Endgame--A Nameless Detective Novel Read online

  Spots stopped sniffing around bushes and posts and pillars, investigated a small curbside tree, decided it was suitable, and proceeded to pee on it. “So much for number one,” Mrs. Cappicotti said approvingly. “Now if he’ll just get on with number two.”

  “The day of the disappearance,” I said. “Did you see any other vehicles in the Cahills’ driveway or parked in front of the house?”

  “The sister’s car was there when I went out to do some weeding in the garden around half past ten. I know it because she came around fairly often.”

  “How long did she stay, do you know?”

  “Half hour or so. I was still weeding when she left.”

  “What color and make is her car?”

  “White. I don’t know from makes or models. Four doors and new looking, that’s all I can tell you.”

  “Do you know her at all?”

  “To talk to? No. Tried once, but she snooted me. The kind of woman men like—pretty face, big boobs—but about as friendly as a shark.”

  “Mrs. Cahill had other visitors from time to time,” I said. “Her brother-in-law, a friend of hers named Fran Woodward. Do you remember the colors of their vehicles?”

  “Not offhand … No, wait, the doctor’s is white, too, I think.”

  “Have you had conversations with either of them?”

  “Him a couple of times, he seems all right. Never had any reason to talk to the friend. Kind of weird, that one.”

  “How do you mean, weird?”

  “Different color hair every time I see her, and I don’t mean black, brown, or yellow. Chartreuse, turquoise, henna red. Dresses like some sort of New Age hippie.”

  “Did anyone else come to visit Alice Cahill? During the day, I mean, while her husband was away?”

  “Not that I ever saw when I was home— Well, finally!”

  We were in the middle of the next block by this time, and Spots had stopped again and was squatting on a patch of curbside lawn. But then he stood up and trotted off again without leaving anything on the grass.

  “Damn dog. Come on, you,” she snapped at him, “get it over with.” He paid no attention to her. “I swear he does this on purpose just to annoy me. Once he dragged me around for six blocks before he did his business. I’m spry for my age, but not that spry. There ought to be a command.”

  “Command?”

  “You know, a training command. They’ve got one for everything else and he obeys them. I say shake hands, he shakes hands. I say roll over, he rolls over. I say sit up, he sits up. I say poop, he either looks at me like I’ve got three heads or ignores me completely. If somebody invented a go poop command it’d sure make dog walking a lot easier.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” I said.

  Spots evidently thought so, too. As soon as Mrs. Cappicotti said the words, “Go poop,” he squatted and did exactly that.

  3

  JAKE RUNYON

  Runyon liked to drive. Always had, in recent years to the point of compulsion, if not obsession. When Colleen was alive, they’d taken all sorts of long and short driving trips together. During his time on the Seattle PD he’d done most of the driving while in uniform and again after he was promoted. He should have been behind the wheel instead of his detective partner, Ron Cain, in the high-speed chase after a fugitive homicide suspect; if he had been, maybe, just maybe, he could have avoided the truck that came out of nowhere and slammed into them, killing Ron and putting him in the hospital with the triple-fractured tibia that had required two surgeries, given him a permanent if barely noticeable limp, and ended his police career.

  After the goddamn ovarian cancer ripped Colleen away from him and he’d gone to work as an investigator for Caldwell & Associates, he’d been on the road a lot as part of the job and also started taking long weekend and nighttime drives. That pattern had escalated after he’d moved down to San Francisco in the abortive effort to reconnect with his estranged son, Joshua, and gotten the field operative’s job with Bill and Tamara’s firm. He’d traveled every major road in the Greater Bay Area and beyond the past five years, using up downtime and logging thousands of miles familiarizing himself with his new home turf.

  During those six terrible months while Colleen slowly wasted away, driving helped him develop the ability to shut himself down without losing awareness—a kind of catlike patience that kept external forces beyond his control from touching him, kept the pain and memories more or less at bay. Didn’t matter where he went or why. Being on the move satisfied his restless need for activity, gave him a measure of peace that he hardly ever found when caught between four walls. When he stepped out of the Ford after a long drive, he was calm, focused, ready to face another day and whatever tasks went with it.

  So he was always glad when assigned to a case that required a road trip, as this one to Eagle Lake in the Sierras did. He’d never been there before, had never even heard of the place, but that didn’t matter. Rural, urban, suburban—all the same to him. After Colleen’s death, he’d lost all interest in his surroundings except as they pertained to his work and to bare-bones living; towns, roads, routes, neighborhoods, landmarks had all been visually noted and then filed away in a corner of his mind for future business-related reference. Eagle Lake would be no different.

  He preferred his road trips to be solitary, but the fact that he had a passenger on the first leg of this one was all right with him. It might have bothered him a little if the woman, Patricia Dennison, had been the chatty type, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t said more than twenty words since he’d picked her up at her Marina District home at eight that morning, and they were now a little less than halfway to their destination. She’d maintained the same position the entire time, over close to the passenger door with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes straight ahead but her attention focused inward. Typical of a recent widow, the more so given the circumstances of her husband’s death and the mission she and Runyon were on.

