Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (18 page)

The second victim was a nurse,
Mary Davis, birth name Johnson. Another common name. Davis had worked
at Children's Hospital in Laurel Heights less than two months before
she was shot while walking to her car on a quiet side street near the
crisis clinic where she'd been on night duty. Before that she'd done
psychiatric nursing at Letterman Army Hospital in the Presidio, and
S.F. General, There was an eight-year period of unemployment after her
1975 marriage, and in 1983 she'd attended City College for additional
training in the psychiatric nursing field. Before her marriage she'd
been with the American Red Cross from 1968 to 1974. Davis's family and
friends described her as a devoted wife and mother, good neighbor, and
active volunteer for an organization providing counseling for AIDS
patients.

I noted down several details
about Davis, feeling an idea begin to take shape.

The third sniping victim, John
Owens, was a veteran living on disability pay in a small home near the
beach in the Outer Sunset. His wife and friends described him as the
designated neighborhood repairman: he had a shop in his garage and was
a genius with balky machinery. The fact that he was confined to a
wheelchair due to injuries suffered in shelling near Saigon in 1972
didn't affect his ability to fix practically anything—
 

Vietnam again.

Hilderly had been there. So had
Hank and Willie. And John Owens. All roughly within the same time
frame. I checked my notes on Mary Davis: American Red Cross, 1968 to
1973. Had she also been over there? Bob Smith, too, maybe?

Embittered war protester knocking
off veterans eighteen or so years after they'd fought their war? No. It
sounded too much like the plot of a bad made-for-TV movie. Besides,
Hilderly and Davis hadn't been in the military. And Hank wasn't what
you'd call your typical vet. For that matter, neither was Willie.

I wished Greg were there so we
could talk it over; he was good at sorting out the possibilities from
the improbables. But he wouldn't be back until afternoon, and I had to
be in Berkeley in less than an hour.

What I needed was more
information. I picked up Greg's phone receiver and called Hank's flat;
only the machine answered. The same was true at Willie's house. I got
the number of his main store on Market Street from directory
assistance. Willie wasn't there, either, but I finally tracked him down
at the Daly City store, in conference with its manager.

I asked, "When will you be free?"

"Christ, McCone, I don't know.
I've got a full schedule today, going round to the stores."

"Give me a time when you'll be
back at Market Street."

"Five? Five-thirty?"

"Good. I'll see you then." I hung
up before he could reply and called Ted at All Souls. "What's Hank's
schedule today?"

"Let me—dammit, get down!"

"Ted?"

"I was talking to Alice. She just
walked across my keyboard and screwed up the computer. Back, you
beast!" There was a thump and a tiny, indignant yowl. "Now— what?" he
asked. "Hank's schedule?"

"If it won't interrupt your
parenting too drastically."

"Don't be sarcastic. You could
have taken them off my hands, you know."

"The schedule . . . ?"

"In court this morning. Back
around two. Says he's going to clear up a few things and then go home
early for a change."

"Okay, will you give him this
message, please, and tell him it's urgent? I want him to meet me at
Willie's Market Street store between five and five-thirty. Emphasize
the urgent."

"Willie's, Market Street,
four-thirty. That's so he'll get there on time; Hank, as you know, runs
late. Will do, and I'll see that he follows through on it."

There are times when I thank
whatever powers-that-be for Ted's calm efficiency. "Great," I said.
"One more thing— is Rae in her office yet?"

"I think I heard her stumble in
there about five minutes ago. Hold on."

When Rae picked up her extension,
she sounded none too cheerful. "I just read about Tom Grant in the
paper," she said. "Did you get involved in that?"

"I arrived right after the
secretary found his body."

"They didn't mention you."

"Good. I'm notorious enough as
is. Listen, I'll fill you in on it later. Do you have time to check
into something for me this morning?"

"If it's not too complicated. My
brain seems to be on hold. Okay, go ahead."

"I need to know about a Forth
Worth, Texas, firm— American Consolidated Services. Specifically, what
services they provide, and where. If you can get personnel to
cooperate, ask about a Bob Smith who worked for them from nineteen
sixty-seven to seventy-three."

"What's my reason for wanting to
know about him?"

"Tell them employee background
check. No, that won't work—they've been contacted by the police and
whoever you talk with might remember he's
dead. Well, think of something."

"Sure," she said, a shade glumly.

I scribbled a note to Greg,
telling him I had a possible lead on the sniper and would be in touch
later. Then I set off for the town that plays host to my alma mater.

I seldom visited Berkeley
anymore—not because I didn't like the town, but because long ago all my
old friends had moved away and I had no real reason to go there. As I
drove up University Avenue toward campus that morning I found myself
experiencing a keen attack of nostalgia. That dark-haired young woman
in jeans who moved past me in the crosswalk could easily have been me,
walking reluctantly to my nine o'clock soc class and wondering how I
could get through it without a third cup of coffee. That sandwich shop
on the corner was where I'd often grabbed a hasty lunch, and I was
willing to bet their bread was just as stale and dry as ever. When I
crossed the Milvia intersection, I felt a swift wrenching; some two
blocks away down a little side street was the apartment building where
I had enacted the happy, then disillusioned, and finally painful scenes
of my one and only long-term live-in relationship. All about me—and
inside me, too— things had changed, and yet they hadn't.

It was odd, I reflected, that
part of me didn't feel any older than on the day I'd left here with my
diploma. Since then I'd entered a profession I'd never
given a prior thought to; I'd dealt with people and situations that
would have made that graduate's flesh creep; I'd often been in extreme
danger, had coped as best I could with violence and death, had even
been forced to kill a man. I was more cynical, more judgmental, more
prone to anger. But deep inside there was a wistful, yearning part that
still felt twenty-three years old.

