Dear Irene,

by Jan Burke

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just that the child care center had something to do with Mercury Aircraft. And when the kid who was hurt died, we all got sent down here.”

  “Did you see it happen?”

  “No, no. I was on the other side of the playground. But some of the other kids were right there—started screaming. That brought the rest of us running. Ambulance came and took him away. Robbie. That was his name. He died later.”

  “You knew Robbie?”

  He made a face. “Yes. I suppose you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I don’t have any fond memories of Robbie. He was a bully. A little bigger than the rest of us and mean. I was just as skinny then as I am now, and Robbie used to pick on us all the time.”

  “Us?” Mark asked.

  “Oh, any of us that he could intimidate. Jimmy, me, other kids. I don’t remember their names. Only Jimmy. What happened to Jimmy scared me so much, I had nightmares about it for years as a kid.”

  “What happened to Jimmy?” I asked. “I thought Robbie was the one who was killed.”

  He made a gesture of impatience. “Yes, Robbie was the one who was killed. But at the time, we all just thought he had a nasty crack on his head. He went into a coma and died, but that was later. It was the first time I had ever heard of anyone going into a coma, so I guess that part did scare me. I just saw him lying on the ground, all pale and quiet before the ambulance came, but he was still alive then.”

  “So who is Jimmy?” Mark asked.

  “Jimmy Grant. We were friends. His mother was the one they arrested. That’s what scared me. It was just an accident, and all of a sudden, they took Mrs. Grant away and then they took Jimmy. As a kid, I remember being worried that someone would take my mother away, too. I was scared to death of it. I never saw Mrs. Grant or Jimmy after that. Next thing I know, the child care center is closed, and we moved.”

  I tried to imagine the impact those events would have had on Howard Parker as a young boy—a young boy who had already lost his father. To a child his age, the thought of losing his mother would be terrifying. Perhaps it would be terrifying to any child—I remember being inconsolable after seeing Bambi, years before my own mother died.

  “Did you know Jimmy’s mother, Pauline Grant?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Vaguely. I don’t really remember her as much as Jimmy.”

  “Did you ever hear from Jimmy after you moved here?” Mark asked.

  “No, I have no idea what became of him. I don’t even know who took him in. His relatives, I suppose.”

  “Did he have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, none that I remember.”

  “Is your mother still living?” I asked.

  Parker smiled. “Yes, she’s still here in Las Piernas. She’ll probably be able to tell you more than I can.” He gave us her name and number.

  We talked with him awhile about the three victims, none of whom he remembered clearly. We asked about other ideas he might have on Thanatos’ motives, but he had no suggestions. We gave him our cards and thanked him. After waving good-bye to Reed and Vince, we made our way to Justin Davis’s house.

  “If he’s telling the truth,” Mark said, “Parker doesn’t seem to have been a witness to Pauline Grant hurting Robbie Robinson.”

  “No. But at least we learned the name of Pauline’s son.”

  “Oh, we learned a lot. But I was just thinking that Howard Parker may not be a target, since he couldn’t have been one of the ones that testified.”

  “Only two of them testified, Edna Blaylock and Alex Havens. But even though Rosie Thayer didn’t take the witness stand, she was killed. And he tried to kill the guy we’re on our way to see. So who knows what Thanatos is using for his criteria,” I said.

  “Yeah, you’re right. And besides, Thanatos said they drank from Lethe, so maybe Parker just doesn’t remember what role he might have played in it himself.”

  “Let’s hope that Justin Davis has a little clearer memory of it all.”

  21

  JUSTIN DAVIS LIVED in Mason Terrace, a gated community on the cliffs above the beach. The development was built in the early 1980s, a subdivision of what had once been a single parcel owned by one of Las Piernas’s older families. There were only fifteen houses in the entire development, but they were so huge that they still ended up being somewhat crowded together. The gatehouse had lost its human gatekeeper long ago, replaced by a fancy electronic security system. We entered a code that Davis had given us when we set up the appointment; he had told us it could only be used once. We were buzzed through a double set of gates. The gates were apparently designed to prevent a second car from riding through on another car’s tail without clearance.

