“Because of you?”
“That was learned counsel’s opinion,” I said. “Mine was that Billy has lots to cry about and not letting him express it will only make matters worse. I told learned counsel Billy needs a full-time therapist, I wasn’t volunteering for the job, only suggesting he find someone. He begged to differ. When I got back, I phoned the judge who wrote the placement order. Haven’t heard from her yet but I’m thinking of other judges who might be willing to help.”
“You see Billy as totally clean?” he said.
“Unless you find something more ominous at his duplex than Star Wars action figures and Disney videos.”
He shook his head. “Like a kid’s place. Boxes of sugar cereal, bottles of chocolate milk.”
I said. “Being a kid’s hard enough. Being neither boy nor man is something else. Any sign of Billy’s allowance money?”
“Nope, just coins in a piggy bank. Some of the pennies date back to the sixties.”
“Fifteen hundred a month and all he spent on was pizza and Thai food and rental movies. It explains Reynold Peaty’s drop-ins. He pretended to be Billy’s friend, had his way with the cash.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “Except no money showed up in Peaty’s dive.”
“A guy like Peaty would have ways to spend it,” I said. “Or, if his relationship with Brad went beyond janitor and boss, maybe the money found its way back to Cuz. Then Cuz set him up to die.”
He frowned. A muscle just below his left eye jumped.
I said, “What?”
“What a family.” He found a stale cigar in a drawer, rolled it, and bit off the end. Spat it into his wastebasket.
“Two points.” I stood and walked to the door. “Time to view the disk.”
He stayed put. “It’s really a bad idea, Alex.”
“I want to get it over with.”
“Even if someone does subpoena you, it could be months away,” he said.
“No sense harboring fantasies all that time.”
“Trust me, your fantasies can’t be worse than reality.”
“Trust me,” I said. “They can.”
CHAPTER 45
Cold, yellow room.
The interview table had been pushed to one side. Metal table, same battleship gray as the bomb shelter.
The things you notice.
Two chairs faced a thirty-inch plasma TV on a wheeled table. A DVD player sat on the bottom shelf. Lots of snarled cables. A sticker affixed to the bottom of the monitor warned against anyone outside the D.A.’s office touching the equipment.
I said, “Suddenly the prosecutors turn generous?”
“They’ve sniffed the air,” said Milo. “Smelled Court TV, screenplays, book deals. The warning from on-high is no O.J. on this one.” He drew a remote control module from his jacket pocket and flicked on the monitor.
Sat down next to me, slumped and closed his eyes and stayed that way.
* * *
Blue screen, video menu printout. Time, date, D.A’s evidence code.
I took the remote from Milo’s hands. His eyes remained shut but his breathing quickened.
I flicked.
A face filled the screen.
Big blue eyes, tan skin, symmetrical features, shaggy blond hair.
Jane Doe Number One.
Milo had asked if I wanted to start out of sequence with Michaela. I’d considered that, said let’s do it in order.
Hoping lack of personal contact would help.
It didn’t.
* * *
The camera stayed close.
An off-screen voice, male, smooth, amiable, said, “Okay, audition time. Digging it so far?”
Zoom shot of the girl’s smile. Moist, white teeth, perfectly aligned. “Sure am.”
“Sure am, Brad. When you’re presenting yourself to a casting agent or anyone else, it’s important to be direct and specific and personal.”
The girl’s smile altered course, became an ambiguous crescent. “Um, okay.” The camera moved back. Nervous blue eyes. Giggle.
“Take two,” said Brad Dowd.
“Huh?”
“Sure am...”
“Sure, Brad.”
“Sure. Am. Brad.”
The girl’s eyes shifted to the left. “Sure. Am. Brad.”
“Perfect. Okay, go on.”
“With what?”
“Say something.”
“Like what?”
“Improvise.”
“Umm...” Lip-lick. A glance back at battleship-gray walls. “It’s kind of different. Down here.”
“Dig it?”
“Umm...I guess.”
“I. Guess...”
“I guess, Brad.”
“It is different,” said Brad Dowd. “Hermetic. Know what that means?”
Giggle. “Umm, not really.”
“It means isolated and quiet. Away from all the hassle. The Sturm und Drang.”
No response from the girl.
“Know why we’re auditioning you in a hermetic place?”
“Nora said it was serene.”
“Serene,” said Brad. “Sure, that’s a good word. Like one of those meditation things, ohmmmm, Shakti, bodhi vandana, cabalabaloo. Ever do any meditation?”
