Jonathan Kellerman_Petra Connor 01 (26 page)

I think I hear someone laughing. Probably a game for him. If I had a gun . . .

I walk for a long time. At Cahuenga, there’s more light and the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl, a long curvy road that climbs up. I’m not going up there. Too much like the park; I don’t want anything to do with parks.

So guess what comes next: another park, Wattles Park, what a weird name. I’ve never seen it, never been this far. Not a friendly-looking place—high fences all around and gates with big chain locks and a sign saying the city owns it and it’s closed at night, keep out. Through the fence all I can see is plants. It looks messy. Probably full of perverts.

Now Franklin ends, here’s Hollywood Boulevard again, I can’t avoid it; like it’s chasing me, this big burst of noise and light, gas sta-tions, cars, buses, fast-food places, worst of all people, and some of them look at me like I’m a meal. I cross La Brea, it gets quiet again, all apartments, some of them pretty nice-looking. I’ve never thought of the Boulevard as anything but stores and theaters and weirdos, but look at this—people live here in pretty nice places.

Maybe I should have traveled sooner.

The cut on my arm is dry and it doesn’t hurt much. The ones on my face itch.

I’m breathing okay, though my chest still hurts. I’m hungry, but three dollars isn’t going to buy me much and I look for Dumpsters to dive. Nothing. Not even a garbage can.

I walk a little bit more and turn off on a real quiet street. All houses, a nice dark street. But no cans here either, or alleys. Cars are parked bumper to bumper and down a ways I see more light and noise, another boulevard. I stop and look around. Some of the houses look okay; others are messy, with cars parked on the lawn.

Then I come to one with no car in the driveway or on the lawn.
Totally
dark. Old-looking, made of some kind of dark wood, with a slanted roof that hangs over a really wide porch. No fence, not even across the driveway. But the grass is cut, so someone lives here, and maybe they keep their cans in the backyard.

The driveway is just cement with a strip of grass growing in the middle, and I can’t see what’s at the end of it. I look around to make sure no one’s watching and walk back there very slowly. As I pass the front porch, I see a big pile of mail in front of the door. All the windows are totally black. Looks like the people have been gone for a while.

No
BEWARE OF DOG
sign, no barking from inside the house.

I keep going and finally make out what’s at the end of the driveway. A garage with wooden doors. The yard is small for such a big house, just a little grass and a couple of trees, one of them gigantic but with no fruit.

The cans are out behind the garage, three of them—two metal, one plastic. Empty. Maybe the people don’t live here anymore.

I turn around and am heading back to the street when I notice a dot of orange over the back door. A small bulb, so weak it only lights up the top half of the door. A screen door; behind the screen is glass. The screen’s held in place by two loop-type things with hooks, and when you twist them it comes right off.

The glass behind the screen is really a bunch of windows—nine squares in a wooden frame. I touch one lightly and it shakes a little but nothing happens. I touch it harder, knock a few times. Still nothing. Same when I knock on the door.

Taking off my T-shirt, I wrap it around my hand and punch a lower square on the left side pretty hard. It just sits there, but the second time I hit it, it comes loose and falls into the house and breaks.

Lots of noise now.

Nothing happens.

I reach in and feel around and find the doorknob. In the middle is a button, and when I turn the knob, it pops out with a click and the door opens.

Back on goes my T-shirt and I’m inside. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to see in the darkness. The room’s some kind of laundry place with a washer-dryer, a box of Tide on top of the washer, some washrags. Next comes a kitchen that smells of bug spray, with lots of plants in pots all over the counters. I open the refrigerator and a light goes on inside, and even though I see food, I shut it fast because the light makes me feel naked. As the door closes, I notice a peace-sign sticker and one that says
SISTERHOOD IS ALL.

My heart is really beating fast. But a different kind of fear, not all bad.

I walk around, from dark room to dark room, nothing but a bunch of furniture. Then back to the kitchen. A closed door on the way turns out to be a bathroom, with more plants on the toilet tank. I turn the light on, then off. Clear my throat. Nothing happens.

This place is empty.

This is sort of fun.

I go back to the kitchen. The window over the sink is covered by curtains with flowers on them with little fuzzy balls hanging down.
Sisterhood.
Women live here; men wouldn’t have all those plants.

