No Cure for Love

24

Sarah’s heart sank when she walked out of customs and immigration into the waiting phalanx of reporters and cameras at the Tom Bradley Terminal of LAX. More than ten hours in the air, though, she realized, allowed plenty of time for someone to leak the details of her arrival. They would have been expecting her anyway. If she hadn’t been a star before, she probably was now. Celebrities and murder. How Hollywood loved that combination.

Even though she knew it would be getting dark outside, she wore sunglasses and kept her head down all the way to the car. Stuart and an airport security guard did their best to steer her through, but the crowd jostled and harassed them all the way to the automatic doors, shoving mini-cassette recorders in her face, flashing cameras at her, yelling questions.

“What was your reaction to the news of your co-star’s murder, Miss Broughton?”

“Miss Broughton, had you any idea your co-star was homosexual?”

“Miss Broughton, what are the plans for the future of the show?”

“Is there any truth in the rumour that Richard Romano is being considered to take Jack Marillo’s place in the series?”

As soon as they left the air-conditioned airport environment for the LA evening, still pursued by reporters brandishing microphones, Sarah felt that familiar balminess in the air, the mild warmth caressing her cheeks.

The arrivals area outside the terminal was the usual chaos of cars, limos and shuttles zipping along the half-dozen or so lanes, piles of luggage and confused tourists looking for the van stops. The air was acrid with exhaust fumes. As she ducked into the passenger seat of Stuart’s waiting Caddy, Sarah noticed the tatty airport palm trees by the concrete walls of the parking structure across the lanes of traffic. So they hadn’t been smoked out of existence yet.

When the porter had finished packing Sarah’s luggage in the trunk, Stuart tipped him and edged the Caddy into the lanes of traffic. A car pulled out behind them, but Sarah didn’t pay it any special attention.

She took off her dark glasses and looked at Stuart’s profile. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Jack... who would want to harm Jack?”

Stuart kept his eyes on the road. “I know, sweetie,” he said. “I know.”

“What happened?”

“The cops don’t really know anything yet.”

“All you told me on the phone was that Jack had been killed and the police thought it was either Jaimie or some sort of homophobic maniac. I can’t believe it was Jaimie.”

“Arvo doesn’t think it was, either.”

“Then it was some maniac?”

“Well, there’s a theory it might have been someone Jack picked up on the Boulevard or—”

“Oh, come on, Stuart. You know as well as I do that Jack wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah... well.” Stuart scratched the side of his nose. He seemed a little sheepish, cagey.

Sarah paused a moment, then said, “Did the detective suggest that there was any connection with the letters, the body I found on the beach?”

“Look,” Stuart admitted, “I didn’t really want to go into it over the phone, but yes, Arvo says it’s all too much of a coincidence. I mean, he thinks someone could be out to bring down the show, some fucking crazy.”

“There couldn’t be any connection,” Sarah murmured. But she knew there had to be. “Does he have any evidence?”

Stuart shook his head. “Not that he’s told me about. He just seems very sure of it.”

Stuart negotiated the airport maze, a small city in itself, and took Lincoln. It was early evening, just getting dark, and a pale full moon shone low in the indigo sky. Opposite, the western horizon glowed deep vermilion. When Stuart turned on the radio, The Doors came on singing “LA Woman.” Sarah asked him if he would change the station and he did, finally settling on a Mozart wind quintet.

As they rounded a curve in the road, just for a second they were at such an angle that the fanned leaves of one of the tall distant palms stood silhouetted against the full moon like a decal. That was so Southern California, Sarah thought, nestling deeper in the seat as the moment passed. Picture-postcard stuff. Beautiful but theatrical. And ephemeral.

Sarah closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. It was Thursday, December 27, two days after Jack Marillo’s body had been discovered mutilated on the bed of his Laurel Canyon home. Stuart had phoned Sarah in England on Boxing Day, and she had managed to get a flight out of Heathrow the following day. She had left London close to three o’clock, and now it was just after five in LA.

That morning, after a miserable, sleepless night, she had received another letter. Mailed in Los Angeles and sent express delivery, it was addressed simply to Sally Bolton, Robin Hood’s Bay, England.

It was a Christmas card.

The picture on the front showed a typical garish manger scene with bright, blurry stars and the vague figures of the three wise men in the distance.

In addition to the heart with her name inside, the message read, “Merry Christmas. I miss you and I’m thinking of you always. I know we are One in Spirit. Maybe one day soon we will have a Baby to love like Little Baby Jesus.”

On top of the news of Jack’s murder, the card had made Sarah physically sick. Now she carried it in her purse next to the letter. She knew the police would be pleased to have his actual handwriting.

Sarah listened as Stuart told her exactly what he had discovered. So far, no drugs had been found in Jack’s system, despite the three grams of cocaine the police had found on his bedside table. And that was entirely consistent with the scenario they had constructed: Jack had just arrived home from Christmas dinner at his parents’ house in the Valley, which he had left at eleven o’clock that evening, and someone — either his lover, Jaimie Kincaid, or a stranger — had been waiting for him. He hadn’t had a chance. As far as the police knew, there was nothing of any value missing, so robbery was ruled out as a motive. They were still in the dark.

Jack dead? Sarah could hardly believe it. More than that, she had a terrible feeling that it was her fault. She had refused to face reality. Not only had she told no one about the heart drawn on the beach except Paula, whom she had sworn to secrecy, but she had even denied to herself that she really had seen it. She had almost convinced herself, too, until she read the letter she had carried with her to Robin Hood’s Bay.

If the same person had killed Jack, an idea she was still resisting, then she was at least partly culpable. If she hadn’t been such a bloody fool and denied to herself the existence of the heart, if she had acted immediately when she got the letter that referred to it, then Jack might still be alive. Paula was right; Sarah was selfish, and she had put her own Christmas plans above someone’s life.

Maybe she couldn’t blame herself for taking the letter to England and not reading it sooner, but that wasn’t the point. The minute she had read it, she should have phoned Arvo Hughes. Maybe he would have arranged for her to fax it or have it couriered to him immediately. And maybe it would have led him to the killer before he got to Jack. What could she say to the detective now? How could she even face him?

The car hit a bump and jolted her. “What?” she said.

“I didn’t say anything,” Stuart answered. “I think you must have been dreaming.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sarah, rubbing her eyes. “I’m so tired.” She realized she had been dozing and looked at her watch. “It’s after one in the morning for me, you know.” When she looked up, she caught a glimpse of a car in the side-view mirror and thought she had seen it pull out behind them at the airport. She could have been mistaken. It was dark, and she couldn’t tell one car from another most of the time. Even if it was following them, it was probably a reporter too impatient to wait for tomorrow’s scheduled press conference at the studio. Or maybe even some sort of bodyguard, a police escort. She mustn’t let her paranoia run away with her. Next thing she’d be suspecting Stuart.

Stuart dipped under the Ocean Avenue tunnel, where Highway 1 hit the coast again after its inland detour from Long Beach. Sunset colors writhed on the ocean’s ruffled surface like oil slicks. On the hillside, oil pumps jogged rhythmically back and forth like giant insects. The car was still behind them.

They didn’t talk much for the last couple of miles. Sarah settled deep in the comfortable seat staring out of the window through half-open eyes, gnawing at her lip and wondering what the hell she would say when the detective interviewed her. Which he would surely want to do before long.

She knew she should just tell him everything, but she felt so foolish and so damn guilty over what had happened to Jack that she didn’t know if she could. She was tired and scared; and when she got scared she got all hard-shelled and defensive. At least she hoped she would get some time to rest first, take stock and prepare herself, like she did for a stage role.

Occasionally, she glanced back through the mirror and became convinced that the same car had been following them all the way from the airport.

When Stuart put his left blinker on to turn toward the house, Sarah noticed that the car behind them did exactly the same. That was too much of a coincidence. She panicked.

“Don’t stop, Stuart,” she said. “Please. I think he’s after us. Just keep going.”

But Stuart turned off the highway toward the parking area.

“Stuart!” Sarah repeated. “Please!” Why was he ignoring her?

Stuart didn’t reply until he had come to a complete stop, and by then the other car was pulling up behind them.

“Calm down, honey, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s only Arvo. He wants to talk to you, and he won’t wait. I agree with him. Things have gone too far. And there’s no way you should come back here alone.”

Sarah nodded. Her spirits sank. She should have known. Now she wouldn’t get any chance to bolster her defenses before the questioning began.

25

Arvo pulled up on the dirt shoulder behind Stuart’s Caddy. He took the keys from a tired and edgy-looking Sarah, opened the door and punched in the alarm system code that she had given him.

The door opened into a long hallway with a welcome mat and a closet full of jackets and shoes. It was stuffy inside the house, consistent with a place that had been shut up for a week.

Slowly, gun in hand, Arvo headed down the corridor, flicking on light switches as he went. The kitchen was first on the right, the bathroom next. The entire left side was taken up by the walled-off garage space, which he guessed Sarah Broughton never used. A connecting door, locked and bolted, led from the hall.

Next he went into the living room. The drapes were closed. A red light flashed on the telephone answering machine.

He opened the drapes and the sliding glass doors to let the sea breeze in, then flipped on the outside light. Steps from the wooden deck led to a short platform of rock that dropped about twenty feet almost sheer to the beach. Arvo glanced down into the dark where a narrow stairway had been cut into the rock. Moonlight illuminated the tall gate at the bottom with sharp iron railings. It was closed.

Next, he went upstairs, where he found three bedrooms and a second bathroom, all neat and tidy, all empty. The two smaller bedrooms were over the garage, and the largest, Sarah’s he assumed, was at the front, over the living room. It, too, had sliding glass doors and an open balcony facing the ocean. The carpet, duvet-cover and wallpaper, he noticed, were in blended shades and swirls of green and blue, reflecting the imagery of the sea. He found the color scheme a little cold but couldn’t deny it seemed to suit her.

Stuart and Sarah carried the baggage into the hallway, Stuart huffing and puffing, then they came through to the living room. Sarah dimmed the light and turned on a shaded table lamp.

Her movements, Arvo noticed, were all fluid and unselfconscious, full of grace, despite her evident weariness, and her actions immediately transformed the ordinary room from a place of possible threat and menace into a safe and comfortable place to be.

She was the kind of person who created atmosphere rather than simply responded to it, Arvo felt. Probably an actress’s skill, and one to watch out for. She seemed much more natural in her bearing now than she had the first time he met her, on the set of Good Cop, Bad Cop.

The room reflected in the half-open glass doors, centered around the dim, warm glow of the lamp. Arvo could hear the ocean and he could see, beyond his reflection, the white line of foam as the waves crested and broke.

The room had a waxed parquet floor, except where a Turkish carpet of intricate design covered the tiles in front of the rough stone fireplace. The wallpaper was a neutral off-white shade and Sarah’s taste in art, Arvo noticed, favored Native American prints, bold and austere in the weak light, and Canadian Inuit sculptures. He approved. He didn’t collect art, couldn’t afford to, but if he did, that was the kind of thing he would be looking for.

There were some framed Hockney prints of bright California scenes, which he also liked, and some Georgia O’Keeffes — flowers in close-up, skulls in the desert. Arvo wasn’t too sure how he felt about those. At least he assumed they were prints, like the Hockneys; surely even a TV actress as popular as Sarah Broughton couldn’t be rich enough to buy genuine Georgia O’Keeffes?

The sparse furniture was modern in design, the Scandinavian kind, in either black or white. Facing the fireplace, a three-piece suite, upholstered in black leather, ranged in a semicircle around a low glass coffee-table.

Sarah said she was just going upstairs to change and asked if they wanted coffee, apologizing because she only had instant.

Stuart and Arvo nodded.

“I want to talk to Sarah alone,” Arvo said to Stuart when she’d gone out of earshot.

“Why?”

“Because she’s confused, she’s got a lot of defenses and I don’t want her inhibited by anyone else’s presence, and I certainly don’t want anyone else interrupting the interview, answering her questions for her.”

“I’ll keep quiet. I promise. I’ll—”

“You won’t be here, Stu. Period. It’s not a request. Look, I know you’re concerned, but go for a drive or something. I’d say she should count herself lucky we didn’t take her straight down to Parker Center and let Robbery-Homicide question her in a police interview room, the way Joe wanted it done.”

“Oh, come on, Arvo. This is fucking ridiculous.” Stuart was still red in the face from carrying the luggage. “Sarah hasn’t done anything. She’s not a suspect.”

“That’s not the point. The point is that it’s my feeling she’s been holding something back. This has gone beyond possible connections, Stuart. It’s real now. I thought you realized that.”

Stuart shrugged and Sarah came back with a tray of coffee. She had changed into black jeans and a white chunky-knit sweater, at least a size too big for her. Blue and green, black and white; those were the colors she seemed to define herself with, Arvo thought. Apart from the paintings, there wasn’t a hint of red, yellow or orange in the place.

“What do you take in it?” she asked Arvo. “I’m afraid I’ve only got Coffee-mate.”

“Black’s just fine with me,” said Arvo. “Stu won’t be staying.”

A look of alarm crossed her face. “Not staying? I... I... don’t understand. Why?”

“It’s okay, honey,” said Stuart, getting up and touching her arm. “Don’t worry about it. Arvo here’s good people. Why don’t I just go out and pick you up a few groceries, huh? Maybe some milk, eggs, bread... you know. Some real coffee beans. Hey, it’s not everyone gets a big Hollywood casting director to do their shopping, is it?”

He patted Sarah’s shoulder and she managed a smile. Then he left. Arvo sat in one of the black leather armchairs and Sarah took the sofa. She put her coffee cup on the low glass table.

“You didn’t have to send him away like that, you know,” she said as they listened to the Caddy start up and drive off.

In the pause that followed, Arvo got his first long look at Sarah Broughton. At the studio, she had been playing the lady cop, Anita O’Rourke.

Even after a long flight and without make-up, she was certainly a beautiful woman. Her heart-shaped face caught his attention most of all. Her skin was pale and flawless, what he would call an alabaster complexion, which was certainly different from most of the tanned denizens of Hollywood he came into contact with. Her blue eyes matched her lapis lazuli earrings, and though they looked capable of expressing many emotions, at the moment they showed mostly anxiety and weariness — enough to warn him that this might be a difficult interview ahead — and they had bags under them.

Beyond all the external features, though, was the unmistakable gleam of intelligence and, Arvo fancied, a strength of character born of suffering and deprivation. This was a woman who had been there, seen it, and come back changed. Was that an act? Arvo doubted it. Some things you just couldn’t fake that easily.

She gave him a challenging, almost coquettish look. “Do you like what you see, Detective Hughes?”

“I’m sorry,” said Arvo. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

She smiled. “I’m used to it. Occupational hazard. Though I must admit I’m not at my best right now.”

For some reason, her response irritated him. Her smile looked far too self-satisfied; she was acting, toying with him. Before he could stop himself, he said, “I suppose you think this is going to be just like the movies, don’t you? Grunt cop falls in love with beautiful vulnerable actress.”

Her eyes turned to chips of ice. “The last thing I need right now is for yet another creep to fall in love with me.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Bad choice of words.”

She nodded. “Indeed it was.” Very ice-queenly. “Look, Detective, I’m really tired. If we can get this over with as soon as possible... ” She pushed back the long sleeves of her sweater and picked up her coffee.

Arvo crossed his legs and leaned back in the armchair. It creaked as he moved. Christ, he hated the kind of furniture that made it sound like you farted every time you crossed your legs. “I don’t know how long it’ll take,” he said. “Depends on you, really. Maybe the caffeine will keep you awake.”

Sarah sipped her coffee and said nothing.

Arvo glanced over at the telephone answering machine, where the red light was still flashing. Three calls. “You could start by playing back the messages,” he said.

Sarah got up and hit the play button. The first was a hang-up, the second a computerized sales call, and the third was a man’s voice.

“I know you’re not there, Sarah,” he said. “I know you’re in old Blighty. It’s Christmas Eve and I’ve had a few drinks and I can’t get it together to punch all those overseas buttons. Do they even have phones over there? Anyway, I just want it on record I did call to wish you a Merry Christmas. Maybe it’ll give you a laugh listening to this when you get back. Am I slurring my words a lot? Hope you had a good one, sweetie. See you back at the sweat factory.”

The voice was vaguely familiar, but Arvo couldn’t place it. Whoever it was, he certainly sounded drunk or stoned. He glanced at Sarah, and she looked at him through the tears that filmed her eyes. “Jack,” she said. “It was Jack. Just the kind of thing he’d do. Idiot.” She hit the stop button and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

Jack Marillo, the day before he died. It was an eerie feeling. Arvo gave her a moment to sit down and compose herself, then he asked, “Have you received any more letters?”

Sarah hesitated, then nodded.

“Will you show them to me?”

She reached for her purse and passed him the letter and card. He was aware of her watching him over the rim of her coffee cup as he read. Though he doubted that the specialists would find any prints or saliva traces — according to their report, whoever had mailed the first letter had used water and a sponge for the flap and stamp — he handled it carefully anyway.

“Interesting,” Arvo said, setting the card and letter down carefully on the table. “When did you get the letter?”

“I picked it up on my way to the airport, when we came here to pack. I was running late. I didn’t want to miss my plane.”

“No, I don’t suppose you did. And I suppose you thought as soon as you were a few thousand miles away the police would get on with their jobs and clear up the mess for you before you came back? Right? Or maybe that it would all just magically go away?”

She chewed on her bottom lip.

“And the last thing you wanted to have to deal with when you got back was a situation even worse than the one before you went away, so you tried to convince yourself that none of it had really happened, didn’t you? Denial.” He held up the letter. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that this practically constitutes a confession to the John Heimar murder?”

“But I didn’t see how it could help you,” Sarah protested. “How I could help you. It doesn’t tell you who did it, does it?”

“It’s evidence,” Arvo said. “That’s the point. Have you thought any more about who could be doing this? About someone with the initial M and about what “Little Star” means?”

“I’ve thought about it, yes,” she said, “but I still don’t know who it could be.”

“Could it have anything to do with Gary Knox?”

She frowned. “I don’t understand. Gary’s dead.”

“I know that. I mean before. The tour. It looks like we’re dealing with an American, unless he’s being very clever indeed. Look how he spells ‘honor’ and ‘anesthetist.’ That means that if it is someone who knows you, then it’s most likely either someone you’re working with now, someone at the studio, maybe even on the show, or someone you came into contact with during the tour.”

