The Night Visitor (17 page)

“I don’t see how I can.”

“Think a little harder,” Sylvia said. “Just get Rory to do the right thing and admit that she murdered her sister and tried to murder Junior.”

Leland took off the paper mask and gloves and pulled off the gown, breaking the plastic ties. “Mrs. Torres, I appreciate how you feel, but the district attorney concluded that there was sufficient evidence to charge Junior in Anya’s murder. It’s unfortunate that Junior’s health prevents him from having a trial, but that’s not the Tates’ or Rory Langtry’s fault.”

“If you get Rory to take a polygraph test, I’ll let it go,” Sylvia said.

“That would serve no purpose, Mrs. Torres. Polygraphs are unreliable and the results are not admissible in court.”

“It would prove something to my family and the public. If she has nothing to hide, why doesn’t she do it?”

“Miss Langtry is not a suspect in the Five Points shootings.”

“She should be. She’s the one with the motive. Her sister was sleeping with her fiancé.”

“There’s no proof of that,” Leland said.

“Junior always slept with the women he painted nude,” Sylvia said.

“Sylvia,” Fermina said, “that’s not true.”

“Mom, there was that one girl you know about for sure. And there’s Rory.”

“That’s different.” Fermina’s brow wrinkled above her mask. “Anya was paying Junior to paint her. It was business.”

“It was some kind of business, all right. Anya going to Junior’s loft to pose for him in the middle of the night. Remember that time at my house? After dinner we were all watching a movie on TV and Junior had to leave because Anya called him. Said she’d squeezed in some time to pose for him. She called it posing. I call it a booty call.”

“You’re just making up stories, Sylvia,” Fermina said. “You don’t know the truth.”

Sylvia turned to Leland. “The point is, Mr. Declues, my brother didn’t try to kill himself. He was outrageously happy with his life. And who tries to commit suicide by shooting himself behind the ear? Junior would never have slashed his own painting. That was all about rage, and so was Anya being shot in the face.”

“I’m afraid, Mrs. Torres, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this issue.”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Declues, that we can’t take Richard Tate’s money for Danny’s funeral. Oh, we’ll take it when we win our lawsuit. So, you can tell Richard Tate right now that he can keep any settlement he’s thinking of offering us. As far as Danny’s funeral goes, everything will be nice and right. You can do us one favor, Mr. Declues. Ask Rory if she’d return the engagement ring Junior gave her. It’s a family heirloom. I’m disgusted that she hasn’t given it back.”

Keith, the night nurse, walked up and began garbing himself in protective clothing from the cart. “Hi, Sylvia. Mrs. Lara.” He nodded to Leland.

“Hey, Keith,” Sylvia said. “Where’s Corliss?”

“She had to leave. One of her kids got hurt at school. Nothing serious. Fell down. Couple of stitches. We’re behind schedule today. I’m going to suction Junior now.”

Leland asked, “Suction?”

“Have to suction secretions from his lungs every couple of hours,” Keith explained. “Because of the trach and the patient lying down all the time, the body produces more mucus. Respiratory problems are the leading cause of death for these patients.”

“A pleasure meeting you,” Leland said.

“Don’t rush off,” Sylvia said. “You should see this. Keith sticks a catheter down the trach tube into one of Junior’s lungs and vacuums out the junk. Then he does Junior’s other lung. While the suctioning is going on, Junior can’t breathe. The nurses work as quickly as they can, but Junior feels like he’s being strangled. Plus the procedure irritates his lungs and throat and they bleed.” She enjoyed the look of revulsion on Leland’s face.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Torres and Mrs. Lara.”

Sylvia said after him, “Make sure you tell Rory about the pain she continues to inflict on my brother every single day.”

36

Rory spread her arms and leaned back her head to fully take in the sun and sea breeze. She was on the rooftop patio of her Manhattan Beach condominium, which was one block from The Strand.

Tom stood behind her and slipped his hands around her waist.

She leaned against him. “I miss the ocean air. It feels and smells so good.”

Tom kissed the top of her head.

“How did it go with my mom?”

“She said she was making a special dinner for you, and there are too many stairs at your condo, and you’re not well enough yet, and so on and so on.”

