Self-Defense

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Flipping through the Rostale directory, I looked for his name in both the yellow pages and the personal listings but found nothing.

  House of cards.

  But what Doris had just told me tightened the connection between Karen Best and Sanctum one tiny notch.

  Maybe Sherrell Best’s intuition about the Sheas was right on target.

  Doris was an eager conversationalist. There’d been no way to bring up Karen’s disappearance with her, but it was worth another try.

  No telling what a little positive reinforcement could accomplish.

  CHAPTER

  16

  The names of the other Sand Dollar people:

  Sue Billings

  Mary Andreas

  Leonard Korcik

  I got home and looked them up. Neither of the women was in the book, but Korcik, L. T., was listed in Encinal Canyon.

  A man answered. “Tree farm.”

  “Leonard Korcik, please.”

  “This is Len.”

  “Are you the same Leonard Korcik who used to work at the Sand Dollar?”

  “No, that’s my dad. Who’s this?”

  “I’m working with the police clearing some old missing persons cases. A girl named Karen Best disappeared a number of years ago. Your dad was questioned about it, and I just wanted to check a few things out.”

  “My dad died three years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. Did he ever mention Karen Best?”

  “Who?”

  “Karen Best.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Twenty-one years.”

  He laughed. “I was seven years old, then. I never heard nothing.”

  “What did your dad do at the restaurant?”

  “Worked the bar part time and cleaned up. We got a tree farm. You need any trees, call me.”

  Click.

  Wendy Embrey phoned just before five. “Can’t be sure, but my bet is she’ll be back in your court.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The minute I told her I was authorizing her release, she closed up—friendly but clearly nothing to say.”

  “What makes you think she’ll want to see me?”

  “I asked her if you’d visited and she lit up. If I were you, I’d be checking my transference meter regularly.” Straining for graciousness, but an edge had come into her voice.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “When I was there she said something about not needing any therapy at all.”

  “Great,” she said. “There’s some A-plus reality testing for you. Well, you can only lead them to water—lack of insight isn’t grounds for extending the seventy-two. Anyway, her father called me. Since I’m probably out of the picture, I thought I’d pass that along.”

  “When did he call?”

  “This morning.” She read off a number very quickly.

  “Was there a message?” I said, copying.

  “Nope, just to call him. Good luck. She’s getting out tonight.”

  A woman answered. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Delaware returning Mr. Lowell’s call.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m his daughter’s psychologist.”

  “I thought she was seeing Dr.—”

  “Embrey. She’s off the case.”

  “Oh. . . . Well, if you’re the doctor, Mr. Lowell will have a meeting with you.”

  “About what?”

  “Lucretia, I assume.”

  “I couldn’t do that without Lucy’s permission.”

  “Hold on.”

  A few seconds passed; then a very loud, deep voice said, “Lowell. Who’re you?”

  “Alex Delaware.”

  “Delaware. The first state, an ignoble little backwater. What are you, French Canadian? Acadian? Coon-ass?”

  “How can I help you, Mr. Lowell?”

  “You can’t help me at all. Maybe I can help you. My boy snitched on the girl’s attempt to snuff herself, the implication being, of course, that it was my damned fault, nammer, nammer, nammer. I doubt she’s changed much, the constipated squall, basic character never does, so I can give you some piercing insights. Unless you’re one of those biopsychiatric Frankenmaniacs who believes character is all a matter of serotonin and dopamines.”

  “Which of your sons called you?”

  “The opium fiend, who else?”

  “Peter?”

  “Selfsame.”

  “Where’d he call from?”

  “How would I know? My girl took it. And don’t try arraigning me at the Tribunal of Ruined Progeny. Guilt may be your stock in trade, but it’s not my currency. I’ll see you not tomorrow but the day after. An hour at the most, significantly less if you annoy me. You’ll come to me; I don’t travel.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I can’t talk to you without Lucy’s permission.”

  “What?” He laughed so loud I had to move the phone away from my ear. “Bedlam is the New Olympus? The lunatics rule the asylum? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Confidentiality, Mr. Lowell.”

  “There are no secrets, boy. Not in the massage-message age. McLuhan’s books are a shitbin—furor loquendi—but it’s true we’re all staring up each other’s assholes. . . . Very well, you’ve lost your chance. Salaam, as the Arabs say, to hell with everyone.”

  “If Lucy does consent, I would like the opportunity to talk to you. May I call you back?”

  “May you?” He laughed again. “At your own risk. You may also pass Go or eat raw fish with the Japs or take three baby steps or fuck yourself with a garden tool.”

  Robin and I had dinner out on the deck. The tide had whipped the sand like cream, and the beach at twilight was a graying plane of peaks and troughs. I couldn’t stop thinking of my conversation with Lowell.

  Had he missed a dose of lithium, or was he cultivating nuttiness for attention?

  He probably didn’t get much attention anymore.

  Why had he called? His offer to provide insights was almost comical.

  The opium eater. The hunch about Peter confirmed.

  Maybe a shattered career and old age had finally caused Lowell to survey the ruins of his family.

  One child dead, the other three estranged.

  An addict, an attempted suicide. . . .

