Bones(69)

He didn't pay any attention to me until I stopped in front of him, blocking his view, and said, “Hello, Yankowski.”

His frown was full of displeasure. “You again. I thought I told you I didn't want anything more to do with you.”

“Yes? Well, you're going to have plenty more to do with me, Counselor. Starting right now.”

“I am not,” he said, and he got up and pushed past me and started back along Sunset Trail. At first I thought he was going to stay on it, which would have made bracing him easier for me; instead he veered off onto one of the sandy paths toward the cliff edge. I hesitated—I just don't like heights—but I went after him anyway, skirting scrub bushes and passing over tiny dunes like faceless heads with iceplant for hair.

Yankowski stopped a few feet from the edge, where the ground rose a little and then fell away sharply into an eroded declivity. I stopped too, but a couple of steps farther back and at an angle to him. Still, I was close enough to the edge so that I could look down part of the cliff face, see the surf licking at the beach far away at the bottom. The gooseflesh rippled on my arms and shoulders, a sensation that had nothing to do with the wind or the cold.

“Yankowski.”

He turned. “Damn you, go away. Leave me alone.”

“No. You're going to talk to me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I know you killed Angelo Bertolucci,” I said. “And I know why.”

He had a good poker face, from all his years in court, but he couldn't keep his body from stiffening. His gloved hands hooked into fists—and then relaxed. He watched me silently out of dark, cold eyes that had no fear in them, only wariness and an animal cunning.

I said, “Well? Do we talk?”

“You talk,” he said. “I'll listen.”

“Sure, why not. I've got the whole thing figured out, starting with Harmon Crane. I'll tell you the way I think it was; you tell me if I'm right.”

He pursed his lips and said nothing. Past him, the fiery rim of the sun was just fusing with the ocean; the swath it laid across the water was turning from silver to gold.

I said, “All right. Crane liked to get away from the city from time to time, to be alone for a week or two; he worked better that way. He liked the isolation of Tomales Bay and he rented a cabin up there from Angelo Bertolucci. Bertolucci didn't like Crane much, but he liked Crane's money. What Crane liked was Bertolucci's wife, Kate.

“I don't know how long he and Kate Bertolucci had been seeing each other, when or how it started. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter either that they both had reasons for turning to each other, or what those reasons were. What's important is that they had an affair, and that Bertolucci found out about it.

“Bertolucci went to the cabin one day in late October of 1949, probably with the idea of catching his wife and Crane together. But she was there alone; Crane had gone to buy groceries. There was an argument; Bertolucci lost his head and clubbed her to death with a piece of stovewood. Then panic set in and he ran.

“Crane came back and found the body and he panicked. Instead of notifying the county sheriff, he cleaned up the blood and buried Kate's body in a fissure opened by an earthquake the day before. After which he packed up and beat it back to San Francisco. But the whole ugly business was too much for his conscience. Guilt began to eat at him. And paranoia: he was afraid Bertolucci might decide to come after him too. He started hitting the bottle; he didn't have the guts to do anything else, including confront Bertolucci.

“Six weeks or so went by and nothing happened except that Crane's mental condition kept getting wrose. He thought about killing himself but he didn't have the guts for that either, not quite. He almost wished Bertolucci would come and do it for him.”

I paused. “How am I doing so far, Yankowski?”

He stayed silent, unmoving. His eyes were small and black under the bill of his cap—little poison-drops of hate.

“So then came the night of December tenth,” I said, “and Crane's death. But it wasn't suicide, the way everybody thought—the way I thought myself until this morning. That locked office was what threw all of us. The police had ruled out any gimmick work with the door and windows; it had to be suicide. Only it wasn't, it was murder.”

Yankowski said, “And I suppose you think I murdered him.”

“No. I think Bertolucci murdered him, just as Crane was afraid he might. And I think you covered it up for Bertolucci by making it look like a suicide.”

“Now why would I do that?”

“Because you were in love with Amanda Crane and you didn't want Crane's affair and the rest of it to come out; you knew she was the fragile type and you were afraid of what the scandal might do to her. But you miscalculated, Yankowski. You did it all for nothing. Her mind wasn't even strong enough to withstand a suicide; she cracked up and never recovered. And you, the big Prince Charming, you abandoned her. You weren't about to saddle yourself with half a woman who needed constant care—not a fast-rising young shyster like you.”