Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (3 page)

Dazed
and upset, I stopped by the ladies' room to wash up.
What will happen to
Barrett?
I thought sorrowfully. I could not bear the thought of her being
less than the beautiful creature she was, and yet, I could not bear the thought
of her dying. I was emotionally and physically tied to Barrett in some strange
way I couldn't articulate.
Did someone try to kill her? Was it the husband
of some woman she 'd slept with? Was it a drug deal gone bad? Was it somehow
related to her bizarre activities on behalf of the studio?

A
young, sandy-haired cop intercepted me as I left the ladies' room to ask if I
was the woman from Orca's. He introduced himself as Detective Curtis and said
the ER nurse had pointed me out. He'd spoken with the waitstaff at Orca's,
who'd described what they'd seen. He wanted to know from me if Barrett used
drugs of any kind, had she complained of feeling ill, did I know the Latin man,
and what if anything had been left on the table. Apparently the one-by-two-inch
stone wasn't found on or around Barrett. He scribbled notes as he grilled me. I
gave him a solid description of the guy and offered to help a police sketch artist
with a drawing. He smiled wryly, saying my attacker would be on Social Security
before an artist could get around to sketching him. They were so backlogged at
the LAPD that they'd made the decision to do sketches only in murder cases. I
told him that Barrett came within seconds of qualifying.

We
exchanged business cards. I told him I'd be leaving for Tulsa in the morning
and would be gone for a week but I could be reached if he needed me. It was a
futile gesture, since I knew from Detective Curtis's tone that he wasn't going
to follow up on this case unless Barrett Silver's body turned up dead in his
bathtub.

I
rummaged through my pants pockets for my car keys as I headed out into the
bright sunlight and over to the parking garage. As I reached over to unlock the
car door, a man came at me from behind a concrete abutment so quickly I had no
time to react. With one body slam, he threw me backward against the cold, gray
slab, knocking the breath out of me, and then quickly pulled me forward up
against his chest, which was as hard as the concrete pressing up against my
back. His breath came in snorting sounds through his nose. He was the man who'd
delivered the small stone to the restaurant. He leaned in to get his mouth on
my neck, and I thought he was going to try to rape me. I tried to break his
hold, but he was skilled at grappling and, with only one hand, he managed to
lock up my arms. I was beginning to panic and yanked my knee up to get it
between our bodies and put some distance between his head and mine.

His
dark hair, worn in a fifties flattop, smelled of old-fashioned styling balm.
His puffy jaw was clamped shut. His eyes were a dark brown, accentuated by a
spider tattoo at the left corner. This was the ugly face of death.

Suddenly
two college-aged boys rounded the corner of the parking garage headed for their
car. I let out a shrill yell for help. They ran toward me, shouting at the man.
With his body strength, he could have incapacitated us all, but maiming three
people was apparently a messier day than he'd bargained for. He let go of me
and took off. Saved by two adolescents in USC sweatshirts. I would forever be a
Trojan fan.

As I
sagged to the ground from fear and exhaustion, the boys lifted me up by my
arms, asking if I were all right and wanting to call the police. I told them
I'd report it and thanked them profusely for their help. They were reluctant to
leave me and watched me drive out of the garage, alive but shaken. My hands
still trembling, I fumbled for Detective Curtis's card and dialed my cell
phone.

He
answered on the second ring. I told him that I'd been attacked in the hospital
parking garage by the same man who'd attacked Barrett at the restaurant. He
said they'd get a unit over to the hospital immediately and that I should stay
out of the area. I told him I wanted to make sure that no one got to Barrett.
He said he'd call hospital security and alert them. I hung up, then, fearful
the attacker could already be in the hospital, I called hospital security
myself, telling the lead on duty that Barrett Silvers's room needed a guard
posted. I called the nurses' station as well to warn them that all visitors
needed to be screened.

Exhausted,
I sank back into the seat and ran a frame-by-frame of the day back and forth
through my mind, trying to piece together a story that made sense. By the time
I was halfway over Coldwater Canyon, I knew the Latin guy wasn't trying to rape
me, he was trying to kill me in the same way he'd tried to kill Barrett—with
his mouth. There was something in his kiss that was lethal. I needed to tell
that to the police. I rang Curtis again, but this time got no answer, so I left
the information on his voice mail.

