The Clinic (37 page)

The big black ashtrays on the bar were overflowing. Vegas casino logo on the rim of one, the place Ted Barnaby had worked.

The CD on the chair from a band called Sepultura.

Spanish for “grave.”

Cute.The image.

I turned off the music.

Silence. No protest.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

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Not the time to explore further: Half the people in L.A. own guns and Locking’s connection to Cruvic plus the tough- punk image made him likely to be one of them. If he’d managed to sleep through the racket, waking him could be dangerous. At the very least, I was guilty of criminal trespass.

I turned to leave and noticed something under one of the ashtrays.

Polaroid snapshot. One corner pinned.

Aligned perfectly with the counter edge.

Positioned.

As if for display.

Photo of a woman.

Bare to the waist, arms stretched high above her head, bound at the wrists and tied to a wooden headboard. Her smallish breasts were tugged upward by the pressure, stretching pale skin over a delicate rib cage. Tight deltoids, goosebump skin.

Her face was covered by a black leather hood studded with zippers.

Two open zippers in the nasal region, zippered mouth-slit fastened shut.

The eyeholes open, too.

Two bright, brown discs shone through.

Below them, two erect nipples, pinched by a pair of hands.

Male hands.

Two different men.

The one on the left, striped with hair, connected to a bare arm.

Small anchor tattoo midway up the forearm.

The hand on the right, smooth and hairless, emerging from a ribbed black cuff.

A ring on that one. Silver skull, red glass eyes.

I inched closer to the photo.

And saw Locking.

On the floor behind the bar.

Propped in a corner, legs splayed, arms limp. One hand curled inward, the fingers of the other
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outstretched.

Blue nails. Blue lips.

The skull ring grinned back at me.

His head had been thrown back so that his neck arched toward the ceiling. Cheekbones in relief, long hair mussed.

A black silk bathrobe did a poor job of covering his thin, white body.

White except for the raspberry lividity splotches where the blood had settled after he’d stopped breathing.

Mouth agape.

In life he’d been smug but he’d left this world looking surprised.

Crusted hole in the center of his high forehead.

Rusty stripes on his face, trailing down to his hairless chest, browning the black silk where they hit the robe.

Blood on the carpet and on the wall behind him.

Blood under the body.

Lots of blood; why hadn’t I seen it right away?

His eyes were half-shut, dry, and dull like those of a fish left on the dock. Long lashes mascaraed by gritty blood.

I’d seen plenty of death. The last time, the man I’d killed . . . self-defense.

I could hear myself breathing.

Suddenly, the room smelled sour.

The position of his head caught my attention. It should have dropped.

But it was tilted upward, leaning against the wall, as if in prayer.

Positioned?

All around him, more Polaroids.

Lots more.Framing the corpse.

The same woman, bound and masked.

Close shots that obsessed on her thighs, her chest, her belly and below.

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Full views that exposed her entire body, long and slim and pale, spread-eagled on a white-sheeted bed.

Legs knotted to the footboard, hips thrusting upward as if trying to buck a rider.

Shots of her alone, others with the same two hands.

Pinching, squeezing, kneading, spreading, probing.

Gynecologic close-ups.

And one facial close-up, placed near Locking’s right hand.

The hood removed.

Blond hair pinned tightly and pulled away from the face.

Lovely face, cultured.

The open mouth expressing fear or arousal. Or both. The brown eyes wide, bright, focused and distant at the same time.

Even exposed that way, Hope Devane’s emotions were hard to read.

My eyes shifted back to Locking’s corpse.

Something else on the floor.

A cardboard box. More photos. Hundreds of them.

Neat lettering on the side in black marker.

SELF-CONTROL STUDY, BATCH4, PRELIM.

When Locking had carried the carton from Seacrest’s house he hadn’t even bothered to close it.

Hiding the pictures under a top layer of computer printout.

Big joke on the cops.

And Seacrest had been in on it. Hehad warned Locking.

The tattooed arm. Co-players.

A buzzing sound made me jump.

