INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL

by Richard B. Schwartz

  The kitchen was a mix of textures. The main wall was brick. Brighton had seen the materials before in a house in Newport Beach: sections of thin bricks mounted on board that is then secured to the wall. Mortar is used for grout and the final product looks like authentic, standard-weight brick. Upscale decorating. The soffit above the sink was painted a muted maroon; the counters were granite, the cabinets cherry and the kitchen table clear glass . There was no artwork.

  He took out his recorder and looked at Diana for approval. She nodded; he clicked it on and hit the play back button on the answering machine. The message was just as she had remembered it. There was desperation in her brother’s voice: “Diana, it’s David. This project I’m working on . . . I just can’t do it, I can’t. I have to talk to you immediately. I’ll be at the studio. Come at once.”

  There were no other messages on the machine. Brighton played it back on his recorder.

  “The urgency in his voice . . . that wasn’t David’s way,” Diana said. “Something was wrong, very wrong. If only I had responded sooner . . . I was at the VA hospital all day on Saturday. By the time I got the message it was . . . too late. He should have called my cell; I would have gotten it instantly.”

  “So it was something like fifteen hours between the time that he called and the time that you arrived at his studio,” Brighton said.

  “Yes, I worked at the hospital all day, got some dinner and then went back to the wards that evening to check on a few patients. It was very late when I got home. I got David’s message and tried to call him, but there was no response. I drove to Laguna and found him . . . dead.”

  “I don’t think you should blame yourself or your brother,” Brighton said. “From the condition of his body I would say that he died very soon after placing the call to you.”

  “If I had been able to talk to him I could have learned what was happening to him and called the Laguna police,” she said.

  Brighton didn’t respond right away. He knew that what she said was true. Finally he spoke. “I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll do some checking, make some calls. I won’t just let this drop.”

  “I’d appreciate that very much,” she said. “David could not have killed himself.”

  He nodded silently. “Before I leave, could I ask one more favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with the case. It’s more a personal thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “When we were on the freeway . . . you told me about the portrait your brother did of you. I’d like to see it.”

  “It’s in my bedroom,” she said. “At the end of the hall.”

  He walked past the living room and saw a number of pieces hanging there beneath a line of miniature track lighting: an old man in a stand of scrub pine, balancing against a rusted, black pickup as he tightens the strings on his scuffed boots; an elderly Asian woman in a neatly-buttoned, faded cloth coat waiting for her bus; women with straw hats and pastel scarves, sipping iced tea as they rest in chalk-white deck chairs; student pastry chefs with tilted hats tracing lines across the tops of napoleons and lining charlotte molds with strips of yellow ladyfingers; a female nude with a towel around her shoulders, sitting on a bare, bleached deck with her eyes closed in the afternoon sun; the face of a man in close up, his lips narrow and dry but with bright white teeth and the beginnings of a smile.

  The picture of Diana had been done many years before. It was hung on the wall opposite her bed, above a table with a large, signed photograph of her brother. The inscription read, “To my beloved sister, Diana.” The portrait was smaller than he had expected, approximately 12” x 20”. Diana was thirteen or fourteen at the time. The figure was 3/4 length. She was wearing a loose-fitting sundress that clung to her just enough to outline her young woman’s body. She was holding a small note between her fingers, its prominence in the portrait suggesting its importance. Her hair was longer then, swept back behind her neck and across her shoulders and back. She seemed absorbed, perhaps even sad, but comfortable with herself, her eyes turned toward the left and the lids half-closed, alone with her thoughts.

  “He said it was clichéd, assembly-line stuff.”

  Startled to hear her voice, Brighton turned to see Diana standing in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her footsteps along the hall.

  “I don’t know very much about art, but I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I think the picture of you is how all teen-aged girls would like to see themselves. There’s no awkwardness. There’s maturity but there’s still youth. Innocence but not ignorance or silliness.”

  “You sound as if you could be an art critic,” she said.

  “No. I just see a lot of people who wish they looked different than they do. When I was a kid and I brought home my school photographs I could always tell when my parents liked them. They would say that they looked good and that they also looked like me. I figure that’s what we want from somebody when we ask them to do a portrait of us. We want to look good but we also want people to be able to recognize that it’s us. It seems to me that’s what your brother was trying to do here.”

  She smiled and for a brief moment he could see in her eyes a part of her that her brother saw when he sketched her years earlier. “I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I can,” Brighton said. “I’ll need to speak to the Chief. Any approach to the D.A. in a case like this would go through him. We’ll see what we can do.”

  “I appreciate it,” Diana said. “I know what you’re saying and what that man Sloat said, but you’ve got to believe me; I knew my brother and he would never have taken his own life.”

  Brighton nodded sympathetically, but didn’t speak.

  She thanked him again for driving her home and he told her to get some rest, that she’d had to absorb a lot of pain in a short time and that she should let it sink in so she could move beyond it later. He dealt with this kind of thing all the time, he said, and he knew what worked and what didn’t work. She smiled appreciatively and walked him to the door. When he got into the cruiser with Albers she was standing in the living room window, watching. Brighton raised his right hand to the side of his face and Albers pulled away from the curb. “How’d it go, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a tape of the brother’s voice. I’ll play it for the Chief when we get back to Laguna. It doesn’t sound good, but unfortunately I doubt that there’s much we can do.”

