Gravedigger (2 page)

“He didn’t try to appeal?”

“No. Maybe he was tired of fighting. Maybe Anna saying she was through with him forever made him give up or something. That’s what my father said. He’s a psychiatrist.” The boy began eating hungrily. “And that’s when Serenity ran away.” He cut at a bacon strip with the edge of his fork, stopped, looked at Dave. “You don’t think he’s right—Serenity wasn’t one of those girls Azrael buried?”

“I don’t know enough yet,” Dave said, “to think anything. But for what it’s worth, Banner Insurance is in doubt. Three of the recovered bodies have been identified and claimed. Three no one has come for. I guess they didn’t send their parents letters and snapshots. One of them could have been Serenity. Blood type, hair color, height, and general skeletal conformation all match. But the girl in question was a perfect specimen—no dental work, never broke a bone.”

“Serenity never broke a bone,” the boy said. “Her teeth were perfect.” The boy worked on the bacon and eggs for a minute. Then he said, “They take a baby footprint in the hospital when you’re born.”

“These bodies weren’t in a condition to yield footprints or fingerprints,” Dave said. “But I’m glad to know about Serenity’s teeth and bones. That helps. Thank you. And to answer your question—yes, this is how I do my job. And now I do know something about the Westovers, don’t I.” He gave the boy a tight little smile. “I appreciate your help.” He tasted the coffee. It was first-rate. “And I appreciate the breakfast.”

“I don’t know where Chass went,” the boy said.

“What about his wife? Where is she now? Anna?”

“I think she runs a school for little kids, a playschool. Someplace in West L.A.” He wrinked his forehead. “What does she call it? The Hobbit School. Yeah.”

“Thanks. I’ll look her up.” Dave ate for a few minutes, drank some more coffee, lit a cigarette. “What about the son, what about Lyle? Does he go to college somewhere?”

“Juilliard in New York,” the boy said. “Only not this year. He was around. I don’t know, but I think he was working. Maybe to help his father out.” The boy went away and came back with a brown pottery ashtray for Dave. He set it on the counter. “He’s a musical genius.” The boy got onto his stool again, sipped some coffee, laughed wryly. “All the kids thought he was a retard, a moron. He has this very bad speech defect, all right? And he wasn’t any good at anything kids do—running, swimming, playing any kind of games. Very bad physical coordination, almost like a spastic, you know? And it turned out he’s a musical genius. We treated him really badly, really mean. Nobody could stand him. He didn’t do anything to deserve it. Kids are cruel, right?”

“But Lyle’s not there now,” Dave said. “And hasn’t been there. Also for a week or ten days. Could he have gone away with his father?”

“I guess so. They never seemed to have anything to say to each other.” The boy shook his head, frowning. “I don’t see why he’d go. He had a lot of friends coming around all the time. Music coming out of the windows over there—sometimes till two in the morning.”

“Did Serenity like him? Did he like her?”

“Not when we were really small,” the boy said, “but when we all grew up a little, she got mad at us when we called him stupid and told him to get lost. Then, pretty soon, it wasn’t a problem anymore. He got all wrapped up in music, practicing all day—only ten, eleven years old. Yes, sure, Serenity liked him—loved him, didn’t she? Sure. I guess he loved her too. I never heard any different.”

Dave checked his wristwatch, drank the last of the coffee from his mug, got off the stool. “I’d better find Anna Westover,” he said. “You’ve got my card?” The boy nodded and got off his stool. Dave said, “If Westover or Lyle shows up over there, will you phone me? I’ll be grateful. If I’m not there, leave your message on the tape, all right?” The boy said he would, and Dave looked around for the way out. The boy led him, opened the apple-green door. The sea wind crowded in. The sun hadn’t warmed it. When Dave was halfway down the drive, the boy called:

“I wish it would be Serenity who shows up.”

“So do I.” Dave lifted a hand, walked on down the drive, crossed the street. He started to get into the Triumph and halted. He looked back. The green door was closed. He went to the 171 mailbox and opened it. It was jammed with envelopes. He shut the box, got into the Triumph, and drove away.