Sarah seemed surprised. “Who have you been talking to? Did Ellie tell you this?”

A light breeze fanned through the doors and ruffled Arvo’s hair. The waves rolled and crashed on the shore. “Does it matter? Why don’t you just answer the question?”

“It could be. I don’t remember a lot about it.”

“Drugs?”

Sarah said nothing.

“Look, can you just give me a name? Someone who might remember. I need some sort of lead here.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “Stan Harvey. He wasn’t part of it, but he promoted the tour here. I’d also met him in London once when he was on business. He was kind to me,” she added. “Here, I mean. Funny, I should remember that.”

Arvo wrote the name down. “And you spent some time in the Shelley Clinic, right?”

Sarah paused. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I spent some time there.”

“Did you form any close relationships with any other patients in the clinic?”

“No. I was too... I was suffering from depression. I didn’t really talk to anyone except Dr. Fermor. I was very ill.” She put her hand to her forehead in what Arvo thought was a theatrical gesture. “Please... I’m tired... what do you want from me?”

Arvo leaned forward. “In a nutshell? I want you to tell me what you know. I think that the same person who’s been writing you letters killed John Heimar. Then I think he killed Jack Marillo. And I think you know something you’re not telling me. I’m not sure why, but I’d guess you’re still trying to deny the connections to yourself, and you can’t bear to admit any responsibility for Jack’s murder. I’m not blaming you for that. Nobody wants to admit they’re the victim of a love-obsessional, someone who has killed twice already. After all, you didn’t ask for it, did you? You don’t feel you’ve done anything to deserve it, do you? You just don’t want to be involved in the mess. It’ll spoil that neat, comfortable ordered life you’ve got going for you. But you are involved. The order is already spoiled. And that’s not all. You’re in danger, too, and I think you’re scared. It’s time to wake up, Sarah. Face the truth.”

Sarah put her coffee cup on the glass table, stood up and walked over to the sliding glass doors, her back to him. “Why are you so certain that Jack’s murder has anything to do with me?” she asked.

Arvo picked up the briefcase he had brought in with him, took out a black-and-white photograph and walked over to her.

“Is this scene familiar?” he asked, holding it out in front of her and pointing to the faint outline in the wet sand. “Do you notice anything here?”

Sarah looked at the picture and shook her head, more in denial than to indicate no. She wrapped her arms around herself. The sleeves of her sweater were so long that they covered her hands, and she looked as if she were wearing a straitjacket. She was so tightly coiled in on herself that Arvo could feel the tension in the air around her.

“Sarah,” he said slowly. “Does the symbol of a heart pierced by an arrow mean anything to you?”

He saw the blood drain from her already pale face, leaving her looking like a ghost, and he knew he’d hit the spot. Shock tactics, but he felt he had to play out this little game, run through the script, to get her where she wanted and needed to be.

“Why?” she asked.

“With maybe a name or something written inside?”

“A name?”

“We think it might be, yes.”

“What name?” she whispered.

“We can’t read it.” This was the information about Jack Marillo’s body that they had managed to keep out of the media. He was probably telling her too much, he knew, but he was running on instinct. He couldn’t stop himself now if he tried.

“Why?” she asked again. “Where did you find this thing?”

Arvo paused, then said, “Someone carved it into Jack Marillo’s stomach with a kitchen knife.”

A sound halfway between a gasp and a groan came from deep in her throat. She looked at Arvo with anger blazing in her eyes and started pounding on his face and chest with her fists until he got his arms around her and held her tightly. Then the violence subsided and she buried her head between his chest and shoulder, and her whole body shuddered with deep, convulsive sobs.

“You bastard,” he heard her repeat between sobs. “You bastard.”

He didn’t know who she meant — him or the killer.

26

When Sarah awoke the following morning, she felt as if she had taken a sleeping pill; her mouth was dry, eyes heavy, and her head felt muzzy, as if it were filled with warm cotton wool. For a while, she didn’t know where she was. Then she realized she was home at the beach house again.

She lay on her back watching the play of green light on her ceiling and walls, listening to the waves, the gulls and the rumble of traffic on the Coast Highway. In the background, she could hear the gabble of a radio talk show coming from next door.

Slowly, she rolled out of bed, stretched and wandered downstairs to put the coffee on before she took a shower. She’d skip the run this morning. It would take a couple of days to get back into the routine. Maybe even longer.

She had finished grinding the coffee and was tapping it into the filter cone, when the man walked into the kitchen. At first she was aware only of a presence, like a shadow crossing her heart. Grasping a kitchen knife, she twirled round to face him.

It was the detective. He just stood there rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, tie askew, hair dishevelled, hand on his gun in its nylon holster at his waist.

And the next thing Sarah realized was that she was stark naked, as usual first thing in the morning. She always slept in the nude and came down naked to put on the coffee. There was no reason to worry about anyone seeing her because she always closed the front drapes before she went to bed and there were no windows at the back or sides of the house.

Though Sarah had never been concerned about appearing nude in films, this time, in front of a stranger in her own home, she felt vulnerable and shy about it. She especially didn’t want this man to see her naked. Too late for that.

She put the knife down, gave him a hard look and walked to the door with as much dignity as she could muster. Dumbly, he moved aside to let her through. They were so close that she couldn’t help but brush lightly against him as she went. “Coffee’s on,” she said over her shoulder, feeling her skin burn with shame and embarrassment. She could feel him watching her as she walked away.

In the shower, she began to remember how the previous evening had ended, how she had sobbed uncontrollably and he had comforted her in a perfectly gentlemanly way, held her close, told her everything was going to be fine. She had been crying as much for Jack as for anything else, and in a way it had been a relief finally to let it all out.

Stuart had returned with the coffee and other groceries, and the detective had asked him to leave. Then, she had told him everything, just as she had told all to Paula on Christmas Day.

Far from being angry with her, he had simply nodded, made notes, asked more questions. Once he had broken through the dam of her silence, he didn’t criticize her for what she had failed to do; he seemed to understand her denial.

When she went back downstairs, fully dressed this time in jeans and a Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt, she found Arvo sitting on a stool at the kitchen island sipping coffee. She poured herself a cup and sat opposite him. He still looked embarrassed. She felt irritated by his presence.

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about walking in just now.”

She stared at him and shrugged. Was this the way it was going to be until they caught the stalker? A man in her house. It wouldn’t be Arvo, she knew that. But the police, or the network, would surely arrange to have someone watch over her. Scared as she was, the idea still upset her. She hadn’t shared her space with anyone in a long time, and she didn’t think she could stand it, whatever the circumstances.

“This is good,” he said, holding up the coffee.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I don’t remember asking you to stay.”

“You weren’t in any shape to ask me anything.”

“You put me to bed?”

He smiled. “Yes. But I didn’t undress you, if that’s what you mean. I just dropped you on the bed, that’s all. Scout’s honour.”

“So why are you still here? Couldn’t you find the door or something?”

“Maybe I just got tired. Maybe I’d had too much to drink, too.”

“Policemen aren’t supposed to drink on duty.”

“There’s a lot of things policemen aren’t supposed to do.”

“Had you?”

“What?”

“Had too much to drink.”

“No.”

“Then why did you stay? You already made it perfectly clear it’s not your job to act as a bodyguard.”

Arvo sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “It isn’t. I just used my judgement. I didn’t think it was safe for you to be here alone. It was late, too late to arrange for any other security, and you were tired and emotional. Last night, it just seemed easier for me to stay in the armchair, that’s all. Besides, I’d nowhere better to go. If it’s any consolation, I had a lousy night’s sleep.”

Sarah couldn’t stop the corners of her lips twitching in a brief smile. “I slept like a log,” she said, then added softly, “Thank you.”

“See, that didn’t hurt did it?” Arvo said, then stretched and rubbed his eyes. “Anything to eat?” He walked over to the fridge.

“You’re staying for breakfast?”

“It’s the least I can do. Ah-ha. Bacon, eggs. Perfect.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “It’s obvious Stuart did the shopping. That man’s diet... ” She found some oranges in the basket on the bottom shelf and peeled one. “At least he bought some fresh fruit.”

Arvo poured more coffee and fried up the bacon and eggs. Sarah turned her nose up when he offered her some, so he ate it all himself.

“Don’t you have to be at work?” she asked.

“Trying to get rid of me already?”

“Just wondering.”

“I could ask the same.”

“I’m still on vacation. If... if Jack hadn’t died I would still be in England.”

“You showbiz people get so many days off. Maybe I’m in the wrong business.”

“Try it,” she said.

Arvo finished his bacon and eggs and pushed the plate aside. Sarah picked it up and carried it to the sink. She was beginning to feel a little more comfortable around him, but she still hoped he would go soon. She hadn’t even unpacked from her trip yet. Besides, a strange male presence infringing on her place of solitude and privacy disconcerted her. Apart from Stuart, Jack and Jaimie, she hadn’t even had another man in the house.

“If you’re ready,” Arvo said, “I’ll drive you over to the studio.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“But I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here. I told you, I’m still on holiday.”

“Sarah—”

She slammed her coffee cup down. “Don’t you Sarah me! This is my home. You’re the only one who’s leaving. Right now.”

He didn’t move.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard.”

“If you don’t go now I’ll call the police.”

“I am the police.”

“Then I’ll call your superior officer. You can’t do this. It’s my home.”

“My, you are grumpy in the morning, aren’t you?” he said.

She tried to gauge his expression as he looked at her, but she couldn’t fathom it. He was obviously giving her the same kind of stone-faced look he gave to the criminals he interrogated. After a brief staring match, though, he stood up, picked up his sport jacket and the plastic bag in which he had put the letter and card. Then he said, “Whatever you say. An Englishman’s home is his castle, right?”

“You’re going?”

“Yes.”

“Well... what?... I mean... what do I... ?” She felt flustered by his sudden capitulation.

“What are you supposed to do?” He took a card out of his breast pocket, shrugged and dropped it on the island. “Call me if you have any problems.”

“And that’s it?”

He shrugged. “The name of the game is cooperation, not coercion. The law helps those who help themselves. That means you have to be willing to help yourself if I’m going to help you at all. Obviously you’re not. Good luck.”

“But aren’t you going to send me a bodyguard or something? You can’t just abandon me. There’s someone out there been killing my friends.”

“Really? Give Stu a call. I’m sure the network will send somebody around, the lucky guy.”

Sarah glared at him for a moment, then ran her hand through her hair and sighed. “Sit down. Please,” she said. “I’m sorry. This is coming out all wrong. I’m just not used to having anyone around the place. Can’t we work something out?”

Arvo held her eyes for a moment, then put his sport jacket on the back of a chair and sat down again. “I thought we’d worked things out last night.”

She ruffled her hair and pulled a face. “I know. I’m just confused. Scared. I don’t know what to do.” She looked around. “This is all I’ve got. I’ve always felt safe here, secure.”

“Not any more.”

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet. I don’t want to feel like a fugitive.”

“Can I have some more coffee?”

“Sure.” She poured him another cup.

“There are several options,” Arvo said. “None of them perfect. If you stay here, you’ve got a choice of either one live-in bodyguard or two outside: one to guard the front and another to guard the back. Expensive, and the least safe. I talked to Stu briefly last night before he left and he thinks he can get the studio to increase the security around the lot, so you won’t have to worry when you’re at work, and maybe spring for a personal bodyguard for you—”

“But I—”

Arvo held up his hand. “Hold on a minute. Let me finish. What Stu suggested is that you stay with him. Believe me, you’re a lot safer with people around you. There’ll still be a bodyguard around to keep an eye out for you, but he won’t need to be under your feet all the time. Stu owns a gun, and I know he’s qualified to use it. Maybe you don’t know it, but he fought in Vietnam. He even won medals.”

“How long is this going to go on?” Sarah asked.

Arvo shook his head. “I wish I knew. Naturally, if it goes on a long time we’ll have to reconsider our tactics. There’s always protective custody.”

“Jail?”

Arvo shrugged. “Worst-case scenario. For the moment, will you just listen to me and let me take you to the studio? They’ll give you some office space there. You can work on your scripts or something. Then you can go back with Stu tonight.”

“But won’t it be dangerous for him, for Karen and the kids?”

“It’s dangerous for everyone around you right now. Stu cares about you. He’s willing to take the chance, and I think he’s right. He’s sending Karen and the kids off to her mother’s in Santa Barbara for a few days. I told you, Stu knows how to handle himself. He’s no fool. And there’ll be someone else — a professional bodyguard — keeping an eye on the both of you.”

Sarah chewed on her lip and thought for a moment, looking around the kitchen. “You worked all this out between you while I was away, did you?”

Arvo nodded. “After Jack’s murder, yes.”

“All right,” she said finally. “It doesn’t seem like I’ve got much option. It’s just as well I didn’t unpack, isn’t it? Can you give me a few minutes to throw some clean clothes together?”

“Sure.”

Outside, the first thing Arvo did was check the mailbox.

“It’s been redir—” Sarah started to say. But she stopped when she saw him hold up a white envelope between his thumb and middle finger.

Sarah felt her chest tighten. “He’s been here,” she said. “During the night, while we were here.”

“Looks like it.” Arvo put the letter in the plastic bag with the others. “The last one was hand-delivered, too, remember. We’d better lock up and go,” he said.

Sarah was aware of herself nodding, even though all she still wanted in the world was a day alone at the beach house relaxing, unpacking, phoning her family to thank them for having her and to remind them she wanted them to visit her soon.

She watched as Arvo locked the sliding glass doors and pulled the drapes, then she picked up her windbreaker with the show’s logo emblazoned on the back and followed him out to where the overnight bag sat by the door. She set the alarm and they locked the door behind them.

Arvo’s car was parked where he had left it on the dirt shoulder outside her back door. Something looked odd about it, Sarah thought, then she saw how it rested flat on the ground.

“He’s slashed the tires,” Arvo said. “Jesus H. Christ! The bastard. He’s slashed the fucking tires!” He kicked the front wheel then leaned forward and slapped his hands against the hood, leaning forward like a guy being frisked by a cop.

Sarah touched his shoulder. “Tell me the number,” she said. “I’ll phone and get help.”

27

Arvo stabbed at the elevator button again and swore under his breath. Parker Center elevators, he remembered, were always out of order. Finally, it stopped, discharged a couple of passengers and took him, groaning and shuddering as it went, up to the third floor.

Every time he went back to RHD, he became more and more thankful for the TMU’s move to the relatively clean and spacious Spring Street headquarters. He hadn’t noticed it so much when he worked at Parker Center, but Detective Headquarters was definitely run-down. If it wasn’t quite as grungy as the make-believe precinct where Sarah Broughton filmed Good Cop, Bad Cop, it was pretty close.

The third floor was overcrowded, for a start; the air conditioning never worked, so you had to work with fans blowing your papers around all over the place; and there were so many earthquake cracks in the walls that nobody could remember which quakes had caused them.

As he walked into the corridor, he heard a radio playing from the secretaries’ office: The Beach Boys, “Help Me Rhonda.” For some reason, it made him think of Nyreen. California girl.

He opened the door to Robbery-Homicide and popped his head in. All the desks were pushed together in the center of the room to make one long, rectangular island, around which the detectives sat facing one another. The room was hot and sweaty. Telephones rang constantly; papers littered the desks and filing cabinets flanked the walls and corners. Over them all, like some sort of guardian angel, a boar’s head was mounted on the wall.

Fran Jenson was staring at her reflection in her compact mirror as she applied thick red lipstick. She looked up and winked at Arvo. Joe Westinghouse, two chairs down, saw him next and came over.

“Let’s go grab something to eat,” said Joe. “It’s been a long day. I could do with a break. Besides, I need a smoke.”

“After all the trouble I had getting the elevator to come up here, you want to go out.”

Joe grinned. A gold filling twinkled. “I’m buying.”

“You’re on.”

It was easier getting down, and they soon walked out onto Los Angeles Street, office towers glistening in the sun. Downtown was the only really high-rise part of LA apart from Century City, with its bank towers vying with one another for tallest structure, so there were plenty of city workers out for cigarette breaks or late lunches. They didn’t wander far, though; over on Main or down toward Sixth, the streets got grungy real quick.

Joe bought chili dogs and Cokes from a street vendor and he and Arvo sat on a low wall to eat. Arvo realized it was mid-afternoon and he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. First, he showed Joe a photocopy of that morning’s letter:

Joe frowned and handed the letter back. “Weird,” he said. “Know what he means?”

“At first I didn’t,” said Arvo, folding the letter and putting it back in his pocket, “but this morning I checked the Good Cop, Bad Cop tapes for the time Sarah Broughton was away in England. There was a show on Christmas Eve where the Jack Marillo character kissed Sarah. It was just a friendly kiss, really — you know, a peck on the cheek. She was upset about a kid she was trying to help who got shot in a drive-by, so he gave her a hug and a kiss. I think that might have been what set him off.”

“What else did you find out from the actress?”

Arvo took a bite of his chili dog and told Joe about the heart drawn in the sand by John Heimar’s body. He also handed him a copy of the Christmas card and letter Sarah had found the morning she left for England.

“Shit,” said Joe after he’d read the other letter. “Two letters, two hearts, two confessions. Wouldn’t stand up in court, but it’s good enough for me. Why didn’t she tell us this before?”

Arvo shrugged. “Scared. Thought it would all just go away.”

“She’s been withholding evidence.”

“True. But she’s also been playing denial. She didn’t want to believe it was happening. Couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t admit it to herself. Not until Marillo’s murder.”

“And now?”

“Oh, now she knows. Now she feels guilty. Thinks she might have been able to save him if she’d acted sooner.”

“Some hope.” Joe paused to take a mouthful of chili dog, then said, “Why are you defending her all of a sudden?”

“I’m not. I talked to her, that’s all. I think she’s scared enough to tell the truth.”

“Sure she’s not working that old Hollywood charm on you?”

An image of Sarah Broughton’s nakedness flashed through Arvo’s memory again: particularly the butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder, a beautiful, professional job done in red, blue and green, about three inches across. Somehow, seeing that tattoo had changed her again in his eyes; it added yet another dimension to what was already an enigma. But charm?

“Fuck you,” he said.

Joe laughed. “Yeah. Methinks this gentleman doth protest too much. But I’d rather be me than you when the Chief finds out.” He took another bite of his hot dog. Chili sauce dribbled from the corner of his mouth and onto his jacket. He swore and dabbed at it with a napkin.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve got the links we were after now,” Joe said. “The heart. Both scenes. The letters. There’ll be no sitting on this. Just wait till the media get hold of it.”

