Milo said, "Parole's usually three years. How come he did six?"
"Part of a deal. After he got out of Quentin, he asked to leave the state. The Department said okay if he could obtain structured placement and double his time. He found some sort of Indian reservation out in Arizona, I think. Did three years there, then moved somewhere else, another state I don't recall exactly and did three there."
"Why the move?" I said.
"From what I recall," he said, "the first place was funded by a grant that got canceled, so he had to move on. The second place was Catholic-I guess he figured unless the Pope canceled, he'd be okay."
"Why the move to L.A.?"
"I asked him about that and he didn't have much of an answer not one that made sense, anyway. Something about original sin, a lot of mumbo-jumbo about salvation. Basically what I think he was getting at was that he'd sinned here against your missing lady so he had to be a good boy here to even the score with the Almighty. I didn't push him on it like I said, he wasn't even obligated to show up. It was a formality."
"Any idea what he did with his time?" said Milo.
"Far as I know he was over at that mission, full time. Cleaning toilets and washing dishes."
"Eternal Hope."
"Yeah, that's the one. Found himself another Catholic place.
From what I could tell, he never left his room, never consorted with known felons or used dope. The priest confirmed it over the phone. If I'da had sixty-three like him, my job would have been a breeze."
"Did he ever talk about his crime?" I said.
"I talked to him about it-first time he came in. Read from his sentencing report, the judge calling him a monster and all that. I liked to do that with all of them at the outset. Establish some ground rules, let them know I knew who I was dealing with, eliminate a lot of nonsense. Most of them leave stir still claiming they're innocent as Baby Jesus. You try to break through that delusion, get some insight going, if there's gonna be any hope. Like doing psychoanalysis, right?"
I nodded.
"Did McCloskey develop any insight?" said Milo.
"Didn't need to. He came in breathing guilt, told me straight out he was worthless and didn't deserve to live. I told him that was probably true, then read the sentencing report out loud to him. He just sat there and took it-like it was some kind of medical treatment that was for his own good. About as close to a walking dead man as I'd ever seen. After a couple of times with him I found myself actually getting sorry for him-the way you feel sorry for a dog that's been hit by a car. And that's something that doesn't come easy to me. I've worked a long time fighting my sympathies."
"He ever say why he burned her?" said Milo.
"Nope," said Bayliss. "And I asked him about that, too. Because his file said he'd never owned up to any motive. But he didn't have much to say-kind of mumbled and wouldn't get into that."
A scratch of the goatee. Bayliss removed his glasses, wiped them with a handkerchief, and replaced them. "I tried to work on him a bit think I phrased it to him in terms of his duty to her, how once he'd done a crime like that, she owned him. In a spiritual sense-I was trying to appeal to his religious side. Whenever they tried the religious stuff I turned it right back on them. But it didn't work with him-he just sat there and stared at the floor. It was all I could do to keep a conversation going for the ten minutes. And he wasn't faking it after twenty-five years I can tell. We're talking nothing. Total zombie."
"Any idea why?" I said. "What got him to that state?"
Bayliss shrugged. "You're the psychologist."
"Okay," said Milo. "Thanks. Anything else?"
"Nothing. What's the story with the lady?"
"She left her house, drove off I and hasn't been heard from since."
"Left when?"
"Yesterday."
Bayliss frowned. "One day gone and they hire a "It's not your typical situation," said Milo. "She's been housebound for a long time. Hardly left her home."
"How long's a long time?"
"Since he burned her."
"She's been severely agoraphobic since then," I said.
"Oh. That's too bad." He looked as if he meant it. "Yeah, I can see why her folks would be worried."
We walked back outside. Bayliss looked thoughtful. He accompanied us all the way to the car.
"Hope you find her soon," he said. "If there was something I could tell you about Joel that would help you, I would. But I doubt he has anything to do with it."
"Why's that?" said Milo.
"Inertia. The dead zone. He's like a snake that got stepped on one time too many and lost its poison."
I drove home on Olympic. Though his seat was pushed all the way back, Milo positioned himself with his knees drawn up. Opting for discomfort. Looking out the window.
At Roxbury, I said, "What's up?"
He kept his eyes on the landscape. "Guys like McCloskey. Who the hell knows what's real and what's not? Bayliss is so sure the asshole's run out of steam, but he admitted he barely knew him.
Basically, he took McCloskey at face value because the sleaze showed up voluntarily and didn't make waves your typical bureaucratic response.
Shit flushes through the system and as long as the pipes don't back up, no one cares.
"You think McCloskey bears further watching?"
"If the lady doesn't show up real soon and no new leads develop, I'm gonna mosey on by again, try to catch him off guard. But before I do that, I'm gonna get to a phone, call in some markers, and try to find out if the scumbag's been consorting with any known felons. You got anything planned for yourself?"
