The Ticket Out (45 page)

I unbuttoned my jacket and showed him the tape recorder.

Silverman went pale.
“I admit nothing!”

I turned to leave. He grabbed the Oscar and swung it at me. I blocked his arm, ripped the statue out of his hand, and chucked it away. It went clanging and skidding along the marble floor. Silverman stood up to retrieve it. He got his legs caught in the lap blanket. He flailed and fell forward and hit his head on the floor. The wheelchair shimmied and tipped over on top of him.

He moaned once. I saw him convulse, then he lay there, silent. I stepped around him and walked out of the house.

I
DROVE
straight to the Malibu Sheriff's substation. It wasn't far from Silverman's. The coast highway was clear going that direction.

I parked in the parking lot. I pulled Scott Dolgin's confession out of the glove compartment and put it in the sack with the Georgette Bauerdorf evidence.

Grabbing the cane, I limped into the reception area of the station. I was spotted with blood. I'd taken off my jacket, and the effort with Silverman had popped more stitches on my left side. The deputy at the desk took one look at me and asked if I was the lady from the Tunnel Massacre. I said I was, and said I had something to report. He ran around the desk, showed me into an empty office, made me sit down, and asked me to wait.

He came back in a minute, followed by what appeared to be every cop on shift. One guy identified himself as the watch commander. I didn't get his name; he was a sergeant. He started to tell me the situation with the tunnel, how the Sheriff's and LAPD viewed it, what the district attorney was saying, how the media was acting. I only heard words; I couldn't absorb what they meant. I knew the cops were waiting for a firsthand account from me. But I was in no way capable of that.

When the sergeant finished, I told him we had to locate Doug Lockwood. I held up the sack. I said it contained physical evidence pertaining to our three murders.

Three, the sergeant said. He'd heard there were two murders. I told him to tell his Unsolved guys McManus and Gadtke that I got what amounted to a confession on Georgette Bauerdorf. An audiotape and other proof were in the sack. And they should hurry, because Georgette's killer was trying to leave L.A. as we spoke.

The sergeant took the sack and took off. The other cops filed out behind him. The desk deputy asked if I felt all right, if I'd like water or a Coke. I said, water, thanks, and aspirin if he had some. He brought me water and two aspirin, and left me alone again. I wanted the painkillers now, but they were in the car.

I sat there.

I was in a strange state. My brain registered that everything was over. But my thoughts were racing down a very strange track. I couldn't control them.

I didn't want to talk to Doug. I didn't want to talk to the authorities. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to go to the paper. I didn't want to go any place where I'd be mobbed by reporters. I didn't want to rest. I didn't want to see a doctor. I didn't want to think about the future.

I was thinking about my sister.

Father flew back to Texas today. Sis would be a wreck. She always was after their visits. I had to try again with her. I had to get her away from Father. Not everything was finished: I had to get her away. He was killing her. He'd kill her. I had to prevent it.

Part of me knew this was craziness.

Part of me thought it was stone-cold reason. Saving Sis was absolutely the only thing left for me to do now. I had to do it without delay. I had to do it right this exact very minute.

I reached for the telephone on the desk and dialed her number.

A woman's voice answered the phone. I said who I was, and the voice said she was Sis's neighbor. She'd been trying to get ahold of me. Come to Venice as soon as possible, she said. Something had happened to Sis.

***

A
DOZEN PEOPLE
stood in the hall outside my sister's apartment. They turned and looked as I stepped out of the elevator. I knew from their faces it was bad.

A woman walked toward me. It was a neighbor I'd met, a friend of Sis's from AA. Her eyes were red from crying.

She said, “I only found her an hour ago. Nobody heard anything—we were all at work. I've called the ambulance.”

I lifted my cane and pushed people aside. The neighbor followed me into Sis's apartment.

She whispered, “We had a date for coffee. I called but her phone rang and she didn't answer, so I came down...”

I stopped still.

“Ann, I'm sorry—”

I put my finger to my lips. I had seen.

Sis did it in front of her shrine. She'd called it that when she put it together. She'd taken family photographs and mementos of her past and made an altar on an old table that was a Whitehead heirloom. She burned candles there, she'd told me. She talked to Mother's picture and prayed for Father's enlightenment.

She lay twisted sideways in a chair facing the shrine. Her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling. She'd shot herself through the heart. Blood was crusted around the wound. It had soaked her clothes and the chair upholstery. Both of her hands were clenched around the Colt. She'd laid the muzzle right on her chest and pulled the trigger with her thumbs.

I could not move. I could only stare at the body.

The phone started to ring. I didn't move. The neighbor waited for me to answer. I didn't move. I had no power to move.

The neighbor answered it herself. “Hello?...One moment, please.” She tapped me. “It's your father.”

I just stood there. She put the receiver up to my ear and tapped me again. I said, “Yes?”

Father said, “I'll be damned—Elizabeth Ann.”

“Yes.”

“Where the hell's your sister? She's supposed to take me to the airport. On second thought, since you're there, how about you drive? I had plenty of your sister on Wednesday.”

“Yes.”

“Then get over to the hotel and I mean pronto. I like to be there early, you girls know that.”

