CHAPTER

36

I walked over to the Century City shopping mall, found a café with private booths, and sat down to coffee and Denton Mellors’s script.

Not a complete script, it soon became clear. Just a five-page triple-spaced summary, what App had called a treatment.

THE BRIDE

We open upon a man watching a woman undressing. From his face we see he is a homicidal maniac, but handsome and muscular. The kind of man women gravitate to.

He holds a boning knife. It is nighttime. The moon hits it and it glints.

The maniac gets up from his crouch and cuts through a sliding glass door. The woman is in the shower, soaping herself up. We see soap on her breasts and her vagina. She is masturbating, enjoying it.

The maniac flings open the shower door. The woman screams as the maniac rapes the woman anally, then fillets her.

The maniac removes his clothing, showers in the woman’s shower as the body still lies there. Then he gets dressed and drives home to his marital bed. His bride is young, beautiful, clearly virginal. She loves him madly. He is the love and lust of her life.

The maniac and his bride engage in foreplay and the maniac makes tender love to his innocent young bride: he is capable of great sensitivity when the situation calls for it. As she comes, thunderously, the camera cuts to juxtaposed faces of the bride and the maniac’s other savaged women—all of them his chosen. The bride’s prolonged, cataclysmic orgasm alternates with their anguish. To the maniac, it is all music.…

I managed to finish the rest of it, resisting the temptation to stow it in the garbage.

Instead, I took it home and called Milo the minute I got through the door. But he wasn’t at the station and I had to content myself with leaving a message at Blue Investigations.

I tried Lucy in Brentwood. Phone off the hook, probably sleeping again. Checking in with my service got me one message: Wendy Embrey wanting to talk about billing problems. That irritated me, and I didn’t bother to copy down her number.

I got a beer from the fridge and watched a couple of surfers struggle to master infinity.

Mellors’s treatment screamed in my head like a car alarm.

He and Lowell and Trafficant drawn together not by art but by hatred of women.

Discovering common interests.

Slaking their needs together the night of the party.

Lowell shutting down the retreat less than a year later.

New use for his acreage?

Another type of cemetery?

   

Robin came home in a great mood and we ended up in bed. I tried to keep the bad pictures out of my head, wondering if I’d be able to make love.

When the time came, I did the right things but my mind was still elsewhere, firing like a strobe light.

She fell asleep quickly, but I found myself itching to get up. I lay there for a long time, not moving.

“Restless?”

“Maybe I’ll get up and take a drive or something.”

She started to sit up but I kissed her forehead.

“Rest.”

“Is everything okay, Alex?”

“Just one of those jumpy nights. You know me.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said. But she closed her eyes and pursed her lips. I kissed them and touched her eyelids with my fingers. She gathered the covers around her head and curled up.

   

I sped past Broad Beach, Zuma, the Colony, Carbon Beach. La Costa.

One very bright light shone above the Sheas’ house. Two proto-Malibu cars were parked along the highway in front: a Porsche bathtub roadster and a Corvette. Between them was an elderly Olds 88 that looked vaguely familiar. I pulled up behind the Corvette and was walking to the front door just as it opened and a man backed out, stumbling.

I thought I heard a voice from inside the house, but the combined roars of the highway and the ocean drowned out the words.

The man approached the house again and I got close enough to hear a woman’s voice.

“Go away! I’ll call the police!”

The man shouted, “Just you—”

“Out! Get the hell out! I’ll call the police!”

The man stopped and folded his arms across his chest. “Go ahead, Gwendolyn. Tell them you’re a murderer.”

Then he charged the door.

The woman screamed again. “You bastard!” The man stumbled again, shoved back with force.

Falling into a pool of lamplight.

Sherrell Best, in his dark suit and tie, his hairless dome shiny as a ball bearing.

I was right in back of him now as the door started to slam shut. He whipped out his right foot and managed to wedge it between the door and the jamb. His ankle was trapped. He shouted in pain.

Threats and curses from Gwen Shea. No backup from Tom, so she was there alone.

Best tried to pull his ankle free but it was vise-gripped.

Gwen Shea kept screaming through the crack. Putting her weight against the door, trying to crush the ankle.

I shouted, “Cut it out, he’s stuck!”

Her eyes spread with panic as she focused on my face. She opened the door, kicked at Best’s leg as I pulled it free, and slammed it shut.

Best lay there, groaning. I pulled him up but when he stood on his right leg, he buckled and I had to support him.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, trying to pull him toward the Olds.

He shook his head. “I’m staying here.”

“What if she calls the police?”

“She didn’t, did she? Because she knows she’s guilty. I can smell guilt.”

He folded his arms again.