A shiny green fly had entered through the open door. It circled the room, alighted on the bar, took off again, inspected an ashtray, sped toward me. I swatted it away and it veered off, studied itself in a Beck’s mirror, flew back. Hovering above Locking’s body, it dove and landed on a
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patch of abdomen.

Pausing, then climbing up to the lifeless face.

To a bloody spot.

It stayed there. Rubbed its forelegs together.

I went to look for a phone.

“It is not,” Philip Seacrest repeated, “a crime.”

He might have been lecturing to students, but Milo was no sophomore.

A West L.A. interrogation room. A video camera hummed on auto but Milo’s pen kept busy. I was alone in the observation cubicle, with cold coffee and frozen images.

“No, it’s not, Professor.”

“I don’t expect you to understand but I believe people’s personal lives are just that.”

Milo stopped writing.

“When did it begin, Professor?”

“I don’t know.”

“No?”

“It wasnot my idea . . . never my propensity.”

“Whose propensity was it?”

“Hope’s. Casey’s.I was never sure which of them actually initiated it.”

“When did you get involved?” said Milo, picking up one of the Polaroids on the table and flicking a corner with his index finger.

Seacrest turned away. Moments ago, his gray herringbone jacket had been off and the sleeve of his white shirt had been rolled up, revealing the anchor tattoo. Now he was fully dressed, the jacket buttoned.

He began picking at his untidy beard. His first reaction upon seeing the snapshots had been shock. Then wet-eyed resignation followed by hardened resolve. He hadn’t been arrested,
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though Milo had offered him an attorney during questioning. Seacrest had turned him down curtly, as if insulted by the suggestion. As the interview ground on, he’d managed to build upon the indignation.

“When did you get involved, Professor?”

“Later.”

“How much later?”

“How could I possibly know that, Mr. Sturgis? As I told you, I have no idea when they began.”

“When did you get involved in absolute terms?”

“A year, year and a half ago.”

“And Locking was your wife’s student for over three years.”

“That sounds right.”

“So it may have been going on for two years before you started.”

“It,”said Seacrest, smiling sourly. “Yes,it might have.”

“So what happened?” said Milo. “The two of them just walked in one day and announced hey, guess what, we’ve gotten into some B-and-D games, care to join?”

Seacrest flushed but he kept his voice even. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Seacrest shook his head and flexed his neck from side to side. The smile hadn’t totally faded.

“Something amusing, Professor?”

“Being brought here isperverse. My wife’s been murdered and you concern yourself with this kind of thing.”

Milo leaned forward suddenly, staring into Seacrest’s eyes. Seacrest startled but composed himself and stared back. “Perverse, trivial, and irrelevant.”

“Humor me, Professor. How did you get involved?”

“I—you’re right about it being a game. That’s exactly what it was. Just a game. I don’t expect you to be tolerant of . . . divergence, but that’s all it was.”

Milo smiled. “Divergence?”

Seacrest ignored him.

“So they asked you todiverge with them.”

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“No. They—Ihappened upon them. One afternoon when I was supposed to be lecturing. I felt a touch of something coming on, canceled class, came home.”

“And found the two of them?”

“Yes, Mr. Sturgis.”

“Where?”

“In our bed.” Seacrest smiled. “The marital bed.”

“Must have been a big shock.”

“To say the least.”

“What’d you do?”

Seacrest waited a long time to answer. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s right, Mr. Sturgis. Nothing.”

“You didn’t get angry?”

“You didn’t ask me how I felt, you asked what I did. And the answer is nothing. I turned around and walked out.”

“How’d you feel?”

Another delay. “I really can’t say. It wasn’t anger. Anger would have been futile.”

“Why?”

“Hope didn’t take well to anger.”

“What do you mean?”

“She had no tolerance for it. Had I displayed anger, things would have gotten . . .

confrontational.”

“Married people fight, Professor. Seems to me you had a damned good reason.”

“How understanding of you, Mr. Sturgis. However, Hope and I neverfought. It didn’t suit either of us.”

“So what did you mean by confrontational?”

