9
AT ABOUT THE same moment, JaMorris and Abby knocked at the front door of the Dunne home on Guerrero Street in the Mission District. It was a three-story structure on its own lot that gave the impression of having been the project of several shabbily genteel architects over its thirty years of life. Odd angles jutted from corners and roofs; the entire second floor seemed to float behind plate-glass windows; a fountain splashed over perennial reeds into a koi pond in the half-covered courtyard that doubled as the welcoming lobby on the first floor.
Exposing a fairly common vein in San Francisco’s über-liberal culture, some past owners (or perhaps the Dunnes themselves) had spent serious money in an effort to render the home aggressively proletarian.
The detectives, negotiating around the bicycles parked along the walls, followed the head of the household down the hallway that ran inside along the courtyard, and came to a large family room at the back of the house, where three women sat on stools in front of a bar, turned to face their incoming visitors. Each had a full glass of white wine at her elbow, and all of their eyes showed signs of tears.
With an air of exhaustion, Curt Dunne stopped just inside the door and said with some formality, “These are Inspectors Monroe and Foley. Inspectors, my wife, Carli—Katie’s mother—and my daughters, Barbara and Sherrie. My son, Daniel, couldn’t get off work, but he told me he’d be glad to talk to you by appointment; I believe you have his numbers.”
“We do, thank you.” JaMorris turned to the women. “Thank you all for agreeing to sit down with us this afternoon. I know it’s been, and continues to be, a tremendously difficult time.”
He silently ceded the floor to Abby, who picked up where he left off. “As you know, it’s been nearly five full days since Katie’s gone missing, and in that time we haven’t heard from any third parties, such as kidnappers demanding a ransom. We haven’t gotten any messages from Katie, and we don’t have a record of her having accessed her credit cards or used her cell phone.” She paused. “Given all of these realities, we are forced to consider the possibility that Katie was the victim of foul play, perhaps even—I know you’ve all considered this—murder.”
At the word, Carli Dunne brought her hand to her mouth. Curt crossed over to stand directly behind her, his arm along the bar. The younger women, in tandem, reached for their wine.
JaMorris pulled up a stool from near the wall, sat down, and picked up the narrative. “This means that we’re shifting the object of our investigation somewhat. It’s not that we’re not doing everything we can to locate Katie or some sign of where she could be, but if she was murdered, our next order of business is to identify a suspect whom we might profitably question to see whether we can move along this investigation and get to the bottom of what happened to Katie.”
“Since you are among the people who know her best and love her”—Abby, taking over, was careful to keep references to Katie in the present tense—“we thought an interview might help to get us off on the right foot. Now we understand, as you made clear to our colleagues last week, that you’ve always been on reasonably good terms with Hal, and that you’re all going through this tragic time together, but—”
Suddenly, Curt Dunne blurted out, “No buts. Let’s forget all that. Hal was the last one to see her alive. He had almost three hours between when he left the house and got home with his brother. Which is more than enough time to have done whatever he decided to do and—”
“Curt!” His wife put her hand down on his arm. “Wait! We can’t just . . .”
“The hell we can’t. We can call a spade a spade. Can you give me any other plausible scenario? Who the hell even knew he would be gone at exactly that time?”
JaMorris threw a glance at his partner. “So I’m gathering that you, at least, Mr. Dunne, think Hal might have played a role in Katie’s disappearance? Missing Persons didn’t mention anything about your suspicions. They said you were all coming from basically the same place, which was wondering what could have happened. Has something changed since last week?”
Curt Dunne didn’t wait for a consensus. “You’re damned straight something’s changed. It’s become obvious that Katie didn’t just walk out on her own. None of us can imagine she would have abandoned the kids, not even for a couple of minutes. And once that’s clear, who does that leave?”
“Well, sir,” Abby said, “it leaves the whole universe, unless you’ve got some specific reason to think it was Hal.”
The woman nearest the inspectors spoke up. “We never really thought about Hal until we started talking about him. I mean, it’s just not something we’d ever considered. We’d always assumed that they got along the way most of us did.”
“I’m sorry,” Abby said. “Your name again?”
“Barbara. Barbara Payson.” She spelled her last name.
“And what did you start talking about?”
“You know, stuff between them that we didn’t think was very important before. Stuff Katie had told us.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” Barbara said, “you know she was seeing a family counselor. Hal wouldn’t go with her. He thought it was a waste of money and didn’t believe they needed counseling. But their fights were getting more serious, and she was worried about them.”
“Physical fights?”
“No. She never said that he hit her.”
The other sister, Sherrie, said abruptly, “She wouldn’t have said if he did.”
“How do you know that?” JaMorris asked.
“That’s who she was,” Sherrie replied. “She was the oldest of us and . . .”
Carli joined the discussion. “She definitely would have left him if he’d been abusing her. But I don’t like how we’re demonizing Hal because she was going to counseling and he wouldn’t go.”
“Was there any talk of them breaking up?” Abby asked. “Did she talk about divorcing him?”
“I never heard that,” Barbara said.
Sherrie added, “We really didn’t acknowledge they were in trouble until . . . until this thing. And now she’s gone, and we may never know.”
“Still, do any of you have a specific reason for suspecting Hal?”
“They could have had a real fight that night,” Curt said. “I mean where he actually hit her. And then he had to get rid of her so there wouldn’t be any sign of it.That could have been why he did it. To cover it up.”
“Although you are not aware of any evidence of a physical fight between them. Am I right?” Abby asked.
Curt answered, “He could have gotten rid of any evidence. Straightened things up.”
“That’s all conjecture, dear,” Carli said. “You know it is. Whether he hit her, whether they were fighting. We don’t know.”
“We do, Mom,” Sherrie said. “At least arguing.”
“Okay, so they were going through a rough spell, maybe, but with two young children, is that really so unusual? She wanted or needed help dealing with what was bothering her, and he was too proud to go along with her. That could have been all this is. We all talked to Hal last week. We know he’s truly devastated. I looked in his eyes, and he was in agony. He wasn’t faking that. I don’t think we should accuse him of anything unless we find out something that he definitely did.”
“That’s good advice,” JaMorris said. “Anything you do find, whether it’s about Hal or anybody else, please come to us first. We know the newspapers have been bothering you, and it wouldn’t be productive to have them put Hal on trial in the press.”
Curt wasn’t ready to give it up. “Let’s not forget that he could have simply woken up that morning and done what he did with no new reason. He could have gotten to the end of whatever he was going through and decided to act.”
“Yes,” Abby said, “that could have happened. But usually, there’s a reason of some kind, and without any hint of what that might have been, we’re in the dark. More important, we don’t have grounds to charge anyone.”
“I’m telling you, it’s him,” Curt said. “Hal. No one else fits.”
Abby nodded. “We’re going to keep looking and hope we turn up something in the line of motive or evidence. If it’s any consolation, at the moment, he certainly remains a person of interest.”