HE WAS SAT DOWN in a fish tank with a silvered glass wall. What looked to be that same picture he’d seen of Herbert Kisberg on the Senserama billboard smiled at him from beneath crossed stars and stripes and Liberty League flags. There was also a poster of a woman wearing a few rags and not much else brandishing a sword labeled Truth and Democracy at an ape with the words World Communism written across its skull. Some handy draftsman had given the ape Negroid features and added a speech bubble. Sorry, Lady, the ape was saying, even us coons caint sometimes get it up.
He smoked his last Lucky Strike. Officer Doyle sat on the far side of a scarred wooden desk. Officer Reynolds sat with a pencil and a notebook in the room’s farthest corner. Both of them were also smoking. If there was a time to come clean about this whole stupid façade, the message trickled through his brain, it was now.
“What I need to do, Mr Lamotte,” Officer Doyle said, leaning a roll of uniform-encased belly fat toward him across the desk, “is to prepare a report which I can then pass on to the Coroner’s Investigator. There’ll need to be an inquest. There’ll also have to be an autopsy, I’m sorry to say. We need to establish cause of death, although the facts look pretty clear-cut.”
Clark heard the muscles of his neck creak and click as he nodded yes. “Basically, a report was radioed in from the Forest Rangers’ office at Arrowhead around noon yesterday morning. Like I said, some hikers had found this car the way I described and with your wife’s body in it. The engine was still running, although it was near out of gas. Working back, we reckon she probably parked there between one to two hours earlier. Say, about ten, or ten thirty. We got the call here in the city because of the deceased’s presumed identity.” The cop cleared his throat. “And Officer Reynolds and me arrived there about the same time as the tow truck and the Coroner’s photographer. It’s an overlook up above Running Springs. Pines and that kind of stuff. It’s a pretty spot. Any idea why your wife might be driving out that particular way… ?”
“I think we’ve got a lodge up there.”
Officer Doyle glanced at his colleague. “Think?”
“No. We have. I’m sorry. I mean—”
“Sure. I know this is difficult. Just take your time. It’s okay. Anyway, we got your wife’s ID and address straight off, but when we turned up at the, ah, Lamotte residence this afternoon, there was no one around but this gardener guy who sees to the grounds of the surrounding estate.”
“Evan.”
“Yeah.” The cop flicked through his notebook. “Mr Evan Brinton. Weird sort of guy, if you don’t mind me saying. He wasn’t much help. And your house was all locked up. No residents or employees. We tried the neighbors—discreetly, I might add—but nothing going. We finally got to Blixden Avenue through your tax records, Mr Lamotte, believe it or not. Oh, yeah—and Mr Evan Briton informed us that you’d been talking to him earlier that same morning. Said you’d come the back way where he works. Does that sound right to you?”
“April and I were out last night. I’m a screenwriter, and we’ve—I’ve—just signed a new contract for a big feelie. We had a meal as a celebration. It was at a place up above Silver Lake called Chateau Bansar.”
“Can you spell that?”
He did. The cop wrote it down.
“Then I dropped her off at Erewhon… .I guess it was around midnight. And I drove back Downtown. I just didn’t imagine…”
“So you didn’t spend last night at home with your wife?”
“No.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I spend a lot of my time at my place Downtown. I find it easier to write there.”
“And sleep?”
“Yeah. That’s how our marriage works.”
“I see.” The old cop nodded. “I mean, Mrs Doyle and I, we share the same house an’ all. But that’s hardly any of my business.”
Clark closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Saw April Lamotte leaving Chateau Bansar. Saw her in his arms and sobbing tears, with the car valet and waiters as witness. “We’d had an argument at the restaurant.”
“About anything in particular?”
He shrugged in a way that he hoped might express the hopelessness of trying to explain any marital argument.
“And then you came back to Erewhon to see her again this morning?”
“Yes.”
“So went into the house at—what?”
“Like Even said, it was around ten this morning. And like I said, we’d had an argument the night before. And there was this big contract. Things that needed sorting out…” The screwed-down chair wouldn’t move when he tried to shift it forward. “I came the back way because kids in downtown had thrown a stone in through the window of my car the night before and I didn’t want her to see the damage. Of course, she wasn’t there.”
“Find anything unusual this morning inside your house?”
“No. Absolutely nothing.”
“So, Mr Lamotte, to be exact, the last time you saw your wife was when you dropped her off last night after that meal?”
“Yeah.” A muscle at the corner of his eye pulsed. “That’s correct.”
“And you didn’t hear from her after that?”
“No—and before you ask, I was at Senserama studios with the production executive who’s bought my feelie script from about noon this morning to the time you saw me arrive at Blixden Avenue. His name’s Timmy Townsend. You can check up with him if you like. Or why don’t you try asking a woman named Barbara something who lives next door to my apartment, if you haven’t already done so? She came by to give me some mail early this morning…” He wiped at his mouth. The shocked indignation was starting to feel genuine. “Look—my wife’s down in the morgue and all you’re doing is asking a whole lot of questions. Where is this leading?”
“I’m sorry, Mr Lamotte.” Officer Doyle’s face glistened like pink marble. “This is just a part of the job we have to do. Someone’s died, and we have to try to find out as much as we can, and as quickly as possible. I ah…” He pulled at his ear, then glanced over to Officer Reynolds, who inclined his head in a slow nod. “This is an even more difficult question. Mr Lamotte—was there any reason for you to think, fear or suspect that your wife might kill herself?”
Images of April Lamotte. Red-haired and beautiful in that green pantsuit as she paced Erewhon, and even redder haired and more beautiful when she drove up in the Delahaye along Sunset to pick him up what felt like half a century ago. Her kissing him. The smell of Chanel Cuir de Russie. The lipstick taste of her mouth. The wet push of her tongue. The determined and well-organized way she’d set out to kill him. “No,” he said finally. “She was… She liked to be in control. She’s not the type who’d ever give up. Not unless…” But unless what? He saw her again at Erewhon. And then outside that swish restaurant. His eyes prickled as if they were filling with dust. A swishing, windy sound rushed though his ears.
“Right.” Once again, as if looking for some signal, the old cop glanced over at the young cop. “Did Mrs Lamotte like hiking, the out of doors?”
“Not especially.”
He nodded. “She was just wearing regular low heels and slacks. Apart from a road map and some handmade cigarettes, the car was pretty much empty. But there was this…”
Officer Reynolds stood up. He walked over and laid a small reporters’ springbound notepad on the table, turned it around so Clark could see it properly. Then he sat down again. The handwriting on the front sheet was the same neat script he’d seen on some of the documents in Erewhon’s study.
The way everythings happened I cant
Im sorry. I thought I could make it
I am afraid. I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago. it would have saved a lot of
Here I am in this dead and empty place