“It’s pronounced ‘sidelined,’ Beckett. But forget that for the moment. I just talked to a rental car agency. Tasia and her posse rented three SUVs before the concert. Two were returned on time, but the third never made it back to the airport.”
“Because Tasia drove it to the ballpark the night she died.”
“It’s still there. And guess what?”
“It’s vandalized.”
“Extra points for the deadshrinker. You advance to round two.”
“What happened to it?”
“Keyed, tires slashed, superglue in the door locks.”
“Graffiti?”
“Scratched into the driver’s door. The C word. Not
conspiracy
.”
Jo stared out the window. “This unequivocally went beyond cyberstalking.”
“Think it’s Archangel X?”
Jo looked at her computer. “I’m going to try to find out.”
Tang was silent for a moment. “Do that. But be careful. This guy may already have attacked you once and put Chennault in the hospital. Watch your back.”
25
S
EARLE LECROIX WASSTAYING AT THE ST. FRANCIS. WHEN JO HOPPED off the cable car, a salsa band was playing in Union Square. The hotel doorman smiled and tipped his hat as she went through the doors.
Inside, conversations bounced off the high ceiling and dark wood paneling. She called Lecroix from a house phone in the lobby.
“Doctor, come on up,” he said.
“I have a table in the bar.”
Lecroix’s drawl thickened. “The media knows I’m here. Take a look outside, see if you don’t spot a ferret with a camera.”
She glanced out the revolving door. Across the street on the square stood a man with a camera on a strap around his neck.
“Unless y’all want your face splashed across the tabloids, with ‘Psychiatrist questions Searle about Tasia’s death,’ I suggest you come upstairs.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Jo climbed the fire stairs to the sixth floor, where the stairwell door opened to a hush. The hallway walls featured gilded mirrors—
See yourself, framed in gold
. When Lecroix answered her knock, she couldn’t hide her surprise.
He smiled, slow and melancholy. “Thought my entourage would greet you?”
He was dressed as he had been at the concert: the full cowboy. The jeans were tourniquet tight, the boots worn down at the heels. He touched the brim of his black cowboy hat and welcomed her into the suite.
In the living room, an acoustic guitar was propped against the end of the sofa. Lecroix offered her a seat and took a chair across from her. Sunlight refracted from the chandeliers, cold and splintery. Sheet music was spread across the coffee table. Jo saw a half-written song, titled, “Angel, Flown.”
“Has the memorial service been set?” she said.
“Tomorrow afternoon at Grace Cathedral.” He gestured at the song-in-progress. “I’m writing a tune in her honor. I’m also gonna sing ‘Amazing Grace.’ ” He set his hands on his knees and took a breath. “That song gets me every time.”
Jo waited until he exhaled. “Can I ask about your relationship with Tasia?”
“That’s why you’re here,” he said.
“How long had you been seeing each other?”
“Since February. We met to rehearse ‘Bull’s-eye.’ ” He eyed her from under the brim of the cowboy hat. His gaze was magnetic. “I really liked her. She was a terrific gal.”
Jo couldn’t tell whether his words were sincere, or a practiced line. “At her house, I saw a pair of boots and a guitar.”
“Both mine.”
“You spent the night before the concert with her?”
“Spent it at her house, but she worked all night, composing. She was buzzing like a hornet. She’d been up—gosh, by then she’d been up for five days.”
“Can you tell me about her mood?” she said.
“Which one?” His smile was brief. When it vanished, it left an afterimage of sadness.
“Start from the beginning. What was she like when you met her?” she said.
“Ball of fire. Outgoing and fun. And creative, my God, the songs just poured out of her. And the girl could sing.”
“When did that change?” Jo said.
He picked up the guitar. “Round . . . April. It was like she fell off a cliff. At first I thought something bad had happened, some family problem. But now I think it was a depressive episode.”
“Can you describe the change?”
“Storm cloud swallowed her up. One time we found her inside a closet at the studio, sitting on the floor, cradling her head in her hands.”
“In a closet?”
“She said that way none of them could ruin her life.”
“Who?”
