No Cure for Love

37

When Sarah opened her eyes all she could see around her was whiteness. Her mouth felt dry and her eyes prickled, as if they were full of ground glass, her lids under heavy weights. Pennies? Like they put on dead people’s eyes? Maybe she was dead. Then the sounds and sights of the hospital room came into focus and someone bent over her.

“Sarah?” the voice whispered. “Sarah?”

She groaned. “What happened?”

“Don’t you remember?”

Sarah closed her eyes again; they were so heavy. She tried. It was all very vague, but she thought she had been driving. Impossible. She couldn’t drive. Something must be wrong with her mind, then. Brain damage; that was it. She was a vegetable. She tried, but she couldn’t move her head. Her neck must be broken. She would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Seeing if she could move her hands, she reached out and touched skin. Hairy. A man’s hand. Slowly, she opened her eyes again. It was the detective, Arvo. So she wasn’t dead.

“Take it easy, Sarah,” he said.

She opened her eyes wider. They were beginning to feel better, less spiky. Arvo looked tired, his sport jacket all creased, bags under his red-rimmed eyes. “You again,” she croaked. “Have I really died and gone to hell?”

He smiled. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

She licked her lips. “What happened?”

“You went off the road at Sunset and Cory. Want the good news first, or the bad?”

“The good.”

“You didn’t hit anyone and you’re not badly hurt.”

“And the bad?”

“You ran into a brand new Jag. The showroom owner’s really pissed.”

“It’s true, then? I was driving?”

“You might call it that. Others would disagree.”

“But I... I can’t drive... ”

“That’s what the traffic cops told me.”

Slowly, her memory started coming back. “There was a bright light, all around the car. It made me go off the road... ”

Arvo nodded. “Police helicopter. Thirty-point-five billion candlepower. No wonder it damn near blinded you. They’d been chasing you since about the sixth car you drove off the road. Which says a lot about the general level of driving in LA, don’t you think?”

Sarah suddenly remembered something important and tried to sit up. “Stuart? Is Stuart all right?”

She felt Arvo squeeze her hand and push her gently back down onto the pillows. “Stu’s going to be okay. He lost a lot of blood but they got him here in time. He might not be eating any burgers with the works for a while, but he’ll live.”

“Thank God,” Sarah murmured. “He was after us. I think he stabbed Stuart. I had no choice. I didn’t know any hospitals, how to get to one... I was scared of turning corners.”

“I know,” said Arvo. “You did the right thing. You saved his life. Do you think you can tell me what happened?”

“I... I’m very thirsty... Do you think... ?”

Arvo passed her a plastic container of water with a bent straw and she sipped it greedily. When she’d finished, she gave a little burp and blushed. “’Scuse me,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “What about me? You said I was okay, but I feel like I’ve been through the wringer. I can’t move my neck. Am I paralysed?”

“No. You’re fine. It’s mostly shock. Some minor cuts and bruises. Mild concussion. Nothing broken. They kept you in overnight for observation, that’s all. You’ve been sedated. That’s why you feel a little strange. And your neck’s in a brace. Whiplash. You should have worn your seatbelt, you know.”

“Yes, well, I had other things on my mind. Does Karen know?”

“She’s with Stu right now. Really, Sarah, don’t worry. You both came through it okay. Would I lie to you?”

The left corner of her mouth twitched in a smile. “You’d better not. Was I right? Did he stab Stuart?”

“Yes. Twice, in the stomach. Like to tell me what happened?”

Sarah collected her woolly thoughts and found that they were getting sharper. The sedative was wearing off and she was regaining her normal clarity. As best she could, she told Arvo everything, right from the start, when Stuart stumbled back into the car and she saw the man beckoning her. There was something she’d forgotten. The silver Toyota in the carport, that was it.

“Zak. Have you caught him? It was Zak, wasn’t it?” she said. “My so-called bodyguard.”

Arvo shook his head. “I must admit that’s what I thought, too, for a while. But no. Zak was in an auto accident on the west-bound Santa Monica Freeway earlier that evening.”

“The accident Stuart saw,” she said. “The one that made him late. But I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. He can’t have been. It was Zak’s car at Stuart’s. I saw it.”

“Maybe it was like his, but it wasn’t his car.”

“Is he all right?”

“A few broken bones, but he’ll live.”

“Thank God for that. I don’t think I could stand another death on my conscience.”

“It’s not your fault, Sarah. Try to remember that. Now what did the man look like? Did he look like Zak? Do you remember?”

“You haven’t caught him?”

“No. He didn’t bother hanging around when the cop car came after you.”

She shook her head. “He was in the shadows, or my face was reflected over his in the window. He was dressed in black.”

“What color was his hair?”

“Blond.”

“How tall was he?”

“Not really tall. Medium, I’d guess.”
“Fat or thin?”

“Medium, again. That’s why I thought it must be Zak. I’d only seen him from a distance and they were the same size and coloring.”

“I know. Was this man muscular?”

“I don’t know. I mean, he wasn’t skinny or fat. It could have been muscle. I’m sorry I’m not being much help. I was so scared, so worried about Stuart, so confused.”

“It’s okay. Did you recognize him?”

Sarah frowned. “I didn’t get a good look. Why? Should I?”

“Do you remember someone called Mitch? Mitchell Cameron?”

Her brow furrowed. “The name sounds vaguely familiar.”

“From the tour with Gary. He was a kind of unofficial bodyguard, wanted to write songs for Gary, be part of the band. You met him in Vesuvio’s in San Francisco. He looked after—”

“Yes,” Sarah said, her hand tightening on Arvo’s. “Yes. I think I know who you mean. I always called him ‘The Creep.’”

“I was given to understand that he liked you very much.”

“Are you saying this Mitch is the one?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Arvo said, “but it’s looking more than likely. We know he came here to LA with the tour and we think he’s still here. Could he have been the one?”

Sarah tried to picture the face at the car window. The problem was that she really hadn’t got a good enough look, and she couldn’t remember Mitch Cameron clearly. She knew the name, had a vague memory of his being around with his quiet brother, opening doors for her and such. But the truth was she had been either too stoned or too depressed to really notice anyone at that time. Sadly, she shook her head on the pillow. “I’m sorry.” She felt something pushing at the surface of her memory, trying to get out, like a hand reaching through the darkness, clawing away the cobwebs. “Just a minute.”

“What?”

“I’ve remembered something. It was my birthday. We were in San Diego, I think, and someone — maybe even Gary — hired a restaurant for a party with a cake and everything. They were all there. All stoned. I just have this mental image of someone starting to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and everyone joining in. I think it was him who started it. Mitch.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! Yes.” She started to sit up but Arvo pushed her back gently and told her to take it easy. “I knew I remembered it from somewhere,” she went on. “I’m sorry, I really wasn’t holding back before. When I first saw it written there, on the letter, it rang some sort of distant bell, but I didn’t know why, or where. Now, all of a sudden, I can picture him singing it very quietly, almost under his breath, and looking at me with those eyes.” She shivered at the memory.

“Can you remember anything else about him?”

“Not really. I mean, he was a presence. He was around. He must have liked me because he was always smiling at me and calling me pet names, but he gave me the creeps.”

“Did he ever make a pass at you?”

“No. I don’t think so. He never got that close, really. He was always just on the periphery, in the background. I think the closest he ever got physically was opening a car door for me.”

“When did you see him last?” Arvo asked.

“Before I went to stay with Ellie. He was... ”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just something I thought I’d remembered, but it slipped away again.”

“You broke all contact with Gary and his entourage?”

