Self-Defence

'She said her mother's dead and she doesn't see her father. In terms of social life, she comes across a little like Miss Lonelyhearts. Defense guys probably loved that, too.'

'How come the prosecutors didn't eliminate her?'

'I asked George Birdwell about that. He said they were running out of disqualifications and figured her for a fooler. Inner toughness that would make her do the right thing.'

'Do you sense that, too?'

'Yeah, I do. There's a… solid core there. You know the old joke about a conservative being a liberal who's been mugged? She impresses me as someone who's been through rough times.'

'What does she do for a living?'

'Crunches numbers for one of those big accounting firms in Century City.'

'CPA?'

'Bookkeeper.'

'Did she mention any problems other than the dreams?'

'Nope. And the only reason the dreams came up is I told her she looked tired and she said she wasn't sleeping well. So I took her out for a piece of pie and she told me about having them. Then she changed the subject fast, so I figured it was something personal and didn't push. Next time she called, she still sounded wiped out so I suggested she see you. She said she'd think about it; then she said okay, she would.'

He took a cigar out of his pocket, held it up to the light, put it back.

'Are any of the other jurors having problems?' I said.

'She's the only one I had any contact with.'

'How'd she hook up with you in the first place?'

'I was studying the jury the way I always do, and we happened to make eye contact. I'd noticed her before because she always seemed to be working real hard. Then, when I went up to testify, I saw her staring at me. Intense. After that, we kept making eye contact. The day the trial ended, the jury was being escorted out back and I was parked there, too. She waved at me. Really intense look. I felt she was asking me for something, so I gave her my card. Three weeks later she calls the station.'

He pressed one hand down on the bar and inspected his knuckles. 'Now I've done my good deed for the year. I don't know how much she can afford-'

'I don't imagine bookkeepers are investing in bullion,' I said. 'We'll work something out.'

One hand pulled at his heavy jowls, knockwurst fingers tugging heavy flesh down toward his bull neck. In the ice-blue light of the lounge, his face was a pockmarked plaster cast and his black hair hung over his forehead, creating a hat-brim shadow.

'So,' he said. 'Is a day at the beach really a day at the beach?'

'Bitchin', dude. Wanna come by and catch some waves?'

He grunted. 'You ever saw me in a bathing suit, you wouldn't offer. How's the house coming along?'

'Slowly. Very slowly.'

'More problems?'

'Each trade seems to have a sacred obligation to ruin the work of the previous one. This week, the drywallers covered over some electrical conduit and the plumbers damaged the flooring.'

'Sorry Binkle didn't work out.'

'He was competent enough, just not available. We needed more than a moonlighter.'

'He's not that good of a cop, either,' he said. 'But other guys he did construction work for said it came out fine.'

'As far as he got, it was fine. With Robin taking over, it's even better.'

'How's she handling that?'

'Now that the workers are taking her seriously, she's actually enjoying it. They've finally learned they can't snow her- she gets up on the scaffold, takes their tools, and shows them how.'

He smiled. 'So when do you think you'll be finished?'

'Six months, minimum. Meanwhile, we'll just have to suffer along in Malibu.'

'Tsk, tsk. How's Mr. Dog?'

'He doesn't like the water but he's developed a taste for sand- literally. He eats it.'

'Charming. Maybe you can teach him to shit adobe bricks, cut your masonry costs.'

'Always the practical one, Milo.'

2

It had been a nomad year.

Thirteen months ago, just before Jobe Shwandt had started climbing through bedroom windows and ripping people to shreds, a psychopath high on vengeance had burned my house down, reducing ten years of memories to charcoal. When Robin and I finally mustered the strength to think positively, we began plans to rebuild and looked for a place to rent.

The one we found was on a beach on Malibu 's far west end. Old rural-route Malibu, nudging up against the Ventura County line, light-years from the glitz. The recession made it affordable.

Had I been smarter or more motivated, I might have owned the place. During my hyperactive youth, working full-time at Western Pediatric Hospital and seeing private patients at night, I'd earned enough to invest in Malibu real estate, buying and selling a couple of land-side apartment buildings and turning enough profit to build a stocks-and-bonds portfolio that cushioned me during hard times. But I'd never lived at the beach, thinking it too remote, too cut off from the urban pulse.

Now I welcomed the isolation- just Robin, Spike, and me, and patients willing to make the drive.

I hadn't done long-term therapy for years, limiting my practice to forensic consultations. Most of it boiled down to evaluating and treating children scarred emotionally and physically by accidents and crimes and trying to untangle the horror of child-custody disputes. Once in a while something else came along, like Lucy Lowell.

The house was small: a thousand-square-foot gray wood saltbox on the sand, fronted on the highway by a high wooden fence and a double garage where Robin, after deciding to sublet her storefront in Venice, had set up her luthier's shop. Between the house and the gate was a sunken garden planted with succulents and an old wooden hot tub that hadn't been serviceable for years. A planked footbridge was suspended over the greenery.

A rear gate opened on ten warped steps that led down to the beach, a rocky spit tucked into a forgotten cove. On the land side were wildflower-blanketed mountains. The sunsets were blindingly beautiful and sometimes sea lions and dolphins came by, playing just a few feet from shore. Fifty yards out were kelp beds, and fishing boats settled there from time to time, competing with the cormorants and the pelicans and the gulls. I'd tried swimming, but only once. The water was icy, pebble-strewn, and seamed by riptides.

A nice quiet place, except for the occasional fighter jet roaring down from Edwards Air Force Base. Lore had it that a famous actress had once lived there with two teenage lovers before making the Big Movie and building a Moorish castle on Broad Beach. It was documented fact that an immortal jazz musician had spent a winter shooting heroin nightly in a rundown cottage on the east end of the beach, playing his trumpet to the rhythm of the tide as he sank into morphiate peace.

No celebrities, now. Almost all the houses were bungalows owned by weekenders too busy to recreate, and even on holiday weekends, when central Malibu jammed up like a freeway, we had the beach to ourselves: tide pools, driftwood, and enough sand to keep Spike licking his chops.

He's a French Bulldog, a strange-looking animal. Twenty-eight pounds of black-brindled muscle packed into a carry-on body, bat ears, wrinkled face with a profile flat enough to write on. More frog than wolf, the courage of a lion.

A Boston terrier on steroids is the best way to describe him, but his temperament is all bulldog- calm, loyal, loving. Stubborn.

He'd wandered into my life, nearly collapsed from heat and thirst, a runaway after his mistress died. A pet was the last thing I was looking for at the time, but he snuffled his way into our hearts.

He'd been trained as a pup to avoid water and hated the ocean, keeping his distance from the breakers and