So Locking lived close to the place where Mandy had plied her trade, maybe with the ultimate bad John.
Next came Sunset Plaza with its Oscar-party fashion boutiques and sidewalk cafes crowded with would-be actresses and the poorly shaved vultures who wait for them to get rich or die. If any of the women found screen work, chances are it would be with their clothes off. One way or another the men would be watching.
Londonderry Place was a block beyond the last cafe, just past Ben Franks's 24-hour coffee shop, a steep, skinny, aerobic hike above the traffic. High, canted lawns, good-sized houses, most with less architecture than a bus stop.
Locking's was two blocks up, one story, white, unmodified since its fifties birthdate. This high up, there was bound to be a city view but the house had low, slatted windows. Arrow plants and yuccas and gazania crowned the sloping frontage. Concrete steps led to the front door and an alarm-company sign was staked at the top.
I walked up a very long driveway that continued past the house. Space for half a dozen vehicles but only one
was parked there: black BMW 530L Through an open wooden gate I saw a blue pool and concrete decking, an outdoor lounge chair. Thick, low-hanging ficus trees cast black shade.
Nothing luxurious but, still, the rent had to be two thousand a month.
I climbed the steps to the door. No mail piled up but it was too early for today's delivery. The car said Locking might be home.
I rang the bell and waited. Music or something like it came through the door. Loud, pounding music. Screaming vocals.
Thrash metal. Locking's choice of background as he tormented the rat.
I knocked louder, rang again, still no response. Descending to the driveway, I looked back at the street. No neighbors out. In L.A., they rarely are.
I slid past the BMW, and walked along the side of the house. More slatted windows.
The pool was fifties-big, an oval that took up ninety percent of the backyard. The rest was a hill of ivy disappearing under the gloom of the ficus trees -two of them, sixty feet tall and nearly as wide, with thick roots that had worked their way under the pool decking, cracking it, lifting it up. The lounge chair was rusted, as were two others just like it. Not far away were a gas barbecue and an unfurled garden hose, kinked so badly it was useless.
The music much louder from back here.
A fiberglass roof darkened sliding-glass doors left an inch ajar.
I went over and looked in. The room looked to
be a den. Well-stocked wet bar, pub mirrors with ale trademarks, hanging glasses, big plastic ashtrays. Lights out except for green numbers dancing on a black face. Six-foot stereo stack. The CD player going. The music at steam-drill level.
Trying to ignore it, I put my hand against the glass and squinted. Alarm panel in a corner. Another green light: unarmed.
The gray carpeting was grubby. Black leather couches, black-lacquer tables, Lucite sculpture of a nude woman bending submissively. One wall was taken up by a huge chrome-framed litho of a melon-breasted, roughed woman in leather tights. Motorcycle cap pulled down over one of her eyes. The other winked. Opposite stood a free-form gray-granite fireplace with ragged edges. No logs. Black beanbag chairs. A single CD case on one.
Panic-attack drumbeat, tortured bass, jet-engine guitars. Brain-scraping vocals, over and over.
No sign of Locking.
I slid the door open a few inches wider, stuck my head in. 'Hello!'
Cigarettes, butts and ashes on the carpet. On one of the tables were piles of magazines.
I took a few steps closer, shouted another 'Hello?'
The magazines were a mix of psychology journals I recognized and things you didn't need a Ph.D. to understand.
Full-color covers: nipple-pink, lip-red, coifblond, pubic-hair umber. The oyster glisten of fresh ejaculate.
The Journal of Clinical Practice and that.
Locking's idea of homework?
On another table stood a popped can of cola, a nearly empty bottle of Bacardi, and a glass filled with something diluted, barely tinted amber. Melted ice cubes, the drink poured hours ago.
One glass. Party for one.
Maybe Locking had rum-and-Coked himself into a deep enough stupor not to hear the noise.
I shouted again.
No answer.
I tried once more. The room stank of nicotine and a durable relationship with takeout food. The big black ashtrays on the bar were overflowing. Vegas casino logo on the rim of one, the place Ted Barnaby had worked.
The CD on the chair from a band called Sepultura.
Spanish for 'grave.'
Cute. The image.
I turned off the music.
Silence. No protest.
'Hello?'
Nothing.
Not the time to explore further: Half the people in L.A. own guns and Locking's connection to Cruvic plus the tough-punk image made him likely to be one of them. If he'd managed to sleep through the racket, waking him could be dangerous. At the very least, I was guilty of criminal trespass.