Back
home, still worried over Barrett, I began preparing for my trip, promising the
nervous Elmo that two days in a car would ultimately be rewarded by limitless
eating for both of us. He sighed, rolling his basset eyes farther back into his
head and looking nearly suicidal.

I
collapsed onto a floor cushion for a little zazen meditation. My inability to
concentrate and center myself was a clear indication that my encounter in the
parking garage at Cedars had shaken me more than I wanted to admit. I'd spent a
few years studying self-defense techniques, beginning in college and continuing
into my brief and ill-fated stint as a police officer: one year and eight
months of murders, suicides, wife beatings, and child abuse before I finally
had to admit I couldn't take man's inhumanity to man. Today had brought up a
lot of "stuff' for me, centered mostly around the disconcerting truth that
in a heartbeat one can go from dining on fine linen to being wrapped in it.

"Life
is short, Elmo. I don't want to die before I find that special person, you
know?" From his roachlike position on the kitchen floor, Elmo briefly
opened one eye just to be polite.

By
nine p.m. I could no longer put off packing. I yanked a navy blazer and a tan
jacket out of the closet and hung them in a dress bag, then threw jeans, socks,
shirts, and four pair of Ferragamo flats into a suitcase. I'd already packed
Elmo's dog food, dishes, leash, his Flagyl for colitis, Benadryl for allergies,
Butazolidin for leg pain, and Ascriptin for arthritis. Elmo was proof positive
that anyone who lived with me would ultimately end up on drugs.

I
stood in front of the full-length mirror viewing my five foot seven inch frame
and sucked in my stomach. The unflattering light seemed to highlight the laugh
lines around what were, even I had to admit, not-bad green eyes. I brushed my
punked auburn hair straight up. When gravity takes the body south, brush
everything north.

I made
the rounds, checking doors and windows and setting the security alarm system.
Fully barricaded, I turned on the ten o'clock news. After the sixth murder
story, I punched the Off button on the remote control and lay still in the
dark.

This
was when I missed living with someone, this time just before sleep when I
wanted to discuss what had happened during the day and what would happen
tomorrow. Sort of a nocturnal debriefing in the spoon position. That moment in
the night when fears and frailties take over was the reason God created
coupling. It was why the passengers on Noah's Ark didn't proceed up the plank
single file. God didn't create couples merely for procreation, because mankind
can too easily circumvent the Divine plan with petri dishes and test tubes. God
created couples for that moment between "news and snooze," that
moment when there is comfort in an icy bottom up against a warm belly and the sounds
of rhythmic breathing in the night. Elmo must have sensed my sadness at being
alone because he curled up in the small of my back, and we both went to sleep.

An
hour later I awakened to one long ring of the fax startling my heart nearly out
of my chest. Too tired to even turn on the light, I stumbled into the office,
where the machine was printing out its message. The metallic chunk-a-chunk of
the fax paper spewing out made an eerie sound in the quiet room as the machine
printed out the message, Open your front door.

I
froze. There was something about an anonymous fax that was more terrifying than
a burglar. This stalker could slide into my home at any time of the day or
night on optic fibers, threaten me, and then hide in a tangle of technology. I
looked at the fax again. The remainder of the page was blank, the return fax
number obliterated.

I
pressed my back against the cool stucco of the living-room wall and tilted a
wooden slat on the bay window shutters just enough to catch a glimpse of the
porch steps. No one was standing there. Lowering the shutter again, I tried to
get control of my nerves. I fumbled around on the desk for Detective Curtis's
card and quickly dialed the number he'd left me. It rang ten times and no one
answered. There was always the option of dialing 911, but how could a fax
telling me to open my door be construed as an emergency, even by me?

Oh,
hell, I'll have to open my door sometime,
I thought.
If not now, then in the morning. Is there a bomb, a note,
a package I can't see from here?

"Well,
shit!" I whispered to Elmo.

