Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (4 page)

She snorted. "That's putting it mildly. His whole family blames me
because the asshole made that fake suicide attempt last fall. His
mother had the nerve to tell me if I paid more attention to him, it
wouldn't have happened. It was cold in Ohio, and neither of us brought
enough warm clothes. So his mother went out and bought her Dougie two
new sweaters, but nothing for me. Then I found out he hadn't even told
them we weren't living together anymore. When I corrected that
impression, his father lectured me on a wife's duties to her husband.
Never mind a husband's duties—little things like respecting his wife's
rights or being truthful. Oh no, those things don't apply to their
Dougie. No wonder he turned out the way he did!" She paused, suddenly
shamefaced. "Sorry. I know I shouldn't rant like that. But every time I
think about it, I just… fulminate!"

"I don't blame you." Rae had come a long way in a few months: from a
woman who neglected her job to rush to her husband's side every time he
snapped his fingers, to a full-scale fulminator. I motioned around us.
"Does this mean you're
divorcing him?"

"Yeah. The couples therapy has proved to me that we can't go on.
Every week more and more things come out about both of us. Perfectly
swinish things about Doug, and things I don't like much about myself,
either. I can work to improve my bad character, but there's nothing I
can do about his."

"So when are you filing?"

"Soon. Trouble is, I've only got twenty-nine dollars in my checking
account." Momentarily she looked glum, then brightened. "But Hank
loaned me a book about how to do your own divorce, and even offered to
help me. I guess I can scrape together the filing fee."

I considered offering to loan it to her but decided against such
partisan behavior. I'd long ago learned to stay out of friends' marital
hassles; whenever I'd taken sides, they'd reconciled, and I'd ended up
the villainous party.

"Hank's been awfully helpful," Rae added. "I was afraid he wouldn't
want me putting in a room up here, but he said yes right away and even
talked the owner into paying for the insulation and Sheetrock."

Hank Zahn, founder and nominal leader of All Souls, was great at
talking people into all sorts of things. Too bad, I thought, he wasn't
any good with a hammer. And speaking of marital hassles… "Has Hank been
around this week?" I asked.

"Not much."

"Anne-Marie?" Anne-Marie Altman, our tax attorney, was my good
friend and Hank's wife.

"Haven't seen her, but I only got back from Ohio on Monday."

"Well, I suppose they'll be at the party Saturday night."

"If they're speaking to each other."

"You've noticed, too."

"Can't help but. Frankly, I think what they need is separate houses.
There are some people who love each other but can't live
together."

"Maybe," I said, thinking of my former relationship with a certain
police lieutenant. "Anyway, I need to talk to you about a case. I hate
to interrupt this… project, but—"

"Don't worry. I need a break. I only have one more thumb, you know."
She sat down next to me on the rolled-up rug.

I told her about the Foster case, pointing out what I thought were
holes and inconsistencies.

When I finished, Rae was silent for a moment. "Oh boy," she finally
said, "twenty years old and on death row! What sort of a kid is this
Bobby Foster, anyway?"

I restrained a smile at her use of the word "kid"; Rae herself was
only twenty-five. "He's okay, once you get past the tough-guy
attitude—which is understandable, given where he is. Grew up in the
projects—Potrero Annex. One of seven kids, father skipped out before he
was born, mother's had two other husbands, both gone now, too. She's an
activist—organized a watch program for her building and was
instrumental in establishing the Potrero Medical Clinic."

"I've heard of it. Didn't they just get some big foundation grant?"

I nodded. "Mrs. Whitsun—Leora Whitsun—works at the clinic now, doing
intake and records. She's getting a pretty good salary and wants to
move her younger kids out of the projects. Her connection with the
clinic has bearing on the case, too. The club owner I mentioned, Jay
Larkey, was a dentist before he turned to stand-up comedy, and he still
keeps his hand in. He volunteers two afternoons a week at the clinic,
which is how he met Mrs. Whitsun and came to hire Foster as a parking
attendant when he got out of the CYA."

"And he was in the CYA for…?"

