Bad Love (33 page)

He looked at me. “Okay, sure, if it helps your peace of mind. But we’ll
keep
you safe.”

He put a hand on my shoulder for a moment, then entered the garage and stayed there for twenty minutes or so. The coroner had come and gone and so had the body, and the technicians were still working, dusting and peeking and making casts. I watched them until Milo came out.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“Out of here.”

“They don’t need me anymore?”

“Did you tell Sally everything you know?”

“Yup.”

“Then let’s go.”

We left, passing the garage. Steen was on his knees by a chalk body outline, talking into a tape recorder. Sarah Grayson was standing near him, writing in a notepad. She saw me and waved, then returned to her work.

“Nice lady,” I said, as we walked away.

“She was one of Central Juvey’s best investigators, used to be married to one of the watch commanders — real asshole, mean drunk. Rumor had it he was rough on her and the kids.”

“Physically rough?”

He shrugged. “I never saw bruises, but he had a vicious temper. Finally, they got divorced, and a couple of months later he came over to her place, raising a ruckus, and ended up shooting himself in the foot and losing a toe.” Smile. “Whole big investigation. Afterward, Sally moved up here and the asshole retired on disability and packed out to Idaho.”

“In the foot,” I said. “Not exactly a marksman.”

He smiled again. “Actually, he was a crack shot, had once been a range instructor. A lot of people found it hard to believe he’d done it to himself, but you know how it is with chronic alcohol abuse. All that loss of
muscle
control. No telling.”

We reached the street. Santa Barbara police cars were parked at the curb, sandwiching the Seville. Neighbors were pressing up against the crime scene tape, and a TV van was driving up. I looked in vain for Milo’s Fiat or an unmarked.

“Where’s your car?”

“Back in L.A. I took a chopper.”

“To where?”

“The airport.”

“How’d you get here from there?”

“Santa Barb uniform picked me up.”

“Status,” I said. “Hoo-hah.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sally used to live in Mar Vista. I was the detective on her ex’s toe job.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. Now
you
drive me. Let’s split before the press leeches start sucking.”

I headed down Cabrillo. He said, “Are you too wiped out or grossed out to eat?”

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I can probably hold something down, or at least watch you.”

“Voyeur — this looks okay, pull in.” He pointed to a small seafood place tucked next to one of the beach motels. Inside was a scattering of oilcloth-draped tables with abalone-shell ashtrays, sawdust floors, netted walls, a live bar, and a self-order counter. The special of the day was salmon and chips. Both Milo and I ordered it, took a number, and sat down at a window table. We tried to look through the traffic at the water. A young waitress inquired if we wanted anything to drink, brought us two beers, and left us alone.

I called Robin again, using a phone at the back, next to a cigarette machine. Still out. When I got back to the table, Milo was wiping foam from his upper lip.

“Katarina was pregnant,” he said. “Coroner actually found the fetus hanging out of her.”

“God,” I said, remembering the mess and the bloated abdomen. “How far along was she?”

“Five to six months. Coroner could tell it was a boy.”

I tried to push aside my revulsion. “Harrison said she never married and she lived alone. Who could the father have been?”

“Probably some med student with a Mensa membership. SDI stands for Seminal Depository and Inventory.”

“A sperm bank?”

“This particular one claims to screen its donors for both brains and brawn.”

“Designer babies,” I said. “Yeah, I can see Katarina going for something like that. Artificial insemination would give her total control over the child rearing, no emotional entanglements. . . . At five months she’d probably be showing. That’s why the killer concentrated on her belly — focused his anger there. Wiping out de Bosch’s line.”

He frowned.

I said, “Maybe the sperm bank’s card was chosen for the message for that same reason. The way it was pinned under the murder weapon was deliberate — setting the scene. It’s all a big ritual for him.”

The waitress brought the food. A look at our faces erased the smile on hers.

I said, “He’s trying to obliterate everything associated with de Bosch. And once again, he used a weapon he found on hand. Turning the victim against herself — insult
and
injury. Trying to reverse what he thinks was done to him. But he must have brought another weapon with him, to intimidate her.”

“His fists could have been all he needed for that. Lots of bruises around her eyes.”