Slipping
open my desk drawer, I pulled out my loaded .38 and peered through the slats
one more time. Total serenity outside. Forcing myself to move to the front
door, I took a deep breath, then pressed down on the latch suddenly and kicked
the door open with the sole of my foot, hearing it reverberate against the wall
of the house. Elmo launched himself from behind me, through the front door and
into the courtyard, baying wildly.

As
the door swung toward me, something flung itself at me from overhead, batting
against my face. I jumped back and screamed as two large, dead rats dangling
from cords dripped blood onto my doorstep. My scream got Elmo's attention. The
sight of the rats swaying in the doorway sent him into another round of barks.
He stood still, staring at the grotesquely dead animals. I flipped on all the
floodlights around the house to illuminate anyone who might still be prowling
around. Seeing no one, I located scissors in the hall table and cut the rats
down. One had its mouth taped shut with silver duct tape, the other had its
throat slit.

"Silence
or Death. What is this, death threats for dummies?" I asked loudly to
steady my nerves. Unable to stomach the sight of the hapless animals, I loaded
them into a plastic garbage bag and deposited them in the trash can behind the
house. Elmo stayed two steps behind me, for which I was grateful. Locating the
bacterial soap in the kitchen sink, I scrubbed up to my elbows, certain Lady
Macbeth never washed her hands as thoroughly.

So
Spider Eye must have followed me home from the Cedars parking garage. Yet I
remembered checking my rearview mirror, and there was no one following me. This
was his way of saying I could end up like Barrett if I talked to the police.
The fax and the dead rats were both designed just to scare me, because if he'd
wanted to kill me, there's a good chance he could have gotten away with it. The
hair stood up on the back of my neck.

At
four in the morning, I called Cedars one more time to check on Barrett. The
nurse said she could only tell me that Ms. Silvers was "stabilized."
But
"stabilized" in what form? Is she vegetable stabilized or
back-to-normal-soon stabilized?
I said a prayer for her before packing the
car behind my locked gates, in case someone was watching for an easy target.
Target or not, I had to get to Tulsa for my parents' anniversary.

My
attendance record at family gatherings was appalling, even by my own standards.
I drove back to Tulsa often. It was just that none of my trips seemed to
coincide with life's important moments. I'd managed to miss my brother's
wedding because I was in production, my kid sister's graduation because the
roads were impassible and the flights were all booked, and all of my parents'
anniversaries because the timing was wrong. Like interstitial programming, I
seemed to arrive between episodes. My sister would be out of town, unable to
attend this particular soiree, so this trip was my concerted effort to be there
when it counted, even if some guy tried to knock me off while I was loading the
car.

Elmo
and I hit the road, maneuvering the 210 while it was still dark. We drove
across the Mohave and watched the sun come up over the desert with genuine joy
in our hearts, glad to be leaving our troubles behind.

Several
hours later, we crossed the border into Arizona, winding our way up the
mountain to Flagstaff, then back down the other side, past the crater, where
fifty thousand years ago, a meteor left a hole the length of twenty football
fields just south of where I-40 leads to Winslow. Seeing vast stretches of
sand, devoid of humanity, where lizards and prairie dogs eked out an existence
in 120-degree heat amidst a formidable array of Spanish bayonets, scrub brush,
and cacti, made my human struggles seem less serious. I turned up the radio and
sang along to a love triangle about a heartbroken trucker who drove his eighteen-wheeler
through a local motel room to kill his cheating wife, apparently loving her to
death.

I
noticed a dark blue Buick in the rearview mirror and slowed down to get a
better look. The car slowed too, deciding not to pass me. I thought I'd seen
the same car in Needles. I pulled off at the first Winslow exit into a gas
station where a family with several small children was gassing up their car.
Their mere presence made me feel safer. The blue sedan didn't exit. I felt
relieved and unloaded Elmo, hoisting his short-legged body out of the Jeep to
save his arthritic shoulders. The moment his paws touched the sand, he pulled
up short and let out a mournful sob. I knelt and quickly removed several
cockleburs from the pad of his foot and pulled him in for a hug. A little girl
with Shirley Temple hair and wearing pink shorts walked over to ask what kind
of dog he was and then trotted back to her car, telling her mother, "That
lady has a basket hound."