Time Bomb (37 page)

“It’s unsolved.”

“How’d it happen?”

I considered how much to tell him. When I didn’t answer right away, he moved forward and said, “Look, I’ve opened myself up to you. Maybe I’ll feel better for it tomorrow, maybe not. But the point is, I didn’t hold back and I don’t really know you from shit. So if you’ve got something to tell me, something I can bring home to Gwen, help her make sense of it, I need to know it. I fucking
deserve
it.”

I told him about Novato’s death in the alley and Sophie Gruenberg’s disappearance. Mentioned nothing of Smith’s suspicion that the two of them had been involved in dope. Talked about Gruenberg’s radical politics and resurrected my theory that Holly had been motivated by some sort of twisted political impulse. Aiming at Massengil. I had nothing to back that up, but the therapist in me had taken over; I wanted to make Burden feel better.

It worked.

He thought for a long time, then said, “It makes it a little easier to take. That she wasn’t going for the kids. That in some crazy, fucked-up way she had a goal. Friends. People who cared about her.”

He turned away, looked at the images of his wife and his daughter. “We wanted to be her friends. That was the whole point. To get to know her, reconnect. Make up for lost time—salvage something. But you can’t do that, can you? It just doesn’t fucking work that way, does it?”

24

Ten minutes had stretched to more than an hour. When I got up to leave, Burden was so subdued he looked drowsy, and the hand that I shook was wet and limp. I left him at his desk and walked to the elevator.

Outside, the air had stayed warm, and though it reeked of exhaust, I was happy to draw it into my lungs. Happy to get away from the hatred and rage that had filled his office like swamp gas.

I thought I understood, now, why Mahlon Burden had been so eager for me to speak with his son. Howard had shut him out; the two of them had no communication. But if Howard talked to me, I could pass along what I learned to the old man.

Shrink as modem.

That’s my main talent. . . . I do know how to put things together.

And Howard had talked; I’d learned a lot more than I’d expected. But nothing I was going to report to Burden.

I reviewed it as I drove: Holly had deteriorated psychologically shortly after Ike Novato’s death. Handled the rifle she’d ultimately taken to the storage shed . . .

Wanna see, wanna say. Wanna see or say too.

Or was it
two
?

See two
what
?

Probably just gibberish, not worth interpreting.

What relationship, if any, was there to Novato’s death? Gruenberg’s disappearance?

I began to doubt if I’d ever really understand what had led Holly to that shed.

Nothing like that feeling of competence . . .

As I turned back onto the Glen, I was determined to put all of it out of my mind. Think good thoughts. Think about Linda. About kissing her.

I got home at seven-forty. She arrived an hour later, wearing a pink dress and sandals, her hair loose and sun-gold.

The first kiss was long and deep and I felt as if I was giving myself over to it completely. But when it ended she said, “You feel tense. Everything okay?”

“Just a little tired. And hungry. Still up for Mexican?”

“You bet. My treat.”

“Not necessary.”

“Don’t worry.” She rubbed my shoulder. “When we do Spago, you’ll pay.”

Just as we made it to the door, the phone rang.

She said, “Go ahead.”

I took it in the living room.

“Alex? It’s me.” Robin’s voice.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Hi. You all right?”

“Sure. Fine. How about you?”

“Fine. I’m just waiting for some glue to set, thought I’d call and touch base.”

“I appreciate that. How’re you?”

“Great. Real busy.”

“As usual.”

“As usual.”

Linda had taken out her compact and was looking in the mirror.

Robin said, “So.”

“So.”

Linda looked up. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Alex, is this a . . . bad time?”

“No. I was just on my way out.”

“Anywhere special?”

“Dinner.”

“Hey,” she said, “feel like picking up a pizza and dropping by? For old times’ sake?”

“That would be . . . difficult.”

“Oh,” she said. “Going
out
going out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll let you go. ’Bye.”

I said, “Wait. Is everything really okay with you?”

“Great. Really. And there’s someone ’round these quarters too. Nothing cosmic at this point, but the indicators are good.”

“I’m glad.”

“Okay,” she said. “I just wanted to touch base. Glad you’re okay. Be well.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.”

“’Bye.”

