Gone (42 page)

Reynold Peaty’s hands lowered onto the girl’s shoulders. His right thumb slipped under the right spaghetti strap. Toyed with the string. Slid it off.

The girl jumped and twisted, craned to see him. His left hand gripped the top of her head and held her in place.

“He’s hurting—”

“Mouth shut!” said Brad Dowd. “Don’t want to catch flies.”

Peaty’s right hand reached around and clamped over the girl’s mouth.

She made frantic little muffled noises. Peaty’s hand slapped her so hard, her eyes rolled back. With one hand, Peaty pulled her up by her hair. The other edged closer to her throat.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Perfect,” said Brad. “This is Reynold. The two of you are going to improvise a little skit.”

I flicked off the picture.

Milo was wide awake, looking sadder than I’d ever seen him.

I said, “You told me so,” and walked out of the room.

T
he next week was emotional bouillabaisse.

Trying, with no success, to get Billy Dowd more appropriate lodgings and regular therapy.

Fending off Erica Weiss’s requests for another deposition, so she could “slam the final nail in Hauser’s coffin.”

Ignoring increasingly strident calls from Hauser’s defense attorney.

I hadn’t been to the station since viewing the DVD. Six minutes watching a girl I’d never met.

The day I moved Robin in, I pretended my head was clear. After I schlepped the last carton of her clothes into the bedroom, she sat me down on the edge of the mattress, rubbed my temples, and kissed the back of my neck. “Still thinking about it, huh?”

“Using unfamiliar muscles. The ribs don’t help.”

“Don’t waste energy trying to convince me,” she said. “This time I know what I’m getting myself into.”

My contact with Milo was limited to one eleven p.m. phone call. His voice, thick with fatigue, wondering if I could take care of some “ancillary stuff” while he coped with the mountain of evidence on what the papers were calling the “Bomb Shelter Murders.”

One nitwit columnist in the
Times
trying to connect it to “Cold War paranoia.”

I said, “Sure. What’s ancillary stuff?”

“Anything you can do better than me.”

That came down to being a grief sponge.

A forty-five-minute session with Lou and Arlene Giacomo lasted two hours. He’d lost weight since I’d seen him and his eyes were dead. She was a quiet, dignified woman, hunched over like someone twice her age.

I sat there as his rage alternated with her anguished accounts of Life With Tori, the two of them trading off with a rhythm so precise it could’ve been scripted. As the time ground on, their chairs edged farther and farther apart. Arlene was talking about Tori’s confirmation dress when Lou shot to his feet, snarling, and left my office. She started to apologize, changed her mind. We found him down by the pond, feeding the fish. They left silently and neither answered my calls that night. The clerk at their hotel said they’d checked out.

The widowed mother of Brad Dowd’s Las Vegas victim, Juliet Dutchey, turned out to be a former showgirl herself, a veteran of the old Flamingo Hotel. Mid-fifties and still toned, Andrea Dutchey blamed herself for not discouraging her daughter from moving to Vegas, then switched to squeezing my hand and thanking me for all I’d done. I felt I’d done nothing and her gratitude made me sad.

Dr. Susan Palmer came in with her husband, Dr. Barry Palmer, a tall, quiet, well-coiffed man who wanted to be anywhere else. She started off all business, crumpled fast. He kept his mouth shut and studied the prints on my wall.

Michaela Brand’s mother was too ill to travel from Arizona so I spoke with her over the phone. Her air machine hissed in the background and if she cried, I didn’t hear it. Maybe tears required too much oxygen. I stayed on the line until she hung up without warning.

No relative of Dylan Meserve surfaced.

I phoned Robin at her studio and said, “I’m finished, you can come back.”

“I wasn’t escaping,” she said. “Just doing my job.”

“Busy?”

“Pretty much.”

“Come home anyway.”

Silence. “Sure.”

I called Albert Beamish.

He said, “I’ve been reading about it. Apparently, I can still be shocked.”

“It’s shocking stuff.”

“They were spoiled and indolent but I had no idea they were fiends.”

“Beyond persimmons,” I said.

“Good God, yes! Alex —
may I call you that—”

“Sure.
Mister
Beamish.”

