The ultimate danger.
He pulled to the curb and an ambulance passed and Dopplered to silence.
Silence had been Irit's world.
Had she been cued into some internal universe, able to feel the vibrations of her own heartbeat?
He'd been thinking about her all day and into the night, imagining and supposing and replaying the scene. But when he began the drive to his friend's house he forced himself to stop because he needed to concentrate on the present.
Still, so many distractions. This city . . . this neighborhood, all the changes.
Don't be shocked.
He turned off onto a night-black side street, then another, and another, until he found himself in a completely different world: dim, silent, the big houses austere as bureaucrats.
His friend's house looked the same, except for the FOR SALE sign staked in front.
It was good he'd caught him in time.
Surprise!
He pulled into the driveway, behind the dark van.
Touching the gun, he looked around again, got out, alarmed the car, and walked up the flower-lined pathway to the paneled front door.
Ringing the bell, he uttered his name in response to the shouted “Who is it?”
The door opened and he got a face full of smile.
“Hey!”
He stepped in and the two of them embraced briefly. To his friend's left was an old mahogany mail table against the wall. On it, a large manila envelope.
“Yeah, that's it.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. Got time to come in? Coffee?”
“Sure. Thanks for that, too.”
His friend laughed and they went into the kitchen of the big house.
The envelope in his hand, stiff and dry.
The guy had come through. Taking risks.
But when had anything worthwhile ever come easy?
He sat and watched as his friend poured coffee, saying, “Easy drive over?”
“No problem.”
“Good. Told you it got bad.”
“Things change.”
“Yeah, but they rarely improve. So . . . you're back in the game. From the looks of it we've got plenty to talk about.”
“That we do.”
The hand stilled. “Black, right?”
“Good memory.”
“Not as good as it used to be.” The hand paused again. “Maybe that's for the better.”
10
“It's affecting my work,” said Helena. “I see a suicide attempt wheeled into the E.R. and I want to scream, Idiot! I watch the surgeons open a gunshot wound and start thinking about Nolan's autopsy . . . he was so healthy.”
“You read the report?”
“I called the coroner until someone spoke to me. I guess I was hoping they'd find something— cancer, some rare disease— anything to justify it. But he was in the pink, Dr. Delaware . . . he could have lived a long time.”
She began crying. Pulled a tissue from her purse before I could get to the box. “The damn thing is,” she said, catching her breath, “I've thought about him more in the last few weeks than all the years before combined.”
She'd come straight from the hospital, still wearing her uniform, the white dress tailored to her trim frame, her nametag still pinned.
“I feel guilty, dammit. Why should I feel guilty? I never failed him because he never needed me. We didn't depend on each other. We both knew how to take care of ourselves. Or at least I thought so.”
“Independent.”
“Always. Even when we were little kids we went our separate ways. Different interests. We didn't fight, we just ignored each other. Is that abnormal?”
I thought of all the genetically linked strangers who'd passed through my office. “Siblings are thrown together by chance. Anything from love to hate can follow.”
“Well, Nolan and I loved each other— at least I know I loved him. But it was more of a— I don't want to say family obligation. More of a . . . general bond. A feeling. And I loved his good qualities.”
She crumpled the tissue. The first thing she'd done upon arriving was hand me insurance forms. Then she'd talked about the coverage, the demands of her job— taking time to get around to Nolan.
“Good qualities,” I said.
“His energy. He had a real—” She laughed. “I was actually going to say “love for life.' His energy and his intelligence. When he was young— eight or nine— the school tested him because he was goofing off in class. Turned out he was highly gifted— something like the top half-percent and he'd been tuning out because he was bored. I'm not stupid, but I'm not even remotely in that league . . . maybe I'm the lucky one.”
“Being gifted was a burden for him?”
“It's crossed my mind. Because Nolan didn't have much patience and I think that had to do with his intelligence.”
“No patience for people?”
“People, things, any process that moved too slowly. Once again, this was back when he was a teenager. He may have mellowed when he was older. I remember him always railing about something. Mom telling him, “Honey, you can't expect the world to go at your pace,— could that be why he became a cop? To fix things fast?”
“If he did that could have been a problem, Helena. There are very few fast fixes in cop work. Just the opposite: Cops see problems that never get solved. Last time you said something about conservative political views. That could have led him to police work.”
“Maybe. Although, once again, that's the last phase I knew about. He could have been into something completely different.”
“He changed philosophies often?”
“All the time. There were times he outliberaled Mom and Dad, radical, really. Just about a Communist. Then he swung back the other way.”
