F is for Fugitive (3 page)

“Come on, Henry. That's not the point. I said I'd do my own laundry and you agreed.”

Henry shrugged. “Hey, so I'm a liar. What can I say?”

“Would you quit? I don't need a mother.”

“You need a
keeper
. I've said so for months. You don't have a clue how to take care of yourself. You eat junk. Get beat up. Place gets blown to bits. I told you to get a dog, but you refuse. So now you got me, and if you ask me, it serves you right.”

How irksome. I felt like one of those ducklings inexplicably bonded to a mother cat. My parents had been killed in a car wreck when I was five. In the absence of real family, I'd simply done without. Now, apparently, old dependencies had surfaced. I knew what
that
meant. This man was eighty-two. Who knew how long he'd live? Just about the time I let myself get attached to him, he'd drop dead. Ha, ha, the joke's on you, again.

“I don't want a parent. I want you as a friend.”

“I am a friend.”

“Well, then, cut the nonsense. It's making me nuts.”

Henry's smile was benign as he checked his watch. “You've got time for a run before dinner if you quit mouthing off.”

That stopped me. I'd really hoped to get a run in before dark. It was almost four-thirty, and a glance at the kitchen window showed I didn't have long. I abandoned my complaints and changed into jogging sweats.

The beach that day was odd. The passing storm-clouds had stained the horizon a sepia shade. The mountains were a drab brown, the sky a poisonous-looking tincture of iodine. Maybe Los Angeles was burning to the ground, sending up this mirage of copper-colored smoke turning umber at the edge. I ran along the bike path that borders the sand.

The Santa Teresa coastline actually runs east and west. On a map, it looks like the ragged terrain takes a sudden left turn, heading briefly out to sea before the
currents force it back. The islands were visible, hovering offshore, the channel dotted with oil rigs that sparkled with light. It's worrisome, but true, that the oil rigs have taken on an eerie beauty of their own, as natural to the eye now as orbiting satellites.

By the time I made the turnaround a mile and a half down the path, twilight had descended and the streetlights were ablaze. It was getting cold and the air smelled of salt, the surf battering the beach. There were boats anchored beyond the breakers, the poor man's yacht harbor. The traffic was a comfort, illuminating the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the bike path. I try to run every day, not from passion, but because it's saved my life more than once. In addition to the jogging, I usually lift weights three times a week, but I'd had to discontinue that temporarily, due to injuries.

By the time I got home, I was in a better mood. There's no way to sustain anxiety or depression when you're out of breath. Something in the sweat seems to bring cheer in its wake. We ate supper, chatting companionably, and then I went to my room and packed a bag for the trip. I hadn't begun to think about the situation up in Floral Beach, but I took a minute to open a file folder, which I labeled with Bailey Fowler's name. I sorted through the newspapers stacked up in the utility room, clipping the section that detailed his arrest.

According to the article, he'd been out on parole on an armed-robbery conviction at the time his seventeen-year-old
ex-sweetheart was found strangled to death. Residents of the resort town reported that Fowler, then twenty-three, had been involved in drugs off and on for years, and speculated that he'd killed the girl when he learned of her romantic entanglement with a friend of his. With the plea bargain, he'd been sentenced to six years in the state prison. He'd served less than a year at the Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo when he engineered his escape. He left California, assuming the alias of Peter Lambert. After a number of miscellaneous sales jobs, he'd gone to work for a clothing manufacturer with outlets in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. In 1979, the company had promoted him to western division manager. He was transferred to Los Angeles, where he'd been residing ever since. The newspaper indicated that his colleagues were stunned to learn he'd ever been in trouble. They described him as hardworking, competent, outgoing, articulate, active in church and community affairs.

The black-and-white photograph of Bailey Fowler showed a man maybe forty years old, half-turned toward the camera, his face blank with disbelief. His features were strong, a refined version of his father's, with the same pugnacious jawline. An inset showed the police photograph taken of him seventeen years before, when he was booked for the murder of Jean Timberlake. Since then, his hairline had receded slightly and there was a suggestion that he may have darkened the color, but then again that might have been a function
of age or the quality of the photograph. He'd been a handsome kid, and he wasn't bad looking now.