“Christ, you’re right,” said Arvo. “Any rookie reporter should be able to put two and two together.”

“True,” said Joe. “But it’s my bet they’ll be busting their asses on the gay angle, if you’ll forgive the pun. And look on the bright side, man. This is a major case now.”

“That doesn’t seem a particularly bright side to me,” Arvo said. “What it means is we’ve got a major political case. We’ve got the Chief and the DA’s office falling all over one another to get an arrest on this. We won’t even be able to take a crap without somebody looking over our shoulders to make sure we’re doing it right.”

“What I’m saying is we’ve got unlimited resources now. Manpower. We’ve got people looking into every nook and cranny of Marillo’s and Heimar’s lives, see if they intersected anywhere, plus we get a rush on all forensic evidence. It ain’t all bad.”

Arvo was silent for a moment. Maybe Joe was right. Anything they wanted, they’d just have to ask. But Arvo was right, too; whatever they did, they’d have to do it under scrutiny. “This guy’s smart, Joe,” he said. “He might be crazy, but he’s smart. He’s not going to be easy to stop unless he starts getting careless. He’s very patient and very careful. Whoever planted Heimar’s body must have watched Sarah Broughton for days or weeks to get the timing just right. He had to know how far the tide would be in or out, what time she would pass the spot where he left the body. If he drew that heart for her to see, he didn’t want it washed away before she got there.”

“He probably waited a long time outside Marillo’s house, too,” said Joe. “There’s no way he could have known where Marillo was, or even if he was coming back that night. Shit, it was Christmas Day. Normal people spend it with their families or close friends.”

Sure, Arvo thought, remembering his own solo Christmas celebration. “I don’t think Christmas means a hell of a lot to the guy we’re looking for,” he said. “You read the letter. He’s very confused about family.”

“I guess so, if he could spend all Christmas Day hiding in the woods waiting for Marillo.”

Arvo nodded. “He’s a loner. Fits the profile. He’s also either very brave or very foolish. He put that letter I just showed you in the mailbox at Sarah’s beach house last night.”

“She was there?”

“Yeah. From the airport. I told Stu it seemed like the best environment to talk to her, where she’d feel most comfortable, be most likely to open up.”

“What about protection?”

“I was there, too.”

Joe raised an eyebrow and his eyes twinkled with humor. “All night?”

“Don’t say a word, Joe,” Arvo told him. “Not a word.”

“Who, me?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Sure it didn’t, Arvo.”

“The bastard slashed my tires.”

“Jealous?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Then you’d better be careful.”

“That thought had occurred to me. Anything else on the Marillo killing?”

Joe threw away his chili-dog wrapper and lit a cigarette. “Found some footprints in the ground back of the house — cheap Korean sneakers — but that’s all. Mostly dead ends, nothing but dead ends. And believe me, we’ve been pushing it. There’s plenty of pressure from above.” He pointed with his thumb toward the sixth floor of Parker Center, where the Chief had his office.

“What about Jaimie Kincaid?”

“Kid’s clean. And, believe me, we went at him hard. The DA’s office really liked him for it at first. Pretty young faggot, lovers’ quarrel. So we really put him through it. He stuck to his story. We got a search warrant and went through his place, gave it the works. Nada. No physical evidence whatsoever connecting him to the murder. Given that Marillo bled like a stuck pig, it would’ve been hard to get rid of every last drop. Footprints aren’t his, either.”

“So you’ve let him go?”

“Yup.”

“I told you he didn’t do it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You?”

Arvo took a sip of Coke. “I talked to Sarah’s shrink, Dr Fermor, on the phone. Seems Sarah was pretty much in isolation while she was out at the Shelley Clinic, and she didn’t form any relationships at all, even at a distance. I also phoned Stan Harvey, who promoted the Gary Knox tour in LA. He put me on to a guy called Carl Buxton down in Orange County. I’m going to see him in a couple of days, when he gets back from Mexico. This guy was the drummer on the tour. He should have some firsthand knowledge of what went on.”

“What makes you think that’ll help?”

“Well, if the killer really does know Sarah from somewhere, from what I’ve heard that tour might have attracted more than a few crazy hangers-on. I want to see if Buxton remembers anyone in particular. Sarah disappeared from public view for over a year after she split with Knox, then she resurfaced, with a new name, as the star in a major network series. The timing makes sense, Joe. It also gives him a year to brood over his lost love.”

“But wouldn’t she remember someone like that?”

“Not necessarily. Dr Fermor also told me that Sarah’s illness might cause some memory loss. If that period of her life is really as hazy as it seems, then the illness might explain why she doesn’t remember. Some sort of retrograde amnesia. When I first talked to her, I was sure that ‘Little Star’ meant something. Maybe the truth is that she can’t remember exactly what it means, or who said it. Maybe it was someone on the periphery. A guy like this wouldn’t need much to set him off. Maybe she smiled at him once.”

“I guess. But what’s he after, Arvo? That’s what I don’t get. Is he just trying to scare her?”

“Scare her? No, I don’t think so. Not the way he sees it. Mostly, he’s trying to impress her.”

“What? By killing people in front of her, dropping them at her feet? I’ve worked homicide a few years now, and I thought I’d seen pretty much everything, but this scenario... ” He shook his head.

Arvo finished his chili dog, dropped the wrapper in a garbage bin and took a long swig of Coke to cool the heat in his mouth. “Like a cat does,” he said. “Ever noticed that, Joe? We had a cat when I was a kid. Called him Watson. My father’s idea. He was a criminology prof. Anyway, he got run over when I was about twelve — Watson, not my father. But the point is, I remember him once getting on the roof, killing a pigeon and bringing it in his mouth through the bedroom window and dropping it on the floor in front of me looking for approval. My pa yelled at him and threw the pigeon out in the garbage, but goddammit if he didn’t come back with another half an hour later. And another after that. No matter what we said. And what I remember especially is that look on his face: ‘See what I’ve done for you? Isn’t it wonderful? Love me for it.’”

“You saying this guy’s the same? But surely he must know how much he is scaring her, whether he means to or not?”

“He’s out to impress her, he’s looking for approval, but he’s tuned in so close to his own frequency that he doesn’t hear her screaming at him to stop. It’s like he’s watching a different movie from the rest of us, Joe. To him, screams signify love, and murder gains respect.”

“Where is she now?”

“Sarah? She’s at the studio. Then she’s going to stay with Stu in Brentwood until this is all over. They’ll have a bodyguard watching over them, and Stu’s no slouch. Also, I want to put the beach house under surveillance, though I think he’s smart enough not to show up there again.”

Joe dropped his cigarette butt on the sidewalk and ground it out with his heel. “Is she in serious danger,” he asked, “or is it just the people around her?”

“You read the letters, Joe. That weird stuff about the mirrors of the sea, cutting away the flesh and all. Now he’s jealous as hell, too, going out of control. Love, approval, jealousy, murder — they’re all mixed up together for him. And he says he’s coming for her soon. The gloves are off now. I sure as hell hope she doesn’t have to face him alone.”

28

The black stretch-limo left Stuart’s Brentwood home at ten in the morning on December 31. Karen, Leora and Ben had come back from Santa Barbara for the day, and they sat in the car along with Stuart and Sarah.

The three days Sarah had spent at Stuart’s house had been uneventful. Every evening Arvo phoned to make sure everything was okay. Sarah was getting used to his concern, but she still resented his intrusion into her life, the way he seemed to have taken control out of her hands, and she still felt annoyed that he had seen her naked.

As it turned out, Jack’s murder meant that there was a lot of work to do at the studio, retaking scenes, rethinking plot lines and so on. At least work took Sarah’s mind off her problems part of the time. Pity it was so bloody depressing on the set without Jack.

So it had been a simple routine: drive to the studio, work, drive back to Brentwood, read or watch TV, then sleep. Every time they went back to the house, the bodyguard, Zak, drove on ahead to check the place out. He was close to them even now, on the way to the funeral. The saving grace was that his presence was so unobtrusive Sarah hadn’t even seen him yet.

The day was warm and hazy inland. As they drove through Sepulveda Pass on the freeway, cool and comfortable in the luxury car, Sarah glanced through the separating glass and the windshield and saw the San Fernando Valley spread out below them, its neat little blocks of grid-work streets stretching as far as the distant mountains, all shimmering under a thin veneer of amber smog.

She remembered what a powerful sight it had been the first time she saw it, which must have been that evening Jack took her for Thanksgiving dinner at his folks’ house in Northridge. She had never had any reason to go to the Valley before that; she didn’t know anyone who lived there. It was night time then, and all she could see were the lights spread out across the broad, flat valley-bottom as far as the eye could see. It was like seeing the city from a plane coming in to land.

Closer to home, Jack had shown her the earthquake damage, too: a three-story apartment building collapsed to two; a Bullock’s store with the entire roof caved in; house after house fenced off, waiting for demolition. Jack’s parents had been lucky; all they lost was their chimney and a few roof tiles.

After heavy traffic on the Simi Valley Freeway, the limo finally pulled up at the cemetery at ten to eleven, ten minutes before the service was set to begin.

It was a small funeral, only immediate family members, a few personal friends, like Jaimie, and colleagues from the show, such as Sarah, Stuart and Lisa, who turned a few heads in a black gown cut just an inch or so too low for the occasion.

Network security and Jack’s family had done a great job of keeping the media at bay. There was a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, but that was about all. No TV cameras. Arvo Hughes was there, Sarah noticed as she followed Stuart into the cool chapel, and his presence felt like an intrusion into the privacy of her grief.

The service was brief. Jack’s parents had never been particularly religious, and though Jack himself had flirted briefly with the Catholicism his Italian background suggested, it hadn’t really taken hold. How could it, Sarah thought, with such a medieval attitude toward gays?

A nondenominational minister said something about the frailty of the flesh and how we must always be ready to face God because we never know when He will call us to His bosom. He made Jack’s murder sound like more of a blessing, a joyous occasion, than a tragedy.

Then Jack’s older brother, Denny, gave the eulogy. They hadn’t been close, Sarah knew, and generally when they met they argued. But the eulogy moved her to tears because it didn’t skirt the family problems; it confronted them head-on.

The brothers had fallen out partly because Denny couldn’t handle Jack’s being gay. This was his younger brother, his reasoning went, and he was supposed to keep up the family tradition of handsome, macho Italian maleness. Instead he’d become a goddamn sissy and shamed his family.

Jack’s parents, Sarah knew, usually avoided the issue altogether, pushing the question of Jack’s sexuality right to the backs of their minds. After all, they had a lot to be proud of. Jack had done well for them in so many ways and Denny was still only a glorified used-car dealer. So what if they were BMWs; they were still used cars.

In his eulogy, Denny spoke of their arguments, of the torment he suffered because he thought his brother wasn’t normal, about how he worried about Jack getting AIDS. But he also said he wished he’d sloughed off his prejudice and taken the time to get to know his brother better. And that Jack had been there for him when he needed it, no questions asked. When it came right down to it, maybe they were too much alike ever to get along easily. The circumstances were different, but what Denny said made Sarah think of the way she and Paula related, or failed to relate.

Dabbing her eyes, Sarah followed the others outside, still in a daze after seeing the coffin wheeled away. It was hot and humid outside the air-conditioned chapel. Sarah felt the beads of sweat gather around her brow and temples, and a tiny rivulet tickled as it coursed down the groove of her spine.

After she had given her commiserations to the Marillos, she felt someone touch her elbow and turned to see Arvo Hughes standing beside her. Sarah flinched at his touch. She wasn’t ready for him again right now. Not here. Not in this state. She had revealed too much of herself to him already. He must think she did nothing but break down and cry.

“What are you doing here?” she asked rather more sharply than she intended. “You didn’t know Jack. Are you expecting his murderer to turn up and gloat, or something?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But that usually only happens in your line of work. Believe it or not, the cases I work aren’t just numbers to me.” He nodded toward the chapel. “I never met him, but he seemed like a decent guy.”

“He was.”

“And in case you’re beating yourself over the head about it, I still don’t think there was a hell of a lot you could have done to prevent what happened. Joe Westinghouse agrees.”

“He does? Well, isn’t that wonderful. Thank you both very much. I feel so much better now.”

“Christ, you’re pricklier than a porcupine. There’s no need to be sarcastic. What I’m saying is, letters or no letters, there’s no way we could have predicted this would have happened. No way. And even if we could have, do you think we could have found a way of protecting everyone you knew? No. So don’t go blaming yourself. What could you do, anyway? Has M given you any choice about when and who he kills? All we’ve got is twenty-twenty hindsight.”

“Well it’s a pity you policemen don’t have a lot better vision than that, isn’t it? Have you ever thought about that? Maybe if you were doing your jobs instead of... instead of... Oh!” She pushed him aside and walked away in tears. She felt embarrassed and phony doing it — like she was playing the prima donna or something — but she knew she would only have felt worse if she had stayed.

“What you doing here? We did not invite you.”

Sarah heard the raised voice and turned. Oh no. It was Jack’s mother, and she was waving her fist at Jaimie Kincaid.

“You no-good pervert,” she went on, her voice getting louder. “You kill my Jack. Is your fault my Jack’s dead. You hear me? Police should have keep you locked up. You go away now. I call police.”

She saw Jaimie walk off, slump-shouldered. Jack’s father put his arm around his wife to calm her down. Denny went after Jaimie. Sarah hoped, after the eulogy, that he would have a few kind words to say rather than simply repeat what Mrs. Marillo had said, punctuated by blows.

Christ, Sarah thought, is everyone looking for someone to blame? The detective was right; she did still blame herself, especially after he had told her about the heart carved into Jack’s body. She knew that, logically, he had been right today, too. Even if she had told the police everything right from the start, it still wouldn’t have saved Jack. She also felt guilty for suspecting Stuart, even for one fleeting moment. Since she had overcome her reservations and gone to Brentwood, he had been nothing but solicitous and steadfast.

But the truly frightening thing was that there was an evil force out there, and she was beginning to wonder if anyone could stop it before it reached its intended destination: Sarah herself.

29

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Sometimes life seemed to consist of nothing but waiting. He remembered those hours in the woods at the back of the canyon house, so focused and unmoving he had felt himself become an animal, operating only on instinct, out of appetite and necessity.

He had crept so stealthily across the dirt that his prey hadn’t heard a sound before the hammer came down with a sharp crack on the back of his head and he pitched forward onto the kitchen floor. It had been perfect.

And it had been perfect because he had waited so long. Anticipation heightened awareness; it honed all his senses to razor-edge sharpness, and brought into play some he didn’t even know he had.

Afterward, he decided that luck was a sense, too, not just some random deal of the cards; if you got into the right state of mind, you could use luck the way you would use sight or smell. Courage, too, perhaps, and maybe even silence.

Now he was sitting in his car on a street in Santa Monica, waiting again. The light was on in the house; he could see it through the slats in the shutters. It was New Year’s Eve, and a block north someone was holding a loud party. But his quarry seemed to be alone. At least the house was quiet, and he had seen no one go in during the hour he had been waiting there.

He knew this one had to be next, but he also knew he had to think it out clearly. For a start, he didn’t have a gun, and his quarry did. Somehow guns didn’t fit with the kind of hunt he had set himself. He knew where to get one easily enough, but they were too distant, too abstract. You pointed and pulled the trigger and someone far away fell down dead.

With guns, there was no real contact, no sense of flesh yielding to hammer or the knife. And that was what he liked about killing. The sound the hammer made, for example, when it fractured the skull, or the way flesh resisted cutting far more than he had thought it would, then how the fat, muscle and sinew under the skin seem to peel back in layers as you cut, presenting colors you had never imagined inside the human body. Maybe he should have been a surgeon.

But not having a gun was definitely causing a problem here. He needed total surprise on his side. And tactics.

And it wasn’t as if there was any choice in the matter of who it had to be. This person had spent the night at Sally’s, keeping her prisoner, and people must be made to see that they shouldn’t do things like that.

He was certain nothing had happened. In fact, it never even entered his mind for a moment that she would be unfaithful to him or that she had been anything other than an unwilling captive. But someone had been in the house, keeping him away, and all night he had suffered headaches and stomach pains. She must see that was not good. These people would only exert a bad influence on her, and she was so impressionable.

First, he had presented her with a random offering; now he was working on real obstacles, on cutting them all out of her life so she could come to him and they could live or die the way destiny intended. It would be soon.

Then, suddenly, a car pulled up outside the house and someone else went in. Two of them. One would have been difficult enough, but two would be too much of a risk. Unless he could think of something, maybe come up with a new sense.

And so he kept on waiting. It was only ten o’clock. Plenty of time. If he remained still and focused his mind completely on the image of Sally hanging from his rearview mirror, he knew that whatever he needed to do would become clear. And how to do it.

30

Shortly after ten o’clock on new year’s eve, Arvo was thinking of going to bed. He was watching Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters on video, and it was no insult to the 1957 black-and-white B-movie that he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open.

It had been a rough two days, ending with Jack Marillo’s funeral. He had checked the rest of the M’s from the list Stuart had given him and come up with zero. One promising lead — a key grip called Kim Magellan who had once been arrested for stalking her ex-girlfriend — proved to be unconnected after Arvo had spent a couple of hours interviewing her.

He had also spent an uncomfortable afternoon closeted with the lieutenant and the Chief, laying out every bit of evidence and speculation in the Sarah Broughton case. While the pressure had been intense, the result was satisfactory. He and Joe were to coordinate the investigation, with plenty of resources at their disposal, and the department would try to keep the letters out of the media. Everyone agreed that excessive media attention would make it even more difficult to protect Sarah Broughton and the people around her.

It was only a matter of time, though, Arvo knew. They would find out. They always did. As the Chief had pointed out, there was already speculation about a member of the TMU being present at the Marillo crime scene. So far, however, the main theory seemed to be that Jack Marillo had been blackmailed or somehow harassed by a gay ex-lover.

Arvo sat with his feet up, shutters partly open, leaves rustling, traffic whooshing along the freeway, a cool breeze from the window about the only thing keeping him awake. It was the first time he had felt so completely relaxed in a while.

Then the doorbell rang.

