The Stalker

it driving over in the sedan, and even though they didn’t anticipate any trouble, they were being occupationally cautious.

They waited in the quiet hallway. There was no response, and no sound from within the apartment. They looked at one another, and then Commac shrugged lightly and depressed the bell button again.

Nothing.

Flagg said, “He’s not home.”

“Looks that way.”

“Do you think he’s flown?”

“Maybe,” Commac said. “Let’s see if the building manager knows where he is.”

They walked downstairs again and looked at the redwood-framed bank of mailboxes set into the stucco- and-mica wall of the vestibule. Then they went back up one flight and knocked on the door of Apartment 204.

After a moment, a tall, handsome woman with reddish-brown hair opened the door and looked out at them quizzically. “Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”

“You’re Mrs. Yarborough, the manager?” Commac asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“We’re police officer,” he said. “We’d like to ask you a couple of questions about one of the apartment holders.”

She blinked at the badge pinned to the inside of the leather case in Commac’s hand. Then she said “Which one?” a little breathlessly.

“Steven Kilduff.”

“I knew it!” Mrs. Yarborough said. Her eyes were brightly sparkling. “I just knew it, the way he ran out of here a little while ago, acting so peculiarly, it just had to be something else beside the fact that Andrea was —”

Commac said, “Andrea? That would be Mr. Kilduff’s wife, is that right?”

“Yes, well she’s his wife now but she left him, you know, last Saturday although I didn’t find out about it until last night when she called me, but just the mere fact that Andrea was spending a few days at their fishing cabin, poor thing, to think things over wasn’t why he was acting so peculiarly, of course I don’t exactly know what it was but since you’re here I imagine it must be something very important?” She stopped, looking at them expectantly.

Commac touched the lobe of his right ear. “You said something about a fishing cabin, Mrs. Yarborough. Is that where Mr. Kilduff went, to the best of your knowledge?”

“Well, I suppose it is,” Mrs. Yarborough said. “Of course, he didn’t say, you understand he was acting so peculiarly and I make it a practice never to pry into the affairs of my neighbors but I just had to tell him about Andrea, poor thing, all alone and simply pining away for him, now you understand she’s not involved in this police business, whatever it is, I can vouch for her character she’s such a sweet girl, but if you could just tell me what it is Mr. Kilduff has done perhaps I—”

“Would you happen to know where this fishing cabin is, ma’am?” Flagg asked patiently.

“Well, not exactly, it’s in Marin County somewhere, on that little river that runs into San Pablo Bay—”

“Petaluma River?” Commac asked.

“Yes, I think so, but now—”

“You don’t know the exact location of the cabin?”

“In some slough or other, I think, Andrea mentioned it but I can’t seem to recall, now really, Officers, don’t you think I’m entitled to know why you want to talk to Mr. Kilduff, I’ve been cooperative, haven’t I? and I think as the manager of the building that I’m—”

“What exactly did Mr. Kilduff say to you prior to his leaving, ma’am?” Flagg asked.

“What did he say?” Mrs. Yarborough put her hands on her hips and looked at them in an exasperated way. “Well, I was telling him about Andrea and all of a sudden he grabbed me by the shoulders, very roughly, and he demanded to know what time she had called and I told him it was after eleven sometime, and that was when he got this very peculiar look in his eyes and ran out of here, now if you don’t mind, Officers, I’d like to know just what it is—”

“Thank you, Mrs. Yarborough,” Commac said quietly. “We appreciate your assistance.”

He nodded to Flagg and they turned and started for the stairs. Just as they reached the landing, there was the sound of a door slamming, very loudly, behind them. As they started down, Flagg said, “What do you make of it?”

“I’m not sure,” Commac said.

“Do we follow it up?”

“I think we’d better.”

“So do I.”

“I don’t see why Boccalou won’t give us the okay, as long as the duty roster’s clear enough,” Commac said. “There’s something more to this whole thing than just an eleven-year-old armored-car robbery, we both agree to that. I think he sees it that way, too.”

Flagg nodded.

“We’ll have to have the Marin County Sheriff’s Department run a check on property owners, to find out where this fishing cabin of Kilduff’s is located. They could have the information for us by the time we pulled into San Rafael to pick up one of their boys.”

They reached the vestibule. “It’s still raining, for Christ’s sake,” Commac said rhetorically, a little sourly, and they went out and ran across the street to the unmarked departmental sedan.

I still love her, Steve Kilduff thought.

I never stopped loving her at all.

He had just come down off Waldo Grade, and was approaching Richardson’s Bay Bridge. Traffic was relatively light northbound, although the always-heavy southbound commuter traffic was predictably snarled by the rain and the attendant poor visibility. He was driving very fast for conditions, upwards of seventy-five, passing cars and changing lanes automatically, praying with a small part of him that he wouldn’t encounter a Highway Patrolman, praying with the rest of him that Andrea was still alive. That was when he realized consciously what he had felt and known deep within him all along—that Andrea was an integral, inseparable part of his mind and of his soul; that a portion of his being had died when he believed she had died, and been reborn with the fervent chance that she was still alive, and would die again if this were not to be so; that he loved her as much now as he had that first day in Sugar Pine Valley.

And he knew other things then, just as certainly.

He knew that Andrea had not left him because of the money, that it had been, instead, because of Steve Kilduff—his weaknesses, the long endless string of failures. He had leaned on her, fed on her like a parasite, and she had dutifully carried him, loving him, never complaining, carried the weight of him on her shoulders all these years, the incredible weight of him, and finally the weight had simply become unbearable; what else could she do then but leave, leave quickly and quietly, sparing him the truth but unable to lie. And all along, he had blamed her in his mind, blamed her because of the money—and she was blameless, really; all along it was the man he had become, the man he had never known existed, the man the coward the weakling he had discovered and been appalled by for the first time just two days ago.

He knew that what had happened eleven years ago, the crime he had committed eleven years ago, had been the cause of it all, of what had happened to the man Steve Kilduff. He had been certain, so certain, that the incident had never affected him at all, when in reality it had been dragging him down by inexorable inches, destroying him, sapping his strength and his will and his initiative and his guts; latent guilt, hidden guilt, more deadly and more terrible than the kind which had been tearing Jim Conradin apart inside, because he had never known it was there, had thought he was free of it for those eleven long years. He had been living with guilt and with fear and he had never even so much as suspected it.

He knew all of these things, one after the other, like links in a chain being slowly drawn across his mind’s eye; knew them to be true and factual without dwelling on them, as if his brain, a faulty computer, had somehow been reprogrammed, redirected. He knew them, and they were important, vital, feeding his desperate need to reach Duckblind Slough as quickly as possible, effectively blocking the doubts that lingered peripherally in his mind—