Once Bitten (13 page)

I put on a clean shirt and suit and slipped the envelope and Terry's photograph into the inside pocket and drove to the precinct. On the way I had a sudden urge to see Terry so I took a detour past North Alta-Vista. I parked outside the building and rang the bell for her apartment but she wasn't there, or if she was she wasn't answering. A young woman with two children came out of the main entrance and smiled as she walked by.

“I don't suppose you know Terry Ferriman?” I asked.

She shook her head. I described her and the woman said yes, she knew who I meant, and that yes she was probably in because wasn't that her car I'd parked behind. It was a black top-of-therange Porsche squatting at the kerb like a huge metal beetle.

“That's Terry's car?” I said, surprised.

“Are you a friend?” she said suspiciously.

“Yes, but I never realised she drove a Porsche,” I said. The woman still didn't look convinced and the last thing I wanted was for her to phone the cops and report me as a suspicious character so I showed her my LAPD identification and she relaxed.

“I'm not getting any answer,” I said, pushing the bell again.

She looked at the console of buttons and squinted,. “I thought she lived in the basement,” she said. One of her children, a young girl, three years old at most, began crying. I reached down and tousled her hair. She cried all the louder. Children don't seem to like me much these days. Maybe they know something.

“Oh no, she's got a small apartment. Upstairs. I've been there.”

“I'm sure she lives in the basement,” the woman insisted.

I wondered if perhaps we were talking about different girls so I showed her the black and white photograph. “That's her, for sure,” she said. “And I've seen her going into the basement flat.” She pointed at the console on the wall. “Try that bell,” she said and watched as I did. I guess she was convinced by now that I was planning to break in.

There was still no answer so I told her that I'd give up and get her on the phone. As I turned to go I had another thought and I asked her for the name of the firm who looked after the block,

handled lettings and that sort of thing. She gave me the name and a telephone number and I wrote them down on the back of the envelope containing the strands of her hair. I could feel her eyes on me as I walked back to the car so I didn't look through the windows of the black Porsche, much as I wanted to. Terry and I hadn't discussed cars to any great extent, just a few passing remarks about my love affair with the Alpine, but I would have expected her to have told me that she had a Porsche. Porsche owners aren't exactly renowned for modesty, if you know what I mean. I wondered too how a young girl who lived in a cramped one-bedroomed apartment in a not particularly affluent part of the city could afford a car like that and the sky-high insurance premiums that went with it.

When I got to the office it was deserted. On my desk was a message from Rivron saying that Chuck Harrison had called so I rang the lawyer first. He wanted to tell me that he'd drawn up the settlement papers and that I could go to his office anytime and sign them. He sounded disappointed that I was so willing to settle, but Deborah had taken all the fight out of me.

My next call was to the firm who managed the block where Terry lived. I got the boss on the line and told him who I was, checked that the North Alta-Vista address was one of his properties,

and asked him which apartment she rented.

The man, a slow-talking guy with a baritone voice, coughed and said that actually Ms Ferriman didn't rent any of the apartments in the building. I interrupted him before he'd finished speaking and told him that I'd already been there along with a couple of Homicide detectives so I knew that she lived there.

He coughed again. “What I mean to say, Dr Beaverbrook,” he said patiently, “is that Ms Ferriman doesn't rent any of the apartments there, she owns them.”

“Owns which?” I asked.

“Ms Ferriman owns them all,” he said. “The whole block. We act as her agent, finding suitable tenants and such like, collecting rents, carrying out repairs.”

I was staggered. At a conservative estimate the building must have been worth about $10 million. How on earth did a young girl come to own a piece of expensive real estate like that?

Thoughts of the car flashed into my mind again.

“For how long have you been acting for Ms Ferriman?” I said.

Another dry cough. “For the last six years, to the best of my knowledge.”

Since she was a teenager. That didn't make sense.

“And are all the apartments occupied?” I asked.

“They are.”

