“You see what I’m saying?” she said, finally.
“I do.”
“She never changed. In school, she went straight for the outcasts—anyone who was different, or hurting—the retarded kids, harelips, you name it. Sometimes I think she was attracted to hurt.”
Another forage in the purse. She found red-framed sunglasses and put them on. Given the ambient shade, they must have blacked out the world.
I said, “I can see why she went into social work.”
“Exactly. I always figured she would do something like that, always told her nursing or social work would be perfect for her. But of course when you tell them, they do something else. So it took her a while to know what she wanted. She didn’t want to go to college, did some waitressing, some file clerking, secretarial. My other kids were different. Real driven. Got a boy practicing orthopedic medicine in Reno, and my older girl works in a bank in St. Louis—assistant vice president.”
“Was Becky the youngest?”
She nodded. “Nine years between her and Kathy, eleven between her and Carl. She was—I was forty-one when I had her, and her father was five years older than me. He walked out on us right after she was born. Left me high and dry with three kids. Sugar diabetic, and he refused to stop drinking. He started losing feeling in his feet, then the eyes started going. Finally, they began cutting pieces off of him and he decided with no toes and one arm it was time to be a swinging bachelor—crazy, huh?”
She shook her head.
“He moved to Tahoe, didn’t last long after that,” she said. “Becky was two when he died. We hadn’t heard from him all that time, suddenly the government started sending me his veteran’s benefits.… You think that’s what made her so vulnerable? No—what do you people call it?—father role model?”
“How was Becky vulnerable?” I said.
“Too trusting.” She touched her collar, smoothed out an invisible wrinkle. “She went straight for the losers. Believed every cock-and-bull story.”
“What kind of losers?”
“More wounded birds. Guys she thought she could fix. She wanted to fix the world.”
Her hands began to shake and she shoved them under her purse. The Stepne sisters were singing louder. She said: “Shut up.”
“Did the losers mistreat her?”
“Losers,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “The great poet with no poems to show for it, living off welfare. Bunch of musicians, so-called. Not men. Little boys. I nagged her all the time, all the dead-ends she was choosing. In the end, none of that mattered a whit, did it?”
She lifted her sunglasses and wiped an eye with one finger. Putting the shades back, she said, “You don’t need to hear this, you’ve got your own problems.”
I saw faint reflections of myself in her black lenses, distorted and tense.
“You seem like a nice young fellow, listening to me go on like this. Ever save any bugs yourself?”
“Maybe a couple of times.”
She smiled. “Bet it was more than a couple. Bet you punched those holes in the top of the jars so the bugs could breathe, right? Bet your mother loved that, too, all those creepy things in the house.”
I laughed.
“I’m right, aren’t I? I should be a psychologist.”
“It does bring back certain memories,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “Out to save the world, all of you. You married?”
“No.”
“A fellow like you, same attitude as my Becky, you would have been okay for her. You could have saved the world together. But to be honest, she probably wouldn’t have gone for you—no offense, you’re just too … put-together. That’s a compliment, believe me.” She patted my knee. Frowned. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through. And be sure to take good care of yourself. Something happens to you, your mother’s going to die, over and over. You’ll be gone but she’ll be left dying every day—understand?”
The hand on my knee clawed.
I nodded.
“Something happens to you, your mother’s going to lie in bed and think about you, over and over and over. Wondering how much you suffered. Wondering what you were thinking when it happened to you—why it happened to her kid and not someone else’s. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do.”
“So be careful.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “To protect myself.”
She whipped off the sunglasses. Her eyes were so raw the whites looked brown. “Gritz—no, she never said a word about anyone named that. Or Silk or Merino.”
“Did she ever talk about Hewitt?”
“No, not really.” She seemed to be deliberating. I didn’t move or speak.
The raw eyes moistened. “She mentioned him once—maybe a week or two before. Said she was treating this really crazy person and thought she was helping him. She said it respectfully—this poor, sick fellow that she really wanted to help. Schizophrenic, whatever—hearing voices. No one else had been able to help him, but she thought she could. He was starting to trust her.”
She spat on the ground.
“She mentioned him by name?”
“No. She made a point of not talking about any of them by name. Big point of following the rules.”
Remembering Becky’s sketchy notes and lack of follow-through with Jean, I said, “A real stickler, huh?”
“That was Becky. Back when she was in grade school, her teachers always said they wished they had a classroom full of Beckys. Even with her loser boyfriends, she always stayed on the straight and narrow, not using drugs, nothing. That’s why they wouldn’t …”
She shook her head. Put her glasses back on and showed me the back of her head. Between thin strands of dyed hair, her neck was liver-spotted and loose-skinned.
I said, “Why they wouldn’t what?”
No answer for a moment.
Then: “They wouldn’t stick with her—they always left her. Can you beat that? The ones who were going to get divorced, always went back to their wives. The ones who were on the wagon, always fell off. And left her. She was ten times the human being any of them were, but they always walked out on her, can you beat that?”
“They were the unstable ones,” I said.
“Exactly. Dead-end losers. What she needed was someone with high standards, but she wasn’t attracted to that—only the broken ones.”