He chortled. “First off, thanks for informing me, that was uncharacteristically courteous. Especially coming from a member of the me-generation.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

He cleared his throat. “Second, do you golf?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Never got into it.”

“Damn shame. At least you drink… perhaps one day, should you have time…”

“If you bring out the good stuff.”

“I only stock the good stuff, young man. What do you
take
me for?”

Two weeks after his arrest, Brad Dowd was found dead in his cell. The noose he’d used to hang himself had been fashioned from a pair of pajama pants he’d ripped into strips after lights-out. He’d been on suicide watch, housed in the High Power ward where things like that weren’t supposed to happen. The guards had been diverted by a neighboring inmate pretending to go crazy and smearing his cell with feces. That prisoner, a gang leader and murder suspect named Theofolis Moomah, underwent a miraculous recovery the moment Brad’s body was cut down. A search of Moomah’s cell uncovered a stash of extra commissary cigarettes and a roll of fifty-dollar bills. Brad’s attorney, a downtown court regular who’d defended several gang leaders, express-mailed his bill to the arraignment judge.

Stavros Menas, Esq. called a press conference and bellowed that the suicide supported his claim that Brad had been a “mad Svengali,” and his client an unwitting dupe.

The D.A. offered a contradictory analysis.

Get ready for a circus the animal-rights people wouldn’t mind.

I vowed to forget about all of it, figured the whydunit would stop eating at me eventually.

When it didn’t, I got on the computer.

T
he woman said, “I still can’t believe you tracked me down that way.”

Her name was Elise Van Syoc and she was a Realtor working out of the Coldwell Banker Encino office. It had taken a long time but I’d found her using her maiden name, Ryan, and a decades-old nickname.

Ginger.

Groovy bass player for the Kolor Krew!

Her identity and a print of the photo I’d seen at the PlayHouse finally surfaced courtesy www.noshotwonders.com, a cruelly mocking compendium of failed pop bands flung by the gargantuan slingshot that was the Internet.

When I called her, she said, “I’m not getting involved in any court stuff.”

“It’s not about court stuff.”

“What, then?”

“Curiosity,” I said. “Professional and personal. At this point, I’m not sure I can separate the two.”

“That sounds complicated.”

“It’s a complicated situation.”

“You’re not writing a book or doing a movie?”

“Absolutely not.”

“A psychologist… whose therapist are you, exactly?”

I tried to explain my role.

She cut me off. “Where do you live?”

“Beverly Glen.”

“Own or rent?”

“Own.”

“Did you buy in a long time ago?”

“Years ago.”

“Have any equity?”

“Total equity.”

“Good for
you,
Dr. Delaware. A person in your situation might find it a good time to trade up. Ever think about the Valley? You could get a much bigger place with more land
and
some cash back. If you’re open-minded about the other side of the hill.”

“I pride myself on being open-minded,” I said. “I’m also big on remembering people who’ve extended themselves for me.”

“Some negotiator —
you absolutely promise I won’t end up in court?”

“Swear on my trust deed.”

She laughed.

I said, “Do you still play bass?”

“Oh, please.” More laughter. “I got asked to join because I had red hair. She thought it was some kind of omen —
the Kolor Krew, get it?”

“Amelia Dowd.”

“Crazy Mrs. D… this is sure taking me back. I don’t know what you think I can tell you.”

“Anything you remember about the family would help.”

“For your psychological insights?”

“For my peace of mind.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a horrendous case. I’m pretty close to haunted.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I guess I can sum it up in one sentence: They were nuts.”

“Could we discuss it, anyway?” I said. “Time and place of your choosing.”

“Would you seriously consider a trade-up?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but—”

“Good time to start thinking. Okay, I need lunch anyway, what the heck. Meet me at Lucretia on Ventura near Balboa, hour and a half, I need you to be prompt. Maybe I can show you life on the other side of the hill can be tasty.”

The restaurant was big, pale, airy, nearly empty.

I arrived on time. Elise Van Syoc was already there, bantering with a young male waiter as she nursed a cosmopolitan and chewed on a single Brazil nut. “Ginger” was no longer a redhead. Her coif was puffy, collar-length, ash-blond. Tailored black pantsuit, tailored face, wide amber eyes. A deal-closing smile accompanied a firm, dry handshake.