“Yes. I never saw or talked to any of them again, and none of them ever tried to contact me.”

“Could they have found you?”

“Not easily. I was either at Ellie’s or at the Shelley Clinic.”

“Did Gary know about Ellie?”

“Gary might have, yes. But Gary died.”

“No one else in the group knew you had a friend in the area called Ellie?”

“No.”

“So you disappeared into thin air.”

“Yes. And I wasn’t in the public eye until the series aired in September. A year later.”

“Which is about the time you started to attract the stalker’s attention.”

“But I didn’t get the first letter until early December. That’s over two months since the series started.”

“That makes sense. He’s been trying to pluck up the courage to approach you. The first time he meets you — on the tour — you’re both members of a crowd, a pretty weird crowd, and he forms some sort of attachment to you. Then you simply walk out of his life. He broods about you for a year. His attachment develops into an obsession, then suddenly there you are again, on television.

“He can’t believe his good fortune. First, he has to find out where you live, then he watches you and fantasizes about you a lot. Guys like him often find anticipation even more exciting than the real thing. Sometimes anticipation is about all they can manage. And fantasizing is a major part of the obsession. At first, he’s tentative. Everything’s at a distance. The letters. Even the first killing. But now he’s edging closer, getting braver. He’s graduated to doing it right in front of you. He wants your approval.”

Sarah moved her head slowly. It made her feel dizzy. “What will he do next?”

“I don’t know. But he’s getting more and more reckless.”

Sarah paused for a moment. “Do you know,” she said, “I had a funny thought while he was behind me in the car last night.”

“What?”

“That he was trying to protect me, not kill me.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

“Like at the house, he just stood there and crooked his finger. He could have taken me if he’d really wanted to, but it’s as if he wants me to come to him of my own free will. He seems to think if he arranges things right, that’s what I’ll do.”

Arvo leaned forward until his face was only inches from hers. She could see the stubble on his chin and smell mint breath freshener. “Sarah, don’t think for a minute that he won’t come after you and force you to do his will. These guys, their fantasies don’t work out exactly like they want and they’re only too happy to give you a little help. Like I said, I think he might be unravelling, coming unstuck at the seams. He failed to kill me and he failed to kill Stu, and he won’t like that.”

“Kill you? I don’t understand.”

Arvo told her about the attempt to set fire to his house.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt. I wasn’t trying to say I didn’t think he was dangerous. I know he is. I mean, just look what he’s done. Jack and all... It’s just that... he could have taken me easily last night, but he didn’t.”

“Then he’s not reached that part in his script yet. Listen, this man is so completely self-centered that he has his own explanation for everything, and it doesn’t involve any fault on his part. He can’t be put off. If you slam the door in his face, then you’re only being careful; if you insult him, it’s only for show; if you shoot him, it’s because you want him to enjoy the afterlife. Do you see what I’m getting at? Whatever you do to oppose him simply means you’re not ready yet to recognize how much you love him. And he knows there are certain things he can do to help you come to that realization.”

“Like what?”

“Well, murder is obviously one of them. Beyond that, we don’t know how far he’ll go to make you see that you love him, that the two of you are meant for one another.”

Sarah swallowed. “He’s not just crazy, he’s very clever, too, isn’t he? Do you really think you can stop him?”

“We’ll stop him.”

“How long?”

“I wish I could say. At least we’ve got some strong leads now. We’re not just whistling in the dark any more. The more disorganized he becomes, the more he acts out of panic, then the more mistakes he’s likely to make.”

“Where can I go until you find him? I can’t go home and I can’t go back to Stuart’s.”

“I think the doctor wants to keep you here a little longer, this morning at least, just for a few more tests. You’re safe here. We’ve got guards on the door. They’ll keep the media away as well as the stalker.”

“The media? I’d forgotten about them. I suppose they know all about it now?”

“They monitor the police radios, so they know you were involved in an auto accident last night. I’m sure they’re busy putting two and two together and making twenty-two. But they’re the least of your worries.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Do I have to stay here? I hate hospitals. I can’t stand the smell.”

Arvo smiled. “I suppose I could always put you under arrest, get you a nice comfortable cell.”

“Arrest? For what?”

“You’ve got enough traffic violations to get you put away for quite a while.”

“Swine. What about work?”

“I don’t know,” Arvo said. “Maybe they can write a black eye, whiplash and a cut forehead into your character. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Things like that do happen to cops sometimes.”

“It’s not, is it? My eye? Black?”

Arvo nodded. “Very.”

She put her hand to it. It didn’t feel swollen, but it was throbbing a bit. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she said.

“Not at all.” Arvo stood up.

“You don’t look so hot yourself, you know.”

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “I know. I didn’t get much sleep. I got the first flight back from San Francisco after I got the phone call from Robbery-Homicide about what had happened to you and Stu. Look, I mean what I say, Sally. You’ve got to stay here for now. Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch soon. This afternoon. We’ll work something out.”

“You called me Sally.”

“Did I? I’m getting confused. I suppose it must be because I’ve been talking to people who knew you as Sally. Gets to be a habit. Sorry.”

“I didn’t say I minded.”

“Good.”

“Just who have you been talking to?”

“Stan Harvey, Carl Buxton, a woman called Candi. She was with Mitch when Gary picked him up in San Francisco.”

“I hope you don’t believe everything you hear.”

“I’m a cop. I take most things with a large pinch of salt. There is just one more thing.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Maybe when all this is over you’ll let me give you some driving lessons?”

“Bastard!” Sarah grasped the pillow beside her and threw it with all her might. But she couldn’t move her neck, and her might wasn’t up to much at the moment. Arvo dodged it easily. Then he was gone and Sarah was left alone in the stark white room with her black thoughts.

38

At eleven-thirty that morning, Arvo sat with Joe Westinghouse in a greasy spoon near Broadway and Fourth watching the seemingly endless parade of panhandlers and street people. It was probably happening in most big cities these days. Mixed in with the tall shiny office towers, the food courts, delis, pretty girls sitting by fountains, you also got the homeless and the crazy. You could always spot the crazies, he thought; they’re the ones who wear woolly hats and tattered overcoats when it’s eighty-five degrees and sunny out there. Maybe they have to keep their brains at a higher temperature than the rest of us.

Having eaten nothing that morning but a bag of salty pretzels on the plane, Arvo tucked into his ham and over-easy eggs with a total disregard for their cholesterol content. So, maybe he should have gone for the fresh fruit and bran special even the greasy spoons offered in LA these days. So what? He mopped up runny egg yolk with his enriched white-bread toast and enjoyed every mouthful.

Joe sat wedged in the booth opposite Arvo, shoulders taking up so much room no one could have found space next to him. He was wearing a neatly pressed brown suit, dazzling white shirt and muted tie. Arvo hadn’t been home yet and was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. They’d been to San Francisco and back on him, and they felt like it, too.

Joe held a sheet of paper in front of him and read as Arvo ate, pausing only to sip his coffee every now and then. He seemed able to do that without taking the toothpick out of the corner of his mouth.

“We got this from the Social Security number. Mitchell Lorne Cameron. Born January 3, 1967, Bakersfield, California.” Joe looked up and grinned. “Well, what do you know? Looks like the little slimeball has a birthday today. I dug out the state birth records. Mother, Marta Cameron; father unknown. After that it got easier. According to the Bakersfield PD, Marta used to run with the local biker crowd, real motorcycle mamma, had a few run-ins over drugs, fights and the like, but nothing serious, no dealing or trafficking as far as they know.”

