by Gil Reavill
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means nobody wants to put in the work anymore. They don’t want to do Hamburg, they don’t even want to do the Cavern, they just want to go straight to Ed Sullivan.”
Remington looked blankly at him.
“The Beatles?” Tester prompted. “Jesus, your generation really is amazing. You’ve got no context at all, and you have the attention span of fireflies.”
“Maybe it would help if you used cultural references from the present century.” She took the Investigaciones Especiales document from her backpack and laid it down on the desk in front of Tester.
“What’s this?”
“Check the date and then the ‘for services rendered’ business.”
Tester examined the document. “Simon Loushane hired a what, a private investigator? In Tijuana?”
“See that E.D.L., Chuck? That would be Evelyn DeYoung Loushane, Victor’s first wife. The one who died at the estate.”
“The one you assured me was an accidental death with witnesses.”
“Right, only Simon evidently thought differently, or he wouldn’t have shelled out five K to hire some under-the-wire P.I.”
Tester took a moment to read the invoice. Then he burst out laughing.
“What?” Remington asked, annoyed.
“E.D.L., little rookie, is Mexican cop slang for a drug-money bust. It stands for ‘evidencia de lucro,’ or something like that. Our boy Simon was retailing a little weed on the side, wasn’t he?”
“Is that official LAPD knowledge?”
“Relax,” Tester said. “He was too small-time for anyone to think of busting him. But he must have run into trouble down South, got an EDL citation attached to his jacket somehow, and then hired this policíaco to get it sorted out.”
Remington’s face burned with embarrassment. She took back the document.
Tester was still chortling. “See, you start out on the wrong foot, with a bad assumption, and your whole line of investigation goes loopy.”
“Okay, so I may have gotten it wrong.”
“I almost feel sorry for you. If you promise to go to class every single day this week, I’ll let you in on a little something.”
“Yeah?”
“You have to promise.”
“All right, for crying out loud, I promise.”
“Every day?”
“Every day. Are you, like, my father’s keeper or something? I feel as if the old guy is in the room with us here.”
“Hey, hey, have some respect for your elders. ‘Old guy’—is that how you see Gene?”
“No, he’s absolutely the greatest dad since sliced bread, okay? Now give.”
Tester leaned forward. “Keep an eye on the TV news this weekend.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah.” Tester nodded solemnly.
“What? That’s it?”
“Just sayin’—and you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Oh, my God, I’m in a bad dream and I can’t wake up.” Their tit-for-tat back-and-forth got a little raw at times, but she still loved the guy. “I’ll be on my way now.”
“I hope you’re off to class,” Tester said.
Exasperated with the situation, she said she was. But she wasn’t.
—
Remington broke open her credit-card piggy bank and bought an airline ticket to Chicago. She didn’t tell anybody. She just went.
The cheapest flight she could get landed her not at the main hub of O’Hare but at a smaller facility called Midway Airport. There was a hassle at the rental-car office, since she wasn’t yet twenty-five, the magic age of safe driving. She had to promise to give the rental company her firstborn child in order to secure a car, a pathetic tin-roofed compact that had her looking over her shoulder in fear at all the behemoth SUVs on the road.
Lake Geneva proved to be a lovely, woodsy ride away, out from the maze of Chicago and through the heartland autumn, a luridly colorful experience for Remington, the California girl. She had always romanticized the dense forests of the Midwest. Now that she was out among them, she decided that she might actually prefer the desert.
The City of Lake Geneva Police Department was located a block off State Route 50. Sergeant Roger Lowell had volunteered to act as her local guide. Sandy-haired and Nordically chiseled, the guy looked as if he’d stepped out of a Hitler Youth recruiting poster. But he was sweet enough to Remington and even deferential, given her big-city law-enforcement credentials—which, on her part, were largely trumped up.
“You want to go out to the scene?” Lowell asked her. “They haven’t released it yet.”
Remington made a vague gesture toward the interior of the station house. “She’s not…?”