“’Bye.”

Linda said nothing as we walked out to the car. I drove to Sunset, cruised past the 405 Freeway on-ramp, listening to Miles Davis. A few moments later, she turned down the radio and said, “Her?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t have to rush things for my benefit.”

“No sense in dragging it out.”

“Okay.”

I said, “It’s over, but we’re still dealing with some of the . . . friendship residue.”

“Sure. Makes sense.” A moment later: “She’s beautiful.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found a picture of her. This morning, in your library. Face down on one of the bookshelves.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t be mad,” she said, “I wasn’t snooping.”

“I’m not mad.”

“What happened is, I woke up early, thought I’d get something to read, and found it while I was looking through your books—at least I assume it’s her. Long curly hair, kind of rusty-colored? Really good figure? Beautiful wide dark eyes? The two of you standing in front of some kind of lake?”

The lagoon at U.C. Santa Cruz. I remembered the trip—the motel we’d stayed at. Rumpled sheets. Walks in the mountains . . .

“It’s an old picture,” I said. “I didn’t know I still had it.”

“Nothing wrong if you had kept it on purpose.”

“I’m not one for souvenirs.”

“I am,” she said. “I’ve still got pictures of Mondo in one of my scrapbooks. Before everything went bad. What does that say about me—psychologically?”

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “Off duty. No out-of-the-office interpretations.”

“You don’t have a proper office.”

“Need I say more?”

She smiled. “Anyway, she is beautiful.”

“She is. And it’s over.”

“You said that already.”

“Got in the habit of saying it,” I said. “Trying to convince myself. It eventually worked.”

“Would you hate me if I asked how and why?”

“
How
is, she went on a trial separation that stretched to something permanent. I fought it, tried to persuade her to come back. By the time she’d changed her mind, I’d changed mine.
Why
is, she felt I was smothering her. Overpowering her. She’d grown up with an overpowering father, needed to stretch her wings, try things out by herself, I’m not trying to make it sound corny or clichéd. There was validity to it.”

“And now she wants you back.”

“No. Like I said, it’s just the friendship residue.”

Linda didn’t answer.

We drove for a while.

“Smothering,” she said. “I don’t see you that way at all.”

“I’m not the same guy I was a year ago. The whole thing made me take a good look at myself.”

“Not that I’d like that myself,” she said. “Being smothered.”

“Somehow, I don’t see you as smotherable.”

“Oh?”

“You fought for your stripes a long time ago, Linda. No one’s going to take them away from you.”

“Think I’m pretty tough, do you?”

“In a good way. I think you can handle yourself.”

She put her hand on the back of my neck.

“Ooh, even tighter. Sorry for making you talk about it. What a Nosy Nancy I am.”

“Nosy Nancy?”

“It’s a regionalism.”

“From what region?”

“My apartment. There—I got you to smile. But this
neck
—it’s like hardwood.” She moved closer, began kneading. I felt her warmth and her strength, coming from those soft hands, the ones I’d thought passive when I first met her.

She said, “How’s that?”

“Fantastic. I’d trade dinner for about an hour of it.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “First we pig out on Mexican food, then we return to either your place or mine, I give you a real Texas massage, and then you can smother me. You just forget about all the ugliness and the complications and you smother me to your little heart’s content.”

It ended up being my place. We were in bed when the phone rang. Lying naked in the darkness, listening to Gershwin’s own rendition of
Rhapsody in Blue,
holding hands.

I said, “Jesus, what time is it?”

“Twenty after eleven.”

I picked up the receiver.

Milo said, “Hi.”

“What’s up?”

“From the nuance of irritation in your voice, might I infer that this is a bad time?”

I said, “You just keep getting better and better at the old detecting game.”

“Someone with you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Blondie, I hope?”

“None of your—”

“Good, it’s her I want to talk to. Put her on.”

Puzzled, I handed the receiver to Linda. “It’s Milo. For you.”

She said, “For me?” and took it. “Hello, Detective Sturgis, what is it? . . . Oh. You’re sure? . . . That’s great. How did you . . . Oh. That was lucky . . . You think so? Okay. Sounds interesting . . . I guess. If you really think so . . . Okay, I’ll be there. Thanks.”