“What happened to her?”

“OD’d on heroin, July 21, 1972.” Joe sipped some more coffee. “But not before she’d had three kids to three different fathers. Mitch was the middle one. He’s got an older half-sister, called Marianne, and a younger half-brother, Mark. After Marta OD’d, a distant relative in Eureka took them all in.”

“Did you talk to this relative?”

“Nope. She’s been dead five years.”

“Anything on the other two kids? They might be able to lead us to Mitch.”

“We’re trying to trace them. It’s early days yet.”

“Bar manager in San Francisco said something about the brother being disabled. She thought he was blind.”

“That’s something we can check. Got to be registered somewhere.” Joe made a note.

“Anything else?”

“Sure. Plenty. Listen, while you’ve been having fun up in San Francisco watching strippers and sitting around here talking to pretty starlets, I’ve been on the phone, fax or computer. All morning.”

“Okay, so give me a hard time, why don’t you.”

Joe grinned. “I checked with ATF. No firearms registration.”

“Huh. Like half of LA. Doesn’t mean he’s not carrying, though, does it?”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “He hasn’t used a gun so far.”

“True,” said Arvo. “But I don’t think it’s because he couldn’t get hold of one. For some reason it’s just not part of his scenario. Anything from DMV? I was going to call in from the hotel last night but I got the message about the accident first.”

“Yup. Drives a red 1990 Honda Civic. I got the number out on the street. The black-and-whites are keeping an eye open.”

“Photo?”

“Uh-huh. Driver’s-licence photo. Not much good. Could probably be any blue-eyed blond kid in LA. After a while they all get to look the same to me.” Joe’s eyes sparkled for a second and he flicked the toothpick toward his nose. “The lab phoned and told me they did find some blond hairs at the Marillo scene. Dyed blond hairs.”

Arvo pushed his plate aside and sipped some coffee. “It’s looking good, isn’t it? If only we could find the bastard. What about the address on the driver’s licence?”

Joe put down his toothpick and lit a cigarette. “Eureka. And I mean the place, not the classical allusion. The distant relative’s address. It’s a dead end. The people who live there now never even knew the old lady.”

“Shit.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“What about the phone company, utilities?”

“Still checking. Nothing yet. At least not under his real name.”

“Why would he use an alias?”

“Maybe there are people he doesn’t want to find him?”

“Like us?”

Joe shrugged. “Maybe others, too. Maybe he owes money. Who knows? Anyway, all I could find was that he skipped out of San Francisco owing Ma Bell a few hundred bucks and they haven’t come across his name since. Maybe that’s why.”

“Can you pull the phone records?”

“Already being done.”

“Have you checked mental institutions?”

“Wondered when you’d get around to that. As a matter of fact, I didn’t have to. I ran him through records. Seems he has a history of assault charges, mostly minor stuff, but about ten years ago in Stockton he went down on a felony assault charge. Bar fight.”

“What happened?”

“They sent him for psychiatric evaluation. Must’ve checked out okay because after that he did eighteen months in Tehachapi. Witnesses said the other guy started it. That went in his favor. Anyway, we’ve got his prints, for what good they’ll do us.”

“Have you checked them against the Heimar and Marillo killings?”

“We got nothing from Heimar and only partials from the Marillo place. No guarantee they were the killer’s, either. We ran a fingerprint check, but we couldn’t come up with a positive match. The lab also found red cotton fibers, which indicated he probably wore gloves.”

“What about Stuart Kleigman’s car?”

“I don’t think we’ll find anything there, either, but it’s being done. This guy plans, Arvo, he doesn’t just act on the spur of the moment.”

“But he’s getting more and more careless. I don’t suppose he’s on parole or probation?”

“No such luck.”

“Did you check with the military?”

“Uh-huh. Drew a blank there, too.”

“What about the psychiatric evaluation? What were the conclusions?”

Joe stubbed out his cigarette in the foil ashtray. “I’ve got someone digging it out for me,” he said. “They’ll fax it to us as soon as they can. I wouldn’t hold out much hope, though. It’ll probably just say Cameron had a short fuse and needed to learn to control his temper.”

“Probably. But you never know. Now, how do we find the son of a bitch? Anything from the IRS?”

The waitress came by with the coffee pot, and Joe pushed his cup and saucer toward her. Arvo declined. He’d already had too much coffee for one morning. Besides, it tasted like battery acid.

“You know how close-mouthed those bastards are,” said Joe, “but I did get the date of his last return and the address it was sent from.”

“And?”

“Two years ago. An—”

“Let me guess, an address in the Castro, San Francisco?”

“You got it. Same one I got from the phone company.”

“Shit. That gets us no further. It’s like he never got an address in LA at all.”

“I know. I’ve got a couple of guys back at Parker Center still checking around. You know, Welfare, State Licensing Board, Workmen’s Comp.”

“I won’t hold my breath. It looks like this one’s slipped between the cracks since he left San Francisco.”

“Sure looks that way. For what it’s worth, I also got a couple of guys putting more pressure on some of the agencies that sell celebrity addresses. Nothing so far, but you never know.”

“Right. And now we can try the car-rental agencies, too.”

“Why?”

“Because of what happened last night,” said Arvo. “My guess is that Mitch has been watching Sarah’s routine for a few days, just like he did when she was at the beach house. He noticed that Zak, the bodyguard, always went on ahead to check the house before Sarah and Stuart went back there from the studio. Last night, Zak rode shotgun for Stuart to a meeting in Hollywood while Sarah was safe at the studio. The stalker must have followed them and taken his chance on the way back. According to the accident report, there’s at least one witness thinks someone deliberately pulled in front of Zak’s car and forced him onto the hard shoulder. It’s a miracle Zak wasn’t killed.”

“But why check the rental outlets? We already know Cameron drives a red Honda Civic.”

“Because Sarah Broughton said she saw Zak’s silver Toyota in the carport at Stu’s house. Since we know it can’t have been Zak’s, Mitch must have gone and rented the same model, same color.”

Joe whistled. “Know how many car rental agencies there are in LA? Know how many people per day rent cars?”

“We’re only interested in silver Toyotas rented over the last three or four days. That should narrow things down a bit.”

“Uh-huh. Any other bright ideas?”

“One,” said Arvo. “We know that about the only work the guy’s done is security, club bouncer, and that he thinks he belongs in the rock business. Now, we can easily find out if he’s working for any of the big, official security companies like Loomis or Brinks because he’d have to be bonded, right?”

“Right. We have, and he isn’t.”

“Okay. So if he is working, he’s probably somewhere they pay cash, no questions asked.”

“Like a bar or a nightclub?”

“Exactly. Or a strip joint. Just like he did in San Francisco.”

“Great,” said Joe. “Only about ten thousand in the city.”

“You’re right.” Arvo rubbed his eyes. “Shit. There’s got to be another way. Let’s think it through. The guy comes into town with Mr. Big Shot, Gary Knox, and his entourage. He must have some pretty big ideas about himself, right?”

“Uh-huh. Then the goose that lays the golden eggs OD’s and the party’s over.”

“Right, and the entourage is cut loose. The band members drift off into session work, retirement, or whatever. It’s like the Stones without Mick.”

“The Vandellas without Martha.”

“Right. And I suppose the road crew and sound technicians find similar work with someone else.”

“And the hangers-on, the groupies?”

“They find someone else to fuck. Now, Mitch’s position is ambiguous, I’d guess. Nobody liked him but Gary, or so it appeared. So no one’s gonna take pity on him and give him a job. He’s got no real skills or talent and probably no money, given he got fired in San Francisco and skipped out owing the phone company.”