By instinct, he picked up his nylon holster from the table beside him before he went to the door and grasped the handle of the gun. He wasn’t expecting any visitors, and in LA it was almost unheard of that someone would simply drop by without phoning first. Even under normal circumstances, there were always plenty of people who wanted to do a cop harm, and some of them could even get hold of his address. And these were not normal circumstances.

Carefully, he opened the front door on its chain, and found Maria Hernandez standing there, a bottle of champagne in her hand.

“It’s the real stuff,” she said, noticing him look at the bottle. “At least that’s what the guy in the liquor store said.”

“How did you know where I live?” was all Arvo could manage.

“Hey, I’m a very resourceful woman. I have a university education and I’m good with computers, too. Can I come in?”

Arvo stood aside and ushered her in. She was wearing a long black PVC raincoat against the evening chill and the earlier shower. Her black hair tumbled in waves over her shoulders.

“How did you know I’d be home?” Arvo asked.

“You told me, the other day. Remember? Said you hated New Year’s parties and always stayed in alone watching a video. Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

Arvo felt awkward. “Of course. But, look, what... I mean is... you must have a party or something... ?”

She fluttered her eyelashes and laughed. “Pretty girl like me? Sure I do. But I didn’t feel like going. Then I remembered what you said and I thought you might like some company. So here I am. Did I do wrong?”

Arvo felt himself grinning like an idiot. “No. No, not at all.”

“Good.” She smiled and took her coat off. Underneath she wore a black-and-white polka dot dress. Polka dots, Christ. Arvo hadn’t seen them for years. At least he didn’t think he had. But what he knew about fashion wouldn’t fill the back of a postage stamp.

The dress was cut low, showing a little dark, smooth cleavage, with two black straps over her shoulders. It flared out below her hips and ended about four inches above her knees. Her legs were bare and she wore a pair of black pumps. The way she moved, Arvo was beginning to think she was a little tipsy. Maybe she’d been to the party already.

“Come in.” He led her through to the living room and cleared the magazines off the sofa and chairs. Other than that, the place was reasonably clean and tidy, no dirty shirts, socks or boxer shorts hanging over chair backs.

“What is this?” Maria pointed to the television, where a giant crab crawled over the top of a sand dune.

“Oh, nothing.” Arvo picked up the remote and punched in the buttons to turn the TV and VCR off.

“Yes, it is. It’s Attack of the Crab Monsters. You like fifties sci-fi movies?”

“Well, yeah,” said Arvo, feeling as if he’d been caught masturbating or something. “Just sometimes, you know... ”

“Why?”

“Well, I haven’t really analyzed it much. I like lots of different kinds of movies, but I guess with these it’s partly the simplicity, good against evil. And the evil’s always something tangible... you know... ”

“Like a giant crab?”

“Yeah. Or a monster from outer space. Or some mutation caused by atomic testing or something.”

“Not from inner space, like the stuff we deal with?”

“That’s right. And maybe most important of all, it’s just pure fantasy, escapism, and the good guys usually win. You’re not a fan, too, are you?”

“Me? Yuck, no. I saw it once on late-night TV when I was a teenager and it scared the shit out of me. I don’t like scary movies, and I get scared even at the old ones, before they could do all the gory special effects. Even when you could see the strings.” She laughed. “I like romantic comedies. Same pure fantasy, though.”

“Maybe you’re right. Shall I get us some glasses?”

“Sure.”

Maria breezed over to the bookshelves that housed Arvo’s video collection and started reading off titles. “You’ve sure got eclectic taste,” she said. “The Maltese Falcon, Doctor Zhivago, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Bridge over the River Kwai, Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh. Jesus Christ. Is there any order to all this?”

“Not really,” said Arvo, taking a couple of champagne flutes out of the cabinet. “I just like movies. There aren’t many that are perfect, like maybe Citizen Kane or Chinatown, but they all have something interesting in them — maybe good acting, some great dialogue, camerawork, whatever. Maybe just one good scene.” He shrugged and removed the wire from the neck of the bottle.

“Even The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant?”

“Has its moments.” Arvo grinned and eased out the cork. “But I’ve got to admit, that one’s a bit of a turkey. There’s a similar movie with Ray Milland and Rosie Grier in it that’s pretty funny, though. Ray Milland plays this racist and he ends up sharing a body with Rosie Grier’s head. Weird.” The cork made a loud pop and champagne foamed around the mouth of the bottle but didn’t spill over.

“I can see you’ve done this before,” Maria said.

“Uh-huh.” Arvo poured the champagne carefully into the flutes. “My mother taught me.”

“Sounds like an interesting mother to have.”

“She was.”

“What did she do?”

“She was a chef.”

“What happened to your parents, Arvo? I know they’re dead, but you never told me how. Auto accident? Plane crash? I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. I understand.”

Arvo was silent for a moment. It was true he had never told Maria or anyone else on the unit what had happened to his parents. Why, he didn’t know. Now, it didn’t seem to matter. Or maybe he wanted Maria to know. The only person in LA who had known was Nyreen, and she was gone now; he had no one else to share it with.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “They were murdered.”

“Both of them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How? Where?”

“Windsor, the Canadian side of the border, where my father taught university. Very ironic, seeing as we lived in Detroit, which is a pretty dangerous city.”

“What happened?”

“As far as anyone knows, they were on their way home from a faculty party, stopped at a red light on Wyandotte, when some kid came running out of a Mac’s Milk store he’d just robbed, jumped in the car and told them to drive. The Ontario Provincial Police found my parents the next morning about ten miles out of town. Both of them had been robbed and shot in the back of the head.”

“My God. I... I don’t know what to say, Arvo.”

“Well, maybe that’s why I don’t usually tell people. It embarrasses them. Anyway, it was over four years ago. I guess I’m as over it as I’ll ever be by now.”

Maria shook her head. “You don’t ever get over something like that.”

“No. That’s true. It does change you forever.”

“Were they ever caught? The kids who did it.”

“Nope. Never. Anyway, I didn’t want to stay in Detroit any more after that — nothing to stay for — so I put in for a transfer. When an opening on this unit came up, I took it like a shot. New life. New world. California, here I came. They were well-insured, and Dad had done pretty well on the stock market, so I inherited enough for the convertible and the down-payment on the house... And that’s about it. Story of my life.”

“And then along came Nyreen,” said Maria.

“It never rains... ”

Arvo put some Billie Holiday on the stereo. It was maybe more suited to bourbon and smoky bars than French champagne in a smoke-free living room, but what the hell. Maria held out her glass. “Here’s to next year,” she said. “And may it be better than the last one.”

“Amen,” said Arvo and clinked glasses. They drank.

“Mmm,” said Maria. “This does taste good.” She sat down on the sofa and Arvo sat in the armchair. “Busy day?” she asked.

“Jack Marillo’s funeral.”

“Was the actress there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Have you fallen in love with her yet?”

Arvo remembered his exchange with Sarah Broughton at the funeral, then he remembered seeing her naked the other morning. He felt himself blush.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Maria said. “I didn’t mean anything.”

Arvo laughed. “No, it’s fine. Really it is. And no, I’m not in love with her. I’m not sure I even like her, and she sure as hell doesn’t seem to like me. She’s scared, so at least she does what I say now, but as for liking... ” He shrugged. “I don’t think she could ever like someone who’s had to make her reveal so much of herself, give up so much of her privacy.”

“Hey. Can’t win ’em all.”

“I’ll drink to that.” For some reason, Arvo didn’t want to tell Maria that he had spent the night at Sarah’s place, albeit alone in an armchair. Or that he had seen her naked. It was crazy, they were colleagues, friends, they’d known each other ever since Maria came to work the unit only a few months after Arvo. Yet there were some things they never talked about.

Over the past three years, they had shared an occasional drink and a problem or two, patched up a few of one another’s bruises, just the kind of things friends do without even knowing much about one another’s taste, without even knowing exactly where one another lived, or so he had thought. There should be another category, Arvo had always thought, between friends and acquaintances, because that surely was where most people in his life belonged.

They had drifted apart when Arvo married Nyreen. Maria hadn’t said anything about it, but then she hadn’t needed to; her silence said it all. For a while, he had resented her for that, resented the idea that a friend should not be as happy as he was about his wedding, and their relationship had cooled. But that was when he had been head over heels in love with Nyreen.

Shortly after he began to realize what a mistake he had made in marrying Nyreen, he heard, through others, that Maria herself was breaking up with the guy she’d lived with for four years, an artist who lived in Venice. Arvo had always thought him a bit of an arrogant asshole on the rare occasions they had met socially. Burdened with his own problems, still pissed at Maria, he hadn’t been there for her. So now there was a lot unsaid, a lot unresolved between them.

“More champagne?” he asked.

“Sure. You mind if I put the TV on? Regular network TV. I just like to watch the Times Square celebrations. It’s a family tradition.”

“Sure.” Arvo flipped on the TV and found the right channel. “My brother lives in New York.”

“Will he be there?”

“Michael? No, too afraid of getting mugged.”

Maria laughed and Arvo went to the fridge to get the champagne. He still felt awkward, on edge.

When he went back she was perched at the edge of the sofa watching people in tuxedos and evening gowns dance to a big band, with her hands folded in her lap. He handed her the glass, and when she took it she looked up to catch his eyes and the next thing he knew he was kissing her on the lips, gently at first, savoring their softness and the scent of champagne on her breath, and then harder, probing with his tongue, intoxicated by her response.

The kiss ended and she stood up close to him. She put her arms around him. “That was nice,” she said. “Why don’t we go in the bedroom?”

“It’s a mess.”

“Good, we’ll make it even messier.”

“The champagne... ?”

“We’ll take it with us.”

“Maria—”

“Sshh.” She put her finger to his lips. “We’ll talk later. Right now, this is what I want to do, no strings, no explanations, and most of all no bullshit.”

Arvo took her hand and led her to the bedroom.

“It’s not a mess,” she said. “At least the bed’s made.”

Arvo laughed. He left the door slightly ajar so they could make out outlines by the light from the other room. They could still hear the television, but he was in no mood to go back and turn it off. They put their champagne flutes on the bedside tables and sat together on the edge of the bed.

Maria turned her face up and Arvo kissed her again, this time running his hand over her bare shoulders, feeling one of the straps slip off. Maria kissed his neck, touching it with her soft warm tongue, and began unbuttoning his shirt. When she had finished, he stretched his arms back and she eased it off. Then she put her hands behind her back and unzipped her dress. The second strap slipped off her shoulder, and the material loosened and fell away from her skin. Arvo cupped one of her breasts in his hands and licked the hard nipple with his tongue. Maria moaned and put her hand at the back of his head, pulling him to her. Her breasts were as firm and smooth as he had imagined.

Soon they were naked and Maria urged him inside her. He felt her muscles tighten against his hardness as they began to move together, slowly at first, then faster.

As they came toward climax, he raised himself on his arms and looked down at her. She grasped the brass bed-rails with both hands and thrust her hips against him, breasts swaying with the rhythm, eyes closed, moisture glistening on her upper lip. Her lips were open but her white teeth were clenched tight.

When he felt he could hold on no longer, she sensed it and opened her eyes, then cried out, a shudder passing through her body. She took her hands from the rails and pulled Arvo onto her so his face was buried in her hair on the pillow. It smelled of apples and cinnamon and it muffled the sounds he made as he came and her nails dug into the skin of his back.

After, they both lay for a while sweating, getting their breath back, then they sat up in bed and reached for the champagne. They toasted in silence. The sound from the TV indicated that the old year was coming to a close.

“So, do you want to talk now?” Maria asked.

If truth be told, Arvo was far too content basking in the warm afterglow for talk, but he sensed that Maria needed the communication. “Sure,” he said.

“If it’s us working together and sleeping together that bothers you,” Maria said, “I can understand that.”

“You can?”

“That’s why I said no strings, no explanations, no bullshit. I mean it, Arvo.”

“But we do work together.”

“It’s not as if we’re partners or anything.”

“But—”

“No, listen up a minute. I’m serious.” She turned on her side and propped her head on her hand. “I came over because I wanted to,” Maria said. “Sure it was a risk. Nobody likes rejection. But I wanted to go to bed with you. Have done for a while. And I thought you might feel the same way.”

“You saying you were only chasing me because of my body?”

“Asshole.” She gave him a playful thump on the shoulder. “Let me finish, will you?”

“Okay.”

“What I don’t want, Arvo, and what I don’t think you’re ready for yet, is a relationship. What we do need, I think, is a little friendly company just like this from time to time.”

“You mean this isn’t a relationship?”

“You know what I mean. We’ve been friends a long time. I know we’ve had some ups and downs, but we’ve still been friends. Sometimes even the best of friends get horny for one another. Acting on that can sometimes ruin a friendship. But you and me, Arvo, we haven’t got anyone else to hurt but ourselves. We’re grown-ups. We can deal with it.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying this is a one-night stand? A wham-bam-thank-you-sir.”

Maria laughed. “No, that’s not what I’m saying, butt-head. But what I am saying is let’s not get hung up on it, okay? I don’t want to live with you or marry you and have your children. I don’t even want to date you. What I do want is for us to go to bed together like this now and then.”

“Can we negotiate maybe dinner once a month?”

“I’ll think about it. But do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And do you agree?”

“Uh-huh. In principle.”

“Shake on it?”

Arvo touched her hair. “I think we can do better than that.” Maria laughed and slid down onto her side, moving closer to him. “My, my, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?” she said. “Hey, listen.”

“What?”

“The countdown.”

And they listened to the crowd count the apple down three thousand miles away and three hours ago in New York City. But after the roaring and the whistling they weren’t paying attention any more. It must have been about a quarter after twelve when the phone rang at a very awkward moment. Maria was closest to it at the time, and before Arvo could make a move, she had picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” she said. “Yes, this is the Hughes residence... What? No, I’m sorry, I’m afraid he can’t speak now. He’s busy. His mouth is otherwise engaged. What? Sure. I’ll tell him. And a Happy New Year to you, too, honey.”

“Why the hell did you do that?” said Arvo.

“Don’t you want to know who it was?”

“It could have been the department.”

“No. They’d beep you. Especially on New Year’s Eve.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“Maria!”

“Okay, okay. It was your ex, that’s who. Little Miss Surfing Bikini.”

“Nyreen?”

“Isn’t it just the kind of thing she’d do, call you up to wish you a Happy New Year?”

“Well, I suppose so. What’d she say?”

Maria laughed. “Not much when she heard my voice. She says to tell you you’re a prick.”

Arvo frowned. “Why would she do that?”

“You really don’t get it, do you? Because she likes to control you, that’s why. It’s all right when she’s running around with someone else and you’re at home alone. But you’re supposed to be suffering, longing for her, mourning the loss of the great love of your life, not having fun.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“She’s jealous.”

Arvo started to grin. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Is there any more champagne?”

“Ah-ah, not yet, mister. You’ve got some unfinished business first.”

“I have? What? Oh, yes, I have.”

Afterward, they finished the champagne, Arvo locked the house up and began to doze off, arm around Maria. He must have actually fallen asleep, because he felt like he’d been brought back from a long way off when he woke to feel Maria shaking him. He opened his eyes and saw the expression of absolute terror on her face.

“Arvo, there’s a fire,” she said, shaking him. “There’s a fire somewhere in the house. I can smell it.”

Arvo couldn’t smell anything, but he rubbed his eyes and got out of bed to check. There was nothing at the front of the house, but now he was beginning to smell smoke, too. The smoke detector started to screech, and when he went into the spare bedroom at the back, he saw the bright orange flames leaping up the walls.

31

Arvo took the Santa Ana freeway all the way to Laguna Canyon. It wasn’t a scenic ride, for the most part, but it was fast. He drove with the top of the convertible open and sang along with Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer.”

It was January 2, and Carl Buxton, ex-drummer of Gary Knox’s band, The Heros, was back from Mexico. Arvo had asked if Buxton were willing to talk about the tour and about Gary Knox, and he had agreed. According to Stan Harvey, Buxton was about the only one of the band with any brain-cells left — enough, anyway, to get out of the rock scene after Gary died and start up a music-geared computer business.

Arvo got the impression that there had been a great deal of craziness around Gary Knox, and as Sarah Broughton had been a part of it for a while, it followed that here was the best place to start looking for her demon lover.

Whether Carl Buxton would remember any more than Sarah did was a moot point. What was the old saying? If you remember the sixties you weren’t there. Well, it hadn’t been the sixties, but rock ’n’ roll was rock ’n’ roll, and the drugs were much the same. Though the music press may have christened Gary the “new Dylan,” Arvo had always thought he had more than a touch of Jim Morrison about him. Which meant madness and mayhem.

Everything depended on how observant Buxton was, or how curious he was about others and their problems. Arvo had met a few rock stars while he had been working with the TMU, and he found them to be egocentric assholes, for the most part.

He glanced down at the map spread on the passenger seat. Just past Irvine, he took El Toro Road into Laguna Hills and wound down to the canyon.

Arvo remembered Laguna Canyon as a beautiful area, scattered with expensive homes, secluded by brush and trees. But he hadn’t been there since the fires, and he wasn’t prepared for the devastation he saw this time.

The steep, majestic hills that rose from the coast were reduced to brown scrub, with no vegetation left, and some areas had even been charred black by the intensity of the fires that had swept down into the canyons, fanned by the hot, dry Santa Ana winds. Here and there, twisted, blackened trees held up their gnarled branches like shaking fists against a bright blue sky.

Close to Buxton’s house, Arvo stopped by a “Restricted Access’ area out of curiosity, left the car and wandered in, under the chain fence. It had once been a street of homes. Now all that remained were the foundations, the stone gateways and paths, brick fireplaces and chimneys. Walls, furniture and possessions had all been consumed by the fires.

Arvo walked up some steps through pink stucco gateposts to what was once the first floor of one house; now it was nothing more than a concrete foundation open to the elements. He wandered back into the barren garden; there, amid the blackened debris, a dead starling floated in a Jacuzzi full of stagnant water.

It could have been his house on New Year’s Eve, he realized, if Maria hadn’t had such an innate terror of fire that she had smelled it before it really took hold.

Arvo had gone out with the extinguisher and put out the fire easily enough, then found a bundle of charred rags by the back wall under the spare bedroom window. He had spent the rest of the night with the firefighters and arson investigators — discovering only what he knew already: that the fire had been deliberately set, and that it had started from a pile of gasoline-soaked rags. An amateur job, the fire department investigator said.

Some consolation.

