Mourners: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) Read Free Page A

calls in with some excuse.”
    “Does he stay home, hole up on those days?”
    “No,” she said. “He leaves at his usual time every morning, whether he goes to the office or not, and stays out most of the day.”
    “How did you find out he wasn’t going to his office?”
    “Mr. Hessen, Martin Hessen, called me last week. He’d spoken to Jim about it, but Jim stonewalled him, too.”
    “Is he letting his work slide?”
    “Not to a crisis point, not yet. But of course Martin and the other partners are concerned.”
    “Have you spoken to your husband’s friends?”
    “He only has one close friend, Drew Casement—they’ve known each other since high school. But he hasn’t confided in Drew. Or anyone else that I contacted.”
    “So you have no idea where he goes, what he does during his day and evening absences?”
    “Not a clue. I thought of following him myself, but I wouldn’t be any good at that sort of thing. That’s why I need your services. I have to find out before . . . I have to find out.”
    I cleared my throat. “Well, there’s the obvious explanation for his actions and the behavioral changes—”
    “It isn’t another woman,” she said flatly.
    “I’m sure you don’t want to consider the possibility, but—”
    “It is not another woman.”
    “I have to say this. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a woman.”
    “No.” Sharply this time. “Whatever is causing this, it isn’t love or sex.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “I’d
know
if it was. A woman knows. Besides . . .”
    “Yes?”
    Her hands moved again, joining, unjoining. “My husband has been very attentive to me recently. You understand? Very passionate.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but you’re wrong. The passion has nothing to do with guilt or subterfuge or even release of tension. It’s more than simple physical desire. It’s a deep-seated need . . . in some way I don’t understand he needs me more than he ever has. The closeness, the intimacy. As if he’s trying desperately to hang on.”
    “To you emotionally?”
    “Just trying to hang on,” she said.
    Just trying to hang on. Euphemism for a man struggling against a mental breakdown. Based on what Lynn Troxell had told me and the two days’ surveillance I’d put in so far, that was the most likely explanation for her husband’s abnormal behavior. Stress-related, maybe, with the trigger being some disturbing event or experience; or the gradual degenerative result of a genetic flaw or any number of other possible psychological and/or physical factors. Breakdowns happen all the time to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons, and manifested in all kinds of ways. More and more every year, it seems; Tamara and Runyon and I had run up against an extreme case ourselves just last Christmas.
    Hell, with all the pressures and insanities in the modern world, it’s a wonder a lot more individuals don’t slide off the edge—great streams of them like lemmings off a crumbling cliff.
    It was after four thirty when I got to the new suite of offices in a venerable three-story building overlooking South Park. Jake Runyon was in, sitting at his desk and studying something on the screen of his laptop. Behind him, the seldom-shut door to Tamara’s office was closed.
    “Hey, Jake. Tamara leave already?”
    “No. In her office.”
    “Somebody with her?”
    “She’s on the phone.”
    “Must be important.”
    He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. He was a big,tense man who almost never relaxed completely, but he seemed to have found a certain comfort level these past few months. When he’d first applied for the job of field investigator eight months ago, his clothes had hung loosely on his compact frame, his slablike face had had an unhealthy cast, and he’d been so tight wound and hard to read that we almost didn’t hire him even though he had the best qualifications. Grieving for his second wife, who had