Self-Defense (19 page)

“Was that the end of it?”

He sighed. “I did drive by their house,
once or twice a week. Then they upped and left—moved out of Malibu. If that
isn’t guilt, I don’t know what is. I called up the restaurant, pretending to be
a friend, and was told they’d gone to Aspen. But they’ve been back in Malibu
for over sixteen years. Own a place called Shooting the Curl—surfing supplies
shop, near the pier. Doing very well, I might add. Tom drives one of those BMWs
and Gwen has a fancy van.”

“You still drive by.”

“Only once a year, Dr. Delaware. On the
anniversary of Karen’s disappearance.”

“Do you do anything else?”

“Do I try to talk to them? No, what would
be the use? For me, it’s a day of reflection. I drive from Santa Monica to
Santa Barbara. If I see a homeless person, I stop and give them food. Sometimes
I pull over at a campsite, but I don’t talk to anyone or show Karen’s picture.
What would be the sense showing the picture of a nineteen-year-old girl?”

He looked down. Hooked his fingers under
his glasses and rubbed his eyes again. “She’s almost forty by now, but I still
think of her as nineteen.... Don’t worry, doctor, I don’t bother the Sheas.
Whatever they did, they have to live with. And they have their own troubles
now: a crippled child. Maybe one day they’ll come to see that Providence and
Fate emanate from the same place. When you approach them, don’t mention my
name, I’m sure they think of me as a raving lunatic.”

“How long was Karen out in California
before she disappeared?”

“Five months.”

“How often did she write?”

“She never wrote. She phoned. Always on Sunday,
and sometimes on Wednesday and Friday. That’s why we were alarmed that first
Sunday. She was like clockwork when it came to those Sunday phone calls. We
phoned the restaurant, and they said she hadn’t shown up for work.”

“I assume she never said anything on a
previous call that hinted at her disappearance.”

“Nothing. She was happy, enjoying the
weather, enjoying her job, everything was fine. She was trying to earn enough
money to enroll in acting school.”

“Did she say which school?”

“No, it never got that far.”

“How did you feel about her becoming an
actress?”

“We didn’t really think she’d become one.
We thought she’d try awhile and come back, go to college, meet someone nice.”

His lip quivered.

“My wife took most of the calls. I was
usually at the store. After Karen disappeared, I grew to hate the store. Gave
it to Craig, but he sold it and got a job with the state. Building and Safety.
After I moved here, my first year was taken up completely by looking for Karen.
The second year too, but nothing was turning up. I had time on my hands and
started to read the Bible. Till then I wasn’t a religious man—I’d gone to
church but I thought about profits and losses while pretending to worship. This
time, the Bible started to mean something to me. I found a seminary in Eagle
Rock and enrolled. Got ordained five years later and started the church. Do you
know what we do?”

“Distribute food to poor people.”

“To
anyone,
we don’t ask questions.
No one gets paid. I live off my Social Security and the few bonds I have left,
and the others are all volunteers. Restaurants donate the food. It’s a good
life. I only wish Karen were here to see it.”

He gobbled a cookie and swallowed coffee
that had to be cold.

I looked at the cardboard box.

He emptied the rest of the contents onto
the table. “I’m going to clean up.”

Clearing the dishes, he began washing
them.

I opened the first of four photograph
albums covering Karen Best’s development from infancy to young womanhood. Taped
to the second was a tiny envelope labeled
First haircut.

Holding the packet up to the light I saw
several curly snippets inside.

Grade school graduation program. Karen,
the winner of a Good Citizenship award.

High school yearbook, Karen in French Club
and Song Girls.
Karrie. Her eyes speak volumes.

A prom shot: Karen beautiful and
mature-looking by now, her blond hair long and silky and curled at the ends. On
the arm of a gawky boy with a dark Beatles do and a struggling mustache.

A dessicated orchid corsage in a stiff
plastic packet embossed with the name of a New Bedford florist.

A hundred or so copies of the sheet Best
had given me, bound by rubber bands.

A copy of the Lord’s Prayer.

I put it all back. Best was standing over
the kitchen sink, hands in plastic gloves, the water full blast and steaming.

I went in.

As he washed, he stared at something over
the faucet.

Another Bible picture, this one a
black-and-white etching.

A young woman being dragged by her hair.

Dinah’s Abduction by Shechem.

Best’s gloved hands were clenched. The
steam had fogged his glasses and his lips moved rapidly.

Praying.

When I got back, I read the Bible. What I
learned made it hard for me to fall asleep.

The next morning, Robin and I had
breakfast in town; then I drove back to the library and had a second look at
the newspaper account of the Sanctum party. August 15. Karen Best had been last
seen the night before.

After xeroxing the article, I called Milo.
He was out but Del Hardy picked up. The black detective was Milo’s occasional
partner, but they hadn’t worked together recently.

“Hey, doc, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good. How’s the guitar?”

“Sitting in a closet, no time to play.
Listen, Bigfoot’s finishing up a robbery at the Smart Shop on Palms, maybe you
can catch him.”

He gave me the number, and I talked to a
female officer who finally put me through to Milo.

“Morning salutations.” He sounded
distracted.

“Don’t want to bug you but—”

“Nah, I’m finished here. What’s up?”

I told him.

“The Best girl,” he said. “Wasn’t she a
blonde?”

“She dyed her hair that summer. And according
to her brother she had very long legs. It may turn out to be nothing, but I
just—”

“It—uh-oh, TV crew just drove up, gotta
split. Where are you?”

“Westwood.”

“Meet me at Rancho Park, on the north end,
past the baseball diamond—take the first entrance past the golf course and go
as far as you can. You’ll know me ’cause I won’t be feeding the ducks.”

