The Murder Book (45 page)

Gleam and hue fraying and wilting at the edges. From the shadows, the black, inexorable progress of rot.

Conditioned air blew through a ceiling vent, flat, artificial, filtered clean, but a stink reached my nostrils: the painting gave off the moist, squalid seduction of decay.

Milo wiped his brow, and said, “You don’t use a model.”

Hansen said, “It’s all in my head.”

Milo stepped closer to the easel. “You alternate paint and glaze?”

Hansen stared at him. “Don’t tell me you paint.”

“Can’t draw a straight line.” Milo got even nearer to the board and squinted. “Kind of a Flemish thing going on — or maybe someone with an appreciation of Flemish, like Severin Roesen. But you’re better than Roesen.”

“Hardly,” said Hansen, unmoved by the compliment. “I’m a lot less than I was before you barged into my life. You
have
diminished me. I’ve diminished myself. Will you really protect me?”

“I’ll do my best if you cooperate.” Milo straightened. “Did Luke Chapman mention anyone else being present at the murder? Any of the other partygoers?”

Hansen’s fleshy face quivered. “Not here. Please.”

“Last question,” said Milo.

“No. He mentioned no one else.” Hansen sat down at the easel and rolled up his sleeves. “You’ll protect me,” he said in a dead voice. He selected a sable brush and smoothed its bristles. “I’m going back to work. There are some real problems to work out.”

W
hen we were back on Roxbury Drive, Milo said, “Believe his story?”

“I do.”

“So do I,” he said, as we walked to our cars. “I also believe I’m a hypocrite.”

“What do you mean?”

“Playing Grand Inquisitor with Hansen. Making him feel like shit because he repressed twenty-year-old memories. I did the same damn thing, with less of an excuse.”

“What’s his excuse?” I said.

“He’s weak. Cut him open you’ll find a Silly Putty spine.”

“You sensed the weakness right away,” I said.

“You noticed that, huh? Yup, moved right in on ol’ Nicky. Got a nose for weakness. Doesn’t that make me pleasant company?”

When we reached the gray Olds, I said, “I know you’re going to tell me I’m laying more shrink stuff on you, but I don’t believe your situation’s comparable to Hansen’s. He had access to firsthand information about the murder and kept it to himself for twenty years. In order to do that, he convinced himself Chapman had been hallucinating, but those details — cigarette burns, the way they moved Janie — say he knew better. Hansen engaged in two decades of self-delusion, and who knows what it did to his soul. You tried to do your job and were ordered off the case.”

“Following orders?” He gazed up the block absently.

“Fine,” I said. “Torment yourself.”

“Hansen paints, I don’t,” he said. “We all need our hobbies… listen, thanks for your time, but I need to sort things out, figure which way to go with this.”

“What about the main point we got from Hansen’s story?” I said.

“Which is…”

“What you were getting at with that final question in the studio about anyone else being at the murder. Chapman spilled his guts to Hansen but made no mention of Caroline Cossack or Willie Burns. Meaning they probably weren’t there. Despite that, the Cossacks stashed Caroline at Achievement House for six months and had her tagged with a behavioral warning. Burns returned to the streets, got busted for dope, took a big risk by getting himself a job at Achievement House. Maybe he skipped on Boris Nemerov because of what he’d seen at the party. If he went to jail on the drug beef, he’d be a sitting duck.”

“Burns as a witness.”

“Maybe he followed the King’s Men because he figured there’d be more doping and he could peddle more merchandise. Caroline could’ve just been hanging with him. Or she wanted to hang out with her brothers — the odd little sister who’d always gotten shunted to the background. The initial motive for Janie’s murder was to silence her. Luke Chapman may have died for the same reason. Caroline and Burns would’ve been extreme liabilities.”

“Victims, not murderers,” he said. “And all the more likely to be dead.”

“Those two photos preceding Janie’s death shot. A dead black guy and a mangled white female mental patient. Maybe whoever sent the book was trying to tell you about two other db’s.”

“Except, as you pointed out, the dead black guy was in his forties, which would be Burns’s age now, not twenty years ago.” He took hold of the door handle. “I need to develop a few migraines over this. Ciao.”

