The Lonely Dead (17 page)

Neither of us were interested in the man. LAPD moved fast: they already had print-outs of the three men featured in McCain's movies, and were showing them to Jessica's associates, starting in Jimmy's bar. The barman there had said none of them looked much like the guy he'd seen the girl with the night she died. These had been amongst the things Nina had achieved before returning to the house mid-afternoon. What we were looking at instead was Jessica's bedside table. This was visible in a gap between the blurred faces and chests of Jessica and her temporary new best friend. On the table was a lamp, a cheap-looking radio alarm, a small pile of books whose garish spines suggested they had self-help titles, three coffee cups, and a small picture frame.

Nina picked up the Polaroid which showed the bedroom, and peered at it. 'You're right,' she said. 'It's not there. And I didn't see anything like it in the apartment.' As soon as I'd noticed the discrepancy I'd called her with a description of the frame, and she'd stopped by Jessica's to look for it. 'When is this grab from?'

'Just less than a week before she died.'

'Assuming the date stamp is accurate.'

'It is. The creation date of the file confirms it.'

'A week. So she could have moved it somewhere herself in the meantime.'

'You couldn't find it. If a picture is important enough to keep by your bedside, you're not suddenly going to decide you don't want it in the house any more.'

'You could if it was an ex-boyfriend.'

'True. But look.' I switched to a third image, which showed only the frame on the bedside table. 'This is it blown up even more. I used interpolation software which basically looks at the colour value of each pixel, compares it to the ones surrounding it, and tries to make an intelligent guess at increasing the size of the image. It looks like shit when applied to a picture of this low quality, but it does show something interesting.' I pointed at the centre of the picture. 'You can't make out any features, but you've clearly got two heads there.'

'Exactly. Jessica plus a former guy.'

'I don't think so. What's the colour on top of both their heads?'

'Grey.'

'The hair colour of older people, in other words. Parents, perhaps.'

'You think?'

'Jessica may not have actually made it back home very often, but I'd have been very surprised if there wasn't a family picture in the apartment somewhere. Nice photo of mom and dad, or if she had a problem with one or both, some idealized sibling or favourite niece. Some record of family. That's what girls are like.'

'Is that so? You found one here yet? Hidden amongst the sewing and the love letters to Justin Timberlake?'

'No,' I said. 'But I haven't looked hard. And you're not a girl.'

'Right. Just a scary woman.'

'Not just,' I said. 'But my point is that something is missing from Jessica's apartment.'

'You think the killer was there.'

'I do. And here's the proof.' I double-clicked on another file, one of the still images McCain had stored in the folder. It showed Jessica spark out on the couch in a somewhat inelegant pose. She was wearing floral pyjamas, pale blue, with little pink and white flowers. 'You said she was found…'

'That's them. Those are the pyjamas. Christ. You're right. He'd been there.'

'I think he had been closing in on her for a while — hunting her, as he probably thinks of it — and spent time in her space as part of the build-up to murdering her. He took the pyjamas and I think he also took a souvenir. He would have worked out that these were Jessica's family, and decided to take something that was close to her, something that mattered.'

'And she wouldn't have noticed?'

'Name me an object in this house that you look at every day. And look at the picture: the table is a mess. Also…'

'But what about the pjs? You'd notice if they were gone, surely.'

'Which is what I was about to say. He was most likely there during the day of the night before he killed her.'

'So why not just wait for her and kill her on home territory?'

'Because it was her home, not his. You know what these people are like. They want to sculpt the event. It has to happen on their terms.'

'Does this actually help us?'

'He found out where she lived. How? It means that on at least one occasion he could've been seen near her apartment. It means that he had to get in. Again, how?'

'LAPD have already canvassed the neighbourhood. Nobody saw anything.'

'But how did he find out where she lived?'

'Ward, you have very good eyes but you're not a cop. He probably just followed her home from a bar. I'm sorry, but even if you're right this doesn't give us anything more to go on. He took pyjamas and stole a picture. Maybe. Big deal. We'll put it right there on the warrant, just below the murder thing.'