“Did he hit her hard enough to knock her out?”

“Hard to tell without an autopsy, but Sally said the coroner didn’t think so.”

“If she was conscious, why didn’t anyone hear her scream?”

“Sometimes people don’t scream,” he said. “Lots of times they freeze and can’t get a sound out. Or the head blows could have stunned her. Even if she did scream, it might not have helped. Neighbors on both sides are away, and the ocean blocks out lots of sound to begin with.”

“What about other neighbors? Didn’t anyone see someone enter the property?”

“No one’s come forward yet. Sally and Steen are gonna do a door-to-door canvass.”

“Sally said the house was a mess. Did she mean poor housekeeping or a toss?”

“A toss. There was overturned furniture, ripped upholstery.”

“Rage,” I said. “Or he could have been looking for old school records. Something that might incriminate him.”

“Getting rid of the evidence? He’s been bumping off people for years, why start covering now?”

“Maybe he’s getting more nervous.”

“My experience is just the opposite,” he said. “Killers acquire a taste for it, enjoy it more and more and get careless.”

“Hope he did get careless and you find something in there.”

“It’ll take a couple of days to do a thorough workover.”

“From the outside, the place looked sealed up. If I hadn’t seen the breakfast dishes, I would have assumed Katarina was out of town. The killer must have closed the drapes after he killed her, then tossed in peace.”

“Like you said, it’s a ritual, something he sets up carefully.”

“So, we’re not dealing with a raving psychotic. Everything that’s happened is too calculated for a schizophrenic: traveling around to conventions, simulating accidents. Skewering my fish. Taping Hewitt screaming. Stalking, delaying gratification for years. This is calculated cruelty, Milo. Some kind of psychopath. Becky’s notes mean we have to look at Gritz carefully. If he’s Silk-Merino, his street-bum-alkie thing may be a disguise. The perfect disguise, when you think about it, Milo. The homeless are everywhere, part of the scenery. To most of us they all look alike. I remember seeing a guy at Coburg’s office. He looked so similar to Hewitt it startled me. All Bancroft really remembered about his intruder, besides age, was dirt and hair.”

He thought. “How many years ago did Bancroft say this guy barged in?”

“Around ten. The guy was in his twenties, so he’d be in his thirties now, which would fit Gritz. Bert Harrison’s Mr. Merino fits that time frame, too. Both Merino and Bancroft’s tramp were agitated. Merino talked about the conference putting him in touch with his problems. A few years later, the tramp returned to his old school, causing a scene, trying to dig up his past. So it could be the same guy, or maybe there are lots of Corrective School alumni wandering around, trying to put their lives together. Whatever the case, something
happened
there, Milo. Bancroft called the school’s students miscreants and fire setters. He denied there’d been any major problems that he couldn’t handle, but he could have been lying.”

“Well,” he said, “local records can be checked, and Sally’ll be talking to Bancroft again, see if she can get more details.”

“Good luck to her. He doesn’t suffer the middle class lightly.”

He smiled and lifted his glass. “That’s okay. Sally doesn’t suffer assholes lightly.”

He drank some beer but didn’t touch his food. I looked at mine. It appeared well prepared but had all the appeal of fried lint.

I said, “Myra Paprock taught school here during the late sixties to the midseventies, so that’s probably the time frame we’re looking at. Lyle Gritz would have been around ten or eleven. Harrison remembers Myra as being young and very dogmatic. So maybe she got heavy-handed with discipline. Something a child could perceive as bad love. Shipler could have worked there, too, as a janitor. Got involved, somehow, in whatever happened. And most of the conference speakers were on staff then, too. I’ve got the exact dates in my notes back home. Let’s finish up here, get back to L.A., and check.”

“You check,” he said. “I’ll be staying up here for a day or two, working with Sally and Bill Steen. Leave messages at her desk.” He gave me a business card.

I said, “The killer’s been accelerating his pace. One year between victims, now only a few months between Stoumen and Katarina.”

“Unless there are other victims we don’t know about.”

“True. I still can’t find Harvey Rosenblatt, and his wife hasn’t returned my call. Maybe she’s a widow who just doesn’t want to deal with it. But I’ve got to keep trying. If Rosenblatt’s alive, I need to warn him — need to warn Harrison, too. Let me call him right now and tell him about Katarina.”

