Self-Defense (30 page)

Looking at the film crew again, she said,
“Why all the interest in Gwen and Tom, handsome?”

All friendliness gone from her voice.

“No particular interest. They just came
up.”

“That so?”

“Sure. Is something the matter?”

She stared at me. “You tell me.”

I ate pie and smiled. “Everything’s fine
with me.”

“You some kind of bill collector? Or a
cop?”

“Neither.”

“What are you then?”

“What’s the matter, Doris?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’m a psychologist, just like I said. Are
Gwen and Tom in some kind of trouble?”

She pocketed her smokes and her lighter
and got up. Standing over me, one thigh pressing into the rim of the table, she
smiled. To a casual observer she would have looked like a helpful waitress.

“You come on real friendly, and then you
ease the conversation around to Tom and Gwen. That just seems a strange thing
for a guy to talk to a gal about.”

Turning her back on me, she walked back to
the bar. The restaurant was still empty.

I ate a few more bites of pie and then I
saw her leave the restaurant. Throwing bills down on the table, I went after
her.

She was heading for a shopworn red Camaro
parked near the movie crew trucks. Cables were strewn across the parking lot,
and one caught her heel and she went down. One of the grips picked her up, and
other film people gathered around her. The blond model stopped posing.

I was within twenty feet of her when she
saw me. She pointed and said something that made the people look at me as if I
was slime on bone china.

A human knot closed around her,
protectively.

I turned around, walking, not running, but
when I made it to the Seville I was breathless.

I got in the car. No one had followed me
but everyone was still looking at me. They kept on looking as I peeled out.

I reached Milo at work and told him what
had just happened. “Didn’t have a chance to get to Karen. Just talking about
the Sheas—how they made their money—upset her.”

“Jealous?”

“There was some kind of hostility there.
She wasn’t sympathetic about their having a kid with CP. What if she and the
Sheas all got paid off to keep quiet about Karen, but the Sheas used it to
build up a personal fortune and she blew it? I know it’s a big jump, but she
did say she worked catering gigs for Gwen. If the Sanctum party was one of
them, she could very well have been there.”

“Huge jump,” he said, “but I’ll see what I
can find out about her. Meanwhile, stay away from there.”

“Something else: Lucy and I did hypnosis
again, and this time there was no resistance. I age-regressed her back to four
years old, and she was able to make out more details of the dream. Definitely
two other men besides Lowell. One’s back was to her the whole time; the other
had what she called a hairy lip, which I assume is a mustache. Trafficant wore
a mustache and goatee, back then. Anything come up on him yet?”

“Haven’t learned a damn thing except he
stopped filing tax returns the year he vanished. As far as I can tell, he
hasn’t shown up in any major penal institutions. No death records either, but a
guy like that would know how to work the system.”

“I tried to trace him through his
publisher. No one seemed to remember him at all. I didn’t get the feeling they
were trying to stonewall, just that he’d really faded from the scene.”

“Yeah. Well, for all we know he’s in
Algeria or Cuba or something, still getting his royalty checks. Meanwhile, I’ve
got something more immediate to deal with. Another copycat, discovered this
morning. We’ve kept the media at bay, but you’ll see it on the eleven o’clock
news. Fourteen-year-old kid named Nicolette Verdugo. Walking home from school
yesterday, never showed up. Cal Trans crew found her at daybreak in a drainage
ditch out in Diamond Bar, near the Orange County border.”

“Fourteen,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.”

He coughed and cleared his throat. “So now
it’s a new task force, the FBI’s probably going to be called in, and guess
who’s representing Angel City? When Shwandt’s lawyers find out about this, I
promise you it’s war. But the whole thing stinks. Keep this confidential: Both
Shannon and Nicolette were defecated on, but neither had any semen in or on or
near them. Ejaculation was a
major
thing for Shwandt; sometimes he did
it more than once on a victim. In fact, the only time he
didn’t
ejaculate was with Barbara Pryor, because he was too stoned to get an erection.
Now why would someone pull off a first-rate copycat, cover all the details, and
leave that out?”

“Someone who can’t ejaculate,” I said. “A
woman? You think the Bogettes really could be behind it?”

“Who the hell knows? It’s pretty hard to
imagine women butchering another woman that way, but Manson’s hags were pretty
good with forks and knives. Problem is, how do we get close to them? There’s
absolutely no grounds for warrants; all we can do is try to interview them, and
if they say fuck you, as they did today, we say thank you, ladies, and go home.
That leaves surveillance, and with their level of paranoia they’ll probably burrow
deep underground. Anyway, it means eighteen-hour days for me. So do me a favor
and keep an eye on Lucy. I’m not going to be much of a guardian angel.”

“Anything specific I should do?”

“Keep her away from her own apartment till
I clear up that goddamn note. Given this new murder, I’d rather err by being
too cautious. The turds, by the way, were of
Rattus
rattus
origin—our little
black scurrying pal. And speaking of rats, all I’ve been able to learn about
Brother Puck was that he had some dealings a few years ago with a dope group
from Montebello. Small-time buys and sells; then they handed him thirty grand
to peddle to other junkies, and he got busted. After that they cut him off, and
he’s been going to East L.A. for bits and pieces.”

“Who paid for his defense?”

“Haven’t found that out yet. If he comes
back to town, I’ll have a little talk with him. Meanwhile, give Lucy my best.”

“One more thing,” I said. “I showed
Karen’s picture to Lucy, and she’s sure Karen was the girl in the dream. It’s
possible she’s confabulating—wishful thinking because she hates her father and
is on a mission to learn the truth—but her reaction was pretty extreme: She
went white, started shaking.”