“Them. You know. The famous
them
.”
Jo laced her hands together. “Was she specific?”
“She had a list, starting with the president. He was bringing the country down. He didn’t believe in America. Didn’t believe in the women and men who love this country and would do anything to make it work.”
He took off the cowboy hat. His skin was sun-weathered. “She never used his name. Said ‘the president.’ Isn’t that strange? And don’t you think she was projecting?”
“How so?”
“Saying he rejected the country, wanted to hurt it, didn’t love it the way it deserves to be loved—don’t you think she was talking about herself?”
Jo tried not to smile. “You ever study psychology, Mr. Lecroix?”
“It’s Searle. I just understand human nature.” He picked out a bluesy line on the guitar. “Also I have a B.A. in Economics from Texas A & M, with a minor in Psych.”
Jo leaned back. “Did Tasia ever threaten to harm herself?”
“No.”
“Did she ever mention the possibility that somebody might want to harm her?”
“The Secret Service, the White House chief of staff, and this guy who stands on Hollywood Boulevard with a religious placard, who she thought was planning to put her into a government concentration camp.”
He paused, and read the question in Jo’s eyes: Why did he stay with Tasia?
His face saddened. It reminded Jo of how he looked after the concert, and his blunt anguish at seeing Tasia dead.
“Hearing paranoid talk did make me wonder if I should break up with her. But I knew about her bipolar disorder. And about a month ago, things changed.”
“Tell me about it.”
“She got a whole lot more energy. I thought maybe she was snapping out of the blues, and getting back to her old self.”
Jo didn’t want to tell him, but
her old self
was a mirage. The up-and-down mood swings were intrinsic to Tasia McFarland’s personality. The baseline was what had eluded her.
“What happened?” Jo said.
“Bubbly again. Just a hoot. She seemed so glad to see me.
Real, real
glad. That’s why I was so awful tired the other night,” he said.
Goodness, he was either tongue-tied, or being an old- fashioned gentleman. “She wore you out physically?”
“Day and night. Two, three times a day. At home, in the studio, on the tour bus.” He shook his head, wide-eyed, almost amazed. “And one day I came home and found a brand-new Corvette sitting on my driveway, wrapped up with a fat red bow. She’d bought it for me.”
“What did you think?”
“That maybe her contract with the label was a whole lot better than I’d imagined. Or she was thanking me for working as her”—he blushed—“stud horse.”
Jo checked off two symptoms of uncontrolled mania: hyper-sexuality and extravagant spending.
“Did you ever see her take drugs? I mean both prescription and illegal drugs.”
“She used to take a lot of pills but she quit them. She wanted to live clean.”
And Jo knew that all her fears about Tasia’s mental instability were true. “Did she explain which drugs she quit taking, and why?”
“Said she’d been prescribed medications to deal with a chemical imbalance. But they made her feel flat.”
“Flat in what way?”
“Emotionally. They sucked away all her joy and energy and creativity,” he said. “She’d decided to live holistically, focus on positive thinking. And she had a new doctor, got rid of the others who’d been doping her.”
Jo wasn’t surprised. Tasia had stopped taking her medication because she craved the buzz and sense of invincibility that came with being manic—and then she’d lurched into depression. But instead of talking to her psychiatrist, she had gone to Dr. Gerald Rhee Park and persuaded him to prescribe Prozac. The antidepressant had induced a mixed episode, making her agitated and depressed, and increasing the risk of a suicide attempt.
“Can we talk about the twenty-four hours before her death?” Jo said.
Lecroix ran his fingers up the neck of the guitar. “We ordered dinner in. She was too busy composing to go out.”
“Just the two of you?”
“About nine P.M. her writing collaborator came by. The ghostwriter—Ace.” He glanced up. “She had me shoo him off.”
“She wouldn’t see him?”
“She said, no interruptions. And believe you me, Ace didn’t like that.”
“I imagine not.”
“She’d been ignoring him for the previous week. Ace was going crazy. He was on a deadline to produce the first draft of the memoir.”
“Why wouldn’t she talk to him?”