“That’s it?”

“What?” he said.

“You go your way, I go mine?” I said. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

His half second hesitation belied his answer. “I wish I
had
something not to tell, Alex — look, I appreciate your effort but we can go over theories till the Second Coming, and it won’t move me any closer to solving Janie.”

“What will?”

“Like I said, I need to do some thinking.”

“Alone.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “alone helps.”

I drove away wondering what he was keeping from me, peeved at being shut out. Thinking about what didn’t await me at home turned irritation to dread, and before I knew it I was hunched over the wheel, driving too fast — going nowhere fast.

Nothing worse than a big house when you’re alone. And I had no one to blame but myself.

I’d screwed things up, royally, despite Bert Harrison’s wise counsel. Like most expert therapists, the old man wasn’t one for offering unsolicited advice, but during my visit he’d made a point of warning me off the paranoia trail when it came to Robin.

“Sounds like small things have been amplified… this is the girl for you.”

Had he sensed something — sniffed out nuances of my impending stupidity? Why the hell hadn’t I listened to him?

A blast of honks jolted me. I’d been sitting at the green light at Walden and Sunset for who knew how long and the cute young woman in the VW Golf behind me thought that justified a snarl and a stiff finger.

I waved at her and sped off. She passed me, stopped talking on her cell phone long enough to flip me off again, nearly collided with the curb as her VW struggled with the winding road.

I wished her well and returned to thoughts of Bert Harrison. The other opinions the old man voiced that day — outwardly casual remarks tossed out at the tail end of my visit.

Coincidence or the old therapist’s trick of harnessing the power of the parting word? I’d used it myself hundreds of times.

Bert’s
parting shot had been to bring up Caroline Cossack. Out of context — well after we’d stopped discussing the Ingalls case.

“That girl. So monstrous, Alex. If it’s true.”

“You seem skeptical.”

“I do find it hard to believe that a young female would be capable of such savagery.”

Then Bert had gone on to express doubts about Willie Burns as a lust murderer.

“A junkie in the strict sense? Heroin? Opiates are the great pacifiers… I’ve certainly never heard of a junkie acting out in such a sexually violent manner.”

Now it looked as if Bert had been right on.

Was all that the intuition of an exceptionally insightful man?

Or did Bert
know
?

Had Schwinn continued to work the Ingalls case for years after leaving the department? Had he told
Bert
about what he’d unearthed?

Bert had admitted knowing Schwinn but claimed the relationship was casual. Chance meetings in theater lobbies.

What if it was anything
but
casual?

Schwinn had fought his way out of drug addiction, and perhaps he’d done so on his own. But that kind of progress would’ve been helped along by treatment, and Bert Harrison had trained in addiction treatment at the Federal hospital in Lexington.

Schwinn as Bert’s patient.

Psychotherapy. Where all kinds of secrets tumbled out.

If any of that was true, Bert had lied to me. And
that
could explain all those apologies he’d tendered. His contrition — so puzzling at the time that I’d wondered about Bert’s deteriorating mental state.

Bert had
encouraged
my suspicions:
“One regresses. Loses one’s sense of propriety. Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive — “

I remembered how he’d wiped away tears.

“Is everything okay, Bert?”

“Everything is as it should be.”

Seeking forgiveness because he knew he had to lie to me? Protecting Schwinn because of patient confidentiality?

But Schwinn had been buried seven months ago and any privilege had died along with his body. Perhaps Bert held himself to higher standards.

Or maybe he was protecting a
living
patient.

In drug treatment — the kind of intensive treatment Bert would’ve prescribed for a long-term addict like Schwinn — family members were included. And Marge was all the family Schwinn had had left.

Bert shielding Marge. It made sense. I strained to recall anything in our conversation that pointed to that and came up with one quickly: Bert had deflected any suggestion Marge could’ve mailed the murder book.

Protecting her, or had
Bert
been the messenger? A doctor honoring his patient’s last wishes.

