Breakdown

Chapter 22

Doing nothing chews at me and can lead me to bad places. I sat in my office, flooded with ugly outcomes. When that grew unbearable, I left Robin a note and drove to Echo Park, looking for a five-foot Norwegian living in a pea-green jalopy.

The vacant lot Judith Meers had described was fenced, with a construction notice hanging from the chain link. No sign of man or car up and down Sunset.

I didn’t make another try but for the next three days I switched futility channels, shifting my daily run to lower Bel Air. Ending up on St. Denis Lane and passing Enid DePauw’s spread before circling back.

Tree-cooled streets and gentle slopes provided a nice workout and allowed me to rationalize. I met up with squirrels, rabbits, feral cats grown chubby on gourmet trash. On the third day, I locked eyes with a stray dog that turned out to be a runty coyote hybrid. Mangy and feisty, he stood his ground for a few seconds before slipping into a thicket of pines, the only remnant of his presence a faint thrum of foliage.

Easy to disappear, here. I wondered if Zelda had hidden herself before scaling Enid DePauw’s wall.

Living rough, with only a candy bar for sustenance, had she grown hungry and reached for an onion-like bulb sprouting in the greenery?

The pain would’ve blossomed slowly but steadily. How long had it taken her muddled mind to figure out something had gone terribly wrong? To lead her to seek refuge in a stranger’s backyard.

How long had it taken her to die?

For all that zoology, the only humans I came across were motorists at the wheels of German and British cars and uniformed maids walking fluffy dogs and chatting with one another.

On the fourth day, I stayed home, stretched, and tried to recall some long-unused karate moves. Watch out, Chuck Norris.

After feeding the fish, showering and changing, I got in the Seville and drove back to St. Denis Lane.

This time I continued past the DePauw estate. A hundred yards up, the road slimmed and picked up grade. As I continued north, homesites shifted from flat acreage to wildly optimistic hillside perches. Less than three miles later, I was within walking distance from the ranch house on Bel Azura Drive.

The two properties Zelda had trespassed were closer to each other than I’d have expected. Had she focused on this area, specifically?

Given her mental state, no reason to think intent was a relevant concept.

I made the turn, anyway.

Bel Azura radiated the same treeless sterility and eye-bleaching glare. I retraced Milo’s cruise up the street, reached the cul-de-sac and turned around just as he had, glided past the trespass house just as a young woman stepped out the front door.

She was ready for her own run, in leopard-spot leggings, a black jersey top, a pink sun visor, and pink-trimmed Nikes. Long dark hair was tied in a ponytail. A pedometer was strapped to one ankle.

She saw me and tensed and looked back at her front door, as if considering escape.

Edgy. Understandable.

I lowered my driver’s window and smiled and showed her my long-expired, utterly irrelevant LAPD consultant badge. Doing that probably doesn’t rise to the level of impersonating an officer but it’s sketchy at best. Especially when I position my hand so it covers my name and title and leads the viewer’s eye to the official-looking departmental seal.

The woman looked where she was supposed to but didn’t comment. Early thirties, delicately built, pretty in a waifish way. She glanced back, again.

I said, “Sorry to alarm you but we’re here to follow up on your trespass case.” Nothing like the plural to beef up one’s status.

Her hand flew to her mouth. “She’s out again? You think she might come back?”

Tight, hoarse voice. I said, “Absolutely not, you have nothing to worry about.” I got out of the car, pocketed the badge.

She folded her arms across her chest. “How can you be sure?”

“She’s deceased.”

“Oh. How?”

“Accident.”

“That’s terrible. She freaked me out but I’d never wish that upon anyone. You came to let me know, Officer?”

“Actually, I’m not a detective, I’m a psychologist.”

Her nose wrinkled. Her arms remained in place. “I don’t understand.”

“In certain cases, we do psychological autopsies. Trying to gather as much information about a death, so we can compile a database and hopefully help other people with similar problems.”

Technically true; I’d advised the crypt on several postmortems. But never at Bill Bernstein’s behest; he had the psychological sensitivity of a bull-moose during rutting season.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, sure, that’s a good thing. When I was in college I volunteered at a mental health center. I felt so bad for those people, it was really a downer.”

One arm dropped.

I said, “Severe mental illness can be really tough but that doesn’t make what happened to you any easier, Ms.” I smiled again. “Sorry, the file’s in the car.”

“Tina Anastasio.” Down went the second arm. “She’s dead. Sad but predictable I guess. Someone that... I’ve been thinking of her as a threat but I guess she was pretty pathetic. Still, you’re right, it was scary. We just moved here from New York, I still don’t know what I’m — anyway, sorry to hear it turned out so bad for her. What happened?”

“She was committed for a couple of days then released to an outpatient residential facility. Unfortunately, she left there.”

“Figures,” she said. “I saw people in the Bronx, helpless, coming and going and never getting help.” She adjusted her pedometer. “I’d better get moving. If I wait too long the will to exercise will pass.”

“Tina, is there anything you want to add to what you told the police?”

“Like what?”

“Anything that would shed light on Ms. Chase’s mental status — for example, you described her as screaming and digging up dirt. Did she say anything?”

“That’s not in the report?” she said. “What she said?”

“No.”

“Wow. I gave the information to the cops. Figures, I never felt they were really listening to me. You bet, she said something. One word, louder and louder until she was shrieking it. ‘Mother.’ ”

Another guess confirmed. Another so-what.

This time I really did put it to rest, but for occasional gnawing thoughts about Ovid Chase. A few days later — ten days after the death of Zelda Chase — Milo phoned and said, “Got something, not earthshaking but if you’re not busy, how about lunch?”

It was just past ten a.m. I’d finished breakfast at eight-thirty.

Not earthshaking but he wanted a face-to-face.

I said, “Sure, name the place.”

“Yours.”