No Legal Grounds (30 page)

“You don’t look ready to go home,” the police lieutenant said to Sam. His name was Saunders, and he was right about that. Sam should have been back at the hospital. But two nights was enough. And his family, staying in an economy motel, also had enough of Sin City.

“I’m here, let’s get this over with.” Sam wore a workout suit Linda had bought that morning and walked with the help of a hospital-issue cane. It was getting on toward eleven o’clock and Sam wanted to get on the road, with his daughter driving his car. Linda would take Max.

“It’s just that I want to get it all straight so I don’t have to be dragging you back here,” Saunders said. He was thin, about forty, with a receding hairline and a lot of forehead susceptible to deep furrows. Went with the job, Sam figured.

At least the lieutenant’s office wasn’t intimidating. A can of Planters nuts sat on the desk next to a computer monitor and a stack of video tapes. Sam saw the official insignia
Cops
on one of the tapes. Was he a fan, or using these for training? On the corner of Saunders’s desk, facing Sam, was a framed quotation: “In Valor There Is Honor — Tacitus.”

The effects of the Vicodin were starting to wear off and Sam’s leg was throbbing. “What isn’t straight?” he said.
“How that fire started,” Saunders said. “According to Detective Powers’s report — ”
“Didn’t you find the place was rigged?”
“Yeah, but who tripped it?”
“Oberlin. Then he shot me and was going to leave me in there.”
“Right. And you managed to get up, wounded as you were, and push him over a railing.”
His tone sounded the slightest bit incredulous, but Sam chalked it up to police protectiveness. In this era of lawsuits and bad publicity, all public agencies were being more careful. “Yes, I pushed him over.”
“And thought he was dead or knocked out?”
“I didn’t really have a chance to find out. I was a little preoccupied with the fire and the fact that I could barely move.”
“So you left him there?”
“I attempted to move him. But I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t?”
“I physically could not move him, is what I’m saying.”
The captain tapped his metallic desk with his index finger. “Right, and so you left him there.”
“I had to make a decision.”
“Of course.”
“You understand what I’m saying, right? I tried to move him, but I couldn’t, and the place was burning down, and I was bleeding and my daughter was somewhere, and frankly I place a little more value on my daughter than a sociopath who was trying to kill us both.”
Saunders said nothing.
“Anything else?” Sam said.
“Yeah. Let’s talk about your background with this guy. You — ”
“I’m sorry. No. I’m not going to talk about him anymore. You have my statement.”
“Mr. Trask, if you would just — ”
Sam stood. “That’s all.”
“Please sit down, if you would, sir.”
“Am I being held?”
“Of course not.”
“Then the interview is over. You know where to reach me.”
With a curt nod, Sam grabbed his cane and made for the door. He had the distinct feeling Lieutenant Saunders was one of those career paper pushers whose existence was justified by how much squirm he could get out of people.

Heather, driving, didn’t speak until they were almost ten miles out of Las Vegas. The afternoon sun was bright, almost blinding. Sam was content to close his eyes and try to will his body to heal itself.

Then Heather said, “Do you hate me?”
Sam opened his eyes, turned to her.
“Do you?”
“Of course not, honey. Why would — ”
“I totally messed up. I messed up my whole life.”
“No — ”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
Sam reached out and stroked her hair. She let him. It had been

a long time. “I’m sorry too. So now we have a second chance. Both of us.”
Heather said nothing. She wiped something from her eye.
“Why did he do this to us?” she said.
“That’s something I ask myself a lot. There may not be any real answer to it.”
“How could there not be?”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about how the mind works. Or what it can become when left to itself. That was him. He had no other resources or authority but his own mind. The law didn’t scare him, he rejected religion. He was his own god.”
“He did this weird thing.” She paused. “He talked about a movie where a guy shoots a car trunk. And then he did it. Do you know what that was all about?”
“Anything else? ”
“Something about heat. I think he said the actor was in
Yankee Doodle
.”
“
Yankee
. . .
Yankee Doodle Dandy
?”
“That’s it.”

“James Cagney?”
“Yeah. Know what he meant?”
“Oh, man. I think I do.
White Heat.
That’s the movie. Cagney

plays a guy named Cody, who’s fixated on his mother. A real mama’s boy who made up for it by becoming the worst criminal he could. At one point he has a hostage in the trunk of the car, and the guy says he can’t breathe, so Cody shoots airholes in the trunk, killing the man, of course.”