  He had one of the choice lots, a little larger than most, on the staggered row that lined the cliff. The stark, white stucco house was built on lines drawn by an architect who apparently forgot to carry anything more than a T square that day. There was a patrol car out in front of it, which I’m sure must have thrilled the neighbors. The officers on duty seemed to be expecting us, and merely waved to us as we walked up the front steps.

  The front door was white and unadorned except for a fancy electronic lock—one that had both a key-card slot and number pad on it. We were searching for the doorbell when Justin Davis himself opened the door.

  “Hidden video camera?” I asked.

  “Yes, and a pressure-sensitive doormat,” he said. “Please come in.” He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. He had that kind of lean, muscular sleekness that comes only to those who work at it, and that kind of grace in motion that belongs only to those who are born with it. He was dressed in a gray sweater and jeans, but made them look as if they would be acceptable attire at a coronation.

  Except for a small scar on his cheek, his face was not remarkable, but neither was he plain nor unattractive. He had pale gray eyes and thick, straight black hair, which was cut in a conservative style. He either hadn’t acquired any gray hair yet or his hairdresser knew some neat tricks to make a dye job look natural.

  He took our coats and hung them on a metal object that I assumed to be an advanced form of hall tree, but it could have been artwork pressed into doing double duty.

  High ceilings, skylights, and tall windows gave the house an open and airy feeling. The inside was as white and bare as the outside. A painting here, a vase there, were all that would break up the starkness of white walls, ceilings and carpet. As a result, my eyes were immediately drawn to these few objects. I found myself anticipating the paintings as soon as I saw the edge of a frame, ready to savor any kind of respite from the blankness that governed the rest of the house.

  But soon we rounded (not literally, since it seemed nothing was round in that house) a corner and came into a room that made me feel a certain appreciation for the spare decoration that had gone before. A wall of windows facing the Pacific gave Justin Davis an incomparable ocean view. The sun was just finishing its business day, and the rich sunset colors displayed beyond Davis’s windows and balcony were stunning. The Pacific and sky combined to make a natural mural.

  We declined his offer of a drink. He seated us on a low white couch at one end of the room, near a fireplace. A fire was burning behind a glass screen, somehow as removed from us as the ocean, but warm and fragrant.

  Davis poured himself a scotch on the rocks and took a seat across from us, in a chair that matched the couch. His voice, when he spoke, was soft and low. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, Miss Kelly. If you hadn’t contacted the police about that letter today, I wouldn’t be here to welcome you.”

  “I’m just glad you didn’t have a chance to fly that plane before the police found you,” I said.

  “Perhaps you could give us some details about what happened this afternoon,” Mark suggested.

  The corner of his mouth quirked up for about a nanosecond. “Wouldn’t the police tell you?”

  “Yes, but it would be good to hear from you, a
s well.”

  “Certainly. I understand that Miss Kelly and—Lieutenant Harriman, is it?”

  “Detective Harriman,” Mark said easily. “I’ll let him know you wanted to give him a promotion, though.”

  “Thanks. Perhaps I’ll contact his superiors. I really would like to see that the man’s efforts are appreciated.”

  “I’m sure Miss Kelly will see that he’s rewarded,” Mark replied. “He’s definitely been more than cooperative with certain members of the press.” Mark managed not to laugh as he said this. Barely. He was avoiding eye contact with me at all cost.

  “So what did happen at the airport today?” I asked.

  “Detective Harriman said the police were already looking for me when you received the letter. He said that you had helped him prepare a list of people who might be . . .” His voice trailed off, and he took a swig of scotch, then got to his feet. He walked over to the windows, looking out at the darkened sea. “I wasn’t in my office today, so they hadn’t located me yet.” His voice caught, and he paused again. He looked back to us, embarrassed. “Sorry. I think all of this is just now hitting me.”