“I did Pilates.”
“I. Did. Pilates...”
“Brad.”
Off-screen sigh. “A hermetic place means less distraction. Right?”
“Right— Brad.”
“A hermetic, serene place strips away superfluous elements so it’s easier to find your center. Not like back in class where everyone’s looking and judging. No one will judge you here. Never.”
The girl smiled again.
“What do you think of that?” said Brad.
“It’s good.”
“It’s good?”
“It’s real good.”
“Brad!”
Blue eyes jumped. “Brad.”
“It’s. Good— ”
“It’sgoodBrad. I’m sorry I’m kinda nervous.”
“Now, you interrupted me.”
“Sorry. Brad.”
Ten-second silence. The girl fidgeted.
Brad Dowd said, “Totally forgiven.”
“Thanks. Brad.”
Ten more seconds. The girl worked at relaxing her posture.
“Okay, we’re serene and hermetic and ready to do some serious work. Do you like Sondheim?”
“Um, don’t know him— Brad.”
“Doesn’t matter, we’re not going musical, this is a drama day. Lower your left shoulder strap— make sure it’s the left one because that’s your good side, your right side’s a little weak. Be sure not to take off your whole top, this isn’t porno, we just need to see your undraped posture à la classical sculpture.”
The camera pulled back, showed the girl sitting primly on a folding chair, wearing a skimpy red top held in place by spaghetti straps. Bare, tan, slender legs, advertised by a short, denim skirt. Sandaled feet planted on the ground. High-heeled brown sandals.
“Go ahead,” said Brad.
Looking confused, she reached up and loosened the right strap.
“Left!”
“Sorry, sorry, always had trouble with— sorry, Brad, always had trouble...” She switched to the left, fumbled, lowered.
The camera moved in on smooth, golden shoulder. Drew back to a full-body view.
Fifteen seconds passed.
“You’ve got a beautiful torso.”
“Thanks, Brad.”
“Know what a torso is?”
“The body— Brad.”
“The upper body. Yours is classical. You’re very lucky.”
“Thanks, Brad.”
“Think you’ve also got talent?”
“Umm, I hope so— Brad.”
“Oh, c’mon, let’s hear some insouciance, some confidence, some superstar can-do attitude.”
Blue eyes batted. The girl sat up straight, tossed her hair. Pumped a fist and sho
uted. “I’m the best! Brad!”
“Up for anything?”
“Sure. Brad.”
“Well, that’s good.”
Five seconds. Then: clang clang. Thud thud thud thud thud.
Noise from behind made the girl turn.
“Don’t move,” barked Brad.
The girl froze.
“Here’s your costar.”
“I— umm— oh— didn’t know there was going to be— ”
“A star’s got to be up for anything.”
The girl’s head began to swivel again. Froze, once more, responding to a command that never came.
“Good,” soothed Brad. “You’re learning.”
The girl licked her lips and smiled.
The gray behind her turned flesh-colored.
Hirsute expanse of chest and belly. Tattooed arms.
The camera trailed lower to a bearish clump of pubic hair. A limp penis dangled inches from the girl’s cheek.
The girl’s shoulders stiffened.
“I— uh— ”
“Relax,” said Brad Dowd. “Remember what Nora taught you about improv.”
“But— sure. Brad.”
“Remain perfectly still— think body control...that’s a good girl.”
The hairy bulk pulsated. Tattoos jumped.
The camera panned up to a sweat-glossed dinner-plate face. Frizzy muttonchops. Clipped mustache.
Reynold Peaty’s hands lowered onto the girl’s shoulders. His right thumb slipped under the right spaghetti strap. Toyed with the string. Slid it off.
The girl jumped and twisted, craned to see him. His left hand gripped the top of her head and held her in place.
“He’s hurting— ”
“Mouth shut!” said Brad Dowd. “Don’t want to catch flies.”
Peaty’s right hand reached around and clamped over the girl’s mouth.
She made frantic little muffled noises. Peaty’s hand slapped her so hard, her eyes rolled back. With one hand, Peaty pulled her up by her hair. The other edged closer to her throat.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Perfect,” said Brad. “This is Reynold. The two of you are going to improvise a little skit.”
I flicked off the picture.
Milo was wide awake, looking sadder than I’d ever seen him.
I said, “You told me so,” and walked out of the room.
CHAPTER 46
The next week was emotional bouillabaisse.
Trying, with no success, to get Billy Dowd more appropriate lodgings and regular therapy.
