10
Stonestown, off Nineteenth Avenue near San Francisco State University and Lake Merced, was the city’s first big shopping mall, built in the sixties to serve west side and Daly City residents. In its early years it had been open-air, with shops off a central courtyard and side ells that were like arctic tundras whenever the wind and fog came howling in off the ocean. As a result the flow of shoppers dwindled steadily and a number of businesses closed down. The entire mall probably would have shut down in the late eighties, if it hadn’t been for a group of developers who took it over and spent millions renovating and enclosing it. All sorts of new retail blood poured into the new Stones-town Galleria, including department stores and chain stores, and the shoppers came back in droves. It had been a thriving operation ever since, and despite high rents, that meant a long waiting list for available space. However long Drew Casement had been in business there, he must be doing pretty well to keep on meeting his monthly nut.
Westside Pro Sports was a large, deep space along one of the short side ells. In keeping with the time of year, most of the upfront displays were of summer pursuits: baseball equipment, golf paraphernalia. The rest of the store was crowded with fishing and hunting apparatus, half a dozen customers, one twenty-something clerk earnestly trying to sell an item called a subcontinental adventure travel pack to a dubious teenager, and a sun- browned, well-set-up guy in his late thirties marking down prices on a rack of pro football jerseys. I figured the tanned guy for Drew Casement-right age, and a walking advertisement for the healthy sporting life-and that was who he was.
Casement was expecting me; I’d called from the office to make sure he was in before driving out here. He didn’t waste any time after I identified myself. Just pumped my hand once, said he was glad to meet me, and led the way into a cluttered private office at the rear.
No wasted time in there, either. He said as soon as he shut the door, “What’ve you found out about Jim? Is it another woman?”
“That’s doubtful,” I said.
“Doubtful? Then you’re not sure?”
“We’re reasonably sure it isn’t.”
“What’s going on then? What’s the matter with him?”
“I can’t say, Mr. Casement.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both. My reports go directly to my client, no one else.”
“Lynn and I don’t have any secrets.”
“Then you can get the details from her when the time comes.”
“You haven’t told her anything yet?”
“There’s nothing definite to tell at this point. That’s why I’m here. Gathering information, trying to piece things together.”
He ran a hand over his face. He was clean-shaven, but he had a heavy beard shadow; longish fingernails made a faint rasping noise in the bristles, like the wheeze of an asthmatic. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to push myself at you. It’s just that I’m worried about Jim. Lynn, too.”
“Sure. Understood.”
“I’ll help in any way I can, but…” He made a helpless gesture. “If I knew anything I’d’ve told Lynn right away. Jim is… well, he’s shrink-wrapped.”
“How’s that again?”
“Oh, you know, not a guy who’ll open up to anybody about anything, even his wife. She must’ve told you that. Sometimes you have to work just to get him to talk about sports or the weather.”
“You’ve known him since high school, is that right?”
“Right,” Casement said. “Senior year at Lafayette High. His family moved over there from Moraga the summer before. He didn’t have any friends, never made friends easy. Funny, in a way, that the two of us ever hooked up.”
“How so?”
“I was a jock back then-football, baseball. One of the cool crowd, lots of chicks, always partying. I didn’t study much and my grades got so low I came close to being declared academically ineligible partway through football season. Jim… well, he was the nerd type. Smart, real smart. His best subjects were my worst: history, math. So I asked him to help me out, and he did.”
“Tutored you.”
“That’s it. Once we got to know each other, spent some time together, we hit it off. The old opposites thing, I guess. He was never easy to talk to, but once you got past his… what’s the word?”
“Reticence?”
“Yeah, reticence. Once you got past that he still didn’t say much, but what he did say made sense. He helped me and I helped him. He’d always been a loner, shy, still a virgin in his senior year.” Casement grinned. “I took care of that little problem for him. Got him some dates, got him laid more than once before graduation.”
“Did he ever say anything about his childhood?”
“You mean what happened with his friend’s parents? No. Never. I asked him about it once, and he just wouldn’t deal with it.”
“How did you find out?”
“I don’t remember exactly,” Casement said. “It wasn’t a secret or anything and I guess somebody mentioned it-my old man, maybe, he was always going on about violence in our society.”
“Do you know if Troxell ever talked to his wife about what happened?”
“If he did, she never mentioned it to me. You think that could have something to do with the way Jim’s acting now?”
“It’s possible. Do you?”
“Well… it happened so long ago, more than twenty-five years.”
“Some people never get over that kind of shock.”
“Yeah. I can see that.”
“A few develop a kind of morbid preoccupation with death,” I said.
“Is that right? How so?”
“They think about it constantly. Read and talk about it. Develop obsessive interests in violent crime. Attend funerals, even the funerals of strangers.”
“None of that sounds like Jim.”
“He never expressed or exhibited any particular interest in violent crime?”
“Not to me. I mean, the subject’s come up, sure, how can you avoid it these days? He hates all that crazy shit, same as I do. But he puts the blame on the wrong horse. Only serious argument we ever had was over gun control.”
“So you’d say he’s strongly antiviolence?”
“Absolutely. Bleeding heart, victims’ rights type of guy.”
Like me. But all I said was, “Nonviolent himself.”
“Oh, sure. Jim wouldn’t hurt a fly. At least…” Casement paused. “What about the idea of suicide?”
“What about it?”
“That’s another sign of preoccupation with death, isn’t it?”
“It can be. Why?”
“Well, something Jim said to me when we were having the gun control argument. I just remembered it. I said suppose somebody attacked him, could he kill in self-defense. He said, ‘No, the only person I could ever kill is myself.’ ”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“You bet I did. Something like ‘Don’t tell me you’ve thought of knocking yourself off.’ He said yes, he’d entertained the notion. Those were his exact words, entertained the notion. He meant it, too. He wasn’t kidding around.”
“Did he elaborate, give you a reason?”
“Uh-uh. I said, man, you’ve got everything to live for-beautiful wife, money, nice home, great job-why would
