side that might have been a leg.
The moon vanished again. Darkness shrouded the dunes; all I could see over there was the backwash of lights along the the Great Highway and Sloat Boulevard. The flash beam wasn’t strong enough to reach that far. I tramped that way as fast as I could, the wind giving me a good push from behind. By the time I neared the foot of the dune I was panting and shivering. I switched on the six-cell again, laid its light on the back-sprawled shape.
Too late. Already too late when I arrived at the beach, by maybe fifteen minutes.
Troxell’s eyes were open wide, their view of eternity obscured by a film of blown sand. Small wound on his right temple, the blood still glistening wet there and where it was spotted on the sand near his head.
I’d been wrong about him letting the sea take him out. That hadn’t been his intention at all. He’d walked straight over here from the parking lot-the single line of his footprints was still visible-and sat down on this sheltered dune with the highway hidden behind him to avoid any possible interference. And then, for whatever skewed reasons, the man who’d been a vocal advocate of gun control had blown his brains out with a small-caliber pistol.
22
I said, “Poor miserable bastard.”
Runyon said, “At least he’s not hurting anymore.”
“That sounds like you approve of suicide.”
“Not a matter of approval. Let’s say I understand the impulse.”
I let that go. Maybe he’d entertained the idea himself after his wife’s slow, painful death; I did not want to know. Suicide was an alien concept to me. I’d seen too much death, spent too much time trying to keep myself and others alive; life was too important to me to see it thrown away on a selfish and cowardly act. Maybe Troxell wasn’t hurting anymore, but his wife damn well would be for a long time to come. As far as I was concerned he’d had no right to do that to someone he professed to love, to any survivor who had to keep on with the hard business of living.
We were standing on the dune, on either side of what was left of James Troxell, both of us with flashlights. I’d notified the 911 dispatcher before calling Runyon, but he had been up by the Beach Chalet, not far away, and he’d gotten here first. Nonemergency 911 calls take a while to bring a response, even late at night, in these emergency-glutted times.
He put his light on the small weapon in the dead man’s hand. It threw cold glints off the metal frame. “Twenty-two semi-auto.”
“Target pistol.”
“Yeah. Looks new.”
“Bought for the occasion,” I said. “He didn’t own a gun before. Didn’t like guns, from what I was told.”
“Funny way to take himself out then.”
“Making some kind of statement. Or because it was the quickest way.”
“Takes guts to shoot yourself in the head,” Runyon said.
“Not if you want to die badly enough.”
Neither of us held our lights on the dead face, but I could see it well enough in the overspill from where the beams were pointed. I shut mine off, turned my back to the corpse. The sea continued to hammer at the beach, the larger breakers throwing up jets of faintly luminescent mist as they came crashing down. The wind seemed stronger now; it had erased Troxell’s footprints, was filling in most of mine and Runyon’s. I was so cold I couldn’t feel my nose and ears when I touched them.
Runyon asked, “So where does this leave us on the Dumont homicide?”
“Good question. I’ll talk to Jack Logan first thing in the morning. He’ll chew my ass for allowing the weekend grace period, but if we’re lucky that’ll be the end of it. We’re covered as long as the Lindens don’t say anything when the law comes around and finds what you found.”
“They’ll keep quiet. Last thing they want is trouble.”
“No pressure on them to give up that key, right?”
“No. I was careful about that. There’s no reason for them to turn on me.”
“Unless the illegal rental angle comes out some way. Never know how people will react when their little scams blow up in their faces. Sometimes it makes them vindictive as hell.”
Runyon had nothing to say to that. He knew the truth of it as well as I did.
I watched the ocean for a time, the constant shifting from oily black to light-striped gray as the moon and the running clouds played around overhead. “I wish I knew if Troxell knew any more about the homicide than he wrote down.”
“We’ll never know, now.”
“What’s your guess?”
“He didn’t.”
“Mine, too. But that could just be wishful thinking.”
Other sounds rose above the pound of the surf: more than one vehicle turning off the Great Highway into the horseshoe entrance to the parking lot. Swirls of red light put a bloody shine on the sky in that direction.
“Here we go,” I said.
We spent another long, cold hour and a half up there with uniformed cops and then a team of plainclothes homicide inspectors, none of whom I knew but one of whom, the older of the inspectors, recognized my name. I did most of the talking. There wasn’t any hassle, just the usual time-consuming, crime-scene grind of repetitive Q and A-all very routine and professionally handled. An ambulance showed up halfway through and a pair of attendants slogged off and then slogged back with the clay shell of James Troxell encased in a black body bag. That was all very routine and professional, too. No muss, no fuss. Every man who dies in the city, no matter who he is or how he ends his life, is treated the same: get the remains under wraps and on ice as quickly as possible, so the living don’t have to face yet another reminder of their own mortality.
I asked the older inspector if it would be all right if I notified the widow. I wouldn’t have done it if this had been a homicide, or if there had been doubt that it was anything but a suicide; the book says there has to be an official notification of next of kin in cases like that. But there’s usually some latitude in a cut-and-dried suicide. No cop wants to break that kind of news if he can avoid it; it’s one of the hardest and most thankless jobs in police work. I hated the prospect myself, but I felt I ought to do it because I was involved and because Lynn Troxell had called me for help and because I was the one who’d found the body. Moral responsibility, if nothing else.
The inspector tried not to look relieved. If I wanted the job, he said, I was welcome to it. Just make sure the widow showed up to ID the remains within twenty-four hours. I said I would.
We dispersed not long after that. Runyon went to his apartment, the cops went back to their mean streets, Troxell went to the morgue, and I went to St. Francis Wood. On the way I called Charles Kayabalian and notified him, too. One more lousy task that I felt obligated to handle.
Drew Casement opened the door at the Troxell home. Face black-rimmed with beard stubble, hair uncombed, athlete’s body slumped a little inside faded Levis and a heavy sweater. And a grim ramble of words once I was inside: “I made Lynn take a Valium and lie down, she’s frantic, exhausted. You didn’t find him, right? He wasn’t at the place on Potrero Hill, I don’t know where the hell he could be. I thought it would be best if I came here instead of chasing around the city, I didn’t want Lynn to be alone at a time like this-”
“I found him,” I said.
“… What?”
“I found him.”
“Where?”
“Ocean Beach.”
“Ocean Beach. Jesus, I should’ve thought of that myself-”
“He’s dead, isn’t he.”
Those words came from Lynn Troxell in a flat, empty voice. She was standing in the doorway to the formal