Okay, let’s try the refrigerator again. On the top shelf are two cans of Barq’s root beer and a gallon plastic orange juice container with just a little juice left. Three gulps of juice. It tastes bitter. I put the root beer cans in my pocket. Next is a tub of Mazola margarine and a stick of Philadelphia cream cheese. I open the cream cheese and it’s covered with blue-green mold. The margarine looks okay, but I don’t know what to do with it.

Below that is a container of strawberry yogurt and three slices of American cheese, stiff and curly around the edges. No mold. I eat all three.

These people have definitely been gone for a long time.

On the bottom shelf is a package of Oscar Mayer low-fat bologna that’s never been opened—I put it in my pocket, along with the root beer—and a whole pineapple, with the green thing still attached on top and soft in a few places.

Leaving the refrigerator door open for light, I bring the pineapple to a counter and open drawers until I find forks and knives. In there with them are bobby pins and hair bands.

I take out the biggest knife and slice the pineapple in half. The soft spots turn out to be brown spots, and they’re spreading all over the pineapple like a disease. I cut around them—this is really a good knife—and manage to get some really nice, ripe pieces of delicious, supersweet pineapple.

That makes me hungrier, and I taste the bologna and end up eating every slice, standing at the counter. Then more pineapple. The juice runs all over my chin and my shirt and I feel it burn my face where the cuts are.

Then one of the root beers.

Now my stomach’s killing me because it’s full.

I go back to the bathroom right off the kitchen, take a leak, wash my hands and face. Then I notice the shower. On a shelf are soap and shampoo and cream rinse and something called detangler.

Plenty of hot water. I add some cold, make it perfect, run it as hard as it goes. Locking the door, I pull off my clothes and step in. The water’s like needles, hurting me, but in a good way.

I take the longest shower I’ve ever had—no Mom waiting to get in and spend half the day there getting ready for Moron; no Moron wanting to sit on the toilet for an hour.

I just keep soaping and washing off, soaping and washing off. Making sure every part of me gets attention: my hair and under my nails,
inside my nostrils, deep up my butt. I want to get every bit of crud out of me.

Then around front, under my balls.

I’ve got a hard-on.

That feels good.

I’m sitting there drying off, loving being clean and safe, thinking about far places, imaginary places, huge mountains—purple majesty, like the song, a silver ocean, surfer dudes, Jet Skis, girls in bikinis dancing the hula, dolphins, Jacques Cousteau, blue tangs, yellow tangs, moray eels, nautiluses.

Then I hear sound and for a minute I think I’ve really spaced out, created a whole tropical island movie with a soundtrack, then the voices get louder.

Women’s voices. Then a bang—someone putting something down.

Light under the door. From the kitchen.

A scream.

A real scream.

CHAPTER

Ramsey said, “I need a bite, do you mind if we go in
the kitchen?”

Nerves making him hungry? Petra said, “Not at all, Mr. Ramsey.” Good chance to see more of the house.

She followed him as he switched lights on, illuminating terrible lithos, big furniture. Veering into exactly what Petra expected: six hundred square feet of pseudo-adobe walls and rustic-beamed ceilings, white Euro-cabinets, gray granite counters, brushed-steel appliances, copper rack full of lethal weapons hanging from the beams. On the counters sat an array of food processors, toasters, microwaves. A greenhouse window provided a view of stucco wall. The eastern border of the house. A side door.

In the center of the kitchen was a long, narrow wooden table, old heart pine, scarred and buffed to a satin finish, the scars shiny dents. Probably a genuine antique, country French. Petra saw it as a monastery piece. Nice. But the eight chairs around it were chrome Breuer types with rawhide leather slings, so discordant she wanted to scream. Whose idea of eclectic, his or Lisa’s?

Ramsey opened the fridge on the left. Fully stocked. A bachelor who made himself at home. He took out another Diet Sprite and a carton of cottage cheese with chives.

“Gotta watch the tush,” he said, locating a spoon. “Sure I can’t get you anything? A drink, at least?”

“No thanks.”

He sat down at the head of the pine table and she took a side chair.

“This must look weird,” he said, lowering the spoon to the cheese. “Eating. But I haven’t eaten all day, could feel my blood sugar drop.”

