"Tell me about Leah."
"We sort of got stuck with Leah. Assigned roommate. She was pretty sweet when we first got here, but she wouldn't rush the sororities, and we sort of left her behind, you know? Socially." She cupped a hand by her mouth and stage-whispered, "She was, like, the big V."
"The big V?"
"A virgin. Which is cool, but we tried to bring her around guys, and she was just so…I don't know, geeky. Playing on her computer all day and stuff – total code monkey. And her clothes – her clothes were bad. And then she started acting weird."
"Weird how?"
"She sort of turned her back on her friends – what friends she had. These dorky kids from her classes, they stopped calling. And she got really anal. Like, on time to the minute. And really neat -lining up the edges of her notepaper and stuff. When we first started as roommates, she was way more casual. I never would have lived with her if she was like how she ended up."
"When did you notice this change?"
"Like, maybe a month to six weeks before she split."
"How did you know she got in with a cult?"
"She kept asking us to come to meetings with her. Stuff like that."
"Where were the meetings?"
"I don't know. Off campus, I'm pretty sure. We didn't listen, really."
"What did you do?"
"Laughed at her mostly." A flicker of remorse in Katie's sea-green eyes. "Hey, I'm being honest."
"Did you meet anyone in the cult?"
"No."
"Notice her with anyone new?"
"No."
"Do you know the names of her friends? Here on campus?"
"Like I said: What friends?"
"Did she mention the names of anyone in the cult with her? Or refer to someone as the Teacher?"
"No."
"Have you heard from her? Or has anyone seen her?"
"No." Katie smiled. "No. No, no, no. I don't know anything about where she is. I just know she's gone." She checked the tag on her inner wrist with a shrug of her hand.
Tim jotted down his cell-phone number on the back of a generic Marshals Service card with the Spring Street address and main phone line.
"If you think of anything else, give me a call."
Katie relinquished her hug hold on a big white bear and took the card.
Tim stood, giving a last glance at Leah's half of the room. Bare mattress, empty shelves, empty nightstand.
The thought of growing up in the house of Will and Emma Henning left Tim cold. So did the thought of living here with these veiled bullies, painting their lashes and nails and talking in code like cackling hens. Girls too pretty and rich and white to require empathy. Girls hell-bent on maintaining a status that required riding the top of a social hierarchy.
His first case since Ginny – he wasn't exactly keeping the misplaced protectiveness in check. He decided, staring at the left-behind Scotch tape on the blank wall, that if the empty rooms of girls hastily departed now struck a nerve, he would allow himself that.
He flipped his notepad closed. "Thanks for your help."
Katie scurried after him to the door. "What? I called. Her parents wouldn't even know she was missing if it wasn't for me. I did my part." The hard, pretty shell of her face shifted for a moment, and he saw the softer features of a girl who hadn't yet been trained in cruelty. "It's not my fault she went off and joined some cult." She reached down and scratched the skin beneath her anklet, the letter cubes bouncing on the leather cord.
"What does WWJD stand for?" Tim asked.
She lowered her eyes uncomfortably. "What Would Jesus Do."
Bear was correct in his assessment – the landlady was a cranky old broad. Tim might even have proposed a more canine term. Her apartment, from what he could see through the barely open door, housed a virtual conservatory of hanging plants. It smelled of stale coffee and cat piss, as did Ms. Adair Peters, sovereign of the Fleur-de-Lis of Van Nuys, a cracked stucco rise with smoked mirrors in the entry and ornate crown molding in the halls.
She emerged from her apartment, nightshirt trailing from the hem of a corduroy blazer she'd thrown on, breathing hard and clasping the lapels in a fist as if she'd been evicted in a blizzard. She ushered Tim into the elevator and slid the collapsible gate closed. The smell, in close quarters, was nearly blinding.
An interminable ride to the second floor.
At Leah's former door, Adair fussed in her pockets, withdrawing a ring of keys. She tried them each, muttering and overcome with the exertion. One finally turned, and she threw the door open, trudging inside. Tim followed.
A single room with a sidebar kitchen and a bathroom so small the open door rested against the toilet. The rusting coils of the radiator lurked under a sole window facing a Ravi Shankar billboard on which some mental giant had spray-painted OSSAMMA BEN LADEN IS A DUM SAND
NIGGER.
Clearly, once Leah had moved from Pepperdine, she'd turned over the rest of her money to the cult.
"I was hoping you were a prospective tenant," Adair repeated for the fourth and, Tim hoped, final time. "I have to show the unit enough as is." She finger-teased her pink-tinted bouffant, glancing around. "Can't say I notice much of a difference with her being gone."
"The neighbors mentioned she wasn't around often."
"Barely ever. I only even saw her a few times. Sneaking out in the early morning, tiptoeing in at all hours. She had a full dance card, that's for sure."
"Ms. Henning advertised a moving sale at this address. Does that ring a bell?"
"She didn't have the common decency to inform me she was moving out, but I knew she was selling a few things. I remember telling the big fella to stop propping open the front door for anyone to walk in."
"The big fellow?"
"The lug who helped her with her little sale. No, more like he oversaw her. A weird name. Skip. Skeet." Her knobby fingers snapped. "Damnit. I can't remember. He wore a frayed shirt to show off his muscles, had some kind of chain around his neck, like that Mr. T fella."
"Gold chains?"
"Don't think so. Had beads."
"Do you remember anyone who bought stuff from them? Someone from the building, maybe?"
"Nope." Her lipstick was feathered around the edges. "Look, exciting as this is standing around an empty room, do you think you could move it along? You're not a tenant or anything, and I have responsibilities I have to get back to."
Including letting her cats resume their routine of pissing on her leg.
From the Hennings to the Katie Kelners to this sad box of a room, Ms. Adair Peters ruling supreme from upstairs. With these options, Tim would've hopped the first flight to Jonestown.
The pay phone from which Will had received the threatening call sat in a Lamplighter lobby six blocks up Van Nuys Boulevard. Was the caller a friend of Leah's or her guard? The big guy who helped her move? The P.O. box was in the neighboring town – maybe cult headquarters was in the vicinity.
Something scraped against the pane. Tim crossed the room despite Adair's labored sigh and opened the window, which gave with some reluctance. Duct-taped to the sill outside were three homemade vases, made from glossy cardboard rolled into thin cones. The wind had claimed the contents of the first two, but a dead carnation leaned from the third, its brittle bud half eroded from rubbing the pane.
Chapter four
As soon as Tim entered Haines Hall on UCLA's North Campus, he heard a voice amplified off a lecture-hall ceiling. He followed the sound down a corridor and entered the arena-style room, standing with his back to the wall. Dr. Glen Bederman was pacing down below on a brief throw of stage, his hands clasped behind his back, bent slightly at the waist, studying the floor like a New England botanist on a stroll. A well-dressed man in his sixties, he walked gracefully, a microphone clipped to his oxford shirt.