Up in Laguna Canyon, Arvo noticed as he walked away, the real-estate agents had already put up signs on the burned-out properties. Soon, the ground would be cleared, new houses built, new vegetation planted, and the cycle would continue.

On one of those whims God is famous for, Carl Buxton’s house had been spared. Hugging the ground not more than fifty yards away, across the street, it was a small English Tudor-style place with high-pitched gables, half-timbering, a tall chimney and casement windows of leaded glass. It reminded Arvo of illustrations he had seen in the fairy-tale books his father had kept from his childhood, more so because it was partially shrouded in shrubbery and trees.

He pulled up beside a white Mercedes convertible in the broad driveway. As he was admiring the car, the front door of the house — all oak and stained glass — opened and a tall, thin man in ice-blue jeans and a salmon-pink shirt walked out to greet him.

“Like it?” he asked, referring to the car with obvious pride in ownership.

Arvo nodded. “Very much.”

“Had it shipped all the way from Deutschland. Cost a packet. Hi, I’m Carl Buxton.” He stuck his hand out and smiled. “You must be the cop. Come in.”

Instead of the typical rock-star look Arvo had expected, Buxton had a baby face, pink lips, puckered like a cherub’s in a Renaissance fresco, glaucous eyes and straight blond hair, with spiky bangs, just about covering his ears at the sides and reaching his shirt collar at the back. Arvo figured he must be in his late thirties, but he looked about twelve.

Arvo introduced himself.

“Arvo?” Buxton echoed. “After the composer?”

Arvo shook his head. “I don’t know. What composer? It was my mother’s choice. She was Estonian.”

“Yeah, man, like the composer. Arvo Pärt. Pronounced ‘Pert.’ Does really contemporary stuff, a bit of minimalism, some of that Gorecki-style religious music, a lot of solemn repetitions. Goes on a bit but I find it nice and relaxing sometimes. Man, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of him.”

“Maybe the next time I feel like a bit of relaxation... ”

But Buxton had already turned his back to lead the way. Arvo followed him through the house, getting quick impressions of a lot of dark wood panelling and antique furniture, and blurred glimpses of framed sixties rock posters on the walls: the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Big Brother and the Holding Company. His favorite kind of music.

They ended up out back, where open french windows led out to a wooden deck that smelled of cedar. Music played softly upstairs: early Eagles, “Take It Easy.” Bougainvillaea edged the neat lawn, tiny white flowers buried deep in the red bracts. Yellow, purple and pink plants Arvo couldn’t name hung from the trelliswork that covered the patio and created a pleasant area of shade. Birds skittered and sang in the jacarandas. There were rose bushes, too: red, yellow and white.

“Nice,” said Arvo.

“Yeah. The gardener does a good job.” Buxton gestured toward a wicker chair. “Take a pew.”

Arvo sat.

“Drink?”

“Iced tea?”

“No problemo.”

Buxton disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Arvo to inspect the oddly shaped cacti in pots arranged all around the deck.

“Interesting,” he said when Buxton returned with the drinks. “I was expecting a woodland recording studio or something.”

Buxton smiled as he sat opposite Arvo and stretched out his long legs. He was drinking Old Milwaukee from a can. Arvo sipped his iced tea. It came complete with ice and a twist of lemon. “Are you still in the business?” he asked.

“I do some studio work,” Buxton said. “Just to keep my hand in. But it’s more of a hobby, really.” He fiddled with a pack of Camel Lights and lit up. There were several butts already in the shell ashtray on the low wooden table. He blew smoke out through his nose. “So, you want to know about that prick Gary Knox, do you?” he asked.

“I’d like your impressions of the tour and the people involved. We can start with Gary, if that’s okay?”

“Fine with me, man. Gary snorted and swallowed everything he could get his hands on. I mean everything. Christ, he wasn’t even that fussy. He’d shove it up his arse if he thought it would get him high.”

Arvo had a sudden and unpleasant memory of what had been done to John Heimar. “How long had you known Knox?” he asked.

“I didn’t know him, really. Jim Lasardi, the bass player, is an old mate of mine. We go way back. The last drummer quit before the tour to go into detox, and they were stuck for a replacement, so Jim gave me a call. I’d already semi-retired, but I needed the money.” He shrugged.

Arvo looked around. “Not any more,” he said.

“No,” Buxton agreed. “Not any more. But believe me, I earned every fucking cent.”

“So that last tour was the only one you did with Gary Knox?”

“Yes, thank God.”

Arvo took his notebook out of his pocket and rested it on his thigh. “It’s that tour I wanted to talk to you about, really,” he said. “I’ve heard a few rumours that it was pretty wild. That true?”

Buxton put his feet up on the edge of the table, ankles crossed, and relaxed in the wicker chair. “Wild is an understatement,” he said. “But while you’ve got your notebook out, I’d like to make it clear that I never have, don’t now, and didn’t then, do any drugs other than the legal ones.”

Arvo grinned. “Those being?”

Buxton held out the cigarette and can. “Tobacco and alcohol, man. That’s all. And I’m not even much of a drinker.”

“This isn’t about drugs, Mr. Buxton.”

“Carl, please. No? What is it about, then?”

“I’m sorry I can’t give you any details right now, but you’ve got nothing to worry about. All I want is information.”

Arvo heard a sound behind him and turned to see a woman leaning against the door frame, one hip cocked. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she wore high cut-off denim shorts and a white shirt knotted under her jutting breasts. Her smooth, ridged belly was nicely tanned. Prime California girl, Arvo thought. The type they write songs about. Like Nyreen.

“Oh, sorry, honey,” she said to Buxton. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

“That’s okay. This is Mr. Hughes. He’s come to talk about Gary Knox.”

“Oh.”

“I hadn’t met Bella then,” Buxton explained. “She never knew Gary.”

Bella didn’t look as if she had even been born then, Arvo thought. But he knew he was being uncharitable; she was probably at least eighteen. She had a dreamy look in her eyes that Arvo was willing to bet wasn’t caused by either alcohol or tobacco.

“You guys need anything?” she asked.

“No, love, we’re fine right now,” said Buxton.

“Okay.” She waved her hands about a bit then chewed on a loose strand of hair. “I’ll just... you know... be... then... ” She shrugged, turned and walked away with the kind of exaggerated rear motion a man rarely sees in this day and age. Only the flip-flopping of her sandals on the parquet floor spoiled the effect. Arvo noticed Buxton gazing proprietorially after her. He caught Arvo’s eye and stubbed out his cigarette. “My wife.”

“Very nice,” Arvo said. It seemed the proper response, like the one he had made to the Mercedes and the garden. “How long have you been married?”

“About six months.” Buxton smiled. “I suppose you could say we’re still on our honeymoon.”

“Congratulations.” Again Arvo thought of Nyreen. Their honeymoon hadn’t lasted that long. He hadn’t heard from her since the New Year’s Eve phone call Maria had answered. “About the tour... ?” he prompted.

Buxton shifted in his chair and recrossed his ankles. “Oh, yeah, the tour. Well, it was certainly a marathon. I can’t even remember how many gigs we did, but it seemed as if we had to play every hick town in the country. Mostly outdoor stadiums, festivals, that sort of thing. It was one hell of a hot summer, too. I mean, the whole thing was grueling, man. Have you ever had to do anything like that? Spend so much time with the same group of people you practically end up going to the toilet to take a piss together? Well I’ll tell you one thing: it soon makes you a hell of a lot less tolerant of your fellow man.”

“I heard it really creates strong bonds, too,” Arvo said. “Like soldiers in the trenches, or the jungle.”

“Were you in Vietnam?”

Arvo shook his head. “Nope. Too young.” And he had been too young. Just. He often wondered what he would have done: gone to Vietnam, or headed for Canada. The latter would have been easy enough, seeing as they lived so near the border, and his father had plenty of colleagues at the university who took draft dodgers over in the trunks of their cars. His mother and father were against the war; they would have supported him if he had burned his draft card. What haunted him about it all now was that he would never know; he hadn’t been put to the test, forced to make the choice.

“Well, quite frankly,” Buxton went on, “let me tell you that bonding stuff’s a right load of nonsense, man. It’s just a load of patriotic crap. All that being cooped up like that together for a long time does is show you what stupid fools most people are when you get right down to it.”

“It does? That’s an interesting point of view.” Arvo had a feeling that, to Carl Buxton, most of the world consisted of stupid fools who didn’t recognize or appreciate his genius. “I haven’t heard it put quite like that before,” Arvo went on. “How many of you were there?”

Buxton crushed his empty beer can and dropped it on the table. “Hard to say. It varied. There were four of us in the band, then there was Gary, the road crew, manager, assorted groupies and hangers on.” He shrugged.

“So it really was as crazy as people say?”

“Yeah. You’ve got to be really together to stay sane through a tour like that. I mean, I’m a professional musician. I’ve been on heavy-duty tours before — been there, man, and bought the T-shirt — and that one was tough even for me. It helps if you’re fit, too, you know. A lot of people don’t realize that. They think we’re all just pill-popping, booze-swilling degenerates. I’ll tell you something for free: Mick wouldn’t still be up there performing the way he does at his age if he didn’t work out, man. No way. Think about it.

“Anyway, I worked out whenever I got the chance. You know, hotel gyms and pools, weight rooms. But there just wasn’t enough time. Never is. Soundchecks. Rehearsals. Hassles. Too much junk food. Not enough sleep. Then there was all the stress of doing one show, two shows, a night. All the craziness around you. Egos. Tantrums.” He glanced toward the french doors and lowered his voice. “And sometimes there’s a groupie you want to spend the night with, you know. I’m only human. I mean, you just can’t know what that’s like, you can’t possibly imagine it, if you haven’t been there.” He shook his head slowly in recollection, then grinned. “But that was all BB. Before Bella.”

“Gary was hanging out with Sarah Broughton, then, wasn’t he? Can you tell me anything about her?”

“Sarah Broughton?” Buxton frowned. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Threw me for a moment there, man. You mean Sally. Sally Bolton. At least that’s what she called herself then. I see her on television sometimes. Some cop show. She a friend of yours?”

“No,” said Arvo. “I’m a real cop.” And he smiled to take the sting out of it.

Buxton laughed. “Right. Sorry. Reason I was asking is she was just as crazy as he was.” He looked over his shoulder again to make sure Bella wasn’t around, and whispered, “I fucked her myself once. And do you know what? I don’t think she even remembered doing it. Pretty crazy, huh?”

Arvo nodded, wondering if there might be a good reason why getting fucked by Carl Buxton was so unmemorable. “Pretty crazy,” he agreed. “What was their relationship like?”

Buxton frowned. “Hard to say. They were stoned most of the time. I mean, you can’t really have a relationship if you’re stoned all the time, can you? Your relationship’s with the drugs then, not with another human being. Toward the end, though, they just seemed to kind of drift apart. Know what I mean?”

Arvo nodded. “Was there someone else?”

Buxton laughed. It was a harsh, unpleasant sound, something like a bark. “There was always someone else for Gary, man. When he could get it up, that is.”

“What about Sar — Sally?”

“Nah. She was so spaced out by the time we hit the west coast anyone could just toss her on a mattress and fuck her like she was an inflatable doll or something, and she wouldn’t know the difference. She would give you about as much response, too. It’s funny, I watch her these days, you know, on television, and she looks like she’s got class. I find it hard to believe it’s the same person. She must have got her shit together, man. You’ve got to give her a lot of credit for that.”

Nice of you, you arrogant, self-serving little prick, thought Arvo.

“Yeah,” Buxton went on, “it’s kind of hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you’re that far down. I know, man. I’ve been there.” He pointed his thumb at his chest.

Arvo wasn’t in the least bit interested in sifting through the dregs of Buxton’s experience. “So things degenerated as the tour progressed?” he said.

“You could say that.”

“Any idea why?”

Buxton lit another Camel and let the first lungful of smoke trickle out before speaking. “Gary was a weird motherfucker to start with,” he announced finally. “The drugs just made him weirder, more distant, more reckless. Have you ever seen that movie, The Doors?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was like that. You know, walking on ledges of high buildings waving his dick at the night and spouting poetry. Dylan Thomas. Walt Whitman. Allen Ginsberg.” He shook his head and took another drag on the cigarette. “I don’t know what his personal demons were, man, but they sure had him by the short-and-curlies by the time we got out to the coast.”

“How did Sally react to all this?”

“I’ve already told you, man. She was a fucking zombie by then. The tour mattress.”

“She didn’t care that he had other women?”

Buxton waved his cigarette in the air. “Women, men, it didn’t matter to Gary then. Maybe even children and small, furry animals, too, who knows? By the time we got to LA, we’d picked up so many hangers-on it was like London Zoo.”

“What kind of people were they?”

“What kind of people were they? I’ll tell you what kind of people they were. They were psychos, schizos, zombies, freaks, paranoids, pseuds, drunks, junkies, crazies of all descriptions. By the time we hit Fresno, we had two Napoleons and at least three Jesus Christs hanging around the fringes. Maybe I exaggerate a little, man, but you get my point? Gary attracted them. Shit, he even went out and picked them up off the streets and brought them back to the hotel and the concerts. Winos, street people. He was on a Jack Kerouac kick about the holiness of bums.”

“Why?”

“Who knows why? Because he was crazy himself and he felt right at home in their company. I don’t know.”

Arvo was beginning to feel overwhelmed. He had suspected that things had been chaotic on the tour, but not this bad. “Look, I’m kind of interested in the cast of characters,” he said. “Could you describe some of them a bit for me? Maybe even give me a couple of names to follow up. Was there anyone in particular, anyone who really stands out in your memory, maybe as being a little creepy. Or someone who might even appear normal enough but still gave you an odd feeling?”

Buxton frowned for a moment, opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, then leaned over and stubbed out his cigarette. “Well,” he said, “now that you mention it, you know, there was one guy in particular.” Arvo sipped his iced tea and watched a little Oregon junco with its hangman’s hood and dapper gray breast flitting between the branches of a jacaranda tree.

“This guy was really strange,” Buxton went on. “He gave me the willies, man. I know I told you there was a lot of craziness around the tour, but most of it wasn’t serious craziness. I mean, a guy who thinks he’s Jesus is crazy, sure, but he’s also pretty harmless. But the bloke I’m talking about was different.” Buxton shook his head slowly. “Scary.”

A breeze ruffled the rose bushes. A starling hopped over the lawn looking for crumbs. The music had stopped, and it was quiet in the garden apart from the birds and the hiss of a distant sprinkler. Occasionally Arvo heard a car passing or a siren in the distance.

“Where did you meet this guy?” he asked.

“Frisco. We had three concerts there in four days. The second night, a group of us went out on the town. I’d had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar, the others had done a few lines of coke, and we were in a mood for some fun. It was one of those nights when everything seemed fine. One of the good nights. Do you know what I mean?”

Arvo nodded. “Go on.”

“We went to North Beach because Gary had this thing about the Beats. Like I said, he used to quote poetry when he was really flying. So he had this idea he had to go to City Lights Bookstore and meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Apparently this is the geezer who owns the place. He’s a poet and he’s been around for years.

“As it turned out, this Ferlinghetti wasn’t there — which is probably just as well, because we were getting a few funny looks by then — so we cruised some of the strip bars and topless joints around Columbus and Broadway. We had a few more drinks, then we ended up back in this bar called Vesuvio’s, where the Beats used to hang out, so Gary told us, right next to the bookshop. Needless to say, Gary really liked it and managed to calm down enough not to get us all thrown out. And then we met him.

“He was with a group of about three or four others. I can’t remember all the details clearly because by this time I’d had a few beers myself. He’s medium height, about five-eight, pretty muscular but nothing special — I mean, not like Schwarzenegger or anything — tattoos on his arms, likes to dress in black, and he has a dyed blond brush-cut and these really piercing light blue eyes.”

“Do you remember anything about the tattoos?”

“I don’t know much about tattooing. It’s just one of those things I never got into. But they looked quite intricate, you know, really professional. I think there was an eagle, or some kind of bird of prey, on one arm, and the other was a red flower, maybe a rose.”

“Any names on them?”

“No. Not that I recall.”

“What was his name?”

“Mitch.”

“His second name?”

“Dunno. It never came up.”

“Know where he lived?”

“No, but someone said he used to work in one of the North Beach strip-joints as a bouncer and he’d just got fired. I don’t know which joint.”

“Okay. Go on with your story.”

“Anyway, he recognizes Gary and comes over, says he’s a poet and a singer-songwriter and asks if he and his friends can join us. Gary says he can if he recites one of his poems. Like, that’s the price of admission to our little clique. Typical fucking Gary. So he does. I don’t know if it was any good or not, but Gary said he liked it and invited him and his group to join us. Mitch was with his brother, this other guy called Ivan, and a couple of girls. One thing led to another and we went back to the hotel. Gary fucked one of the girls and somehow they just didn’t go away, they became part of the entourage.”

At this point, Bella appeared in the French windows looking bored silly. Her body seemed to be vibrating rhythmically, as if it had a motor inside. She was holding a long strand of hair, pulling it forward from the ponytail and sucking on it with one corner of her mouth. “You guys need anything else?” she asked in a baby-doll voice.

Buxton glanced at Arvo and raised his eyebrows in question.

“Sure,” said Arvo. “I’ll have another iced tea, please.”

“And another beer for me, sweetheart,” Buxton said.

Now she had a purpose in life, Bella swayed back inside. Buxton gave Arvo a look as if to say, “Women.” The fridge door rattled when it opened, then banged shut. Bella delivered the drinks and stood around for a moment, as if unsure what to do. Buxton patted her rear. “Leave it for a while, love. Man talk.”

“Sure, honey.” She smiled and gave a little wave as she left. “You won’t be too long?”

“Course not, sweetie.”

Bella sashayed back through the French windows. Buxton pulled the tab on his beer, then Arvo asked what Mitch was like.

Buxton wiped foam from his lips. “He was a cool customer,” he said. “I mean cool in the sense of being cold. You got no real sense of warmth from him, no feeling. He was pretty quiet at first. You know, the kind who sits back and observes, tries to figure out all the angles. I got the impression that he was trying to learn how to behave in order to be accepted by us, to please Gary in particular. It was a spooky feeling, as if all his behavior was planned. They say psychos are like that, don’t they?”

“Can you give me an example?” Arvo asked.