“But the one-bedroom apartment is used by Ms Ferriman?”

“That is correct. And she also uses the basement. For storage, I understand. It is a substantial size, taking up as it does virtually all the basement area with the exception of the laundry facilities and the furnace.”

“I don't want to sound as if I don't believe you, but I'm sure that I got the impression that she rented the apartment. The one bedroom apartment.”

“Oh no, I can assure you most definitely that she owns it. What makes you think she rented?”

For a moment I wasn't sure, then suddenly it came back to me. “There was a list,” I said. “In the apartment. There was an inventory, a list of what the apartment contained, the sort of thing that a landlord would have, so that when the tenant moves out he can check if there was anything missing.” Like a knife, I thought.

“Ah, I see your confusion, Mr Beaverbrook. Yes, we ran an inventory on all the apartments some time ago at the request of Ms Ferriman. And we did the one bedroom apartment at the time, I remember, as she suggested that at some time in the future she might decide to rent it.”

“And the basement?”

“No, no, the basement was to be kept for storage, I seem to remember. No, I don't think anyone from our office has ever been there. No need to, you see.”

“Yes, I see. One more thing, when were you asked to do the inventory.”

There was a hesitation and an intake of breath as he thought. "I would think it would have been about six months ago,“ he said. ”Several tenants had moved out and Ms Ferriman had redecorated,

so she thought it would be an opportune moment to compile new inventories for the various apartments in the building."

I thanked him for his help, and asked him for one more piece of information. The name of the bank to which his company passed on the rent from the various tenants in the building. He said he was always happy to assist the LAPD in its inquiries. He seemed like a nice guy. I wondered about the knife. De'Ath thought it wasn't an issue any more because the landlord's inventory showed that there was no knife missing. I wondered how he'd react when he found that Terry was effectively her own landlord and that the inventory had been her idea.

Rivron came back as I was replacing the receiver and he dropped his computer onto his desk hard enough to rattle its disc drives. “You're back, then?” he said, and you didn't have to be psychic to tell that he was mightily pissed off at me.

“Yeah, I'm sorry about that,” I said. “Are we busy?”

“Are we ever!” he said. He threw himself into his chair and scooted it backwards so that he could swing his feet on top the desk. “A loony with a grudge against women who's been spraying acid onto the legs of women with long blonde hair. A teenage girl who's been crucifying cats in her bedroom. Two armed robbers who claim to be hearing voices from beyond the grave. And a Bible salesman who said God spoke to him through his car radio and told him to drive through a crowd of tourists on Hollywood Boulevard. How's your day been?”

Yeah, he was definitely pissed off at me.

“I'm sorry about last night,” I said. “I was on a case, and it took me longer than I thought to get there. How's it been so far this afternoon?”

“Those are the cases from this afternoon,” he said. “There were another dozen or so last night. I didn't get home until dawn, and then De'Ath called me just before noon and hauled me back in.”

“Good old Black De'Ath,” I said. "He thinks that because he works twenty hours a day,

everybody else should."

“Yeah, well at least you're here now,” said Rivron. “There's a wolfman down in Room C that you'd love to get your teeth into. Or vice versa.”

I looked at my watch. “Hell, I can't. I've got a meeting.” Rivron looked as if he was going to throw his computer at me so I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender. “I won't be long, I swear to God I won't be long. I've got a see a guy from UCLA, that's all.”

“About a case?” he asked.

“About a case,” I said emphatically. “I'll be back in two hours, and then you can clear off home.”

He didn't appear any happier but there was nothing he could do because, when it came down to it, I was his boss. Not that I'd ever pull rank, but with Rivron I knew I wouldn't have to. I patted him on the shoulder on the way out.

The bar in which I'd arranged to meet Rick Muir was a fake Olde English pub, lots of plastic beams, a dartboard, warm beer and chicken in a basket. It was run by a couple of homosexual expatriates whose camp act seemed to be every bit as fake as the decor.