“Sick.”
“He goes to prison, and when he’s told his mother is dead, he goes nuts and starts tearing the place up. Nicky was fixated on his mother too. When I got to her, that really sent him off the beam.”
“This is really nuts.”
“At the end of the movie, he’s on top of some gas tanks and he screams, ‘Made it, Ma! Top of the world!’ And then he shoots into the tanks and goes up in a fireball.”
It all had a perverse sense of connection. Even down to the fact that Nicky Oberlin was burned to death in a house fire. Maybe he wanted it to happen, just like Cody.
Then another connection hit Sam. He knew the movie from a film series at UCSB, a tribute to James Cagney. They’d shown a bunch of his films, from
The Public Enemy
to
Mister Roberts.
Of course
Yankee Doodle Dandy
was in there, and
White Heat.
Sam got cold as he realized Nicky Oberlin might have been sitting in Campbell Hall with him the night they showed it.

Sam took a check to Gerald Case the next morning and told him the story. When he finished, Case held out the check. “I don’t feel I earned all this.”

“But if I was doing my job I would have got to him before he got to your daughter.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m good, remember? I’m supposed to get those things right.”
Sam refused the check. “You were part of it. You helped me force his hand. If we hadn’t, who knows, maybe he would have waited for a better time. Maybe he would have taken me out.”
“And he would have.”
“I know.”
Case nodded and folded the check. “Okay, you twisted my arm. But let me take you to dinner sometime. See, I can find anything, especially good restaurants.”

Now he had time to heal. With his family around him. He was even getting his legal legs back. Pete Harper had called and said he still wanted Sam to handle the lawsuit. Great news. Life had to get back to normal now even though none of them would ever be the same again.

Home was quiet this afternoon, with Max at practice and Linda taking Heather to a counselor. Robyn Caid was a member of Solid Rock and a specialist in psychological trauma. At least Heather had agreed to go. Reports after their first meeting were positive. Heather, it turned out, had not been raped by Nicky Oberlin, though he had tried. His failure was another layer in his deep and complicated profile.

Sam had also talked to Rich Demaris, a lawyer friend, who got an agreement from a deputy city attorney to reduce Heather’s DUI to a wet reckless. As part of the plea, Heather would have to go through an alcohol program. That in itself was a good thing. Heather would need all the help she could get.

In his study, Sam managed to get some good research done on LexisNexis. It felt good to be back in the right kind of fight, even though he couldn’t sit in the same position for too long. Not yet. His own physical therapy loomed.

His phone buzzed.
“Mr. Trask, it’s Lieutenant Saunders.”
“Right. What can I do for you?”
“I’m going to need you and your daughter back here.” “What? Why?”
“We have a lot more questions. We wanted to give you some

time but — ”
“What questions?”
“The body, Mr. Trask, the one we found in the house — ” “Yeah?”
“It’s not Oberlin.”
The room seemed to telescope backward.
“We got dentals,” Saunders said. “The burned guy isn’t him.”

Sam squeezed the phone hard, as if to force the statement back in.
“Mr. Trask?”
“I’m here.”
“We thought maybe you could help us figure out who it is. We never did get a full statement from your daughter. Maybe we could set a time — ”
“Where is Oberlin?”
Pause. “We don’t know.”
“You don’t
know
? He was in the house! I saw him.”
“There was only one body — ”
“A car. He had a . . . a Mustang.”
“No, the Mustang was still there. We think maybe he had another vehicle. There were some other tire tracks behind the place.”
“I don’t believe this. What are you doing about it?”
“We’re looking for him.”
“With how many guys?”
“What we can — ”
“Find him.”
“You don’t have to raise your voice, sir.”
New fears pinged through Sam’s mind. He was out there. Nicky Oberlin was still out there. Maybe outside his house. Maybe —
“Mr. Trask, if you’ll come — ”
“Listen to me, Saunders. I can’t help you now. I’ve got to protect my family.”
“Sir — ”
“I’ll call you back if I think of — ”
“Sir, if you’ll just — ”
“You might try one thing. The body. It might be a man named Charles Lundquist.”
“Let me write that down. Who is he?”
“Low-level record producer. Had an office in Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard. You should be able to trace it from there. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait — ”
Sam clicked off and called Linda.
“Are you still at counseling?”
“No, we’re on our way to the Northridge Fashion Center. We’re going to — ”
“Linda, listen to me. Come home. Now. I’m going to get Max.”
“Sam, what is it?”
“Oberlin. He’s alive.”

