Strawgirl (25 page)

"I know," Estrella grimaced, kicking the tire of Bo's car. "That's what's so upsetting."

St. Theresa's Church, a 1950s A-frame featuring a rose window Bo suspected had been pieced from old wine bottles, given the preponderance of green, was barely visible behind four TV sound trucks lining the curb. One of the trucks bore an L.A. logo. The story was, unfortunately, gaining momentum. On the residential sidewalk across the street from the church, twenty people dressed in black held aloft hand-lettered posters. "Satan Is Loosed out of His Prison," one poster announced. "And Whosoever Is Not Found Written in the Book of Life Will Be Cast into the Lake of Fire," another picked up the refrain. From the looks on the demonstrators' faces, Bo would have bet they'd invest in a lake of fire if they could just throw into it everybody who didn't agree with their view of the world. She was sure she'd be among the first to be flung.

"Comforting, aren't they?" she muttered to Estrella after finding her coworker in the milling crowd outside the church. More than half of those milling had that white-sock aura Bo associated with cops.

"Revelation," the familiar voice of Madge Aldenhoven mentioned behind them. "Written by the Apostle John while in exile on Patmos."

"There's every reason to believe the book of Revelation was actually written by an ancestor of mine." Bo smiled at her supervisor. "It's so nice to see you, Madge. But what a sad occasion."

"
Madre de dios
." Estrella said under her breath.

"Don't forget that you're on probation, Bo," Madge murmured, narrowing her eyes. "I can tell from your attitude that you're up to something. I have to stress that I think you'd be more comfortable in another line of work. Surely you agree."

Bo saw Dar Reinert beckoning from the church steps.

"I had almost come to that conclusion on my own, but now I don't think so." Bo slid out of the conversation. "We'll know tomorrow. Right now I hope you'll excuse me while I chat with Detective Reinert."

"What did she mean by 'we'll know tomorrow'?" Madge asked Estrella.

"I have no idea," Estrella answered, shaking her head.

Dar Reinert, commandeering the church steps by sheer bulk, could not have looked more obviously official if he'd been in uniform. "You're gonna like hearing this," he grumbled into Bo's ear. "We found your nut-case Zolar last night, sleeping in a tree in Balboa Park. And here's the weird part. When we got him out of County Psychiatric and took him down to the canyon this morning, just to see if he'd say anything, this seventy-year-old retired schoolteacher who looks like she pumps iron comes crashing through the shrubbery. Says she has a house on the other side, hikes in the canyon a lot. Says she knew this psycho was there, that she gave him vitamins or something."

Bo swallowed an erupting lecture on the meaningless term "psycho" and remembered Zolar's cache of wholesome supplies. So that's where he got them. But the schoolteacher had bombed with the premoistened towelettes. They wouldn't have helped much anyway.

"Here's the part you're gonna love," Reinert went on as a small pipe organ began the Guardian Angels' Song from Humperdinck's “Hansel and Gretel”. "This schoolteacher says your nut was in her backyard sleeping on a picnic table Tuesday afternoon from 1:30 to about 6:00. Bonnie Franer said she picked up Samantha from the daycare center at about 5:15. Your guy's got an alibi for the whole afternoon the day of the rape."

Bo couldn't tell if the news or the sentimental music were responsible for the tears in her eyes. Probably both, she decided. There had been a guardian angel for Zolar. She made a mental note to take the old schoolteacher a fifth of good Irish whiskey.

"Bradley, I didn't know you were gonna cry for chrissakes," Reinert spluttered. He seemed amazed when the handkerchief he pulled from the breast pocket of his jacket turned out to be a small fan of paisley stapled to a piece of cardboard. Grimacing, he wadded the object into a ball and dropped it behind one of the Hollywood junipers bending over St. Theresa's steps.

People were filing in to take seats in the little church as Bo became aware of something covered in fawn-colored cashmere, nudging her side. It was an arm, attached to the shoulder of Dr. Andrew LaMarche.

"May I?" he offered in a calm baritone.

Behind him Estrella and Madge Aldenhoven formed a smiling wall.