"He'd been running drugs since he was nine. The last time, he was in
for assaulting a dealer who had cheated him. There were other offenses
relating more to his violent temper than to drugs. Right before
Kostakos disappeared, though, he'd begun
to turn his life around. His mother's a very gutsy woman, and
underneath it all, Bobby has the same basic toughness."

Rae nodded thoughtfully. "So what do you need me to do?"

"First, set up some appointments for me. I called the victim's
mother from the pay phone at San Quentin, and she agreed to see me
after three." I looked at my watch. "I've got to leave in a few minutes
in order to get down to Palo Alto on time. See if you can catch the
roommate, Amy Barbour, at work and arrange for me to meet her at the
apartment around six or seven. If that's okay, set up something with
George Kostakos for tomorrow, the same with Mrs. Whitsun and the
boyfriend, Marc Emmons. I'll drop in at Café Comedie and talk with the
people there this evening."

"Phone numbers?"

"I'll leave the file on my desk." I stood up. "You probably should
read it and the trial transcript, plus look at the video—if you can
stomach it."

"If I can stomach a week with Doug's family—"

I cut her off; the tape was nothing to joke about. "I'll probably
want you to verify some of the facts turned up in the police
investigation, as well as run checks to see if there's been any
activity in Kostakos's checking or charge accounts—that sort of thing.
But that can wait until tomorrow. "

"Right. What about the investigator in charge of the case? Do you
want me to contact him?"

"Can't—he's dead. But there's somebody I know in the department who
might pull the file for me—if I ask nicely."

Greg Marcus, my former lover, would be at the New Year's Eve party
on Saturday—and my new dress was low cut and red, the color he liked
best on me.

Laura Kostakos had told me to take the University Avenue exit off
Highway 101. As I did, I felt a stab of nostalgia for my college days,
when I'd dated a Stanford grad student who lived near the interchange,
in the area that is actually part of the troubled community of East
Palo Alto but then had been almost as desirable as Palo Alto itself.
His was a long street lined with nothing but apartment buildings; they
ranged from no-frills to luxury complexes replete with swimming pools
and putting greens. I'd attended some of the best parties of my life on
that street, but those days, a friend who lived in Palo Alto had
recently told me, are gone.

Now, she said, even the most opulent of the complexes are showing
signs of the hasty, poor-quality construction that dooms them to early
obsolescence. Their facades are cracked; their rooflines sag; the
putting greens are weedy, the swimming pools filmed with mold. Instead
of Stanford students and young professionals and naval officers from
Moffett Field, they are largely tenanted by working-class blacks who
have moved across the freeway from East Palo Alto proper, looking for a
better life.

As I drove past the bars and liquor stores and shabby businesses on
the stretch of University Avenue known locally as Whiskey Gulch, I
reflected on the stinginess and hypocrisy of a society that rewards its
aspiring minorities with the ruling class's leavings, then tries to
claim the neighborhood is declining because of the "new element" that's
moved in. The decaying apartments of East Palo Alto were several cuts
above the decrepit Potrero Hill projects where Bobby Foster grew
up—World War II-vintage cell blocks where fear and violence lurk in
every enclosed staircase and entryway—but they weren't much when you
considered how hard their occupants had worked to get there.

At the end of the strip of businesses, a sign announced I was
entering Palo Alto itself. The neighborhood changed: stately trees
arched over the pavement; handsome homes decked with Christmas wreaths
stood far back on manicured lawns; the cars in the driveways were
Mercedeses and Cadillacs and sports models. Palo Alto is a reasonably
liberal town that prides itself on culture and intellect (while
determinedly avoiding the strident radicalism of such academic enclaves
as Berkeley), so I was fairly sure that not all the blacks on this side
of the dividing line would be wearing starched uniforms—but I also
suspected there wouldn't be enough bona fide minority residents to hold
a chapter meeting of the NAACP.