“What if she has a gun?” I said. “This is exactly how bad things happen.”

“Then she’ll add to her sins.”

“That won’t solve your problem.”

“Will anything else solve my problem?”

“That’s not a very religious answer.”

He looked away.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s talk about this rationally. I’ve learned some things that may—”

He grabbed my sleeve. “What kinds of things?”

“If you leave and promise not to confront her again, I’ll tell you.”

He looked back at the house. Shook his right leg and winced. Stared at the speeding cars, then once more at the house. All lights off.

“I take that as a solemn oath,” he said.

   

“Tell me,” he said, sitting in the driver’s seat and massaging his ankle.

“Do you need to see a doctor for that?”

“No, no, it’s fine. Tell me what you’ve learned.”

“I need you to promise you won’t act on it.”

“I can’t promise that!”

“Then I can’t tell you.”

“You swore!”

“It’s for your own safety, Reverend.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I see that.”

His nostrils widened. For an instant he looked like anything but a man of God.

“All right. I made a fool out of myself. So did Elijah, coming down from the hills, raving at Ahab. So did Moses, talking to a bush, and Jesus, consorting with the low and the needy—”

“Reverend, the last thing I want to do is prolong your suffering. I want to find out the whole truth about Karen also.”

“Why?”

“For my patient,” I said, keeping it simple.

“That’s hard to believe.”

“So was walking on water.”

He started to touch his sore ankle, then stopped himself and brushed his fingers against the keys dangling from the ignition. “If you really know something, tell me, doctor. Trust me to do the right thing.”

“Not unless you promise not to act. Your getting involved the way you did tonight will only slow things down.”

“Slow things down? Does that mean there’s progress?”

“Some. I’m sorry, I know you’ve lived with this for a long time, but it’s going to have to be a while longer.”

“A while,” he said, flexing his foot. “Why did you come here tonight?”

“Because you’re probably right about the Sheas knowing something. But if you get in the way, we may never find out what. And I won’t tell you another word unless I’m sure you’ll cooperate.”

The pain in his eyes had nothing to do with his leg.

“All right. I promise not to do anything that gets in the way.”

“Nothing at all,” I said. “No contact with anyone associated with the case until I tell you it’s safe.”

“Fine, fine. What do you know?”

“I consider that a religious oath.”

“I won’t swear needlessly, but you have my word.”

   

I gave him some of it, leaving out names. The growing possibility that something had happened to Karen at the party and that Felix Barnard had learned about it, tried to profit, and died because of greed.

A tremor of rage took hold of his face. He forced himself placid. An unsettling calm, almost like death.

“I knew there was something about that man,” he said. “Polite—too polite. I never completely trusted him. How did he die?”

I told him. “That’s why we have to be careful, Reverend. If covering up was worth killing for then, it still is.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. But there was no fear in him, only a cold, quiet acquiescence. I’d asked a lot of him. Thinking of the picture in his kitchen—Dinah’s Abduction by Shechem—I wondered if I was putting too much faith in him.

“And them?” he said, looking at the Sheas’ house.

“No direct involvement, so far, other than the fact that they may have hired Karen to work at the party. And we still haven’t been able to verify that.”

“I can’t believe that. Their evasiveness. Look what just happened. If she’s innocent, why didn’t she call the police on me? And their shop’s been closed for two days, no sign of him. So maybe he knows something’s up and has left town. Isn’t flight the first sign of guilt?”

“How do you know about the shop, Reverend?”

He didn’t answer.

“More surveillance?”

His smile was grim.

“What made you decide to watch them now?”

“Talking to you on the phone the other day. I could tell from your voice that you were on to something. Is your patient ready to meet me yet?”

“My patient’s in mourning. Death in the family.”

“Oh, no.” He put his hands on the steering wheel and sank down. “I’m so sorry. Was he—or she—close to the deceased? Can you at least tell me the sex of the person you’ve been talking to, so I can pray accordingly?”

“A woman.”

“I thought so,” he said. “A woman’s compassion … poor thing. Hopefully the time will come when she’ll be able to step away from her grief.”

“Hopefully.”

“Of course you can’t rush her. Those things can’t be rushed.”

He turned and gripped my hand. “When she is able to—whenever it is—call me. Maybe I can help. Maybe we can help each other.”

I nodded and got out of the car.

Through the passenger window, he said, “You’re a good man. Forgive me for not believing your intentions.”

“Nothing to forgive.”

“Are you religious, doctor?”

“In my own way.”

“What way is that?”

“I don’t believe the world’s random.”

“A major leap of faith,” he said. “I try to renew it in my own mind, every day. Some days are easier than others.”