Trophies And Dead Things

'Last week, in a random shooting on Geary Boulevard.'

'One of those snipings? I remember seeing on TV that there had been another, but none of the details.' Grant closed his eyes, as if trying to call forth the news story. When he opened them again, their expression was one of bewilderment. 'Ms… may I call you Sharon?'

I nodded.

'Sharon, I'll be damned if I know what this is all about.'

'Is it possible that Hilderly was once a client of yours?'

'I have a good memory for my clients. He wasn't.'

'Could you have employed him as an accountant at some time?'

'Is that what he was? No, I've always used the same man at the same Big Eight firm.'

'Where are you originally from, Tom?'

'Durango, Colorado.'

'And you attended college and law school at…?'

'Undergraduate at Boulder, law at Illinois.'

'Have you spent much time in Berkeley?'

'I don't believe I've been there more than a dozen times in my life. Is that where Hilderly came from?'

'He attended the university until he was expelled for activities relating to the Free Speech Movement.'

'I'm afraid I don't know much about that, other than what I read in the papers a long time ago.'

I watched him for a moment. While his eyes seemed candid and his manner was relaxed, I sensed an undercurrent of falsehood in the man. After a bit I asked, 'What about the name Libby Heikkinen? Is that familiar to you?'

He shook his head-too quickly, I thought.

'Jess Goodhue? David Arlen Taylor?'

'Neither. Who are these people?'

'The other beneficiaries. Are you sure none of their names rings a bell?'

'Goodhue sounds vaguely familiar.'

'She's an anchorwoman with KSTS-TV.'

'Right. I think she interviewed me once.'

The sense of falsehood still nudged me. I said, 'Aren't you interested in the value of your share of Hilderly's estate?'

'I'm more interested in why he named me in his will. But, yes, how large is it?'

'Your share would come to around a quarter of a million dollars-should you be able to prove you are the Thomas Y. Grant that Hilderly intended the money to go to.'

Grant's gaze strayed to a window that overlooked another bricked courtyard, and to the eucalyptus groves of the Presidio beyond its wall. He was silent for a long moment, then looked back at me and said, 'I'm afraid I can't do that. And frankly, while it's a good deal of money, I don't really need it. I understand the difficult position this places Hank Zahn in; naturally he's bound to do everything he can to carry out his client's wishes. So what I'm going to propose is this.- I will sign a document renouncing all claim to this inheritance, in perpetuity.'

It was a gesture I hadn't expected-and one that was totally unnecessary. Now I began to suspect that-despite his outwardly cool manner-Tom Grant had known Perry Hilderly and was afraid I'd find out the nature of the relationship. I said, 'Are you sure you want to do that?'

'Yes. Will you ask Mr. Zahn to draw up the paperwork?'

'Certainly. I'll call for an appointment when it's ready.' I closed the file and replaced it in my briefcase.

Grant stood. 'When you do, ask Angela to schedule it for late in the day; I'd like to show you my studio.' Involuntarily I glanced over at the shelf beside the fireplace, where the mockingbird feathers spread about the dry, taut piece of skin. My feeling of distaste was even stronger now.

'Since you seem so interested in my hobby,' Grant added.

On my way through the pristine front courtyard, I suddenly recalled the source of the odd phrase that had popped into my head earlier: it was from the last stanza of a song by the seventeenth-century English playwright John Webster that I'd been required to memorize in one of my high-school literature classes. I could still remember the entire quatrain, more or less accurately.

Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

Four

As it turned out, Greg was forced to cancel our lunch-a fact about which I had mixed emotions. When I arrived at Homicide, one of the inspectors-a man named Wallace, whom I knew slightly- handed me an armful of files and showed me to Greg's cubicle. 'The lieutenant said to leave them on the desk when you're finished,' he told me.

So I spent what should have been my lunch hour reading through the case files on the random shootings. Four of them, dating back to April, the latest being Hilderly's on July 6. The first was a restaurant employee, returning late to his rooming house in the Outer Mission. Next was a nurse, leaving for her four-to-midnight shift at Children's Hospital in Laurel Heights. The third victim, a veteran on disability, had been unable to sleep and gone outside his home in the Outer Sunset to get some air minutes before he was killed. And then there was Hilderly. The weapon used was a.357 Magnum, and the bullets recovered from the bodies matched ballistically. All the shootings had occurred after ten P.M. and on relatively quiet streets; even Hilderly's had been no exception, since normally busy Geary Boulevard is almost deserted at one-fifty A.M., the hour he'd alighted from an empty Muni bus at the corner of Third Avenue.

There had been no eyewitnesses to any of the killings; the Muni bus, in Hilderly's case, had already driven away. Family, friends, and co-workers of the victims had been interviewed, and the investigators were unable to turn up an enemy or anyone else with a motive for murder. The information in the files showed that the victims had been more or less upright citizens, ordinary people going about their ordinary business. Ordinary people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As is customary in such cases, the mayor's office had offered a reward for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer. The usual false leads, extortion attempts, and crackpot calls (including one in which the caller claimed the shootings were the work of her husband, who had then flown off in a UFO) had been phoned in to the police hot line. Unlike killers such as Zodiac, the perpetrator did not contact either the press or the police. If the snipings continued, the public outcry would become louder, and panic would ensue; political pressure on the department, already heavy, would increase.

I skimmed the files devoted to each individual, then turned to Hilderly's, curious to see where he'd been on the night of his death. There was a statement from his employer, Gene Carver of Tax Management Corporation, saying that Hilderly had worked late that evening. I frowned; he'd been shot only the week before last, long after the busy income-tax season. Why the late hours? Then I read on; Hilderly and his boss had been preparing for an IRS audit of one of their major clients. Carver stated that he himself had left the office at one A.M. and offered Hilderly a ride