  Ken seemed a nice enough fellow, but his antipathy for his father was right on the surface.

  “What’s on your mind, honey?” said Robin.

  “Nothing much.”

  She smiled and let her hand rest on my bicep. I tried to chase away clinical thoughts and turned to her. A trace of color remained in the sky—a paint smear of salmon, capping the sinking sun. It played on the auburn in her hair and made her eyes coppery and catlike.

  “Still at work?” she said, stroking.

  “No more.”

  I drew her to me and kissed her deeply. Her tongue lingered in my mouth.

  “Carpe foxum,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Seize the babe.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  Despite a decent night’s sleep, my first thought upon waking was: Lucy’s out of the hospital.

  I wasn’t happy with the idea of her trying to make it on her own. But if I pushed she’d probably back away, so I decided to give her till noon before calling.

  In the meantime, I’d catch Milo up on what Doris Reingold had told me.

  He hadn’t come into the station yet and no one picked up at his home. I called the business number he used for his private moonlighting and the tape answered: “Blue Investigations.” I left a message.

  It was just after nine; Robin and Spike had been gone for over an hour. I drove to the market at Trancas and bought groceries, thinking about all the places off the highway where a girl could disappear. Just as I got home, Milo phoned.

  “I’m at Lucy’s place. Can you come out right now?”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Physically, she’s fine. Just come out; we’ll talk once y
ou get here. Here’s the address.”

  The street was three blocks north of Ventura Boulevard. The block was treeless and sun-fried, all apartments, mostly mega-units with underground parking and security gates that would give an experienced burglar pause for about twenty seconds. FOR RENT banners and real estate brokerage signs on most of them. Promises of “move-in incentives.”

  Lucy’s building was older and smaller, a two-story quadriplex of flesh-tone stucco and dark red wood. Two units on top, two below, each open to the street, with individual entrances set back from a covered walkway. Another FOR RENT sign staked in the lawn near the ground-level mailbox.

  Her apartment was number 4, upstairs. Number 3 was vacant. Her welcome mat featured a chipmunk saying “Hi!” The windows through which Ken had seen her kneeling in the kitchen were masked by shades. The doorjamb around the hinges was splintered a bit and nailed together—Ken’s breaking in to save her—but the door was locked. I rang the bell and Milo parted the shades, then let me in.

  The front of the apartment was divided into living and dining areas. The kitchen was a cubby with avocado cabinets and white appliances. Barely enough room to kneel. All the walls were off-white, not that different from the Psych unit at Woodbridge.

  The oven was a squat little two-burner Kenmore, maybe fifteen years old. The dining room table was fake oak surrounded by three folding chairs. In the living room were a tufted blue velvet love seat and two matching chairs, a glass-topped coffee table, and a 14-inch television and a VCR on a rolling stand.

  On top of the TV was a single photo, of Lucy and Peter. Head shots, no identifying background. She was smiling, he was trying to.

  Lucy sat on the blue couch, barefoot, wearing jeans and a baggy gray sweatshirt that said L.A.’s the One. Her hands gripped each other, and she looked up and gave me a struggling smile. Milo went and stood behind her. His jacket was over a chair. He wore his revolver in a waist holster.

  He looked at the coffee table. “Look, but please don’t touch.”

  A short stack of magazines had been pushed to one side. Next to it was a sheet of yellow ruled legal paper; next to that, a white envelope.

  On the paper was a note, typed off-center, crowding the left margin and the top of the page:

  FUCK YOU BITCH IN HELL

  JOBE DIES, YOU DIE TWICE

  Below that was something affixed to the page with transparent strips of cellophane tape.

  Dark shriveled things, the size and shape of olive pits.

  “Rat turds,” said Milo. “Pending lab analysis. But I don’t need a tech to tell me.”

  “Mailed or delivered?”

  “Delivered.”

  “Delivered right inside,” said Lucy. “I found it on the table when I got home last night.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Three in the morning. They let me out at one, but then there was paperwork and I left some clothes up in my room and had to go back. When I got here, the door was unlocked, but I just figured Ken or the paramedics had forgotten to lock it.” Trying to be calm. Her hands were white.

  “You came home alone?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t notice it because I was tired, just wanted to sleep. I fell off, then I woke up around five to get a glass of water and saw it.”

  “Who has keys to the apartment?”

  “Just Peter and myself. And the landlord, I guess.”

  “Who’s the landlord?”

  “Some old woman who lives in Port Hueneme,” said Milo. “Her handyman patched the jamb. I just spoke to him, and he claims he locked it when he was through.”

  “Anything weird about him?”

  “Mr. Gonsalvez?” said Lucy. “No, he’s a sweetie—and he couldn’t have written that, he barely speaks English.”

  Milo nodded. Lucy hugged herself.

  I found his eye. “Is the lab on its way?”

  “Not yet.” To Lucy: “Why don’t you pack those few things.”

  “Can I take a shower? I really don’t think anyone was in the bathroom.”

  “Sure.”

  She left. A door closed and a few moments later the sound of the shower filtered through, like heavy distant rain.

  Milo sat down where she’d been. He pointed to the chair without the jacket, and I took it.