“You’re younger than you sound, Dr. Delaware.”

“You, too.”

“How sweet.”

I sat down and thanked her for her time. She glanced at a diamond Movado. “Did Brad and Nora really do what everyone’s saying?”

I nodded.

“How about some juicy tidbits?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“But I do.”

“You really don’t,” I said.

“What, it’s disgusting?”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Yuck.” She sipped her cosmopolitan. “Tell me anyway.”

I parceled out a few details.

Elise Van Syoc said, “How’d you get all that equity working with the police? It can’t pay very well.”

“I’ve done other things.”

“Such as?”

“Investments, private practice, consults.”

“Very interesting… you don’t write?”

“Just reports, why?”

“It sounds like a good book… I’m afraid this isn’t going to be lunch, just a drink. I’ve got an escrow to close, huge place south of the boulevard. And there’s really nothing I can tell you about the Dowds other than they were all weirdos.”

“That’s a good place to start.”

The waiter came over, lean, dark, hungry-eyed. I asked for a Grolsch and he said, “For sure.”

When he brought the beer, Elise Van Syoc clinked her glass against mine. “Are you in a relationship? I’m asking in terms of your space needs.”

“I am.”

She grinned. “Do you cheat?”

I laughed.

She said, “Nothing ventured,” and finished the last bit of Brazil nut.

I said, “The Kolor Krew—”

“The Kolor Krew was a joke.”

“How’d you get involved?” I said. “The other three members were sibs.”

“Like I told you over the phone, I was recruited by Crazy Mrs. D.”

“Because of your hair color.”

“That and she thought I had talent. I was in the same class as Nora at Essex Academy. My dad was a surgeon and we lived on June Street. Back then I thought I liked music. Took violin lessons, switched to the cello, then I conned my dad into getting me an electric guitar. I sang like a goose on downers, wrote ridiculous songs. But try telling me, I thought I was Grace Slick. Brad and Nora
really
killed all those people?”

“Every one of them.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“It’s so bizarre,” she said. “Knowing someone who did that. Maybe
I
should write a book.”

Something new in her eyes. Now I understood why she’d agreed to meet with me.

“I’ve heard it’s tough,” I said.

“Writing?” She laughed. “I wouldn’t do it myself, I’d hire someone, put my name on it. There are some big best sellers who do that.”

“Guess so.”

“You don’t approve.”

I said, “So Amelia Dowd thought you had talent—”

“Maybe I
shouldn’t
give you my story.”

“I have no interest in writing it up. In fact, if you do write a book, you can quote me.”

“Promise?”

“Swear.”

She laughed.

I said, “Amelia Dowd—”

“She heard me play cello in the Essex Academy orchestra and thought I was some kind of Casals, which tells you about
her
ear. Immediately, she calls my mother, they knew each other from school affairs, teas at the Wilshire Country Club, acquaintances more than friends. Amelia tells Mother she’s putting together a band —
a wholesome family thing, like the Partridge Family, the Cowsills, the Carpenters. My hair makes me perfect, I obviously have a gift, and bass is just another form of cello, right?”

“Your mother bought that?”

“My mother’s a conservative DAR lady but she’s always loved anything to do with showbiz. The ‘secret’ she tells everyone once she knows them long enough is that she dreamed of becoming an actress, looked exactly like Grace Kelly, but nice girls from San Marino didn’t do that even if nice girls from the Philadelphia Main Line did. She was always on me to join drama club but I refused. Ripe for Mrs. D’s picking. Plus, Mrs. D made it sound like a done deal —
big record contract pending, interviews, TV appearances.”

“Did you believe it?”

“I thought it sounded idiotic. And lame. The
Cowsills
? My taste was Big Brother and the Holding Company. I went along with it on the off chance something would happen and I’d be able to miss school.”

“Did the Dowd kids have any musical experience?”

“Brad played a little guitar. Nothing fancy, a few chords. Billy held a guitar like a spaz, Amelia was always adjusting it. If he could carry a tune, I never heard it. Nora could but she couldn’t harmonize and she was always bored and spaced out. She’d never shown interest in anything other than drama club and clothes.”