“So?”

“So he’s got a number of problems. He’s already got a car. Next, he needs somewhere to live. Then he needs a job.”

“A job without too many questions asked,” Joe added. “From what you’ve told me I doubt he’d get much of a reference from that broad in San Francisco.”

“You’re right there. But there’s something else. Mitch is a liar and a dreamer, a big talker. He thinks he’s got talent, thinks he’s got a future in the music business. He’s also a man with a powerful will. So, do you think he’s just gonna sit on his ass strumming his guitar, or work as a nightclub bouncer, till his big break comes?”

“If you’re thinking—”

Arvo leaned forward and put his hands palm down on the table. “An agent. It makes sense, Joe. Everyone in this city has an agent.”

Joe laughed. “That’s true enough. I even know a few cops have agents. Know how many of them there are?”

“I didn’t say it’d be quick, just that it would be worthwhile, maybe quicker than checking all the bars. And if we concentrate on small agents representing musical acts... What do you think?”

“Could be.”

Arvo smiled. “Unlimited resources,” he said. “That’s what the Chief told me.”

“What now?”

“First I’m gonna go home, take a shower and change my clothes. Then we’re going to make a concentrated effort to find Mitchell Lorne Cameron.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

And they walked out into the bright noon sun.

39

At three o’clock that same afternoon, still no closer to finding Mitchell Cameron, but at least clean and wearing a fresh set of clothes, Arvo pushed a wheelchair out of Cedars-Sinai right into a throng of newspeople waiting outside.

Sarah Broughton sat in the chair. Her right eye was swathed in bandages, and she was wearing a neck brace. She also wore dark glasses over the bandage to protect her one good eye against the bright January sun.

As soon as she hit the street, the questions began:

“Ms. Broughton, can you tell us why you were driving down Sunset Boulevard yesterday evening without a license?”

“Is there any truth in the rumor that you’ve been receiving death threats?”

“How will your injuries impact on Good Cop, Bad Cop?”

“Is it true that the network is thinking of axing the series?”

“Was it a publicity stunt?”

“Ms. Broughton, why were you in the car with Stuart Kleigman? Why had his wife and children gone to stay with family in Santa Barbara?”

“Do these letters have anything to do with Jack Marillo’s murder?”

“Ms. Broughton. What’s the connection between the body you found on the beach and the murder of Jack Marillo?”

“Are you being stalked, Ms. Broughton?”

“Could you comment on the statement made by Luanna Costello, the famous psychic, that someone has put a curse on Good Cop, Bad Cop?”

“Is it true that the killer cut the hearts out of both victims and mailed them to you?”

And so it came from all sides — from the Los Angeles Times to the National Enquirer, from CNN to KFMB — boom microphones, mini-cassette recorders, TV cameras. Just the way it had been when she arrived at LAX after the news of Jack’s murder.

Sarah kept her head down as Arvo helped her into the unmarked car, scanning the crowd and the surrounding area as he did so. He drove her the short distance round the block to Ma Maison Sofitel, the nearest hotel, on Beverly Boulevard.

Security at the beach house would be difficult to organize because the area was so open, Arvo had explained, so Sarah had agreed that even a hotel would be better than the hospital. At least it wouldn’t smell of antiseptic.

Arvo accompanied Sarah up to her room, then, after checking the locks on the door and window and assuring her that she would be well guarded, he left, reminding her to lock up after him.

One of the hotel employees had picked up some books that Sarah had requested in advance and placed them on the coffee table: Alan Bennett’s Writing Home, the latest William Boyd paperback and a Sharon McCone mystery by Marcia Muller. Beside them lay a New Yorker magazine and a copy of last week’s London Sunday Times. After all, they hadn’t got Mitch Cameron yet; she might be here for a while.

Alone, Sarah set the deadbolt, put the chain on and leaned against the door to take a deep breath. Then she went into the bathroom, took the bandages off and examined her bruises for the first time. By the looks of them, her eye had a whole rainbow of colors to go through yet. Arvo was right, though; the writers could probably work her injuries into the show the way they had written in Jack’s murder. Now the painkillers were wearing off, her face and head had started to ache.

Back in the room, she stood and looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window. It framed a spectacular and panoramic view from the eastern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, on her left, through Beverly Hills to the Hollywood Hills to her right. The sky was pale blue, with a few swirls of cloud over the hills, and today there was hardly any smog to obscure the scene.

Dotted all around the ragged purple-brown horizon were clusters of buildings, signs of human habitation everywhere. To the far right, Sarah could just about make out the HOLLYWOOD sign. In the foreground were the streets of West Hollywood, mostly residential areas of small bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings, along with the trendy shopping streets like Melrose and La Brea.

As she scanned the view, inhibited by the damn neck brace, Sarah had an odd, disembodied feeling, as if she were slipping into a dream. It was as if the hotel wasn’t there, and she was suspended in mid-air over Hollywood. Her senses felt enhanced, as they had sometimes when she was stoned. But her mind was clear. She knew what was happening. Had known since she remembered Mitch calling her “Little Star.”

Somehow, the terror of the chase or the car accident itself had jogged her memory and released a flood of information.

Sarah turned away from the window, feeling a little dizzy, and paced the room. God, she was tired; she hoped they caught the stalker soon. They were close; she could sense it in Arvo’s manner, in the way he had hurried off after bringing her to the room, like a hound on the fox’s scent. It was the thrill of the chase, the whiff of blood. She wanted her life back. All of it.

She helped herself to a gin and tonic from the minibar and sat down on the sofa. She didn’t really want a drink, but she felt restless. It was something to do, and it might help take the edge off her nerves now the sedative had worn off. She thumbed through The New Yorker but couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything. There was nothing on TV, either, except soap operas.

As soon as she tasted the gin, she thought of the tour. Gin and tonic had been Sarah’s drink then, and the taste brought back memories. So did hotel rooms. They acted on her the way the “madeleine” did on Proust.

Sometimes on tour, she would sit up all night with the band playing poker, smoking, drinking, maybe listening to late-night radio stations in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New Orleans or Phoenix. She couldn’t remember the places, just the one composite hotel room, the pills, the joints, the drunkenness and the hallucinatory quality of it all: someone fucking in the bathtub while one of the sound tekkies puked down the toilet; someone, maybe Gary or the lead guitarist, whatsisname, going crazy and trashing the room.

Now she had the memories back, they didn’t matter. She knew now that she hadn’t really lost her memory in the first place, hadn’t blocked out incidents. The whole thing had been exactly like her memories of it. That was it. There was no more. The entire experience had been a blur; it was vague. That was exactly the quality that life had possessed above all others at that time: a kind of hallucinatory, jump-frame vagueness. What seemed blurred now had been blurred then. In fact, things were perhaps a little clearer now than they ever had been at the time.

It had been a long walk on the wild side for her — more of a stagger, really — and if she had slept with a few people she shouldn’t have, so what? Chalk it up to experience. After all, she hadn’t caught any diseases, and she had come through.

She also remembered the incident that had finally driven her to run away from the tour madness and into a different kind of madness of her own, the incident she had begun to tell Arvo about in hospital. Thank God she had stopped herself in time.

It had been a very hot day and the band was staying at a hotel in Anaheim. They were supposed to be playing at the stadium there the next night. Gary needed some designer-drug cocktail or other, and Mitch had found a guy who lived over in the trailer park across the road. Someone who dealt a little.