I turned to leave and noticed something under one of the ashtrays.
Polaroid snapshot. One corner pinned.
Aligned perfectly with the counter edge.
Positioned.
As if for display.
Photo of a woman.
Bare to the waist, arms stretched high above her head, bound at the wrist and tied to a wooden headboard. Her smallish breasts were tugged upward by the pressure, stretching pale skin over a delicate ribcage. Tight deltoids, goosebump skin.
Her face was covered by a black leather hood studded with zippers.
Two open zippers in the nasal region, zippered mouth-slit fastened shut.
The eyeholes open, too.
Two bright, brown discs shone through.
Below them, two erect nipples, pinched by a pair of hands.
Male hands.
Two different men.
The one on the left, striped with hair, connected to a bare arm.
Small anchor tattoo midway up the forearm.
The hand on the right, smooth and hairless, emerging from a ribbed black cuff.
A ring on that one. Silver skull, red glass eyes.
I inched closer to the photo.
And saw Locking.
On the floor behind the bar.
Propped in a corner, legs splayed, arms limp. One hand curled inward, the fingers of the other outstretched.
Blue nails. Blue lips.
The skull ring grinned back at me.
His head had been thrown back so that his neck arched toward the ceiling. Cheekbones in relief, long hair mussed.
A black silk bathrobe did a poor job of covering his thin, white body.
White except for the raspberry lividity splotches where the blood had settled after he'd stopped breathing.
Mouth agape.
In life he'd been smug but he'd left this world looking surprised.
Crusted hole in the center of his high forehead.
Rusty stripes on his face, trailing down to his hairless chest, browning the black silk where it hit the robe.
Blood on the carpet and on the wall behind him.
Blood under the body.
Lots of blood; why hadn't I seen it right away?
His eyes were half-shut, dry, and dull like those of a fish left on the dock. Long lashes mascaraed by gritty blood.
I'd seen plenty of death. The last time, the man I'd killed... self-defense.
I could hear myself breathing.
Suddenly, the room smelled sour.
The position of his head caught my attention. It should have dropped.
But it was tilted upward, leaning against the wall, as if in prayer.
Positioned?
All around him, more Polaroids.
Lots more. Framing the corpse.
The same woman, bound and masked.
Close shots that obsessed on her thighs, her chest, her belly and below.
Full v
iews that exposed her entire body, long and slim and pale, spread-eagled on a white-sheeted bed.
Legs knotted to the footboard, hips thrusting upward as if trying to buck a rider.
Shots of her alone, others with the same two hands.
Pinching, squeezing, kneading, spreading, probing.
Gynecologic close-ups.
And one facial close-up, placed near Locking's right hand.
The hood removed.
Blond hair pinned tightly and pulled away from the face.
Lovely face, cultured.
The open mouth expressing fear or arousal. Or both. The brown eyes wide, bright, focused and distant at the same time.
Even exposed that way, Hope Devane's emotions were hard to read.
My eyes shifted back to Locking's corpse.
Something else on the floor.
A cardboard box. More photos. Hundreds of them.
Neat lettering on the side in black marker.
SELF-CONTROL STUDY, BATCH 4, PRELIM.
When Locking had carried the carton from Seacrest's house he hadn't even bothered to close it. Hiding the pictures under a top layer of computer printout.
Big joke on the cops.
And Seacrest had been in on it. He had warned Locking.
The tattooed arm. Co-players.
A buzzing sound made me jump.
A shiny green fly had entered through the open door. It circled the room, alighted on the bar, took off again, inspected an ashtray, sped toward me. I swatted it away and it veered off, studied itself in a Beck's mirror, flew back. Hovering above Locking's body, it dove and landed on a patch of abdomen.
Pausing, then climbing up to the lifeless face.
To a bloody spot.
It stayed there. Rubbed its forelegs together.
I went to look for a phone.
' It is not,' Philip Seacrest repeated, 'a crime.' He might have been lecturing to students, but Milo was no sophomore.
A West L.A. interrogation room. A video camera hummed on auto but Milo's pen kept busy. I was alone in the observation cubicle, with cold coffee and frozen images.
'No, it's not, Professor.'
'I don't expect you to understand but I believe people's personal lives are just that.'
Milo stopped writing.
'When did it begin, Professor?'
'I don't know.'
'No?'
'It was not my idea... never my propensity.'
'Whose propensity was it?'