Curious, I thought, that a man can reinvent himself. There was something enormously appealing in the idea of setting one persona aside and constructing a second to take its place. I wondered if serving out his sentence in prison would have had as laudatory an effect as being out in the world, getting on with his life. There was no mention of a family, so I had to guess he'd never married. Unless this new attorney of his was a legal wizard, he'd have to serve the remaining years of his original sentence, plus an additional sixteen months to two years on the felony escape charge. He could be forty-seven by the time he was released, years he probably wasn't interested in giving up without a fight.

The current paper had a follow-up article, which I also clipped. For the most part, it was a repetition of the first, except that a high school yearbook photo of the murdered girl was included along with his. She'd been a senior. Her dark hair was glossy and straight, cut to the shape of her face, parted in the middle and curving in softly at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were pale, lined with black, her mouth wide and sensual. There was the barest suggestion of a smile, and it gave her an air of knowing something the rest of us might not be aware of yet.

I slipped the clippings in the folder, which I tucked into the outside pocket of my canvas duffel. I'd stop by the office and pick up my portable typewriter en route.

 

_______

 

At nine the next morning, I was on the road, heading up the pass that cuts through the San Rafael Mountains. As the two-lane highway crested, I glanced to my right, struck by the sweep of undulating hills that move northward, intersected by bare bluffs. The rugged terrain is tinted to a hazy blue-gray by the nature of the underlying rock. The land here has lifted, and now the ridges of shale and sandstone project in a visible spine called the Transverse Ranges. Geological experts have concluded that California, west of the San Andreas Fault, has moved north up the Pacific coast by about three hundred miles during the last thirty million years. The Pacific Plate is still grinding away at the continent, buckling the coastal regions in earthquake after earthquake. That we continue to go about our daily business without much thought for this process is either testimony to our fortitude or evidence of lunacy. Actually, the only quakes I've experienced have been minor temblors that rattle dishes on the shelf or set the coat hangers in the closet to tinkling merrily. The sensation is no more alarming than being shaken awake gently by someone too polite to call your name. People in San Francisco, Coalinga, and Los Angeles will have a different tale to tell, but in Santa Teresa (aside from the Big One in 1925) we've had mild, friendly earthquakes that do little more than slop some of the water out of our swimming pools.

The road eased down into the valley, intersecting
Highway 101 some ten miles beyond. At 10:35, I took the Floral Beach exit, heading west toward the ocean through grassy, rolling hills dotted with oaks. I could smell the Pacific long before I laid eyes on it. Screeching sea gulls heralded its appearance, but I was still surprised by the breadth of that flat line of blue. I hung a left onto the main street of Floral Beach, the ocean on my right. The motel was visible three blocks away, the only three-story structure on Ocean Street. I pulled into a fifteen-minute parking space outside the registration office, grabbed my duffel, and went in.

 

 

 

 

 

The office was small, the registration desk blocking off access to what I surmised were the Fowlers' personal quarters in the rear. My crossing the threshold had triggered a soft bell.

“Be right out,” someone called. It sounded like Ann.

I moved to the counter and peered to my right. Through an open door, I caught a glimpse of a hospital bed. There was the murmur of voices, but I couldn't see a soul. I heard the muffled flushing of a toilet, pipes clanking noisily. The air was soon scented with the artificial bouquet of room spray, impossibly sweet. Nothing in nature has ever smelled like that.

Several minutes passed. There was no seating available, so I stood where I was, turning to survey the narrow room. The carpeting was harvest gold, the walls paneled in knotty pine. A painting of autumn birches with fiery orange and yellow leaves hung above a maple coffee table on which a rack of pamphlets promoted points of interest and local businesses. I leafed
through the display, picking up a brochure for the Eucalyptus Mineral Hot Springs, which I'd passed on the road coming in. The advertisement was for mud baths, hot tubs, and rooms at “reasonable” rates, whatever that meant.