“Hypoglycemic?”

“There’s diabetes in my family, so I’m careful.” He began eating cottage cheese, wiping white flecks from his mustache. Not caring what he looked like in front of her. Maybe she’d been wrong about the Don Juan thing. Or maybe he turned it on and off. She watched him take a swallow of soda, two more spoonfuls of cottage cheese, got his attention by taking out her pad.

“Okay, that night,” he said. “I told you I was in Tahoe, didn’t I? The first time you were here.”

Petra nodded.

“Scouting locations for next season,” he went on. “We’ve got a double script with some casino episodes, trying to figure out where we want to do it. We’ll be shooting in a month or so.”

“Who was with you on the scouting trip?”

“Greg and our locations supervisor, Scott Merkin. We looked at some properties by the lake, visited a few of the casinos, had dinner at Harrah’s, and flew home.”

“Commercial flight?”

He put the spoon down, drank some more. “All these details. So I’m a suspect?”

No surprise in his voice. The unspoken final word to the sentence:
finally.

“It’s just routine, Mr. Ramsey.”

He smiled. “Sure it is. I’ve said the exact same thing tons of times to suspects—on the show. ‘Just routine’ means Dack Price is gonna go after the guy.”

Petra smiled. “In real life, routine means routine, Mr. Ramsey. But if this isn’t a good time to talk—”

“No, this is fine.” The pale eyes locked in on Petra’s. Ramsey ate more cottage cheese, raised the soda can to his lips, realized it was empty, and fetched another.

“I guess it makes sense, my being a suspect. Because of the . . . incident. That was the slant the news put on it.”

Staring at her.

Rope. She could visualize it uncoiling, like a cobra.

“This whole thing,” said Ramsey. “The way people are thinking about me after those news broadcasts. No, it wasn’t a commercial flight, we went by private charter, we always do. Westward Charter, we use them all the time. Our usual pilot, too. Ed Marionfeldt. I like him ’cause he was a navy fighter pilot—real
Top Gun.
We flew out of Burbank, everything’s recorded in Westward’s log. Out around eight
A.M.,
back by eight-thirty
P.M.
Scott drove home, and Greg brought me back here. He usually drives when it gets late, because my night vision isn’t all that great.”

“Eye problems?”

Though his mustache was clean, Ramsey wiped it again. “Early stages of cataracts. My ophthalmologist wants to laser me, but I keep putting it off.”

Telling her he couldn’t have driven Lisa to the park at night?

“So you don’t go out much at night?”

“I do, it’s not that bad, lights just bother me.” He smiled. “Don’t give me a ticket, okay?”

Petra smiled back. “Promise.”

He dug the spoon into the cottage cheese again, looked at it, put it down. Petra noticed looseness around his mouth. Mottling behind the ears and several fine lines that had to be tuck remnants. Gray hair sprouted from an ear. In the bright light of the kitchen, every wrinkle and vein was advertised.

His body starting to fail him. Blood sugar. The eyes.

The penis.

Appealing to her sense of sympathy? Hoping for female tenderness sarcastic Lisa hadn’t offered?

“So Greg drove you home,” she said.

“We got here around nine-fifteen, nine-thirty, did some paperwork, then I just crashed. Next morning, Greg was up before me, working out by the time I got to the gym—I’ve got a home gym. I did a little treadmill, showered, we had some breakfast here, decided to practice some putting, then head over to the Agoura Oaks Country Club for eighteen holes. Then you showed up.”

Sorry to spoil your day, Herbert.

“Okay,” said Petra. “Anything else?”

“That’s it,” said Ramsey. “Who knew.”

She closed the pad and they hiked back to the front door.

“How’re the cars?” she said, passing the glass wall.

“Haven’t thought about them much.”

Petra stopped and peered through the black glass. Was the Mercedes parked in its allotted space? Without light, visibility was zero.

Ramsey flicked a switch. And there it was. A big sedan, gunmetal gray.

“Toys,” said Ramsey, turning off the light.

He walked her to the Ford, and when she got behind the wheel, he said, “Give my regards to Greg.”

Petra’s turn to stare. He gave her a small, sad smile. An old man’s smile.

“I know you’ll be verifying the alibi,” he said. “Just routine.”