Good Morning, Killer

I had found stillness.

Twenty-three

If I were working the case, I would jump all over the photography angle. I would show Ray Brennan’s picture to everyone in Arlene Harounian’s life until we could pinpoint how and where they met. I would redraw Brennan’s “hunting field” to a twenty-five-square-mile grid on the map in the command center — west to Culver City, south to Manhattan Beach — and all the eager new agents would say, Ahhhhh.

But I was not working the case. I had been held to answer, and the trial was coming now like a pair of headlights when your power steering has died. A sense of fatalism replaced whatever moxie I had felt in court. Devon might wave his crutch, but nothing would stop Mark Rauch’s head-on prosecution now.

Also, the story broke in the papers: fbi agent to stand trial in love shooting — Veteran Agent Ana Grey Allegedly Wounded Police Detective Boyfriend in Marina Del Rey Apartment. As my lawyer kept reminding me, the slightest violation of bail would be a public relations jackpot for the other side.

I returned to the prison of the hobby room, with the brown carpeting that had the flat cracked nap of an old sheep and smelled like an old sheep, and sat on the checked sofa and stared at the empty fireplace. We had lost our motion to prevent cameras in the courtroom. The trial would be televised, and after that, even if the verdict were not guilty, my career would be over. The Bureau did not deal in damaged goods.

There was no longer a reason to leave the house or even get dressed. Aside from a call or two from the law firm every day, I would sit on the couch in my pajamas and make obsessive checklists concerning the Santa Monica kidnapping. I would meditate on Brennan’s watery picture over the mantle, then reconstruct the assaults on Arlene and Juliana, noting time and date, location of the victims, method, physical evidence, laboratory findings, and make spiderlike diagrams showing possible connections between Brennan, Arlene and Juliana.

There was one promising link. The lab report faxed by Dr. Arnie said tiny chips had been found in Arlene’s hair — the same sandwich of floral wallpaper between two layers of old paint that had collected in Juliana’s clothes. Both girls had been taken to the same 1940s-era house “in a loamy area near the coast.” The link that did not make sense was that one of the girls was dead.

Killing the victim did not fit Brennan’s known pattern. He had wounded the ducks; strangled Juliana to the point of unconsciousness and let her go. Why? Guilt? Torture? Ambivalence? Another clue was the grave. If he had meant to hide the body, he would have done that. If he had meant to show it off, he would have done that, too. This was hasty and halfhearted — maybe, I scribbled, because it was not part of the plan. Perhaps she had asphyxiated accidentally during the sex act. His ritual is interrupted. Suddenly, he finds himself not in control of the game. He swallows the rage and reverts to his military training — a quick burial, leave ’em by the trail, go on to accomplish the mission.

That compulsive drive — to finish the act at all costs — might prove stronger than the intelligence that had protected him so far, the canniness that had allowed him to set up his victims (it could be dozens, including those from back east, never put together by local law enforcement because he would move out of their territories — attack and withdraw to safety).

He would be overwhelmed by the uncontrollable need to find another girl.

Now.

Who could I tell? Who would listen? All connections with the Bureau had been stripped. There were no more encouraging e-mails; hell, nobody even returned my calls. When it was announced that we were going to trial, Galloway must have come down hard. I couldn’t talk to Mike. For weeks we had stalked around each other in the confines of the house, avoiding mention of the case. He was my final sanctuary. I would not put him in a position of disloyalty now.

It was about two in the morning and I was awake, as usual, barreling through an old Donald L. Westlake mystery, dug up from the dad’s side of the hobby room, although not even a hilarious band of thieves could distract for long. I put the book down and finally, with restless despair, threw open the white cabinet that had been standing as an enigma all this time amongst the old possessions of Mike’s parents. Inside was a jewel box of sewing notions: a hundred rolls of thread lined up in rainbow order on hooks set in Peg-Board. There were drawers of bobbins, scissors, glue and markers. Scraps of crocheting and spools of ribbon, each in their places; a clear box just for Christmas glitter and felt.

Here was a marriage. Mike’s dad had built this cabinet for his mom, I was sure. He had made a place for her pleasure and her work, and she had done her work, and there were the garments, hanging on a rack — half-made blouses with the patterns still pinned. I sat down on the rancid carpet and allowed myself to become lost, handling old cellophane packets of bindings (twenty-five cents each), unrolling silver lace, finding peace, like an orphan, in the fairy-tale world of the phantom parents. It scarcely mattered whose parents they were, so deep was the yearning to be comforted. I dug into the cool layers of the button bin, letting them sift through my fingers like stories.

Then, emboldened, I pulled out a drawer in the sagging file cabinet that held the trout-fishing magazines. Burrowing into the one spot in the left side of the couch that still had spring, in the light of the fat brown-shaded lamp, I studied yet another watercolor rendering of a steelhead trout. Over and over these magazines showed the trophy, and it was always the same trophy. And what about those hours tying flies beneath the magnifying glass, only to have most of them, and the trophy, lost? What could I, as an investigator, learn from this?

I went back to the fishing magazines. Then I discovered that hidden behind them, way back in the file drawer, was a pile of Playboys dating from the sixties. The top cover (Miss February) was coated with a perfect layer of dust, as if the secret stash had lain untouched for thirty years.

Miss February’s interests were “tennis and kittens.” For the centerfold, she wore a G-string sewn with tiny hearts and stroked a white fluffy cat. She had enormous pinkish breasts that barely fit on the page. She’d be a grandmother now. What I loved most were the one-inch ads in the back of the magazine that whispered to the anxieties of the male psyche: “Helps you overcome false teeth looseness and worry”; “Bill Problems?”; “A Timely Message to the Man with Hernia”; “How to Speak and Write Like a College Graduate”—and a classic pictorial essay on “Favorite Valentine’s Day Gifts,” featuring Playboy bunnies and red satin sheets. Then I saw the photo credit.

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was Mike.

“Saw the light on, so I thought …”

He handed me a cup of milk and a bag of chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts.

I said, “Wow.”

“What are you doing?”

“Snooping into your parents’ lives. Did you know your dad read Playboy?”

Mike took the magazine looking somewhat confused.

“Am I shattering your illusions?”

He broke into a grin. “God bless the old man.”

“Look who took the pictures,” I said excitedly, pointing to the photo credit. “Hugh Akron.”

“Our Hugh Akron?”

“Got to be. Do you think he’d want to have this?”

“What? This magazine?”

“For his personal collection.”

“Sure, if he wants to buy it, the slimy tea bag. He ripped me off for Lakers tickets. The scalpers were selling them for less.”

“How does a creep like Hugh Akron get girls to take off their clothes?”

Mike was lost in the magazine.