Chaucer Street, where Laura Kostakos lived, was one of a number in
the exclusive Crescent Park district that were named after literary
figures. Her house was Spanish style—a two-storied, white stucco with a
red-tiled roof. The front lawn was full of big dead patches; a loose
rain gutter rattled in the wind. Behind the mulberry tree that shaded
the arching front window, I could see drawn drapes. The magnolia tree
near the door had dropped its leaves on the brick walk, and nobody had
bothered to clean them up. As I rang the bell, I noted the absence of
any kind of Christmas decoration.

Mrs. Kostakos took a long time answering my ring. When the door
finally opened, I saw a tall woman with graying blond hair worn loose
upon her shoulders. It was a style that would have looked too youthful
on many women in their late forties, but on her it seemed right,
imparting a fragile air that enhanced her fine bone structure. Her blue
velvet lounging pajamas—curious attire for three in the afternoon—hung
loose on her, giving the impression that she had lost a great deal of
weight; she'd applied no makeup to hide the dark half-moons under her
eyes.

She thanked me for coming, even though I was the one who had
requested the interview. Then she led me down a long, narrow gallery
lined with spotlighted oil paintings and sculpture on pedestals. The
air in the gallery was chill. Laura Kostakos moved stiffly, in the gait
of a much older woman. As the folds of her pajamas rippled, I caught
the scent of a gardenia like perfume I'd always associated with my
maternal grandmother.

At the far end of the gallery was a living room whose dark exposed
ceiling beams radiated out to a curving wall containing a series of
five small window seats. The windows encased within the jutting
sections of wall admitted little light; through them I could see a
free-form swimming pool that looked as if it had been carved from lava
rock. The murky mid afternoon light sheened the black water.

The living room itself was gloomy. Shadows gathered in its far
reaches, where glass-fronted bookcases hulked; on the table at the L of
the sectional sofa, a single low-wattage lamp burned, giving off a dim
halo of light. The chill I'd felt in the gallery penetrated here, too.
I glanced at the stone fireplace, saw the grate was choked with dead
ashes.

Laura Kostakos motioned for me to sit on the sofa. I took a place
next to the table with the lamp. She positioned herself on a
ladder-back chair across from me.

To establish rapport, I said, "This is a lovely room."

She glanced around, then shrugged disinterestedly. "Yes, I suppose
it is. I barely see it anymore." After a brief pause, she added, "It's
good of you to take an interest in my daughter's disappearance."

"I should warn you right off that my interest is in behalf of the
young man convicted of killing her."

She nodded, picking at a piece of lint on her velvet-covered thigh.
"I have no problem with that."

I removed a notebook and pencil from my bag. "I've come to you for
two reasons. First, I'd like to get some idea of Tracy as a person,
hear what she was like."

"Is like, Ms. McCone. Tracy is still alive."

"That brings me to the other reason I asked to speak with you.
You've told people that you believe she's alive, and I'd like to know
why."

She nodded again and waited. Apparently she expected me to conduct a
formal interview, as the police would do.

I said, "What kind of a young woman was… is Tracy?"

"A normal young woman. More talented than most, but quite… normal.
If anything, her normalcy borders on the pathological. At least, that's
what my husband would say— he's in psychology, you know."

"Could you explain that more fully?"

"Tracy is overly conscientious. She works very hard and is extremely
self-critical. Very harsh on herself at times. With girls of her age
you expect some irresponsibility: they're late for appointments; they
forget to call home; they miss birthdays or Mother's Day. But not
Tracy. Even her play has a serious quality, as if she's playing for
keeps. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, I do. You and your husband—"

"We're separated," she said quickly.

"I see. Both of you are professors at Stanford?"

"Yes, although we've elected to take extended leaves of absence.
From the university and from one another."

I debated probing into the marital situation but decided it had no
bearing on the case, other than as a by-product. "I notice that Tracy
was working as a cocktail waitress before she began to break into
comedy. Were you disappointed that she chose not to attend college?"

"Actually she did attend for two years—Foothill Junior College. But
when the time came for her to transfer to a four-year school, she opted
to move to San Francisco and try her wings at comedy instead. Frankly,
Ms. McCone, Tracy isn't academically inclined. I doubt she would have
been happy or successful continuing with her education."