Bo nodded demurely, placed her left hand through the doctor's arm, and wished she were in Dixie, wherever that was. At the holy water font inside the door she dipped her fingers and touched her forehead out of childhood programming before recalling that she hadn't been attached to Roman Catholicism in any meaningful way since her first bra. The holy water ran over her left eyebrow and into her eye. Never fond of funerals, Bo measured the possibility that this might be the worst yet. In less than a minute the merely possible became hard fact.

In a quiet frenzy of courtesy LaMarche stood aside as Madge and then Estrella entered a pew followed by Bo and finally the elegant doctor. Estrella quickly dropped to the kneeler, pulling Bo with her as if for comfort.

"Don't freak," Estrella whispered into clasped hands, "but isn't that the ACLU guy sitting in front of LaMarche?"

"Oh, God," Bo breathed. A heartfelt prayer. The unkempt mop of sandy curls in the next pew belonged to Solon Gentzler. It was going to be the funeral from hell.

"In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost," Father Frank Goodman pronounced as everyone settled into blond and oddly Scandinavian pews. Sunlight filtering through the predominantly green rose window created an aquarium-like atmosphere. The effect was not diminished by a robed figure of Christ ascendant above the altar. In sparkling green light, the statue seemed to be drifting upward from the depths of a pale sea. Behind her Bo heard Dar Reinert's gruff whisper.

"Keep your eyes open, Bradley. See if anything looks fishy to you."

Only an invitation from Frank Goodman to join in singing "We Shall Overcome" saved Bo from an inappropriate grin tormenting the corners of her mouth. Too much watery imagery. And now the anthem of the civil rights movement? What next?

Solon Gentzler's enthusiastic and off-key rendering of the familiar song, audible above everyone else, only made matters worse. Bo was glad to cover her face with her right hand as Frank Goodman began his homily, which had to do with overcoming an evil that had destroyed a little girl and her mother. When she was certain of her composure, Bo placed her hand properly in her lap and scanned the assemblage. Lots of cops. Some of the staff from St. Mary's surgical floor. Lots of media types. A number of nuns.

Bo scanned the nuns closely for any who might not be what they seemed. If Samantha's killer were stupid enough to attend the service, an old-fashioned religious habit might make an interesting disguise. Of the twenty-seven nuns in the church, representing Benedictine, Carmelite, and Sacred Heart orders, not one could conceivably have been a man.

Frank Goodman was doing something with two roses—one creamy white, the other a tiny pink bud. He was tying the roses together with a broad silver ribbon. Estrella dabbed at running mascara with a handkerchief; LaMarche looked waxen. Bo didn't want to hear the priest's words. Didn't want to think about the lost mother and child the flowers were meant to represent.

"Humph," Dar Reinert snorted behind her.

Turning to see what had caused the detective's reaction, Bo noticed two men taking seats at the rear of the church. One was short, well muscled, and had obviously suffered a broken and badly set nose in the past. His eyes behind black wireframe glasses were somber. His companion was taller, blond, and wore a Hollywood-style silk Armani jacket with more grace than most talk show hosts. On the jacket's lapel was a tiny gold and enamel rainbow flag.

"You know those guys?" Reinert whispered over the back of Bo's pew.

"No," she answered, turning to face the detective. "Neither one of them's from CPS. And I haven't seen them at St. Mary's, either."

"Shh," Madge admonished as everyone dropped to the kneelers while Frank Goodman led them in prayer.

Bo grabbed a program from St. Theresa's morning services out of the hymnal rack on the pew behind Solon Gentzler and carefully read announcements for a youth group car wash, a marriage encounter group for seniors, and the sung rosary group's need for an alto and a bass. As an MTV video, she mused, the sung rosary might be an unexpected hit. Anything was better than attending to Frank Goodman's words, which were about a child Bo had seen in the transitional moments just after death. Between the medical ritual and those that would follow—the closing of the eyes, the covering of the face. Rituals incongruous and horrible when performed for a tiny child.

