The Upright Man (18 page)

Having glimpsed her life before the event, only then did I look at the Polaroids Nina had left me. These showed Jessica’s apartment on the day when the LAPD had found it. They too were flat, blank views, but they were not uninflected. Every square millimeter said something quite direct: their very existence announced that the girl who had lived in this place was dead, which was why I had wanted to see the others first.

I looked at them closely for a while. Then I went back to the beginning of the files on the hard disk, set the system to order them chronologically, and looked at them again.

It took a long time before I noticed something.

“SEE?”

Nina nodded. “There’s no picture that shows it better?”

“That’s as good as it gets. I’ve blown it up, but . . .” I switched to a window I’d hidden behind the first; “we don’t live in a movie, and so the blowup looks like shit.”

Nina leaned forward and stared at the picture on the screen. She was looking at a grainy and blocky picture that showed Jessica lying on her bed, from the chest up. A man’s face was over hers.

Neither of us were interested in the man. LAPD moved fast: they already had printouts 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 with the girl the night she died. These had been among the
things Nina had achieved before returning to the house in the midafternoon. 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 that 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 anymore.”

“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 color 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 center 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 color on top of both their heads?”

“Gray.”

“The hair color 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 favorite niece. Some record of family. That’s what girls are like.”

“Is that so. You found one here yet? Hidden among 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 sprawled out on the couch in a somewhat inelegant pose. She was wearing floral pajamas, pale blue, with little pink and white flowers. “You said she was found—”

“That’s them. Those are the pajamas. 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 buildup to murdering her. He took the pajamas 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 pj’s? You’d notice if they’re 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 neighborhood. Nobody saw nothing.”

“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 pajamas 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. And 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
S
ANTA
M
ONICA
,
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 L.A., 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 midevening 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 colored plastic, why do we pretend anyone will wear it? Because, I snarled at Nina, this is what capitalism does to show off. It’s our culture flopping out its dick. “Hey, you shadows in the non-English-speaking chaos—just
look
at our surplus capacity. If we can piss all this time and effort away on such vacant crap, just
imagine
the 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
happy, and some of them aren’t even very well fed—but nobody knows or cares what happens back behind these billboards for a way of life, because life for the people who matter just keeps getting better. The whole country is turning into a muffin-padded panic room where MBAs and soccer moms sit reading books on how to love themselves more, as if that could even be remotely
possible.
They’ve turned smoky, cool coffee shops into places where the perky go to iBook the novel that will prove just how sensitive they are; made fuggy, scary bars into places that feel like the Employee Relaxation Facilities of forward-thinking megacorporations. I was in a bar recently and it smelled of
incense
—how fucked up is that? Not smelling of cigarettes is bad enough, but
spiced lavender?
Inside is not supposed to be fresher than
outside, can’t they
see
that? You can’t stop being afraid just by pretending everything that scares you isn’t there.

Part of the problem, I went on—my voice now easily as obnoxious as any around us—is that I could remember a world in which nobody ran. Now running is the new giving to charity. Running is wisdom. Running is the absolute good, our ritual walkway to the gods’ approval and beneficence. Run and all will be well. If we were in charge of the Catholic Church, sainthood would be conferred according to the time the candidate spent wearing Nikes. “Sure, Father Brian did good works and saved lives and stuff, but what were his splits on the mile? Father
Nate?
Forget it. That guy never ran a half-marathon in his life.” We have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of what is reasonable or sane, while around the world the countries that 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? A great new diet is racing up the charts! J-Lo got herself some new bling—just look how 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. I noticed that 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 for you, 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 answering machine.

“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 other 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 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 a 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, whose working name is Cherri, agreed.”