“The last time you talked to Jerry was when?”
“About a month ago when he and Steve came down from Bodega Bay for the weekend.”
“Steve Farmer?”
“Right. Steve lives up there now, but his folks are here in the city. He brought Jerry down a few times, so he could visit them while Jerry was seeing Chris.”
“Jerry doesn’t have a car?”
“No. He did have one until last spring, but he sold it because he needed money to finish out the semester here at State.”
“How did he get to San Francisco when Farmer didn’t bring him?”
“Borrowed Steve’s car or took the bus.”
“Uh-huh. What was the job he had up there?”
“Deckhand on one of the commercial salmon boats,” Brodnax said. “I don’t know which one.”
“Did he like doing that?”
“He thought it was okay. But it was just a way for him to make enough money so he could come back to school. He wants to be a writer, you know. One of those investigative reporters, like Woodward and Bernstein.”
“Then as far as you know, he wasn’t having any problems in Bodega Bay? Nothing that would make him drop out of sight as suddenly as he did?”
“Not as far as I know. I guess Steve could tell you if he was.”
“Where does Farmer work?”
“At a place called The Tides. As a tally clerk and warehouseman at the fish market there.”
I asked him about Jerry Carding’s relationship with his father. His answers were pretty much the same as the ones Lainey Madden had given me: they’d got along fine, no major disagreements that Jerry had ever mentioned. Brodnax had met Victor Carding on a couple of occasions and professed a general liking for him, although “he was into booze kind of heavy and made some slurs about blacks once.” And if he had disapproved of Christine for any reason, Brodnax did not know about it.
“I understand you introduced Jerry and Christine,” I said then. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. She was in my psych class during the spring semester and I took her out a couple of times. But the vibes weren’t right for anything heavy between us. She and Jerry connected right from the first; it seemed to be the real thing for both of them.”
“Did you see much of her after she began going with Jerry?”
“Not too much. With Jerry a few times and around campus.”
“Did she ever mention anything that might have been bothering her?”
“You mean those threats she’d been getting?” Brodnax shook his massive head. “I didn’t know about them until the police told me. Chris never talked much about herself.”
“Do you know the names Martin Talbot or Laura or Karen Nichols?”
“No. I didn’t recognize them in the papers this morning and I still don’t.”
“How about Bobbie Reid?”
He frowned at that and shifted his helmet from one hand to the other. “Bobbie? What’s she have to do with Chris’ murder?”
“Maybe nothing, but her name came up. You knew her, then?”
“I met her a few times, yeah.”
“Here at the college?”
“No. Steve Farmer used to go with her.”
Now that was interesting. Christine and Bobbie knew each other, Bobbie used to date one of Jerry Carding’s best friends, Bobbie commits suicide and Christine is murdered. Another connection-but where, if anywhere, did it lead?
I asked, “How long ago was this?”
“A year or so. They were pretty involved for a while.”
“Why did they break up?”
“I don’t know. Steve wouldn’t say anything about it afterward; I don’t think it was a friendly split.”
“Was he hurt? Angry?”
“Both, I guess. But he got over it.”
Did he? I wondered. “Did you see Bobbie at any time after the break-up?”
“No, not once.”
“Do you know any of her other friends?”
“Just Steve.”
“Jerry knew her, though?”
“Sure. Same way I did, through Steve.”
“Did he ever talk about her?”
“I can’t remember if he did.”
“Why would she take her own life? Any ideas?”
“No. But she was a spacey chick.”
“How do you mean?”
“Emotional, hyped up all the time.”
“Drugs?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t think she was into that. A little pot, maybe, but that’d be all. She was just… I don’t know, intense, freaky. Like she couldn’t get her head together. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
The wind blowing across the floor of the stadium was bitter cold; I could feel my ears and cheeks burning. And I had run out of questions. So I said, “Okay, Dave, thanks. I won’t keep you any longer.”
He nodded solemnly. “I wish there was more I could do to help,” he said. “I keep thinking something’s happened to Jerry too. If he’s all right, why hasn’t he shown up all week? Or why hasn’t somebody found him?”
“Somebody will, son. Sooner or later.”
He nodded again and gave me his hand: his grip was as gentle as his voice. Then he put his helmet on and trotted onto the field, and I turned back toward the stands.
On the way there I noticed that the team’s place-kicker had begun practicing field goals at the north end. He was a soccer-style kicker and pretty good, judging from the forty-yarder he put squarely between the uprights. The second kick I watched him try, from forty-five yards out, hit the crossbar, caromed straight up, hit the crossbar a second time, and fell through: good.
For some reason, my mind being what it is, that made me think of a country-and-western song that had been popular several years ago, a religious novelty item with the more or less unforgettable title of “Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life.” Uh-huh. Well, some of us got drop-kicked through, all right. But some of us missed wide right or wide left, or just by inches, and some of us-like Christine Webster-got blocked at the line of scrimmage.
And then there were the ones like me. We made it through, but not without hitting the damned crossbar a few times on the way…
From the college I drove downtown and stopped at the main library in Civic Center where I spent half an hour looking through month-old issues of the Chronicle and Examiner. I found nothing at all about Bobbie Reid-no news story, no obituary, not even a funeral notice. Which meant that her death, like so many deaths in a city as large as San Francisco, had not been deemed important enough or unusual enough to warrant coverage; and that her body, like Christine Webster’s, had been claimed by out-of-town relatives and her funeral held elsewhere.
There would have to be a police report on file, though, because the Homicide Detail is required by law to investigate all suicides. Eberhardt could look it up and use it to begin digging into Bobbie’s background.
As for me, it seemed that a drive up to Bodega Bay was the next order of business. I had no leads to pursue here, no leads at all except for the tenuous link to Steve Farmer’s involvement with Bobbie Reid; maybe I could find out something by talking to Farmer or by nosing around among the people in Bodega who knew Jerry Carding. On the way out of the library, I decided I would head up the coast first thing in the morning.
It was almost five o’clock by then. I had not been to my office all day and I had been out of touch since