Fending off Erica Weiss’s requests for another deposition, so she could “slam the final nail in Hauser’s coffin.”
Ignoring increasingly strident calls from Hauser’s defense attorney.
I hadn’t been to the station since viewing the DVD. Six minutes watching a girl I’d never met.
The day I moved Robin in, I pretended my head was clear. After I schlepped the last carton of her clothes into the bedroom, she sat me down on the edge of the mattress, rubbed my temples, and kissed the back of my neck. “Still thinking about it, huh?”
“Using unfamiliar muscles. The ribs don’t help.”
“Don’t waste energy trying to convince me,” she said. “This time I know what I’m getting myself into.”
* * *
My contact with Milo was limited to one eleven p.m. phone call. His voice, thick with fatigue, wondering if I could take care of some “ancillary stuff” while he coped with the mountain of evidence on what the papers were calling the “Bomb Shelter Murders.”
One nitwit columnist in the Times trying to connect it to “Cold War paranoia.”
I said, “Sure. What’s ancillary stuff?”
“Anything you can do better than me.”
* * *
That came down to being a grief sponge.
A forty-five-minute session with Lou and Arlene Giacomo lasted two hours. He’d lost weight since I’d seen him and his eyes were dead. She was a quiet, dignified woman, hunched over like someone twice her age.
I sat there as his rage alternated with her anguished accounts of Life With Tori, the two of them trading off with a rhythm so precise it could’ve been scripted. As the time ground on, their chairs edged farther and farther apart. Arlene was talking about Tori’s confirmation dress when Lou shot to his feet, snarling, and left my office. She started to apologize, changed her mind. We found him down by the pond, feeding the fish. They left silently and neither answered my calls that night. The clerk at their hotel said they’d checked out.
The widowed mother of Brad Dowd’s Las Vegas victim, Juliet Dutchey, turned out to be a former showgirl herself, a veteran of the old Flamingo Hotel. Mid-fifties and still toned, Andrea Dutchey blamed herself for not discouraging her daughter from moving to Vegas, then switched to squeezing my hand and thanking me for all I’d done. I felt I’d done nothing and her gratitude made me sad.
Dr. Susan Palmer came in with her husband, Dr. Barry Palmer, a tall, quiet, well-coiffed man who wanted to be anywhere else. She started off all business, crumpled fast. He kept his mouth shut and studied the prints on my wall.
Michaela Brand’s mother was too ill to travel from Arizona so I spoke with her over the phone. Her air machine hissed in the background and if she cried, I didn’t hear it. Maybe tears required too much oxygen. I stayed on the line until she hung up without warning.
No relative of Dylan Meserve surfaced.
I phoned Robin at her studio and said, “I’m finished, you can come back.”
“I wasn’t escaping,” she said. “Just doing my job.”
“Busy?”
“Pretty much.”
“Come home anyway.”
Silence. “Sure.”
* * *
I called Albert Beamish.
He said, “I’ve been reading about it. Apparently, I can still be shocked.”
“It’s shocking stuff.”
“They were spoiled and indolent but I had no idea they were fiends.”
“Beyond persimmons,” I said.
“Good God, yes! Alex— may I call you that— ”
“Sure. Mister Beamish.”
He chortled. “First off, thanks for informing me, that was uncharacteristically courteous. Especially coming from a member of the me-generation.”
“You’re welcome. I think.”
He cleared his throat. “Second, do you golf?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Never got into it.”
“Damn shame. At least you drink...perhaps one day, should you have time...”
“If you bring out the good stuff.”
“I only stock the good stuff, young man. What do you take me for?”
* * *
Two weeks after his arrest, Brad Dowd was found dead in his cell. The noose he’d used to hang himself had been fashioned from a pair of pajama pants he’d ripped into strips after lights-out. He’d been on suicide watch, housed in the High Power ward where things like that weren’t supposed to happen. The guards had been diverted by a neighboring inmate pretending to go crazy and smearing his cell with feces. That prisoner, a gang leader and murder suspect named Theofolis Moomah, underwent a miraculous recovery the moment Brad’s body was cut down. A search of Moomah’s cell uncovered a stash of extra commissary cigarettes and a roll of fifty-dollar bills. Brad’s attorney, a downtown court regular who’d defended several gang leaders, express-mailed his bill to the arraignment judge.
Stavros Menas, Esq. called a press conference and bellowed that the suicide supported his claim that Brad had been a “mad Svengali,” and his client an unwitting dupe.
The D.A. offered a contradictory analysis.
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