Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (42 page)

"The other guy mentioned a couple of attendants who are off. Did
either of them know Kostakos or Foster?"

"Nah, they only been here a couple of months. None of us're real
steady workers."

"Does anybody at the club ever talk about the murder?"

"Sometimes. In whispers."

"What do they say?"

"That Foster was railroaded. But face it, nobody wants to think
somebody he knows can do a thing like that."

The redhead returned, jogging. Another car approached; the man I'd
been talking with went to the curb. I thanked them both for their time
and started down the sidewalk.

The drizzle had become a full-blown rain by now. Most of South
Park's buildings were dark; here and there light showed behind closed
blinds or around yellowed shades. Along with the rain, the wind kicked
up again; it rattled the bare branches of the sycamore trees ringing
the park; their leaves lay sodden on
the ground.

I glanced at my watch and shivered. Ten-thirty on a rainy Thursday
night in winter. A little less than two years before, Tracy Kostakos
had gone to her unknown fate at just about this time on just such a
night. Had she walked this way, feeling the drops on her head and
wishing for a hat, as I was? Or had she ignored them, moving
purposefully—and if so, to what end? And had Bobby Foster walked beside
her, or was he telling the truth—that they'd argued and parted?

Not for the first time I was afraid I'd prove unequal to feeling my
way through the dark maze that lay between the present and that
long-ago night. But the desire to shed light on its events had taken
firm root within me. It wasn't even desire, but raw necessity—for the
sake of the man whose life I held in my hands.

George Kostakos said, "Do you realize what it will do to people,
your resurrecting this tragedy?"

"I'm afraid I can't get beyond the fact that it may save a young
man's life."

He lowered his handsome, rough-hewn face into his palms, ran long
fingers through thick black hair that was frosted with gray. "Christ, I
know it's unconscionable to put my own feelings first, while that kid's
sitting up there waiting to die. But we've all been through such agony,
dammit. I don't want the people I care about to suffer that again. And
I certainly don't want to relive it myself."

I remained silent, giving him time to get his emotions under
control. It was eleven o'clock Friday morning. We were seated in the
living room of his borrowed house in the Marina district, directly
across the street from the Palace of Fine Arts. Through the front
window I could see the icy-gray lagoon bordered by wind-warped cypress
trees; beyond it the tan colonnade and domed rotunda—relics of the 1915
exposition celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal—were shrouded in
mist. Kostakos had explained that a friend who was
temporarily living in Europe had offered him the use of the house when
he'd separated from his wife the previous summer. Even if he hadn't
told me that, I would have guessed it wasn't his, because nothing about
it went with the man seated across from me.

The house actually had a schizoid quality. The exterior was
Mediterranean, as many of the buildings in that quiet, affluent area of
the city are: white stucco, with black ornamental grillwork and
decorative yew trees; possessed of the obligatory postage-stamp front
lawn; two storied, with a garage below the living room window and a
door enclosed in a Moorish arch. From the outside it seemed an
ordinary-enough house for the Marina, although its location would make
it more expensive than most.

Inside was another story. The owner had taken it upon himself to
create a designer's showcase dream that would be a nightmare to anyone
desirous of living comfortably. The walls of the first-floor entry were
starkly white; it contained nothing whatsoever except a polished black
rock on a pedestal. The uncarpeted stairs rose to a living room off a
gallery—also white, with bare, bleached wood floors. Two pairs of
spartan chrome-and-leather chairs faced each other at right angles to
the fireplace; they struck me as the modern-day equivalent of those
prissy antiques that are guaranteed to be unsittable and will probably
fall apart if you try. A second grouping of chairs and tables at the
far end of the room looked similarly inhospitable, and the only sign of
human habitation was a book- and paper-heaped desk in front of the
window. I assumed that was Kostakos's import.

The chairs had proved as unsittable as they looked, at least for any
length of time. I shifted on mine now, waiting for Kostakos to speak.

