25
Jack Logan looked as Monday-morning tired as I Felt. Rough weekend for him, too, for whatever reason. Eye bags, deep lines bracketing his mouth and nose, a patch of gray shadow on one side of his jaw where he’d missed with his razor. When I noticed the shadow I rubbed a hand over my face, and sure enough, my fingers scraped over a stubbly patch of my own. Some pair we made. A couple of old horses still out running around the track when we should have been pastured or in our home stalls taking it easy. Whether that meant we were blooded stock or just stupid-stubborn plugs was anybody’s guess.
He’d gotten my message, but he didn’t know about James Troxell’s suicide until I told him. The wheels grind slow at SFPD these days. I gave him a verbal rundown, then handed over the extra copy of the client report to Lynn Troxell that I’d brought with me.
When he finished reading it he pinched his eyes between thumb and forefinger, sipped coffee, looked out his office window at the stream of cars on the Bay Bridge approach. There was no point in trying to read his expression. I’d played poker with the man often enough to know it couldn’t be done.
“What gripes me most about suicides,” he said finally, “is all the damage they leave behind. Damage and loose ends.”
“Total self-involvement. They stop caring about anything but their own pain.”
“Yeah. So you’re convinced the reason Troxell blew himself away is this death obsession he had.”
“That, and the fact that he couldn’t go on facing his own cowardice.”
“No direct involvement in the Dumont homicide.”
“Just what he evidently witnessed.”
“You sure about that?”
“As sure as I can be without corroborating evidence.”
“You think we’ll find some among his effects?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“In that place he rented on Potrero Hill, maybe?”
“Could be.”
“Uh-huh. How’d you find out about him being a witness?”
“Does it matter, Jack?”
“Depends on how relevant it is.”
“Not very.”
“We’re not going to find anything else among his effects, are we? Any surprises?”
“I doubt it.”
Logan drank more coffee, looked out the window again. The back end of the Hall of Justice practically abuts the 101 freeway approach; you could hear the steady thrum of traffic noise through the closed windows.
Pretty soon he said, “You should’ve come in with this as soon as you found out. Troxell might still be alive if you had.”
“I know it. What can I say, Jack? I screwed up.”
“Well, you’re not the only one. The wife, the lawyer.”
“We all made the same mistake. It looked like he was going to come in voluntarily. We wanted to believe it, so we believed it.”
“Suicides. Christ. You just can’t figure what goes on inside their heads.”
“Sometimes you can,” I said, “if you make the right connections.”
“Yeah, well, not this time.”
“No, not this time.”
“So all right,” he said, “it’s over and done with. End of story, if what you’ve told me is true. You sure there’s nothing else I should know?”
I hesitated before I said, “Not about Troxell.”
“The Dumont case?”
“Jake Runyon’s working on an angle he dug up, mostly on his own time.”
“Yeah? Why’s he so interested?”
“He feels sorry for the victim’s sister. So he’s doing it pro bono. Dog with a bone, you know how it is.”
“What’s the angle?”
I told him about Sean Ostrow.
“Sounds pretty circumstantial to me,” Logan said.
“So far,” I agreed. “No hard evidence of any kind. If there was, Jake would’ve turned it over by now.”
“I hope so. For both your sakes.”
“You want me to have him come in anyway, talk to you or the inspectors who caught the case?”
Logan thought about that. “Not much point. But if he does turn up anything definite, you send him in on the run. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Okay. Go on, get out of here. I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes.”
Bullet dodged. I didn’t waste any time taking myself out of the line of fire.
I caught up with Charles Kayabalian at Civic Center, in the City Hall lobby. He was defending the plaintiff in a civil suit, the judge had just called noon recess, and Kayabalian was on his way to lunch. He had no problem with me joining him. I wasn’t hungry, but you have to eat-had better eat when you’ve gotten little sleep the night before and a developing head cold from all the running around in that Ocean Beach chill. The last thing I needed right now was to wind up sick in bed.
Rough weekend for Kayabalian, too. He didn’t look as poorly used as Logan or me, maybe because he was several years younger, but the signs were plain enough on his thin, walnut-brown face. And in the fact that his usually impeccable attire was on the rumpled side today, the knot in his paisley tie just a bit off-center. He yawned more than once on our way to the restaurant on Van Ness.
Once we were seated with our lunches in front of us I asked him when he’d last talked to Lynn Troxell. He said, “Just before eight o’clock, briefly. I called to see how she was bearing up.”
“And?”
“She sounded calm enough under the circumstances.”
“Casement still with her then?”
“Yes. He answered the phone.”
“Was he going to stay with her?”
“Until Lynn’s sister could get there from Marysville. Lynn asked her to come-she needs family at a time like this and they’re fairly close. Or Casement did the asking, I don’t know. He said he was going to notify Martin Hessen and anybody else that needed to be told. Better him than me, frankly.”
“The sister was coming right away?”
“As soon as she could. She may be there by now.”
We talked a little more while we finished our sandwiches. My ham and cheese was going to lie in my stomach all afternoon; I could feel it hardening up in there already as we got up from the table. On the way out of the restaurant Kayabalian allowed that he would probably go over and see Lynn Troxell in person later today. “I’m not relishing the visit,” he said. “A stranger’s grief is bad enough, but in a friend or loved one… well, you know what I mean.”
“All too well.”
“You won’t be seeing her again, will you?”
“Not right away, no.”
But eventually. Like it or not, sooner or later-I was pretty sure of that.
At the agency, we had Sassy Tamara to start the week. Hip, flip, and cynical. I liked that version a lot better than Gloomy or Grumpy. At least she was more or less responsive.
When I asked her about her weekend, she said, “I almost got laid by a dude wanted me to wear Marilyn Monroe’s hair.”
“Huh?”
“Carries it around in his briefcase in case he gets lucky.”
