Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (38 page)

The words were delivered dispassionately, but there was a disturbing
undercurrent of rage. I chose not to respond to it, said mildly, "If
you kill him, one of the remaining birds will take up the role of the
aggressor."

"I'm going to do it anyway."

Maybe it would help her, but I doubted that. Probably she'd end up
trying to murder the entire hummingbird population of Palo Alto. "Mrs.
Kostakos, let's get back to Tracy—"

"People think I'm crazy, you know."

I was silent again. She seemed to be approaching the subject in her
own way, and I was content to let her do so.

"My husband left me because he couldn't stand living with a crazy
woman anymore. He considers me dangerously obsessed with Tracy's
disappearance. My students and colleagues in the math department began
handling me with kid gloves, as if they were afraid one wrong word
would send me screaming into the streets. Of course, anything deviating
from the statistical norm is unsettling to mathematicians. You can
understand why I had to take a leave of absence."

"Are you working on anything now? Articles or a book—"

"No, nothing. I can't concentrate. I hardly ever go out of the house
anymore." Her words were coming more swiftly now. "The neighbors have
mostly stopped speaking to me; they look at me strangely. When I do go
out, people in the stores, in the street… it's as if I radiate an aura
that frightens them. Do I frighten you, Ms. McCone?"

"No."

"Do you think I'm crazy?"

"I think you're lonely, and under terrible strain."

She took her knee off the bench and turned toward me. "Thank you for
saying so, even if it's not true."

"I meant it. Do you think you're crazy?"

The question made her sink onto the window seat. "I honestly don't
know."

"Perhaps you should see a therapist."

"I was, but I just can't anymore. It doesn't help. The only thing
that would…"

"Would be finding out what happened to your daughter."

She nodded, bending her head so her hair fell against her high
cheekbones. The walls of the recess cast shadows over her that made her
hair more gray than blond, and totally lifeless.

"Mrs. Kostakos," I said, "please help me. You'll be helping
yourself. And Tracy."

"How?"

"Tell me what makes you think that Tracy vanished voluntarily."

She didn't speak. I let the silence spin out into minutes. The gray
year's-end day was drawing to a close; already the crimson of the
hummingbird feeder had faded into the background of pine needles.

Finally she said, "All right. There was one thing, the week before
she vanished. At lunch that Friday she asked me if I thought she was a
good person. I said yes, of course—the way you do when someone catches
you off guard with an important question. She seemed to sense it was a
reflexive response, however, because she said maybe she once had been,
but she didn't think she was anymore."

"Did you ask her what she meant by that?"

"Naturally. But she refused to be specific. She merely said that
circumstance changes people, leads them to do things they never would
have, as well as not to do things they know are right. When I pressed
her, she said she'd done a number of things that were hurtful to
others, but that her worst sin was one of omission—of not correcting a
situation that was sure to harm someone she cared about. After that,
she refused to talk anymore. Later when she disappeared, I assumed
she'd gone away to escape whatever circumstances were making her
feel she was a bad person. I've always believed she would eventually
work it out and return."

I noted the approximate date of the conversation on my pad, then
wrote in block letters: BAD PERSON/OMISSION/ HARM. I studied them for
over a minute, then said, "This may have a great deal of bearing on
what happened, but it still doesn't explain why you seem to dismiss the
ransom note you received, as well as the bloodstained car that was
found in the mountains."

She sighed deeply. "I'd hoped I wouldn't have to… Ms. McCone, this
may sound horrible coming from her mother, but
Tracy isn't the… paragon the newspapers made her out to be. She is, as
I said, self-reliant and conscientious and loyal to those she loves,
but she is also very ambitious and…"

"And?"

"She can be quite… ruthless when it suits her purposes. She is an
achiever, and people who wish to achieve a great deal often can be
self-centered and cruel. My daughter had already achieved a great deal
in a very short time. It had whetted her appetite, the way the taste of
blood will whet a predatory animal's."

It was an odd and disturbing comparison. "So you're saying that the
note and the car are evidence manufactured by Tracy to misdirect anyone
looking for her?"

