Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (60 page)

I even had an idea about the phone calls to Laura from "Tracy." The
first time I'd met Kathy, she mimicked Tracy's voice, repeating the
punch line from the bewildered feminist routine. Later, when I viewed
the videotape, the punchline had sounded familiar because Kathy's
imitation had been a good one.

All of it—the switched dental records, the calls, the book on
creating a new identity that they'd somehow placed in the apartment on
Upper Market—had been designed to keep a true identification of Tracy's
remains from ever being made.

So there it was: a more or less logical scenario. Except I couldn't
quite buy it, not as it currently stood.

The problem was the motive. I simply couldn't imagine Larkey—no
matter how enraged—driving up to the cottage with the intent to kill. I
couldn't imagine him creating an elaborate frame of Bobby Foster, a
young man he professed to like, much less standing mutely by while
Bobby went to his death. It was not that I didn't believe Larkey was
capable of such actions; I'd long ago learned that most people are
capable of anything, given sufficient reason. But if Larkey had done
those things, he would have had a much more compelling motive than mere
anger. He would have had much more than his masculine pride at stake.

I stared distractedly at my reflection in the black airplane window.
The bright cabin lights made me look washed out and sickly; my thoughts
made me looked worried and frustrated. Quickly I glanced away.

What exactly was it that Tracy had said to her mother at their last
Friday lunch? The things about not being a good person anymore, but
something besides that. Something about a sin of omission. That,
coupled with whatever she had seen in Jane Stein's copy of the Times,
might give me an inkling of that motive. But where the hell was I going
to lay my hands on a copy of an L. A. paper at this hour of the night
in
San Francisco? Perhaps I'd made a mistake in not staying over—

The flight attendants were passing along the aisles, collecting
things. I finished my drink, handed the plastic tumbler over, and
raised my tray table, as instructed, to an upright position.

I found the nearest bank of phones on the concourse and called All
Souls. Jack wasn't there; Rae was on another line. I waited
impatiently, tapping my fingers on the aluminum shelf. When she finally
came on, she said, "Shar, thank God you're back. There's a woman on the
other line who needs to talk to you. She's been calling off and on all
afternoon."

"Who?"

"She won't give her name, but she says it's important."

"Get her number, tell her I'll call her back."

Rae put me on hold, came back about fifteen seconds later. "Shar,
she still won't tell me anything. Just said she'll call again."

"Dammit! It's probably about this case."

"If she calls again, I'll make her give me a number somehow, or I'll
tell her to come here. What happened in L.A.?"

Briefly I explained to her about finding Mclntyre, and what that
probably meant.

When I finished, Rae said, "You know, it's funny, but I think Larkey
suspected something like that."

"Larkey? What's he got to do with it?"

"When I called him to cancel your appointment, he sounded kind of
down, so I told him you'd gone to L.A. to locate Tracy. I thought it
would cheer him up—you'd said he cared for her—but it didn't. He asked
me to have you let him know how it turned out. Said that if it wasn't
Tracy down there, he wanted to drive up to Napa tomorrow and check out
those dental records again. Seems he'd been thinking about them, and
something odd had occurred to him."

"What?"

"He couldn't go into it; he was in a meeting."

What had occurred to him, I thought, was that he'd better cover up
switching the X rays and falsely claiming the remains weren't Tracy's.
Perhaps he intended to go to Napa, take another look at them, and
identify them correctly, in order to deflect suspicion from himself. I
said, "I'll talk with him later. Any other messages?"

"George Kostakos. He's at home."

"What about Jack—where's he?"

"Had to go to Sacramento on another case."

"If you see him before I do, fill him in on what's happened. But
right now I need you to do something for me. I'm not even sure it's
within the realm of the possible, but I need a copy of the L.A. Times,
metropolitan edition, for February second, the year Kostakos
disappeared."

"I'll check the library."

"I doubt it's still open."

"This is a tough one." Rae sounded glum, then rallied. "Maybe Hank
will have some idea."

"Hank. Is he still staying there on the couch?"