''Hope's. Casey's. I was never sure which of them actually initiated.'
'When did you get involved?' said Milo, picking up
one of the Polaroids on the table and flicking a corner with his index finger.
Seacrest turned away. Moments ago, his gray herringbone jacket had been off and the sleeve of his white shirt had been rolled up, revealing the anchor tattoo. Now he was fully dressed, the jacket buttoned.
He began picking at his untidy beard. His first reaction upon seeing the snapshots had been shock. Then wet-eyed resignation followed by hardened resolve. He hadn't been arrested, though Milo had offered him an attorney during questioning. Seacrest had turned him down curtly, as if insulted by the suggestion. As the interview ground on, he'd managed to build upon the indignation.
'When did you get involved, Professor?'
'Later.'
'How much later?'
'How could I possibly know that, Mr Sturgis? As I told you, I have no idea when they began.'
'When did you get involved in absolute terms?'
'A year, year and a half ago.'
'And Locking was your wife's student for over three years.'
'That sounds right.'
'So it may have been going on for two years before you started.'
'It,' said Seacrest, smiling sourly. 'Yes, it might have.'
'So what happened?' said Milo. 'The two of them just walked in one day and announced hey, guess what, we've gotten into some B-and-D games, care to join?'
Seacrest flushed but he kept his voice even. 'You wouldn't understand.'
'Try me.'
Seacrest shook his head and flexed his neck from side to side. The smile hadn't totally faded.
'Something amusing, Professor?'
'Being brought here is perverse. My wife's been murdered and you concern yourself with this kind of thing.'
Milo leaned forward suddenly, staring into Seacrest's eyes. Seacrest startled but composed himself and stared back. 'Perverse, trivial, and irrelevant.'
'Humor me, Professor. How did you get involved?'
'I - you're right about it being a game. That's exactly what it was. Just a game. I don't expect you to be tolerant of... divergence, but that's all it was.'
Milo smiled. 'Divergence?'
Seacrest ignored him.
'So they asked you to diverge with them.'
'No. They - I happened upon them. One afternoon when I was supposed to be lecturing. I felt a touch of something coming on, canceled class, came home.'
'And found the two of them?'
'Yes, Mr Sturgis.'
'Where?'
'In our bed.' Seacrest smiled. 'The marital bed.'
'Must have been a big shock.'
'To say the least.'
'What'd you do?'
Seacrest waited a long time to answer. 'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'That's right, Mr Sturgis. Nothing.'
'You didn't get angry?'
'You didn't ask me how I felt, you asked what I did. And the answer is nothing. I turned around and walked out.'
'How'd you feel?'
Another delay. 'I really can't say. It wasn't anger. Anger would have been futile.'
'Why?'
'Hope didn't take well to anger.'
'What do you mean?'
'She had no tolerance for it. Had I displayed anger, things would have gotten... confrontational.'
'Married people fight, Professor. Seems to me you had a damned good reason.'
'How understanding of you, Mr Sturgis. However, Hope and I never fought. It didn't suit either of us.'
'So what did you mean by confrontive?'
'A war. Of silence. Interminable, frigid, seemingly infinite stretches of silence. Psychological exile. Even when Hope claimed to forgive, she never forgot. I knew her emotional repertoire the way a conductor knows a score. So when I saw the two of them, I maintained my dignity and simply walked away.'
'And then what?'
'And then...' Seacrest pulled at his beard again, 'someone closed the door and I assume they... finished. I'm sure you find my reaction contemptible. Cowardly. Wimpish. No doubt you think you would have reacted differently. No doubt you'll be going home tonight to a dutiful wife and dutiful children - probably somewhere in the Valley. A charmingly conventional 818 lifestyle.'
Milo sat back and pressed a thick finger over his lips.
Looking suddenly tired, Seacrest covered his eyes with both hands, pulled down at the lids, let the hands trail down his cheeks and fall in his lap.
'It was go along, Mr Sturgis, or...'
'Or what?'
'Or lose her. Now I've lost her anyway.'
He slumped. Began to weep.
Milo waited a long time before saying, 'Can I get you something to drink, Professor?'
Headshake. Seacrest looked up. Then at the Polaroids. 'May we end this? Have you heard enough about the sick divergent world of intellectuals?'
'Just a few more questions, please.'
Seacrest sighed.
Milo said, 'When you found your wife and Locking you didn't figure you'd already lost her?'
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 11 - The Clinic Page 31