He hung up. I just stood there. The neighbor hung up the telephone. She took my arm and tried to lead me to a chair. I pulled away from her. I raised my cane and smashed it down on Sis's shrine. Photographs and mementos flew. I raised my cane again and smashed it down on the shrine. The neighbor tried to catch my arm. I raised my cane again and smashed it down on the shrine. Glass shattered and wood cracked. I raised my cane again and smashed it down on the shrine.

I
TOOK THE
off-ramp at La Cienega and turned south.

A primer-gray van curved down the ramp behind me. We were being followed. I knew now it wasn't coincidence. There was a van like it parked in Sis's alley. I'd seen it again outside Father's hotel. It had followed me from Venice; now it was following me to the airport. I couldn't see who the driver was. I had my suspicions.

Father looked around. “Why're we going this way, missy? I believe the 405 takes us directly to the airport.”

I said, “I want to show you the pumpjacks in Baldwin Hills. It's kind of great in the middle of a city.”

Father shook his head. “They're just old producing fields.”

I shrugged. He said, “You better not make me late.”

I'd picked him up at his hotel downtown. He was waiting out front with a drink in his hand—he had a buzz on. Night was falling; I stayed in the car. He didn't notice my injuries. He hadn't heard about the tunnel. He only watched two things on TV: sports and weather. The Colt was wedged under my seat.

Father turned on the radio.

“There is sad news for Los Angeles tonight. Retired film producer and prominent philanthropist Jules Silverman died this afternoon at his Malibu estate. He was eighty-five. Silverman won an Academy Award for—”

I turned the radio off. Father said, “What is wrong with you?”

He turned the radio back on. I turned it off. I said, “Didn't Grandpap make his first bundle in the East Texas oil boom in the thirties?"

Father looked at me. I said, “Did he know a wildcatter named George Bauerdorf?”

Father reached for the radio. “I don't recall the name. Why?”

I swerved and bumped two tires over the median. Father grabbed the dashboard. “Watch out, for Christ's sake!”

I swerved back into the lane. Father tried to grab the steering wheel. I shoved his arm away.

“What in the jumped-up hell is going on, Ann?”

I checked the mirrors and slammed on the brakes. Father caught himself on the dashboard.
“Goddamn it to hell!”

The van almost rear-ended us. It cut into the left lane and speeded up. I checked over my shoulder. The driver was Dale Denney.

He pulled up beside me and rolled down his window. His nose was still taped; his face was puffy and bruised. I floored the gas. It flung Father against his seat. The van cut into my lane and accelerated ahead of me.

Father shouted,
“Who's that now, Christ?!”

The land was dark on both sides of the street. We were in Baldwin Hills. There were no houses; just the oil fields fenced with chain-link.

I saw an opening in traffic and cranked a U-turn. The car jolted over the median; there were loud thumps. I headed back north.

Father yelled,
“Stop the damn car!”

I checked my mirrors. The van kept going south. Denney hadn't noticed I was gone yet.

Father lunged for the steering wheel. I elbowed him off. I stood on the brakes, skidded across the gravel shoulder, and plowed into the chain-link in the dark. I hit the steering wheel. Father's head hit the windshield and snapped back.

I went cold. I could see everything very clearly. I reached under the seat, found the Colt, cocked the hammer, and aimed it at him. He was a foot away. I pulled the trigger. The gun kicked, the muzzle flashed. Father slammed sideways. I pulled the trigger again. Father's arms went up. I pulled the trigger again. Father's shirt caught fire. He yelled and thrashed for his door handle. The door flew open and he fell onto the shoulder. I aimed down. I pulled the trigger again. I emptied the chamber. The noise numbed my ears.

But something was wrong.

I lowered the Colt.

Father was rolling on the gravel. He was trying to put out the flames on his shirt. He yelled,
“Jesus H. Christ!”
and cursed me by name. But he wasn't bleeding. He wasn't shot. He wasn't dead.

I jerked open the cylinder of the Colt, dumped out the spent shells, and picked one up.

Blanks.
Doug had given me blanks—

I was rammed from behind. My neck whiplashed; I dropped the shell. I jammed the car into first, twirled the wheel, and punched the gas. I fishtailed back onto the pavement going north.

Denney pulled up on my right. He was pointing a gun through his window. I ducked and covered up. My passenger window exploded. The bullet grazed my hip. The impact burned—my thigh burned and went numb. I stood on the gas and booted it for the closest freeway. Denney stayed on my right bumper. I saw the freeway entrance and waited. At the last second, I yanked the wheel right. Denney swerved to avoid me. He scraped a cement pylon broadside. I cranked a hard right and floored it up the ramp. The engine strained.

I checked my mirrors and cut over to the fast lane. I took the box of shells and dumped it on the seat.

Brass .41 shell casings. The base looked normal. The other end was crimped shut. Blanks. That's why he kept loading the Colt for me.

There was a piece of paper in with the shells. He'd left a note. I opened it and read by the light of the dashboard:

“I didn't want you to do something that couldn't be undone. I love you.”

I heard a horn and checked my mirror. Denney came barreling up the freeway behind me. One of his headlights was gone.

I hit the gas. I whispered, “Doug.”