“For sure not a working nurse with no juice. This was a woman who grew up on a ranch, Alex. Got abused by her father, struck out by herself, and made a point of having her shit together. Rick says she reminded him of a pioneer woman. I can see her packing. A.22 wouldn’t be too bulky for a woman’s handbag. Armbruster attacks her, she’s prepared. She mighta even felt good about it, at first.”
He turned silent. No sense elaborating.
He’d killed several men in Vietnam, a few more in the line of duty. I’d ended one life. Self-defense, no question about the necessity. But at odd times it could chew at you. Thinking about the children my psychopath would never sire.
“She carries it around all these years,” he went on. “Then she gets sick, her inhibitions drop, and she blurts it to Tanya. Anything that doesn’t fit?”
“Not so far.”
“Leland William Armbruster,” he said, savoring the name. “Let me do a little more background and if nothing contradictory comes up, I say we settle on ol’ Lowball as our dead guy and tell Tanya that Mommy operated with clear justification.”
“Maybe it was more than self-protection,” I said. “With Armbruster hanging around Patty’s building, he could’ve spotted Tanya. Given Patty’s personal history and her devotion as a mother, she’d have been vigilant about any threat to her child.”
“Lowball’s a kiddy-groping sleaze? Sure, I like that even better. Hell, even if it’s not true, we spin it that way for Tanya, she’s got yet another reason to feel good about Mommy…yeah, I like it enough to marry it. Big juicy happy ending and we all go out for pizza.”
I called Tanya at six. She phoned back at eight. “Sorry it took so long, Dr. Delaware.”
“Studying?”
“What else?”
“How’ve you been doing?”
“Reasonably well. Is there anything new?”
“I have a question for you. Do you know if your mother ever owned a gun?”
“She did and I still have it. Why, did you find out something about a shooting near where we lived?”
“All kinds of things have come up but nothing dramatic, so far. Detective Sturgis thought if she did have a weapon it would be useful to rule it out. What kind is it?”
“Smith and Wesson semi-automatic,.22 caliber, that dark metal finish-bluing-with a wooden grip.”
“Sounds like you’ve handled it.”
“Mommy took me to the range to teach me how to shoot when I was around fourteen. She learned as a girl, thought it was a skill I should have. I was pretty good but I didn’t like it. Someplace out in the Valley, all these guys in camouflage. I said I didn’t want to continue and she said fine but if I wasn’t going to get proficient, she was going to separate the gun from the bullets for safety purposes. Are you saying Detective Sturgis actually wants to analyze it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” she said. “I know she never really hurt anyone. Anyway…”
“I was re-reading your chart and the second time you came to see me you talked about her being nervous.”
“I did?” she said. “Did I give a reason?”
“No, but you described her straightening late at night, when she thought you were sleeping. You’d just moved from Fourth Street, so I wondered about some kind of stress related to the change. But both you and she said the move was a good one.”
“I honestly don’t remember any of that, Dr. Delaware…the mind sciences are ambiguous, aren’t they?”
Echoes of Kyle Bedard. “They can be.”
“I’ve been thinking about psychiatry as a specialty, wonder if I have the ability to deal with that level of ambiguity.”
“It’s a long way off before you need to decide,” I said.
“I guess,” she said. “But time passes quickly as you get older.”
CHAPTER 15
Unless you’re a heart-transplant surgeon waiting for an organ, you don’t bring a phone or a beeper to the dining room at the Hotel Bel-Air.
Robin and I had decided tonight would be okay for a bit of glamour. We got a spot reservation, arrived at nine forty-five. She wore a sleeveless red sheath and black pearls I’d bought her years ago. Her auburn curls were combed soft and glossed with something that smelled good. I wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a red tie, figured I was doing a pretty good impression of someone who cared about haberdashery. The food was great, the wines were mellow, and when we left at eleven thirty, I felt flush.
We were in the bedroom, about to slip under the covers, when the phone rang.
“I woke you?” said Milo.
“That assumes I sleep.”
“I wouldn’t bug you but life just got complicated.”
Hollywood Boulevard after midnight was grubby sidewalks, night-haze that turned neon to grease smears, retreat of the tourists, goblins, bats, and ghouls emerging from their hidey-holes.
Clubs shuttered during daylight drew clumps of hollow-eyed kids and those who preyed upon them. Adrenalized bouncers looked for trouble. Night types beyond categorization loitered at the fringes of the crowd.
I made it halfway up Cherokee before the LAPD sawhorses and the uniform charged with protecting them stopped me.
Milo’s name coaxed a stare and a nod, then a muffled conversation with a two-way radio. “Park over by the side, sir, and proceed on foot.”
I hurried to the brick-colored building. Petra had called it raw sienna. Artist’s eye. Darkness shaded the stucco dull brown.
The uniform at the glass doors waved me in. Milo was up a ways, standing by an open door, talking to a skinny red-haired woman courageous enough to wear a mullet.
Coroner’s badge on her lapel. Investigator Leticia Mopp. Milo introduced her anyway.
She said, “Nice to meet you,” and turned back to him. “Rigor’s come and gone. Want another look before we pack him up?”
“Why not?” said Milo. “Always been the sentimental type.”
Mopp hung back and we crossed a toxic-dump living room. The few clean surfaces were pollened by fingerprint powder.
Petra Connor stood just outside a cramped gray bathroom at the rear. Stick-thin, ivory-skinned, and dark-eyed, she had on the usual black pantsuit. Hair that matched the suit was cropped in a glossy wedge. With her was another Hollywood detective I didn’t recognize, even younger.
She said, “Hey, Alex. Looks like everything converges, after all. This is Raul Biro.”
Biro was compact and broad-shouldered in a beige suit, brown shirt, and yellow tie. He smiled and nodded.
Petra said, “Love to chat, guys, but our job’s done here for the time being. We’ll talk tomorrow, Milo?”
“Count on it.”
“First new case in thirteen months,” she said. “I thought I missed the rush but now I’m not so sure. Raul doesn’t mind, right?”
Biro said, “Need the experience.”
The two of them left and Milo motioned me into the bathroom.
Lester Jordan sat hunched on his toilet wearing a periwinkle-blue terry robe that hung open on a pasty, ravaged body. His head hung low. The robe’s lapel swathed his neck. A rubber-tubing tourniquet around his left arm popped veins as kinked as an old garden hose. A syringe flashed silver on the filthy tile floor to his right. Not some homemade spike; this was a medical-quality disposable syringe, bright and shiny and empty. On the back of the commode sat the spoon-lighter kit and an empty Baggie.
“All these years and now he O.D.’s?” I said.
Milo gloved up. Carefully, almost tenderly, he took hold of Jordan’s chin and lifted the dead man’s head.
Around Jordan’s neck was another tourniquet. A white, braided cord, pulled so tight it nearly vanished in cold flesh. Triple-knotted in back, the hue blending in with Jordan’s pallor. Jordan’s eyes were half open, dry, alive as shirt buttons. His tongue drooped, black and distended, a Japanese eggplant.
Milo lowered the head just as gingerly. “I came here at ten thirty to talk to him about Leland Armbruster, found flashers and roadblocks, the full circus. Inside the apartment, Petra’s on her cell punching numbers. My phone rings. It’s me she’s calling. She says, ‘Beamed yourself up, Scotty?’”