“Thanks for fighting my battle.”

“Anytime.”

“I just want to stay in my own bed for one night. Tomorrow is Sunday and you can drive me back to the
villa.”

He kissed her neck and slipped his hands beneath her shirt. She turned in his arms and fiercely kissed him. They broke their kiss, both of them breathless, and stood staring into each other’s eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too. I was gone, but now I’m back. I’m here.”

He held her tighter.

She said, “Let’s go inside.”

They descended a staircase that pierced the condo’s three floors. The building’s design was modern, with corrugated steel, bare wood beams, and lots of glass. They entered the master bedroom on the top level.

He backed with her toward the bed, kissing her, and pulled her onto the bed with him.

She pushed herself up. “Be right back.” She went to her lingerie chest and pulled out a flimsy garment.

“That’s lovely,” he said, “but you don’t need to.”

“I want to. You’re in such a hurry.” Casting a coy glance over her shoulder at him, she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

She held up the nightgown, one that Tom had always liked, by its spaghetti straps. She’d grabbed it less for its allure factor than for its length. It would hide the self-inflicted bruises and scratches on her thighs and waist. She didn’t want to explain.

She took off her clothes and pulled the gown over her head. Before she let it drop over her shoulders, she examined herself in the mirror. She looked terrible. She had always been slender, but now every rib protruded.

She turned to look at her back. The irritated patches of skin on each shoulder blade and across her lower back were getting worse. She’d soaked in baths of mineral salts and slathered on lotion, but it hadn’t helped. She figured she was allergic to the laundry detergent that Rosario used. She’d take her natural detergent to the villa. She’d also take her organic cotton pajamas. The silk nightwear her mother had bought was beautiful, but maybe it was irritating her skin.

She caught a whiff of something acrid. Her heart began to pound. She flung open the bathroom window and breathed deeply of the ocean air. The putrid odor disappeared. She relaxed. It wasn’t the onset of a waking dream. The condo had just been closed up too long.

While searching through the fragrances among the bottles on an antique, glass-topped tray, her eyes were drawn to a hand-painted wooden box she’d bought on a trip to Spain. She opened it. Inside were earrings missing their mates, cheap rings and bracelets she’d bought for fun, barrettes, and other odds and ends. There also was a folded square of velvet. She opened it and took out a gold ring with a large opal surrounded by small diamonds.

The ring had belonged to Junior’s grandmother, who had passed it to Junior’s father, her eldest son, who had given it to Fermina as an engagement ring. Fermina had given it to her eldest son, Junior, to give to his intended one day. He had done so, surprising Rory with a down-on-one-knee proposal on the beach at sunset on Valentine’s Day. Rory and Junior were engaged. Everyone in the Lara family had been thrilled. That was when they had loved her.

Evelyn had eyeballed the ring and sniffed. “You can’t be serious.”

Rory slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand, next to her diamond from Tom. “I loved you, Junior. I wish your life had turned out differently. I am truly sorry about what happened to you and to us.”

There. It was done. She’d finally made peace with Junior, Anya, and Five Points. She’d finally put to rest the ghosts of her past. She was ready to return the ring to Junior’s family and move on. She exhaled.

The pain in her chest hit her with enough force to knock her to her knees. She clawed at a throw rug, struggling to breathe. The stringy-haired man with the yellow mask was standing over her, working with his plastic tube. Kaleidoscopic images assaulted her—a mobile hanging from a green ceiling, a television playing, a muddle of paintings, photos, and newspaper clippings—all spinning, turning, the sights and sensations stronger than ever.

She reached under her nightgown for a fleshy spot on her emaciated thigh, pinched as hard as she could, and mentally counted:
One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, two, three
…

The stringy-haired man disappeared. Rory sat cross-legged on the floor and massaged her aching chest, breathing more easily. She could still see the green room, and now she saw Junior’s nude portrait of her. It was so vivid she reached to touch her bathroom walls, to make sure that other room wasn’t real.

Tom was outside the bathroom door. She heard him restlessly shuffling on the hardwood floor. She smelled the shampoo and deodorant he’d used that morning and his fresh perspiration. It seemed impossible. All her senses were hyperacute. Her entire being seemed to be functioning at a fever pitch. At the same time, she was in that other world of the green room. It now felt familiar, as if she’d lived there for years.