“Was she in a relationship at the time she died?”
“I don’t know—probably. The last time I saw her—couple of days before she stopped by to give me some laundry—I asked her how her social life was and she refused to talk about it. What that usually meant was she was involved with someone she knew I’d nag her about. I got upset with her—we didn’t talk much. How was I supposed to know it was the last time and I should have enjoyed every minute I had with her?”
Her shoulders bowed and quivered.
I touched one of them and she sat up suddenly.
“Enough of this—I hate this moping around. That’s why I quit that survivor’s group your friend Sturgis recommended. Too much self-pity. Meanwhile, I haven’t done a damn thing for you.”
My head was full of assumptions and guesses. Learning of Becky’s attraction to losers had firmed up the suspicions left by her notes. I smiled and said, “It’s been good talking to you.”
“Good talking to you, too. Do I get a bill?”
“No, the first hour’s free.”
“Well, look at that. Handsome, a Caddy, and a sense of humor to boot—you do pretty well, don’t you? Financially.”
“I do okay.”
“Modesty—bet you do better than okay. That’s what I wanted for Becky. Security. I told her, what are you wasting your time for, doing dirty work for the county? Finish up your degree, get some kind of license, open up an office in Beverly Hills and treat fat people or those women who starve themselves. Make some money. No crime in that, right? But she wouldn’t hear of it, wanted to do important wo
rk. With people who were really needy.”
She shook her head.
“Saving the bugs,” she said, almost inaudibly. “She thought she was dealing with those potato thingies, but a scorpion got into the jar.”
CHAPTER
24
Her description of Becky as a stickler for the rules didn’t fit with Jean Jeffers’ recollections. A mother’s vision could be overly rosy, but she’d been frank about Becky’s chronic attraction to losers.
Had Becky finally been attracted to the ultimate loser? How loose had things gotten between her and Hewitt?
And what twisted dynamic bound the two of them to G?
Bad love.
Blaming the victim bothered me, but revenge seemed to be the fuel that powered the killer’s engine, and I had to wonder if Becky had been a target of something other than random psychosis.
I drove home straining to make sense of it. No strange vehicles within a hundred yards of the gate, and last night’s anxiety seemed silly. Robin was working, looking preoccupied and content, and the dog was chewing a nylon bone.
“Milo just called from Santa Barbara,” she said. “The number’s on the kitchen counter.”
I went into the house, found an 805 exchange that wasn’t Sally Grayson’s, and punched it. A voice answered, “Records.”
“Dr. Delaware returning Detective Sturgis’s call.”
“One minute.”
I waited five.
“Sturgis.”
“Hi. Just got through talking to Becky’s mother. Becky never mentioned anyone by name, but she did talk about helping a poor unfortunate psychotic who could very well have been Hewitt.”
“No mention of Gritz?”
“Nor of Silk or Merino. One thing that was interesting, though: she said Becky liked to mend broken wings and had a penchant for losers—guys who involved her in dead-end relationships. If you think of Hewitt as the ultimate loser, it supports what we suspected about things getting unprofessional between them. Having said all that, I don’t know that it leads us anywhere.”
“Well, we’re not doing much better here. No school records at Katarina’s house, so either she never kept them or the killer made off with them. We do have confirmation that Myra Evans was Myra Paprock, but it’s a no-go on Rodney Shipler. His tax records show him working for the L.A. Unified School District for thirty years—right after he got out of the Army. Never up here—and I verified it with the S.B. district. No connection at all to the de Bosch school.”
“What about summer vacations?” I said. “School personnel sometimes take part-time jobs during the off-season.”
“Summers he worked in L.A.”
“How long was he in the Army?”
“Fifteen years—staff sergeant, most of it over in the Philippines. Honorable discharge, no blots on his record.”
“He made somebody mad.”
“It doesn’t look like it was someone at the school. In fact, we can’t find any records of anything fishy happening out at the school. No fires or felonies or anything anybody would want to avenge, Alex. Just a few complaints about noise from Bancroft and one vehicular accident that did occur when Myra Evans was teaching there—May of seventy-three—but it was clearly an accident. One of the students stole a school truck and took a joyride. Made it up to the Riviera district and spun off a mountain road. He died, Santa Barbara PD investigated, found no foul play.”
“How old was the student?”
“Fifteen.”
“Vehicular accident off a mountain road,” I said. “Grant Stoumen was hit by a car and Mitchell Lerner was pushed off a mountain.”
“That’s a little abstract, Alex.”
“Maybe not, if matching things—achieving consistency—is part of the killer’s fantasy.”
Pause. “You’d know more about that than I would, but why focus on the school when we’ve got a victim with no connection to it? No obvious connection to de Bosch, period.”
“Shipler could have been connected to the symposium.”
“How? A janitor with a side interest in psychology, or did he sweep up afterward?”
“Maybe it’s the race angle somehow. Shipler was black and de Bosch was a covert bigot.”
“Why would someone pissed off about racism beat a black man to death?”