Finally he raised his head and looked me in the eye. His were
gold-flecked hazel, the kind that can surprise you by sometimes
appearing either green or blue. He said, "I'm not going to
try to obstruct your investigation, but I don't care to help you,
either."

I hesitated, framing my reply carefully. "I'm not asking you to
help, not in any material way. The reason I wanted to talk with you is
that I'm trying to form some kind of impression of your daughter. I've
heard various things about her—from her mother, her roommate, her
employer—and it will round out the picture to hear what you have to
say."

He regarded me intently for a moment, then got up and moved
restively around the barren room. He was tall and lean, and his
body—clad in a blue chambray workshirt and jeans—seemed to hum with a
pent-up energy. This man, I sensed, would do nothing halfway. Whatever
he turned his hand to would receive his total concentration and
effort—be it teaching, writing, research, or things personal.

Face it, McCone, my often annoying inner voice said as I watched him
pace, your prim-and-proper "things personal" is a euphemism for sex.

Not totally, I countered. But if so, what of it? I'm not allowed to
think about sex? I certainly ought to be, after all these months
without it.

But the thought was unsettling nonetheless, and when Kostakos sat
back down, I had difficulty meeting his eyes. He said, "You've talked
with Laura?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"How is she?"

"Lonely."

His eyes became shadowed, their color edging toward the green; the
fine lines around them grew tight, as if he were in pain. After a pause
he said, "I'm sorry about that. I've told her she ought to get out, go
back to the university, start seeing her therapist again—anything but
sit there in that house or that wretched apartment."

"You know about her weekly visits there?"

"I know." His lips pursed; the knowledge had left a bitter taste.

"Amy Barbour knows, too," I said. "She's afraid Laura might be
self-destructive or dangerous to her."

"Amy Barbour is a twit. Laura's incapable of harming herself or
anyone else. She's much too selfish for that."

The harsh judgment shocked me. It showed on my face, because
Kostakos immediately added, "Selfishness isn't really a negative trait,
you know."

"If you say so—you're the psychologist."

"There's a difference between selfishness and self-centeredness," he
said. "Self-centered people are narcissists, engrossed in only what
concerns them. Selfish people, on the other hand, tend to put their own
welfare first, but they realize they're not the center of the universe.
They're often able to do extremely well by others, because they take
care of themselves and can be quite effective in their endeavors. When
I say Laura is selfish, I mean she looks out for herself. It's her way
of getting through."

"She doesn't seem to be doing too good a job of it recently, though."

"No." He hesitated, eyes clouded again. "But there's nothing I can
do about that."

"You mentioned her way of getting through. What's yours?" It was a
very personal question, but Kostakos seemed candid enough to answer it,
and I wanted to keep him talking.

He motioned at the desk in the front window. "My work. It takes me
outside myself."

"Laura said you've both taken leaves of absence from Stanford. Are
you teaching somewhere else?"

"Something like that. I'm involved with a group called Living
Victims. Have you heard of it?"

"No."

"It's a support group for friends and relatives of murder victims.
Sort of like Parents of Murdered Children, except it's not
limited to blood relatives. They helped me a lot when I first moved to
the city, and now I'm trying to return some of that by assisting them
with grant writing. And I'm also working on a book that I'd started…
before."

"What's the book about?"

"It outlines a psychological model—" He broke off. "You don't really
want to hear about it."

"Actually, I do. I was a soc major at Berkeley, and I took a good
bit of psych, too."

Kostakos looked pleased. I assumed he spent a good deal of time
alone, and although his involvement with Living Victims would bring him
into contact with a fair number of people, most of them would have
little interest in his psychological theories.

"The model is a system of personality classification, based on
whether a person is primarily action oriented, emotional, or
intellectual," he said. "Within the various categories there are three
levels—the healthy, the normative, and the pathological. That's nothing
new; it's a synthesis of various models that have been around for a
long time. What I'm trying to do is explain it in layman's terms as
well as develop guidelines that people can use to move in the direction
of the healthy level."

"A self-help book, right?"

