11th hour

Chapter 68

I’d like to say that the day improved, but that would be a lie. I had nothing in my tank but vapors and I tried to put in a day’s work on that.

Joe called a number of times, but I let the calls go to voicemail and I didn’t call him back.

Conklin and I cleared Todd Waterson by noon and I called Claire three times in six hours asking if she had facial-reconstruction results on the heads from the Ellsworth compound.

I even paid her a personal visit, talking to her over the shot-up dead body of a gangbanger.

“Lindsay, it takes time. Dr. Perlmutter is giving us every minute she has, but she gets called in on other jobs. And the DNA cannot be rushed.”

“I can’t get any traction on the case.”

“It’s been five days. You’re acting like it’s been five months.”

I got coffee out of the vending machine in the breezeway, climbed the back stairs, and settled in for the duration.

Conklin and I worked the tip line until nine that night. Sad to say, nothing of consequence washed up, just useless flotsam from people who had nothing better to do than screw with the police or indulge their paranoid delusions.

I shared a pizza with Conklin, went back to work, finally quit at ten. Half an hour later, I opened my door to a dark apartment and a note from Karen saying she had walked and fed Martha.

I listened to Joe’s voicemails. I took a long shower. I drank warm milk. I put on some soft music. I didn’t sleep that night.

I mean, I really didn’t sleep. I lay in the big bed, stayed on my side of it, and listened to Martha’s gentle snoring from her puffy bed on the floor.

At about two, I turned on the TV.

I watched infomercials — Jewelry TV, then the Coin Vault — learned a few things about numismatic proof coins in original packaging, just what to leave my grandchildren. I switched to the Zumba body, the Shark vacuum cleaner, and then the world’s best bra ever!

I turned off the box, but my eyes stayed wide open and I replayed Joe’s messages in my mind.

The first several times he’d called me, he’d been mad. He’d shouted, said that he’d told me the truth, that June had lied, and that my believing her showed I had a profound lack of faith in him. That it was insulting.

He said that he loved me and that I should pick up the phone. “Call me, Lindsay. I’m your husband.”

Next few messages, he said was sorry for yelling. He realized why I was angry and said he wasn’t mad anymore. He wanted to talk to me and he would tell me about every moment he’d spent with June in the last two years.

“There were not very many moments, Lindsay, and none of them were naked. None.”

The last time he called, he sounded empty. He left me the name of the hotel where he was staying, said to call him if I wanted to talk or if I wanted to listen.

I didn’t want to do either.

It was almost seven o’clock when I got up to make myself a cup of tea. When the phone rang, I picked it up, said, “Hello?”

But it wasn’t Joe.

It was Conklin.

“A body washed up in Big Sur an hour ago,” Conklin said. “A surfer, apparently.”

“Marilyn Varick was a surfer.”

“Yeah. This DB is a man. And he’s got a head.”

“So how does this have anything to do with our case?” I asked.

“The guy who called the police said there was a card lying in the sand next to the body. On it was the number six thirteen.”

I stood flat-footed in my kitchen then adjusted my thinking about the remains at the house of heads. I guess I’d thought the killings were over.

“Richie, about Chandler and his boat. We always thought that body dumps were a possibility.”

“Could he really be so dumb as to dump a body with all this attention on him?”

“Let’s ask him.”