I got there a quarter hour later and found
him on a bench, near a cement wading pond that had been drained but was still
streaked with algae. A stray retriever was nosing the grass. No ducks or people
in sight. I showed him Best’s data sheet and the clipping and pointed out the
date of the party.

“Night before she missed her call home,
for what it’s worth.”

He skimmed and handed it all back to me.
“You actually met with the father?”

“At his request.”

“How does he grab you?”

“Devoted. Obsessive.”

“So you two got along great.”

“There was a certain rapport there.” I
summarized what Best had told me about the search for Karen, ending with his
suspicion of the Sheas.

“So what does that have to do with Lowell
and Trafficant? Paradise Cove is—what?—ten, fifteen miles up from Topanga.”

“She worked in Paradise Cove, but she
lived near Topanga Beach. I passed the address coming into town. Just a hop and
a jump from Topanga Canyon Road. Then there’s the time frame and her physical
similarity to the girl in the dream.”

Crossing his long legs, he looked up at
the sky. An airplane was writing something illegible. He shook his head. “This
father sounds obsessive to the point of nuttiness. The way he’s been bugging
those people.”

“He says he hasn’t done it for years. If
that’s true, it indicates self-control.”

He continued sky gazing. “Actually, that
does amaze me. Living in the same city with them, believing they know
something, and letting it go.”

“Maybe his work keeps him going. He fills
his days with good deeds.”

“Food to the poor, huh?”

“Could be I’m a chump, but he impressed me
as a good guy, Milo. Trying to deal with his loss by finding some higher
meaning. The only thing that bothered me was a picture he had hanging up in the
kitchen over the sink. A Bible print—Dinah being abducted by Shechem. He was
staring at it as he washed the dishes. I looked up the story when I got home.
It’s in the book of Genesis. Dinah was Jacob’s daughter; Shechem was a
Canaanite prince who kidnapped her and raped her. Two of her brothers took
revenge by slaughtering him and his whole village.”

“Nice image for a man of the cloth to
meditate on.”

“I don’t want to light any fires under
him. I know what revenge can do.”

He lowered his eyes and looked at me.

“So what’s the theoretical scenario here?
She took a nature hike on Friday night, ended up at Lowell’s place the day
before the party, and got invited in?”

“Not unless she was a serious hiker. We’re
talking several miles up to the top of Topanga. But maybe she was hitchhiking
and got picked up. And maybe the party started early—or it was informal. People
drifting in at all hours.” I held up the clipping. “This makes it sound like a
loose scene rather than some formal bash.”

“All those big shots and people are just
wandering in?”

“You remember how things were back in the
seventies. Peace, love, people playing at social equality. Best said that was
one of the reasons the sheriffs didn’t take Karen’s disappearance seriously.
Times were casual, kids on the road, everyone into free-and-easy.”

He looked out at the baseball diamond and
the rolling lawns beyond. “I spent the seventies grinding away in college, then
shooting at guys in black pajamas, but I take your word for it.”

“I was a grind too,” I said. “But I
remember hitchhikers thicker than gulls on PCH. Best says Karen was a good
girl, but she’d been away from home for almost half a year, and kids can change
fast when they taste freedom. Plus, she wanted to be an actress. What if she
was thumbing—or just taking a short walk up the canyon, unwinding after work.
And a person with a famous face pulled alongside her—in a stretch limo. Telling
her there’s a hot party up the hill, lots of other showbiz types, hop in. Would
an aspiring actress turn that down?”

“Guess it’s plausible,” he said. “If the
partying started early. But even then, all you’ve really got is a dream and a
missing girl.”

“A girl who called home every week and
then stopped. And was never heard from again.”

He faced me once more. “I’m not saying
she’s not dead, Alex. Sounds like she probably is. But that doesn’t mean she
died up in Lowell’s place, and after all these years I don’t see how you’re
gonna get any closer to it.”

“I don’t either. God, I really hope I
haven’t lit a fire under Best. At the very least, I’m giving him false hope.”

“Well,” he said, “if you’re right about
his being a man of faith, maybe it’ll carry him through.”

“Maybe.” I sat forward on the bench. A
tiny colorless spider had crawled onto my knee. I picked it up carefully, and
its thread legs wriggled frantically. Placing it on the grass, I watched it
disappear among the blades.

Milo said, “Something
has
been
bothering me, though. What you told me about brother Peter. Guy never travels,
but he just
happens
to be out of town when she sticks her head in the
oven? Unemployed, but he’s too tied up with
business
to get back? Then
he takes the time to call Embrey and a half brother he hasn’t seen in twenty
years but not Lucy?
Then
you tell me he’s weird. And now Lucy’s saying
someone swiped her underwear, and he has a key to her apartment.”

“You think he did it?”

“I think it sounds like he’s running from
something. Maybe nasty impulses. Maybe he’s close to her in a way that scares him,
so he split to the desert to be alone with his goddamn thoughts.”

“Oh, man,” I said. “Just what Lucy needs.”

I thought about my brief meeting with
Peter, trying to remember as much as I could about him. Pale face, sleepy
voice. Cold hands. Bulky sweater on a hot day. Eager to get back to the car.
Looking down at his lap....

“What if he’s running from something
else?” I said.

I described the brother.

Milo looked at me. His big black eyebrows
were up.

“Junkie?”

“It fits, doesn’t it? His unemployment,
Lucy’s defensive attitude—evasive, actually. I remember her saying he was
always trying to protect her
“even though he’—
and then she broke off
the sentence. When I pressed she said, Even though he isn’t the toughest guy in
the world. But it wasn’t what she started to say. I know it’s conjecture, but
he
really
wanted to get back inside that car. When I glanced back, he
was sitting low in the seat. As if he was doing something. Lucy looked back
too, and that session she dropped her chronic smile. He could have been fixing
right there. She could have known.”