I sat there and gawked at him. All I could think of to say was, “Jesus Christ.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“When did you find this out?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Didn’t mean much then, where you’re concerned; I didn’t know you were working on a case that involved Victor Carding. Logan and Klein went to Brisbane to talk to Carding last night. That’s how we learned the kid is missing; Carding’s been trying to locate him ever since the accident, to tell him about his mother’s death. He didn’t have any idea where Jerry might have disappeared to, he said. Told the inspectors his son was in love with Christine, couldn’t possibly have killed her-the usual stuff you expect to hear from a father. And that was it, until we heard about his murder late this afternoon and how you were involved in that too.”
I stood up and took a couple of turns around the room; I was still trying to get my thoughts sorted out. Eberhardt drank beer and watched me expressionlessly.
After a time he said, “I talked to your friend Donleavy before I came over here; he filled me in. He also told me the nitrate test on Carding’s hands proved negative, and that there weren’t any powder marks on his clothing. So it couldn’t have been suicide the way you thought.”
“I know. He called me with the same news.”
“How sure are you this Martin Talbot is innocent?”
“Positive. I’d swear to it in court.”
“It’d make things simpler if you were wrong.”
“I suppose so.” I lowered myself into the chair again. “First Christine Webster, then Victor Carding. And Jerry Carding is missing. You think he could have been a target too?”
“You mean murdered like the others? Some nut with a grudge wasting not only what’s left of the Carding family but also the kid’s girlfriend? Come on.”
“Hell, crazier things have happened,” I said. “It could be a psycho deal.”
“I doubt it. Not that kind.”
“So maybe not. But there’s another kind I can think of.”
“I’ll bet I know what it is. The kid himself is a psycho; he went berserk and murdered both his girl and his old man. Right?”
“Right. That would pretty much explain everything, including his disappearance.”
“Sure it would,” Eberhardt said. “It’s the best theory we’ve got so far. But it’s also got too many holes and loose ends to suit me.”
“Such as?”
“The kid’s character profile, for one thing. Friendly, serious-minded, well-adjusted; wants to be a journalist. No quirks, no apparent hangups. Pacifist on political and ideological issues. Everybody Logan and Klein talked to said he’s got strong feelings against violence of any kind.”
“People aren’t always what they seem to be, Eb. Things can happen inside them-pressures, compulsions, psychological shifts.”
“You think I don’t know that? But there are usually indications, small attitude changes of one kind or another. And according to the people who know him, Jerry Carding’s the same kid he always was.
“Then why did he vanish all of a sudden?”
“Yeah-why? I sent a man up to Bodega Bay today, but he hasn’t been able to dig up any answers so far.” Eberhardt got out a pipe and a pouch of tobacco, began loading one from the other. “Anyhow,” he said then, “another thing is the time element. The kid dropped out of sight on Sunday, Christine was killed on Tuesday, and Victor Carding was murdered today. If somebody goes berserk, it doesn’t take him two days to commit his first homicide and two more days to commit his second.”
He was right, of course. But for the sake of argument I said, “So maybe he didn’t go berserk. Maybe he just went insane-the cunning kind of psychosis. He plans his murders, carries them out at two-day intervals.”
“Nuts,” Eberhardt said. “And that’s not a pun. Cunning lunatics don’t go after friends and members of their own families; they pick random victims. They also operate in a set pattern, the same kind of MO in each case. There’s no pattern here. Take the weapons, for instance.”
“Weapons? Plural?”
“Plural. Webster and Carding weren’t shot with the same gun. The girl was killed with a. 32 caliber weapon- and there was no sign of it near her body. Carding was killed with the. 38 you found in Talbot’s hand. Like I said: no pattern, but plenty of holes and loose ends.”
“You figure two different murderers, then?”
“Not necessarily. But it looks that way.”
I did a little brooding. “Has Donleavy been able to trace the.
38?”
“No. It doesn’t seem to be registered anywhere. Probably an outlaw weapon.”
“But it could have belonged to Victor Carding.”
“It could have.”
“And so could the missing. 32.”
“I suppose so.”
“Was Carding upset about Christine’s death?”
“Klein said he was, yeah.”
“What did he have to say about his son’s relationship with her?”
“Not much. Why?”
“Did he seem to approve of it?”
“Yes. What are you leading up to?”
“A possible answer, maybe.”
“Which is?”
“Suppose Carding hated Christine for some reason,” I said. “Suppose he was responsible for those threatening calls and letters. And suppose he was the one who killed her-lured her out to Lake Merced on some sort of pretext; she knew him well enough to have gone there to meet him after dark. Then suppose Jerry found out about it, confronted his father today, lost his head and grabbed up the. 38 and shot him. Revenge motive.”
Eberhardt lit his pipe. “I don’t like it much,” he said between draws.
Neither did I, but I said, “It is possible.”
“Possible, but damned unlikely. Donleavy and the Brisbane police searched the Carding property; they’d have found the. 32 if it was there.”
“Carding could have got rid of it after shooting the girl.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that point. But what’s the motive? Why would a man hate his son’s girlfriend enough to want her dead?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was the unbalanced one, not Jerry. Maybe his wife dying sent him around the bend.”
“He’d still need a motive, crazy or not.”
“Well, what kind of guy was he? What were his attitudes, prejudices, things like that?”
“We’re still checking and so is Donleavy. But he seems to’ve been a pretty average sort. Worked as a carpenter and construction laborer, built the Brisbane house himself fifteen years ago, got along well with his neighbors. Devoted to his wife and had a good relationship with Jerry, who’s an only child; Klein says he was grieving deeply over the wife’s death and worried about the kid’s disappearance. His only vice appears to’ve been booze. He’d been arrested once for drunk driving and once for public drunkenness, and he was about half-smashed last night-a borderline alcoholic.” Eberhardt shrugged and wreathed himself in a cloud of pipe smoke. “There’s nothing in any of that to support your theory.”
“No,” I said.
“It just won’t wash. It doesn’t explain why Jerry disappeared from Bodega Bay, or why he wouldn’t have
