Deadfall(7)

Blood in them, jetting up bright red out of a fountain in a yard grown high with dead trees and shrubs. A bird on the wing, and I touched it somehow and felt the life leave its body and pass through my fingers, and it fell in a long spiral—a deadfall. Then I was on the floor, crawling, crippled with pain and leaving a trail of blood behind me—but it was the floor of Eberhardt’s house, not Purcell’s, the afternoon Eb and I had been shot by a hired Chinese gunman. And then I was on one knee, looking down at myself, putting a hand on my own shoulder and saying, “Easy, I’m here to help you, you’re going to be okay,” and I shuddered at the lie and felt myself shudder, felt the life go rushing out of my own body this time. And then somebody yelled, a thin wailing cry full of anguish—

—and I woke myself up, because it was me doing the yelling.





Chapter Three





Nothing much happened over the next week. I avoid reading the newspapers most of the time, but I had a look at the Chronicle twice during that week; I also called Ben Klein at the Hall and talked with him. But there just weren’t any developments in the Leonard Purcell case. Or at least none that the police were admitting to. According to Klein, Tom Washburn had been unable to attach any particular significance to Purcell’s dying words, except as an obscure reference to Leonard’s brother, Kenneth Purcell, who had died in a fall this past May. None of the neighbors had seen or heard anything useful. No solid motive had surfaced. There were no suspects. Possible leads were still being checked, Klein said, but he didn’t sound confident that they would point him anywhere.

I had no real stake in the case, yet I could not keep it out of my head. You don’t watch a man die—feel a man die—and then just forget about it as if it never happened. Especially not with reruns of those nightmares every couple of nights. So I read the newspaper stories, and talked to Klein and a few other people, and found out some things about Leonard Purcell and his brother. Eberhardt thought this was morbid and a waste of time, and maybe it was. But Eberhardt has thicker skin than I do; after more than thirty years on the San Francisco cops, it’s just a job to him. Sometimes I wish it was just a job to me, too. Sometimes.

The fact that Leonard was the second member of the Purcell family to die within six months might not have interested me if his brother’s death hadn’t been the result of a fall and hadn’t also been on the odd side. Kenneth Purcell, a wealthy real estate broker and art collector, had lost his life during a Thursday-night party at his Moss Beach home. There had been a lot of drinking at this party, evidently—Kenneth had thrown it to show off a valuable antique snuff box he’d acquired—and he had done the lion’s share of it. Sometime between nine-thirty and ten he had disappeared; he hadn’t been missed until ten, by his wife Alicia. When a search of the house and immediate grounds failed to turn him up, the wife and a couple of the guests had gone out to check the cliffs at the rear of the property. His body had been caught on the rocks a hundred feet below.

There had been no witnesses to his fall. And no evidence of foul play, although Kenneth hadn’t been well liked and there were rumors that some of his real estate brokerings were of the quasi-legal variety. The official theory was that he had wandered out onto the cliffs to clear his head—it had been a cold, windy, but clear night—and lost his footing somehow. The valuable snuff box, which Kenneth had had on his person earlier, had not been found on the body; his coat pocket had been torn in the fall and presumably the box had been lost in the ocean. County coroner’s verdict: accidental death.

Klein didn’t think there was any connection between the deaths of the two brothers. Tom Washburn, on the other hand, did think so—apparently for more reasons than just those half-delirious words I had heard Leonard speak before he died. Klein hadn’t wanted to go into Washburn’s reasons but did say he’d had them checked out thoroughly. He’d also checked out Leonard thoroughly. And was satisfied that Leonard had had no violent old enemies, hadn’t professionally or personally offended or antagonized any individual or group of individuals in recent weeks, was not in serious debt to anyone, had no ties to any criminal element. His law practice had been small but thriving, with a mixed client list of gays and straights; and he was financially well off. The official police theory in his case was that he had been shot by an intruder on the hunt for money or valuables.

That was the way things stood—more or less in limbo—when I got to the office at nine o’clock on a Thursday morning, one week after the shooting. Eberhardt wasn’t in yet; he likes to keep executive hours, a habit that irritates me sometimes because the agency is mine, not his, and he wouldn’t be a part of it if I hadn’t felt sorry for him after his early retirement from the SFPD a couple of years ago and taken him in as a full partner. Still, coming in late most mornings was a minor annoyance. He was a good man to work with where and when it counted—a good friend. All things considered, the partnership had turned out much better than I’d expected it would.