“I think Tasia had serious second thoughts about the whole project. Dredging up her past turned out to upset her in a major way.”
“Her past, meaning her marriage?” Jo said.
“She never talked to me directly about those years.” He twanged the strings of the guitar. “You think that’s strange? Rhinoceros in the room and all?”
“I don’t know. Did you know she met with Robert McFarland in Virginia—”
“No. Heard it on the news, like everybody else.” He stopped playing. “I got no idea what they talked about. Tasia didn’t take me into her confidence.”
His face flushed a deeper red.
“What were her most recent opinions on President McFarland?” Jo said.
Lecroix’s voice rose. “You heard that song she wrote about him. ‘The Liar’s Lullaby.’ And she left that for me. What am I supposed to make of that?”
Jo let him cool off for a moment. “At her house I saw a copy of
Case Closed.
Was she interested in the Kennedy assassination?”
“Ace gave that to her.”
“Why?”
Lecroix practically snorted. “To ‘educate’ her out of believing in conspiracy theories. Tasia read the book, but didn’t really care about JFK—she cared about Jackie. Talked about what it must have been like being First Lady, living in a bubble, struggling with a marriage and young children.” He paused. “Most of all, she talked about the babies Jackie lost, and how terrible that was.”
“Babies?”
“Jackie had a miscarriage and a stillborn baby, and a preemie who died just a couple months before Dallas. Tasia identified with her.” His shoulders sagged. “Tasia had lost more than one pregnancy herself. Even mentioning pregnancy made her sad and angry.” He sighed. “She never elaborated on it. And I let it lay.”
Jo parsed the expression on Lecroix’s face, and tried to fit this information into her understanding of Tasia. Lecroix looked down and continued to pick out a melody on the guitar.
“Did she ever talk about contributing to discussions at an extremist Web site—Tree of Liberty?” Jo said.
“No. I’m no right-winger, and I didn’t think she was, either.” His face turned wry. “I perform with the flag hanging behind me onstage, but patriotism didn’t draw her to me, or do it for her. In the long run, I don’t think Tasia would ever have settled down with a singer. She’d kept much more important men than me in love with her, and that was her biggest buzz of all. Power.”
Jo thought for a moment. “Was there any difference in her attitude before she saw McFarland in Virginia, and after?”
Lecroix’s voice sank. “You asking if she went there to try and get him back?”
He seemed sad, confused, and proud, all at once.
“Is that what you think?” Jo said.
“I got no idea. How am I supposed to handle this news? My girlfriend goes to a hotel for a one-on-one with the president, and I have to hear about it on TV?”
He began picking at another blues line. The steel-stringed melody filled the room, bright and aching.
“The night before the concert, at Tasia’s house,” Jo prompted.
“Ace finally gave up and left. Tasia was racing a hundred miles an hour. I thought making love might calm her down, but she kept up a running commentary the whole time. Like she was announcing the Daytona Five Hundred, live and in High Definition.”
Jo tried not to smile at the image.
“She seemed . . . you ever seen a horse with a burr under its saddle? It can’t settle down. That was her. But overnight, the invincibility came back. When I got up in the morning she seemed like steel.” He stopped playing. “I wish to hell I knew what was bothering her.”
“Did she ever mention a stalker?” Jo said.
He frowned. “No. Was somebody following her?”
“Maybe. Did she ever talk about messages from fans?”
“She was warm and generous with the fans. Made a point of replying to every person who wrote to her. But she never mentioned a stalker, and I think she would have. She felt surrounded by threats. If somebody was after her, she would have been screaming about it. What’s going on?”
“It may only have been cyberstalking, but it’s possible that somebody followed her to San Francisco.”
“You think a stalker shot her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Goddamn.” He shook his head. “There’s crazies out there. Are there ever. I have a security system at home, and on the road I carry all kinds of protection.”
“Sounds wise.”
He grew pensive. “You think some stalker was after Tasia for herself? Or because of who she used to be married to?”
“That’s an excellent question.”
Lecroix’s sad eyes grew serious. “Who’s more likely to have stalkers?”