"Nothing urgent.
"If you feel like it, take a run out to the beach. Check out the second house, just in case she's bunked out there and not telling anyone. It's a long drive and I don't want to kill that much timecourse I don't think it'll lead anywhere."
"Sure."
"Here's the address," he said.
I took the slip of paper and continued to drive.
He looked at his watch. "Might as well leave soon. While the sun's still out. Play sleuth and work on your tan hell, take out your boogie board and catch a wave."
"Watson goes gnarly?"
"Something like that."
No messages at home. I stayed long enough to give the fish a heavy feed, hoping to keep them away from the few egg clusters that remained.
Then back on Sunset, heading west, by two-thirty.
Day at the beach.
I pretended it was going to be fun.
I hit Pacific Coast Highway, saw blue water and brown bodies.
Robin and I had done this drive, so many times.
Linda and I had done it once. The second time we'd been out together.
Alone was different.
I stayed away from those thoughts, paid attention to the Malibu coastline. Never the same, always inviting. Kama Sutra real estate.
Probably why people went into hock in order to get a piece of it.
Living with black flies and corrosion and highway mayhem, and waxing amnesiac about the inevitable cycle of mud slides, fires, and killer storms.
Arthur Dickinson's piece was choice. Five miles up from Point Dume, past the sprawling public beach at Zuma, and a left turn onto Broad Beach Road just past the rodeo rink at Trancas Canyon.
Western Malibu, where the tacky motels and surf shops have long disappeared, ranches and tree farms fill the landside of Pacific Coast Highway, and the dinner hour is dominated by sunsets of unlikely hue.
The address Milo had given me took me to the far end of the road. A half mile of white silicon heaped into sine-wave dunes.
Fiftyby-a-hundred-foot mounds of dubious geology going for four million plus. At that price, architecture becomes a competitive sport.
The Dickinson/Ramp place was a one-story saltbox with silvered wood sides and a flat brown gravel roof, behind a low chainlink fence that provided no privacy and gave the public visual access to the beach.
The house wa
s flanked on both sides by free-form, two-story ice cream scoops. One was vanilla stucco, still under construction; the other, pistachio trimmed with raspberry. Both lots were blocked by prison-bar electric gates. Green tennis-court tarp behind Vanilla. A FOR SALE sign in front of Pistachio. Alarm warnings on both.
But no security system for the saltbox. I lifted the latch and walked right in.
No landscaping, either-just a thorny mess of orange bougainvillea climbing part of the fence. Instead of a garage, a cement pad over sand, wide enough for two vehicles. A yarn-colored VW van with a ski rack on its roof was parked carelessly, taking up both widths.
Nowhere to conceal a Rolls-Royce.
I approached the house, absorbing the heat of the sand through the soles of my shoes. Still wearing a jacket and tie and feeling like a salesman for something. I could smell the tang of the ocean, see the high-tide spray percolate over the dunes. A V-formation of brown pelicans cut through the sky. A hundred feet beyond the breakers, someone was windsurfing.
The front aoor was brine-eaten pine with a knob that had greened and crusted. The windows were cloudy and moist to the touch and someone had finger-written CLEAN ME on one of the panes.
Glass wind chimes dangled over the doorway, swaying and striking one another, but the roar of the ocean killed their song.
I knocked. Got no answer. Knocked again, waited, and went over to one of the streaked windows.
Single room. Unlit. Hard to make out details, but I squinted and discerned a small, open-shelved kitchen to the left, combo bedroom and living area filling the rest of the space. Futon unrolled on a dull pine floor. A few pieces of furniture bargain rattan with Hawaiian print cushions, beanbag chair, plain-wrap coffee table. On the beach side, sliding glass doors led to a shaded patio. Through them I could see a couple of folding lounges, a rise of dune, and tealcolored water.
A man stood out on the sand, directly in front of the patio.
Knees bent, back rounded, curling a barbell.
I walked around.
Todd Nyquist. The tennis instructor was braced ankle-deep in the sand, wearing skimpy black briefs, a leather power-lifter's girdle, and fingerless weight gloves, straining and grimacing as he hefted and lowered. The iron discs on the bar were the size of manhole covers.
Two on each end. His eyes were clenched shut, his mouth was open, and his long yellow hair was wet and limp and drooping down his back.
Sweating and grunting, he kept lifting, keeping his back immobile, putting all the strain on his arms. Curling in rhythm to the beat that blared from a boombox near his feet.
Rock "n' roll. Thin Lizzie. "The Boys Are Back in Town."
Manic beat. It had to be torture keeping up with it. Nyquist's biceps were engorged flesh carvings.
