When he left the Hillman, he knew he should start following up on what Bill had told him about Nick Kinsella and the eighty-five hundred dollars Brian Youngblood had paid on his debt. But the skirmish with Phil Partain had left a sour taste; he was done with business for the day. He drove straight up over Twin Peaks and west to the brown- shingled house on Moraga Street.
He didn’t even try to talk himself out of it. He was going to see Bryn Darby sooner or later, and it might as well be right away, tonight, if she was home. This crazy damn compulsion was like a fever in his blood and the only way to get rid of it was to face her, let her tell him to leave her alone, let her shame him into it. What other reaction could she have, some guy she’d seen once in her life obsessing over her? Yell at him, call him names-that was what he wanted her to do.
Wasn’t it?
He didn’t know. Goddamn it, he’d always known what he wanted. Now all of a sudden he wasn’t sure anymore.
Yes, he was: he wanted the past, not the present and sure as hell not the future. He wanted Colleen to still be alive, he wanted his old life in Seattle back, he wanted to be a part of his son’s life. But the past was dead, irretrievable. All he had was the present, and the present didn’t include Joshua-the present was his work, nothing more. Only now there was this crap with Bryn Darby, whatever it was, to complicate what needed to be simple. He had to put an end to it one way or another, drive it out of himself, so he could get back to where he was before last Friday night: a tightly wrapped detective with all his emotional baggage carefully stowed so he wouldn’t stumble over it.
She was home; lights glowed behind drawn blinds in one of the brown-shingled house’s front windows. He squeezed the Ford into a narrow space between two driveways a short distance beyond. It was a cold night, the wind biting out here near the ocean, but he could feel sweat starting under his armpits as he walked back. Crazy, he thought. He forced the shutters up in his mind, got a tight grip on himself. Climbed the stairs and rang the bell.
Nothing for several seconds. Then footfalls and a guarded woman’s voice behind the closed door. “Yes? Who is it?”
“Mrs. Darby? Bryn Darby?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Runyon, Jake Runyon. Last Friday night at Safeway… I’m the man who helped you.”
She said, “Oh,” faintly and there was a long pause. “What do you want?”
“A few minutes of your time, that’s all.”
Another, shorter pause. Then the porch light came on, a deadbolt lock rattled, and the door opened on a chain. The good side of her face peered out at him warily.
His mind had gone suddenly blank. He said the first words that came to him, “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner…”
“It’s too early for my dinner. How did you find out where I live?”
“It’s what I do. My job.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Finding people. I’m a detective.”
“Detective? Police?”
“No.” He had his license case in his hand; he flipped it open and held it up close to the opening. “Private investigator.”
The visible eye blinked. It was a darker brown than he remembered, the iris very large, the lashes above it long and feathery. The suffering in it was as he remembered, too. Like something alive and hurt, hiding in a dark place.
“Is it trouble about what happened?”
“No,” he said, “nothing like that.”
“I don’t… have I done something?”
“No.”
“They why are you here? Do you want something from me?”
“No.”
“Payment of some kind for your help?”
He shook his head.
The eye narrowed anyway. The smooth skin along her cheek tightened until the cheekbone stood out in shadowed relief. “Like for instance a date?”
“I don’t… Date?”
“Divorced woman and damaged goods besides,” she said with brittle irony. “Ought to be grateful, right? Easy pickings.”
“No, you’re wrong. That’s not it at all.”
“Isn’t it?”
The cynicism in her voice was a small, cold thing surrounded by the hurt. Her pain had sharpened; the radiating force of it backed him up a pace. Made him feel ashamed, too-the self-recriminative feeling he craved. He shook his head again. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I never meant to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt you anymore,” and he swung around and went quickly down the stairs.
He was nearing the sidewalk when he heard the door chain rattle, her voice saying, “Wait,” then her steps on the porch. He stopped. She was tying one of her scarves around her head, covering the frozen side of her face, as she came down. No coat, only a thin sweater over an ankle-length skirt, but she’d taken the time to grab the scarf on her way out.
She stood off from him at the foot of the stairs, her body turned so that the shielded side of her face was out of his line of vision. “If you’re really not after something, why did you bother to track me down?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“That’s not an answer. You must have some idea.”
“A compulsion, that’s all. At Safeway, the way you looked…”
“I know how I look.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Another headshake. He couldn’t seem to control the muscles in his neck. “You don’t have to wear that scarf,” he said. “Or stand like that, turned to the side.”
“Yes, I do. What’re you going to say now? That you’re sorry about my deformity but I should learn to deal with it?”
“I’d never say that.”
“You don’t know anything about what happened to me… Or do you? Did you track that down, too-my entire medical history?”
“No.”
“But you do know what happened.”
“A little. Not much.”
“And you want to know more, is that it? Diseases can be so interesting.”
This time he managed not to move his head. He said nothing.
She came a step closer, as if on the same impulse that had brought her out of the house. “You said you didn’t want to hurt me anymore. What did you mean by that? How could you hurt me?”
“By coming here like this, bothering you.”
The visible side of her mouth formed a bitter smile. “This is nothing. I’ve been hurt a lot worse.”
“I know,” he said.
“You know? No, you don’t. You can’t imagine.”
“I think I can.”
“From a few facts you dug up about me?”
“Not from facts. I knew it at Safeway, when I saw you up close. I could see it, feel it.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“It’s the truth.”