“Was all this in high school?”
“I think it was after the satanic phase— probably his senior year. Or maybe his freshman year in college. I remember his reading Mao's Little Red Book, reciting from it at the table, telling Mom and Dad they thought they were progressive but they were really counterrevolutionary. Then for a while he got into Sartre, Camus, all that existential stuff, the meaninglessness of life. One month he tried to prove it by not bathing or changing his clothes.” She smiled. “That ended when he decided he still liked girls. The next phase was . . . I think it was Ayn Rand. He read Atlas Shrugged and got totally into individualism. Then anarchy, then libertarianism. Last I heard he'd decided Ronald Reagan was a god, but we hadn't talked politics for years so I don't know where he ended up.”
“Sounds like adolescent searching.”
“I guess it was, but I never went through it. Always middle-of-the-road. The boring child.”
“How'd your parents react to Nolan's changes?”
“They were pretty cool about it. Tolerant. I don't think they really ever understood Nolan but I never saw them put him down.” She smiled. “Sometimes it was funny— the passion he put into each new phase. But we never made fun.”
She crossed her legs.
“Maybe the reason I never went through any of that was I felt Nolan was so unpredictable that I owed it to Mom and Dad to be stable. Sometimes it did seem that the family was divided into two segments: the three of us, and Nolan. I always felt close to my parents.”
She swiped at her eyes with the tissue. “Even when I was in college I'd go places with them, go out to dinner with them. Even after I was married.”
“And Nolan wasn't part of that?”
“Nolan stopped hanging out with us when he was twelve. He always preferred to be by himself, do his own thing. Now that I think about it, he always kept his life private.”
“Alienated?”
“I guess so. Or maybe he just preferred his own company because he was so smart. Which is another reason becoming a cop seems so strange. Who's more establishment?”
“Cops can be pretty alienated as a group,” I said. “Living with all that violenc
e, the us-them mentality.”
“Doctors and nurses develop an us-them, too, but I still feel part of society.”
“And you don't think Nolan did?”
“Who knows what he felt? But life must have been pretty damn bleak for him to do what he did.”
Her voice was tight, dry as kindling.
“How could he, Dr. Delaware? How could he get to the point where he didn't feel tomorrow was worth waiting for?”
I shook my head.
“Dad's depressions,” she said. “Maybe it's all genetic. Maybe we're just prisoners of our biology.”
“Biology is strong but there are always choices.”
“For Nolan to make that choice he must have been profoundly depressed, wouldn't you say?”
“Men sometimes do it when they're angry.” Cops sometimes do it when they're angry.
“Angry about what? Work? I've been trying to find out more about his work record, see if he went through any bad work situations. I called the police department to get hold of his file and they referred me to his original training officer, a Sergeant Baker. He's at Parker Center, now. He was nice enough, said Nolan had been one of his best trainees, there'd been nothing out of the ordinary, he couldn't understand it either. I also went after Nolan's medical records, contacted the department insurance office and used some of my nursing skills to pry them loose. Back when I was still hoping for a disease. Nolan hadn't been treated for any medical conditions but he had seen a psychologist for two months before he died. Up til a week before. So something was wrong. A Dr. Lehmann. Do you know him?”
“First name?”
“Roone Lehmann.”
I shook my head.
“He's got an office downtown. I left him several messages but he hasn't called back. Would you have any problem calling him?”
“No, but he may not break confidentiality.”
“Do dead people have confidentiality?”
“It's an open question but most therapists don't breach even after death.”
“I guess I knew that. But I also know that doctors talk to doctors. Maybe Lehmann would be willing to tell you something.”
“I'll be happy to try.”
“Thank you.” She handed me the number.
“One question that I have, Helena, is why Nolan transferred from West L.A. to Hollywood. Did Sergeant Baker say anything about that?”
“No. I didn't ask him. Why? Is that strange?”
“Most officers consider West L.A. a plum. And Nolan went from the day shift to the night shift. But if he liked excitement, he could have wanted an assignment with more action.”
“Could be. He did like action. Roller coasters, surfing, motorcycling. . . . Why why why, all these whys. It's stupid to keep asking questions that can't be answered, isn't it?”
“No, it's normal,” I said, thinking of Zev Carmeli.
She laughed, a jarring sound. “I saw this cartoon in the paper, once. That Viking, Hagar the Horrible? He's standing on a mountaintop, with rain and lightning all around, holding his hands up to the heavens, shouting, “Why me?' And down from the heavens comes the answer: “Why not?' Maybe that's the ultimate truth, Dr. Delaware. What right do I have to expect a smooth ride?”