Rick was an expatriate, too, but his libido was heavily on the side of heterosexuality which I always reckoned was his main reason for moving to the West Coast. He spent more time prowling the beaches for babes than he did in his lab, but he put out enough papers to justify his grants and was climbing pretty quickly through the academic hierarchy. He had the look of a Californian beach bum, blonde hair that he tied back in a ponytail while in the lab, clear blue eyes, broad shoulders and a film star tan. He was sitting at a table with a pint of something brown from the North of England in a tall glass in front of him.

“Jamie, how goes it?” he asked, getting to his feet and shaking my hand.

A waitress hovered at my shoulder hoping to catch Rick's eye. He gave her one of his come-tobed smiles and I practically heard her whimper as he ordered a beer for me. Oh yes, did I mention it, he's a good ten years younger than I am. About Terry's age, I guess.

“It's going well,” I said as we both watched the waitress strut to the bar.

“Nice,” he said.

“Very,” I said.

We chatted for a while about the weather, about the relative merits of Californian and English women, about my divorce and about his sex life, and then I finally got around to what I wanted Rick Muir, PhD, to do for me. I handed him the envelope. “Can you run that through your carbondating equipment?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “What is it?”

“Hair,” I said.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Human hair?”

“Yup.”

He pulled a face. “How old do you think it is?” he asked. "I mean, is it fosilised or something?

You know as well as I do that carbon-dating is no good for recent samples. Even for something five hundred years old it's only really accurate to plus or minus a century. And even to get that degree of accuracy you've got to be shit hot with the technology."

“Which you are,” I said, and ordered us two more beers from the waitress who looked only at Rick while I spoke to her.

“Which I am,” he agreed, smiling at the girl and giving her a boyish wink. "What I'm saying,

Jamie, is that there's no point in giving me a lock of a girl's hair and asking me to find out how old she is. That's not how it works. I can tell you if something is ten thousand years old, or five thousand, but I can't tell you whether human hair is five weeks or five years old."

“But you would know if it was recent or not?”

“Well, yes,” he said hesitantly, “but you could do pretty much the same by looking at it through a microscope. Or stroking it. Hair dries out pretty quickly once it's been cut. An easier way would be to do a chemical analysis, probably.”

“What do you mean?”

“Check it for pollutants and the like. A lot of the shit in the air and in the water wasn't around fifty years ago so their presence in animal or plant tissue can give a pretty good indication of its age. That can be a darn site more accurate than carbon-dating.”

I nodded and called for the check. “Just humour me, OK. Run it through your equipment, and if it doesn't work I'll try something else.”

“And you won't tell me what it's all about?”

The check arrived and I paid. The waitress thanked Rick. “It's crazy,” I said. "Just humour me.

If you find something, I'll tell you everything. And believe me, there'll be one hell of a paper in it for you." That seemed to satisfy him and he put the envelope into his blazer pocket. I left him talking to the waitress and, by the look of it, getting her phone number.

Rivron was in one of the interview rooms when I got back to the precinct so I left a message for him on his desk saying that he should call it a night and I phoned down to the desk sergeant to see what else there was to do. I was told there was arsonist in room E who'd killed a family of four by throwing a home-made Molotov cocktail through a bedroom window. He was claiming that they were Satanists who'd been casting spells on him. I ran him through the program and it showed that he was perfectly sane so I told the investigating officers and they went back for another chat with him. I was in the office typing out a report when De'Ath rolled in like a tank in top gear.

“My man,” he said, a big smile on his face. “Are you winning the battle against the dark forces which are plaguing our city?”

“Who wants to know?” I said. I didn't trust him when he was in such a good mood. It usually meant he had bad news for me.

“Only I, your loyal ally in the everlasting struggle between good and evil.” His grin widened and he sat on the edge of Rivron's desk, his legs crossed at the ankles.

