money.
I’m thinking, maybe if I look poor enough, she’ll give me more, and I hunch over a little but all she does is pat my hand.
“Take it. Please.”
I pocket the dollar.
“All righty,” he says. “So now we’ve got a business deal.” More teeth. “Okay, hon, where’s the best spot?”
“Right where we were, the sun’s perfect.” She points and walks up the hill a bit, stamps her foot, and touches her own camera. Why they need two cameras is a good question, but I guess some people don’t trust machines. Or their memory. They probably want to make sure they capture everything they see, maybe to show the grandkids.
She says, “Okay!” Kind of sings it out. She’s short, skinny, wears a man’s jacket over her Dodgers T-shirt and green pants.
He takes his camera out of his case and gives it to me and goes up next to her. It looks expensive, and I’m nervous holding it.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s simple, and you look like a smart young man.”
I look at them through the viewfinder. They’re too far away, so I come closer.
“It’s preset, son,” he says. “Just push the button.”
I push. Nothing happens. I try again. Still nothing.
“What’s the matter?” he says.
I shrug. “I pushed it.”
She says, “Oh no, did it jam again?”
“Let me take a look,” he says, coming down again. I give him the camera and he turns it around. “Uh-oh. Same problem.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she says, stomping her foot. “I told you it was a good idea to bring mine along. When we get back home, first thing I’m doing is going straight back to that dealer and tell him to fix it right this time!”
He gives me an embarrassed smile, like he doesn’t like her bossing him around.
She joins us, smelling of some kind of soap. He smells of onions.
“Sorry, sweetie, this will just take a minute,” she says, opening her camera case and taking out… something big and black but not a camera-it’s a gun. I can’t believe it, and all of a sudden she’s jabbing it really hard into my belly button, and I can’t breathe and she’s pushing it there, like she’s trying to force it right through me, and her other hand’s around my neck squeezing hard. She didn’t look that strong, but she’s really strong, and he’s holding me, too, pinning my arms to my sides.
They’re on both sides of me, like they’re my parents and the three of us are a family, only I can’t breathe and they’re hurting me and she’s saying, “Now, just come with us, street trash, and don’t make the wrong move or we’ll kill you, we really will.”
Smiling again. Not pity, something else-the same look that was all over Moron’s face before he went for the tools.
They lead me toward the open fence. They know about it too-not a secret place! I’m so stupid!
Her face is like a mask, but he’s breathing hard, excited, his mouth’s open, his skin’s pink as a pencil eraser, the onion smell’s blowing on my face, and they’re dragging me toward Five, and he’s saying, “You’re gonna get done, kid. Like you never been done.”
CHAPTER
20
Petra stayed at her desk, calling her phone company contact about Lisa’s records and being assured they’d arrive today. She began the preliminary paperwork on the court order for the extended records, phoned the coroner and the criminalists. No medical findings yet, no prints retrieved from Lisa’s clothes or body or jewelry. Maybe a glove, the tech opined. Fortified by vending-machine coffee, Petra checked all the approved police tow yards and consulted rosters of found autos. Lisa’s Porsche wasn’t listed.
Time to go back on Schoelkopf’s scut line. She’d already talked to dozens of detectives, covering the day watch from Van Nuys to Devonshire, then West L.A. Now she started in on Pacific.
Each time the same reaction: You’ve got to be kidding.
Everyone knew who the bad guy was on this one. But they also understood brass-generated busywork, and after the laughter died down, she had their immediate sympathy.
The end result: no similars. Meanwhile, Cart Ramsey got to hit golf balls, soak in the hot tub, enjoy the chrome and polish of his little car museum while his ex-wife was laid out on the coroner’s table getting her face peeled off.
The Mercedes was probably scrubbed and steamed and vacuumed cleaner than an operating room.
She thought about Lisa’s body, that gaping blood-filled hole in the abdomen, protruding entrails, what had been done to the young woman’s face, and wondered what it took to turn love to that.
Could it happen anytime passions ran high, or did the guy have to be twisted?
Domestic bliss, domestic blood. There’d been one moment-an eye-blink instant-when she’d been capable of murder.
Why was she thinking about the past?
Deal with it, kid.
She tortured herself with memories.
A twenty-five-year-old art student pretending cool but so blindly, dumbly in love she’d have been willing to shed her skin for Nick. That rush of feeling, passion like she’d never felt before. Lovemaking till she couldn’t walk. Postcoital pillow talk, lying flank to flank, her vagina still humming.
Nick had seemed such a good listener. It was only later she figured out it was phony. He kept quiet because he refused to give her anything of himself.
She told him everything: growing up motherless, the irrational guilt she felt about causing her mother’s death, driving her father crazy to the point where boarding schools were the only solution, half of her adolescence spent in musty shared rooms, the other girls giggling and smoking, talking about guys, sometimes masturbating, Petra could tell by the rustle of comforters.
Petra, the weird, silent girl from Arizona, just lying there, thinking about killing her mother.
She’d entrusted Nick with the secret because this was true love.
Then one night she told him a new secret: Guess what, honey? Patting her tummy.
She’d expected surprise, maybe some initial resentment, knew he’d melt eventually because he loved her.
His eyes froze and he turned white. The fury. Glaring at her across the dinner table with contempt she’d never imagined. The special meal she’d prepared just sitting there, his favorites-ostensibly to celebrate, but maybe deep down she’d known he wouldn’t be pleased, maybe the veal and the gnocchi, the twenty-dollar Chianti classico, had been nothing more than bribes.
He just sat there, not moving, not talking, those thin lips she’d once thought aristocratic so bloodless, the hateful mouth of an old, nasty man.
Nick How could you, Petra!
Nick, honey You, of all people! How could you be so stupid-you know what childbirth does!
Nick Fuck you!
If she’d had a gun then…
She opened her eyes, realized for the first time that they’d been closed. Squad room noise blew back at her, the other detectives busy doing their jobs.
What she needed to do.
