SEVENTEEN
I
t was after nine before the authorities, in the person of Sergeant Chet DeKalb, allowed me to leave Tomales. DeKalb had come out even though he was off duty, because I had asked for him specifically. He wasn't pleased at having been yanked away from dinner with his family—he lived in Terra Linda and it was a long drive from there to Tomales—but he didn't take it out on me. He was polite; and when he saw the way Bertolucci's murder shaped up he even permitted a spark of interest to show through his stoicism.
We did our talking in the display room, with those stuffed things looking on. Lab men, photographers, uniformed deputies, the county coroner paraded in and out, performing the grim aftermath ritual of violent death. Outside, knots of local residents shivered in the fog, as indistinct when you had glimpses of them as half-formed wraiths. The revolving red light on the county ambulance made one of the windows alternately light up with a crimson glow and then go dark, like the winking of a bloody eye.
I told DeKalb everything I knew about Bertolucci, everything I had suspected about him and his connection with those bones. “But now I don't know,” I said. “What happened here tonight … it confuses the hell out of things.”
“Not necessarily,” DeKalb said. “There doesn't have to be a correlation between your investigation and Bertolucci's death.”
“Doesn't have to be, no.”
“But you think there is.”
“I don't know what to think right now.”
“Could have been a prowler,” DeKalb said. “Bertolucci caught him, tried to scare him off with the shotgun; they struggled, the gun went off, bang the old man's dead.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Or somebody local had a grudge against him. You said nobody seemed to like him much.”
“Why now, though? The same week a thirty-five-year-old can of worms opened up.”
“Coincidences happen.”
“Sure. I've had a few happen to me over the years. But this time … I don't know, it doesn't feel right that way.”
“Hunches,” DeKalb said. “You can't always trust 'em.”
“Granted. Hell, I don't see how the murder can be tied up with Harmon Crane and the missing wife, either.”
“Anybody you can think of who might have had a motive?”
“That's just it, I can't think of a single person or a single motive—not after all these years.”
“You tell anybody your suspicions about Bertolucci and his wife?”
“No. I only found out about her this afternoon, and I came straight here afterward.”
“Who told you about the wife?”
“Woman in Berkeley—Marilyn Dubek, the niece of Crane's widow. But she's fat, fifty, and a housefrau; the idea of her following me here and blowing Bertolucci away is ridiculous.”
“What about the widow?”
“No way. Late sixties and mentally incompetent ever since her husband's suicide.”
“Well, maybe the Dubek woman told somebody else what she told you after you left.”
“Maybe. But I got here as fast as anybody could in rush-hour traffic, and I was in the general store no more than fifteen minutes. Whoever killed Bertolucci pretty much had to have arrived at the same time I did and probably a while earlier. Don't you think?”
“Seems that way,” he agreed.
“I don't suppose any of the neighbors saw the car?”
DeKalb shook his head. “Nobody home at two of the houses. Old woman who lives in the other place up the way was cooking her supper; besides that, she's half-blind.”
I said, “You know, if this was the perpetrator's first visit here, he might have had to stop over in the business section to ask directions.”
“Already thought of that. Officers are checking it now. Let's get back to your investigation. Did you tell anybody about your first meeting with Bertolucci?”
“Just my client.”
“Michael Kiskadon,” DeKalb said, nodding. “I don't suppose you'd consider him a candidate?”
I hesitated, remembering what I'd thought yesterday morning after talking to Kiskadon on the phone—that if his wife didn't get him some psychiatric help pretty soon, he was liable to come unwrapped. And then what? I'd wondered. What happens to a guy like Kiskadon when he starts to unravel? Well, murder was one thing that happens to head cases; the sheer terrifying number of lunatics running around committing atrocities these days was proof of that. But something had to trigger a homicidal act, and I had told Kiskadon nothing about Angelo Bertolucci that could have induced a murderous rage. Besides, there was Kiskadon's physical condition: he was weak, he could barely get around unaided, he seldom left the house even for short periods. I could no more envision him driving all the way up to Tomales to confront Bertolucci than I could Marilyn Dubek.