Bad Love (32 page)

The lawns were suffering the most, most of them dead or dying. A few were vivid green — too green.

Spray paint.

Santa Barbara, trying to free itself from dependence on Sierra snowpack, had declared mandatory rationing long before L.A. Now the town was returning to desert, but the addiction to emerald was hard to shake.

I reached Katarina’s house. Older than its neighbors and considerably smaller, a pale blue, English country cottage with two turrets, a slate roof that needed mending, and a big dirt expanse in front. A privet hedge rimmed the plot, uneven, and picked apart in spots. What had once been a rose garden was now a collection of trellised sticks.

An old-fashioned wire-link gate was fastened across an asphalt driveway, but as I pulled up I could see it was unlocked. I got out and pushed it open and walked up the drive. The asphalt was old and cracked, stretching a hundred feet to the tail end of a small, Japanese car.

Drapes whited all the windows of the house. The front door was paneled oak, its varnish bubbling, a
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
sticker affixed just below the lion’s head knocker. Below that was another one, bearing the name of an alarm company.

I rang the bell. Waited. Did it again. Waited some more. Used the lion. Nothing.

No one was around. I could hear the ocean.

I went around the side, past the little white car and a high-peaked garage with sagging swivel doors left half open. The backyard was twice the size of the front plot and denuded. The borders with its neighbors were obscured by thick plantings of dead citrus and dead avocado. On the ground were shapeless patches of lifeless shrubbery. Even the weeds were struggling.

But a couple of giant pines toward the back had survived nicely, their roots deep enough to tap into groundwater. Their trunks yearned for the ragged cliff that overlooked the beach. Through their boughs, the ocean was gray lacquer. The property was at least a hundred feet up, but the tide was a drum roll, loud enough to block out every other sound.

I looked at the rear of the house. Buttoned up and curtained. Near the cliff was an old redwood table and two chairs, guano specked and faded to ash. But half of the table was covered with a white tablecloth, and on the cloth were a cup and saucer and a plate.

I walked over. Coffee dregs in the cup, crumbs on the plate, and an orange smear that looked like ossified marmalade.

The ocean grumbled and seabirds shrieked in response. I walked to the edge of the cliff. To the spot where Katarina had photographed her father, slumped in his wheelchair.

Dry dirt. No fence, easy fall. I peered over and a splinter of vertigo pierced my chest. When it subsided, I looked over again. The hillside was gouged with erosion — giant fingermarks that traced a dead drop down to the rocky beach.

The gulls screamed again — a reprimand that reminded me I was trespassing.

The coffee and crumbs said Katarina was in town. Probably gone out for an errand.

I could wait here, but the more efficient thing would be to call Milo and catch him up on Becky Basille’s notes, Harrison, and Bancroft.

As I started to leave, I passed the garage once again and saw the rear end of another car, parked in front of the little white sedan. Bigger and darker — black. The distinctive vertical slash taillights of a Buick Electra. Same car I’d seen at the front of the hospital, in seventy-nine.

Something near the rear tire.

Fingers. White and thin. A hand, the top speckled by an eczematous rash.

No, another kind of speckling.

Darker than eczema.

She was lying on the cement floor, faceup, parallel to the Buick, nearly concealed under the chassis. The other hand was over her head, palm exposed, gouged with deep cuts. Tendons looped from some of the wounds, limp as tired elastic bands.

Defense cuts.

She had on a pink housedress under a white terry cloth robe. The robe was splayed open and the dress was pushed up past her waist, nearly reaching her chin. Her feet were bare, the soles grimed by garage dirt. Her eyeglasses were a few feet away, one of the sidepieces twisted nearly off, one of the lenses cracked.

Her neck was cut, too, but most of the damage had been done to her abdomen. It was black and red — ripped apart, a jumble of viscera — but oddly bloated.

The vertigo returned. I wheeled around, then checked my back. I faced the body again and felt myself grow weirdly calm. Time slowed and an internal rush and roar filled my head, as if the ocean had been transplanted there.

Something missing. Where was the inevitable message?

