The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller (10 page)

Joe saw me bustling in as he was coming out of the coffee room and said, “Banker’s hours.”

“What are you, my spy?”

He tried to sip his hot coffee. “I’ve got meetings all morning.”

“What do you think would happen if we called a moratorium on them?” I said. “Just say No More Meetings, and never go?”

“The world would implode,” he said.

“I saw pickets down the street. Know what that’s about?”

“No idea,” he said.

I looked at him there, handsome in his blue shirt and said, “Hey, big fella, how’d ya like to come up and see me sometime?”

“I’m supposed to meet Jennifer. To talk about David.”

“Ah.” I started to ask about David again, but left it there. “Back to the trenches,” I said, and went off to my desk.

I had an hour before I’d have to leave for the Turtle Rock autopsy. I stacked paper in
Now, Later
, and
Maybe Never
piles, then left the building and went to the morgue, thinking not only of my Does but of the terrible task that Lenore Schaeffer still had to face that day.

This time I turned right on Flower, taking a different route, and didn’t see pickets outside any other county facilities. I did notice a marquee by bleachers in a small park squished between city buildings announcing a baseball game between county cops and Santa Ana’s finest.

The autopsy took its course without notable findings, not even a captured projectile that did our Turtle Rock Juan Doe in.

After work I went shopping for shoes for the wedding the next day, bought some sexy lingerie too, at 60 percent off. If they can sell it and still make a profit at 60 percent off, why not offer it that way to begin with?

Joe called around seven. If I’d have him, he said, he’d be over. It was ix-nay with Jennifer that night. They’d argued over the phone. I put the shoes away, took a shower, looked twice at my fancy undies, cut the tags off. What’s new duds if not to wear?

Propped on an elbow, Joe said, “Once upon a time…”

(He was wearing no clothes.)

“Yes?”

(I was wearing no new lingerie.)

“There was a prince. A mature man, a manly man. Rippling muscles. Steely blue eyes—”

“This is a comedy, right?”

Joe kissed my nose. “You want a story, or you taking a deposition?”

“I’ll behave.”

In another time, another house, I had a mirror hung by a chain made of large gold links with a red wooden ball on the end. Depending on the company, I’d turn the mirror horizontal, hang it that way. Today there was no mirror, just a semi-settled-down me and a good man sixteen years my senior who was going to tell me a story from his vault of good ones or suffer an unmerciful end.

“This prince,” he said, “he loved a beautiful maiden.”

I kissed his hairy arm. “Enough about me. Go on.”

“End of story.”

“What kind of story is that? Come on.”

“The maiden dumped him. Dumped him cold, for a knight with a fancy horse.”

“The bitch.”

He swept his hand over the downslope of my waist. A change came into his face, distant, thoughtful. His head wagged on the
platform of his hand. Then he said, “Sorry. Preoccupied. Harold Raimey phoned today. He thinks it was the husband too. We just can’t pin him. But it’s got to be the husband.”

“Sort of makes you double-think the concept of marriage, doesn’t it? Why’d you stay so long in yours?”

“There was David.”

“You’re not supposed to stay for the kids. So say the experts.”

He kicked off a knot of pine-green sheet. “An expert is a bastard with a briefcase from Boston.”

“That’s cute.”

“It’s not original.”

He grew thoughtful again. “Why’d I stay so long…? Fear and habit. Habit and fear. Not very flattering, is it?”

“Fear of what?”

“You name it. The big scene. How much her lawyer would stick me for. Not having anyone to go to the movies with. The in-laws—you get attached. Do you divorce them too? Of course you do. Your friends, the people you work with—you don’t want to explain. It’s embarrassing.” He stroked my hand then said, “There’s another reason I didn’t want to leave. I was afraid some hot young thing would follow me home some night.”

“It
is
a scary thought,” I said. I studied the architecture of his face, the brow with five lines of latitude, the smile that is his secret weapon, and said, “C’mere,” and kissed him.

As if on cue, the phone rang. “ ’Scuse me, Monkeytoes. Back in a minute.” I leaned over the bedside and dragged the phone by its cord over the carpet from where I’d set it to make room for our drinks. It unplugged at the base. Holding up the end, I said, “With one swift move, the whole world disconnects.”

“It should
be
that easy,” Joe said. He was sitting up now.

When I plugged back in, the phone rang again. “Mama Corleone’s Pizza,” I said.

There was a pause, then a hesitant male voice. “This is Dave Sanders. Is my dad there?”

“Just a sec.” Handing the phone over, I mouthed, “It’s your son.” David had never called my house before.

“Did I overstay my curfew?” Joe asked. He listened a while, then said, “Ten-thirty, eleven. Why? Is something wrong? I can be home earlier. You want to meet me at the apartment?”

“Go,” I whispered, handing him his shirt.

He said into the phone, “I can be home in five minutes. Okay. Later, son.” Handing me back the phone, Joe silently pulled on his shirt, shorts, jeans. Zipped, thought a moment, then said, “Now that was strange.”

I fixed a cup of weak tea and went to say hello to Motorboat. He lay in cool moonlight, stretched long and comfy on his pine chips, eyes burning bright: the Thing That Never Sleeps.

“Chum,” I said, “how you?” I lifted the cage lid and ran a finger and thumb along his soft log of a body. “
You
stay up all night thinking. What good’s it do? Do you have any answers for me? Hm? No answers, not one.”

ELEVEN

W
e went to the wedding that was also an excuse for a bunch of cop-types to get silly and rude. The hearse was parked outside when I arrived. It had purple lights on the back fenders and a pink-and-black JUST MARRIED sign anchored front and back. Joe was standing beside it waiting for me. I told him he looked snazzy.

