“Pretty hard to tell with a non-virgin. No traces of semen, no significant bruising. Whatever she was doing to get herself killed, it probably didn’t include any sexual activity. There’s something else, too. Her back—you want to see?”
“No, that’s all right,” Casey said hastily.
Deacon grinned. “Some swelling there. Wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find a few ribs broken. A fall, maybe. Or that accident you mentioned. Have to wait and see.” Then suddenly impatient, he snapped, “That’s it. I mean it. The rest is all on paper. Final maybe tomorrow. Your copies of the preliminary’ll be around in a little while. Tell Al I wish him the best of luck.”
“And tell him where he can put his luck!” Krug groused. “Probably homicide, how do you like that? A murder we need like a hole in the head. Why the hell wasn’t she dumped somewhere else?” A self-pitying sigh followed, then he shifted gears, brusque and all business again. “Okay, according to that dude, she was booked, so get on the phone and get the dope. With any luck at all, we can dump this mess in somebody else’s ever-loving lap.”
But as it turned out, they couldn’t.
“You’re kidding,” Krug groaned when Casey hung up. “She resided where?”
“Pacific Street,” Casey read from his scribbled notes. “The number sounds close to Lincoln Boulevard.” Then he grinned at Krug. “Just like the bluebird of happiness, Al—it’s right here in our own backyard.”
“You kill me, you know that? Bluebird! You really kill me. Okay,” Krug said briskly, “let’s go.”
It was almost four o’clock when they walked out.
FIVE
“Mr. Scobie’s been looking for you,” the secretary he shared with two other juniors warned him. “Search party forms by the water cooler at oh-seventeen hours—whatever time that is. Maybe you ought to tell them you took sick? You sure look it to me.”
Farr struggled to smile. “I see you want me to get a reputation for drinking my lunch.” Then her face blurred, and he blinked rapidly. “Give me a minute or two, will you? Then tell him I’m here.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Farr.”
As the door of his office closed gently behind her, Farr leaned on his desk, his arms trembling as he braced himself, palms flat on the blotter, elbows stiffened. He had thought he was fine, but now he realized how he’d fooled himself. Lulled himself. Hypnotized himself, staring at the slow surge of the surf under Santa Monica Pier…
The Santa Monica Police Station was no more than five miles from where he lived in a chic nine-story apartment complex clinging like a gigantic white plaster limpet to the break in the palisades which was Santa Monica Canyon. But Farr had known he couldn’t bear to go back to his apartment. And he dared not appear at the office in a state of shock.
Indecisive, trembling, he waited through the red signal. Across Ocean Avenue an arched sign advertised Santa Monica Pier. Colorado became an incline here, a sloping overpass with decorative shrubbery and more pavement below. But at the foot of the grade, the pier began with an old building shaped like a circus tent.
Today, obviously optimistic about sun and customers, whoever ran the carrousel in the peaked building had opened up. The glass doors were folded back wide, Farr saw, and from the cavernous interior came the tinny thump of a calliope—giddy, bittersweet, unexpectedly nostalgic. Farr’s eyes stung and his throat tightened as he blurrily glimpsed the flying steeds, gleaming brass poles, the tinsel and mirrors and gaudy paint of the merry-go-round.
Then mercifully quick, he passed by. And as soon as he could—beyond the hot-dog stands and fish markets and palmistry parlors—he parked his car. And numb, immune to the passage of time, he sat on one of the fisherman’s benches, staring at the gray-green rolling waves…
Afraid of water, he kept thinking obsessively, now that he was away from it. Scared to death even to swim, she had said. Shuddering, he rubbed a hand over his face. His palm was sticky, clammy. Should’ve washed, he thought. Had he touched it? Her. God, why had he come into the office. But now he was here, he was stuck, he knew.
Naked, he thought. She was naked under that sheet. His heart clenched, and he began to sweat again. Nude and flat and thin-looking. A small body. Small and fragile.
Yet, when he had held her that first time, she had felt amazingly round and firm and strong. From dancing, she’d said. Dancing and other gymnastic delights…
“Like what, for instance?”