What if Janie’s murder had eaten at Schwinn — corroded his late-in-life serenity — to the point where he felt impelled to stir up the ashes? Because even though the department had booted him out, and outwardly he’d made major life changes, Pierce Schwinn had held on to a detective’s bulldog sensibilities.

Janie wasn’t only a cold case, she’d been Schwinn’s
last
case. One massive overdose of unfinished business. Perhaps Schwinn had connected the unsolved murder with his breakdown.

Bert would have wanted to help him with that.

The more I thought about it, the better it fit. Schwinn came to trust Bert, showed Bert the murder book, eventually bequeathed the album to his psychiatrist. Knowing Bert would do the right thing.

Bert’s involvement would also explain why the blue-bound horror had been mailed to me. He’d met Milo a couple of times, but he knew me much better and was well aware of my relationship with Milo. For Bert, my handing over the book to Milo would have been a certainty.

Fingerprints wiped clean. I could see the old man doing that.

What I
couldn’t
see was him driving down to L.A., stealing Rick’s Porsche, and returning the car with the original Ingalls file on the front seat. The GTA combined with the HIV detective rumor and that weird encounter with the man who called himself Paris Bartlett had Big Blue written all over it.

Someone in the department. Or once associated with the department. Maybe even the cop buddy I’d hypothesized, stepping in once the wheels had begun to turn.

Theories…

Bert had just called to let me know he was leaving town. A few days ago, he’d mentioned nothing about travel plans.

Escaping
because
of my visit? Bert and I weren’t everyday acquaintances, there’d be no reason for him to notify me of his itinerary. Unless he was trying to distance himself from the fallout.

Or call me off.

By the time I made it to the bridle path that leads to my property, my head ached with conjecture. I pulled up in front of my house… our house. The damn thing looked cold, white… foreign. I sat in the Seville with the engine running. Turned the car around and drove back toward the Glen.

You
could
go home again, but what was the point?

My nerves were exposed wire sizzling with impulse. Maybe a long, pretty drive would help cool them down.

Alone.

Milo was right about that.

M
ilo drove out of Beverly Hills, mulling over the interview with Nicholas Hansen.

The guy was pathetic, a momma’s boy and a drunk, no big challenge browbeating him into spilling. But would Hansen change his story once he had time to stew, maybe call an attorney? Even if he did hold fast, his tale amounted to third-party hearsay.

Still Milo knew what he had to do: Go home, transcribe his notes of the interview, making sure he got all the details down, then stash the transcription with all the other good stuff he kept to himself — the floor safe in his bedroom closet.

He took Palm Drive to Santa Monica, then the diagonal shortcut to Beverly, driving like a gangster’s chauffeur — slower than usual, checking the scenery all around, scoping out the drivers sitting two, three, four car lengths behind the rented Olds. Taking a different route than usual — past La Cienega, then doubling back on Rosewood. As far as he could tell, everything clear.

One thing the Hansen interview
had
accomplished: Milo knew now that he couldn’t let go of Janie.

All these years he’d coped with department bullshit and propped up his self-image with secret little pep talks, the psychobabble he’d never share with anyone.
You’re different. Noble. Heroic, nonstereotypic gay warrior traversing a goddamn heterosexual universe.

Rebel with a lost cause.

Maybe all that self-delusional swill was what had helped him conveniently forget Janie. But the moment Alex had shown him that death shot, his heartbeat and his sweat glands told him he’d lived nearly half his life as the worst kind of chump.

Conning himself.

Was that insight? If so, it sucked.

He laughed out loud because cursing lacked imagination. He and Hansen were two peas in the same cowardly, ass-covering pod. Alex, ever the shrink — ever the
friend
— had tried to spin it differently.

Thank you very much, Doctor, but that don’t change the facts.

Yeah, old Nicholas was a moral mollusk, but meeting him had solidified things.

As he cruised through quiet West Hollywood streets, he formalized the next risky step: Get closer to the murder by leaning on someone who’d actually been there. The choice of targets was: Brad Larner. Because twenty years after high school, Larner was low man among the King’s Men, a loser who’d worked for Daddy, then regressed to lackeying for his buddies.