I forced myself to look for red letters.

Searching for two words . . . nothing. Nothing in the garage but the car and Katarina and a small metal workbench off to one side, backed by a pegboard panel.

A workbench like Robin’s, but cluttered with paint cans, tools, gluepots, jars of shellac. Hanging from the pegboard, hooks bearing hammers, gouges, chisels — one of the chisel hooks empty.

A knife on the table, its blade glazed red.

Birchwood handle. Wide tapered blade. Everything glazed . . . the bench stained, but no words, just a spatter of stains.

Old paint blotches. New ones. All mixed in with the telltale red-brown.

Dribs and droplets but no proclamation.

Something white underneath the handle of the killing tool.

A scrap of paper. Not white — almost white, beige. A nice, classy shade of ecru.

Business card.

Confident-looking brown letters said:

SDI, Inc.

9817 Wilshire Boulevard

Suite 1233

Beverly Hills, CA 90212

Something else.

In the upper right.

Tiny.

Hand printed by ballpoint.

Printed neatly, the characters identical to the lettering on my tape package.

So much pressure on the pen that the stiff paper had been torn through in spots.

BL!

I ran down the driveway, threw myself into the car, and sped down to the marina. There was a pay phone on the boat moorings, near some trash cans. The stench was welcome.

I tried Robin again. Still no answer.

A detective at West L.A. Robbery-Homicide said, “He’s not in.”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Sorry, don’t know where he is.”

“Maybe he’s out in his car,” I said. “Could you try radioing him?”

His voice hardened: “Who is this?”

“Assistant Chief Murchison,” I said without thinking, marveling at the ease of the lie.

Second of silence. Something that might have been a gulp. “One moment, sir.”

Thirty seconds later: “Sturgis.”

“It’s me, Milo—”

Pause.

“Alex,” I said.

“You palmed yourself off as
Murchison
?”

“Katarina’s dead. I just found her body.” I gave him the details, describing the crime scene in a rapid word storm. The card with the “bad love” message.

“Same printing as the package the tape came in.”

“SDI,” he said.

“It’s right there in Beverly Hills. Maybe he chose to use it for the message for a reason.”

“SDI . . . sure as hell not the Strategic Defense Initiative.”

“Could you check on Robin? I know the place is secure, but the killer’s picking up speed, and the idea of her being alone up there . . . I tried calling her twice, but she’s not in.”

“Probably went out to do some shopping, but I’ll stop by.”

“Thanks. What do I do now? I haven’t even called the local police yet.”

“Where are you?”

“Pay phone, a few minutes from the house.”

“Okay, go back there. Stay away from the actual crime scene and just wait. I’ll call Santa Barbara PD, tell ’em you’re kosher, then I’ll head up there myself — what time is it? — three-thirty . . . I should be there by six, the latest.”

I waited near the cliff, as far from the garage as I could be. Staring at the ocean, inhaling brine, and trying to make sense of things.

Two young uniforms showed up first. One stayed with the body and the other took a superficial report from me — name, rank, serial number, time and place — listening courteously and just a bit suspiciously.

Twenty minutes later, a pair of detectives arrived. One was a woman named Sarah Grayson, tall, slim, attractive, in her forties. Her eyes were slightly slanted, colored an even brown. They moved slowly but frequently. Taking things in. Reserving judgment.

Her partner was a big, heavy man named Steen, with a bushy dark mustache and not much hair on top. He went straight into the garage and left me to Grayson.

Somehow we’d ended up back near the cliff edge. I told her tape recorder everything I knew, and she listened without interruption. Then she pointed at the water and said, “There’s a seal flipping around out there.”

I followed her arm and made out a small black dot, ten breaststrokes from the tideline, cutting a perpendicular line through the breakwaters.

“Or a sea lion,” she said. “Those are the ones with the ears, right?”

I shrugged.

“Let’s go over it again, doctor.”

When I finished, she said, “So you were looking for Dr. de Bosch to warn her about this revenge nut?”

“That, and I wanted to find out if she could tell me anything about why he’s
out
for revenge.”