I turned to her, irritable, but she looked tired and I put away what I'd been going to say. 'Funny you and John didn't make it work. What with you both being so reasonable and open-minded.'

She smiled. 'Look — I'll call it in.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'I feel validated beyond my wildest dreams. Now let's go liberate some of your food from the store.'

'Screw that. Let's go somewhere they'll cook it too.'

—«»—«»—«»—

We ended up over in Santa Monica, eating at an Italian place on the Promenade. We ate for a short while, at least, and then moved back to the bar area for somewhat longer. Nina looked good with a glass of wine in her hand. It fitted like it was meant to be there. I told her what little I had done in the last few months, and as the wine kicked in I eventually told her how much I missed Bobby, and my parents, and she nodded and understood and didn't say anything to try to make it better. I realized I didn't know very much about her at all and found that she had grown up in Colorado, gone to college in LA, and not much else. She told me about some old girlfriend of hers who had called her and she was supposed to be meeting with, and we agreed that the past was another country and one which the movement of time's tectonic plates pulled further away every year. As it got to mid-evening the bar got more crowded, Nina glaring at people to keep them away from my seat during my occasional trips to smoke outside. With Nina, a glare is enough.

As I got more drunk the people around me seemed to get louder and more obnoxious. The chatter was of the movie business (of course), of money, of health and weight, of fashion. The more inconsequential the subject the louder they seemed to want to talk about it, an endless prayer to the gods of fate. I got more and more cranky until Nina was sitting silently while I ranted. Fashion makes me furious. It always has. This summer we're all going to be wearing vermilion, are we? Says
who?
When we see a bikini made of squares of brightly coloured plastic, why do we pretend anyone will wear it?
No one will ever wear it.
Ever. No one. So what was the point of the designer drawing it, showing it to other people, eliciting their ooh's and ah's? All of these activities took time and money, as did the marketing and the booking of hotels and equipment; all of it moved to and fro via the gas-guzzling limos and airports of the world until the action reached a beach somewhere exotic so an over-paid buffoon could photograph a skittish smack-head in a garment which
no one will ever actually wear.
The whole episode is a hypothetical. 'If you looked like this model (which you don't) and had the money to go on vacation to places like this (which you don't) and could further afford to pay a head-spinning amount for a swimsuit ($1000 — have you lost your fucking
mind?) …
then you might wear this — if it didn't look uncomfortable, modish and plain howling stupid (which it most certainly does).' This, I snarled at Nina, is what capitalism does to show off. It's our culture flopping out its dick. 'Hey, you shadows in the non-Western chaos — just
look at
our surplus capacity. If we can piss all this time and effort away on such useless, vacant crap, then just
imagine
the quantities of gold and guns and grain we must have stashed away, how well fed and happy the citizens of Our World Inc. must be.'

Except they
aren't
all happy, and some of them aren't very well fed — and as time goes on, this fakery becomes all there is. But nobody knows or cares what happens behind the lifestyle billboards, because life for the people who matter just keeps getting better. The toddlers have taken over the asylum, and they're having everything made child-friendly to fit. They've turned smoky, cool coffee shops into places where the healthy go to iBook their Deep Thoughts; made fuggy, scary bars into places that look like airport lounges and feel like the Personnel Relaxation Facilities of futuristic megacorps. I was in a bar recently and it smelled of
incense
: how fucked up is that? Not smelling of smoke is bad enough, but
spiced lavender?
Inside is not supposed to be fresher than outside, can't they
see
that? The whole country is turning into a muffin-padded nest where the MBAs and soccer moms of America can sit reading books on how to love themselves more, as if that could be remotely
possible.
And they can't achieve this by setting up dedicated shrines for this ungodly self-absorption, they have to change all
my
places, the dirty and average and unexpected, so they're exactly the same.