  “I guess I don’t have any choice but to take the 210 and then drive through Pasadena again to get back to the 5,” Albers said. He was making small talk, moving the dead body of David Bennett into some remote file in the back of his head.

  “No. Maybe we’ll stop somewhere on the parkway. Get some coffee.”

  “Right,” Albers said. “How’s the sister doing?”

  “She’s not saying much. She and her brother were close, a lot closer than usual. She told me that her brother told her everything. I think that’s nice. You take my family, hell, one half barely speaks to the other half . . .”

  “I know what you mean,” Albers said. “With ours it’s always an uneasy peace . . .”

  Diana got out of the shower, her body moist with steam, toweled off and slipped into some gray jeans, a dark blue tee shirt, and running shoes. She combed her hair back and pinned it, picked up her purse, and walked to the hall closet. She pulled out a light beige jacket and slipped it on. Then she reached back to the left corner of the closet, slid a garment bag out of the way, and searched the darkness, her hand eventually finding the vintage Walther .32 pistol that had been a gift from her brother. It hung from the end of the closet bar in a simple sling holster. She paused to recall the procedure in which she had been briefly trained, checked to make sure that the weapon was fully loaded, slipped it carefully into her purse, and hurried to her car.

  Chapter Three

  The Harbor at Dana Point
/>   Sunday, 7:45 a.m.

  The morning sky was still dense with clouds as Detective Tom Deaton made his way along the line of guest slips at the harbor. He was looking for his father’s boat, which carried his mother’s name, the Katharine Elisabeth. A 47’ Chris Craft with twin diesels and two staterooms, it was now his father’s home, his cottage in the Laguna hills on permanent loan to Tom.

  His grandfather, Ralph Deaton, had brought the family from northeastern Kentucky to Orange County after the war. His aunt had moved to Ohio with her own family a generation later, but his father, Wayne and mother Kathy had stayed in California. Wayne began his adult life as a fisherman, but as business and demography changed, the wooden boats on the salt were replaced by 60’ motor yachts; the family homes at the outer extremity of L.A. commutes rose in cost from the low 6 figures to the low 7 and the bluffs above the Pacific were blanketed with industrial parks, shops, and restaurants, as the smells of fish and light industry were replaced by the smells of new money.

  Wayne Deaton had followed the market, first managing the ferry service to Catalina and eventually working his way up to the position of harbor master at Newport Beach. The long slip that had once contained a group of fishing boats, including his own, now served a 72’ Hatteras that cost more than the combined value of the 27 houses in his father’s neighborhood in the Bourbon County town of Paris, Kentucky.

  When his wife Kathy died in 2005, Wayne turned over his house to his son Tom and began sleeping in the boat that bore her name. She had lived to see it and enjoy it and somehow he felt her presence there more than he did in their cottage in the hills.

  “Dad . . . ?” Tom said.

  “I’m in the galley; come on down.”

  “I felt the boat list to starboard a little when you stepped onto the deck. It was a good feeling. How about some coffee?”

  “Sounds great,” Tom said. “It’s a little cool out.”

  “I’ve got some bagels too and some of that whipped cream cheese you like,” Wayne said.

  “I’ll have one if you’ll join me,” Tom said. The coffee was hot and black, with wisps of steam drifting on the surface and over the edges of the oversized mug. Tom sipped it carefully.

  “Have a seat,” Wayne said. “I’m been looking forward to seeing you. I figured it might be fun to sail down the coast rather than having you face the morning traffic.”

  Tom smiled. The thirty-five minute morning drive was an easy shot, compared to the water route. His father had come in the previous afternoon and logged some quality time with his friends in the local marinas.

  “The coffee tastes great,” Tom said. “So does the bagel. When did you get the toaster oven?”

  “A couple of weeks ago,” Wayne said. “Your mother would have approved. She always thought I needed to be domesticated a little.”

  “How’s the boat?”

  “She’s a kind mistress,” Wayne said. “As long as I spray off the chrome and teak at least twice a day and have her serviced three times more often than an antique Austin-Healey, she’s fine. I figure she doesn’t require more than about 6 hours of attention a day, which works out with my schedule. I’m thinking about getting a dog to fill the rest of the available time. Now that we’ve put in that patch of grass and plastic fire hydrants for the yachters it wouldn’t be too hard to walk it a couple times a day. I need a homebody with a large bladder. Wally Carter recommended a miniature bull terrier.”

  “Might even protect you,” Tom said.

  “I’d have to protect him. They cost a small fortune.”

  “We always had nice dogs,” Tom said.

  “Yes, we did,” Wayne said. “They were always your mother’s dogs, but that was OK. She spent more time with them. How are you feeling, Tom?”