"As of this morning."

That was another thing I wanted to deal with—but not until this case
was wrapped up. "Well, ask him."

"Will do. By the way, I went by your place earlier to feed the cat.
The contractor was there; he said not to worry about locking up after
him, because you'd given him a key to the side gate."

"Yes—he's bonded, and I couldn't let myself get tied down to his
schedule. Thanks for looking out for Wat."

"Don't mention it. Where can I reach you?"

"I'm not sure. I'll check in."

I broke the connection and called George at his borrowed house. I
wanted to break the news to him about finding Mclntyre
alive—and to break it in person, because it meant that his daughter
really was dead. But I only reached the machine.

In a way it was good, I thought, because after breaking that kind of
news, it would be very hard to leave him. And where I needed to go as
soon as possible was Café Comedie.

On Bryant near Fourth Street, roughly two blocks from South Park, I
ran into a monumental traffic jam. Odd, I thought, for close to
ten-thirty at night.

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, staring at the sea of red
taillights in front of me. Then I switched the radio on, to see if I
could find out what was causing this. Out of old habit, I punched the
button for KSUN, an AM station with an exuberant hard-rock format,
where my former lover, disc jockey Don Del Boccio, now held court in
the prestigious late-evening slot. (If, as Don was fond of saying,
having the ear of half a million teenagers whose combined IQ was
probably in the low seventies could be considered prestige.)

I was so irritated at the jam-up that I didn't even feel a rush of
nostalgia when I heard Don's voice extolling the talents of a group
called Matt and the Mercenaries, and I turned down their atonal
screeching (perhaps they really were in a war zone?) so far that I
almost missed it when minutes later Don said, "… traffic advisory." I
turned the radio up again, expecting him to report an overturned big
rig or some such thing on
the bridge approach several blocks ahead.

"… and also a news bulletin," he added. "We have a five-alarm fire
that's backing up traffic on Bryant Street and nearby access routes to
the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Emergency vehicles are blocking Bryant
at Second and Third, and while police are attempting to reroute
traffic, it's pretty much at a standstill. So if you're traveling to
the East Bay or South of Market tonight, it's best to avoid the main
arteries. The fire is on South Park, between Second and Third streets,
Bryant and Brannan. Fire crews and ambulances are on the scene, and
police are asking that people keep away from the area if at all
possible. That's all we've got on it now, but we'll be keeping you
posted."

South Park!

I clutched the wheel, my stomach knotting. Now that I knew about
the fire I became aware of sirens, of an orange-red glow in the sky.
A sickening feeling filled me. Was it possible this disaster was
somehow related to my case? Was it Café Comedie…?

I needed to get there and find out what had happened, but there
were no side streets or alleys intersecting this part of the block.
There were parking spaces along the curb, and I was in the far right
lane, but the one next to me, as well as those in front of and behind
it, were taken. Two cars ahead there was a vacant space, but now
traffic was at a total standstill; hours could pass before I reached it.

Everywhere people were hanging out their windows, trying to see what
had caused the holdup. Some got out and stood in the street; the driver
of the pickup that was stopped next to the parking space I coveted
climbed up in the truck's bed and looked around. If this continued,
Bryant Street would soon look like a used-car lot on inventory
liquidation day. I fumed and grumbled aloud, experiencing that feeling
of impotence in the face of impersonal forces that is easily one of the
worst aspects of urban life. If traffic didn't move soon, tempers would
flare, and the street scene could turn ugly.

The guy in the bed of the pickup was the first to snap: he yelled,
"Fuck it!" and jumped down onto the pavement. Then he climbed into the
truck and started it. It lurched forward, into the bumper of the car in
front of it, then back into the one behind. Its wheels turned sharply
to the right; the pickup slewed through the empty parking space beside
it and onto the sidewalk.

The car behind it barely hesitated before it followed suit. The two
vehicles fishtailed down the sidewalk next to the logjam in the street.
A woman two cars over leaned out her window and shouted, "Assholes!"