“OK, I give in, Samuel. What's happened? Has my car been towed away? Or burst into flames? Or have immigration finally decided that I've overstayed my welcome?”

He removed a file from under his arm and waved it triumphantly in the air.

“Terry Ferriman,” he said. “The vampire.”

“Alleged vampire,” I said.

“She isn't,” he said.

“Isn't a vampire? Or isn't Terry Ferriman?”

“The latter, my old friend. Whatever she may be, she ain't Ferriman, Terry. Not unless she's one of the Undead. Or Living Dead. Or whatever it is you call them.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Samuel?”

“Alan and Claire Ferriman died when she was eleven years old. In Utah. Car accident.”

“I know that Samuel. She told me, remember. She said she was an orphan.”

He grinned. “Yeah, but what she didn't tell you, my man, was that Terry Ferriman died in the same car crash!”

“Are you sure?”

"Man, what do you take me for? The birth certificate she used to get a passport and driving license belonged to the original Terry Ferriman. The kid was born in Los Angeles, but because she died out-of-state there was no cross-referencing done. Once our lady, whoever she is, got the birth certificate the rest was easy. All the credit cards are genuine, and so is the social security number,

but it's all based on a lie. There's a warrant out for her arrest right now. You will call if you see her, won't you?" His eyes narrowed, though he had the same easy smile on his face. Like the cat that had got the cream.

“Yeah, Samuel. I'll call you.”

“Be sure you do,” he said.

“Any more evidence on the murder thing? Anything that'll tie her in to it?”

“Nothing. Yet. But that girl is sure as shit up to something.” He waved the file under my nose.

“You don't go to all this trouble unless you've got something to hide. We're trawling through as many computer data bases as we can looking for people with her characteristics. And we're waiting for a run down on her fingerprints.”

On his way out he told me that there was a child-murderer waiting for me in Room B. Terrific.

I spent an hour or so probing the mind of the middle-aged woman in Room B. She kept me winking at me as she spoke. She was insane, but I guess that would be no comfort to the parents of the three children she'd mutilated and killed. Yeah, according to the Medical Examiner that's the way it happened, she cut off their testicles and forced them into their mouths and then, and only then, did she throttle them with a leather belt. It was unusual to find a female child killer,

especially one who preyed on children other than her own. I mean, women sometimes kill their own kids, but almost never do they go out and hunt others. She blamed the murders on an alter-ego called Emma Wilson who spoke to all the time, even when she was running through the Beaverbrook Program, asking for her advice on which answer to give. She denied any involvement in the killings, even when confronted with the bodies in her basement and as evidence of her innocence produced notebooks full of scriblings which she said were messages from Emma.

According to her file, the notes were all in her handwriting. Her eyes were almost blank and she kept licking her lips as she spoke to me, and according to the flashing cursor on the Beaverbrook Program she was severely schizophrenic and needed help. She showed most of the primary symptoms of schizophrenia: thought-controlled disturbances and auditory hallucinations (Emma Wilson's voice in her head) and primary delusions (she kept on claiming that the officer who arrested her had been following her for nine months). The wink was a psychomotor disorder often exhibited by schizoid patients and the Beaverbrook program picked up another four factors indicative of the illness and pinned it down as Hebephrenic Schizophrenia. Given sensitive enough therapy coupled with medical treatment and she'd be able to live a normal enough life. That was unlikely to happen in view of the brutality of the murders, but at least I could tell De'Ath that there was no point in interrogating her, he'd have far more success if he let the shrinks loose on her.

She'd open up if handled the right way. De'Ath suspected she might hold the key to another half a dozen missing children cases. I hated child-killers. I really did.

I was alone in the office eating a turkey breast sandwich and pecking at the typewriter when De'Ath burst into my room. At first I thought he was pissed at the report on the woman, but it soon became clear that he had something else on his mind. He slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the glass and jabbed a black finger at me in time with his words.