“Miss Loushane’s body was flown back to Los Angeles this morning.”
We probably passed each other in the air, Remington thought. “The pathologist around?”
“How strong is your stomach?” Lowell asked.
Forensic medical specialist Flip Carey accepted Remington’s visit with distracted reserve. “Walworth County has an M.E., but she’s over at the university in Whitewater. Right here, right now, I’m all we’ve got.”
He led Lowell and Remington through the warren of city offices into a tiny medical lab on the premises. “Everybody’s been through here, as you can imagine. You just missed the FBI guys—they were set up for a couple of days. Chicago police, Wisconsin Department of Justice, golly, emissaries from just all over.”
“They’ve got the assailant’s remains over at the Milwaukee state crime lab,” Lowell put in.
The preliminary postmortems on the Kappa Kappa Chi killings that Carey dropped on Remington’s lap proved pretty grim. “Sorry, I can’t let you take it off-premise,” the pathologist told her. “The media pressure on this business has been overwhelming.”
“It’s okay,” Remington said. The P.M. file opened like some foul rose, cataloguing the forensic aspects of the massacre. The photos of the scene tested her. The damage done to Cindy Loushane rendered the body unrecognizable.
“Oh, that’s Elizabeth Sanborn,” Carey put in, looking over her shoulder. “The one who crawled out of the cabin and expired down by the lake.”
He helped her page through the photos. “That’s Miss Loushane.”
Remington’s mind balked. “He took her head off?”
“Took it off and took it with him,” Carey said. They were trying to have a normal conversation about a situation of such abnormality that it might have happened in another, more violent century.
“What is it with this guy and head chopping? Cuts off hers, then does his own?”
“We recovered Miss Loushane’s beside the Lake Shore Trail, near the forest preserve,” Lowell explained. “The skull was all caved in.”
“Minus the, uh, without the brain,” Carey added. “The theory around here is that he ate it.”
“Christ in the foothills,” Remington said.
“She always says that,” Lowell told Carey.
“None of this is out in the press,” Carey said. “I mean, it’ll have to become public sooner or later, but the poor girl isn’t in the ground yet.”
“Did you know her, Officer Remington?” Lowell asked.
“The family, the family,” Remington stammered. “I know the Loushanes.”
Flip Carey wanted to talk about the failure to ID the killer. “Milwaukee had a forensic dentist in. Nothing doing. The perp’s mouth was half destroyed, plus he had Third World teeth, you know? I’ve seen what that’s like. You ask these migrant fruit pickers for their dental records, they just look at you and shake their heads. ‘No se,’ you know?”
After Remington slugged it out with the P.M. report, she and Lowell bid goodbye to Carey. They left her rental car in the police-station parking lot. The young sergeant drove them in a Lake Geneva police black-and-white, around the east end of the lake toward the scene.
“This is pretty much the biggest thing we’ve ever had arou
nd here,” he said. “Although, have you ever heard of the Suitcase Murders?”
“No.” Remington hoped to hell he wasn’t going to lay them out for her.
He didn’t. They spoke of another brand of ghoulishness. “You know, the M.E. over in Milwaukee, working on our John Doe, he examined the stomach contents of the assailant and found no human brain matter.”
Remington let that sink in for a few moments. “Maybe he tossed it in the lake.”
“Right,” Lowell said. “We’ve got bass in there, plus northern pike and muskie that’ll pretty much eat anything all the way up to a tin can.”
They drove through broad-leafed forests that soon yielded to stands of towering pines. Shafts of sunlight shot through the dense green of the undergrowth. Approaching down a paved single-lane driveway, they crested a small rise. Below them lay the most photographed and broadcast piece of real estate in recent days, the large white-clapboarded lodge looming like a mother ship, the smaller cabins grouped around it like a school of fish.
“Pretty,” Remington murmured.
They got out of the black-and-white to walk the grounds. “Has there been any word on confederates? How’d he get out here?” Remington asked.