“Jean Timberlake worked there in the afternoons after school,” Ann said behind me. She was standing in the doorway, wearing navy slacks and a white silk shirt. She seemed more relaxed than she had in her father's company. She'd had her hair done and it fell in loose waves to her shoulders, steering the eye away from the slightly recessed chin.

I put the pamphlet back. “Doing what?” I asked.

“Maid service, part-time. She worked for us, too, a couple of days a week.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Well enough,” she said. “She and Bailey started dating when he was twenty. She was a freshman in high school.” Ann's eyes were mild brown, her manner detached.

“A little young for him, wasn't she?”

Her smile was brief. “Fourteen.” Any other comment was curtailed by a voice from the other room.

“Ann, is someone out there? You said you'd be right back. What's happening?”

“You'll want to meet Mother,” Ann murmured in a way that generated doubts. She lifted a hinged section of the counter and I passed through.

“How's your father doing?”

“Not good. Yesterday was hard on him. He was up
for a while this morning, but he's easily fatigued and I suggested he go back to bed.”

“You've really got your hands full.”

She flashed me a pained smile. “I've had to take a leave of absence.”

“What sort of work?”

“I'm a guidance counselor at the high school. Who knows when I'll get back.”

I let her lead the way into the living room, where Mrs. Fowler was now propped up in the full-sized hospital bed. She was gray-haired and heavy, her dark eyes magnified by thick glasses in heavy plastic frames. She was wearing a white cotton hospital gown that tied down the back. The neck was plain, with
SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY HOSPITAL
inked in block letters along the rim. It struck me as curious that she'd affect such garb when she could have worn a bed jacket or a gown and robe of her own. Illness as theater, perhaps. Her legs lay on top of the bedclothes like haunches of meat not yet trimmed of fat. Her pudgy feet were bare, and her toes were mottled gray.

I crossed to the bed, holding my hand toward hers. “Hi, how are you? I'm Kinsey Millhone,” I said. We shook hands, if that's what you'd call it. Her fingers were as cold and rubbery as cooked rigatoni. “Your husband mentioned you weren't feeling well,” I went on.

She put her handkerchief to her mouth and promptly burst into tears. “Oh, Kenny, I'm sorry. I can't help myself. I'm just all turned around with Bailey
showing up. We thought he was dead and here he comes again. I've been sick for years, but this has just made it worse.”

“I can understand your distress. It's Kinsey,” I said.

“It's what?”

“My first name is Kinsey, my mother's maiden name. I thought you said ‘Kenny' and I wasn't sure you heard it right.”

“Oh Lord. I'm so sorry. My hearing's nearly gone and I can't brag about my eyes. Ann, honey, fetch a chair. I can't think where your manners went.” She reached for a Kleenex and honked into it.

“This is fine,” I said. “I've just driven up from Santa Teresa, so it feels good to be on my feet.”

“Kinsey's the investigator Pop hired yesterday.”

“I know that,” Mrs. Fowler said. She began to fuss with her cotton cover, plucking it this way and that, made restless by topics that didn't pertain to her. “I hoped to get myself all cleaned up, but Ann said she had errands. I hate to interfere with her any more than I have to, but there's just things I can't do with my arthritis so bad. Now, look at me. I'm a mess. I'm Ori, short for Oribelle. You must think I'm a sight.”

“Not at all. You look fine.” I tell lies all the time. One more couldn't hurt.

“I'm diabetic,” she said, as though I'd asked. “Have been all my life, and what a toll it's took. I got tingling and numbness in my extremities, kidney problems, bad feet, and now I've developed arthritis on top of that.” She held a hand out for my inspection. I expected
knuckles as swollen as a prizefighter's, but they looked fine to me.

“I'm sorry to hear that. It must be rough.”

“Well, I've made up my mind I will not complain,” she said. “If it's anything I despise, it's people who can't accept their lot.”

Ann said, “Mother, you mentioned tea a little while ago. How about you, Kinsey? Will you have a cup?”