  “Take your time,” Mark said.

  He came back to the chair and then looked over at me, giving me another quick smile. Two or three nanoseconds this time. He didn’t strike me as someone who found it easy to smile, not even for that long. “Where was I?” he asked.

  “You were saying that you weren’t in your office when the police looked for you,” I said. “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I own a security systems company. Everything from industrial to home security.”

  “And your office didn’t know how to locate you this morning?” Mark asked.

  “I took the day off. My business has reached a point where I don’t have to spend every single day in the office. It’s a nice switch after years of never being home, always being in the office. In those first years, I was often there all day and night—except for a couple of hours at the gym. I’m a big believer in exercise—and even then I knew that if I wanted to be a good manager, I needed the stress-relief a workout brought me. Later, I’d catch a quick nap on my office sofa and be ready to roll.

  “But now I have a team in there that I can trust, and I have time to pursue my real interests—especially flying and skydiving. I own my own plane. A Cessna 182.”

  He stood up, and again he offered us a drink. When we declined, he refilled his own and took a sip before continuing.

  “Today, I didn’t even get close to my plane. Airport Security met me at my car and walked me into their office. A Detective Baird was there, and he asked me to wait for a moment. Then Detective Harriman came in, and explained that he had asked my mechanic, Joey Allen, to check my plane while Airport Security looked on. Poor Joey. It’s his first day back from a two-week vacation in Hawaii, and he gets hit with investigations and questioning—I probably caused his whole schedule to go hell.”

  “It took a long time to find the problem?” Mark asked.

  “No. Joey saw it within minutes. Someone had put the wrong fuel in my plane.”

  “How could he tell?”

  “Color. To explain it in simple terms, each type of fuel is color-coded; it’s a method of preventing mix-ups in fueling, a mistake which can be deadly. So by looking at the color, Joey knew that the wrong fuel had been mixed in with the one I would usually use. I probably would have been able to start the plane, even take off, but I would have had engine trouble in no time.”

  “Is Joey the one who would normally fuel the aircraft?”

  He shook his head. “I take care of that sort of thing myself. I know my own plane, and I pack my own chute. I use Joey’s help mainly for safety’s sake—to check my work and to take care of problems that are beyond my skill level.”

  “When did you last fly the plane?” I asked.

  “About a week ago.”

  Well, I thought, that lets Joey off the hook. “And no one saw anyone near your plane since then?”

  “No. But over the course of a week, any number of people could have been near it and not attracted any special attention. The airport is busy and there are a lot of Cessnas out there.”

  We asked him a few more questions, none of which got us much of anywhere on the matter of the airport, but Mark did get some great quotes for his story. We started asking about the Olympus Child Care Center.

  “Oh, yes, I remember it. Probably as much from hearing my mother talk about it as being there, to tell the truth. There were a lot of changes in our lives as a result. We moved to Las Piernas, for one thing. But as for the incident itself, I can’t tell you much. I remember a group of kids yelling at Mrs. Grant, remember the ambulance coming for the kid who got hurt—Robbie, I think it was. Not much else.”

  He said he didn’t remember any of Thanatos’ victims. “No, I haven’t had contact with any of them. It’s been a long time. I don’t think I would have recognized any of them if I saw them on street. We were all just kids.”

  “What about Jimmy Grant?” I asked.

  He was quiet for a moment, swirling his drink. “What kind of monster wouldn’t pity Jimmy Grant? He was sort of an outcast to begin with. Didn’t have many friends—he was the one I thought about when my mother used to tell the story. Funny.

  “Maybe it was because I didn’t understand enough about death to feel sorry for Robbie. I thought, well, he’s gone. But Jimmy—I remember people talking about how Jimmy would never see his mother again. She killed kids, they said, so they wouldn’t ever let her near Jimmy again. I don’t think anyone ever heard what happened to him.” He sighed. “As I said, who couldn’t understand what that must have been like for an eight-year-old boy?”