“We’ve got nothing. The guy just materialized, you know? There are a lot of theories. Everyone’s real concerned about the missing body part.”
“The brain.”
“Yeah,” Lowell said.
“So after doing the wet work he hands it off to an accomplice, like a trophy.” Remington was thinking out loud. “The souvenir actually could have been the real motive behind the whole business.”
Lowell nodded. “Machetes off the poor girl’s head, cracks it open like a walnut and then scoops out the prize.”
Remington had the sense that the sergeant was trying to prove himself to her, talking as if he could be just as hard-core police as the next guy.
A single-story motel-like building tucked away in the woods accommodated the lodge’s live-in help, the laundry room and various utility rooms.
“Those are the employees’ quarters?” Remington asked.
“You know, out of all the law enforcement we’ve had come through here you’re the only one who specifically asked to speak to the maids.”
The cleaning staff was, to a woman, Hispanic. They were shy at first but warmed to Remington with a gossipy intensity. They wanted to talk about it, and they were full of solid information shot through with wild flights of rumor.
“So my friend, like, she goes out with one of the officers? One who was there when they got him, Officer O’Brien? He’s married, but she sees him anyway.”
Lowell chuckled, mortified. “Officer E. J. O’Brien’s estranged from his wife,” he said quickly.
The woman, a Cuban immigrant named Quesara, told Remington to call her Sara. She leaned forward whenever she wanted to impart sensitive tidbits.
“My friend’s guy was the one who finished the devil off. The killer’s head, Madre de Dios, was lying there on the ground. So he goes over and picks it up by the hair.”
Quesara leaned farther forward, until her lips were near Remington’s ear. “He holds it up and it speaks to him,” she whispered. “The head says to the officer, ‘I can’t stand to see you not dead.’ That’s what it says. Then it squeezes its eyes shut, you know, like it don’t want to look, right? Madre María. This O’Brien guy gets so scared he drops the head and shoots it twenty-three times.”
“Uh, it was seven, seven rounds,” Lowell corrected. “The head was shot seven times.”
“Uh-huh, and what was fucked up, some of the people who were there heard the words in English and some heard them in Spanish.”
“What the corpse said, in Spanish?” Remington was just checking to make sure she was getting it right.
“Sí,” Quesara said.
They were largely silent as Lowell drove Remington back to her rental car. Lowell continued to act embarrassed, as if Remington had caught a glimpse of Wisconsin backwoods insanity.
“You don’t, uh, believe…” Lowell seemed uncertain how to proceed. “That was all just talk. Those maids…I was there, and, uh, none of that happened.”
“The officer, the one Quesara mentioned, O’Brien? He did fire his weapon into the severed head of the assailant multiple times?”
“That he did,” Lowell admitted. “It really hampered our identification efforts.”
Hampered them, Remington thought, to the degree that the City of Lake Geneva Police Department still hadn’t been able to put a name to a guy who was, at the moment, the most notorious mass murderer in the country.
Chapter 10
Remington flew back to L.A. in time to make it to Forest Lawn, the sequel. Now there were two Loushane children buried alongside their mother in the family plot. Two memorial services within two weeks were two too many. The sentiments of the priest at the graveside took on a hollow sound, as if promises of redemption often repeated became meaningless.
“As we gather to commend the soul of our sister Cynthia DeYoung Loushane to God our Father and to commit her body to the earth, let us express in prayer our common faith in the Resurrection.”
The main difference this time was the number of cameras around. Kappa Kappa Chi was a big deal with a lot of national coverage. Not one but two news copters hovered in the sky above the service. The cemetery folks had corralled the TV crews and the press photographers into a tight rectangle thirty yards off to the side, but everyone could hear the whir of the camera advances as the Father said the words.
“Almighty God, in obedience to your will our Lord Jesus Christ broke the fetters of hell and rose to life, bringing deliverance and resurrection to those who are his by faith.”