He did six more solid reps, then a few shaky ones, until the music stopped. Letting out a hoarse cry that could have been pain or triumph, he bent his knees further and, with his eyes still closed, lowered the barbell into the sand. He exhaled noisily, began to straighten, shook his head and sprayed sweat. The beach was nearly empty. Despite the weather, only a handful of people strolled along the shoreline, mostly with dogs.
I said, "Hello, Todd." He hadn't come fully upright and the surprise nearly knocked him off his feet.
He recovered gracefully, planting his soles, then bouncing like a dancer. Opening his eyes wide, he stared, processed, and gave a wide smile of recognition.
"The doctor, right? I met you over at the big house."
"Alex Delaware." I came closer and held out my hand. My shoes filled with sand.
He looked at his gloved hands and kept them up in the air.
"Wouldn't, if I were you. Pretty rank, Doc."
I lowered mine.
"Just doing my pumps, he said. "What brings you out here?"
"Looking for Mrs. Ramp."
"Here?" He seemed genuinely baffled.
"They're looking for her everywhere, Todd. Asked me to come down here and check."
"That's really weird," he said.
"What is?"
"Uh, the whole thing. Her disappearing. It really is freaky.
Where could she be?"
"That's what we're trying to find out."
"Yeah. Right. Well, you won't find her here, that's for sure.
She's never been here. Not once. At least not since I've been living here." He turned toward the ocean, stretched, and inhaled. "Can you imagine owning a place like this and never being here?"
"It is gorgeous," I said. "How long have you been living here?"
"Year and a half."
"You rent the place?"
He smiled wider, as if proud to possess some important secret.
Removing the gloves, he fluffed his hair. More sweat droplets flew.
"It's a trade thing," he said. "Tennis and personal training for Mr. R. in return for a place to stay. But it's not really my crib. Mostly I'm other places, traveling around-last year I went on two cruises.
Up to Alaska, and down to Cabo. Did an exercise class for old ladies.
I also give lessons at the Brentwood Country Club, and I've got lots of friends in the city. I sleep here maybe once or twice a week."
"Sounds like a good deal."
"It is do you know what this place would rent for? Even being dinky."
"Five thousand a month?"
"Try ten for an all-year-round, eighteen to twenty during the summer, and that's with the heat not even working. But Mr. and Mrs. R they've been really cool about letting me stay here when I want, just as long as I make the drive over to Smogsville and give Mr. R. a good workout when he wants."
"He never comes here?"
His smile eroded. "Not really. Why should he?"
"No reason. It just seems like a good place for a workout."
We heard female conversation and turned toward it. Two stringbikinied girls, around eighteen or nineteen, were walking a sheepdog. The dog kept veering away from the water, tugging on its leash, making the girl on the other end work. She fought for a while, finally gave up and let the dog lead her diagonally across the beach. The other girl jogged along. The dog stopped straining when it reached the property line of the vanilla scoop. The three of them headed our way.
Nyquist hadn't taken his eyes off them. Both had manes of long, thick, sun-coarsened hair. One blonde, one redhead. Tall and long-legged, with perfect thighs and laughing California girl faces straight out of a soft drink commercial. The blonde's bikini was white; the redhead's, acid green. When they were a few feet away, the dog stopped and coughed and began shaking itself. The redhead bent and petted it, revealing heavy, freckled breasts.
Nyquist whispered, "Whoa." Raising his voice: "Yo! Traci!
Maria!"
The girls turned.
"Hey," he said, still shouting, "how's it going, ladies?"
"Fine, Todd," said the redhead.
"Hey, Todd," said the blonde.
Nyquist stretched and grinned and rubbed a washboard abdomen. "Looking good, ladies. Whatsamatter, old Bernie still afraid of the water?"
"Yeah," said the redhead. "What a chicken." To the dog: "Aren't you, baby? Isn't Bernie just a little old wussy chicken-dog."
As if comprehending the insult, the dog turned away, kicked sand, and coughed again.
"Hey," said Nyquist, "sounds like he's got a cold."
"Naw, he's just chicken," said the redhead.
"Vitamin C'll do something for that. And B-12-crush it up and put it in his chow."
"Who's this, Todd?" said the blonde. "A new friend?"
"Friend of the landlord's."
"Oh," said the redhead, smiling. She looked at the blonde, then at me.
Gonna raise Todd's rent?"
I smiled.
Nyquist said, "One sec, Doc," and bounded over to the girls.
Putting his arms around them, he drew them in, as if for a football huddle. They seemed surprised but were pliant. He muttered to them, smiling all the while. Rubbing the back of the b
londe's neck.
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 06 - Private Eyes Page 31
