about the dead-” Lainey winced: Here we were talking about Christine and Christine herself was dead. “She could be kind of close-mouthed at times. Like she didn’t tell me or Jerry she was pregnant until after she’d known it herself for weeks.”
“Do you have any idea who Bobbie worked for?”
“No. The Kittredge Agency is in a big building in the Financial District and it must have at least a hundred offices in it.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”
“That’s all I know. Is it really important? I just don’t see how her suicide could be connected with Chris’ murder.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But it’s something that ought to be checked out, just in case. Did you tell the police about Bobbie Reid?”
“No, I don’t think I did. It didn’t occur to me then; I was pretty upset.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
She nodded. And from outside, in the direction of the Medical Center, there was the faint shriek of a siren. Lainey cocked her head, listening to it-and shivered and hugged herself again. “Is it cold in here?” she said. “It feels cold.”
“A little,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “I think I’d better be going. I don’t have any more questions.”
“All right. Will you let me know if you find out anything?”
“Of course.”
“I won’t be home for the weekend, though. I’m flying down to San Diego tonight. That’s where Chris’ parents live, you see, and the funeral is tomorrow.” She wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I hope a lot of people come,” she said. “Chris liked people.”
The siren kept on wailing in the distance, like a discordant note in a dirge.
Or the scream of a young girl dying.
ELEVEN
I stopped for lunch at a cafe on Irving Street. Not because I wanted food; I had no appetite after the interview with Lainey Madden. But I had not eaten breakfast and my stomach was kicking up hunger pangs. It was already a quarter of one, and it seemed like an intelligent idea to give the digestive juices something to work on.
Over a tasteless hamburger and a cup of coffee I took my first look at what the Chronicle had to say about the murders. Both stories-a news report on the Carding homicide and an update on the death of Christine Webster-were on page two, the front page being given over to reports of trouble in the Middle East and a big Gay Rights march through Civic Center. There was suggestion of a possible link between the two cases and some attention was paid to Jerry Carding’s mysterious disappearance from Bodega Bay; otherwise it was pretty straightforward stuff, no open speculation, just the basic facts. Martin Talbot was said to have confessed to the Carding murder, but the police were still investigating. My name was mentioned three or four times. There was even a paragraph on my career background in which I was referred to as “something of a Sam Spade type, the last of San Francisco’s lone-wolf private eyes.”
When I finished forcing down my hamburger I took the paper outside and deposited it in a trash receptacle. Then the last of San Francisco’s lone-wolf private eyes got into his car and drove through the cold gray fog to S.F. State College.
There was no street parking near the Nineteenth Avenue entrance, so I turned into Park Merced and left the car in front of an apartment building on Cardenas. The woodsy campus, when I finally got onto it, was crowded but relatively quiet. It had not always been that way. I remembered the television footage from back in 1968: a student strike protesting the war in Vietnam and demanding a Third World Studies department and an open admissions policy; disruption and cancellation of classes, rock-throwing incidents; and our present U.S. senator, S.I. Hayakawa-then president of S.F. State-calling in the police riot squad to bust a few heads. Sad times back then. Ugly times. And all because of a war that we should have stayed the hell out of in the first place.
Well, things change-even for the better sometimes. The kids still looked the same, though, at least to my crusty old private eye: long hair and frizzed hair and Afros, beards, the kind of clothing my generation would have called Bohemian. Whatever happened to suits and ties and girls in winter outfits and summer dresses? The question made me smile mockingly at myself. Pining away for your lost youth, huh? I thought. You Sam Spade type, you. Come on, who cares what college students wear as long as they’re happy and getting themselves an education? And most of these kids looked happy enough-maybe because it was Friday and they had the weekend and Thanksgiving vacation to look forward to, or because, for now anyway, all was right in their world.
But then I remembered that Christine Webster had been one of them not too long ago, and I stopped smiling. She had no world anymore-not this one, at least. And neither did her unborn child.
I bypassed the Administration Building; I had already decided that there was no point in trying to locate Dave Brodnax through the Registrar’s Office. College administrators are chary these days of giving out any information on students, including class schedules, and the fact that I was a detective would carry no weight at all. Lainey had said Brodnax was on the football team; I thought that maybe I would be able to get to him through the coach or somebody else in the Physical Education department.
As it turned out, finding Brodnax was easier than I had anticipated. The first young guy I stopped for directions told me the football team had just begun its daily practice in Cox Stadium; the last game of the season was tomorrow afternoon. He explained how to get to the stadium, over on the north side of the campus, and I made my way in that direction. Halfway there, I heard voices yelling the way football players do. They led me straight to the backside of a press box and an open gate in a cyclone fence.
Cox Stadium was laid out below in a kind of grotto, surrounded by wooded slopes, with more trees and undergrowth beyond the north end zone. Picturesque. The stands were made out of concrete and had rows of wooden benches; I was on the home side. I went through the gate and down fifty or sixty steps toward the field. The players, about four dozen of them in pads and practice jerseys and maroon helmets, were spread out across the turf running plays and banging into tackling dummies and doing wind sprints. The grass was pretty chewed up and deep furrows striped it where the yardlines were. It was not getting as much care as it should, probably because of maintenance cutbacks by the college when Proposition 13 limited their tax revenue.
I left the stands and crossed the track that ovaled the field and went to the sideline benches. A dark guy in his thirties was standing there, writing something on a clipboard. He wore a maroon windbreaker and had a whistle strung around his neck; I thought that he must be one of the coaches.
He glanced up as I approached him. It was cold down there and his cheeks had a brick-colored tinge. “Something I can do for you?”
“I’d like to see Dave Brodnax, if that’s okay.”
“Is it important?”
“Yes, sir, it is. Just tell him it’s about Jerry Carding and Christine Webster.”
The names seemed not to mean anything to him; maybe he only read the sports sections in the daily papers. But he said, “All right, I’ll send him over,” and moved away toward where a group of beefy-looking kids were just starting to practice the recovery of fumbles.
I watched him pick one out of the group, say something to him. The kid looked over at me, nodded at the coach, and then came trotting over. He took off his helmet just before he got to me, and I saw that he had a wild shock of reddish hair and two or three hundred freckles. He was at least four inches over six feet and would weigh in at around 240-some big kid. The knuckles on his hands looked as large as walnuts.
“Hi,” he said, “I’m Dave Brodnax.” His voice was surprisingly soft for someone his size, and it matched the look in his eyes: grave, troubled. “You another policeman?”
“Not exactly.” I introduced myself. He knew my name from the newspapers and seemed willing enough to answer questions when I explained to him why I was investigating.
“But there’s not much I can tell you,” he said. “I don’t have any idea who could’ve killed Christine or what happened to Jerry.”