"Yes."

"Would she actually let Bobby Foster die in order to keep anyone
from finding her?"

Laura Kostakos raised her eyes to mine. They caught faint glimmers
from the lamp beside me, seemed cut of the same lava rock as the pool.
"I cannot believe that. She must be planning to return before that
happens."

And in the meantime she was putting Bobby Foster—her supposed
friend—through a living hell. If her mother's theory about her
disappearance was correct, Tracy had chosen a strange and
contradictory way of working out problems that were making her feel she
was a bad person.

I said, "Can you think of anyone—a friend or a relative, perhaps—who
might be hiding her?"

"I've contacted everyone I could think of. No one has heard from
her, and given the circumstances, I'm fairly sure they wouldn't lie to
me."

"What about a place outside the Bay Area? Someplace she has a
connection to or knows well?"

She considered briefly. "We had a summer cottage on the Mendocino
coast, but it was sold years ago. Otherwise, no, I can't think of any
other place."

Of course, she couldn't have known of all the places Tracy might
have visited after she moved away from Palo Alto. Nor could her
inquiries have covered any number of people she wasn't aware her
daughter knew.

I had one more question. "Why do you suppose she felt she had to
disappear to work out these problems?"

"I don't know."

"But you must have speculated on it."

"Of course I have!" It was a cry of pain. "I've scarcely thought of
anything else since it happened. I've gone over the conversation we had
at lunch, time and time again. I've reexamined everything that she told
me for weeks and months before that. But I don't have a single,
solitary idea."

Her glimmering eyes moved away from mine, to a point somewhere in
the encroaching darkness. The fear in them was almost a palpable
presence. I came close to turning my head to see what or who stood
there. But I didn't have to. I knew.

It was the amorphous shape of dread—that chimera that, once
glimpsed, forever waits implacably in the shadows.

The icy wind gusted across Upper Market Street. It sent litter
swirling along the gutters and plastered sheets of discarded newspapers
against the iron bars of the fence that guarded the edge of the east
sidewalk. Beyond it the hill dropped off precipitously. The lights of
the flatlands below were fog hazed, the usually panoramic glitter of
the Bay Bridge and East Bay barely discernible.

Traffic rushed by me on the downhill slope. The vehicles' headlights
washed over me, then their taillights disappeared around a sharp curve.
I hunched against the capricious gale and walked along, hands stuffed
in the pockets of my pea jacket. Parking was at a premium here on the
overpopulated east side of Twin Peaks; I'd had to leave my MG a long
block from Tracy Kostakos's former apartment building.

The row of apartment houses that clung to the lower part of the hill
started about a hundred yards from where I'd parked. When I reached
their shelter, the wind was not so severe. On the west side of the
pavement the buildings rose in tiers, crammed side by side on the
smaller streets that snake their way toward the radio transmitter and
the overlook crowning the third
and fourth highest of San Francisco's forty-three hills.

The architecture on Twin Peaks is mostly rabbit-warren modern: lots
of postage-stamp-sized balconies that people seldom use because of the
wind; picture windows that afford spectacular views and cause the
residents' heating bills to rise; standard thin walls and bland decor;
too few garages and too many cars. If it wasn't for the views, the area
would probably have gone the way of the "desirable" part of East Palo
Alto many years ago, but the vistas keep the apartments filled and the
rents high.

Of course, I thought as I walked quickly downhill, not all the
buildings on Twin Peaks were tacky or overpriced. My former lover Greg
Marcus owned a tasteful little redwood-sided house on a cul-de-sac off
Parkridge Drive. Perhaps I should stop by there after talking with Amy
Barbour. I could persuade Greg to let me look at the files on the
Kostakos investigation tomorrow, rather than waiting until next week…

No, I decided, bad idea. It could create all sorts of complications.
Better to wait and catch him at the New Year's Eve party.

