Never Fear (23 page)

“Do you still have them?”

She nodded, then got up and walked over to the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk. She poured it into the sink and removed a piece of paper sealed in a plastic bag. She walked back to the couch and handed me the list. “The ones where I think they met someone are highlighted.”

There were four addresses. Two meant nothing to me, but the last two I knew. I handed the paper to Harrison and he studied it for a moment.

“A Chatsworth address. And Eagle Rock.”

I nodded. “Hazzard and the actress Candice Fleming. ”

“You're certain of these?” I asked.

James nodded.

“And the others?” I asked.

“They were both buildings downtown, but I think they were about something else.”

“How did you find the Iliad Apartments?”

“Gavin found it. I think he met the man in three-oh-six. ”

“Just once?”

She nodded. “I found out his name was Lewis Powell from the property company, but I still don't know who he is. I couldn't find any record of a Lewis Powell. It's like he didn't exist. And after your brother was killed, I stopped looking.”

“How did you know the things you knew when I met you in my brother's apartment?” I said.

“I followed John and Gavin to a bar one night. After Gavin left I let John buy me a drink, flirted just enough to ask him about his work . . . family . . . I liked him.” She let the rest go.

I stepped over to the window and looked out toward the San Gabriels in the east. A small line of orange flame cut through the darkness where a new fire had erupted. Harrison stepped up next to me and stared at the dark line of the mountains.

“Why didn't Hazzard tell us about this meeting?”

“I don't know.”

I turned and looked back at James. “I don't think you should stay here. We can find you a safe place.”

“Dana is dead, and she didn't know anything. How are you going to keep me safe?”

I started to answer but stopped myself. I couldn't protect her any more than I had protected Lopez. Who was I kidding?

“I have a place to go—no one will find me there, no one knows it.”

Harrison started toward the door and I followed.

“Lieutenant,” James said.

I stopped.

“There was someone else following Gavin and your brother.”

“You're sure of that?”

“Yeah, and John knew it. He was trying to lose the other car when he had the accident.”

I took out the xeroxed copy of my father's New York driver's license.

“Could it have been this man?”

She stared at the picture for a moment before placing him.

“The man from the Iliad Apartments?”

I nodded.

“It's possible, but I couldn't swear to it. I only caught glimpses of him.”

She looked at the picture again, then handed it back to me.

“You know him, don't you?” James asked.

I nodded. “What make of car was following them?”

“A Buick. I didn't get a plate.”

Harrison and I exchanged looks. The lights began to flicker again.

“I think I'll disappear for a while,” James said.

Outside the wind had freshened and carried a faint trace of smoke. Harrison and I walked back to the car but didn't get in.

“Every step we take seems to bring me back to him,” I said.

I glanced back at the warehouse and could make out the silhouette of James in her window watching us.

“I lied to her. I don't know who he is. . . . I'll drop you back in Pasadena and you can get started on the disk, and the addresses on that list.”

I looked over the top of the car toward the orange glow in the sky above the mountains.

“Where are you going?” Harrison asked.

“Back in time.”

30

I dropped Harrison in Pasadena, then took the 2 and began the climb toward the San Gabriel Valley. Tumbleweeds were flying across the freeway, piling up against the median until enough had gathered so the wind would take them all at once like a wave cresting a jetty.

A faint glow was visible just over the rise of the Glendale hills to the east where a new fire had started. The darkness occasionally lit up with a glowing ember streaking past the windshield.

Topping the rise leaving Glendale, the flashing lights of CHP and fire trucks blocked the road ahead. A flare was burning in the left lane next to a large deer that had been struck and now lay twisted on the road. Twenty yards ahead a truck lay upside down on top of the median, its load of thousands of oranges spread across the pavement.

A yellow fire department tarp covered the crushed truck cab where the driver had died. As I passed on the right shoulder, oranges began popping under my tires, and the smoky air filled with the sweet scent of orange juice for an instant before the wind took it away.

At Foothill I turned west and drove into La Crescenta. A mile on I turned right. The homes lining the streets were modest, part of the first subdivisions to climb toward the mountains after the war. I took another left and then a right. At the corner of Carlotta I pulled over and stopped.

I had no memory of driving here before, but I had found it without even glancing at the map. Nothing looked familiar except that the ranch houses and split-levels looked exactly like hundreds of other neighborhoods that spread out across Los Angeles.

But I hadn't missed a turn. I knew that 3829 was two blocks straight up the hill on the right, and that there was a dry wash behind it, and that when the wind blew out of the mountains as it did now, the house would be filled with the scent of chaparral and eucalyptus. It was where we had lived with my father.

I pulled away from the curb and drove around the block to come at the house from the cross street. As I came back to Carlotta I switched off my lights and coasted to a stop as the house came into view.

The house was dark, not even a light by the front door. A FOR SALE sign was stuck in the small front yard where the ivy-covered hill sloped down to Carlotta. I opened the car door and stepped out. The air was filled with the scent of eucalyptus, as I remembered. At the edge of my vision I could see their dark shapes swaying in the wind next to the wash behind the house.

I walked across the street and stopped at the foot of the driveway. Details that I hadn't been able to see from across the street began to emerge. The house had shingled siding painted light green with white trim. There were no drapes on the front windows, as if the house were inviting me to come inside. I walked up the stepping-stones that led to the front door. Flyers advertising yard work were stuck under the mat. A Realtor's lockbox hung from the door handle. The house was unoccupied. The lockbox was broken. I turned the handle and the door swung open. I started to take a step but stopped when I heard the sound of my mother's voice.