“You have a right to ask questions.”
“Well, maybe I should do more than ask. There's still Nolan's stuff to go through. I've been putting it off, but I should start.”
“When you're ready.”
“I'm ready now. After all, it's all mine, now. He left everything to me.”
She made an appointment for next week and left. I called Dr. Roone Lehmann's number and gave my name to his service, asking for the office address.
“Seventh Street,” said the operator, reciting a number that put it near Flower, in the heart of the downtown financial district. Unusual location for a therapist but if he got lots of referrals from LAPD and other government agencies, I guess it made sense.
Just as I hung up, Milo called, his voice charged with some kind of energy.
“Got another case. Retarded girl, strangled.”
“Pretty quick—”
“Not from the files, Alex. I'm talking brand-new, here and now. Caught the radio call a few minutes ago and I'm headed over to Southwest Division— Western near Twenty-eighth. If you come by now you might get a look at the body before they take it away. It's a school. Booker T. Washington Elementary.”
11
Southwest Division was twenty miles and a universe away from the park where Irit Carmeli had lost her life. I took Sunset to La Cienega, headed south down San Vicente, and picked up the Santa Monica Freeway east at La Brea. Exiting at Western, I covered the next few blocks of inner city with relative speed. Few cars were on the street as I passed shuttered buildings and burned-out lots that hadn't been rebuilt since the riots and maybe never would be. The sky was very pale gray, almost white, looked as if it had given up on blue.
Washington Elementary was old, dun-colored, and cruelly graffitied. Set on acres of potholed playground, the entire property was surrounded by twelve-foot chain-link fencing that hadn't prevented vandals from pretending they were artists.
I parked on Twenty-eighth, near the main gate. Wide open but guarded by a uniform. Squad cars, technical vans, and the coroner's station wagon had converged at the south end of the playground, between the monkey bars and the swings. Yellow tape divided the lot in two. On the northern half children ran and played under the eyes of teachers and aides. Most of the adults watched the activity across the field. Few of the kids did and the yard was filled with laughter and protest, the scrappy doggerel of childhood.
No media cars, yet. Or maybe a murder down here just wasn't good enough copy.
It took a while to get past the uniform but finally I was allowed to make my way to Milo.
He was talking to a gray-haired man in an olive suit and writing in his notepad. A stethoscope hung around the other man's neck and he talked steadily, without visible emotion. Two black men with badges on their sportcoats stood twenty feet away, looking at a figure on the ground. A photographer snapped pictures and techs worked under the swing set with a portable vacuum, brushes, and tweezers. Other uniforms crowded the scene but they didn't seem to have much to do. Among them was a short, bearded Hispanic man around fifty, wearing gray work clothes.
As I came closer, the black detectives stopped chatting and watched me. One was fortyish, five nine and soft-heavy, with a head shaved clean, bulldog jowls, and a dyspeptic expression. His jacket was beige over black trousers and his tie was black printed with crimson orchids. His companion was ten years younger, tall and slim with a bushy mustache and a full head of hair. He wore a navy blazer, cream slacks, blue tie. Both had analytic eyes.
Milo saw me and held up a finger.
The black detectives resumed their conversation.
I took a look at the dead girl on the field.
Not much bigger than Irit. Lying the same way Irit had been positioned, hands to the sides, palms up, feet straight out. But this face was different: swollen and purplish, tongue extending from the lower left corner of the mouth, the neck circled by a red, puckered ring of bruise.
Her age was hard to make out but she looked in her teens. Black, wavy hair, broad features, dark eyes, some acne on the cheeks. Light-skinned black, or Latino. She wore navy sweatpants and white tennis shoes, a short denim jacket over a black top.
Dirty fingernails.
The eyes open, staring sightlessly at the milk-colored sky.
The tongue lavender-gray, huge.
Behind her, a foot of rope hung from the top bar of the swing set, the end cut cleanly. No breeze, no movement.
The coroner left and Milo approached the black detectives while waving me over. He introduced the heavy one as Willis Hooks, his partner as Roy McLaren.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Hooks. His hand was baked leather.
McLaren nodded. He had clear, nearly coal-black skin, and clean features. Turning bac
k to look at the dead girl, he set his jaw and chewed air.
“Was she left that way or cut down?” I said.
“Cut down,” said Milo. “Why?”
“My first thought was she looks like Irit. The position.”
He turned to the body and his eyebrows rose a millimeter.
“Irit's yours?” said Hooks.
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