“Snazzy? You look pretty snazzy yourself.”

It was the first time I’d worn a dress in months: dusky pink.

We had talked earlier about what happened last night with his son, but Joe brought it up again. Joe said, “Maybe I’ve installed a hyper-conscience in my kid. Just by being around Greg he figures he’s a criminal. This is the guy who’s taking stuff off the Internet that I guess isn’t licensed to him or something.”

“I remember,” I said. “And it certainly is illicit.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s not murder,” he said.

People in the house were leaning out the front window waving and calling to us to come in. “Looks like we better,” Joe said, and bounced ahead.

“Where’s Ray?” I asked.

“Flirting with the sweetheart he brought.”

“Is it the stripper?”

“What stripper?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

Inside, the minister said we’d have a five-minute rehearsal in one of the bedrooms, and that brought a lot of catcalls from some of the wild partyers already blitzed from brews stashed in a coffin
of Ray Vega’s creation, lined with a shower curtain patterned with rotund naked women. On the top he had burned the words:
Ray’s Dead-Drunk Liquor Store
.

The poor minister kept stroking his hair off his forehead and looking around as if he hoped he’d never have a need for the protection of anyone from Orange County law enforcement. When the ceremony and dining was over Ray made sure the man of God had a brew tucked in his pocket before he saw him out the door.

The bride’s father convinced the couple to take his Lincoln instead of the hearse. Those of us who weren’t shrieking in the hot-tub out back transferred signs and streamers while the couple stood in the kitchen with the parents, receiving sage advice.

Now Joe and Ray and I and a county sergeant named Gary Svoboda were ferrying the hearse to the ocean, three of us grinning like pigs on sour pears. Ray and I were in the back, Joe and Gary in the front. Ray sat on the floor of the hearse with his legs drawn up, his ivory jacket gleaming like a molar. I lay on the casket, bony knees hanging over the end. When our driver took a quick turn at the last light leading to the Dana Point marina, the melted ice in the liquor store beneath me sloshed.

“Whoa, little dogie,” Ray cried, and looked about to retch.

“I oughta dump the whole lot o’ ya in the ocean,” Gary said, his beefy hands clamped on the steering wheel, gunfighter mustache twitching.

In a convertible next to us, two guys wearing ball caps were looking our way. One of them said, “What the hell is
that?
” Ray put his face to the window and gave them a dead man’s stare.

Gary stopped the bus at the top of the bluff for a breathtaking view of the 2,500-slip harbor, then drove a few blocks over to a three-tiered, tailored park with a winding path and a gazebo looking over the Pacific.

We piled out, walked to the gazebo, and gazed down on the mile-long breakwater and a replica of the Pilgrim, the stately, two-masted square rigger used by hide-harvester Richard Henry Dana.

The ocean was shearing its first slice from the bottom of the sun. The world looked more beautiful than any of us deserved.

Ray said, “Why didn’t we get married here?”

“
You
didn’t get married,” I said.

“Oh thank God!” He looked at his white jacket, the front, the sleeves, and grinned. “Saved again!”

Then, for some reason inexplicable except to drunks, we all grew quiet. A para-sailor came floating in, slitting the skin of water. The red chute eased down above him, while farther out, a handful of white sails saw-toothed the horizon.

The hush of the sea, the gliding gulls, the mansions inland with their windows beginning to light from within, all this was too good to leave just yet. We went to sit on the grass among the tiny grass-daisies as the evening drew on and the colors palled and the diminishing scent of Gary’s shaving lotion roped us together. Gary, solemn Gary, gave in and told a joke that didn’t go over, but we laughed anyway. After a while, Joe took his jacket off and wrapped it on my shoulders. In another moment, he said to Ray and Gary, “A couple of blocks over, a man killed his wife while walking on one of these bluffs.”

“Always on the job, that Joe,” I said softly, and took his hand and bit his palm a little.

“Hey, you buttheads, we don’t want to talk about work, do we?” Ray said.

I shoved a bare foot at him. He fended it off, leaned back, closed his eyes, and sang a pensive Willie Nelson about when the evenin’ sun goes down, it’s the night life, not the right life, but it’s his life. Joe hummed too, and Gary, his eyes focused on the green-gray sea, nodded along to the tune.

I couldn’t help it: I thought of my Does. No yachts with banners in a marina for them. Only the moon in its cool dispassion, and a slow-moving security cruiser behind us, checking to see that everything was as quiet, as barren and lifeless, as it was supposed to be.

TWELVE

T
hirty miles south, along San Juan Creek in San Juan Capistrano, an army of Audubon volunteers set out to hack plants invading the natural habitat of native birds, and I meant to join them.

I don’t agree with all of Audubon’s politics, attend no meetings, and know the officers’ names only by newsletter. I am more bookish than fervent. Still, and in spite of a slight headache from debauchery, I decided I’d rather engage in bush wars than stay and do household tasks that put me in glum moods.

I gathered old gloves, a hat, and an insulated bottle painted in military camouflage I’d picked up at a garage sale. Before leaving, I looked in at Motorboat. He stared at me from the open end of a hollow log, his lower jaw shifting, the teeth ever in need of grinding. I said goodbye and told him to keep out of trouble.

I’d drawn a map to the cleanup site on a big yellow sticky and stuck it to the center of the steering wheel. I’d be making my turn onto Ortega Highway, one part of which is dubbed Ricochet Alley by members of the highway patrol because of the cars that careen off the roadside into the ravines below. At another spot known as Pushover Point junked and stolen cars, perforated by weekend shooters until they look like tea strainers, nestle in the shrubs.