Dazed, her ears ringing, Joana sat up on the pavement. She was surrounded by people, many of them college students. They were looking down at her with concern while they watched the station wagon roll slowly up the bank on the other side of the street. Everyone spoke at once.
"Are you hurt?"
"…ran right through the stop light…"
"…didn't even slow down…"
"…must be crazy…"
"…drunk…"
Joana rose shakily to her feet. Her hands were scraped where they had hit the pavement, but as far as she could tell, there were no other injuries. She turned with the others to watch as across the street the station wagon plowed heavily into a thicket of laurel and stalled. The engine died, and for a moment there was an unnatural silence over the scene.
The door of the station wagon swung open. Slowly the woman got out from behind the steering wheel. She was a short, unremarkable-looking woman, a trifle overweight and wearing a cotton print dress. Her gray hair was in disarray, she looked confused. The woman turned her head from side to side, as though searching for something, but her eyes were empty.
The people down in the street who had been watching her suddenly came to life. A crowd surged forward and up the embankment toward the woman. As they converged on her, the woman crumpled to the ground like a marionette with the strings cut.
Down on the street a black-and-white police car pulled into the block and jammed to a stop. Two young officers jumped out. One of them ran up the grassy slope toward the woman who lay beside the station wagon. The other listened briefly to a group of witnesses, then came over to Joana.
"Are you hurt, miss?"
"No. I scraped my hands a little when I jumped out of the way, that's all."
"Those people say the vehicle appeared to head right for you and accelerate."
"I don't know, everything happened so fast. I didn't see anything until I was out in the crosswalk and all of a sudden the car was coming at me. I just had time to jump out of the way."
"I'll need your name and address for the report."
Joana fumbled out her driver's license and handed it to the young policeman. He made careful entries in a pocket-size notebook.
"Jimmy!"
The officer looked up at his partner called from across the street. He was kneeling there on the grass beside the woman.
"Yo?"
"Come over here."
The policeman called Jimmy returned Joana's license and closed the notebook. He slipped it into his shirt pocket and crossed the street. The people who were standing around moved after him in a group. Joana was carried along with them.
The two policemen stood together and talked in low, urgent voices. The crowd stayed back to give thema semicircle of space. The people gave their attention to the woman who lay face up on the ground. Several of them ventured closer.
"What's the matter with her?" somebody asked.
"She fainted."
"Fainted, hell. She's dead."
"She can't be. Her car didn't hit anything solid, just kind of mushed into the hedge."
"I don't care, man, the woman's dead. Just take a look."
Joana turned away and started to walk back down the embankment toward the street. The policeman who had talked to her followed and caught up with her.
"Excuse me, Miss…" He consulted his notebook. Miss Raitt."
"Yes?"
"Did you get a good look at the woman who was driving the station wagon?"
"Not really, it all happened so quickly."
"Would you mind taking a look at her now?"
"Is it necessary?"
"Some of the witnesses say she seemed to aim her car at you deliberately. We have to know if you recognize her."
"All right."
Joana let herself be led back to where the woman lay on the grassy slope. The people standing around made way for her. The woman's eyes were closed now, the expression on her face almost serene in contrast to the mask of ferocity Joana had glimpsed as the car bore down on her. Were it not for the dead gray pallor of her face, the woman could have been sleeping.
"Know her?" the policeman asked.
"I've never seen her before."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. Can I go now?"
The policeman glanced over at his partner, who was taking down the names of witnesses. "Yes, you can go," he said. "If there's an inquest you may be called upon to testify."
Joana nodded and started again for the street. She felt numb, and strangely detached from the recent violent events. When she reached the sidewalk, instead of heading back toward her car, she crossed the street to a drugstore and found a telephone booth. She searched for a moment through her bag, then pulled out the card she was looking for: Peter Landau, Psychic Counseling.
A Wednesday afternoon was generally one of the quieter periods in the emergency ward of the West Los Angeles Receiving Hospital. Later on, as the weather grew warmer, they would begin getting more seasonal action from the beach-the people who swallowed too much seawater or absorbed too much sun. But before the hot weather set in, there would be just the normal emergency-ward customers. They would get the usual numbers of children who had ingested some noxious substance found uncapped and unguarded under the sink. There would be a few dog bites, a housewife who sliced her finger along with the carrots, a broken bone, a sprain, a concussion, a coronary. A varied list, but routine, and spaced out nicely over the day. Fridays and Saturdays, business picked up. That was when they got the sick drunks, the bum-trippers, the torn-up traffic victims, the losers of fights, the mugging victims, and the gunshot wounds, On Friday and Saturday nights there was hardly ever a chance for a doctor on the emergency ward to slip away for a quiet cigarette, which was what Dr. Warren Hovde was doing on the bright June afternoon when Mrs. Yvonne Carlson was brought in.
One look at the woman's body told Dr. Hovde there was nothing he or anyone else could do for her. Nevertheless, he ran through the standard tests before marking her officially D.O.A. and sending the body down to the pathology lab in the basement.
Since he had the time to kill, Dr. Hovde took the police report on Mrs. Carlson, Caucasian, fifty-seven, back to the office cubicle to read while he treated himself to another cigarette. Dr. Hovde was careful never to smoke at his own office where one of his patients might see him. It would undermine the stern antismoking lectures he delivered regularly.
He leaned back in the wooden swivel chair, propped his feet on a pulled-out drawer, and began to read the formal police version of the accident in Westwood a little more than an hour earlier. Suddenly he sat forward when he recognized the name of Joana Raitt in the report. He went back and started the report again, reading the whole thing through carefully.
When he had finished he carried the folder with him out to the ward. There he spoke to the young resident who was treating a roller-skater for a pair of abraded knees.
"Do you think you can manage without me for a few minutes?" Dr. Hovde said.
The resident looked around at the nearly empty ward. "Unless we get an earthquake."
"I'll be in the pathology lab."
With the manila folder containing the accident report tucked under his arm, Dr. Hovde headed for the elevator.
Chapter 6
Peter Landau pursed his lips and gently touched the tips of his fingers together as he stared down at the zodiacal chart. It was a pose he had practiced before the mirror. He knew it made him look thoughtful. Every twenty seconds or so he would take up a felt-tip pen and scrawl bold, cryptic markings across the chart. Then he would revert to the thoughtful look, alternating it with a concerned frown and a slight nod of satisfaction.
The table on which he worked was round and heavy, covered with a fringed cloth of thick purple velvet. In the air floated a bare hint of incense, exotic spice. From hidden speakers came the muted sitar excursions of Ravi Shankar.