time or later, no one saw him at any of his old haunts, nothing.”
I consider it. The whole story is fascinating, both terrible and cathartic. Heather’s complicity is disturbing, of course. I have only a sketch of “Pete,” delivered by a man who hated his guts. But even so …
“I doubt it,” I say. “I can’t rule him out one hundred percent, but he doesn’t sound like an intelligent planner. This is too advanced for him.”
Burns stares down at his illusory whiskey water. “That’s a relief.”
“I understand why you focused on the husband and Pete,” I say, moving things back to the investigation. “But were there any other suspects?”
“There was one.” He sounds reluctant. “Heather’s boyfriend.”
“She was having an affair?” I ask.
He sighs. “Yeah. Nice guy by the name of Jeremy Abbott. He worked in real estate, divorced, around the same age as Heather. They’d been seeing each other for about six months.”
“Was this before or after she suspected her husband was cheating on her?”
“Don’t know. I found out about Abbott through her email.”
“Why was he ruled out as a suspect?”
Burns looks confused. “You didn’t read it? In the file?”
“We’re still getting caught up,” I say.
“Then get ready for a shocker. Jeremy Abbott went missing the same night as Heather. His car was found in his driveway, still running. Driver-side door was open and one of his shoes had come off.”
Burns nods.
“Douglas Hollister is looking better and better,” I mutter.
“He never turned up?” Alan asks.
“Jeremy?” Burns shakes his head. “Not a sign. Just like Heather. Disappeared from the face of the earth.”
I glance at Alan. He nods back at me.
“What?” Burns asks.
“We’re wondering if Jeremy might show up soon too.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The day is California-perfect. The sky is blue from horizon to horizon, and the sun shines down with a gentle warmth. It’s a day for T-shirts and blue jeans, sunglasses optional. Parents and surfers alike will be looking at this day and thinking about the weekend, hoping that this honey keeps on falling from the sky.
We’re on the way to see Douglas Hollister, and I’m excited about it. Not the excited of a kid going to the comic book store, but the excited of a meat-eater getting ready for a live meal.
I have developed a picture of Heather Hollister. Like me, she lost a parent early in her life. Like me, she was called to this job. To being a cop. Our reasons were different; she wanted justice for the world in exchange for the lack of justice for her father, whereas I was lured by an inner siren song.
By all accounts she was very good at her job. She hadn’t let her obsession destroy her. She found time to marry, to have children, and to care for the victims she ran across as a detective.
Now she’s lost her husband and her children. The life she knew is gone. Our stories couldn’t be more different and yet the same.
I feel a kinship for her that’s put an ache inside me, a longing that I recognize. It comes when empathy with a victim crystallizes to a painful, sharp-edged clarity. I care about every corpse that becomes my responsibility. Each was a life, replete with hopes, dreams, boredom, laughter, tears, day to day. I know this about them all, but with some, I can see it like I can see the hills next to the highway through the window as Alan drives.
Paul Rhodes is a writer I like a lot. He can be a little uneven at times, but there was a passage he wrote in one of his books that summed up this idea for me, this encapsulation of the uniqueness that each of us exists as, even though the stories of our lives are the same stories that have rolled on forever:
Every man thinks his dream deserves worship. It came from him, him, there is no other him; thus, it must be unique.
God says (in a booming, wrathful, surround sound voice, fit to shake the rafters of the world): FOLLY!
And man trembles.
God hunkers down in his white robes and puts an arm around man’s shoulders. It’s an ineffable embrace, of course; mother’s milk, father’s thunder, joy to build the world.
God says (not unkindly), Now that I’ve got your attention, listen up:
Every dream has been dreamt before, a thousand by ten thousand times. Those desires you deem unique have been attached to a million dreamers before you. They woke each day to wage the wage-war, to fight for survival for themselves and those they loved; to don a good suit, to drink a rich wine, to find themselves sweating that evening in the clutches of someone beautiful. The dream is never new, my son. Only the dreamer.
God smiles the sunrise.
Oh man, sweet child, how I love your folly.
They say any idiot can have a child, and that’s true. The biology is the same. The outline of the story is the same. But the real truth is, none of them is the same. People make every story different. Only the world-weary really believe otherwise.
Tommy and Bonnie will never be Matt and Alexa. That’s okay. They are themselves. They are the same idea when viewed from a distance, but listen closer and you hear it: Both songs are sung in a different tone, both are rich and beautiful, both are extraordinarily themselves.
I see Heather this way now. I perceive her not as a female victim with some similarities to myself but as a unique individual who added more to this world than she took away. I believe that her husband, Douglas Hollister, murdered not her body but her life.
We’re on our way to see this man, and I’m hoping that our visit brings him sorrow.
“You think Burns will keep his cool?” Alan asks.
I turn my gaze from the passing hillside and my thoughts of Douglas Hollister’s doom.
“What’s that?”
“Burns. He seems a little amped up. I’m worried.”
It was true. Burns was practically licking his chops, just thinking about biting a nice big juicy metaphorical chunk out of Douglas Hollister.
“I think he’ll be okay. He’s been a cop for too long. It’s not like he’s going to kill Hollister right in front of us.”
Alan slides a look at me, then back to the road. “You hope,” he says.
Or maybe I don’t, I think but do not share with him.
Douglas Hollister lives in Woodland Hills, in a nice, newer two-story. The exterior is an off-white faux-adobe, with light wood accents at the windows. The front yard has a single adolescent tree. The rest is green grass, cut short. Attractive, cute even, but unimaginative. It has the look of any of a thousand homes that were thrown up during the housing boom. Hollister’s been here with his new wife, Dana, for only three years, so I’d guess they bought at the height of the market.
“What do you think about Dana Hollister?” I’d asked Burns.
“I think she’s clueless and that she loves the guy,” he replied, echoing our thoughts when we’d first viewed the black-and-white photograph of them coming out of the hotel room. “She cheated with him, so I hold that against her, but she always struck me as not being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Dumb more than malicious.”
He filled us in on the other facts. Dana Hollister had worked in real estate for a few years, a career she started not long after she and Douglas met. She’d done okay but had quit a year ago, after the housing bubble burst. Now she was trying to start up her own business.