“Your intuition tells you it’s genuine?”

“My intuition’s been rather quiet
recently.”

“Mine, too, when it comes to her.”

“Maybe we can get corroboration of Karen’s
presence at the party from someone who worked that night.”

“Someone who wasn’t paid off? You know,
Alex, the more I think about it, the whole idea of payoffs doesn’t really cut
it, logically. All you’ve got on the Sheas is that Best doesn’t like the look
in their eyes and they were lucky enough to make some money over a twenty-year
period. All you’ve got on Doris is
she
doesn’t like the Sheas. No
indication of any collusion. If something happened that the three of them
and
Felix Barnard found out about, what’s the theory? The whole bunch of
them put the arm on Lowell or Trafficant or whoever had something to hide? And
if Barnard’s death was tied in with blackmail, why would the others be allowed
to live?”

“They didn’t break the rules; Barnard
did.”

“Still, to leave all those loose ends for
so long? People living down the road from you knowing you were involved in
killing
a girl?”

“Maybe they didn’t know the gory details.
Just that Karen was last seen at the party. Lowell could have told them she had
a bad drug trip and left early, something like that.”

“So why pay them off?”

“To avoid bad publicity for Sanctum.
Trafficant’s presence had already created controversy. Trafficant killing Karen
would have finished Lowell off.”

“So who’s our corroborator, some other
server? What do we have here, a whole
platoon
of people who knew Karen
had worked the party? With Best looking for her obsessively, all those fliers
he put up, cornering people at the shopping center, you mean to tell me
no
one came forward?”

“They might not have if they really didn’t
believe she’d been harmed. What if the other servers were told she’d run off
with a boyfriend and didn’t
want
to be found? Or that Best was an abusive
father and Karen was scared to death of him? Maybe spinning
that
yarn
was what the Sheas got paid for. Which would make them collaborators and help
ensure their silence.”

“A yarn,” he said.

“Convincing young people it was true
wouldn’t have been too hard. Remember the times: Don’t trust anyone over
thirty.”

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.

“Locating the other servers would help,” I
said. “Especially those other women from the Dollar—Andreas and Billings.”

“Nothing on them yet, and I can’t promise
you I’ll have time to do a comprehensive in the near future. So do me a favor
and don’t launch Lucy on any trajectory you can’t control. Keep yourself safe,
too. I’ve got enough to worry about.”

A warm quiet morning, lit by a
primrose-yellow sun. Hypnosis session number three. Induction was effortless.
Within minutes Lucy was four years old and watching herself wander through the
forest.

Once again, Hairy Lip’s and Lowell’s faces
were visible, but the third man kept his back to her and she could produce nothing
more about him.

I questioned her more about the mustache.

“Is the hair on his lip dark or blond?”

She looked confused.

“Is Hairy Lip’s hair brown, Lucy?”

“Don’t... know.”

“Is it blond—yellow?”

Consternation.

“The hairy lip, is it just a mustache—is
the hair only on the top lip? Or does he have a beard, hair all over his face?”

“Um...” Shrug. “Hairy lip.”

“Just a hairy lip?”

Shrug.

When she came out, I reviewed what she’d
told me.

“Didn’t do very well this time, did I?”

“You did fine. It’s not a performance.”

She knuckled her forehead. “I know it’s
all in here. Why can’t I bring it out?”

“Maybe there’s nothing else to remember.
You’re seeing things the way you saw them then. Through a four-year-old’s eyes.
Certain concepts wouldn’t have been available to you.”

“I was so excited about today, I thought
we’d make real progress.”

“Give it time, maybe more will come out.”

I let her sit quietly for a while.

“Actually,” she said, “there
was
something. The trees where they buried her. I noticed something about them but
you didn’t ask me so I couldn’t tell you—didn’t have the words.” Her eyes
closed. “The image keeps coming back to me. Lacy.”

“Lacy trees?”

Nod.

“What kind?”

She frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Just that they were lacy.”

“And pretty. It’s like”—her eyes opened—“I
guess what you said was true. I didn’t have the word “lacy’ when I was four, so
I couldn’t put it into words. But now that I’m an adult again, it came back to
me. Pretty, lacy trees. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “Lacy trees. That’s
all I can say. Do you have time for me tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Any time. I’ve got nothing to do but read
old magazines and watch TV. Being alone in a big house is a lot more solitude
than I’m used to.”

“Ken’s not around much?”

“Hardly at all. We’re planning to spend
some time together over the weekend, maybe take a drive somewhere.”

Her hands were busy, fingers rubbing
against one another.

“The third man,” she said. “He keeps his
back to me the whole time. It’s frustrating. And all I can really see of the
other one is the mustache.”

I went and got the copy of Terry
Trafficant’s book, opened it to the rear flap, and showed her the author photo.

“No, definitely not. Sorry. His mustache
is wimpy. Hairy Lip’s was big and dark and thick.”

She put the book down.

I said, “Could you describe him so someone
could draw him?”

Her eyes closed again. Her squint looked
painful. “I can see him but I can’t really describe his features—it’s as if I’m...
handicapped.
As if part of my brain is working, but I can’t translate what I see into
words.”

She opened her eyes.

“I think I’d know him if I saw him, but I
just can’t tell you anything more about him other than the mustache. I’m
sorry—it’s not like actually seeing. More like images making their way into my
mind. That sounds flaky, doesn’t it? Maybe I’m totally off base on all of it.”