So, they had gone over. Gary, herself, Mitch and his brother. Inside, the trailer was hot and stuffy. One of the windows was open an inch, but it didn’t help much. Someone had stuck yellow plastic daisy and sunflower appliqués on the walls beside the crude drawings of cocks and cunts, the kind of thing she’d once seen in a gents toilet in Bognor Regis one drunken night long ago.

Sarah was sitting in a battered armchair, she remembered, the kind with the seat so worn and low that it’s difficult to get out of easily, especially if you’re as spaced as she was. There was a fat woman at a table by the door silently removing her bright red nail polish, head bent so she showed at least three chins. She was wearing shorts and a black tank top that strained at its seams over her bulk. The acrid smell of acetone infused the hot, stale air.

The man from whom Gary was buying the drugs was skinny and wore only a pair of garish Hawaiian shorts. He had no hairs on his chest and a tattoo of an anchor on his upper right arm. His teeth were bad, like a speed freak’s; his long hair was greasy, and he hadn’t shaved for a few days. He smoked one joint after another. The other man in the trailer looked like a biker to Sarah, with a full beard, beer gut, black T-shirt and torn, oil-stained jeans. The smell of oil and grease formed an undertone to the nail polish remover and marijuana smoke. Like the woman, he too remained silent.

The only ones doing the talking were Gary and the skinny guy. Sarah remembered wanting to leave, but she was so out of it, and so deep in the armchair, that she couldn’t muster the energy.

Seven of them in there, then. And the dog. A bowlegged, mean-eyed, ugly pit bull with a black-and-white snout. It looked like the dog equivalent of a shark, Sarah thought — single-minded, merciless, vicious — and it scared her the way it kept coming over to her and sniffing. She asked the biker to tell it to go away but he ignored her. So did the skinny guy and the fat woman too. They all snorted a sample of the designer drug. All except Sarah, who had just about had it by then, and Mitch’s brother, who never touched drugs.

Everyone got more bright-eyed and excited. God knew what was in the cocktail, but they either seemed to find every word a priceless witticism or every sentence a pronouncement of the most profound importance. It was all getting to seem very silly to Sarah, who was coming down fast now, and she was trying to work up the energy to get out of the damn armchair.

But the dog wouldn’t leave her alone. It kept sticking its snout in her crotch, pushing hard up against her. She kept shoving it away but it just glared at her and came back for more. She was wearing a short skirt, and the position she was stuck in, the dog could get its nose under the hem, right between her thighs and rub against her panties.

Getting scared now, she smacked it hard on the snout one time and it snarled at her. The others noticed then, distracted out of their drugged haze for a moment. Then the skinny guy pointed, said “Look,” and they all started to laugh. Sarah couldn’t see because of her position, so she twisted sideways and saw that the dog had an enormous erection.

She told them she didn’t think it was funny and tried to get out of the chair again. But the dog stopped her. This time it put its forepaws up on her breasts and tried to straddle her. This brought howls of laughter from the skinny guy and the fat woman. Even the biker grinned. “Hung like a horse, that dog,” he said.

Then, before Sarah knew what was happening, the dog was sniffing and rubbing around her thighs with its snout, great hard-on down between its back legs, and the mingled smells of motor oil and marijuana smoke and acetone were stifling her, the heat making her skin burn and her heart pound. Christ, she was coming down so fast it was leaving skid-marks on her brain.

Someone tried to pull her out of the armchair. He got her almost all the way out, then she felt dizzy, slipped out of his grasp and slumped over to one side, hanging over the chair arm. She could feel the dog nudging her and sniffing between her legs from behind now and someone said something about doggie-style and she felt a hand pull at her panties.

She kicked back hard, hit flesh with a sharp heel and heard someone curse, then she mustered all the strength she could and got to her feet. She swayed for a moment, dots swimming in front of her eyes, and steadied herself with her hand on the wall. The room was spinning around her; everyone was looking at her like faces in a fish-eye lens.

The dog growled. Gary was holding his shin but still laughing. The fat woman near the door had put down her bottle of nail polish remover and was starting to look threatening in a blank, porcine kind of way. The dog was still worrying Sarah, barking, rubbing against her legs, licking them and jumping up to push its snout in her crotch.

Nobody moved. They were all just watching her. Sarah managed to dredge up all her reserves, and with what felt like a superhuman effort, she pushed open the door. Just before she got outside, the fat woman grabbed her roughly by the arm and tried to drag her back in.

As she struggled, she became aware of a quick movement and a slapping sound from behind her. She turned. Mitch Cameron had hit the fat woman in the face and blood poured from her piggy mouth. Her grip loosened and Sarah staggered out, crying, into the harsh daylight. Nobody else tried to stop her. She weaved her way through the trailer park, then toward the road, dodging between the lanes of honking traffic on the wide road and tottering on her high heels back to the hotel.

She looked behind once, but no one was following her. Something snapped inside her, and now there was only one thought in her mind. Run far away from here.

By the time she had crossed the road, she had regained enough basic control to know that the only thing she could do was take a cab to Ellie Huysman’s. She knew the address by heart, even when she was stoned. Ellie would help her.

The doorman at the hotel recognized her, knew she was hooked up with money and got her a cab. It was only when she had collapsed in the back seat and given the cabby Ellie’s Redondo Beach address that she realized she’d left her purse, wallet and everything else she owned either back at the trailer or in the hotel room. But by then she didn’t care. There could be no going back; it was all over; she just had to get away. Ellie would pay the cabby. All Sarah wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and cry.

Sarah rubbed her eyes, as if to erase the memory, then pushed the gin and tonic aside. Why she had even poured it in the first place, she didn’t know. She hadn’t touched a drop of the stuff since she had walked out on Gary. Damn hotel rooms, the things they made you do, made you remember. She took a small can of ginger ale out of the fridge and sipped that to take the taste of the gin away.

An airplane left a vapor trail across the horizon above the Hollywood Hills. Closer to the hotel, a police helicopter whirred over the Blue Whale, maybe keeping an eye on her. Sarah sighed and picked up The New Yorker again.

Nothing to do now but wait.

40

Waiting. waiting. waiting.

He hadn’t been able to wait outside the hospital all night — there were other things he had to do — but he was certain they wouldn’t let her out until morning. He had seen the crash from a distance, and though it had wrenched his heart to watch and to think he might have been partly responsible, that there had been a misunderstanding, he could tell that she hadn’t been seriously injured.

Now, in different clothes, with darker hair and driving a new rental car, he watched the chaos outside the hospital as the detective wheeled her out.

She was Their prisoner now. His love was a prisoner, and there was nothing he could do. It was obvious They had tightened security since last night. That studio bodyguard had been pathetically easy, only too willing to jump to the bait of a macho game of freeway cat-and-mouse.

Now, though, he was certain that the car following them was an unmarked police car, and he made sure, after he had broken from the crowd of reporters, that he stayed well behind.

Again, it turned out to be remarkably easy. His sense of luck was developing fast and strong. Instead of taking her to jail, they took her to a hotel. Well, a hotel could become a jail easily enough, couldn’t it?

He knew there would be guards on her door and maybe even a bodyguard in the room with her. The thought made him shake with rage. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white and told himself to be calm, calm, calm.

He wanted to kill them all and carry her high into the mountains or deep into the sea. He no longer had any fear of the unknown. The way things had been going, with the lies they had probably brainwashed her to believe about him and the shyness and awkwardness that still inhibited the way he communicated with her, he knew now that their best chance, their only chance, lay beyond the confines of the flesh. She must learn to love the unknown with him.