“Let me think... Yeah... Like I don’t think he had a sense of humor, but he figured out pretty sharpish that people wouldn’t like him if he didn’t, so he created one to order. If he laughed, you sensed that he wasn’t really amused, that he just thought it was appropriate to laugh or people would think he was odd and wouldn’t like him. Do you know what I mean? Never trust anyone without a sense of humor, man. That’s my philosophy.”

“Absolutely. Can you tell me anything else about him?”

“He was really good at finding drugs. We hit a new town, he’d score whatever you wanted — whatever Gary wanted — in minutes, man. And he liked to play headgames.”

“What kind of headgames?”

“He liked to try and scare people, fuck with their minds. He had that look, for a start, with the eyes and all — you know, like Charlie Manson — and he also had an aura about him that made me feel someone had stepped on my grave every time he walked in the room. He carried a flick-knife, too. What do you guys over here call it? A switchblade, that’s it. Not that I ever saw him use it except to clean his fingernails, mind you. But he made sure you knew he had it.

“Anyway, he was obsessive, man. If he got into something with you, he just wouldn’t let go. If he got you to tell him something about your past, some little incident you were maybe ashamed of, he’d just keep digging and poking until he’d squeezed every detail out of you, every ounce of shame. He liked to humiliate people. Once he made eye contact, he wouldn’t let go until he’d got what he wanted. We got to calling him Gary’s pet pitbull. A pitbull of the mind. Once he got his teeth in your psyche... ” Buxton gave a theatrical shudder.

“What about his friends, his brother?”

“They seemed normal enough, though God knows what they were doing hanging around with him. Ivan and Mitch’s brother were both very quiet. I don’t remember getting a word out of either of them. The brother used to follow him around like a pet dog. The girls liked to fuck a lot.” He lowered his voice again. “One of them gave great head. Candi, I think. The other was called Aspen. I ask you, what kind of a name is that? Who in their right mind would name their kid after a fucking ski resort? Anyway, they were all, like, around, you know, but Mitch was clearly the leader. He was the one people remembered.”

Rock music started playing from inside again. Louder, this time, and a little more rebellious: Guns N’ Roses. Buxton didn’t react to it at all. Arvo sipped some iced tea, then asked, “What other kind of games did Mitch play?”

“He liked to tell elaborate lies. He used to talk about how he wasted someone out in the desert once, or how he’d played in a rock ’n’ roll band, even made a record once. He even said he’d seen the President coming out of a brothel in Reno. Lies. Gary loved that sort of shit, lapped it up. You’d never think such a miserable cynic as him could be so gullible, but he was.”

“Could any of the stories have been true?”

“I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think so. Whenever you asked him to elaborate, he got all vague about the details. You know, like the record had been deleted and you couldn’t find a copy anywhere. That kind of bullshit. To be honest, man, I didn’t really care whether they were true or not. Mostly I just tried to avoid being around him, but that wasn’t always possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was always there, always on the fringes. Because Gary liked him.”

“He didn’t scare Gary?”

“Not at all. But then Gary didn’t always see things the way normal people do, if you catch my drift. Nobody scared Gary. He could fuck minds with the best of them.”

“Was Mitch ever violent in your presence?”

“Yeah. It could come on all of a sudden. Like, it would just erupt. He ended up being a sort of unofficial bodyguard for Gary and Sal. For all of us, really, whether we wanted him or not.”

“What sort of violent things did he do?”

Buxton thought for a moment. “I saw him hit a few people, usually people who were being obnoxious or pushy. He generally did it very quickly, and they didn’t get a chance to hit back. He was strong and he seemed to have a kind of quick reaction speed... I don’t know... it’s as if he’d studied unarmed combat or some of that martial arts stuff, or maybe been in the Marines.”

“Did he ever say anything about being in the armed forces?”

“Nope. And if you were too young for Vietnam, Mitch certainly was. I’d say he was about thirty, tops.”

He could still have been in the forces, Arvo thought, and if he had been, he might be easier to track down. True, there was no longer a draft, but anyone could sign up. There had certainly been more than enough wars since Vietnam. The Gulf, for example. On the other hand, you could learn martial arts just about anywhere these days. “Are there any specific incidents you can tell me about?” he asked.

Buxton thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Yeah, there was one time. And it tells you a lot about the guy, now I come to think about it. But why are you so interested in him? You haven’t really told me what this is all about.”

“There’s been some threats of violence, that’s all, and we think it might be connected to someone who was on the tour.”

Buxton snorted. “Well if it’s threats of violence you’re interested in, Mitch is your man. Who’s he been threatening? Can’t be Gary. He’s dead.”

“I can’t really say any more than that. Will you tell me about the incident?”

Buxton sulked for a moment, then sipped some beer, lit another Camel and recrossed his legs, ankles resting on the table. “Yeah. Okay. We were in this hotel bar in Santa Barbara, a few of us sitting around shooting the shit before a concert. Out of the blue, Mitch asks if anyone has a postage stamp and Jim — that’s Jim Lasardi, the bass player I mentioned before — says, “Why, Mitch, do you want to write your autobiography?” It was just a meaningless sort of joke, really, because we don’t know anything about the guy, right? Well, everyone laughs but Mitch. His face sort of twitches in a cold smile, which is definitely not sincere by any stretch of the imagination, and he changes the subject, or someone else does.

“Then Mitch gets all sulky. He says he doesn’t want to go to the concert that night, so we go and play, and when we come back to the hotel after the show for a few drinks, all a bit wired, he’s, like, still sitting there in the same chair in the bar. It’s the only time I ever saw him close to being drunk. He must have drunk a whole bottle of bourbon and he was still in control.

“Anyway, he starts going on about all the things he’s done in his life, like how he’s worked down the mines, picked grapes with the wetbacks in Napa and Sonoma, written songs for a famous band whose name he can’t remember, driven a cab in Frisco, published his poems, traveled around South America with nothing but a few dollars in his pocket... You get the message? He goes on and on and on, and nobody really knows why he’s telling us all this, or even whether he’s putting us on. But there’s something in his tone that makes us keep quiet and listen till he’s finished.

“Then he says something about people making a joke out of his life, belittling what he’s done, and suddenly we all know what this is about. Uh-oh. This guy has been sitting brooding about Jim’s stupid joke all night. All fucking night. Can you believe it? So Jim says something to ease the tension, like he didn’t mean anything by it, but Mitch isn’t hearing by now, and he just reaches over, really fast, pulls Jim by the collar and hits him right on the bridge of the nose. Blood everywhere. Jim’s nose is broken. Next thing, the hotel manager comes over and throws a fit and Mitch decks him as well. One punch to the side of the jaw and he’s out.”

“What happened?”

“Gary smoothed things over.”

“And did Gary let him stay around after that?”

“Gary said he had a word with him and, to be fair, Mitch never did anything like that again. But things didn’t feel the same any more. We all gave him an even wider berth. You have to understand, though, that Mitch would do anything for Gary. Anything. He loved the guy, hero-worshipped him. And Gary’s ego was never so well stroked it couldn’t do with a bit more.”

“What about Sally?”

“He was very protective about her. Very courteous. A real gentleman. Funny that, isn’t it?”

“Did he ever come on to her?”

“Not that I know of. It wasn’t like that. Everyone else treated her like a tart, but Mitch treated her like gold. He opened doors for her, that kind of shit. He even used to have pet nicknames for her.”

The hairs on the back of Arvo’s neck prickled. “Like what?”

“Oh, just cute stuff, you know. He’d call her ‘The Lady,’ for example. ‘The Lady’s carriage awaits,’ he’d say when the limo arrived. Or ‘Princess.’ ‘Little Star.’ Names like that. Look, if Sally’s been getting threats, they’re not from Mitch. He worshipped the ground she walked on.”

But Arvo was no longer listening. He put his glass down and sat up.

“Do you know where he went after the tour ended?” he asked.

“Haven’t a clue, man.”

“Mind if I use your phone?”

“No,” said Buxton, looking puzzled. “Not at all. No, don’t get up. Stay where you are. I’ll get Bella to bring it out to you. Bella!”

32

Stuart and Sarah ate a hurried lunch at a table opposite Brentano’s in the open plaza of the Century City Shopping Center. Sarah nibbled at a corned beef on rye she’d got from the deli and Stuart sucked at his Diet Coke and tucked into a Johnny Rocket burger with the works.

Sarah was still in her Anita O’Rourke costume from the morning’s shooting — this time a navy-blue business suit over a pearl silk blouse — and one or two shoppers stared and whispered as they walked by, recognizing her.

It was almost three o’clock and the lunch hordes had gone by then. When she was filming, Sarah often didn’t get a lunch break until two or three. Today, Stuart had taken pity on her and brought her here just to get her out of the gloomy studio atmosphere for an hour or so. At least that was what he told her. She knew Stuart well enough to know he had another agenda, too.

It had been a tough morning’s filming, especially given the mood on the set over Jack’s murder. The director wanted to do a few fill-in scenes and solo Anita scenes — the female cop at home feeding her cat, eating her breakfast and so on — basically just about anything he could get away with shooting without Jack.

The whole affair gave Sarah the feeling that the network was some sort of gigantic perpetual motion machine and, whatever happened, it must not be allowed to wind down. Sarah had found it difficult to concentrate and felt annoyed with herself because they had to do simple scenes over and over again. Usually she prided herself on her professionalism, but today she’d been like some kid fresh out of drama school. Worse, a high-school play.

Between mouthfuls, Stuart was telling her about the morning’s meeting he had attended, but she found her attention wandering. Even in public, in broad daylight, she felt jumpy. She kept wondering if the dark figures she saw coming toward her out of the corners of her eyes meant to do her harm, if one of them might be him. It was hardly paranoia, she assured herself — someone really was after her — but somehow the thought didn’t offer much comfort.

She had slept badly, hearing noises in the dark, worrying that the killer would find her there and kill Stuart like he had killed Jack. She even worried again for a moment that it might be Stuart and that he was lulling her into a false sense of security before the kill. Of course, that thought made her feel guilty.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

“Pardon? Oh, sorry, I was miles away. Forgive me?”

“Sure. Just try not to brood on it, huh? It won’t do any good. Let the cops handle it. It’s what they do.”

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to help but worry. But please go on. I promise I’ll listen.”

“I was only talking about your future, that’s all. And mine. Hell, maybe even the fucking network’s future.”

Sarah smiled. “Oh, so it’s nothing very important then.”

“Right. Well, the main thing is they’re not giving the show the ax just yet. We’ve got a few episodes in the can, and then there’s reruns we can always throw in for a few weeks. Come February and March nobody notices anyway. Half the country’s covered with snow and ice and shit like that. People watch anything just to avoid looking out their windows.”

“And Jack?”

“We’ve got to find a replacement. Sooner the better. You know the network. They want someone new in before the fucking ashes have settled in Jack’s urn. Shit, I’m sorry, honey.” He ran his hand over his silvery hair. “I can be an insensitive bastard sometimes. Maybe the pressure’s getting to me. Anyway, they know that it’ll take time if we want to get it right. And it’s got to be right. That’s why they’ve given me a week.”

“A week? To find a replacement for Jack?”

“Yup. Can you believe it? And you’ve got to help, too. You and Jack had a special kind of chemistry, and I don’t think we should even try to duplicate that, but it’s got to be someone you can work with. I mean, it has to be someone you have some sort of rapport with. You’ve got to meet some of the possibilities. Maybe dinner, cocktails, whatever. I’m sorry.”

Sarah nodded, pale. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. And in the meantime? How do they explain Jack’s absence?”

Stuart paused to glance around, then slurped some Diet Coke through a plastic straw, leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Remember that scene you did when you both entered that suspect’s apartment in the dark and someone fired a shot? The cliffhanger they were saving for later in the season?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how Jack gets killed on screen.”

Sarah pushed her paper plate away. “But that’s sick.”

“No. That’s network television, honey. I don’t mean to sound hard here, but a lot of people have got a lot of money invested in Good Cop, Bad Cop. And it’s not just this season, either. Sure, we could hobble through that, even without a replacement. But what about next year? The year after? We’re talking about a high-rated show here. Real high. And the challenge is to keep pushing up the ratings without Jack. Sad as Jack’s death is to them, it’s not as sad as losing their jobs or their Bel Air homes. Not as sad as losing the beach house, either, or finding yourself out of work. Think about it.”

“You can’t mean that. You know I’d give up the beach house if I thought it would bring Jack back.”

“That’s exactly my point. Though I’m not sure that asshole Dean Conners would give up his new Saab, or that bimbo he’s got stashed away down in Carlsbad, even if it would bring Jesus Christ back. What I mean is, nothing’s going to bring Jack back, but the rest of us have to go on. The wheels continue to grind exceeding hard here. We don’t just want a one-season wonder. You’re either on the bus or you’re off it, Sarah. Bottom line is we find someone you can work with real quick, or they can write you out, too, and start over. I’m sorry to be the guy putting the pressure on, especially with all the other shit that’s going down right now. But it was either me or Ollie the Producer from Hell. I kind of volunteered.” He grinned.

Sarah smiled and patted his hand. “Thanks, Stuart. I appreciate that. And I do understand what you’re talking about. I’m not that naïve. It’s just that to have him murdered on television the same as in real life doesn’t seem right. It seems sort of cynical, sick, disrespectful.”

“I hear what you’re saying, and you’re probably right, but that’s the way it’s going to go down no matter what you or I think. Makes sense in a way. I mean, cops do get shot on the job.”

A young man in shorts and a UCLA sweatshirt approached the table and Sarah tensed, ready to run if he came up to her.

At first, it looked as if the kid was going to pass right by, then he made a sudden movement toward them. Before Sarah had even scraped her chair back, a figure seemed to appear from nowhere, grab the kid from behind and throw him to the ground. Shoppers and tourists scattered as if a bomb had been thrown among them. People at the cafés screamed and hid behind tables. Sarah and Stuart stood up and moved away.

The kid in the sweatshirt lay on his stomach, the other man standing with one foot between his shoulder blades, holding a gun on him and talking on a radio handset. He was only medium height, but muscular, fit-looking, blond-haired.

“Hey, man!” the kid protested. “You’re hurting me. I only came to get her autograph, tell her how sorry I was about what happened to her partner. That ain’t no crime, is it?”

“Shut up,” the other said, increasing the pressure on his foot so the kid screamed. “Just shut the fuck up.”

Within moments, two security guards from the mall had arrived on the scene and the kid was being dragged away.

Stuart took Sarah’s arm. She was shaking. “Come on, honey,” he said. “I’d better get you back to work.”

“What happened?” Sarah asked, in a daze, allowing Stuart to lead her toward the exit. “Was that him?”

“Probably not. Like he said, just a kid after an autograph.”

“Who was the other man?”

“That was Zak, our bodyguard.”

“I’m glad he’s on our side.” Sarah felt a little dizzy, and her heart was beating fast. “I’m okay,” she said to Stuart, disengaging her arm. “Just a bit shaken, that’s all. If people keep treating my fans that way, I won’t have any left before long.”

33

Not much more than an hour after Arvo left a balmy late afternoon in Orange County, he arrived in a chilly, foggy San Francisco. He picked up his gun from airport security and headed for the cab stand.

The area around the airport was clear enough, if you didn’t count the dirty rags of cloud in the darkening sky, but fog loomed ahead over San Bruno Mountain as the cab sped along the Bayshore Freeway, past the still gray water around Candlestick Park, jutting out to the east.

Arvo had called the airport from Carl Buxton’s house and found out the time of the earliest available flight. After that, he had phoned a hotel he knew near Chinatown and booked a room for the night.

He had left a message for Sarah Broughton at the studio, asking her if she could remember anything about a member of Gary Knox’s entourage called Mitch, and leaving the name of his hotel. He had also let the lieutenant know where he was going and why, then he phoned Joe Westinghouse to see if Mitch’s name rang any immediate bells with Robbery-Homicide. It didn’t.

Around Union Square, it seemed to Arvo as if the fog really were some vast sea-wraith that had slid under Golden Gate Bridge and insinuated itself through streets, under doorways, smudging the neons and the streetlights, reducing the city to a few smears of blurred pastel on a gray canvas. It looked like a futuristic, Blade Runner kind of world; all it needed to complete the picture was steam rising from soup-vendors’ pots and people standing around at open counters eating noodles in the mist.

Arvo paid the cabby and checked into the hotel near the Chinatown Arch on Grant Avenue. It was close enough to North Beach. He hadn’t bothered renting a car; he knew from experience that wheels were more of a liability than a blessing in San Francisco. If he got tired climbing the hills, he could always hail a cab or jump on a cable car.

First, Arvo took a quick shower. He wished now that he had taken the time to go home and at least pack a change of clothes; he would stick out like a sore thumb in some of the places he was likely to be visiting tonight. It could have been worse, though, he decided, getting dressed. For his meeting with Carl Buxton he had put on light khaki slacks, a tan button-down shirt and his sport jacket. At least his appearance didn’t scream COP.

When he walked out onto Grant Avenue, he wished he had brought an overcoat, too, or at least a sweater. The fog seemed to have cold, ghostly fingers that pried deep and soon found every weak spot in every bone and muscle in his body.

Beyond the Chinatown Arch, the stores were open. Garish displays of T-shirts, electronics, handicrafts and Oriental gifts spilled out onto the sidewalk. Fog blurred the edges of the neon characters over the stores. Tourists milled around asking themselves if the no-name portable CD-player they bought here at a giveaway price would really work when they got it back to Buckeye, Sawpit or Bullhead City.

He heard the insistent clanging of a cable car as he approached California. Then he saw it glide through the fog across the intersection ahead of him like some special effect from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. San Francisco could get you like that sometimes.

Now and then Arvo fancied he caught a glimpse of workshops through grimy basement windows, sweatshops where people pressed clothes in clouds of steam, or printed local newspapers and flyers. Though the bad old days were long gone, when the area was a poor, cramped ghetto riddled with opium dens, child prostitutes and disease, Chinatown could still seem like an overcrowded warren riddled with connecting passages and rooms beyond rooms, none of them empty.

Arvo turned right at Broadway, which pretty much marked the boundary between Chinatown and North Beach. Carl Buxton had said that Mitch used to be a bouncer in a North Beach strip-joint, so at Broadway and Columbus, Arvo started with the first place he saw. At the intersection, he could hear the regular two-tone droning of the foghorn from the Bay beyond the traffic noise.