Tracy's former building was brick faced, three stories, with a fire
escape scaling the front wall and a plane tree growing out of a
planting area in the sidewalk. A lighted entryway contained three
mailboxes, and a metal security gate barred the way into the building
proper. Beyond the gate was a door to the ground-floor unit; fake
marble stairs rose to the other apartments. I examined the names on the
mailboxes and found a plastic label—the kind you make yourself with one
of those punch-out gizmos—on number two, reading BARBOUR/KOSTAKOS. As I
pressed the bell, I wondered if the fact that Tracy's name remained was
the doing of the roommate or the mother who continued to pay half the
rent.

There was no intercom, but Amy Barbour was expecting me—Rae had
assured me of that when I'd checked in before leaving Palo Alto—so I
went over and put my hand on the gate. The buzzer tripped the lock
quickly, and I stepped into the vestibule. The gate clanged noisily
behind me; the traffic sounds were so loud that I barely heard a voice
call out "hello" from the landing above.

"Ms. Barbour?"

"Come on up."

The young woman who stood in the door off the second-story landing
had dark red hair, a square-jawed face, and a short beaky nose. Her
hairdo looked like one of those spiky punk styles that was being
allowed to grow out; it drooped in little petals that reminded me of an
artichoke's leaves. She wore jeans and a red sweatshirt stenciled with
a fanciful lion's head; her figure was round and a trifle bottom heavy.

I introduced myself and extended my hand. She grasped it firmly, met
my eyes in a forthright manner.

"Your hand's like ice," she said. "Damned wind, I hate it. Come on
in, I'll give you a drink."

I followed her inside. The door led into a living room with the
obligatory picture windows facing the East Bay. The white drapes were
closed against the fog. The walls were also white, but the carpet was a
hideous mustard; someone had tried to hide part of it with a Mexican
rug, but I could still see enough—spills and stains included—to make me
wince. The furnishings were surprisingly good: a white leather sofa and
matching chair, tasteful glass-and-chrome tables; plain ceramic lamps;
an elaborate entertainment center. There was a single wall decoration
over the couch, one of those works that is part collage, part oil
painting, and totally expensive.

As I took off my jacket, Amy Barbour disappeared around a corner
into a dining area. I dropped the jacket on the sofa and followed,
starting when I came face-to-face with myself. The entire end wall of
the dining area was a mirror.

Amy turned, smiled at my reaction. "Pretty shocking, isn't it? You
can imagine how awful it makes you feel at seven in the morning. It's
the landlord's idea of how to make the place look larger, so he can
justify the ridiculous rent." She went through the archway into a small
kitchen and sniffed at a pot on the stove.

I said, "I suppose he picked out the carpet, too?"

"I think he got it cheap because nobody else wanted it. It's being
replaced in January. I can't wait to see what he comes up with this
time." She fetched a pair of glasses. "Whatever it is, it still won't
go with Trace's nice furniture."

"Most of the things belong to Tracy, then?"

"Yeah. She was the one with the bucks." Amy spoke with no
resentment, as if it were good fortune that had befallen both of them.
"I've got some mulled wine here. Would you like some?"

I sighed mentally, nodded, and watched as she ladled it from the
pot. In the past three weeks or so I'd had about every variety of
mulled wine known to mankind. Something bizarre happens to people at
the holidays: they seize perfectly drinkable—even good—wine and put
strange substances into it. Cloves, orange peel, cinnamon, and—for all
I know— parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. They make gallons of it,
more than any crowd could reasonably be expected to drink, and two days
before the new year they're still serving what's left over from
December fifteenth.

Amy handed me a glass and looked expectant. I took a sip, found it
palatable in my present frozen state, and murmured compliments. Then we
went back to the living room and sat at opposite ends of the leather
sofa. Amy curled her stockinged feet under her and twisted so she could
look at me. "So," she said, "who're you working for—crazy Mrs. K?"

"Laura Kostakos, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"No."

"Oh. I just kind of assumed…"

"Why?"

"Well, she's so fanatical about Trace. The stuff about her still
being alive. This apartment, the whole schtick." She ran a hand through
her artichoke-leaf hair. "Don't get me wrong—if Trace did turn up, I'd
probably start going to church again. But she won't. She's dead. I
don't like it, but I can live with it. Unlike her mother. Who is
totally… do you know her?"