As I slowed to pay the southbound toll on the Golden Gate Bridge, I thought it might be an idea to drive over to Vicente Street-not far from there-and see if Doug Rosmond had come home. I did not much feel like going back to the dusty emptiness of my office, and the car was running all right since I had stopped to put water in the radiator after leaving Pinewood Lane.
I took the 19th Avenue exit off the toll plaza and drove through Golden Gate Park and turned westward on Vicente. There was no fog today-not yet anyway-and from the vicinity of Cheryl Rosmond’s home you could see the slate-gray water of the Pacific beyond Ocean Beach. It had the kind of desolate appearance the sea achieves in winter, primitive and unsettling, like looking at something out of the dim past. Like the deserts and the majestic mountain ranges, the oceans were something else that did not change with the passage of time.
The number Elaine Kavanaugh had given me was a white box-shaped rough-stucco house identical to its neighbors on both sides of the street, crowded together in long rows like beads on a tightly strung necklace. It had a small square of lawn, and a wide set of wooden stairs inside a stucco frame leading up to the front entrance. White filmy curtains covered the rectangular window to one side.
I parked my car at the curb and got out and climbed the steps. The wind blowing in from the sea was harsh and penetrating, and I hunched my neck in the collar of my topcoat as I pressed the doorbell. I stood waiting, shivering a little, but no one opened the door. I put my thumb against the bell and rang it again, and then there were faint sounds within, someone approaching. I was in luck after all. A night bolt scraped inside and the door parted inward.
The first thing-the only thing-I saw were her eyes.
They were huge and very green and very soft, expressive and warm and yet containing a kind of pleading, like a child after a severe punishment saying
There was something in my eyes for her, too. I became aware of that very suddenly, and I wondered dimly if she was reading the same things I was, if a similar kind of inner reflection was there for her as well.
Neither of us moved for several long seconds; then, finally, she made a soft meaningless sound deep in her throat and put her hand up at the edge of the door, as if she were thinking of shutting it. I tried to find something to say to her, but I could not seem to think of anything. I looked at the rest of her, and I was in no way disappointed: small, slender hands; long flowing hair the soft reddish-gold of autumn leaves; no makeup, but none needed to accentuate elfin features as symmetrical as expert sculpturing. She could have been twenty-seven or thirty-two-a totally unimportant factor-and she was soft and gently rounded in a pale lavender skirt and a white sweater with lavender bands like narrow epaulets across the shoulders.
‘What is it?’ she said then, in a voice that was just a shade too high.
I felt awkward suddenly, and my hands seemed large and curiously spasmodic. I got them down into the pockets of my overcoat. ‘Is… Are you Cheryl Rosmond?’
‘Yes? What is it you want?’
‘I’d like to talk to your brother. Doug Rosmond?’
‘Oh,’ she said, and her hand dropped away from the door. There seemed to be a faint flush just under her small ears.
‘Is he at home, Miss Rosmond?’
‘Yes, he’s here.’
I told her my name and my profession. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face, but she was not looking at me at all now; her gaze was to the left of me and beyond, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, the blades of grass in the lawn. ‘I’ve been hired to locate a man named Roy Sands, a friend of your brother’s; he’s disappeared.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand it.’
‘Do you know Sands?’
‘Yes. We… Yes.’
‘May I come in, Miss Rosmond?’
‘Of course. Doug is on the back porch, fixing the drain on the laundry sink. I’ll get him.’
‘Thank you.’
She backed away, and I entered and shut the door. It was pleasant in there, warmly comfortable: curving mahogany sectional and matching chairs upholstered in pink and pastel-yellow, white alabaster lamps giving off warm light through shantung shades, staggered knickknack shelves on one wall with glass and porcelain figurines of owls and elephants and horses. The floor was almost completely covered by a muted-patterned rug.
Cheryl kept on backing away, looking at me, and then away, and then back. She said, Til get Doug,’ and turned abruptly through a doorway.
When I was alone, I took my hands out of my pockets and stared at them. They looked faintly gray, the veins bluish and prominent. I put them away again and went around the room, looking at the pictures on the walls without really seeing them.
A voice said my name, and when I turned, a guy in the same age bracket as Hendryx and Gilmartin was standing in the doorway through which Cheryl had gone moments earlier. She was not with him. I wondered if she had gone to some other part of the house, where she could not hear her brother and me-or whether she was out there in the kitchen, at the stove or at the drain-board, listening and maybe thinking about me in the same way I was thinking about her…
I shook myself mentally and got my mind focused on Doug Rosmond. He was coming toward me now, a big, quiet-looking man dressed in a gray sweatshirt and old, dusty jeans. He was her brother, all right: the same reddish-gold hair, his thick and unkempt; the same green eyes; the same symmetrical features-though in his case distinctly masculine. He would have had a lot of women in his time, I thought-he was the kind of guy they felt instinctively protective toward, the maternal instinct-but unlike men such as Hendryx and Gilmartin, he would have left each of them with their pride and their self-respect afterward; there was no hint of cruelty or cynical contempt in his face or his steady gaze.
We got the amenities over with, and I sat on one of the chairs. He went over to lean against an inexpensive television-and-stereo unit nearby; I supposed it was because he did not want to sit on the furniture with his dusty clothing.
‘I’m glad to hear that Elaine Kavanaugh called a detective in to help find Roy,’ he said. ‘She was pretty worried about him when I talked to her.’
‘When was that, Mr. Rosmond?’
‘A couple of days ago, the last time. She called to find out if I’d heard anything from Roy. Just grabbing at straws, I guess.’
‘Do you have any ideas where Sands might be?’
‘No-none, I’m afraid.’
‘I take it you don’t think he went off of his own accord?’
‘Not the way he felt about Elaine, not without telling her he was going,’ Rosmond said. ‘Besides that, Roy isn’t the kind of guy to just disappear unexpectedly-like a boozer will, sometimes, or an outdoors type, or a guy with a lot of independence.’
The booze angle had occurred to me briefly on the drive back from Marin County. I said, ‘Sands isn’t much of a drinker?’
‘Not Roy. Puke and pass out on three shots and sick for two days afterward-that kind of guy. A couple of beers nursed out over an evening is his limit.’
So much for that possibility. I asked Rosmond some of the same questions I had asked Hendryx and Gilmartin earlier, and got the same general answers: Sands was basically introverted, a gambler and hell-raiser only in the mildest sense, and an all-around nice guy. There was nothing in any of that, or if there was, I couldn’t see it; I was having a difficult time keeping my mind orderly because of Cheryl, and I found my eyes straying toward the open doorway to the kitchen from time to time.
I lit a cigarette and told Rosmond about Hendryx’s meeting with Sands at the Presidio. I asked, ‘Did Sands ever mention business or acquaintances, anything at all, in the Pacific Northwest?’
‘Not that I know of. Well, wait, there’s a guy named Jackson, Nick Jackson, I think, that came from Oregon or
