Disturbance

SEVEN

I talked to Marilyn Foster’s co-workers at the dentist’s office where she was employed as a receptionist. She was a reliable worker. The dentist and his wife, who was a hygienist in his office, looked upon Marilyn almost as a daughter. They were sure she would have confided any troubles to them, and had no indications of unhappiness in her marriage. She was the last person, they said, who would ever simply disappear.

I talked to her mother and sister, who lived in the San Fernando Valley. Again, no sign that her life was troubled, that she had a secret romance going, that she was feeling restless or wanted a change of scenery.

The contacts I had at the police department didn’t have a lot to say beyond what had been said at the press conference-no leads, hoping that any publicity the Express could give the case would help to generate those. It was clear they didn’t think this was a voluntary disappearance.

I wrote up the story and tried to pull myself together for a completely different kind of press conference-the one Wrigley had arranged for late that afternoon. As I walked downstairs with John Walters, he glanced at me and said, “You look like a cold slice of hell on stale toast.”

“Always so kind,” I said.

That made him laugh, not something he was doing very often these days, so I had a smile on my face when we went into the room Wrigley had designated for the event-a large space that had once been used for staff meetings. That was in the days before you could fit the staff into a phone booth and still have room to dance.

I was relieved to see that while the turnout wasn’t embarrassingly low-local television, a few local papers, two radio stations, and a couple of online news outlets-the room wasn’t crowded enough to cause me to panic. All the same, the subject wasn’t one I wanted to talk about. I prefer being one of the people asking the questions in these situations.

Wrigley gave the introduction, putting on that public persona that actually makes him appear serious and competent. Anyone who looked hard enough could see that he was enjoying himself.

I wasn’t too surprised to notice that Ethan had left his desk in the newsroom and managed to slip into a chair in the back row, where he alternately tried to signal me with an occasional thumbs-up and glared ferociously at anyone who asked a question that he deemed out of line. It was enough to amuse me into remaining calm.

After the Q & A ended, Wrigley stayed behind to chat up some of those who lingered. John, Ethan, and I headed back upstairs. I heard someone rushing down the stairwell just as John was asking Ethan if he had enjoyed making an ass out of himself for the entertainment of the competition. Lydia came to a halt on the landing above us. “They found her,” she said, looking shaken.

“Who?” Ethan asked.

“Marilyn Foster.”

“Alive?” I asked, knowing the answer even before Lydia shook her head.

“In an abandoned warehouse, near the harbor.”

“What aren’t you telling us?” I asked, knowing that no one who works as a city editor would be looking like she did over a garden-variety homicide.

“She was tortured.” Lydia shuddered. “The killer drew things on her in some kind of indelible ink. Moths.”

I went to work on a rewrite. Ethan was sent to talk to the police-he had to borrow my car. Now that it was a homicide investigation, John was hesitant to send me, even though it wasn’t going to be Frank’s case. Before Ethan left, I took him aside and said, “This may sound strange, but mention the hose to them. A couple of nights ago, someone pulled the same trick on Marilyn Foster.”

His eyes widened.

“Yes, it scares me. No, I won’t try to find another way home. I’ll wait until you get back and can stay with me.”

“Good,” he said. “What time does Frank get back?”

“Depends on traffic,” I said. “Probably late this evening.”

“Call him.”

“He’s probably out of range of a signal.”

Ethan looked skeptical.

“And I really, really don’t want to fuck up his time off,” I quickly added. He started to leave, but I had seen the mischievous gleam in his eyes, and I caught his sleeve. “Ethan, don’t you call him, either!”

“I make no promises,” he said, freeing his shirt from my grip.

“Ethan!”

But he was out the door.

If John thought I looked bad before the press conference, he should have seen me after I called Dwayne Foster.

Sometimes families of victims take out their understandable rage and feelings of helplessness on the press-they can afford to alienate us but not the police who are investigating their loved ones’ deaths, so we get the force of their reactions. But I soon discovered that Foster wasn’t hostile, he was just bereft, lost in that numb state of denial and pain where a person tries to deal with every intruding thought that isn’t the essential one. I was someone who had listened to him when few others had paid attention, and he needed a listener now, however disjointed his conversation might be.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said several times.

I asked him if there was anyone in his family, or a friend, who might come to stay with him. He told me that his brother was on the way from Santa Monica.

“They haven’t found her car yet. I was thinking about driving around, looking for the car. If he’s in it-”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“No,” he said, defeated. “No. But-moths. Why moths?”

From the moment Lydia had told me about the decorations on Marilyn Foster’s body, my thoughts had gone to the warning on the Moths’ blog. Had this woman been killed as a warning to me? The idea that the Moths might go to that extreme horrified me.

I thought of Marilyn’s ex-boyfriend in prison-someone who was LWOP, as was Parrish. Like me, Marilyn had dark hair and blue eyes-Parrish was known to choose victims with those features. And there was that weird business with the garden hose.

But Parrish was in prison. There was no doubt about that. And the Moths on the blog had always seemed more likely to bluster than to act. Surely they knew that if they started committing murders, computer forensics experts would track them down.

I had no real evidence, though, and wondered if I was making connections based on my own fears. I was sleep-deprived and stressed nearly to my limit, in no shape to see things clearly.

So when Dwayne Foster asked me about moths, I didn’t give him the answer that seemed likely to me, but he didn’t seem to need one. The question was just part of that emotional pinball game playing in his mind.

“I can’t help but think about… about what he did to her. Why? Why her? She was so sweet. She never did anything to anyone.” He took a big, gulping breath, let it out on a sob.

“Tell me more about her. Tell me how you met,” I said.

It worked. For a few minutes, he focused on something other than the last day of Marilyn’s life. His brother arrived, and we ended the call.

My phone rang again almost as soon as I hung up.

“Irene? Ethan. I’m with Reed and Vince,” he said, naming two homicide detectives with the LPPD. “I told them about the hose. They want to know if you’ll meet them at your house in about an hour.”

“I’ve got a rewrite, and you’ve got my car, remember?”

I heard him talking to them.

“Reed says, when we’re both done for the day at the paper, give him a call and he’ll meet us.”

All of that seemed as if it might work out just fine. Ethan and I had turned in our stories. Reed and Vince were following us back to my house from the paper. But then, just before I turned down my street, I saw something that made me slam on my brakes and nearly get rear-ended by the unmarked car behind me.

Marilyn Foster’s blue Chevy Malibu was parked in the space that had been empty the night before.