“Well, there’s this,” she said that first night when he came home from the party and found her waiting for him. In the bright light he had switched on as they entered his apartment, she unzipped her abstract-figured mini-dress, and with the grace of a professional stripper, stepped out of it.
“Hey,” he breathed.
She smiled her tender melting smile, and time became as brittle as spun glass. Can a whore have the face of a young angel? Her breasts were fuller than he had realized. No bra, he thought, the new style. And black bikini panties. Of course, a whore.
Her eyes glistened. “You mother,” she whispered violently, “why the fuck don’t you quit thinking?”
Then she flung herself at him, and he caught her, and they reeled around the room like drunken dancers, finally tumbling onto the thick carpet. And by this time, they were laughing. And they couldn’t stop. Breathless, his eyes streaming, he lay there holding her, happier than he could ever remember.
“Boob,” she sighed. “Oh, you’re a boob.”
“And you’re shameless.”
“Well, it was either that or wait through some straight-arrow sex pitch.” Digging her elbows into the carpet, she leaned over him, peering into his face. “Well, am I right? Am I?”
Too blissful to argue, he nodded, laughing. He was still laughing as she kissed him, hiding their faces in the fall of her long silky hair. While she slowly undressed him—making a game of that, too—he stroked all the lovely shapes of her body, molding long sweet curves of thigh, soft yielding globes of breast, gentle slope of her back bending lithely over him. “You’re a marvel,” he kept murmuring, spellbound. “A witch, I think. No, an houri. That’s better, an houri.” And deep in his mind, the word echoed—whoorey? whorish?
But he didn’t care any longer. Because, at the last moment, she looked frightened—which proved otherwise, didn’t it? She said don’t and no in a strange strangled whisper that thrilled and alarmed him. Then her arms and legs clamped him tight. And it was fine. It was wonderful. She was strong, and wild, and slippery. He was riding a dolphin…
“For God’s sake,” Scobie said, “three hours for lunch?”
“I’m sorry, but it was unavoidable.” Farr swallowed dryness. “You see, a—that is, someone I know was drowned. In Santa Monica. I had to drive down and identify the, uh, body.”
“Good God,” Scobie muttered, his lushing golfer’s face purple suddenly under his smart new iron-gray hairpiece. “No wonder you look shaky. Not someone close, I hope?”
“Not really, no.” Farr hesitated, staring out the high window behind Scobie’s desk. Beverly Hills was a ghost city half hidden by a radiant haze. “But, of course, it was a shock—”
“Naturally. Yes, of course it would be.” Scobie cleared his throat, appearing vaguely confused as he glanced around his paneled office with its collection of Daumier reproductions. “Well, I suppose…Look here, David, you feel up to finishing out the day?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Looking relieved, Scobie smiled fatuously. “Good for you, my boy. That’s the spirit! When all’s said and done, work is the best cure for anything—isn’t that right?”
And as he beamed good cheer and the puritan ethic—work for the night is falling—Farr hated him. A bitter hatred, like a devil’s brew of remorse, and guilt, and fear.
SIX
Turning left on Pacific to Main, Casey braked for the stop sign smoothly. Then he shot across the
intersection that reminded him of some dying country-town corner. Outside a neighborhood grocery, two barefoot hippies were sharing a bag of potato chips with a happy-looking mutt. Beyond, Pacific Street rose in fits and starts to a rise which gave a clear view of the sea—not a charming neighborhood, as it should have been, but a homely hodgepodge of two-story frame houses converted into apartments, and crackerbox stuccos crammed together on tiny lots.
Marveling as usual at the wanton and unimaginative waste of scenery so typical of Southern California, Casey began looking for house numbers. Not even boom-and-bust had happened here, he thought. Not like in Venice, just south a mile or so, an eccentric sunstruck dreamer’s creation. He spotted the number. “There it is,” swinging into the curb.