He smiled ruefully. "I know—one more to add to the legion in the
stores. But I've got a lot of confidence in this project; what people
don't realize is that within any one personality category there are
individuals who don't seem to have anything in common because they're
operating at different levels. But all of those—except for the most
severely disturbed—are capable of moving toward the highest level
without making any fundamental changes in who or what they are."

"Can you give me an example of one of these groups?"

"Sure. Think of historical figures, leaders—the good guys. Who comes
to mind?"

"Well, since we've had a shortage of those lately, John Kennedy,
Martin Luther King."

"Okay. Do you know who those people would share a group with? The
Reverend Jim Jones and Charles Manson."

"Good Lord."

"Pathological to healthy. Now this model—" Again he broke off.
"Look, would you like some coffee?"

"Sure, that would be nice." As he stood up, I added, "Let me help
you make it—I'm curious about the rest of this house."

"Strange, isn't it? I still haven't gotten used to it, and I doubt I
ever will."

Kostakos led me around the stairwell to the other side of the
gallery. A dining room opened off it. The walls in there were desert
orange, the table a slab of something that resembled petrified wood.
Tall cacti stood in the corners like entrapped outlaws, their arms
reaching for the sky—or in this case, skylight.

"The southwestern room?" I asked.

"Yes—a decided contrast to the North Polar living room."

Kostakos pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen. It was
large and high ceilinged, with more skylights, more bleached wood and
white walls. The starkness was alleviated by shelves of colorful
cookbooks, a great many hanging baskets, and large bunches of dried red
peppers. Beneath the bentwood table lay an enormous black-and-white
cowhide rug.

"The peppers and baskets carry on the southwestern motif," I said,
"and that rug's definitely Texas."

Kostakos laughed. "This house suffers from an extreme identity
crisis. There's a game room downstairs that's Hollywood kitsch. The
master bedroom's all antlers and moose-hide—north-woods theme. The
guest bedroom's southern— flower prints
and white lace and little lavender-scented pillows. If you woke up in
there, you'd half expect Butterfly McQueen to come sashaying in with
your breakfast tray."

"What in God's name is the owner like?"

"He's a mild-mannered medical researcher at UCSF. But I suspect he
has a rich fantasy life." Kostakos went to the U-shaped workspace at
the end of the room. "What kind of coffee would you like? We have
Brazilian, Zimbabwe, Colombian-Armenian, and Plantation Blend dark
roast."

I was embarrassed to tell him that to me coffee is just coffee,
despite my efforts to educate myself to the contrary.

Kostakos grinned at my confused silence. "I don't care, either.
Coffee's good if it's strong and drinkable. I've been using the dark
roast because there seem to be cases of it in the pantry." He busied
himself with a grinder and beans.

I sat at the table, stooping first to pat the rough cowhide. "About
your personality classifications—which one are you?"

Without hesitation he replied, "My group's the one described as the
intellectuals."

"Fitting, considering you're a professor."

"You'd be surprised how often a person's group doesn't mesh with his
or her profession. But I must say I like my group. We're perceptive,
analytical, produce very original ideas. Some of us have been on the
genius level. Freud, for example." He set the coffeemaker going and
faced me. "Of course, there are those who claim Hitler may have been
one of us."

"That's not too encouraging. I wonder which group I am?"

He got out coffee mugs and set them on the table. Even the mugs in
this house were at odds: one was a caricature of Richard Nixon,
ski-jump nose and all; the other was Jimmy Carter, big white teeth
agleam.

Kostakos regarded me thoughtfully. "I'd have to know you a lot
better to say for sure, but if I were to hazard a guess from
what I've observed of you and from knowing your profession, I'd say
your group is the same as mine."

"Oh, come on! I'm no intellectual."

"That's just a convenient label. You're straightforward, give
evidence of being analytical. You think before you speak, phrase what
you say precisely. In your business, you're certain to be logical and
perceptive. I also sense you might have what's known in psychological
jargon as 'the third ear'—the ability to hear meanings beyond what a
person's actually saying. You've got intuitive and emotional qualities.
You just don't let them get in the way."