“Be a good girl,” she whispered.

I spun around, but there was no one there. It was memory I was hearing. I turned back and looked into the front hallway, then stepped inside. The air held the scent of cleaning products now, but what I remembered was something else. I took a step toward the empty dining room and stopped. It was perfume. My mother had worn it. I looked out into the living room and the fieldstone fireplace that rose to the ceiling. I reached out and flipped a light switch but it didn't come on. The power had been turned off.

I took a step and the scent of perfume returned. For an instant I wanted to turn and run out the door. My heart began to race, then a flash of memory lit the room and I saw her standing there looking out the window with her back to me. She was wearing tight stirrup slacks and a matching sweater. Her dark hair swept up on top of her head like an astronaut's wife.

She was whispering the same words over and over, holding something in her arms. I took a step into the living room and could hear her voice again, but there was an urgent quality to it now as she repeated the words over and over again.

“Be a good girl, be a good girl.”

“Enough,” I said out loud. Beads of perspiration were gathering on my forehead. The flood of memories began to come faster and I couldn't stop it. There were voices, a TV, all the sounds that make up a day inside a home, except none of them was distinct.

In a far corner of the house I heard the closing of a door. I turned and looked down the dark hallway leading to the bedrooms. The master bedroom was at the far end. The first door on my left had been my room. The walls of the hallway had been where pictures hung. I stared at the empty spaces and the images began to come back. The pictures had never been passed down to me, had vanished from family memory. And my father was in all of them—the wedding pictures, holding a sailfish in Mexico, my mother in a hospital bed with my father standing next to her holding his baby.

I walked to the end and stared into the empty space that had been my parents' room but there were no memories there. Not a sound, or a voice, or a picture of what their bed had been like. The reason I had come wasn't here. I stepped back into the hallway and stopped. The door to what had been my room was closed.

“Where is she?” I heard my father say.

I stepped up to the door, hesitated for a moment, then pushed it open. As it swung into the room, the past came rushing back. The walls were painted a bright yellow, a bed against the far wall, a dresser and rocking chair next to the window. The closet door was open. My mother was on her knees inside whispering the same words I had heard her saying by the window.

“Be a good girl, be a good girl.”

But it was different now. It wasn't the gentle voice of a mother rocking a baby to sleep. She was pleading.

She repeated the words a few more times, then stood up. On the floor a five-year-old girl sat on a blanket staring up at her. I looked at the little girl's face and saw myself, but I had no memory of this. My mother said something I didn't understand, then she reached out with a trembling hand and closed the closet door.

I walked over and stared at the floor of the closet. I didn't remember this. Why would my mother have closed me inside a dark closet?

“What happened here?” I whispered.

I tried to work through it the way I would a crime scene, but I couldn't. The language of physical evidence wasn't enough. The bare, empty room was silent. I looked back at the closet, then took a breath and stepped inside.

“I know this,” I said silently, and then I heard the voice in my head that had always been there, but I never understood the words.
Don't go there
.

The closet smelled of freshly dry-cleaned wool and shoe polish. I knew the feel of the soft blanket on the floor. I knew how far I had to stretch to touch each wall, and that the carpet in one corner was loose.

My mother was standing at the door looking down at me, her eyes betraying a wildness.

“This is our secret,” she said and began to close the door.

I was sitting now. My hand followed the line of light across the floor as if I could hold on to it and keep it from vanishing as the door closed. With the
click
of the latch, the sliver of light on my hand was gone. I was still for a moment, then I heard my own breathing. It started slowly, as if I wasn't certain there was air in the darkness. Then my breathing began to race until it had the rhythm of a motor cycling again and again, trying to catch a spark.

The shattering of glass pierced the darkness beyond the door. I held my breath and listened. There was shouting, a single voice. I tried to understand the words but in the distance of memory only the meaning was understandable. Rage.

He was moving through the house, going room to room. A lamp was smashed in the living room, dishes thrown off the dining room table. I heard my mother's voice in clipped pieces. “No . . . no . . . it's my fault . . . I'm the one . . . Don't . . .”

The wood of a dining room chair splintered, as if hit with an ax.

“God, don't,” my mother said.

I heard the soft
thud
of a body being thrown against a wall and then he was moving again up the hallway. The glass in a picture frame shattered and then the door to the bathroom flew open and I heard the shower curtain pulled aside and then yanked from the rod.

He tried the door to my bedroom but the lock held. The whole house then shuddered as if a temblor had shaken the ground as he threw his body against the door. A piece of the frame snapped, sounding like a gunshot, but the door held. He hit it again and again, the cracks in the door frame opening farther each time. On the fourth charge the door gave way.

There was silence for a moment, and then I could hear him standing in the doorway, his breathing heavy with exertion. He stepped into the room and I stared at the faint line of light at the bottom of the door as he passed by the closet, walking over to my small bed. He began ripping at the sheets and covers, pulling them off like a dog digging at a burrow in the ground.

The bed hit the wall with a jolt and then I heard the sound of his voice. A low murmur, almost a growl. At first I couldn't understand the words, but then they emerged in repetition again and again. “Where are you? Where are you?”

His footsteps passed by the closet door heading toward the hallway, then stopped. I heard two clipped exhales, then nothing. Then another short violent breath. His shadow moved into the line of light at the bottom of the door. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying not to make a sound or take a breath.

The handle of the door began to turn. I started to reach for it, but the darkness in the closet that had been so frightening just a moment before closed around me like two large hands and pulled me back through dresses and coats hanging nearly to the floor until the faint light at the bottom of the door vanished and I disappeared in the darkness.