Soon. It would be soon. Nothing to do now but wait. Wait and think.

41

Stan Harvey’s office was on the fourth floor of a low-rise stucco building on Hollywood Boulevard, just a stone’s throw from the Capitol Records Tower, that bizarre construction on Vine, built to look like a stack of records. It was showing its age, Arvo thought as he parked. These days it would be built more like a stack of CDs.

Harvey himself answered Arvo’s knock at the frosted-glass door and excused himself for a moment. He was on the phone, he apologized, and his secretary had left early. Wearing jeans and a black Rolling Stones T-shirt, the kind with the tongue sticking out between red lips on the back, he looked about fifty. He was mostly bald, and whatever gray hair he could muster from the sides and back was tied in a ponytail. Lord deliver us from middle-aged men with pony-tails, Arvo thought. Don’t they realize how ridiculous they look?

While Harvey finished his phone call, Arvo studied a signed photograph of Gary Knox among the dozens of other framed celebrity photos on the walls. He had forgotten how decadent, how aristocratically, poetically and elegantly wrecked Knox had looked, a sort of cross between Jim Morrison and Keith Richards, with his full lips in a pout, faintly sneering expression, five o’clock shadow and the lank brown hair perpetually falling over one eye.

The other eye, however, stared out with disconcerting clarity, as if piercing into your soul, knowing all your faults and secret shames. Knowing and not forgiving. Gary Knox looked merciless in his judgements.

As he looked at the image, Arvo found it impossible to picture Sarah Broughton as part of this man’s life. From what he knew of her, she seemed an intelligent and sensitive woman; what on earth could she possibly have seen in him? On the other hand, Arvo knew well enough that whatever powers governed human coupling often showed a very black sense of humor indeed.

“Nasty looking piece of work, ain’t he?” said Harvey, hanging up the phone and lighting a cigarette with an initialled gold lighter. Not much to look at himself, he had a scraggly gray beard and matching moustache. Where the facial hair left off, little red veins were visible under dry skin. Above the thin lips and the slightly hooked nose, his eyes seemed to weave the motifs of his hair and complexion; they were gray, streaked red with burst blood vessels.

Harvey was yet another member of the Brit “Mafia.” A Cockney, by the sound of him. “Siddown, siddown,” he said. Arvo sat in a black swivel chair opposite the cluttered desk. “What can I do you for?”

“How long have you been in this business?” Arvo asked.

Harvey sucked on his cigarette. “’Ard to say, really,” he answered, blowing out smoke as he said it. “Since the sixties, I suppose. I used to hang around the London clubs when the Stones, the Yardbirds and the rest used to play there. Christ, those were some days. You can forget Liverpool. I mean, fuck Liverpool, man. London was where it was at. The energy. The talent.

“I was just a snotty-nosed little kid back then, didn’t know my arse from my elbow. I got into the business slowly, in a small way at first, working as a roadie for a local band, arranging a few gigs for my mates. Then, poof, all of a sudden these local bands are in demand. Record contracts materialize out of thin air. There’s money in it. Well, Stan, this beats clocking on for a nine-to-fiver, I told myself, so I set up as a semi-pro. One thing led to another, and here I am.”

“When did you come over here?”

“Late sixties. Matter of fact, I came over for Woodstock — the original one — and never really went back again. Well, you know what I mean, not back to settle there, like. Business trips, of course. But LA’s my home now, for my sins. England’s finished. Fucked. Has been for years.”

“What exactly was your relationship with Gary Knox?”

“Purely business. I kept the bastard at arm’s-length as much as I could. Between you and me, he was an evil little pillock. Talented, sure, but what a manipulative, arrogant son of a bitch. Unreliable, too.” Harvey shook his head slowly. “You meet all kinds in this business,” he said. “Mostly they’re egotistical little pillocks without any talent, so I suppose Knox at least had one over them on that score. But the bastard cost me money.”

“How?”

“No-shows, for a start. And that notorious gig in Omaha — you must have read about it — when he staggered on stage late, tried to get the opening of the first song right for about five minutes, then swore at the audience and walked off. Stoned. Naturally, they all asked for their money back.”

“What was your job?”

“Well, basically I promoted the tour. You know, arranged the venues, the publicity, transport, accommodation and so on. When I say that, I don’t mean I did it all myself, of course. Most of the work was delegated or contracted out to local promoters. I guess my office sort of coordinated things. I used to work with Kenny Little, Gary’s manager, in London years back.”

“Did you have any contact with Gary and the band while they were on tour?”

“Too bloody much. Knox was such an obnoxious prat, I kid you not, that he’d phone me in the middle of the night to complain if the hotel had Courvoisier instead of Rémy in the minibar. Which can happen a lot if you’re doing places like Milwaukee and Rapid City, no matter how ritzy the hotel, believe me. I mean, you’d be lucky to even get cognac, some of those places. Don’t know Rémy from cough syrup.” He stabbed out his cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a gold record with curled edges. The smouldering butt fell to rest among about twenty others.

“But you didn’t actually spend any time with them at the hotel or backstage?”

Harvey stared at him, open-mouthed. “Spend time with those infantile piss-artists? You must be joking.” He pointed his thumb at his chest. “This may be my job, but I’ve got a life, mate.”

“What about when they were here in LA?”

“Same thing. No, wait a minute. I did have to go down and sort something out once.”

“Sort what out?”

“I like to give local bands a chance to play as openers sometimes, if they’re good enough, and I’d arranged for a band I liked to open at one of Gary’s LA shows. Naturally, they’re all excited, so they get there early and set up their equipment. Then Gary’s roadies arrive and start dismantling it all. They said there wasn’t enough room on the stage for both Gary’s and the support band’s amps and speakers, and they wouldn’t have time to set up for Gary between acts, so the support band would just have to fuck off.”

“Nice guys.”

Harvey smiled. “Welcome to the music business. So, when I get there, there’s almost a fight going on, and Gary’s stoned already, just sort of watching and standing back. I sort it out — find a corner for the support band’s gear — and leave.”

“Did you meet Sarah? Sally Bolton?”

“Oh, yeah. She was backstage, just sitting there, you know, crying her eyes out, and everyone was ignoring her. I remembered meeting her once before, in London. I asked her what was wrong.”

“What did she say?”

Harvey shook his head. “Didn’t say anything. Too stoned.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told her she’d be better off if she left the bastard, that he was a worthless son of a bitch who’d only ruin her life, if he hadn’t already.”

“Did she respond?”

“Just smiled at me through the tears in that stoned kind of way. Christ, she looked so young and lost, like a kid whose favorite doll has just got broken. I told her there was a plane ticket back to England waiting for her in my office anytime she wanted to pick it up.”

“Did she?”

“No. I never saw her again. Not until she turned up on TV, anyway. Done well for herself. Good on her.”

“Did you know any of the hangers-on, any of the people they picked up on the way?” Arvo asked.

“Like flies to shit, people like that, in my experience.”

“Ever heard of a guy called Mitchell Lorne Cameron?”

Harvey frowned and lit another cigarette. Arvo was thankful that the strong urge to start smoking again that swept over him around Christmas had dissipated.

“No,” said Harvey. “Can’t say as I have. Was he a friend of Knox’s?”

“In a way.”

“Never heard of him.”

“They picked him up in San Francisco, him and a couple of others. He stuck to them all the way down here and after. I guess after Knox’s death he was sort of cut loose. He hadn’t been popular with the other band members anyway, so there’s no way they’d tolerate him, not with the boss out of the way.”