“I don’t know … but I’m sure de Bosch is at the core of this. The school, the conference—all of it. Merino told Harrison the conference set off something in him—maybe it was seeing de Bosch lauded publicly, when he knew the truth to be otherwise.”
“Maybe, but so far the school’s got a clean record.”
“Bancroft seemed to think it was a hotbed of antisocial behavior.”
“Bancroft isn’t your most reliable witness. Sally says he’s been known to hit the bottle pretty hard, and his world view’s somewhat to the right of the Klan. Compared to his old man, he’s a pussycat. The two of them had a special thing for de Bosch because de Bosch overbid Bancroft Senior for the land the school was built on. When de Bosch broke ground in sixty-two, they tried to mobilize the neighbors against it—disturbed kids running amok. But no one went along with it because the Bancrofts had alienated everyone over the years.”
“The neighbors didn’t mind a school for problem kids?”
“There were some worries, but the lot being vacant bothered them more. Vagrants used to come off the highway, light fires, toss trash, make a mess. Bancroft Senior had dickered with the owner for years, making offers, withdrawing them. De Bosch’s school was an improvement as far as the neighborhood was concerned. Real quiet, no problems.”
“Except for a fifteen-year-old kid in a stolen truck.”
“One incident in twenty years, Alex. Considering that de Bosch dealt with emotionally disturbed kids, wouldn’t you say that’s pretty good?”
“I’d say it’s excellent,” I said. “Exemplary. And one way to keep things so tidy is through firm discipline. Very firm discipline.”
He sighed. “Sure, it’s possible. But if de Bosch was running a torture chamber, wouldn’t there be complaints?”
“Five dead people is a complaint.”
“Okay. But if you want a hostility motive, look at Bancroft. He had a hard-on for de Bosch for over twenty years. But that doesn’t mean he ran around the country murdering everyone associated with him.”
“Maybe he should be looked into.”
“He will be,” he said wearily. “He’s being looked into. Meanwhile, you be careful and sit tight. I’m sorry, Alex, I wish the goddamn pieces had fit together neatly, but it’s turning out to be messy.”
“Just like real life,” I said. “Anything new on Katarina?”
“Coroner still can’t decide if she was conscious or unconscious after those blows to the face. Her baby was, indeed, a twenty-two-week-old normal male, Caucasian. I called the sperm bank, they wouldn’t even verify she was a customer. Sally and I can probably pry some information loose, eventually. Meanwhile, is Robin coming to us? Rick says no problem except for Rover—excuse me, Spike. Dog allergy. But if Robin really wants to take the pooch with her, he can put himself on antihistamines.”
“He won’t need to,” I said. “Robin insists on staying with me.”
“Must be your charm … well, don’t sweat it, I’m sure you’re safe.”
“Hope so.” I told him about the brake lights the previous night.
“Just lights, nothing funny?”
“Just lights. And then the car drove off.”
“What time was this?”
“Nine forty-five or so.”
“Any other cars around?”
“Quite a few.”
“Sounds like nothing. If you see anything funny, call Beverly Hills PD—they protect their citizenry.”
“I will. Thanks for everything.… The kid who went off the mountain, did he have a name?”
“Still on that, huh?” He gave a small laugh. “His name was Delmar Parker and he originally came from New Orleans.�
�
“What was he being treated for at the school?”
“Don’t know, there’s no complete police report, because the case was closed and filed. We’re working from summary cards at the coroner’s office and lucky to find them.… Let’s see … name, date, age, cause of death—multiple traumas and internal injuries—place of birth, N’Awleens … parent or guardian—here it is—the mother … Marie A. Parker.”
“Any address?”
“No. Why? You want to dig up another one?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to dig up anything, believe me. I’m just grasping, Milo.”
Silence. “Okay, I’ll try, but don’t count on it. It was a long time ago. People move. People die.”
I pretended everything was normal. Robin and I ate lunch out by the pool. The sky was clear and beautiful, bracing itself for a smog cloud heading over from the east.
Lifestyles of the rich and fearful.
Terror and anger still gnawed at my spine, but I thought of the people under the freeway and knew I had it damned good.
The phone rang. My service operator said, “There’s a long-distance call for you, Dr. Delaware. From New York, a Mr. Rosenblatt.”
“Mister, not doctor?”
“Mister’s what he said.”
“Okay,” I said. “Put him on.”
She did, but no one answered my hello. A few seconds later a young woman with an all-business voice clicked in and said, “Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer. Who are you holding for?”
“Mr. Rosenblatt.”
“One moment.”
A few seconds later a young voice said, “This is Mr. Rosenblatt.”
“This is Dr. Delaware.”
Throat clear. “Dr. Delaware, my name is Joshua Rosenblatt, I’m a practicing attorney here in New York and I’m calling to ask you to stop phoning my mother, Dr. Shirley Rosenblatt.”
“I’ve been phoning because I was concerned about your father—”
“Then you have nothing to be concerned about.”
“He’s all right?”
Silence.
I said, “Is he all right?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that.” Pause. “My father’s deceased.”
I felt myself deflate. “I’m sorry.”
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