Part of the problem, I went on — now easily as loud and obnoxious as the fashionistas and wannabe movie moguls — is that I could remember a world in which nobody ran. Can you imagine? Where the sight of average joes puffing along the street was bizarre and new and you wondered what on
earth
they thought they were doing. Now running is the new giving to charity. Running is the new wisdom, the absolute good: the modern ritual walkway to the gods' approval and beneficence. Run, and you will be successful; run and all will be well. If we were in charge of the Catholic Church then sainthood would be conferred strictly according to the time the candidate spent wearing Nikes. 'Yes, sure, Father Brian did good works and saved lives and stuff, but what were his splits on the mile? Father Nate? Forget it, dude. That guy never ran a half-marathon in his life.'

We have lost all sense of proportion, of what is important or reasonable or sane: while around the world the countries which don't have the time or luxury for this
bullshit
are getting ever more pissed at us for behaving like we own the whole playground. But who cares, right? Here's another dumb movie about wacky teens! A great new diet is racing up the charts! J-Lo got herself some new bling — just look how damned pretty it is! Who gives a crap what's happening in dusty shit-holes where they don't even speak American? Life's great! Crack open a decaf Zinfandel! I ran out of steam and drink at exactly the same time. Young people on nearby tables were staring at me as if I'd declared the three-act structure null and void.

'Fuck you,' I suggested, loudly. Everyone turned away.

Even Nina was looking at me, one eyebrow raised. 'The Prozac really just isn't cutting it, is it?'

'The world is fucked,' I muttered, embarrassed. 'Everyone in it is fucked too. Roll on Armageddon.'

'Yeah, I can remember what it was like being fifteen,' she said. 'Don't fret. It will pass.' She stood. 'Come on, Ward. I'm drunk. You're loaded. It's time to go home.'

I saw the credit slip on the table and realized that, somewhere in the last fifteen minutes, she'd paid our tab.

I slid off my stool and followed her out of the restaurant, feeling foolish. That, and something else.

—«»—«»—«»—

By the time we'd located a cab and ridden it back to Nina's house the wine in my system had tipped over and started making me feel weary and worn out. Most of the journey had been in silence, though not an uncomfortable one. I made a big thing about paying for the ride and then stumbled wildly getting out of the car. Maybe Nina was right. Boys achieve a degree of timelessness: didn't matter how ancient my body sometimes felt, fifteen seemed a glass ceiling for my level of sophistication.

When we got inside I headed straight for the coffee machine. Doing so took me past Nina's answer phone.

'You got a message,' I said.

Nina touched a button and looked at the number it flashed up. 'It's Monroe.'

The message was short. A man's voice brusquely told Nina to call him whatever time she got back. She rolled her eyes, but immediately hit a button that returned the call.

'Charles Monroe's office.' The voice came out of the speakerphone loud and clear.

'It's Nina Baynam,' Nina said, rubbing her eyes. 'I got a message.'

The person on the end didn't answer, but no more than three seconds later the voice of Nina's boss came on the line.

'Nina, where the hell have you been?'

'Out,' she said, evidently surprised at his tone. 'Why didn't you call my cell?'

'I did. Three times.'

'Oh. Well, I was somewhere loud.' She looked pointedly at me as she said this. 'What's the problem?'

'I've just had a phone call from the SAC in Portland.'

Nina immediately looked more serious. 'Another killing?'

'Yes, and no. Not another hard disk. Not another girl.'

'Well, then what?'

When Monroe spoke again, it was carefully and slowly. 'A prostitute named Denise Terrell — working name Cherri — walked into a police station there the night before last. She was disoriented. She claimed she'd been on an afternoon out-call and 'something happened'. Next thing she knew it was night and she woke up propped against a dumpster. Eventually they worked out she had serious concussion and took her to a hospital. The next morning she had remembered some more and started saying she'd been booked to one of her agency's regular clients but had struck a deal with another man, who somehow knew they had dealings with this particular john. This man had contacted her direct and offered her money in exchange for her letting him know when and where the meeting was going to take place. Said the guy owed him a lot of money and he wanted to catch him somewhere private, when his guard was down. The girl agreed.'