A
NNA WESTOVER SAID, “ISN’T
it tiresome how right folk wisdom always turns out to be?” In an empty schoolroom strewn with naptime blankets, building blocks, toy xylophones, little red tables, little red chairs, she stood, small, thin, and brittle, facing a window where the clear morning light showed every line of worry and disappointment in her handsome face. She smiled wryly, and more lines appeared to frame her generous mouth. “‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’” She sighed, looked at Dave, straightened her shoulders. “How much I would have done differently, if only I hadn’t been so sure of myself.”

Outside the window, under old pepper trees, little kids in bright sweaters toddled and hopped, chirping and squeaking in a yard of grass-cracked blacktop, among gaudily painted swings, seesaws, jungle gyms. “It looks like a cheerful life,” Dave said. “There have to be worse ways to earn your living.”

“I agree,” she said. “It’s the loneliness I feel sorry about. I might have had my father and mother again, but a choice was given me a long time ago, and I chose my husband. Now I don’t have him and I don’t have them.”

“People who make either/or propositions to their children can’t be much of a loss,” Dave said.

She had fine, clear, gray eyes, and they searched his face now skeptically. “Have you children, Mr. Brandstetter?”

He shook his head. “I was one once. Does that help?”

“Almost not at all,” she said. She crossed her arms on her breast, clutching her arms. She walked around the room on legs that were good and straight and must have been beautiful before they became too thin. “What you want for your children is that they never stumble and fall and hurt themselves. Suddenly emotions take charge of you that you never knew you possessed. It’s appalling how strong they are. Common sense hasn’t a chance.” She stopped and looked at him again. “But you mustn’t think it’s their fault—my parents, I mean. Of course they would be happy to have me back in the circle of their love again.”

“Then, if you’re lonely—” he began.

“I am also stubborn and ashamed. When I wanted to marry Chass, my father said he was no good, and that he would bring me sorrow and disgrace. He said he didn’t have any moral fiber. He acknowledged that he was brilliant. He admitted that he had charm, grace, good looks, all of which would take him far in the law. But he saw into Chass as I couldn’t see, and knew that intelligence, charm, grace, good looks don’t add up to a man.”

“What about ambition?” Dave said. “That’s an expensive house out there at the beach. It takes hard work to earn a house like that. And he’s only forty-five.”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded and smiled sadly with a corner of her mouth. “Ambition. Yes, indeed. The really dangerous ingredient for a no-good. That was what my father trusted least in Chass. Oh, yes.” She laughed grimly. “Ambition he did have. I thought it was wonderful. It wasn’t. It was a disease, a cancer.”

A small oriental boy stumbled and fell in the yard. A mountainous black woman in a tent-size flowered smock swooped down, gathered him against her massive breasts, petted him, crooned to him. His cries from beyond the plate glass sounded like the reedy bleat of a squeeze toy.

“I was so in love with him, so proud of him, so sure of him. I begged my father to help him. He thought he could make me let Chass go by refusing. Instead, I quit school myself, went to work, and paid his way through law school. He came out at the top of his class. I was vain, and I rubbed my father’s nose in it. Wrong, how wrong he’d been. Oh, was I vain and foolish.” Laughing sourly at herself, she began gathering up the small blankets, folding them, stacking them on the lower shelves of bookcases full of rubber balls, dolls, mallets, teddy bears. “And fond and foolish was my father. I thought, and perhaps he thought so too, that he was acting on the strength of evidence. He was a lawyer, after all. He took Chass into his firm, made him a junior partner. But it wasn’t the strength of the evidence, was it? It was guilt at having let me sacrifice my own education, my future—‘sacrifice’ would have been the word he used to himself—to put Chass through law school instead of helping him, as he could so easily have done, so easily. Guilt. And chagrin at having misjudged the man his daughter loved.”

“He wasn’t with your father’s firm,” Dave said, “when this witness-bribing thing happened?”

“Oh, no.” She began picking up the scattered small chairs and arranging them neatly at the tables. “Chass didn’t stay more than a few years. He chafed. Things moved too slowly. Then the chance to handle a big criminal case came his way. He begged my father to let him handle it under the firm’s umbrella. But it wasn’t that kind of firm. It was corporate law, civil law, property management, that tame sort of thing. My father distrusted criminal law. He wouldn’t hear of it. And Chass left the firm.” She opened a door, switched on a light in a washroom, came back with a sponge and, crouching, began to wipe off the tabletops. A faint smell of orange juice reached Dave. “He did well on his own. I didn’t much like the clients he sometimes brought to dinner. I didn’t like them in the same house with my children. But that didn’t often happen.” She gave a little dry chuckle. “Just too often. But”—she sighed, rose, moved to the next table, crouched again, wiped again—“he was happy. Things were moving fast. He liked the courtroom, the confrontations, the reality—that was what he called it—the reality of it all. And, of course, he loved winning. And he always seemed to win.”