Inside the bar, the smoke created the same effect as the fog outside. A top-heavy black woman on the stage moved to some bump-and-grind song Arvo didn’t recognize. It hardly mattered, anyway, as her movements were out of sync and the meager audience was more interested in the flesh she was about to display than anything else. Having no intention of staying in any of these places long enough to catch something, Arvo went straight to the bar to start asking questions.

He struck out in the first three places; staff turnover being what it was, he couldn’t find anyone who had been in the job for more than six months. In the fourth place, he found a waitress who said she’d worked there for two years and thought she recognized his description of Mitch.

After twenty dollars had disappeared down the front of her lacy black panties, which was all she was wearing, he realized he’d been conned. He declined the blow-job, offered for only another twenty, and moved on. He supposed he should have been flattered by the price; he’d heard that the older you are, the more they charge, seeing as it takes you longer to get it up.

At the sixth place, thirsty from walking and talking and breathing so much secondhand smoke, he ordered a beer. What came from the tap would probably have failed any rigorous scientific test, but at least it was fizzy and cold. The bartender knew nothing of Mitch but suggested he ask Martha, the club’s manager. As she happened to be talking to one of the waitresses only a few feet away, Arvo asked her if she would join him.

Martha was a squat, barrel-shaped woman in her early fifties. Her intelligent green eyes gave the impression that what she hadn’t seen wasn’t worth seeing. She had a dark mole beside her nose, with three hairs growing out of it, and a square chin under an almost lipless mouth, as thin and red as a razor slash. Her hair, which was cut short and layered, seemed a natural, healthy chestnut color, though Arvo had been fooled before by the magical properties of chemicals. She wore a light-green cotton blouse tucked into the waist of a brown skirt that fell well below the modesty level.

Martha hoicked her hard, square butt onto a stool and looked ready to listen to yet another hard-luck story she didn’t want to hear. On the stage, a flat-chested, anemic dancer stumbled through the motions with her eyes half closed. Arvo thought he could see needle-marks on the insides of her thighs, but they might have been tiny moles, or a rash of some kind. Diaper rash, maybe, judging by how young she looked.

“Cop,” said Martha. A statement rather than a question.

Arvo nodded and pulled out his badge.

She scrutinized it. “LAPD.”

“That’s right.”

“Long way out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, sonny? I’ll bet you don’t even have any power up here.”

Arvo smiled. “No more than any other citizen, ma’m.”

Martha looked him up and down. “You’ve got the tan,” she said, “and the look, but you still don’t seem one hundred per cent purebred La-La-Land asshole to me.”

“Maybe that’s because I’m from Michigan.”

“That right?”

“Yeah. Detroit. Well, Birmingham, really. It’s a sub—”

“I know where Birmingham is. Know what it is, too. Other side of the tracks.” She pointed to her formidable chest. “Hamtramck. My daddy was a drunk and my mother was a saint. What do you want to know, Mr. Arvo Hughes?”

Arvo smiled and shook the strong, dry hand she held out, then he told her what he knew about Mitch. “Can you help?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “I know Mitch. Mitchell Cameron. Haven’t seen him for a while, but I know him sure enough. One of the meanest sons of bitches I ever had the misfortune to employ.”

Arvo took out his notebook. “When was this?”

“About eighteen months ago. Sometime last summer, anyway.”

“What did he do?”

Martha paused for a moment and asked the bartender for a glass of milk. When she got it, she took a sip, made a sweeping gesture around the club and said, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with this business at all, son, but the last thing you want is trouble. Sure, sometimes you get a customer cuts up a bit rough. When men get all excited they have a way of thinking with their dicks. And believe me, none of them are big enough to hold enough gray matter to understand a simple ‘No.’ So you need a bit of muscle around.” She laughed. “Helps if they’re eunuchs, of course, but hell, most of ’em have taken so many steroids they might as well be.”

Arvo laughed. “How did Mitch fit in?”

“Well, Mitch was different. For a start, he wasn’t so much muscular and threatening physically as he was mentally intimidating. He had killer’s eyes and a scary presence. To put it simply, he scared the shit out of most people and never even had to lift a finger. Not that he couldn’t if he wanted. That was the trouble.”

“He hurt someone?”

“Real bad. Damn nearly killed a guy. Not that it would’ve been any great loss, but like I said, the last thing we want in this business is the place swarming with cops.”

“What happened?”

Martha tossed back the last of her milk, saw Arvo looking puzzled and grinned. “Stomach,” she said, patting her corseted midsection. “Never has been quite what it should be. I blame it on too much borscht when I was a kid. Anyway, why drink the profits? What happened? The usual. Some drunken asshole gets a bit too fond of one of the dancers, and all of a sudden he’s in love. A case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak, if you get my point.” She winked. “Anyway, he’s grabbed the girl and he’s pulling her toward his lap when Mitch goes over. Instead of being Mr. Diplomacy like he should and ushering the guy out with apologies and promises of good times to come, what does Mitch do? He breaks the guy’s arm, is what. Just like that. Where the guy has his arm stretched out, dragging the girl, who’s crying and pulling back, Mitch just puts the arm over his knee like it was a stick of firewood and snaps it. You could hear it crack over the music.”

Arvo shook his head in sympathy.

“And that was just for starters,” Martha went on. “As if that wasn’t enough he hits the guy flush in the face and breaks his nose. Blood all over the place. Then he starts banging the guy’s head on the table.”

“What did you do?”

“Do? Well, luckily for us the guy was playing away from home — some asshole at a weedkiller convention or something — and he didn’t want his wife and kids to know he’d been sniffing around strange pussy. So we got him to the hospital, told them he’d been mugged, and got him taken care of. It wasn’t too hard to dissuade him from bringing the cops in. I got rid of Mitch.”

The music stopped and the dancer took a bow, almost falling off the stage as she did so. Martha pulled a face of disgust at the girl but said nothing. Arvo guessed the poor anemic dancer didn’t have much longer in this job.

Martha laughed.

“What?” Arvo asked.

“Just remembering. The girl, the dancer the asshole was grabbing. I think she and Mitch had a thing going. She kind of liked the attention, anyway. I think it excited her. Mitch was her hero for the night.”

So the girl had been impressed by Mitch’s use of violence. Enough, Arvo wondered, to make him think, as his mind became more unbalanced, that the way to a woman’s heart was to kill for her? “Do you remember her name?” he asked.

“Candi, I think. With an ‘i.’”

Arvo made a note of it. Hadn’t Carl Buxton mentioned a Candi, too? “Would you happen to have her address anywhere?”

Martha shook her head. “Sorry, honey. Candi’s ancient history. She was only with us a couple of weeks, as I remember, and we never did get around to the paperwork.”

“How did Mitch react to being fired?” Arvo asked.

“Pretty well. Admitted he got out of line. Begged for another chance, of course. Who doesn’t? When he saw he wasn’t going to get it, he said he’d got a better job lined up anyway and then he up and left.”

“Was there a job?”

“Search me.”

“Did he make any threats of revenge?”

“Nope.”

“And there were no unusual incidents afterwards?”

“No.”

“Do you know anything about him?” Arvo asked. “His private life, his background? That sort of thing.”

Martha shook her head. “Sorry. I never socialize with the hired help.”

“Do you know if he’d ever been in trouble with the police?”

“I’d say he’d be hard-pressed not to have been, wouldn’t you? But I can’t say for certain. He sure as hell didn’t put it in his résumé.”

“What about a mental institution?”

She shook her head. “He always seemed in control to me, even when he broke the guy’s arm. Cool as anything. But I suppose there are all kinds of mental illness. He was very manipulative, but that’s hardly a mental illness, is it, or most of our politicians would be in the crazy house.” She shook her head. “Again, I can’t say I know anything about it. Sorry.”

“Parents? Family?”

“No— Oh, wait a minute. One of the girls had been talking to him and she said she felt sorry for him because his parents died when he was young and he’d been raised by foster- parents. He had a brother and a sister, too, but I never saw them. Something wrong with the brother, some sort of disability.”

“A mental disability?”

“No. Physical. Blind or something. Sorry, I can’t remember.”

The music blared up again as another dancer hit the stage.

“You must have had some personal details?” Arvo said. “Maybe from his employment application?”

“Sure.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I think so. In the office.”

“May I—”

But Martha was already on her feet. “Wait here,” she said. Then she turned and added to the bartender, “Give him a shot of bourbon while he’s waiting. On the house.”

Arvo accepted his drink, thanked the bartender and swiveled his stool to watch the show.

She was a bouncy blond with a bright toothpaste smile, very large and impossibly firm breasts, and a perky, energetic dancing style. She certainly looked healthy enough, and Arvo found her act about as sexy as watching an aerobics class. But then, he reflected, some people found aerobics classes sexy. Hadn’t most of the people who watched that “20-Minute Workout’ years ago been men? It took all sorts.

Martha came back with a sheet of paper in her hand. She handed it to Arvo and he looked over the scant information. She was right; it didn’t say much. It did, however, give a Social Security number, a reference address, from another bar by the looks of it, and an address and telephone number on Collingwood.

Arvo pointed to the address. “Where is that?” he asked.

“He’s not there any more,” said Martha. “I can save you the trouble of going there. We mailed a couple of forms to him, Internal Revenue stuff, but they came back return to sender.”

Arvo nodded. “Can you remember exactly when that was?”

Martha frowned. “Not exactly, no. But I’d guess it was about six, maybe nine, months ago.”

“Where is Collingwood, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s down past the end of Market Street. In the Castro.”

Arvo looked up from his notebook with wide eyes. “The Castro? Isn’t that—”

Martha waggled her left wrist. “Sure is, honey.”

34

Sarah didn’t get Arvo’s message because stars simply don’t get most of the messages people leave for them. Given that they are protected by a gauntlet of secretaries, bureaucrats, gofers, security guards and highly guarded phone numbers, it isn’t surprising. Sometimes it seems the only people who can get through to them are the crazies.

So Sarah wasn’t thinking about Mitch when shooting finished for the day and everyone disappeared into the night. Had she been thinking about him, it is doubtful that she would have remembered much anyway, as she had hardly noticed him; to her, he had been just another vague shape in the haze, someone to hold open a car door while she smiled, stumbled in and fell over the seat.

It was almost nine, and Stuart should be waiting for her over in his office. At night, the lot was well lit and there were enough people still coming and going, some of them security, that Sarah didn’t feel especially afraid.

It had been a frustrating evening spent filming a short, simple scene over and over again until Sarah got sick to death of saying, “Please, Mrs. Sanchez, you must understand we’re not here to cause you any trouble.”

She blamed herself for not concentrating hard enough, as she had told Stuart at lunch, but if truth be told, everyone was so stunned by Jack’s murder that no one was firing on all cylinders. But, as Stuart had said, the series goes on, and you’re either on the bus or you’re off it.

Sarah sighed. Sometimes she wished she were back in rep performing old chestnuts by the likes of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, with the occasional Restoration comedy thrown in for good measure. There were times when she almost missed the poky digs with the peeling wallpaper, the toilet next door flushing loudly at all hours of the night, the hot water that never worked, the cold toast and runny egg for breakfast and the overcooked roast beef and soggy sprouts for dinner.

Instead, she spent her days surrounded by union technicians in fake courtrooms and precinct offices with computer-produced backdrops for views, speaking trite, witless dialogue.

Still, she told herself, the money was good, and instead of the poky digs she had the beach house. Or used to have.

As she turned a corner by a row of trailers, she heard the hum of a studio cart come up behind her and slow down. She suddenly felt exposed, found herself looking for the best direction in which to run. A group of technicians stood outside one of the sound stages having a smoke, and she knew she could make a break and dash over to them if she had to.

She tensed as the cart drew up alongside her, but it was only Geoff, one of the lighting technicians, a fellow Brit from Newcastle, slowing down to ask if she wanted a ride. Gratefully, she took him up on his offer. But even then she found herself wondering if he could be the one. He dropped her off at the administration block and waited outside until she had gone through the door.

She checked in with the security guard at reception, who told her nobody would get past him. Stuart wasn’t back yet, so she waited in his office, watching Murphy Brown.

She turned the TV off when Murphy Brown finished at nine-thirty and looked out into the long corridor to see if Stuart were coming. Though there were still some people working, most of the office workers had gone home and the place had that eerie, deserted feel of the Marie Celeste. It even looked like a long deck on an ocean liner with cabin doors on either side.

She checked her watch again. Quarter to ten and still no sign of Stuart. What the hell could be keeping him?

At ten o’clock, she started pacing the office, looking out the door every few minutes. At a quarter past ten she finally saw Stuart turn into the corridor from the stairwell.

He was out of breath when he got to the office. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Hope you weren’t worried.”

“What happened? Long meeting?”

“Accident on the freeway, is what. I tried to call you here, but the fucking car phone’s gone kaput.”

Sarah smiled. “Not to mind. Ready?”

“Let’s go.”

They got into Stuart’s Caddy out front and waved to the guard at the gate as they left the lot. Because Sarah was regarded as being safe at the studio, and her friends were in danger, Zak the bodyguard had kept an eye on Stuart during his trip to Hollywood and his meeting there. Now he would have driven on before them to check out Stuart’s house.

The freeway was busy, but not unusually so, and before long they were coasting Sunset heading into Brentwood.

Flat-roofed, all white stucco, plate-glass, and sharp angles, Stuart’s house was a modernist monstrosity, at least to Sarah’s taste. Though she would never tell him so, she thought it looked like a dental clinic.

On a slight incline, the house was reached by a semicircular driveway that turned off a residential street, ran past the front door, then rejoined the road again.

Zak’s gray Toyota was already in the carport just off the driveway. The motion-detecting lights came on as Stuart pulled to a halt outside the front door. Inside the house, some of the lamps were lit, all synchronized by a complicated system of timers to make it always seem as if there were someone at home.

Sarah turned her back on Stuart to get out of the car and immediately became aware of a sudden flurry of activity behind her. The next thing she knew, Stuart had slumped back in over the front seat, groaning.

She was on her feet by the passenger door, which she hadn’t closed behind her yet, and now she saw the figure standing back in the shadows near the trunk of the car, simply beckoning for her to come, crooking his finger.

She screamed for Zak, but nobody came.

She jumped back in the car as quickly as she could, pulled Stuart all the way in and locked the doors. When she looked through the back window, the figure was still there, all in black, standing completely motionless, as if rooted to the spot, waiting for her to get her purse or something.

Sarah could feel her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst. Christ, how she wished that she could drive. She had to do something; she couldn’t just fall apart. Stuart was groaning beside her clutching his stomach, maybe dying, and she was sitting there like a fool waiting for the cavalry to come.

There was no cavalry. Where the hell was Zak?

And still the dark figure stood there behind the car, watching. All she could make out was that he was medium height, fairly muscular, and blond-haired. Christ, she thought, could it even be Zak?

The car doors were locked; the phone didn’t work; the key was still in the ignition. There was only one thing she could do.

Turning sideways, she dragged Stuart over toward the passenger side. It took all her strength, but there was a lot of room to maneuver inside the Caddy, and she finally did it. When Stuart was half on the passenger seat and half on the floor, she climbed over the back and into the driver’s seat.

Her hand slipped on the leather and when she saw the whole seat was glossy and slippery with blood, she almost lost control.

She pounded the wheel and screamed, shutting her eyes and praying all the horror would go away and she would wake up to the sun on the Pacific. But Stuart was groaning on the floor, curled in the fetal position. She had to do something now.

Then Sarah looked out of the window to the passenger side and saw the face of her tormentor staring back at her. She couldn’t make out his features clearly because they were superimposed on her own reflection in the glass, but she could have sworn he was smiling at her. He looked pleased with himself.

He tapped on the window.

Sarah took a deep breath and turned the key in the ignition.

35

Arvo waited for the stoplight at Broadway and Columbus, breathing out plumes of fog and holding his jacket collar closed around his throat to keep out the chill.

There was an Italian restaurant near here, he remembered, where he had dined with Nyreen on their one and only weekend in San Francisco last March. What a weekend it had been: glorious sunshine, walking, eating, shopping, making love, a ferry ride to Sausalito and deli sandwiches and wine on the beach looking back over at the San Francisco skyline.

No, he mustn’t get caught up in those memories again. While cops can enjoy beauty as much as the next person, given the right circumstances, the job often alters their perceptions, and they don’t always see things the same way other people do.

Cop vision, Arvo had often thought, compares more to those heat-sensitive photographs that describe the world in reds and greens and oranges, the way he remembered seeing the city spread out on the monitor during a night ride in one of the LAPD helicopters. In vivid, shifting primary colors, they see the dark side, the predators and prey, losers, grifters, the starving and the desperate, the con men, the lost souls and the psychos.

Finally, Arvo was able to cross. He started down Columbus, passed the City Lights Bookstore and found Vesuvio’s, directly across the garbage-strewn Jack Kerouac Alley.

Inside was almost as colorful as the mosaic-like stained-glass and tile exterior, with local artworks on the walls, along with a framed set of W. C. Fields playing cards, each with a photo and a legendary saying from the old curmudgeon himself. The place was crowded and noisy, but at some of the tables, people were ignoring the clamor all around them and sitting hunched forward, hands over their ears, concentrating on chess games. Around the top was a gallery with more tables looking down on the bar’s main floor. Dress styles and ages varied, Arvo noticed, but there was a general air of youth and artiness.

The small area behind the bar was cluttered, too, and most of the stools were taken. A small canvas screen hung high on the wall above the ranged bottles, and a slide show of old Victorian nudes and music-hall personalities flickered over its surface.

When he had got his glass of Anchor Steam beer, Arvo asked the woman behind the bar if she had ever heard of Mitch Cameron, and gave as good a description as he had. She said he sounded vaguely familiar but it would be better to ask Cal over there, because Cal had been around forever and knew everyone.

Cal was a modern beatnik of about fifty, with a beard and wispy gray hair poking out of a black beret cocked at a rakish angle. He was sitting at the bar reading a book of poetry written in lower-case letters with lines of wildly differing lengths. Beside it was a notebook and a chewed yellow HB pencil stub.

When Arvo tapped him on the shoulder, he turned his head slowly. His eyes were as gray as his beard and attempted — but didn’t quite manage, in Arvo’s estimation — a look of infinite wisdom and compassion.

“I’m looking for someone who knows a guy called Mitch Cameron,” Arvo said, without introducing himself as a cop. “The bartender said you know everyone.”

Cal smiled. “Guess that’s true. Mitch Cameron, you say?” His face darkened a little. “Sure, I know him. He hasn’t been around here for a year or more.”

