“I know you're being questioned by the LAPD. I know they've cleared you, so I'll try to keep this as short as I possibly carl.”
“I appreciate it. Whatever it takes,” he said. “Please. Go ahead. I want to help find the person who did this. I need to feel like I'm helping, doing something.”
I sat on a matching couch. A huge block of polished marble was the table between us.
“I'm sor but I have to start with the obvious. Did your wife have any enemies that you're aware of? Anyone who's crossed your mind since this to move my own happened?”
He ran his hands over his beard, then back and forth across his eyes. “Believe me, I've thought about that. It's part of what's so ironic. Marti's one of the most popular people in town. Everyone loved her, which is so rare out here. You can check” He stopped, and his face contorted. He was very close to losing it, and I believed that I could see his thought. Everyone loved her Past tense.
His shoulders drooped. He wiped his eyes with a closed fist. “I'm sorry. I keep thinking that what's happened has sunk in, but it really hasn't.”
“Take your time,” I told him.
I wanted to say more; I wanted to tell him that I knew what this felt like. Not just to lose a wife, but to lose her in this way A while back, I'd been pretty much where he was right now. If his experience was anything like mine with Maria, there was no comfort to be had anywhere, much less from a stranger, a policeman. Anything personal I could tell him at this point would only be for my own sake, though, so I didn't talk about Maria and how she was murdered.
“Dad?”
Zoey, the oldest daughter, stood in the high arch between the living room and hallway She looked frightened, tiny, and very alone in the doorway “It's okay, hon,” he said. “I'm okay Come here for a sec.” He opened his arms, and she went to him, taking the long way around the couch to avoid walking next to me.
She fell into his hug, and then both of them began to cry. I wondered if she had seen her father cry before. “It's okay,” he said again, smoothing her hair. “It's okay, Zoey I love you so much. You're such a good girl.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Zoey whispered.
“We'll do this later,” I said softly “Another time. I've got your statement on file. I don't need much more anyway”
He looked at me appreciatively, the side of his face ed against Zoey's head. She had softened her posture and curled to meet the shape of his hug. I could tell that ere close, and I thought ofJannie.
lease let me know if there's anything I can do,“ he said. want to help.”
could just take a quick walk through the house, it h useful for me," I said.
lirce rnect to go, but then stopped and spoke again, only be- couldn't help myself. “You're doing exactly the right told him. ”Your children will get you through this.
hm close."
They're all I have now Thank you. You're very Lit at that, and if I had to guess, I'd say he knew it ust a cop's advice I was offering. It was a father's, and 'and's. Suddenly I didn't want to be at this house any th2n I had to be.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 45
AS A DETECTIVE, I would have liked to have spent hours in the Lowenstein-Bell house, to soak up all the details. Under the circumstances, 1 gave myself fifteen to twenty minutes.
I started by the pretty pool and stood at the deep end, staring down at the royal-blue racing lines painted on the bottom. Estimates were that Mary Smith had shot Marti Lowenstein-Bell from this position, a single bullet to the top of the head. Then she'd pulled the body over to her with a long-handled pooi net.
The killer calmly stood right here and did the knife work without ever taking the body out of the water. The cuts on the victim's face had been sloppy and quick, dozens of overlapping slashes. As though she were erasing her It was evocative of what people sometimes do to photographs, the way they symbolically get rid of someone by Xing out the face. And in fact, Mary Smith had also destroyed several family photos in the office upstairs in the house.
I looked up to where I imagined the office would be, based on file diagrams.
The logical path from here to there went through the living room, then up the limestone staircase in the main entry hall.
The killer had visited the home before the day of the murder How exactly had that occurred? At what time? And-why? How was Mary Smith evolving?
When I passed through the house again, Michael Bell was sitting with his three small daughters, all of them blankly watching their movie. They didn't even look up as I went by, and I didn't want to interrupt them again if I could help it. For some reason, I remembered hugging Jannie and Day right after what happened with Little Alex in Seattle.
The upstairs hallway was a suspended bridge of wood and glass that bisected the house. I followed Mary Smith's likely path up there, then down to an enclosed wing where Marti's office was easy enough to find.
It was the only room with a closed door.
Inside, the office wall had conspicuous blank spots where I imagined family photos had hung. Everything else looked to be intact.
The killer is getting bravei taking more risks, but the obsesSion with families remains strong. The killer's focus is powerful.
My attention went to a high-backed leather chair in front of a twefltyoneinch vertical monitor. This was the victim's Workspace and, presumably, the place where Mary Smith sat to send the e-mail to Arnold Griner at the L.A. Times. The office also had a view of the terrace and pooi below. Mary Smith could have watched Marti's body floating facedown while she typed away Did it repulse her? Put her into a rage? Or was she feeling gross satisfaction as she sat here looking down on her victim?
Something clicked for me. The destroyed photos here. The recent close call at the coffee house. Something Professor Papadakis had said about “avoidance.” Something else I had been thinking about that morning. Marry Smith didn't like what she was seeing at the murder sites, did she?
The longer this went on, the more it reflected some powerful image from the past that disturbed her Some part of herself she didn't want to see was becoming clearer. Her response was to devolve. I hated to think about it, but she was probably losing control.
Then I corrected myself - the killer was losing control.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 46
I LAY FLAT ON MY BACK on the hotel bed that night, my head spinning in different directions, none of them worth a damn as far as I was concerned.
Mary Smith. Her pathology Inconsistencies. Possible motivation for the murders.
Nothing there so fat Jamilla. Don't go there either. You're not even close to solving that.
My family back in D.C. Was I ever messing that up.
Christine and AlexJunior. Saddest of all.
I was aware that no part of my life was getting the attention it deserved lately Everything was starting to feel like an effort. I had helped other people deal with this kind of depression, just never myself, and it seemed to me that flobody's very good at self- analysis.
True to her word, Monnie Donnelley had already delivered some material on James Truscott. Very simply, he checked out. He was ambitious, could be considered ruthless at times, but he was a respected member of the Fourth Estate. He didn't appear to have any connection to the Mary Smith murders.
I looked at my watch, muttered a curse, then dialed home, hoping to catch Jannie and Damon before they went off to bed.
“Hello, Cross residence. Jannie Cross speaking.”
I found myself smiling. “Is this the hugs-and-kisses store? I'd like to place an order, please.”