Burning Man (29 page)

“Three,” I whispered, but instead of my shooting the Strangler, we lifted Sirius up and started walking. It was up to me to lead, even though I didn’t know how to lead anymore and hadn’t for some time.

Fire blew our way again, and the pain made me cry out. It surprised me that I was still alive enough to feel.

Something dug into my arm, and I felt pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes to see my shepherd hovering over me. One of his front paws was on my arm, and the other was on my chest.

“I’m all right,” I said, patting him.

Once again I had done my Lazarus act and returned from the dead, but this time, more than any other of my resurrections, I recognized that being alive was a good thing. It hadn’t always been that way. When you’re severely burned it takes a long time to get better, but that had been the easier recovery for me. After Jen’s death I tried to hide from everyone how bad off I was. Few
people had any idea I was a basket case, and my severe burning had helped to mask my other symptoms.

My dreams were now forcing me to look back. There was no longer any hiding from what I’d been. Part of me had wanted to die in the fire. Jen’s death had left me a hollow man, a shell ripe for going up in flames. Being responsible for my partner was the only reason I hadn’t let myself become a human flare. As bad as reliving the burning was, facing up to the old emotions was worse. It was a hell of a lesson to keep on burning night after night.

My moment after stripped away my veneer. I had gone out into that fire wanting to die. Ironically, getting burned probably saved my life. I had been contemplating suicide, but I hadn’t wanted it to look like a suicide. That was my own personal insight. I had a feeling my vision somehow applied to the Klein case, but I didn’t know how.

Inspiration might strike, I told myself, if I got more sleep. Later, I told myself, I would think about it. And then, knowing I wouldn’t burn anymore that night, I fell asleep again and awakened much later than usual.

Every PTSD burning takes its toll. Satchell Paige once posed the question, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” In the morning following a burning I usually awaken feeling as old as Methuselah. When I got up, I was parched and drained and achy. I downed an Advil with two glasses of water and then started thinking about my moment after.

My visions—for want of a better word—are not always straightforward, but unlike dreams I always remember every detail of them. I would like to believe that the after-fire message comes from my subconscious, but I don’t know if that’s an adequate explanation. Before my walk through fire I was never prescient, but now some strange door seems to have opened up for me. My oracle demands a high price, though. It needs its pound of burning flesh.

I made myself a breakfast of Cheerios and coffee. While I sipped my coffee, I thought briefly about my moment after but didn’t stay with it for long. It was too personal. I didn’t like remembering the suicidal thoughts that I’d had and was glad that darkness was no longer with me.

During my talk with Karen Santos, she had recalled seeing a “feisty” bird on the sweatshirt of the young woman that had bought the baby bootees at the monastery’s gift shop. Her impression was that the bird was gold or brown and belonged to a college. It was time to find that bird. I started entering information into my laptop.

“
Road Runner
,” I hummed as I typed, “
the coyote’s after you
.”

The search engine told me there were more than twenty four-year colleges in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Fernando Counties. The mascots were varied: there were lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), as well as an anteater, a beaver and, yes, a roadrunner. There were mascot characters such as Prospector Pete, Matty the Matador, and Johnny Poet (which makes sense only if your school is named after the poet John Whittier), and nonanimal mascots in the forms of titans, Trojans, and waves.

There were also two eagle mascots. One belonged to Biola University, and the other to Cal State, Los Angeles.

I went to the website for each school. Both of their eagles looked feisty, but the CSULA golden eagle looked more like the bird that Santos had described. It was golden brown and black, and had an attitude. The demographics and location of the school also made it a more likely choice. Biola University was located in La Mirada, about a forty-minute drive from the Monastery of the Angels, whereas Cal State, LA was only about five miles from the monastery, with the same Interstate 10 passing by both of them. The more I read about CSULA, the more it fit the profile of the young woman Karen Santos had seen in the gift shop. Sixty percent of the Cal State, LA undergrads are women, and almost half of those are Hispanic. The vast majority of the university’s twenty-one thousand students lived off campus. Assuming Rose’s mother
was a typical commuter student, it wouldn’t have been hard for her to maintain a low profile while attending classes. No one might have even noticed she was pregnant.

Sorting through my notes, I tried to find Karen Santos’s telephone number. Some of my notes had gotten scattered after the attack on me, and the only home number I could find was that of Dottie Antonelli.

When I dialed her up I said, “I’d like to return a barely used Saint Jude’s medal.”

Dottie didn’t sound surprised to be hearing from me. “It’s about time that you called to say thank you.”

“And what am I thanking you for?”

“I’m thinking those Saint Jude and Saint Michael medals saved your life.”

“I’m surprised you’re not crediting the pumpkin bread as well.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“Is there a patron saint for pumpkin bread?”

“There’s a patron saint for farmers: Saint Isidore the Farmer.”

“Thanks for distinguishing. Like there would be another saint named Isidore.”

“For your information there’s at least one other saint named Isidore.”

“You’re kidding?”

“I am not.”

“But there is only one Saint Isidore the Farmer?”

“That’s right.”

“With a patron saint named Isidore the Farmer, it’s no wonder that there are so many jokes about farmers’ daughters.”

“I hope you’re not calling to tell me one of those jokes.”

“It didn’t start out that way, but maybe you’ll get lucky. I called for Karen Santos’s number.”

“I’m afraid that puts me in a bit of a dilemma, Detective. We’re not supposed to give out the phone numbers of our volunteers.”

“She already gave me her number. I misplaced it.”

Heavy on the mock skepticism, Dottie said, “Is that so?”