“A war. Of silence. Interminable, frigid, seemingly infinite stretches of silence. Psychological exile. Even when Hope claimed to forgive, she never forgot. I knew her emotional repertoire the
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way a conductor knows a score. So when I saw the two of them, I maintained my dignity and simply walked away.”

“And then what?”

“And then . . .” Seacrest pulled at his beard again, “someone closed the door and I assume they

. . . finished. I’m sure you find my reaction contemptible. Cowardly.Wimpish. No doubt you think you would have reacted differently. No doubtyou’ll be going home tonight to a dutiful wife and dutiful children—probably somewhere in the Valley. A charmingly conventional 818

lifestyle.”

Milo sat back and pressed a thick finger over his lips.

Looking suddenly tired, Seacrest covered his eyes with both hands, pulled down at the lids, let the hands trail down his cheeks and fall in his lap.

“It was go along, Mr. Sturgis, or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Or lose her. Now I’ve lost her anyway.”

He slumped. Began to weep.

Milo waited a long time before saying, “Can I get you something to drink, Professor?”

Headshake. Seacrest looked up. Then at the Polaroids. “May we end this? Have you heard enough about the sickdivergent world of intellectuals?”

“Just a few more questions, please.”

Seacrest sighed.

Milo said, “When you found your wife and Locking you didn’t figure you’d already lost her?”

“Of course not. It wasn’t as if it were the . . .”

“The first time?”

Seacrest’s mouth shut tight.

“Professor?”

“This is exactly what I was afraid of—Hope’s reputation filthied. I refuse to be part of that.”

“Part of what?”

“Dredging up her past.”

“What if her past led to her murder?”

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“Do you know that?”

“Now that Locking’s dead, what do you think?”

No answer.

“How many other men did she play games with, Professor Seacrest?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do know there were others.”

“I don’t know for a fact, but she had owned the . . . apparatus for some time.”

“By “apparatus’ you mean the hood and the bindings and those rubber and leather garments in her size that we found at Locking’s house.”

Seacrest gave a dispirited nod.

“Anything else other than those items?”

“I’m not aware of any.”

“No whips?”

Seacrest snorted. “She wasn’t interested in pain. Only . . .”

“Only what?”

“Restraint.”

“Self-control?”

Seacrest didn’t answer.

Milo wrote something down. “So she’d had the apparatus for some time. How long?”

“Five or six years.”

“Three years before she met Locking.”

“Your arithmetic is excellent.”

“Where did she keep the apparatus?”

“In her room.”

“Where in her room, Professor?”

“In a box in her closet. I came across it by accident, never told her.”

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“What else was in there?”

“Pictures.”

“Of her?”

“Of . . . us. Pictures we’d taken. She’d told me she’d thrown them out. Apparently she liked to review them.”

“Who moved the photos and the apparatus to Locking’s house?”

“Casey.”

“When?”

“The night you dropped in.”

“I only saw him carry out one box.”

“He came back later. I’d asked him to move them before. Right after Hope was murdered. I was afraid of something exactly like this.”

“Why didn’t he comply?”

Seacrest shook his head. “He said he would but kept delaying.”

“More games,” said Milo.

“I suppose. He was a rather . . . calculated fellow.”

“You didn’t like him.”

“Hope did, that’s all that mattered.”

“Your feelings didn’t matter?”

Seacrest’s smile was eerie. “Not one bit, Mr. Sturgis.”

“If Locking was delaying, why didn’t you just throw them out?”

“They were Hope’s.”

“So?”

“I . . . felt they should be preserved.”

He licked his lips, averted his eyes.

“Before she died they were hers, Professor. Wouldn’t that make them yours? So why give them to Locking?”

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“For safety,” said Seacrest. “I thought the police might search Hope’s room.”

“But still,” said Milo. “You didn’t want to sully Hope’s name, yet you kept a couple hundred photos?”

“I hid them,” he said. “In my University office. Not that I needed to. Those first two detectives never even bothered to search Hope’s room. You never really did, either.”