“You got this from Carl Buxton?”

“Yes. And seeing as I got his name from you, I thought I’d come back to the source.”

“Sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, man. But Carl’s a decent enough bloke. Thinks a bit too highly of himself, but show me one rock musician who doesn’t. Like I said, Carl’s about the only one of them hasn’t fried his brains with drugs.”

“This Cameron,” said Arvo, “he fancied himself as a bit of a player himself. Do you know what I mean?”

Harvey nodded, eyes narrowing. “Uh-huh.”

“Apparently, Gary Knox said he liked Cameron’s poems and songs, and Cameron thought he had a chance to get into the band, or at least into the business. Anyway, we think Cameron is still somewhere in LA, and we’d really like to talk to him.”

“So exactly what is it you want from me?”

“Cameron feels he belongs in the music business. He thinks he’s got talent. He’s even done coffee house appearances, that kind of thing, according to people who knew him. Maybe even played with local bands back in San Francisco. He also thinks that Gary Knox saw and recognized his talent. He feels endorsed, somehow, singled out for stardom. It wouldn’t surprise me if he felt it was his job to take over from where Knox left off, so to speak, carry on the flame. What would he do?”

Harvey reached for another cigarette and lit it from the stub of his old one. At this rate, even the secondhand smoke was getting to Arvo and making him feel dizzy. “Any number of things,” Harvey said. “If he didn’t already have contacts in the business here, most likely he’d advertise in one of the music papers and try to get together with a band. Or maybe he’d look for an ad and answer it. From what you say though, a guy with an ego like his would have difficulty fitting in with someone else’s idea of a band, especially if he fancied himself as a great songwriter. He’d want to gather people around he could control, you know, direct them toward expressing his vision.”

“Makes sense,” said Arvo. “How long do you think it would take him to find such a band?”

Harvey shrugged. “It’s variable. Anywhere from a week to a lifetime.”

“What I’m thinking,” said Arvo, leaning forward, “is that he might be at a stage now, solo or in a band, where he has an agent. And that agent might be able to give me his address.”

Harvey sucked on his Dunhill. “Could be,” he said. “Could be. But why come to me. I mean, I’m not an agent.”

“You might be able to save us some time, is all. There’s a lot of agents in this city, but we’re looking for someone who might take on a guy at Cameron’s level. In other words, local, unproven talent. I’ve never heard the guy, so I don’t know if he’s got it or not. I’m assuming if Knox really did think something of his music, then he’s got at least enough talent to get himself a low-level agent.”

“Hmm,” Harvey murmured. “Could be. And you want some names?”

“It would help. Look, Stan, we think this guy is very dangerous. The sooner we find him the better.”

Harvey laughed nervously. “Well, make sure you don’t let him know who told you.”

“Can you help?”

“Yeah. I know a few small-time agents might just handle someone at his level, or at least know about him.” He looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. Want me to call now?”

“Let’s give it a try. If you would.”

Harvey pulled his Rolodex toward him and flipped through it. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Arvo.

“I skipped lunch. There’s a coffee shop and deli just next door does a great Reuben sandwich.”

“No problem.”

Arvo left Harvey to the phone and went to pick up the food. While he was there, he also got a corned beef sandwich for himself. When he got back to the office, Harvey looked over and gave him the thumbs down sign.

Arvo nibbled his sandwich, the first meal he’d had since his greasy-spoon breakfast, sipped hot black coffee and watched it get dark around the Capitol Record Tower.

It must have been about the fifteenth or twentieth call — Arvo had stopped counting — when, after the usual preamble, Harvey asked his question, and this time a smile started to spread over his rough features.

“You do know him?” he said, and stuck his thumb up. “Sure? Yeah. Great.” He reached for his pen.

Gotcha, you bastard, thought Arvo.

42

Traffic was heavy on the Santa Monica freeway at nine o’clock that evening as Arvo drove the unmarked police car to the address Stan Harvey had got for him. Both Joe Westinghouse and Maria Hernandez rode with him.

Yes, the agent had said, Mitchell Lorne Cameron was listed with him, though he hadn’t been able to get him any work for three or four months. Problem was, Mitch was getting a bit of a reputation as an arrogant bastard, not to mention an occasionally violent one, and no one wanted to work with him. The last gig he’d played, he’d punched out the manager after accusing him of falsifying the previous night’s attendance records. The kid had some talent, sure, but he lacked the social skills.

People were also sick to death of hearing him go on about how he was the true successor to Gary Knox and how close he and Gary had been.

Arvo turned with the hundreds of other red taillights onto the San Diego Freeway, then took Venice Boulevard west. According to the Thomas Brothers Guide, the street Cameron lived on was about as far away from the beach as you could get and still be in Venice: way out in the east side, close to the freeway.

At the nearest intersection, two police cruisers waited, as requested. The detectives needed back-up, but they didn’t want to go in with sirens blaring and guns blazing. The cruisers would block off the street at both ends in case Cameron made a break for it. The crime-scene techs had also been alerted, and their van was on its way.

Arvo found the house without much difficulty and pulled up beside a fire hydrant out front. Number 14536 was a small bungalow in a street of similar small bungalows, not affluent, but certainly not run-down either. Typical of the LA single-family dwellings put up in the idealistic thirties, most of them had postage-stamp gardens, where some of the more house-proud owners cultivated a little lawn, a few begonias here and a few geraniums there.

After getting Cameron’s address, Arvo and Joe had applied to the judge for a “no-knock’ warrant and got one, mostly because Cameron’s level of danger was regarded as extremely high, and the chief was taking a direct interest in the case. A quick solution would look really good after some of the disasters that had plagued the LAPD in the past few years. So Arvo knew he had better not fuck up. If he did, then he might find himself transferred to Hollenbeck Division for a little “Freeway Therapy.” And he didn’t like the idea of driving all that way to and from Santa Monica every day. Spring Street was more than far enough, and he had almost considered moving during the months the freeway was closed after the earthquake.

“To knock or not to knock,” said Joe under his breath as they walked toward the short path leading to 14536. “That is the question.”

As arranged, Joe went around the back of the house and Arvo and Maria took the front. The porch light was on. Arvo flipped the mailbox open. Empty. Inside, the house was dark and silent as a grave.

Maria took out her gun and stood to one side of the door. Arvo stood to the other side, stretched out his arm and knocked. More than one cop had bought it with a shotgun blast through a closed door.

Silence except for the laughter of a television sitcom audience a few houses away.

He knocked again and called out for Cameron to open up. Still silence. It was a clear, cool night, but Arvo could feel the sweat at the back of his neck moistening his collar, prickling on his brow. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

Curtains twitched across the street. Somewhere, a door opened and swung shut. A car with a really sick muffler passed by. Inside Cameron’s house, the phone rang. The sudden, sharp sound made Arvo and Maria jump. Seven, eight, nine, ten rings and no one answered. No answering machine picked up the message.

When the ringing stopped, Arvo thought he could hear the M*A*S*H theme music start up from the bungalow next door.

He kicked the flimsy door and stood back. Maria went in first, crouching low, both arms fully extended, sweeping a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle. Covering her, Arvo flicked on the light switch.

They stood in a short hallway with coats hung on either side and two doors leading off. The first door led to the kitchen and the second to what seemed to be the living room. After checking the place out quickly, they went to open the back door for Joe, who said he had neither seen nor heard anything outside. Though it looked like there was no one home, they all kept their guns out until they were certain.