I returned to the pay phone and dialed Ojai while reading the warning label on the cigarette machine. No answer, no tape. I hoped it was because Harrison’s self-preservation instincts were sharp. The little man would make an easy, crimson target.

When I returned to the table, Milo still hadn’t eaten.

“Gone,” I said. “Maybe hiding already. He said he had somewhere to go.”

“I’ll ask an Ojai cop to stop by. What about Becky Basille? How do you fit her into this? Hewitt screaming “bad love,’ the killer taping Hewitt?”

“Maybe Hewitt was a Corrective School alumnus, too. Or maybe the killer indoctrinated Hewitt about bad love. If G is our guy, Becky’s notes imply a close relationship of some kind between him and Hewitt. If I’m right about the killer not being psychotic, he’d have been the more put-together partner — the dominant one. Able to push Hewitt’s buttons, feed Hewitt’s paranoia, get him off his medication, and turn him against his therapist. Because of
his
hatred of therapists. Plus, he had another reason to hate Becky: Hewitt was getting attached to her.”

Milo began cutting salmon with his fork. Stopped and ran his hand over his face. “I’m still looking for Mr. Gritz. Pulled his complete sheet and it’s all minor league.”

“He told the Calcutta folks he was going to get rich. Could there be some kind of profit motive to these murders?”

“Maybe he was just bragging. Psychopaths do that.” He looked at his food and shoved his plate away. “Who’m I kidding?”

“The kid on the tape,” I said. “Any record of Gritz having children?”

He shook his head.

“The chant,” I said. “ ’Bad love, bad love, don’t give me the bad love.’
Sounds
like something an abused kid might say. Having a child recite it could be part of the ritual. Reliving the past, using de Bosch’s own terminology. God only knows what else he’s done, trying to work through his pain.”

He took out his wallet, pulled out cash, and put it on the table. Tried to catch the waitress’s attention, but her back was to us.

“Milo,” I said, “Becky might still be a link. She could have talked to someone about Hewitt and G.”

“Like who?”

“A relative, a friend. Did she have a boyfriend?”

“You’re saying she broke confidentiality?”

“She was a beginner, and we already know she wasn’t that careful.”

“Don’t know about any boyfriend,” he said. “But why would she not tell Jeffers, then go and gab to a layperson?”

“Because telling Jeffers would have meant getting pulled off Hewitt’s case. And she could have talked without feeling she was breaching confidentiality. Leaving out names. But she might have said something to someone that can give us a lead.”

“The only member of her family I ever met was her mother, and that was just once, to listen to her cry.”

“A mother can be a confidante.”

He looked at me. “After that picnic with Paprock’s husband, you’d be willing to do another exhumation?”

“What else do we have going?”

He pushed food around his plate. “She was a nice person — the mother. What approach would you take with her?”

“Straight and narrow. Hewitt had a friend who may be involved in other killings. Someone whose name starts with G. Did Becky ever talk about him?”

He caught the waitress’s eye and waved her over. She smiled and held up a finger, finished reciting the specials to a couple across the room.

“She lives near Park LaBrea,” he said. “Near the art museum. Ramona or Rowena, something like that. I think she’s in the book. Though she may have unlisted it after the murder. If she did, call me at Sally’s and I’ll get it for you.”

He looked at our untouched plates, took a toothpick from a can on the table, and poked at his incisors.

“Got your message about the sheriff,” I said. “When does he plan to get to the tape?”

“Next couple of days, unless some emergency comes up. Don’t know what it’ll accomplish, but at least we’ll feel scientific.”

“Speaking of science,” I said, “any estimates yet about when Katarina was killed?”

“Coroner’s initial guess is anywhere from eight to twenty hours before you found her.”

“Eight’s more likely. The coffee dregs were still moist. If I’d gotten there a little earlier I might have—”

“Gotten hurt yourself.” He leaned forward. “Forget the rescue fantasies, Alex.”

My head hurt and so did my eyes. I rubbed them and drank water.

The waitress came over and looked at our uneaten meals.