Talbot’s sudden departure by cab was surprising. From what Laura Nichols had told me, he had not gone anywhere since the accident except for those periodic walks around the neighborhood. So why this trip? And why the seeming purpose in his stride?
The taxi swerved over into the left-turn lane at Nineteenth and Sloat; I managed to do the same. And to make the light with them. They cut over onto Junipero Serra, turned left again at Ocean Avenue, and followed Ocean to the City College. Over the hill to Geneva, then, and straight out past the San Mateo County line and the Cow Palace.
An uneasiness had begun to grow in me, and it kept on growing when the driver swung right on Bayshore Boulevard and headed up the long sweeping hill beyond. I was pretty sure I knew where Talbot was going, now. And I was right: on the other side of the hill the cab made another right-hand turn and entered Brisbane on Old Country Road.
My hands were tight around the wheel as I turned in after them. Brisbane was a small town of maybe four thousand people, nestled in the curves and cuts along the eastern slopes of the San Bruno Mountains overlooking the Bay. It had some similarities in appearance and population mix to Sausalito, although it was more of a bedroom community than an artistic one. A place where all sorts of different types lived, from painters and sculptors to business executives to blue collar workers.
It was also the place, Mrs. Nichols had told me, where Victor Carding lived.
Why would Talbot be on his way to see Carding? Three possible answers, as far as I could tell. One-he wanted to talk it out with the man, ask forgiveness, seek some sort of relief for his guilt. Two-he was after punishment instead of relief, either verbal or physical. Three-the initiative was Carding’s, not Talbot’s, and Talbot was responding to a telephone summons.
The first or the second seemed the most probable. The only reason Carding could have for requesting a meeting was that he intended to carry out his threat; but if you’re going to kill a man you don’t invite him to your house to do it. The first answer was the best of the lot, though it could still mean trouble; the second was volatile as hell. Dicey situation any way you looked at it.
But the big question was, what was I going to do about it?
I followed the cab up San Bruno Avenue, hanging back a full two blocks. At Glen Parkway it turned right, hooked through the center of town, and then began to climb upward on the network of narrow twisting roads that crisscrossed the slope. Most of the houses up there either clung to the steep hillside below the roads, with carports and entrances at road level, or sat on little knolls or inside man-made cutouts. They ran the spectrum of architectural types and building materials: country cabin, plain frame, box, old Spanish, false Southern Colonial, ultramodern hexagonal and octagonal; brick, redwood, pine, stucco, old gray stone, whitewashed block. The only things they all had in common were balconies and wide picture windows, to take advantage of a panoramic view of the Bay, parts of San Francisco, the East and South Bay cities.
I lost sight of the taxi half a dozen times as we climbed the rutted, switchbacked roads, almost lost it completely once at a three-way intersection. But I was still behind them when they turned onto Queen’s Lane, near the highest perimeter of the village. The road looped around and through an undeveloped section-vertical hillside on the left, slope on the right wooded with scrub oak and bay and horse chestnut trees-and the taxi disappeared again for eight or ten seconds. When I neared the center of the loop, where a dirt-faced turnaround had been cut out of the bluff wall, I had them back in sight. And they were just pulling up beyond a gravel driveway seventy-five yards downrange.
I braked, veered over onto the turnaround. Half a minute later Talbot got out of the cab and stood next to a rural-type mailbox, looking up the driveway; from where I was, I could not see the house there. At length he headed up the drive, walking stiff-backed but with that same sense of purpose, and disappeared from sight. The cab stayed where it was, parked on the verge; Talbot had evidently told the driver to wait.
Okay, I thought, here we go. Play it one step at a time. I set the emergency brake, got out, and went down the road at a fast trot. The wind slapped at my face; it was strong up here, pungent with the spicy scent of bay leaves. Overhead the sun seemed to be trying to break through the clouds, creating a bright metallic glare that made me squint.
The house came into view when I was thirty yards from the driveway. It was set on a piece of level ground above the road, its backside close to a notch machine-carved out of the hill-a pretty attractive place for someone Mrs. Nichols had referred to as a “common laborer.” Smallish, square-shaped, made out of brick and brick-colored wood. Wide, roofed porch across the front, decorated with planterboxes full of ferns. Half-hidden on the far side was what looked to be a two-car garage; the driveway bent around in that direction.
Talbot was up on the porch, just standing there before the door, waiting.
I slowed to a walk, watching him. Just as I reached the mailbox, he pivoted abruptly and came down off the steps. Nobody home, I thought-but the sense of relief I felt was premature. Talbot stopped after a couple of paces, turned, and stared over toward the garage. A few seconds later he started toward it. And vanished again around the side of the house.
Maybe Carding was at work or had gone somewhere else; but maybe, too, he was out in the garage and had not heard or had chosen to ignore the doorbell. Give Talbot half a minute, I told myself. If he doesn’t show by then, better get up there.
Behind me I heard a car door slam. Then a voice yelled, “Hey! You there!”
I turned. It was the cabbie, a youngish guy, heavy-set, wearing a poplin windbreaker and a pugnacious expression. “You talking to me?”
“That’s right, buddy. You been following me?”
Ah Christ, I thought, this is all I need.
“Thought I spotted a tail when we started up here,” the cabbie said. “What the hell you been following me for?”
“Nobody’s following you,” I said. I looked up at the house again. Still no sign of Talbot.
“I figure different,” the cabbie said belligerently. He came away from the taxi, stopped twenty feet from me, and put his hands on his hips. “I don’t stand for shit like that.”
The thirty seconds were up. I could feel my chest beginning to tighten; sweat formed cold and sticky under my arms. Something going on in that garage. Talbot would have come out by now if there wasn’t.
“You hear what I said, fatso?”
Fatso. I gave him a go-to-hell look and started up the drive, hurrying. The cabbie came after me; I could hear his shoes crunching on the gravel. Wind currents swayed the scrub oak and the brownish grass on the hillside above, made faint whispering murmurs in the afternoon stillness. But nothing moved and nothing made a sound anywhere around the house or the garage.
“Turn around, goddamn it!” the cabbie yelled behind me. “Come on, you son of a bitch!”
That was enough; I could not afford to let it go any further. I whirled on him, glaring. “I’m here on police business, smart guy,” I lied in a hard tight voice. “You understand? Police business. You want to make trouble, fine, I’ll have your ass thrown in jail for obstruction of justice.”
He pulled up short and blinked at me. Most of the belligerence faded out of his expression; he began to look uncertain and a little worried.
“Now go on, get back to your cab,” I said. “And don’t say anything about me to your fare when he comes back. Capici?”
“Hey,” he said, “hey, I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know you were a cop-”
“Move it!”
I put my back to him, the hell with him, and trotted the rest of the way up onto the flat. The drive made a wide loop there, around and alongside the house; I cut off it at a sharp angle, onto hard-packed earth. When I neared the porch corner, the whole of the garage materialized ahead of me. One of its double doors was standing part-way open and I could see that there were lights on inside; but that was all I could see. Still no sign of And that was when the gun went off.
The flat cracking sound was unmistakable; I had heard the report of a handgun too many times in my life. I broke into a lumbering run. There was no second shot-no other sounds of any kind from inside the garage. Instinct warned me against barging in there, but I did it anyway: I caught the edge of the closed door half and swung myself around it, through the opening by two steps.
I was braced to find a dead man lying on the floor, and that was what I found. But what surprised me, what