  “What do you think?” he said softly.

  “The timing is pretty convenient,” I said. “Out of the hospital a few hours and she gets you right back here. But what about our theory about Peter’s loan sharks?”

  “Loan sharks tend to escalate the violence. Why would they gas her, than regress to this?”

  “Maybe they came to do serious harm but didn’t find her home. Or maybe they and Peter have nothing to do with it. What if it is someone connected to Shwandt—remember how the Bogettes threatened justice? Or some other nut who’s latched on to Lucy—someone who noticed her at the trial.”

  “How would anyone know she was away?”

  “They watched her—stalked her. Remember, she leaves her drapes open.” Tension in my voice. “Is there anything that makes you doubt her?”

  “No, that’s the thing. She’s calmed down now, but when I first got here she was petrified. Shaking. Either genuine terror or great acting, Alex. And she doesn’t have a typewriter, so the note couldn’t have been written here. Where else would she write it between two and five in the morning? Where the hell would she get rat shit?”

  “That’s reminiscent of Shwandt.”

  He nodded.

  “Was anything else disturbed?” I said.

  “No.”

  I took in the skimpy decor.

  “You should see the bedroom,” he said. “Single mattress on a board, a cheapie end table, nothing on the walls. Her clothes aren’t bad, but she doesn’t have much.”

  “Nunnish.”

  He looked at me sharply.

  I said, “So what’s bugging you about it?”

  “I just don’t trust my instincts with her.”

  He dropped his chin into one palm. Black and gray stubble popped through the pockmarks.

  “How long have you been here?” I said.

  “Since five-forty.”

  It was after eleven.

  “Why’d you wait so long to call me?”

  “Didn’t want to interrupt your beauty sleep.”

  “Seriously.”

  He frowned and pushed hair off his forehead. “After I calmed her down, we talked. Capital T. I told her I was gay—I know you warned me, but it just seemed right. I followed my instincts; once in a while it works.” Looking at me.

  “Okay. How’d she take it?”

  “Almost as if she was relieved.”

  “Maybe she is,” I said. “On two counts. She’s not personally rejected, and she can be with you while avoiding the mess of a sexual relationship.”

  “Whatever. . . . Sorry if I jumped the gun, Alex. I didn’t want to screw anything up. But sitting there, holding her, she’s crying, her head on my shoulder, I could just see something happening, and all she needed was another rejection. I figured—”

  “Obviously, you figured right.”

  His smile was slow to form. “Mr. Validation—ever think of working with people?”

  “Are you going to call the lab to do a crime scene?”

  “If I do, this could get really messy. Once those wheels start rolling, it’ll be impossible to keep it quiet. Someone’s bound to talk: Bogeyman juror harassed. . . . It’s only a matter of time before the press dogs find out and start peeing all over it. Then they start focusing on her and learn she tried to kill herself and got committed. Who’d love that?”

  “Shwandt’s lawyers,” I said. “Mentally ill juror. Grounds for instant reversal.”

  “Especially coming on the heels of the copycat. My bet is they’d get the whole thing thrown out.”

  “Lucy would be humiliated,” I said.

  “Big time.” He got up and paced.

  I looked over at the note. “Is
there any conceivable way this could be related to the copycat? Could the Bogettes or someone else in Shwandt’s camp have hatched up some scheme to get his conviction reversed?”

  “Who the hell knows? Those girls are crazy as shit. Low-IQ fanaticism, the worst kind.”

  “It would sure be a low-IQ plan. No other jury will ever let Shwandt walk the street again.”

  “Yeah, but if he’s in court, they get to see him. For all I know, they’re planning to liberate him out of there.”

  I read the note again. “ ’Die twice.’ Could that mean humiliation as well as the real thing?”

  He shrugged. The shower stopped.

  “Okay,” he said. “Till we clear this up, priority one is keeping her safe. If she manufactured this, the worst thing is I get snookered. So where do I stash her? She says she’s got no close friends and no family other than him.” Glancing at the picture on the TV. “And he is a junkie, by the way.”

  “I know,” I said. “His father told me.”

  “When did you speak with him?”

  “Yesterday. I tried to get hold of you to tell you. I have some other stuff to talk about too, but let’s figure out what to do with Lucy first.”

  “I could put her in a hotel, but any place above a fleabag is gonna eat into her money pretty damn fast.”

  “What about Ken? He’s in real estate—deals with distressed properties. Even if he doesn’t have anything himself, he might know of a low-cost, short-term rental. Here or up in Palo Alto. Maybe she should go out of town for a while.”

  “It’s a thought,” he said. “She talked about him a little, wanting to thank him for saving her but not knowing how to approach him. How weird it was having a brother she didn’t know. Then she changed the subject to the Puckster. Worried that he hasn’t called.”

  “Worried, not angry?”

  “Worried. I got the feeling she’s been worrying about him for a long time.”

  “I’m sure she has,” I said. “She say anything more about him?”

  “No, and I didn’t push. . . . Okay, can you reach Ken?”

  “I’ve got his card.”

  The bedroom door opened and Lucy came in the room, toweling her hair.

  “Definitely nothing else missing,” she said. “My stuff’s all intact.”