  “Better than I thought I would,” he answered. “I’m not yet as steady on my feet as I’d like to be, but that should change. I figure I’m at about 75 or 80 percent.”

  “It’s good to see you vertical again,” Wayne said.

  “The first couple weeks are the hardest. You don’t know whether the operation is going to work or not. I mean . . . you figure it will help, but maybe it won’t do the complete job . . . or maybe there’s no such thing as a complete job under the circumstances. You feel helpless lying there, waiting for results . . . any results. Then you start to notice changes and you wonder how many more changes there will be . . . whether you’ve reached the first step or the final plateau. I appreciated your checking in on me so often.”

  “I was worried,” Wayne said. “Who else would help me drink this kind of coffee?”

  “It’s good, Dad. It really is.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Wayne said. “It seems to taste better when you’re working. I suppose it’s because you need it more. When you’re semi-retired you miss the . . . I don’t know . . . the structure . . . the rhythms of your life . . . the breaks, the vacations, the holidays.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve had to look at the calendar to remind myself what day of the week it is.”

  “Your Aunt Jean sent me a bottle of scotch for Christmas. Probably cost her a small fortune. Cask strength it said on the label. I didn’t know what that meant. I asked the guy at the liquor store by the harbor. He told me. Cask strength means it’s pure alcohol.”

  “You can add your own water,” Tom said. “It’s a good deal. You’re getting twice as much scotch in each bottle.”

  “That’s right,” Wayne said. “And they say it’s delicious. Been in special casks . . . gives it additional flavor . . . but you know what?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I haven’t tasted it. It’s right up there in that far cabinet. Came in a special tube, with a picture of the place where it was made. I haven’t had a drop of it.”

  “You should give it a try.”

  “I will,” Wayne said, “but when you can do it anytime it’s not the same as when you had worked all day and really needed it.”

  “I understand,” Tom said. “There’s a good side to that though.”

  “Of course there is,” Wayne said. “And I’m grateful every day. After all, I’m still around, when a lot of people aren’t. It’s just . . . different. When do they want you back at work?”

  “Pretty soon, I think,” Tom said.

  “You’re a good detective, Tom. You’ll continue to be.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said, as he poured himself and his father a second cup of coffee.

  “Have you seen Sarah lately?”

  “I saw her about two weeks ago,” Tom said. “She came by the hospital to drop off my mail.”

  “I’ve always liked her,” Wayne said.

  “Yes, me too,” Tom said.

  “Did you happen to catch any of the news this morning?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I checked the national news on the internet. There wasn’t anything special in the paper.”

  “It happened last night,” Wayne said. “Too late for the morning papers. The national media will pick it up as soon as the details come out.”

  “What happened?” Tom asked.

  “One of my clients told me. Made a special point of it. Maybe he figured I could find out some of the details and pass them along to him. He knows you work for the force and all.”

  Tom sipped his coffee and waited for his father to go on. Wayne took a drink, said, “This really isn’t all that bad,” and then continued.

  “It was up on the Canyon Road. The early indication is a suicide.”

  “Who was it; do you know?”

  “A painter. Very big locally. Probably nationally as well. The guy who called me has one of his paintings. Said he paid eight hundred thousand dollars for it.”

  “David Bennett?”

  “Yes, that’s him. The police haven’t released the name yet, but somehow this guy had already heard
. He probably knew where the studio was and talked to somebody who saw cruisers and police tape there.”

  “That’s really interesting,” Tom said. “I knew his stuff was good and that it was expensive, but I didn’t know that it was that expensive. Usually paintings don’t draw big dollars until after the artist is dead. David Bennett was a young man. In his thirties or early forties still, I think.”

  “Right.”

  “And he was cranking it out. It’s not as if his best work was all behind him and people were scrambling to buy up the good pieces that remained. I passed one of the galleries in Laguna on my way down here. There was a sign announcing a new show of his work.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “So why on earth would he kill himself?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know; that’s what my guy wondered. That’s why I thought I should mention it to you.”

  Chapter Four

  Carlton Road, Topanga Canyon

  Sunday, 8:45 a.m.

  She parked in the trees at the bottom of the gravel road, circled around to the hillside at the back of the house, and walked quietly from the southwest, approaching the corner with the small, shuttered window. The pine needles were dry and the lichen on the side of the trees was greenish gray. She heard the grackles expressing their opinion about her presence as a few lit upon the ground and then flew quickly back into the trees.

  There were no vehicles parked near the house. The door of the two-car garage on the southeast slope was closed. She looked for tire tracks in the earth on the sides and end of the blue-stone cul de sac, but the winds and canyon rains had rearranged the dust and pine needles and obliterated any obvious traces.

  She moved closer to the house, listening beneath the window for footsteps or voices. Her pistol was out of her purse now. She was carrying it in her right hand, her index finger snug against the trigger housing. As she approached the front porch she heard a rustling sound in the woods beyond. She raised the pistol higher and edged around the corner of the house. The noise stopped. Probably a squirrel or a local dog. She waited. Still no sound. She eased around the corner, climbed up on the edge of the porch and sat beneath the picture window of the living room, listening.