“This is no dream,” she whispered. “No hallucination. This is real. I’m in Junior’s head.
I’m in his head.”

Tom rapped on the door. She knew he was too polite to pound, but that’s what it sounded like. She ducked when she heard a flock of seagulls cawing, sounding as if they were flying right at her, but she saw them through the window, sailing past at a distance. She heard people on the beach talking, a couple rehashing an argument, and kids playing.

“Ro…You okay?”

She was still on the floor. “I’m fine. Just freshening up.”

“All right.” He paused. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

Sex was now the last thing on her mind. “Okay. Maybe I am being a little ambitious.”

“No worries.”

“Okay. Give me a minute.”

She climbed to her feet and pulled off the nightgown. Her mind was still there, in Junior’s world. She again saw the nude Junior had painted of her and somehow felt his eyes on her now, seeing her reflection in the mirror through his eyes.

“You like that painting of me, huh?” she whispered to her reflection. “You think you can take over my life? Well, you’re not getting me. You’re not robbing me of my life.”

She steeled herself against Junior’s world, determined to break its hold on her.
His
hold on her. Never again. She dragged the fingernails of both hands against her waist, rending the skin, relishing the pain, the cleansing pain, the pain that would save her. It blunted the visions slightly. The painting changed, almost as if she had walked into it and was posing for Junior, seeing herself through his eyes.

“Is that your safe place, Junior? Well, this is
my
safe place. Away from you.”

She drew blood as she again scratched her skin.

The images faded but didn’t stop. She sensed that she was inside Junior’s favorite memory, the one he visited endlessly, and watched herself as she coquettishly dropped her foot to the floor, stretched out on the old sofa, and arched her back, ready for him.

* * *

Tom was sitting on the bed and jerked when the bathroom door flew open with sufficient force to bang against the wall. He’d expected to find Rory dressed, but she was nude. He had but a second to register how thin she’d become and to see her bruised and bloody torso and thighs before she was on him, clawing at his clothes.

She pushed him onto the bed and was quickly astride him, taking him with a fury that he didn’t know she possessed. She was lost inside the passion. In a moment, he was too.

37

Henry Auburn was at his desk in the police station, looking through the Anya Langtry murder book. It was Sunday evening and the Detective Section was nearly deserted. He had never really put the Five Points shootings behind him. Danny Lara’s killing had brought it back to the surface again. All the pieces fit, but the edges chafed. He couldn’t prove Rory Langtry or the Tate family’s involvement in what had happened at the Killingsworth Building in Five Points, but he felt it.

Five years ago there had been fierce pressure on the Pasadena Police Department to find Anya Langtry’s killer. Junior Lara had been an easy target, especially because he was in a coma and not expected to live. Auburn had resisted his boss and the DA’s decision to file murder charges against Junior. Auburn’s boss had been a lieutenant then. Now he was a captain.

Auburn recalled arriving at the scene in Five Points. It was two o’clock on a hot September afternoon. The Santa Anas had blown hard the night before. Refuse and dirt were shoved against the buildings and street curbs.

The name Five Points wasn’t on any map. It was what the Pasadena locals called a broad intersection at the convergence of five streets in the northwestern part of the city. The triangular Killingsworth Building was on one corner. The building had been constructed in 1921 for the Killingsworth Printed Document Company, then the largest manufacturer of bank checks west of the Mississippi. After the company had vacated the building in 1979, the property had passed through several owners, going into foreclosure during the Great Recession, when Junior Lara had bought it for a song. Junior had ambitious plans to turn the dilapidated building into galleries and residences for artists, hoping it would be a first step in revitalizing the neighborhood. His dream died the night of the shootings.

The crime had been discovered by Ethan Byrd, an artist friend of Junior’s who’d come to pick up Junior to have coffee with friends. When Byrd had exited the old elevator into Junior’s sixth-floor loft, he’d been surprised to see Junior’s doves roosting on the exposed pipes. Byrd had found the victims on the floor behind a vintage couch.