The changes in Berkeley were
contradictory, too. The old landmarks remained, but interspersed among
them were new buildings and a fair number of trendy shops and
restaurants. The quiet, somewhat funky town of my memory has become
chic these days: home of the Gourmet Ghetto, pioneering frontier of the
New California Cuisine. The university, while still a major player, is
no longer the only game in town. On the streets where you once mainly
saw students on bicycles or in beat-up basic-transportation vehicles,
you're now just as likely to spot well-heeled executive types in BMWs.
Of course, the direction of progress has not been totally upscale: as I
reached the edge of campus and went to turn left on Shattuck, I was
momentarily taken aback by an enormous McDonald's. Not everyone in
Berkeley, apparently, is a gourmet.

Luke Widdows had told me his
house was on a section of Walnut Street a block from a shopping complex
called Walnut Square. I found it—two-storied, white clapboard, wrapped
by a wide porch—and parked in the driveway as directed. His office,
he'd said, was in the carriage house out back. I followed a meandering
dirt path through a vegetable garden to the smaller structure—shabbier
than the main house, with a steeply canting roof. When I knocked on the
screen door, Widdows answered immediately.

He was a slender man with curly
brown hair and a fluffy beard, dressed in khakis and a blue T-shirt.
There was an openness in his manner that I liked, and he seemed so glad
to see me that I guessed my arrival had saved him from some distasteful
task. He ushered me into a room with a paperstrewn desk and a pair of
comfortable old armchairs, offered coffee, and went to fetch it.

"The nice thing about working out
here," he called from the next room, "is that there's a small kitchen.
I don't need to go to the main house if I don't want to. Which is a
blessing, because I rent a couple of rooms to students who like loud
music. Do you take anything in your coffee?"

"Just black."

"Me, too."

Widdows returned and handed me a
large mug, then sank into the opposite armchair, eyeing me with frank
interest. "Private detective, huh?" he said. "How'd you get into that
line of work?"

"I got a degree in sociology from
Cal."

He laughed knowingly. "Mine was
in journalism."

"I'd say that's a bit more
practical."

"Not much. In journalism, there's
no teacher like hands-on experience."

"Well, obviously you've acquired
that."

"All of it the hard way." He
spoke without bitterness or self-pity; whatever his trials had been,
they seemed to amuse him. As he slouched in the chair, one leg thrown
over its arm, bare foot dangling, I glanced at the chaotic desk and
computer setup—reminders of the work I was probably interrupting.

I said, "I don't want to keep you
from anything pressing."

"You are—and I'm delighted. This
morning I couldn't get any of the Jumble—that word scramble in the
paper—so I know this is going to be one of those days when I won't be
able to string the parts of a sentence together. You wanted to know
about Perry Hilderly?"

"Yes. I understand he worked for
you at
New Liberty."

"If you could say that any of us
really worked. Perry was a reporter. Investigative, I guess you could
loosely term it. He couldn't write worth a lick—I had to rewrite most
of what he turned in—but he was a Movement figure, had contacts with
people who might
not otherwise have talked with reporters."

"How long was he at the magazine?"

"He started in sixty-eight, after
he left Berkeley."

"And he lived in San Francisco
then?"

"Somewhere in the lower Fillmore
district, I think. A lot of Movement people did back then—it was cheap,
and they could get in touch with the 'real people,' as we were fond of
calling minorities."

"And he went to Vietnam in
sixty-nine?"

"Spring, it was. He came to me,
said he was burned out and disillusioned with the Movement. He wanted
to see firsthand what the war was all about. We didn't have the funds
to pay him, but we struck a deal that if he paid his way, we'd supply
press credentials. So off he went."

"And what did he report on?"

"He hadn't so much as delivered a
line of copy by the time the magazine folded." Momentarily Widdows
looked regretful. "That was my fault, I'm afraid. My draft board was
after me—this happened about a month after Perry left for 'Nam—so I
took what I thought was the easy way out and split for Vancouver. The
magazine never had strong management after I left."

Now I eyed him with interest.
Strangely enough, I'd never met anyone who had moved to Canada to avoid
the draft. "From the way you phrase it, I take it the 'easy way out'
wasn't?"

"Not really. Draft resisters
weren't all that welcome up there. There were simply too many of us,
and not enough jobs. Not enough commitment to the country for the
Canadians to accept us. And a lot of us got homesick—I know I did. I
came back here under the amnesty program. Wrote a book about my
experiences that did well enough that I could buy this house. I'm
pretty apolitical these days; mainly what I write is gardening books
and articles. You saw my vegetables?"
 

I nodded, thinking that Luke
Widdows was as much of a victim of the turmoil of the war days as those
who had gone to Asia and fought.

"Where did you first meet Perry?"
I asked.

"Here in Berkeley. I interviewed
him for a couple of articles in the
Daily Cal."

"Can you tell me something about
the people he was close to?"

"You mean like the other leaders
of the FSM?"

"Let me give you some names, see
if they were friends of his. Thomas Y. Grant?"

"Where have I—isn't he the
attorney who was murdered in the city last night?"

"Yes."

Widdows's eyes widened. "You're
working on that?"

"A related matter."

"I see." He seemed intrigued by
my reticence. "Well, as near as I recall, the first time I ever heard
of Grant was when I unfolded the paper this morning."

"What about David Arlen Taylor—D.
A. Taylor?"

"Oh, sure. He was a close friend
of Perry's, probably his closest."