  The investigative part of it shaped up to be fairly routine, not that that mattered to Runyon. A case was a case, some stimulating, some dull, all part of the job. Philip Dennison had been found dead inside a cabin on Eagle Lake, a mile or so from the village of the same name. His death was accidental; there didn’t seem to be any doubt of that, considering that he’d been alone in the cabin with all the doors and windows locked on the inside. The question was what he’d been doing there in the first place. When he’d left San Francisco the previous Friday, he’d told his wife he was headed for a sales conference—he’d been a sales rep for a computer software firm—in Southern California, several hundred miles in the opposite direction.

  The officer in charge of the sheriff’s substation in Eagle Lake, a senior deputy named Rittenhouse, hadn’t been able to provide an answer. Nothing in the cabin or in Dennison’s vehicle explained it; the only luggage was his, he’d brought no sporting gear with him, and there were no indications that he’d had company during the time he’d been there. None of the locals were able to shed light on the matter. Nor had any of the dead man’s friends and co-workers Mrs. Dennison had spoken to. As far as she or they knew, he hadn’t known anybody in the Eagle Lake area. And she, like Runyon, had never been to or heard of the place before.

  Naturally she wanted the matter looked into. Closure. That was one reason, the primary one, she’d come to the agency. The other reasons were to see this unknown place where her husband had died, to make arrangements for the transportation of his remains to the Bay Area for burial, and to take possession of his Cadillac and drive it back to the city for disposal. Unless there were complications, Runyon figured he’d be making his solo return trip by Saturday at the latest.

  They were on Highway 50 just outside Sacramento when Mrs. Dennison stirred and then abruptly broke her silence. As if giving voice to a brooding thought, she said, “I think he was with a woman up there.”

  Runyon glanced over at her. “Your husband?”

  “Yes. It has to be the reason Philip went
to Eagle Lake. To fuck some woman.”

  Runyon was used to hearing casual obscenities from women as well as men, but this one wasn’t casual. It came out low and brittle, as though the taste of it in her mouth was unfamiliar, sour. Not a word she used very often, he thought, and a measure of the depth of her feelings.

  “From what you told us yesterday, the Eagle Lake authorities seemed to think he was alone.”

  “They said there were no traces of a woman in the cabin where he died, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. I don’t believe he was alone.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Why else would he go up there, hundreds of miles from where he told me he was going.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Maybe he just wanted to get away by himself for a few days.”

  “He wanted to get away, yes, but not by himself. Not Philip.”

  “He’s done something similar before, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Twice. At least twice.”

  “You know this for a fact?”

  “I know it,” she said. “He was discreet about it, oh, very discreet. He never cheated in his own backyard; he always had to sneak away to do it.”

  “Different women, do you think, or the same one?”

  “I don’t know. Different ones, I suppose.” Her mouth quirked. “He always used to say variety is the spice of life. He was talking about other things, but the implication is the same.”

  “Did you accuse him of being unfaithful?”

  “Yes. He denied it, of course, but he wasn’t a convincing liar. I told him I’d divorce him if I ever had sufficient proof. It scared him—he loved me; he didn’t want to lose me—but he kept on doing it just the same.”

  Serial philanderer. Some men were wired that way, even those with wives as attractive as Patricia Dennison. She’d given her age as thirty-two, but she could have passed for seven or eight years younger. Flawless skin with no visible age lines, dark blond hair framing a heart-shaped face, cornflower-blue eyes. Impersonal appraisal: Runyon had never allowed himself to consider a client as anything but a client and never would.

  He said, “You must have loved him to put up with it.”

  “Once.” Then, after a long pause, “No, that’s not true. I still loved him, just not as much.”

  “Would you have gone through with a divorce?”

  “Oh, yes. It wasn’t an idle threat.”

  Runyon was silent.

  Pretty soon Mrs. Dennison said, “I want you to find out who he was with at the lake. Her name, where she lives.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I have some things to say to her.”

  “You realize that if there was a woman—”

  “There was.”

  “—she may not have known he was married.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Confronting her would serve no real purpose, Mrs. Dennison.”

  “Please don’t try to talk me out of it. Will you find her for me or not?”

  Not a commitment he could make yet; it wasn’t part of her original statement of purpose in hiring him through the agency. He let a few seconds tick away before he said carefully, “If it’s possible, I’d want to be there when you talk to her.”

  She smiled—a brief, counterfeit smile. “Why? Do you suppose I mean to scratch her eyes out or shoot her or something?”

  “I don’t suppose anything,” Runyon said. “It’s a matter of protocol.”

  “All right. If you need to be there, then be there; I don’t care. Just find her, that’s all I ask.”

  * * *

  Eagle Lake was in the El Dorado National Forest a few miles northeast of Highway 50, some two-thirds of the way to South Lake Tahoe. The village was wrapped partway around the southern tip of the lake, a glass-smooth body of water a mile or so in diameter. From the glimpses Runyon had of it coming in, the lake was tightly hemmed by pines all the way around; short docks and portions of summer homes and permanent residences were visible here and there. A line of steep hills and high mountain peaks rose beyond the far end of the village, ski runs carved out of two of the closest hillsides. The village buildings seemed to be mostly A-frames, the major exceptions a couple of lodges near the ski areas, the largest designed to imitate a Swiss chalet.