“But what about you?” Linda said. “You can’t just sit here waiting for him.”
Sam opened the small case he’d brought into the living room. Opened it. Took out the gun.
“This is a Browning handgun,” he explained. “If he comes here, I will use it.”
Max’s eyes opened wide. “Does that work?”
Heather said, “Come with us, Dad.”
“I can’t.”
Linda touched his arm. “I don’t want us to be apart.”
“Just until they find him.”
“What if they never do?”
A prospect Sam did not want to think about it. When Linda and Heather went to pack some things, Max said, “Can I say something?”
“Sure.” Sam sat them down on the sofa. “You scared?”
Max shook his head. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’ll look after ’em, Dad.”
“Your mom and sister?”
“Yeah. I’m bringing my bat with me. If he ever tries anything . . .”
Sam threw his arms around Max and pulled him close.
“I mean it,” he said.
“I know.”

Sam was not going to leave any chance that Max would have to prove himself. As soon as Linda and the kids were off to her sister’s place in San Luis Obispo, he called Gerald Case.

“The news is,” Sam said, “that Oberlin is still out there. The body in the house wasn’t his.”
In the silence Sam could imagine Case slapping his forehead.
“I’ve sent Linda and the kids to her sister’s. I want to hire Greg Wayne to do more drive-bys.”
“I’ll do them, Sam.”
“No — ”
“I insist. I owe you.”
“You don’t — ”
“Consider it done.”

The gun was with him everywhere he went. He hoped he was ready for anything.
He knew he couldn’t continue to live like this. Apart from his family. A prisoner in his own home.
Then, on a Friday, he got an early morning call from Cam Bellamy.
“Just got off the phone with one of the homicide detectives in Vegas,” Cam said. “You were right about the body they found, Sam. They made a positive ID.”
“So it was Lundquist?”
“Yeah. Yesterday I had LAPD check Lundquist’s office. He had an answering machine there with a message on it saying he was going out of town. Only had three messages on it.”
“Anybody report him missing?”
“Not that we know of. Know what that means? Oberlin had this worked out way before he met with you. He knew all about your family, found some record guy whose identity he could take over. A guy who wouldn’t be missed if he went on a long trip. That must have taken some doing.”
“Why didn’t he get rid of the body?”
“Listen, they think the body was under the house, and get this, covered with a resin of some kind. Which is why it burned so bad.”
“Resin?”
“To preserve it. It was a trophy, Sam. That’s Oberlin’s profile. You know that skull you had your hands on?
“It was his father, wasn’t it?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Something he said.”
“Well, you’re right. The dentals checked out on that one too. Oberlin’s father went missing in 1972. Sacramento cops originally thought Laverne might have offed the guy, who was a known abuser. But they ruled her out, figured she was more a victim than anything else. They concluded he had taken off and that was that. They never even looked seriously at Nicky as a suspect. He was, what, twelve years old at the time?”
“Right.”
“They wouldn’t have figured a kid like that could kill his father and then chop him up and bury the parts. Even less digging them up like some sort of trophies and keeping them.” Cam sighed. “Sometimes I don’t even believe what passes across my desk.”
“Can you peg him for murder?”
“Won’t be easy. We have to prove he killed Lundquist. He could claim Lundquist was a guest in the house and was there willingly, for all we know.”
“What about kidnapping? Heather?”
“That’s a maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“She went with him across the state line. That makes it federal.”
“That’s good. That’s life in prison.”
“Probably.”
“And attempted murder on me?”
“That would be in Nevada.”
Sam shook his head. “This is sounding less than certain, Cam.” “We have to make a case.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I’d like to nail him with special circs.”
“And then he gets, what, twenty years in Quentin before the needle?”
“Sam, we’ve only got the system we — ”
“He’s always managed to get around the system.”
Cam paused, then spoke in low tones. “Maybe he’ll get stupid and we’ll get lucky, and he’ll get shot.”