“And you think it has something to do with this school?”

“She and her father ran it. It’s the only thing I can come up with.”

“What was the exact name of the school?” she said.

“The de Bosch Institute and Corrective School. It closed in eighty-one.”

“And you thought she’d know what happened because she was the owner’s daughter.”

I nodded and looked at the rear of the house. “There could be records in there. Therapy notes, something about an incident that traumatized one of the students enough to set him off years later.”

“What kind of students went to this school?”

“Emotionally disturbed. Mr. Bancroft, the owner of the school across the street, described them as antisocial — fire setters, truants, and other miscreants.”

She smiled. “I know Mr. Bancroft. So when do you think this traumatic episode might have occurred?”

“Some time before nineteen seventy-nine.”

“Because of that conference?”

“That’s right.”

She thought for a while. “And how long was the school around?”

“From nineteen sixty-two to eighty-one.”

“Well, that’s verifiable,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Maybe if there was a trauma we’ll have a record of it. Assuming something happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“You just told me you think this guy’s crazy, doctor — this supposed avenger.” She kept her eyes on me and turned one of her earrings. “So maybe he cooked it all up in his head.”

“Maybe, but being psychotic doesn’t mean being totally delusional — most psychotics have periods of lucidity. And psychotics can be traumatized, too. Plus, he might not even be psychotic. Just extremely disturbed.”

She smiled again. “You sound like an expert witness. Cautious.”

“I’ve been to court.”

“I know — Detective Sturgis told me. And I discussed you with Judge Stephen Huff, too, just to play it safe.”

“You know Steve?”

“Know him well. I used to work juvenile down in L.A. Steve was handling that kind of thing, back then. I know Milo, too. You keep good company, doctor.”

She looked at the house. “This victim down in L.A. — Ms. Paprock. You think she taught at the school?”

“Yes. Under the name of Evans. Myra Evans. Her day job was with the public school system in Goleta. There might still be records of that. And the male victim, Rodney Shipler, worked as a school janitor in L.A., so he may have had a similar job up here.”

“Shipler,” she said, still looking at the house. “Whereabouts in L.A. do you practice?”

“Westside.”

“Child counseling?”

“I do mostly forensic work now. Custody evaluations, injury cases.”

“Custody
— that
can get mean.” She turned her earring again. “Well, we’ll go and look around in the house soon as the tech team and the coroner come and okay it.”

She gazed at the ocean some more, brought her eyes back to the redwood table, and lingered on the coffee cup.

“Having her breakfast,” she said. “The dregs still haven’t solidified, so my guess is this is from this morning.”

I nodded. “That’s why I thought she was home. But if she was eating out here and he surprised her, wouldn’t the house be open? Look how sealed up it looks. And why didn’t anyone hear her scream?”

Holding up a finger, she slung her purse over her shoulder and went to the garage. She and Steen came out a few minutes later. He was holding a metal tape measure and a camera, listening to her and nodding.

She took something out of her purse. Surgical gloves. After shaking them out, she donned them and tried a rear door. It opened. She stuck her head inside for a moment, then drew it back.

Another conference with Steen.

Back to me.

“What’s in there?” I said.

“Total mess,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Another body?”

“Not that I can see so far. . . . Look, doctor, it’s going to take a long time to get things sorted out here. Why don’t you just try to relax until Detective Sturgis gets here? Sorry you can’t sit on these chairs, but if you don’t mind the grass, get yourself a place over on that side.” Indicating the south end of the yard. “I already checked it for footprints and it’s okay — ah, look, there’s another sea lion. It’s real pretty up here, isn’t it?”

Milo made it by five forty-eight. I’d staked out a position in a corner of the yard, and he walked straight to it after talking to Grayson.

“Robin was still out when I checked,” he said. “Her truck and her purse were gone and so was the dog, and she’d written down something on the fridge pad about salad, so she probably went shopping. I saw absolutely nothing wrong. Don’t worry.”

“Maybe she should stay with you.”

“Why?”

“I’m not safe to be around.”