I agreed with her, but the lunatics had shown me the way out. I was
about to execute the same maneuver when a siren whooped somewhere
behind me. A motorcycle cop, obviously on his way to attempt to reroute
traffic, raced down the sidewalk after the truck and car. A ticket and
the ensuing delay was something I didn't need, so I settled for pulling
into the empty parking space. Then I jumped out of the MG and ran
toward South Park.

As I got closer, the air reeked of smoke; it clogged my nostrils and
windpipe and made my breath come short. There were flashing lights
ahead: red, blue, amber. The sky overhead glowed like an inverted
red-orange globe. People were shouting. Radios in the emergency
vehicles squawked and crackled.

When I turned onto Third Street itself, I saw the entrance to South
Park was blocked by a police barricade. A great crowd milled about,
resisting the officers' efforts to clear a path for an arriving
ambulance. I could hear the flames now: a roar that sounded as if whole
buildings were being sucked into a vacuum. The smoke-filled air was
warm as a spring day.

The crowd acted as a solid mass, shifting this way or that, but
providing no opening. I wriggled between two men, pushed a third aside,
elbowed a woman so she stepped back. To my left a police officer
shouted for people to move; he spread his arms wide, and one of his
hands caught me hard on the shoulder. The lights of the ambulance
washed over the tight press of humanity. As it crept forward, the
driver hit the siren. That accomplished what no amount of police
commands could: the crowd parted and the ambulance drove toward the
barricade. I slipped under the officer's arm and darted in its wake.

As the ambulance sped through the barricade, a hand grabbed my arm.
"That's far enough, lady."

I didn't reply, transfixed by the scene in front of me. Fire trucks
clogged the parkway itself. Ambulances were pulled onto the grassy
oval. People lay on stretchers, white-coated paramedics attending to
them. At the picnic tables and on the ground, others—many in evening
attire—sat or lay. Their faces and hands were smoke blackened, their
clothing torn and disheveled.

Beyond the ring of barren sycamore trees, the facade of Café Comedie
was enveloped in what looked to be a solid wall of flame. The
wrought-iron fence in front of it had been flattened by the
hook-and-ladders. The buildings on either side were afire, too. Great
torrents of water arched through the air; smoke billowed. The swiftly
moving figures of the firemen were mere sooty silhouettes. And over it
all spread the consuming brilliance of the flames.

If they couldn't control this inferno soon, it would engulf all of
South Park. Perhaps several surrounding blocks.

"Lady, move before you get hurt," the officer said, tugging at my
arm.

"Do you know how it started?"

"Somebody said something about an explosion."

I stared at the wall of fire, remembered the gas leak Larkey had
mentioned—the one PG&E couldn't fix properly. "Was anybody trapped
in there?"

"Don't know. Now—move!"

I moved, but only a few yards away. I couldn't take my eyes off the
flames. In spite of the efforts to quell them, they shot upward, as if
to consume the sky itself.

A woman near me was having hysterics. She kept sobbing, "He
promised! He promised!" I looked her way, saw she was bent over, a man
clutching at her leather-jacketed shoulders. The man was Mike, the
bartender from the club. As I drew closer, I realized the woman was
Kathy Soriano.

Mike looked relieved when he saw me. He said, "I can't do anything
for her."

"Let me try." I took hold of Kathy, dragged her down to a sitting
position on the pavement. She hunched over, arms wrapped around her
midsection, hands over her face, sobbing raggedly.

Mike squatted beside us. I asked him, "Is she hurt?"

He shook his head. "She was just handing her keys over to one of the
valets when the explosion happened. I'd stepped out for some air on my
break. I grabbed her, and we ran down here." He looked toward the
flames. "My God," he added in awed tones, as if only now realizing what
might have happened to him had he stayed inside.

Kathy was rocking back and forth now. "Jay," she sobbed. "Jay. He
promised."

I put my arms around her. She buried her head under my chin. Over
her rumpled curls I said to Mike, "Jay? Rob?"

He shook his head slightly—in the negative. "The explosion was back
by the office, from what I could tell."