They sat for a moment looking at the two-and-a-half-story old frame house with its steep pitch roof, dormer windows, and curlicued gingerbread porch. “Gracious living,” Krug said. “A hippie joint, you think? Anyhow, a bunch of one-room pads. Got to be. One of those joints gives zoning inspectors heart failure.” He sighed gustily. “Okay, sport, let’s see what we can see.”
Walk In, a faded hand-lettered sign thumbtacked beside the doorbell directed. Mgr. First Door Rt. Through the oval pane they could see a stairway to the right, a long hall to the left lined with doors; at the far end, what appeared to be a kitchen. Krug opened the door, sniffing. “Smells like feet.”
“I’ll take it over pot and incense.”
“With that kind of choice, who wouldn’t?” Idly, Krug shuffled through the heap of mail lying on a battered refectory table just outside the door. “Nothing here for Berry.”
The manager’s door opened before they knocked, and a fat, cross, androgynous face under a mass of pink plastic curlers peered around it. “You fellas looking for—? Oh,” she said, “police, I bet. Wait a minute,” and the door banged shut again. Through the flimsy panel they could hear her calling for someone named Richy. “You get on out here, there’s cops at the door!”
Krug grinned. “You betting it’ll be Jack Sprat?” he asked softly.
As Casey laughed, the door opened again. Richy was as fat as his wife.
“Gents,” he said, amiable as a neighborhood bartender, “what can I do for you?”
Conventionally, Krug introduced them as he flashed his identification. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr.—”
“Saretti. R. J. Saretti. I been living in this town since before he”—pointing to Casey—“was born.”
“That so?” Krug looked uninterested. “Mr. Saretti, we’re inquiring about a tenant of yours. Holly Berry—”
“I told you she was in trouble,” came the voice of Saretti’s now-invisible wife. “You and your nice kids!”
“Don’t mind her.” The fat man grinned. “It’s the change, y’know? Makes ’em nervous sometimes.” A patient, put-upon husband, he sighed. “Matter of fact, Holly is a nice kid. All our tenants’re okay, I see to that. Keep track of ’em, y’know?” and he winked at Krug. “But kids are kids. Even the best of ’em—Hey, I hope that accident she had wasn’t nothing serious.”
“Didn’t she tell you about it?”
“How could she when I haven’t seen her?”
“Then how did you hear about it—her brother, maybe?”
“Nah, some guy was here said he was a friend of hers. Told me she had this crack-up—”
“When was this?”
“Last week sometime.” He peered first at Krug, then Casey. “You didn’t answer me if she’s okay or not.”
“No,” said Krug, “I guess we didn’t. You haven’t seen her since the accident, then.”
“Nope. Matter of fact,” Saretti added, “it’s been quite a while. Couple weeks, come to think of it.”
“You mean she hasn’t been home in that long—or you just haven’t seen her?”
“If she’d been here, believe me,” the wife shrieked, “he’d of seen her, all right!”
“That so, Mr. Saretti?”
“Listen, you think a place like this don’t need watching night and—” Saretti stopped, scowling. “Yeah, so what? It’s a crime or something to keep an eye on your property?”
“I suppose,” Casey suggested, “somebody’s been picking up her mail.”
“Maybe.” Saretti shrugged. “She didn’t get much anyhow. You know how it is. Nobody’ll give these kids credit, so they don’t get any bills. Maybe a postcard once in a while, that’s all.” He glanced at the heap of mail on the table by the front door. “Guess her uncle must’ve taken whatever there was. Or that friend of hers. Said he was picking up some stuff to take to her. Listen, hey, she in the hospital?”
“Not exactly,” Krug said. “This friend who picked up her stuff—he the same one who told you she’d had a wreck? The one that was here last week?”
“Yeah, sure. But lemme think.” Saretti scratched the day-old stubble on his fat cheek. “Yeah, definitely, it was last week sometime.” Then, defensively, he added, “Listen, if there’s any trouble, it’s got nothing to do with us, see. We run a clean, decent—”
“Sure, we understand,” Krug interrupted. “No problem. Now, about this uncle, Mr. Saretti. He live here in town, you think?”