“Why the fuck didn't you tell me about this guy Turner?” he shouted.

“Turner?” I said, confused, still thinking he was talking about the woman.

“Greig Turner. Old folk's home at Big Sur? You were there yesterday, remember?”

“What's happened?” I said. Something was wrong, I was sure. If it was just a matter of Lyttelton or his nurse making a complaint, De'Ath wouldn't be as angry as he was.

“He's dead,” said De'Ath, pacing up and down. “He's dead and according to his nurse you were his last visitor.”

“Some dish that nurse,” I said. Male bonding, it never failed to win De'Ath over.

“I never saw her. I've just had my opposite number from Big Sur on the phone chewing me out and wanting to know what sort of investigation we're running on his turf.” Well, it almost never failed.

“I didn't know they had someone as high as you over in Big Sur,” I said. Flattery often worked,

too.

“Don't fuck me around, Beaverbrook,” spat De'Ath. But sometimes flattery didn't work, right?

“You're in deep shit. You've been passing yourself off as an LAPD detective and that's gonna go on your file. Now what the fuck are you up to?”

I tried to remember what I'd told Dr Lyttelton about the reason for my visit. I was pretty sure I hadn't mentioned Terry Ferriman to him but he'd told me about Matt Blumenthal. De'Ath would almost certainly have checked up with Blumenthal's agency which means they'd have told him the same as they told me, that the client was Greig Turner and that the subject of the enquiry was one Lisa Sinopoli. Was there any way De'Ath could connect Lisa Sinopoli with Terry Ferriman? I doubted it.

“Talk to me, Beaverbrook,” De'Ath growled.

I couldn't think of a lie that would justify my visit to Turner. I racked my brains but I simply couldn't think of anything. If I'd had more time then maybe I could have come up with a half-way convincing story, but De'Ath was prowling backwards and forwards like a bear with a sore head and every train of thought I had ran straight back to Terry.

“It was the Ferriman thing,” I said.

He stopped pacing and glared at me. “Fuck, I know that,” he said. “You showed Lyttelton her photograph, don't you remember?”

Shit, I'd forgotten. I'd shown her the picture and asked if she'd ever visited Turner. And I'd told him her name. God, it was lucky I hadn't tried to lie because then De'Ath really would give me a roasting. "Turner's picture was in her apartment. In the bedroom. Remember? On the wall.

Movie star in a director's chair?"

De'Ath shook his head. "I knew it was a mistake letting you into the apartment. I knew it. Shit,

shit, shit, Beaverbrook. Don't you ever fucking well listen to me?"

“Of course I do, Samuel. You just said shit. Three times.”

He didn't laugh but I felt him loosen up a little. "I saw the picture and a friend of mine, an agent,

said he knew where he was. I thought that if I spoke to Turner I might get more of an insight into her character. And Samuel, I don't remember trying to pass myself off as a detective, I really don't.

I told Dr Lyttelton that I was a psychologist, and he knew who I was anyway. He'd read some of my papers and he was interested in my research."

He held up a hand. It was big and square, the sort of hand that belonged to a heavyweight boxer,

which is exactly what De'Ath had been during his army days. “OK, OK,” he said. “What did you talk about? Whatever you said it must have upset him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Why else would he kill himself?” said De'Ath. “Didn't I tell you that? Must have slipped my mind.”

Killed himself? When De'Ath had told me that Turner was dead I'd assumed that he'd just died naturally. It was obvious from what I'd seen that he didn't have much time left.

“How could he have killed himself?” I asked. “The man I saw could barely move. He was in a wheelchair and a nurse had to do everything for him.”

De'Ath leant against my desk and folded his arms across his chest. “It looks as if Turner tied a scarf around his neck and then looped at around his bedpost and rolled himself out of bed. It doesn't take much to strangle yourself. I've seen people do it from doorhandles. It just depends on how determined you are. But you're getting away from the point again, Beaverbrook. What did you two talk about?”