They departed the cemetery in the peace of Christ and regrouped an hour later in the back gardens at Wildermanse. Remington felt like a spy in the house of grief. The gathering by now had a round-up-the-usual-suspects feel. Cardinal Purchase held court, surrounded by archdiocese functionaries and acolytes. He surprised Remington by breaking out from his circle as she passed, stepping over and grabbing her hand.
“My dear.” The Cardinal made the greeting sound grand. He could probably solemnly intone a grocery list.
“Your Eminence.”
“Let perpetual light shine upon her.”
“Amen.”
“So young, taken so young. Are we all right, Miss Remington?”
“I’m heartsick, sir. I didn’t know her well.”
“Yes, you were Simon’s special friend, am I right? Two in one month. Come into Our Lady, will you? We have several Fathers trained as grief counselors. Fellowship can be a balm.”
Remington hadn’t set foot in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels since she was a child. “I will, Reverend Father.” Another lie to chalk up in confession. She was still recovering from her shock at the fact that a patriarch of the church remembered her name.
Many people sought the prelate’s blessing, and the current of need swept Cardinal Purchase away. Remington moved on through the assembled mourners. She passed by Genevieve Ratsy-Patsy, in animated conversation with a group of young female friends.
“I couldn’t buh-leeve she said that!” Gena gushed. “That’s why the red carpet is red, you know? Because there’s so much blood spilled on it.”
The girl’s friends laughed. An unfortunate image, Remington thought, given the circumstances. Gena was talking about some premiere she had attended the previous evening. Come life or death, Hollywood rolls on. As she walked past, the starlet gave her a vague nod. Remington wanted to ask her where Ellis was but couldn’t bring herself to summon the proper fawning smile.
The early-evening light spilled over Wildermanse. Bone-dry autumn winds tumbled downslope out of the mountains to remind all Angelinos that they lived in a pitiless desert. Remington suddenly knew where she’d find Ellis. She took the secret path out of the gardens toward the cascade.
Ellis was there. And so was Brockton.
&nb
sp; “Layla,” Ellis called, seeing her approach.
She moved to give Ellis a consoling hug.
Brockton surprised her by shoving himself roughly in front of his brother. He stepped forward and slapped Remington across the face.
“Brock!” Ellis yelled.
Brock Loushane pushed Remington backward, seizing a pinch of skin on her arm and twisting it savagely, the way he used to do when they were kids. “The next time you go off on a south-of-the-border jaunt with my siblings, I want to hear about it.”
Ellis dragged his brother off. “Goddamn it, Brock! What are you doing?”
Brock turned abruptly away and headed back toward the house and gardens.
“What was that?” Ellis took Remington in his arms. “He hit you?”
“It’s all right. I believe Brock thinks he owns me.”
“Brock thinks he owns everyone. Jesus, I’m sorry. My stupid brother.”
The sound of the cascade was continuous, a perpetual sluicing noise. The waterfall cooled the air, canceling out the deadening effect of the Santa Ana winds.
“Where is she?” Layla asked.
Caroline.
Ellis didn’t answer. He tossed a stone over the chain-link into the concrete gutter of the cascade, where it pinged audibly down the channel.
Remington realized that Caroline had once more taken up residence at the villa in Tijuana. Val Duran’s arrogant assertion echoed in her ears. “She’ll come back,” he’d said, and she had indeed returned to him.
“Dad’s furious she’s not here,” Ellis said. “They had a screaming fight about her leaving. She told him she couldn’t bear to hear another funeral Mass.”
The world had gone askew. Remington felt tired, helpless, cored out. The trip to Wisconsin had been a bad idea.
“I was thinking,” Ellis said. “We can’t hold out on the police any longer, can we? I mean, we have to tell them that Simon was poking around in Mom’s death. I can’t see how it would connect up with…” He couldn’t bring himself to say Cindy’s name.
“You can forget about that.” Remington told him the real meaning of E.D.L. that Chuck Tester had clued her in on.
“So it’s nothing,” he said.