“Nah, the first time he showed up—maybe two, three weeks ago—he told me he was from out of state. Visiting, y’know? Said the last few years he kinda lost touch with the kids. Holly and her brother, that is. He don’t live here. The brother, I mean.”
“You know where the uncle might be staying?”
“He didn’t say.”
“How about her brother?”
“Well, I think he moves around a lot,” Saretti said evasively. “But he worked at this gas station on Pico, so I sent the uncle over there.” Again he shrugged. “Day or so later he shows up again. Said the kid quit his job, so he was back where he started from. He was real disappointed not getting hold of him.”
“When was the last time you saw this uncle?” Casey asked.
“Well, let’s see, it’s been three, four days at least.”
“You tell him the girl had a wreck?”
“He knew all about it, but it didn’t worry him none. What he was worried about was getting hold of her brother.” Something crashed inside the room behind him and suddenly he appeared uneasy. “Look,” he began, but Krug interrupted him: “You think he left town—this uncle?”
“Couldn’t tell you. Look, fellas, I want to help any way I can, but I got things to do—”
“Sure,” Krug said comfortingly. “We don’t want to take up a lot of your time. Just a couple more questions.” He glanced at Casey. “This friend you say came by last week. You ever see him before?”
“Nope, never.”
“You remember what he looked like?”
Saretti stroked his bristles. “Let’s see. A young guy. ’Bout your age,” he said to Casey. “Taller than you, though. And sharp-looking.”
Krug looked amused. So much for your new threads. “You didn’t get his name?”
“Just he was a friend of hers. I figured he must be one of those rock-and-roll guys she hung around with. Picking up some stuff for her, like I said. And he did, too. I know, ’cause I kept an eye on him. Couple minutes, that’s all he was up there. Then down he comes with her clothes and stuff.”
“Didn’t you let him into her apartment?”
“Nah, he had her key. That’s how come I let him go in her place.”
“These clothes he took,” Casey said casually. “By that, you mean something like a dress, I suppose. Shoes, too, maybe? Things like that?”
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s a laugh,” came the voice beyond the door again. “If I know you, you had every button counted.”
“Will you cut that out?” Saretti yelled. “I said I don’t remember, okay, so I don’t remember!” Then his peevi
sh face brightened. “Tell you something I do remember, though. That Jag he was driving. One of those sporty jobs. Slinky as hell. Seen his plates, too,” he added triumphantly. “California, and new ones, not the old tag kind.”
“Richy, if you’re gonna stand out there—”
“See what I mean? Nervous.”
“It’s okay, I don’t blame her,” Krug said. “We’ve taken up a lot of your time already. But if you’ll let us into her place now—”
Saretti hesitated, then blew out his breath. “Okay, come on, it’s upstairs.” And pulling the door gently shut behind him, he led the way. “It’s seven. Lucky number.” Four steps and he was already wheezing. “You know there’s people won’t rent a three or thirteen? Crapshooters, I guess. Or maybe some number thing. These kids got a lot of crazy ideas. Dope and witchcraft and all that. ’Course, we don’t have any of that stuff around here.”
No witches, no demons, only dirt, Casey thought, his nose tickling as each threadbare tread produced puffs of dust as fine as smoke. The stair rail creaked alarmingly as he grasped it. On the right, the faded wallpaper was skinned through to the plaster at shoulder-height.
Upstairs, the narrow dark hall was hot and musty, deadly quiet. “Got a couple day sleepers here,” Saretti explained. “Everybody else works—or at least they’re out all the time.”
Not surprising, Casey thought. The lock on her door was a good one, he noticed, not self-locking, but the bolt sort you have to use a key on to lock as well as unlock. Had Holly installed it herself?
He was about to ask when Saretti threw open the door to Number 7, saying cheerfully, “Here you go, gents. Not fancy, like they say, but at least it’s home. You ask Holly, you don’t believe me. Ask her if she’s not snug as a bug in a rug here.”
Poor Poor Ophelia Page 3
