Camouflage(12)

“Crawlspace?”

“Behind the water heater in the basement. Where he’d go when he was little and something scared him. It took me five minutes to find him and another ten to coax him out.” Bryn drew a long, shaky breath, let it out in a faint hiss. “There’s no doubt, Jake. He’s terrified of that bitch. I came close to getting in the car and driving over to Robert’s and confronting her.”

“Bad idea,” Runyon said. “She wouldn’t admit it—and it might make her angry enough to take it out on Bobby.”

“I thought of that, too. That’s why I didn’t do it.”

“Don’t say anything to your ex, either, when you take Bobby back tomorrow.”

“If I take him back.”

“Another bad idea if you don’t. You know what Robert would do.”

“I know, but I can’t stand the thought of Bobby being alone with that woman anymore. The next time he does something to provoke her … God knows what she might do to him.”

Runyon didn’t respond. Bryn’s fear was legitimate, the point inarguable.

He heard her take another couple of breaths, composing herself. Then she said, “Did you find out anything about Francine?”

“Nothing so far that might explain her behavior. Her marriage didn’t last long enough to produce any children.”

“Well, thank God for that.” Pause. “Jake? Would you try talking to Bobby again tomorrow? He responded so well to you today.…”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

“I hate to keep burdening you with this—”

“It’s not a burden. You know I’m there for you.”

“Yes. But it seems so one-sided.”

“Not so,” he said, and meant it. Being there for Bryn meant being there for himself. She was his salvation. Gave him reasons other than work to get up in the morning, ways to fill his days and nights that didn’t involve long, aimless, solitary drives. Helped him regain his self-respect. Made him a man again, physically as well as mentally. He wasn’t sure whether what he felt for her was love or a kind of abiding gratitude; if it was love, it was an altogether different kind from what he’d shared with Colleen. One thing he did know for certain: he would do anything for Bryn, just as he’d have done anything for Colleen.

* * *

He spent part of Sunday afternoon trying to get through to Bobby again. The avuncular approach, the buddy approach, the detective approach. None of it got Runyon anywhere. The boy was locked in tight now, like a frightened young animal hiding in the shadows of a cave. Poking his head out into the light on Saturday had been a onetime thing; he was too afraid to let it happen again.

That left only one way to stop the abuse, the potentially dangerous way—by running a backdoor investigation of Francine Whalen.





5

It didn’t take Tamara long to locate Roxanne Lorraine McManus. Just two billable hours, in fact. That kind of speed is good for client relations and PR purposes, but it doesn’t do much for the agency’s bank account. We weren’t going to make much out of the extra document delivery charge, either.

Surprise: Ms. McManus was alive and well and living in San Francisco.

I was in my office where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing, when Tamara brought in the data printout. When I decided to semiretire a few years ago and made her a full partner and essentially turned the agency over to her, the plan was for me to come in a couple of days a week, do a little office work here and there, and pretty much stay out of the field. Yeah, right. Tamara’s head for business practices was far superior to mine; in short order she found ways to double our business, which necessitated hiring a second field operative, Alex Chavez, with me taking up the rest of the slack in lieu of hiring a third. Two days a week became three, three became four and sometimes five, and pretty soon I was doing almost as much work as before, office and field both. Some semiretirement. Not that I minded too much, though, most of the time. I’ve never been any good at sitting around trying to think of something to do with myself, and with Kerry now a vice president at Bates and Carpenter and Emily away at school or off with her friends, the condo was a pretty lonely place on weekdays.

“I’d’ve found her even sooner,” Tamara said, “except that now she’s using initials instead of her first and middle names.”

“R. L. McManus. Don’t find women doing that much.”

“Only one I can think of is k d lang.”

“I wonder why she made the switch.”

“Probably never liked her given names. I wouldn’t be too happy with ‘Roxanne Lorraine’ myself.”