Devil's Waltz

26

The two of us went up to the department office and Janos asked Merilee to get Dawn Herbert’s student file. Five-by-eight index card.

“This is all of it?” she said, frowning.

“We recycle all the old paper now, Dr. Janos, remember?”

“Ah, yes. How politically correct...” Janos and I read the card: DE-ENROLLED stamped at the top in red. Four typed lines under that:

“Not much,” I said.

Janos gave a cold smile and handed the card back to Merilee. “I’ve got a seminar, Dr. Delaware, if you’ll please excuse me.”

She left the office.

Merilee stood there holding the card, looking as if she’d been an unwilling witness to a marital spat.

“Have a nice day,” she said, then turned her back on me.

I sat in the car and tried to untangle the knots the Jones family had tied in my head.

Grandpa Chuck, doing something to the hospital.

Chip and/or Cindy doing something to their kids.

Ashmore and/or Herbert learning about some or all of it. Ashmore’s data confiscated by Huenengarth. Herbert’s data stolen by Huenengarth. Herbert probably murdered by a man who looked like Huenengarth.

The blackmail scenario obvious even to a casual observer like Janos.

But if Ashmore and Herbert had both been up to something, why had she been the first to die?

And why had Huenengarth waited so long after her death to search for her disks, when he’d moved in on Ashmore’s computers the day after the toxicologist’s murder?

Unless he’d only learned about Herbert’s data after reading Ashmore’s files.

I stayed with that for a while and came up with a possible chronology:

Herbert the first to suspect a tie-in between Chad Jones’s death and Cassie’s illnesses — student leading the teacher, because the teacher couldn’t care less about patients.

She pulled Chad’s chart, confirmed her suspicions, recorded her findings — encoded as random numbers — on the university computer, printed out a floppy disk, stashed it in her graduate locker, and put the squeeze on the Jones family.

But not before making a duplicate record and filing it in one of Ashmore’s computers, without Ashmore’s knowledge.

Two months after her murder, Ashmore found the file and tried to use it too.

Greedy, despite his million-dollar grant.

I thought of the Ferris Dixon money. Way too much for what Ashmore claimed to be doing with it. Why had the largesse of a chemical foundation extended to a man who criticized chemical companies? A foundation no one seemed to know much about, supposedly dedicated to life-science research, but its only other grantee was an economist.

The elusive Professor Zimberg... the sound-alike secretaries at his office and Ferris Dixon.

Some kind of game...

The waltz.

Maybe Ashmore and Herbert had worked different angles.

He, leaning on Chuck Jones because he’d latched on to a financial scam. She, trying to milk Chip and Cindy on the child-abuse secret.

Two blackmailers operating out of one lab?

I worked with it a while longer.

Money and death, dollars and science.

I couldn’t get it to mesh.

The parking meter’s red VIOLATION flag popped up like toast. I looked at my watch. Just after noon. Over two hours until my appointment with Cassie and mommy.

In the meantime, why not a visit with daddy?

I used a pay phone in the administration building to call West Valley Community College and get directions.

Forty-five-minute drive, if traffic was thin. Leaving the campus and heading north, I turned west on Sunset and got onto the 405. At the interchange I transferred to the Ventura Freeway, drove toward the western end of the Valley, and got off at Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

The northward cruise took me through a commercial cross-section: upscale shopping plazas still pretending trickle-down economics was working, shabby storefront businesses that had never believed it in the first place, insta-bilt strip malls without any ideological underpinnings.

Up above Nordhoff, the street turned residential and I was treated to a lean stretch of budget-box apartments and motor courts, condo complexes plastered with happy-talk banners. A few citrus groves and U-pick farms had resisted progress. Essences of manure, petroleum, and lemon leaves mingled, not quite masking the burnt-supper smell of simmering dust.

I drove to the Santa Susanna Pass, but the road was closed for no apparent reason and blockaded by Cal-Trans barriers. I kept going to the end of Topanga, where a jumble of freeway overpasses butted up against the mountains. Off to the right a group of sleek women cantered on beautiful horses. Some of the riders wore fox-hunting garb; all looked content.