  All in all, it was one of those off-the-beaten-track mountain communities that offered water sports in the summer and snow sports in the winter. If it had a chamber of commerce, the word they’d use to describe it would probably be picturesque. To Runyon it was just another place to catalogue and eventually tuck away with the multitude of others in his mental filing cabinet.

  It was a few minutes past noon when he drove past a sign on the outskirts that gave the population as 1,026. There was plenty of snow on the peaks near and far, and leftover patches of it spotted the hillsides and shaded hollows alongside the two-lane road and Eagle Lake’s main street that intersected it. The village had a semi-deserted look and feel. Between seasons, the winter people gone and the summer people yet to arrive.

  A café appeared ahead and Runyon asked Patricia Dennison if she wanted to stop for something to eat before they spoke with Deputy Rittenhouse. She said no, she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted to get that part of it over with as quickly as possible.

  The sheriff’s station was easy enough to find, a large log A-frame set back from the road with a tall sign at the entrance to an asphalt parking lot in front. Runyon pulled the Ford in next to a pair of blue-and-white cruisers marked Eagle Lake Sheriff Department.

  The day was mostly sunny, but the wind that stung his face when he stepped out still held a winter chill. Mrs. Dennison seemed not to notice. She left her coat unbuttoned, her wide mouth set in a grimly determined line, as they entered the building.

  Typical small-town substation: three desks with computers, communication equipment, locked case of rifles and shotguns on one wall, closed door to what was probably a private office at the rear, railed divider separating the working part of the office from the visitors’ section. One rack of antlers on a large wall-mounted moose head was doing service as a coat and scarf rack.

  Only one of the desks had an occupant, a fortyish woman dressed in a khaki uniform. Civilian dispatcher, probably. She smiled at them. “Hello, folks. Can I help you?”

  “I’m Patricia Dennison. Deputy Rittenhouse is expecting me.”

  The woman’s expression turned solemn. “Oh, yes. He had to go out, but he shouldn’t be far away. I’ll radio him you’re here.”

  She did that, spoke briefly, and then informed them that the chief deputy would be there in about ten minutes. Patricia Dennison refused an offer of coffee while they waited; Runyon did likewise. They sat in silence on a bench in the visitors’ area.

  Nine minutes by the wall clock had ticked by when Deputy Rittenhouse came in. He was a heavyset man in his fifties, his large egg-shaped head barren except for a few tufts of light brown hair and a small inflamed patch above his forehead that was probably eczema. He wore a badge pinned to his uniform shirt, a radio communicator hooked over the collar, a Sam Browne belt around his thick waist.

  The introductions out of the way, Rittenhouse invited them into his office where they could speak in private. He spoke softly, gravely, in deference to the widow, but Runyon had the impression that he could be a no-nonsense type when the situation called for it. Mrs. Dennison had told him when she made the appointment that she was bringing a private investigator with her, but not the reason why. Rittenhouse’s appraisal of Runyon was brief and sharp-eyed. Small-town law officers weren’t always happy to have PIs on their turf, but if the deputy had any such feelings, he didn’t allow them to show.

  “I imagine you’ll want to get the most unpleasant business out of the way first,” he said to Mrs. Dennison. “Official identification, transportation arrangements. Your husband’s remains are at Eagle Lake Clinic, not far from here—”

  “No,” she said. “That can wait.”

&n
bsp; “Wait? I don’t understand.”

  “I’d like to see the cabin where he died first.”

  “… For what purpose?”

  “There’s no reason I can’t see it, is there?”

  “No, but…” Rittenhouse rubbed at the inflamed patch on his scalp with a blunt forefinger. “As I told you when we spoke on the phone, there’s no question that his death was accidental. All the doors and windows were locked and barred on the inside.”

  “That’s not why I want to see the cabin.”

  “Well, as I told you on the phone, no one had been there with him. At any time before the accident, I mean.”

  “Then why did he come all the way up here when he was supposed to be at a conference in Los Angeles for five days?”

  “I have no idea.” Maybe not, but Rittenhouse’s manner had changed slightly, as if the subject made him uneasy. “Is that why you hired Mr. Runyon here? To find out why your husband came to Eagle Lake?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Well, he could have had any number of reasons.” Innocent reasons, Rittenhouse’s tone implied. When she didn’t respond, he said lamely, “Sometimes people do things that don’t make sense to anybody but them.”

  Runyon said, “Mind if I ask a question, Deputy?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Who did Mr. Dennison rent the cabin from?”

  “He didn’t rent it. The owner gave him permission to stay there.”

  “Who would the owner be?”

  “Man named Hansen, Lloyd Hansen. Insurance agent, lives down in Sacramento.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Yes. He confirmed it. Mr. Dennison stopped to get the key on his way up Friday afternoon.”

  “How do the two of them know each other?”

  “Old friends from college.”

  Runyon asked the client if Lloyd Hansen’s name was familiar. She said in a flat voice, “Yes, Philip mentioned him. Now and then they would get together for what he called a reunion.”