“And the money?” Dave said.

“And the money.” She wiped another table, rose and took the sponge into the washroom. Dave heard water splash. Over the sound of the water, she called, “That was when we bought that pretentious house, where the damned wind never stops blowing. Serenity was six.”

“And Lyle?” Dave wondered.

She came out with the sponge. “Five. And a great worry. He couldn’t speak, he could only make funny noises. It turned out that was his way of speaking. It still is.”

“Did you take him to therapists?”

She was wiping tabletops again. “Oh, yes. I believe several of them went into other professions after encountering Lyle. At first, they insisted something was the matter with his brain.” She found a spill spot on the asphalt tile floor and wiped the shiny surface clean. “He has the brain of an Einstein.” She didn’t sound pleased about Lyle. “If he wanted to speak, he’d speak. He simply can’t be bothered.”

“I’m told he’s a fine musician,” Dave said. “He was living with his father. Why was that?”

“It was his choice,” she said briskly. “Ask him.”

“Tell me where to find him and I will,” Dave said.

“At Juilliard, in New York,” she said.

“Not this winter,” Dave said. “You mean you haven’t seen him since he came home?”

“Is he home? I thought you said you couldn’t find him.”

“The boy across the street says he’s been home, playing music at night, working during the day, to help his father out. The house is in poor shape. What happened to all that wonderful money? Did it go for his defense?”

“And he can’t earn any more,” she said. She stood in the washroom doorway, and smoked a cigarette. The motions she made were nervous. “He’s disbarred. You knew that.” She blinked. “The boy across the street? You mean little Scotty Dekker?” She laughed bleakly and shook her head. “How we misjudge children. I’d never have believed Scotty could understand a thing he saw or heard. A pretty little animal—that’s what I always thought about Scotty.”

“He’s still pretty,” Dave said, “and he’s got eyes and ears, and maybe even a normal brain. But he evidently wasn’t any closer to Lyle than you are. And he doesn’t know where he’s gone or why. Or his father, either. Where would they go, Mrs. Westover?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know why it’s so pressing. What do you care? I suppose Chass finally ran from all the people he owes money to. The house is heavily mortgaged, for one thing. I presume he owes you money?”

“He doesn’t,” Dave said. “Do you hear from Serenity?”

Anna Westover stared. “Has something happened to her?”

“Do you know where she’s been these past two years?”

“No. She never wrote, never telephoned. No.”

“She wrote,” Dave said, “to her father.”

Anna Westover turned, threw away her cigarette. Dave heard the toilet flush. She came out of the washroom, came straight to him. “You have a way with you,” she said, “like a good priest’s, a father confessor’s. But you aren’t a father confessor, are you? You’re something very different.”

“Did your husband, ex-husband, come to you, or phone you for money at any time recently?”

“He would know better,” she said. “After he got out of prison, he came once. But not for money. He wanted me to make love to him. I suppose he thought he could charm me back again, I don’t know. He seemed very sad and shabby. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t let him do as he wanted. What is this about Serenity?”

Dave told her, showed her the letter, the snapshot.

“Dear God,” she said, and sat down on one of the little round tables. “That swine. That son of a bitch.” She was looking away. The window light was on her face again. Her face was taut. She turned it, lifted it to Dave. “You don’t believe it, I hope. Because it isn’t true, you know. It’s simply a way for him to raise money. He saw the story about those poor, tragic girls on television, and he remembered he had that letter from Serenity, that photo. Oh, I know so well how his warped mind works. I can see him digging out that insurance policy, rubbing his hands, sitting down at his desk to write that letter.”

“Banner Insurance agrees with you,” Dave said. “But how can you be sure? You say you haven’t heard from her. The photo shows she was there. That is Serenity, isn’t it? Scotty Dekker says it is.”

“Why would she go there?” It was a cry of protest.

“She was on dope,” Dave said. “She went some pretty low places, even before she ran away. Scotty told me about the room with the mattress and the rats in Venice.”