It took me a moment to interpret what was going on. “You’re shaking me down again, aren’t you?”

“Did you know that Saint Michael is the patron saint of law enforcement? We just got in a shipment with some new Saint Michael medals. I’d be glad to put one aside for you, along with a few other choice items.”

“How much is all that going to set me back?”

“Your donation of a hundred dollars will be greatly appreciated.”

“Who’s the patron saint of extortionists?”

“I don’t believe there is one.”

“In that case, you want me to write a recommendation letter for you to the pope?”

“If you do, don’t forgot to mention our statue fund. You do remember what our beautiful statue of Saint Dominic and Our Lady looked like, don’t you?”

I remembered only too well. “That concrete foundation saved my life.”

In a tone suddenly as serious as mine, Dottie said, “God saved your life.”

Even though we both knew that insurance was going to cover the repair of the statue, I said, “Forget the Benjamin and put me down for two fifty. But that donation comes with strings. Does the gift shop ship items?”

“That can be arranged.”

“In that case I want a monthly monastery candy-gram.”

Sounding all too pleased, Dottie said, “You want a box of our chocolates sent to you every month?”

“That’s what I said.”

“It worked, didn’t it? Talk about a miracle. You found a woman through that box of chocolates.”

“It wasn’t the chocolates.”

She offered up a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort and said, “Yeah, right.”

“The real miracle will be you giving me Karen Santos’s number.”

“Temperance is one of the seven heavenly virtues.”

“Right now it’s feeling a lot more like one of the seven deadly sins.”

She gave me the number.

Luck was with me—Karen Santos was home and said she would be glad to help me with my bird hunt. I waited while she turned on her computer and then directed her first to the Biola University site. As she studied their eagle she made a lot of uncertain sounds before finally saying, “It’s possible that’s the bird I saw, but I can’t be sure.”

From there she went to the Cal State, Los Angeles site, navigating from the athletic department, to a picture of the school’s mascot, to the T-shirt and sweatshirt offerings at the bookstore. With each jump of a webpage she became increasingly more enthusiastic. “The CSULA lettering looks very familiar,” she said, “and I am all but sure that’s the right eagle.”

I thanked Mrs. Santos. The eagle had landed.

Assuming Rose’s mother was a student at CSULA, I needed to find the best way to leave her a message. Since CSULA was mostly a commuter school, students would be dependent on getting their news online or from a school newspaper. I did another computer search and found the school had a student newspaper that came out every Friday called the
University Times
.

I started writing entries in my notepad. If I could get the student newspaper to run a story, Rose’s mother might take notice. I blocked out the story as I wanted to see it in print, omitting information I didn’t want to disclose, and embellishing on that which I
wanted to play up. A cynical reporter might have said I was playing fast and loose with the facts. If I was lucky, the fledgling journalists working at the
University Times
weren’t old enough to be cynical.

Because Rose’s story needed a human interest angle, I decided Lisbet would fill that bill perfectly. Of course I didn’t bother to inform Lisbet of that.

I called the
University Times
in the hopes that some eager beaver was up against a deadline and working on a Sunday. Sylvia Espinosa, the news editor of the paper, was that eager beaver. By the sounds of it, she was the only person working the offices. When I told her I was calling about a murder with a potential tie-in to the campus, she sounded positively ecstatic.

“The only off-campus calls I usually get are from press agents trying to publicize some concert or speaker,” she said. “And this week’s on-campus stuff isn’t much more exciting. Our lead story is on a potential misuse of one hundred dollars in funds by the ASI—that’s our student government.”

“That’s not exactly grand larceny.”

“It was either that or a story on a rally attended by eight students for a history professor that was denied tenure.”

“I can see that would make for a tough choice.”

“Manna from heaven is a murder with a campus tie-in. Tell me about it.”

With her appetite whetted for some banner headline, I laid out the story for her. When I finished, I learned that Sylvia was old enough to be cynical.

“The connection with our school sounds iffy,” she said.

“There was a positive ID regarding the CSULA sweatshirt.”

“I’ve seen winos walking around wearing Cal State clothing, Detective Gideon, but that doesn’t mean they’re students here.”

“The profile of our person of interest fits the average student profile at your school.”

“It also fits me and half a million women in the LA area.”

“As you might imagine, this is a sensitive case and I’m limited in what I can tell you, but I can say that we have several significant leads that suggest Rose’s mother is, or has been, a student at CSULA.”

“And your eyewitness saw this woman carrying a covered basket near the Angels Flight landing?”

Because I didn’t want the monastery connection revealed, I had intimated that the sighting had taken place at Angels Flight, without actually saying it. Cops and the media have a strange symbiotic relationship: they use us to try and get a good story, and we try to use them to get the story we want.

“The sighting didn’t take place there, but we have a witness that offered a description of a young, heavy Hispanic woman in her late teens or early twenties. Our witness talked with this woman and said she was well spoken and didn’t have any discernible accent.”

I could hear Sylvia scratching away. “So you have more than one witness?”

“We’re talking to several people now that are assisting us in this case.”

By the sounds of it, Sylvia was continuing to scribble down all of my double-talk, but I wasn’t sure if she was buying it or was even planning on using it.

“Has your newspaper ever done a piece on the Safely Surrendered Baby Law? It’s what most people call the California Safe Haven Law.”

“Not that I remember. What is it?”

“It’s a law that allows any newborn to be dropped off at a hospital or a fire station with no questions asked. The mother doesn’t have to give her name or be fearful of any kind of punishment.”