She reached across me and hung up the phone. Her breasts grazed my lips. Beflexively, I nibbled. She pulled away and said, “Want to go for a ride?”

A street named Fiesta Drive. No fog tonight. In the moonlight, the magnolias looked like paper cutout trees.

The house was tidy-looking, no different from any of the others on the block. An Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked in the driveway; behind it, the low, black cigar of a Firebird Trans Am. On the Firebird’s rear bumper was a sticker with the call letters of a heavy-metal radio station and another that said
LIFE IS A BEACH.

The front door smelled of fresh paint. The bell chimed out the first seven notes of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A worried looking, heavyset woman in her fifties opened the door on the fifth note. She had on moss-green slacks and a white blouse and was barefoot. Her round face was pale under a crown of baby-blue hair rollers. Her jawline had lost the battle with gravity.

Linda said, “I’m Dr. Overstreet.”

The woman trembled and said, “I’m . . . They’re . . . Won’t you come in. Please.”

We stepped into a living room identical in size and trim and layout to the one in the Burden house. This one was painted buttercup-yellow with contrasting white moldings and furnished with a skirted floral chintz sofa and matching chairs, a brown corduroy recliner, golden-maple end tables, and shiny white ceramic lamps. Prints of plein-air landscapes and still lifes favoring fruit and fish hung on the walls, along with a bronze Zodiac wheel and an old Christmas wreath. The fireplace had been bricked up and painted white. A model schooner fashioned of rough-edged copper sheeting and brass wire sat on the hearth.

A dark-complected man with sharp features sat on the recliner, but he wasn’t relaxed. He had thinning black hair, whitening at the temples, a drawn lantern-jawed face that sagged—orienting downward as surely as a dowsing rod. He wore a T-shirt and gray slacks under a plaid Pendleton robe, terry-cloth slippers on white, blue-veined feet. His arms rested on the sides of the recliner, the hands clenching and unclenching.

Milo stood across from him, to the left of the sofa. A boy of around sixteen or seventeen sat right below him. The boy was big, in a soft, bulky way, with thick, formless white arms extending from the rolled sleeves of a pea-green patch-pocketed T-shirt. Around his pudgy wrists were nailhead-studded leather bands. His black jeans were tucked into chain-heeled Wellington boots. A massive stainless-steel death’s-head ring dominated his left hand. His right hand shielded his face. What little I could see of his countenance was puffy, not yet fully formed, under dark hair cut close to the scalp. Fuzzy approximations of sideburns ran down cheeks speckled with pimples, and dipped an inch below his earlobes. He didn’t look up at our entrance, just continued to do what he’d obviously been doing for a while: crying.

Milo said, “Evening, Dr. Overstreet and Dr. Delaware. These are the Buchanans, Mr. and Mrs.”

The man and woman gave miserable nods.

“And this is Matthew. He did the artwork on your car.”

The boy cried louder.

His father said, “Cut that the hell out. At least face up to it and don’t be a coward, goddammit.”

The boy continued to cry.

Buchanan shot up and walked to the couch, a big, soft man. He took hold of the boy’s wrists and yanked them away. The boy bent low, tried to bury his face between his knees. His father reached under and forced his head upward, gripping him by the jaw.

“You look at them, goddammit! Face up to it, or it’ll be even worse for you, I promise.”

The boy’s face was pasty and snot-smeared, his mouth lopsided and grotesque in his father’s grasp. He clenched his eyes shut. Buchanan swore.

Mrs. Buchanan took a step toward her son. Her husband’s eyes warned her off. His hand tightened. The boy yelped in pain.

“Easy,” said Milo. He touched Buchanan’s arm. The man stared at him furiously, then backed off.

“Sit down, sir,” said Milo gently.

Buchanan returned to the recliner, drawing his robe around him and looking away from the rest of us.

Milo said, “Matt, this is Dr. Overstreet. Principal of the Hale school, but you probably know that, don’t you?”

The boy stared at Linda, terrified, then clamped his eyes shut.

Linda said, “Hello, Matthew.”

The boy buried his face again.

His father whipped around and said, “Say it!”

The boy mumbled something.