  “Is your mother still living?” Mark asked.

  He was quiet again. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “Is my mother still living. Good question.”

  “You don’t know?” I asked, surprised.

  He gave me another one of those faint smiles.

  “Sorry, that’s a philosophical question at this point. Peggy Davis, the body, is alive. Peggy Davis, the mind, is dead. She suffers from a severe memory-loss disorder. She’s in Fielding’s Nursing Home—a very good one, but still a nursing home.

  “Putting her there was a difficult decision to make. I guess in her own way, she made it for me in October. Mother was being taken care of by a private nurse in her own home. This was about the tenth nurse I had hired within the past year. I paid top dollar, but unfortunately, my mother’s condition is one that causes her to be violent and verbally abusive at times.

  “Her memory loss has become much, much worse this past year as well, so she’s harder to care for. Anyway, she wandered out of the house when the nurse got a phone call. Managed to catch a bus. I didn’t find her for another five hours—downtown, in Sheffield Park. She had a scrape on her head, never knew how or where she got it. She didn’t know me. She didn’t even know who she was. That was about all I could take.”

  We talked a little longer, as much to take his mind off his problems with his mother as to gather any information. When we were leaving, he thanked me again, bestowing one last, rare smile on me.

  It didn’t endure any longer than the other smiles. When I looked from the car to his doorway, where he stood watching us, I thought he looked sad. For a moment, I was certain that sad look meant that he had more to tell us, but dismissed this as the product of an imagination still suffering from lack of visual stimuli.

  * * *

  “WHAT’S ON YOUR mind, Irene?” Mark asked.

  I realized that I had been brooding as we made the long drive from Justin Davis’s house toward Don Edgerton’s place.

  “Not very good company, am I, Mark? Sorry. I was just thinking about Peggy Davis.”

  * * *

  THE ANCIENT GREEKS believed that the dead drank from the River Lethe and were transformed from beings with remembered lives into shades, existing in a state of oblivion.

  Now, it seems,
some of us come to that river long before we die.

  22

  THE TWO DOBERMANS behind the chain-link fence were barking at us as if it were something personal—loud and unrelenting, their lips curled and bodies bristling with focused tension. It was clear that they wanted to release that tension by ripping our throats open.

  Show no fear, the old wisdom says.

  You have to have a lot of faith in fence-builders to trust the old wisdom.

  Across the street, three young men leaned against a car parked on a lawn, huddling in their jackets and smoking cigarettes. We were the best show on the block. They weren’t the only ones with front row tickets. Two detectives sitting in an unmarked car were clearly amused by this spectacle of the intimidation of the press. Mark recognized them, but didn’t know them by name.

  “Shit,” Mark said. “I hate this.”

  I could tell it was more than an expression of irritation or embarrassment. No one else could hear what we said to each other over the racket the Dobermans were making, so I ventured to ask him if he was afraid of dogs.

  He gave me a tense shrug. “I was attacked by one when I was ten. I’m a married man, or I’d moon those two jerks in the car so you could see my scars.”

  A porch light came on, and a man opened the front door. The dogs became even more determined, jumping against the fence and causing the metal to sing. “Are you from the Express?” the man yelled out to us.

  “Yes!” we shouted in unison.

  He whistled once and the dogs immediately stopped barking.

  “Are you Mr. Edgerton?” Mark asked.

  The man nodded. He said something to the dogs in a low voice, some words I couldn’t make out, and they ran over to his side. “You can come on in now,” he called to us.

  I glanced at Mark. “Mr. Edgerton,” I called, “I wonder if you could pen the dogs for me.”

  “They’re very well-trained,” he answered. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “It’s okay, Irene,” Mark said, but I wasn’t convinced.

  “Mr. Edgerton, I’m sure those dogs are very well-trained, but I’ve got a real fear of dogs. If you can’t pen the dogs, maybe we could meet you somewhere else.”