In the pocket of her long khaki skirt Bo felt the grieving beads Hannah had given her, and allowed herself to remember her own sister. Her own hopelessness in the face of suicide. Hannah would have to face that, too, when she came to terms with her mother's death. A difficult reality to face. Pulling the strip of beads from her pocket she held them in clasped hands as Frank Goodman finished an appeal for the repose of both daughter and mother. In the front row the elderly Father Karolak succumbed to a sudden fit of coughing clearly designed to obscure Frank Goodman's words. Goodman could, Bo pondered, find himself in deep trouble for that prayer, assuming anybody heard it over Father Karolak's staged hacking. Deep trouble for including a suicide in his kindly intentions. The Roman Catholic church was not renowned for its sympathetic understanding of clinical depression's worst-case scenario. It was apparent that Father Frank Goodman didn't care.

"The man has courage," Andrew LaMarche noted quietly as they stood. "And so do you, Bo. I'm sorry that I questioned your judgment. Your decision regarding Hannah was the right one." He glanced at Madge Aldenhoven, ramrod straight in a navy linen suit beside Estrella. "I admire what you've done."

Frank Goodman, accompanied by pipe organ, was singing Gounod's Ave Maria in his fine, almost Irish, tenor. Bo fought down a resurgence of the confusion Andrew LaMarche seemed determined to promote. "Thanks, Andy," she whispered, and stuffed the grieving beads back into her pocket. When he took her hand briefly she felt ridiculous and comfortable simultaneously, but didn't pull away. Not until Solon Gentzler, in unfamiliar territory and checking the crowd for clues as to what to do next, turned to glance over his shoulder. His big smile faded to a flush of chagrin when he saw LaMarche leaning in what could only be described as a husbandly attitude against

Bo. Bo jerked her right hand from the pediatrician's left one and looked at the church's beamed ceiling. It provided, as she had known it would, no exit.

"Oh, boy ..." Estrella pronounced through a clenched smile.

"Thank you all for coming," Frank Goodman concluded as the organist began to play an obscure but upbeat medieval gavotte. Rivulets of sweat gathered momentum and dribbled down her back as Bo stood gratefully to leave. The memorial service had possessed, she decided, all the better-known qualities of the Spanish Inquisition.

Once outside she made a dash for the shade of a well-leafed liquid ambar tree at the edge of St. Theresa's property, ducked behind its trunk, and lit a cigarette. Madge Aldenhoven materialized within minutes.

"I hope you're prepared for tomorrow's hearing," the supervisor reminded her. "You will represent the department and you will say that in your professional opinion Paul Massieu is the person responsible for Samantha's death. You will recommend, on behalf of the Department of Social Services, that he be held over for prosecution. You will note in your testimony that he represents a threat not only to Samantha's kidnapped sister, but to all children. I've prepared a statement outlining the department's position on this case. All you have to do is read it."

Bo exhaled smoke at the envelope Madge was handing her, and stared at one of the tree's star-shaped leaves. "And if I don't?" she asked.

"This is a directive from the department," Aldenhoven answered as if the words were a creed. "Failure to represent an official position is grounds for immediate dismissal."

"Ah." Bo nodded, rolling the envelope into a tube and looking through it at the leaf. "I assume you have a copy of this statement against which to match my testimony."

"Yes. But of course it doesn't need to be word-for-word."

"Refreshing," Bo told the leaf. "So refreshing."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Bo." Madge smiled without authenticity, and left.

Bo stubbed out the cigarette and dropped the butt in her best purse, which would now reek of rancid filter. She never left cigarettes lying around, and also never remembered to retrieve the butts from purses and pockets. It seemed a minor problem compared to those lining up behind tomorrow's showdown. But she'd made her decision. Gentzler had it choreographed down to the last nuance. All she had to do was follow through.

"Are you Bo Bradley?" the man with the broken nose inquired, making his way across St. Theresa's robust lawn.

"Yes," Bo answered. "Why?" His attitude was businesslike, but tinged with a sort of planned determination.

"I'm Rombo Perry," he explained. "I was the social worker for Mrs. Franer. I was there when she ... when she died."

"It was nice of you to come," Bo said, puzzled. Rombo Perry's handsome, unusual face seemed haggard. The look was inconsistent with the man's remarkable fitness. She would not have been surprised if he'd attempted to sell her a health club membership.