I found the 118 on-ramp within the concrete pretzel, traveled west for a few miles, and got off on a brand-new exit marked COLLEGE ROAD. West Valley C.C. was a half-mile up — the only thing in sight.

Nothing at all like the campus I’d just left. This one was announced by a huge, near-empty parking lot. Beyond that, a series of one-story prefab bungalows and trailers were distributed gracelessly over a ten-acre patchwork of concrete and dirt. The landscaping was tentative, unsuccessful in places. A sprinkling of students walked on plain-wrap concrete pathways.

I got out and made my way to the nearest trailer. The midday sun cast a tinfoil glare over the Valley and I had to squint. Most of the students were walking alone. Very little conversation filtered through the heat.

After a series of false starts, I managed to locate someone who could tell me where Sociology was. Bungalows 3A through 3F.

The departmental office was in 3A. The departmental secretary was blond and thin and looked just out of high school. She seemed put-upon when I asked her where Professor Jones’s office was, but said, “Two buildings up, in Three-C.”

Dirt separated the bungalows, cracked and trenched. So hard and dry that not a single footprint showed. A far cry from the Ivy League. Chip Jones’s office was one of six in the small pink stucco building. His door was locked and the card listing his office hours was marked:

All the other offices were locked too. I went back to the secretary and asked her if Professor Jones was on campus. She consulted a schedule and said, “Oh, yeah. He’s teaching Soc One-oh-two over in Five-J.”

“When’s the class over?”

“In an hour — it’s a two-hour seminar, twelve to two.”

“Do they take a break in the middle?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned her back on me. I said, “Excuse me,” managed to get her to tell me where 5J was, and walked there.

The building was a trailer, one of three on the western edge of the campus, overlooking a shallow ravine.

Despite the heat, Chip Jones was conducting class outside, sitting on one of the few patches of grass in sight, in the partial shade of a young oak, facing ten or so students, all but two of them women. The men sat at the back; the women circled close to his knees.

I stopped a hundred feet away.

His face was half-turned away from me and his arms were moving. He had on a white polo shirt and jeans. Despite his position, he was able to inject a lot of body English into his delivery. As he moved from side to side the students’ heads followed and a lot of long female hair swayed.

I realized I had nothing to say to him — had no reason to be there — and turned to leave.

Then I heard a shout, looked over my shoulder and saw him waving.

He said something to the class, sprang to his feet, and loped toward me. I waited for him and when he got to me, he looked scared.

“I thought it was you. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Didn’t want to alarm you. Just thought I’d drop by before heading over to your house.”

“Oh — sure.” He blew out breath. “Well, that’s a relief. I just wish you’d told me you were coming, so I could’ve scheduled some time for us to talk. As it stands, I’ve got a two-hour seminar until two — you’re welcome to sit in, but I don’t imagine you want to hear about the structure of organizations. And after that there’s a faculty meeting till three and another class.”

“Sounds like a busy day.”

He smiled. “My kind of day.” The smile vanished. “Actually, Cindy’s the one with the tough job. I can escape.”

He smoothed his beard. Today’s earring was a tiny sapphire, inflamed by the sun. His bare arms were tan and hairless and sinewy.

“Is there anything specific you wanted to talk to me about?” he said. “I can have them break for a few minutes.”

“No, not really.” I looked around at all the empty space.

“Not exactly Yale,” he said, as if reading me. “I keep telling them a few trees would help. But I like being on the cutting edge — building something from scratch. This whole area’s the high-growth region of the L.A. basin. Come back in a few years and it’ll be teeming.”

“Despite the slump?”

He frowned, tugged on his beard, and said, “Yes, I think so. The population can only go one way.” Smile. “Or at least that’s what my demographer friends tell me.”

He turned toward the students, who were staring at us, and held up a hand. “Do you know how to get to the house from here?”

“Approximately.”

“Let me tell you exactly. Just get back on the freeway — on the One-eighteen — and get off at the seventh exit. After that you can’t miss it.”

“Great. I won’t keep you,” I said.

He looked at me but seemed to be somewhere else.

“Thanks,” he said. Another backward glance. “This is what keeps me sane — gives me the illusion of freedom. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“Absolutely.”

“Well,” he said, “I’d better be getting back. Love to my ladies.”