“Any idea where he might be?”

“No. And I can’t say I care, either. I didn’t really know him well. What happened was, one day he showed me his poems and asked me what I thought.”

“What did you think?”

“They rhymed, for Chrissake!”

“What did you tell him?”

“That they were full of clichés and pious platitudes masquerading as philosophy, and that he should send them to those greeting-card people. What’s their name? Hallmark?”

“How did he respond?”

“Punched me in the face, picked up his folder and walked away. Why are you asking? You a cop or something?”

“Uh-huh,” said Arvo.

“I knew it. I can spot cops a mile away, man.”

Good for you, Arvo thought. “Some people say he’s a scary character.”

“Maybe they should’ve told me that before I said what I thought of his poetry. He damn near broke my jaw. That’s scary enough for me. The man’s crazy.”

“Know where he might be right now?”

“Nope. Sorry, man, I can’t help you, but there’s one of the chicks used to run with his crowd upstairs. Can’t miss her. Ditzy looking brunette, strictly space cadet, nobody home.” He tapped his skull. It didn’t echo, but Arvo got the point. “Hangs out in the lady psychiatrists’ booth.” And he turned back to his poetry book, scribbling something illegible in the margin.

Arvo hadn’t a clue what Cal meant, but he made his way up to the gallery, which turned out to be less crowded than downstairs. Then he saw a little nook with a joke sign reading “Reserved for Lady Psychiatrists’ hanging over it, and two people at the table.

He walked over, told them his name and said he was looking for Mitch Cameron.

“Mitch?” said the woman. “Oh, yeah. Shit, Mitch. Right. Sit down, sit down.” A long skinny arm shot out of her baggy sleeves and she gestured for him to sit. She had rings on all her long, thin fingers, including the thumbs. “This is Brook,” she said, introducing the angst-ridden young man next to her, with his pale complexion and lock of hair falling over his eye. “He’s working on a movie screenplay and he wants me to be in it, don’t you, Brook?”

Brook glared at Arvo and grunted. Wants to get laid, more like, thought Arvo. Screenplay. Jeez, some things don’t change even north of Santa Barbara.

“I’m Candi,” she said. “With an “i.’”

At last, the elusive Candi. Exotic dancer and blow-jobber par excellence. “Pleased to meet you,” Arvo said. “Is there a little heart over it?”

She frowned. “Over what?”

“The ‘i’?”

Candi just looked confused. Maybe she hadn’t seen LA Story. She had long straggly brown hair that looked as if it could do with a good wash. Her face was pleasant and open, free of make up, but it had that blurred, unfocused quality, like her eyes, and probably like her life. Drugs will do that to you. Arvo didn’t know if she were drunk or stoned right now, but she was something. He hoped she was older than she looked.

“I’m trying to find Mitch,” Arvo explained slowly. Candi’s eyes were on him but not quite fixed. She had a mixed drink in front of her and sucked it through the crushed ice as he talked, making a slurping sound. Brook lit a cigarette and stared at the slide show. Arvo decided there and then it would be best not to tell them he was a cop. Maybe they’d guess, like Cal, but he wouldn’t put money on it. He probably looked like a tourist. Or a bookie.

“He’s gone,” Candi said finally.

“Do you know where?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“He owes me some money.”

“Huh. Good luck.”

“Do you know where he’s gone?”

“LA. We went down there with Gary Knox, you know, the rock star, the guy who died of an overdose last year.” She nudged Brook. “I fucked him, you know,” she said to him. “I fucked Gary Knox.”

“Oh yeah?” said Brook. “What was he like?”

Candi frowned, then giggled. “Well, would you believe it, I can’t remember. Maybe I just blew him. What the hell.” She waved her arm and almost knocked over her drink.

Better work quick while she’s still on her feet, Arvo thought. “So Mitch stayed in LA?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Well, like, I had this new dancing job to come back to and all, but Mitch, he didn’t have nothing. He’d gotten fired. You know why, man?” She nudged Brook.

“No. Why?” he mumbled.

“For protecting me from this drunk asshole who was, like grabbing my tits, that’s why.” She looked at Arvo, eyes burning briefly with excitement at the memory. “Broke the guy’s fucking arm, Mitch did. And his face. His nose, I mean. Got himself fired. Shit.” She giggled. “He was my knight in shining armour.”

“So Mitch stayed in LA?”

“Uh-huh. Said it was his big chance.”

“Big chance? How?”

“Mitch wanted to be a rock star. Didn’t you know that? He played guitar, wrote songs and poetry and stuff. Gary Knox said he liked them and Mitch thought maybe he’d record some. Maybe he’d even let Mitch be in his band. But he died.”

“Do you remember Gary’s girlfriend at the time? Sally?”

Candi screwed up her eyes. “I think so,” she said. “Hey, is that the one who’s on that TV cop show? I had this argument with a guy—”

“That’s the one,” Arvo said.

She banged the table and made the glasses rattle. “Whoo-ee! Holy shit! I knew I was right. That’s twenty bucks Pete owes me.”

“Did you know Sally?”

“She was a cold one. Spaced out most of the time. No, we never talked. I fucked Gary, though. Did I tell you that?”

“You did,” said Arvo, smiling. “What about Mitch? Did he like girls?”

“Pants or skirt, it didn’t matter to Mitch. If it moved, he’d fuck it.” She laughed.

“He was bisexual?”

“Like a pendulum.”

“Did you notice how he got along with Sally?”

“Did he fuck her, do you mean?”

“How did he treat her?”

“He called her his Little Star. I don’t think he fucked her. She was a cold one, man, did I say that already? Prob’ly like fucking an iceberg. But what would I know? I don’t do girls. A girl’s got to draw the line somewhere, don’t you think?”

Arvo took a deep breath. He asked her if she knew what kind of car Mitch drove.

“A red one,” she said. “Or it might have been blue. I don’t know.”

Her head was starting to droop and loll onto her chest now. Brook seemed to be getting impatient beside her, Arvo thought, if indeed that was what the occasional tics and sighs coming from his general direction meant.

“Do you know where he might be living in LA, anyone he might be staying with?”

She shook her head without looking up.

“What about money? Work? He’d need a job. What kind of work does he do?”

At this she looked up. “Security,” she said. “’S’all he can do apart from write songs. Bouncer. Bodyguard. Do you want to know the truth?” She wrinkled her nose and crooked her finger at Arvo to come closer. He did. Close enough to smell the gin on her breath. “They sucked,” she whispered. “His songs sucked. But don’t you tell him I ever said that or he’d kill me.”

“He would?”

“Sure. I mean, I’m not his Princess, his Little Star, am I? Sure he would.” She started singing to herself, “‘Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are... ’”

At which point Brook put his hand on her arm and said, “I wouldn’t let him, baby. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you.” And he glared at Arvo with reinforced passion. Like hell, thought Arvo. From what he had heard, Mitch Cameron would make sushi out of someone like Brook.

There was nothing more to be learned from Candi. It was time to let the seduction run its course, if it wasn’t already too late, and it was time for Arvo to head back to the hotel and check if there were any messages. Maybe he would call in Mitch Cameron’s Social Security number. The DMV runs driving record checks for cops twenty-four hours a day, while you wait.

As he walked, Arvo remembered something Candi had said, and a little warning bell went off in his mind. She had said all Mitch could do was act as a bouncer or a bodyguard. Arvo had briefed Zak himself, and he remembered the compact body, the blond hair. Zak — Mitch. Surely it couldn’t be... But if he was right, Sarah was in great danger. He pulled up his collar and hurried toward the hotel.

36

Try to stay calm, Sarah told herself. Right foot, gas; left foot, brake. At least that was how she remembered it. She pressed her right foot down. Why wasn’t it moving? Then she remembered. First she had to shift the stick from park to drive.

She took her foot off the accelerator, pressed down on the brake and moved the lever. Then she stepped on the gas again.

The engine roared and the car started to shudder, but it still wasn’t moving. She realized she still had the brake pressed down to the floor, so she let it go.

The car kicked up gravel and shot forward into the drive with a squeal of tires, swerving wildly from side to side. Sarah panicked and trod hard on the brake without taking her foot off the gas. The car slewed into the shrubbery that lined the drive, hit the base of a small palm tree and skidded to a halt.

Sarah banged on the wheel and let her head drop. Tears blurred her vision. She couldn’t do it; she couldn’t possibly control this monster. She had felt the same way that time trying to drive out in the desert.

The engine had stalled, and all she could hear was Stuart’s uneven breathing. Then she heard the noise of a car starting break the silence behind her, and she realized he was coming after her.

She didn’t have any alternative now.

She started the car up again. The problem now was that she was out of the range of Stuart’s motion-sensor lights, she couldn’t see where she was going. Headlights. Where was the headlight control switch? It had been daylight in the desert.

There were dozens of switches and buttons on the dashboard, all with little symbols that were supposed to make them easy to use. Sarah couldn’t understand a bloody thing, and she’d got the windshield wipers going and country music playing on the radio before the beams of light shot out and lit up the gravel drive and the road about fifty yards ahead.

Stuart shifted and groaned on the floor. His knees were wedged up against his chest, and his head rested between the edge of the seat and the door. He clutched his stomach with both hands, as if to keep his insides from spilling out.

“Stuart, can you talk?” Sarah asked.

“Bleeding... hurts... ” was all she got out of him.

“I’m going to get us out of here,” she said. “Just hang on.” Stuart groaned.

Sarah saw headlights in the rearview mirror.

His headlights.

She put the car in drive again, eased her left foot off the brake and put her right foot on the accelerator, not too hard this time. The car coasted down the drive. At the end, Sarah turned right onto the road, but the arc of her turn was too wide.

A horn blared and two bright lights came straight at her. She held the wheel straight, and the oncoming car skidded across the road with a squeal of rubber, hit the curb and turned over.

Sarah kept her foot down.

She had no idea of how to judge the car’s width and guess how much space she had around her. The Caddy was a big car, and she had always felt nervous when Stuart drove by the rows of parked vehicles in the street, sure he was so close he would hit someone getting out, or at least clip a wing mirror. There must be some secret to it. Lacking any knowledge of what it was, she decided the best she could do was stick with the car ahead and follow its taillights.

The windshield wiper squeaked across the dry glass every few seconds, and Garth Brooks was singing about a broken heart on the radio. Sarah loathed country and western, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the road ahead for a second and she didn’t want to risk fiddling with the buttons and switches again.

A couple of oncoming cars blinded her with the dazzle of their headlights, honked their horns and veered away to the right at the last moment, when they realized she wasn’t going to give way. It was a fairly narrow road by Los Angeles standards, and Sarah realized she must be hogging the center.

The red taillights were still in front of her, and behind she could still see the glare of his headlights. There was a cloying, slightly metallic smell in the car now, and she realized it was Stuart’s blood. Her hands felt sticky on the wheel and her jeans and T-shirt were stuck to her skin with blood and sweat.

At least Stuart was still alive, moaning on the floor beside her. The windshield wiper squeaked over the glass every second or so. Garth Brooks had given way to Tammy Wynette singing “Stand By Your Man.”

Then she saw the intersection up ahead. Sunset. And a red light. The car in front edged as far left as he could without being on the wrong side of the road and stopped. His left-turn indicator started to flick on and off.

Sarah followed him over, took her foot off the gas and pressed down on the brake. At least she knew how to indicate a turn, and she pushed the lever by the steering wheel. As she waited for the lights to change, she took the opportunity to press a few buttons on the dashboard and stop the windshield wiper without turning off her headlights.

But her respite lasted only a brief moment. Just when she had succeeded in getting Tammy Wynette to give way to The Doors singing “Love Her Madly,” a set of headlights grew bright in her rearview mirror. He was still behind her.

She had no plan. She had to get Stuart to a hospital, that was clear enough, but where was the nearest one? There was a big medical center in Santa Monica, but she didn’t know how to get there. It was all she could do to stay on one winding road following the car in front, let alone negotiate right and left turns through the LA urban maze.

Before she could come up with any ideas, the light began to flash green and the car in front turned. Sarah took her foot off the brake, pushed down on the accelerator again and started to turn the wheel as she shot forward.

But she had put her foot down too hard and she didn’t turn the steering wheel far enough. Instead of gliding smoothly and effortlessly around the ninety-degree bend, she skidded too far toward the right.

The Caddy bumped over the curb. Metal scraped against the low stone wall of the house beyond the grass verge with an ear-wrenching scream, and Sarah saw sparks fly.

Instead of stopping, she kept her foot on the accelerator, and before she lost control completely she twisted the wheel sharply to the left. The back of the car clipped a signpost, then Sarah felt a bump as she passed over the curb and back onto the road again.

By now the traffic lights were favoring through traffic on Sunset, and Sarah managed to drive another two cars off the road in a blare of horns, blaze of lights and banshee screech of tortured rubber.

Christ, she thought, mouth dry, heart pounding in her throat, this was Los Angeles. She was more likely to get shot by an angry motorist than stabbed by a crazy fan. Surely a cop car would come along soon?

Now she was back on the road again, staying in the outside lane, with taillights to follow, the going was a little easier. She could afford to think for a moment about what to do.

Her best bet, she reckoned, was to stay on Sunset and hope a police car came along. She kept looking around for flashing red lights, listening for sirens, but she couldn’t hear any. She must have forced about five cars off the road already. Had nobody reported a crazy driver in the area yet?

She could try to drive Stuart to Cedars-Sinai. It was miles away, but all she had to do was keep going along the same road.

She thought she saw the lights of a garage at Barrington, but the traffic light was green and she was going too fast to pull over safely. Sunset wound on, all gentle curves and dips, nothing but curb, grass and houses on each side. There were no streetlights, and dark trees overhung the road.

But Sarah didn’t dare risk turning off. She might get lost, get stuck on some dead-end street, and he would be right behind her, just waiting for her to make a fatal error.

The radio was playing the Stones singing “Sympathy for the Devil’ now, but she didn’t bother trying to turn it off. In a way, any music was a comfort, a necessary link to the real world. Stuart shifted position on the floor, trying to push himself up onto the seat. He managed it about halfway, then exhausted his strength and slipped down to the floor again with a groan.

“Stuart?” Sarah asked. “Are you all right?”

He mumbled something unintelligible and Sarah assured him again that they would soon get help.

She could smell his blood even more now it was getting warmer in the car. She didn’t know how to operate the air conditioner, but at least she knew where the electronic window button was. She reached out and pressed it. The window beside her slid down slowly and silently, and a welcome gust of cool evening air blew in.

She saw lights ahead, and a red light started to blink at the back right of the car in front. Sarah was about to follow suit when she realized this must be the freeway. She knew she had to stay on the surface streets if she hoped to have any chance at all of surviving this nightmare. She couldn’t drive on the freeway. They would die there for sure.

With a slight twist of the wheel, she edged over to the lane to her left. She managed to stay on Sunset and cross the bridge over the freeway, aware only in her peripheral vision of the speeding blurs of red and white light spread across the lanes below. Despite the breeze blowing in through her open window, she felt sweat bead again on her brow and start to itch behind her ears. It was worse than being under the studio lights.

As she crossed the overpass, she could see no one immediately ahead of her, and she felt frightened, alone, cut adrift. Luckily, someone exited the freeway just in front of her, heading east, so she eased her foot off the accelerator to let him in and settled down to follow. Her ankle and her neck were aching with tension. His headlights were still dazzling in her rearview mirror.

Some of the curves south of Bel Air were very tight, and Sarah bit her tongue in concentration as she made them. It was still dark all around her, even as she passed the north end of the UCLA campus. No haven there. Best stay with the car ahead, which she saw as a kind of umbilical cord, her only lifeline reaching up from the bottom of a deep, dark shaft. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle both driving and thinking about where she was going at the same time.

Then, with a shock, she remembered that Cedars-Sinai was on Beverly Boulevard, not Sunset. She’d seen it on shopping trips to the Beverly Center. And she didn’t know which cross-street to go down. Rising panic clutched tight at her chest and stomach. She just couldn’t do it. Stuart was going to die. She would never be able to forgive herself.

Despair almost overwhelmed her. He was still behind her, his malevolent headlights blinding her whenever she looked in the rearview mirror. She had no choice; she had to keep going, stay safe in the car and pray the police would stop her soon. She honked the horn loudly a few times, then kept it pressed down for a full minute, but nothing happened.

At least he hadn’t tried to overtake her or run her off the road. If he had wanted to, he could have made her pull over at any time, broken the window, killed Stuart and made her go with him. He still could. Carjackings happened all the time in LA, and nobody in their right mind would stop to help.

But he hadn’t. Why?

Perhaps, she thought, if he did try to run her off the road, he might injure her accidentally, and he didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t in the script. Whatever the full-range stretch of his fantasy was, he still felt the need to protect her at this point. It was his hallucination; nobody else could be allowed to control it. So he was running protection for her, saving her; he would bring things to an end his way, in his own time. Unless she could do something to stop him.

Suddenly, she noticed there were streetlights, and the street signs were white, with little bumps on the top. That meant she was in Beverly Hills. The road broadened here, east- and west-bound separated by a grass meridian, and the traffic started to move faster. Tall palms lined the roadside and beyond them stood the high walls of wealthy estates.

Suddenly a white stretch limo shot out of a hidden driveway, and she couldn’t swerve aside without clipping the front before the driver jammed on the brakes. It was only a glancing blow, but it shook her up and the panic sent her skidding over into the fast lane, causing another flurry of horns and squealing brakes.

She righted herself and got back into the outside lane, moving slowly and carefully, ignoring the impatient drivers who honked at her from behind. Maybe hitting a limo in Beverly Hills would bring the cops down on her? She hoped so.

The radio was playing the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones” now. Up ahead, Sarah could see a tall glass office tower. Some of the windows were lit, but there would be no one around so late at night. There was also a large billboard advertising KOOL cigarettes. Civilization. Surely there must be cops around?

The road veered sharply to the left ahead, and as Sarah approached the corner she noticed the first flashing red light in her rearview mirror. The limo driver, she bet, got straight onto the cops on his car phone.

She was just about to take her foot off the accelerator and put on the brake, when a bright cone of light shot down suddenly from the sky and enveloped her.

She put one hand up to shield her eyes, lost concentration and pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake. The car bounced over the curb at the corner and ran straight through the plate-glass window of the Hornburg Jaguar showroom in a shower of glass and screech of tortured metal.