The living room looked ordinary enough. Cheaply furnished with a worn gray three-piece suite and a scratched coffee table, it didn’t give much away. A framed poster of Gary Knox hung on the wall, full length in concert, holding a mike stand, and a red electric guitar rested against a small amplifier directly below the print. The wallpaper was peeling. The room smelled of stale smoke. An overflowing ashtray on the table explained why. Joe touched one of the butts. “Cold,” he said.

The only other interesting thing in the room was the stereo equipment with two large speakers and compact discs piled haphazardly on the floor. Some of the small, thin discs were out of their jewel-boxes, scattered on the floor. Well, the manufacturers did say you could eat pizza off them or use them as Frisbees.

The kitchen held nothing it shouldn’t; in fact, it was missing many things that should be there — like plates, pots and pans. Cameron mostly ate out or ordered in, by the look of things, and he favored Mexican and Chinese, going by the empty cartons in the garbage. Next to the kitchen was a small dining area with a Formica-topped table and four matching chairs.

Another door led off the living room, this one locked. Arvo bent his head and put his ear to the wood, but no sound came from within. With Joe and Maria covering him, he kicked the door open and stood back while Joe knelt in front of him, sweeping the room with his gun. Nothing. Arvo switched on the light. The three of them stood around the entrance.

“Jesus Christ,” breathed Joe. “A shrine. It’s a fucking shrine.”

From floor to ceiling, the walls were covered with pictures of Sarah Broughton. Some looked like stills from her movies and television series, others like studio publicity shots; some were head and shoulders, others full length; in some she was clothed, in others naked. Many of the pictures looked like collages, bits and pieces of Sarah pasted together in impossible combinations.

When he was able to take his eyes off the walls, Arvo noticed the computer equipment. Maria was already checking it out and whistling between her teeth. It took up about a quarter of the whole room, set up around one of the corners. Not only was there a state-of-the-art Macintosh computer and a color laser printer, there was also a digital camera, a 35-mm Film Scanner, a 14,400 bps modem and a double-speed CD-ROM set-up. Two VCRs and a monitor were hooked up to the computer.

On the bookshelves above stood mostly software for graphics, desktop publishing and image-enhancement. Expensive stuff for a club bouncer and wannabe rock star, Arvo thought, wondering what else Cameron might be into. Drugs? Computer theft? Or maybe he just had a lucrative sideline in desktop publishing.

Maria picked up a stack of printouts from the desk and passed them to Arvo. More pictures of Sarah. This time Cameron had been editing them, playing with the images on screen, cutting off her head and sticking it on a little girl’s naked body, separating arms, legs, head and torso and mixing them up again in increasingly bizarre combinations. Maria raised her eyebrows. Arvo handed the pictures to Joe, who shook his head slowly.

“I suppose you guys see lots of this weird shit?” he said.

Maria shrugged. “It’s not uncommon.”

Joe put the printouts down and gave a little shudder. “Give me a dead crack dealer any day.”

Another shelf revealed three back issues of a desktop-published fanzine called, simply, SARAH. Written solely by Cameron, Arvo guessed, it featured more of the same collage-type nudes, bits of Sarah and bits of women from porno magazines. One showed what Arvo took to be a close-up of one of Sarah’s eyes with a spread beaver shot superimposed.

All the text said was, “Sarah Sally Sarah Sally Sarah Sally Sarah... ” over and over again in a variety of fonts. Pretty unimaginative, Arvo thought. You’d think the bastard could at least have written her a poem or two. Wasn’t he supposed to be creative? When Arvo put the magazine down he felt like washing his hands.

“Come and have a look at this, Arvo,” Maria said, and he walked over to join her in the other corner.

It was an altar. At least that was what it looked like to Arvo, and he had seen such things before. Cameron had erected his homage to Sarah, including his favorite framed photograph. Sarah was looking over her naked shoulder, butterfly tattoo in clear sight, directly into the camera, an enigmatic expression on her face. Cameron had surrounded the photograph with red candles, most of them half burned.

Lying on the square of black velvet beside the photograph were a wallet and a small spoon. Trophies, most likely. Carefully, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he flipped the wallet open. John Heimar. He put it back for the crime-scene experts to deal with. There was nothing else in the room except a single bed with a red quilt and a bedside table. The sooner they got out of the place and sealed it, Arvo thought, the less likely they would be to spoil any evidence. Besides, the room was starting to give him the creeps.

Back in the living room, Joe bent over the coffee table. Next to the ashtray stood a yogurt carton full of matchbooks. All of them were from a club called Ten Forward, on Melrose.

“What do you think?” Joe asked, holding up one of the books so Arvo and Maria could see.

“Make it so,” said Arvo.

43

La Cienega seemed to take forever. Every light a red one. Still, Arvo told himself, Sarah Broughton was safe at the hotel, and if Cameron were working at the club, he’d be there until the early hours. There was no hurry. They certainly didn’t want to announce their arrival in a blaze of lights and cacophony of sirens, any more than they had at the house. But still he felt anxious. It wouldn’t be over until they had Mitchell Cameron in custody.

Between Pico and Olympic, Arvo radioed in to arrange for patrol cars to secure the area around the club, then he used the car phone to call Sarah. She sounded bored and irritable but said she was okay. Arvo told her to hang in there and keep her fingers crossed, they were getting close.

On Melrose, Arvo pulled up by the curb right outside Ten Forward, ignoring the No Parking signs. A group of kids hung around the entrance, arguing with a tall man with a shaved head and a black T-shirt who towered head and shoulders over them. The T-shirt must have been XXXL, if such a size existed, Arvo thought, and it was still tight over his biceps and pecs. He wouldn’t have stood there arguing with the guy. But kids always do think they’re immortal, and with the designer drugs they take these days, they think they’re omnipotent, too.

Finally, the doorman managed to shoo the teenagers away. When he saw Arvo, Joe and Maria approach, he made a disgusted sound and said, in an unexpectedly high-pitched and raspy voice, “Fucking kids, huh. Underage. Cops?”

“That obvious?” said Joe.

The man grinned, showing a gaping black hole in an otherwise seamless band of white where one of his upper front teeth was missing. “I don’t want no trouble,” he said.

“Hey, man, you won’t get any from us,” said Joe. “Guy named Mitchell Cameron work here?”

“Mitch Cameron? Sure.”

“He inside now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Since when?”

“Started at nine.”

“Back entrance?”

“Uh-huh. Round the alley.”

“And no one gets past you, right?”

“You’re the boss.”

“Okay. We’re going in.”

The man gave a little bow and extended his arm toward the door. “Be my guests.”

Joe said he would take the rear entrance while Arvo and Maria went into the club to smoke Cameron out. They might look a bit less like cops than he did, he added with a grin. At about six-four, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and low-key tie, he was probably right.

Arvo and Maria found themselves in the bar area. Modeled closely on the Star Trek: The Next Generation Ten Forward, but darker and bigger, it featured molded plastic, futuristic tables and chairs, and even a starscape backdrop on screens that were supposed to represent the large windows of the starship. Galaxies whirled by, the stars all a little blurred. Must be traveling at warp speed, Arvo thought.

It was also a hell of a lot noisier than the TV bar. Hot, too. Kids milled around, some of them looking hardly any older than the ones the doorman had sent away, and waitresses dressed in tight-fitting Trekkie-character costumes held trays of drinks aloft. One of them looked like Deanna Troi, another like Tasha Yar. Conversation competed with loud music, all of it merging in a deafening wall of noise.

The music itself was hard to describe. Part raw rock, part disco beat, part synthesizer funk, it seemed to exist solely for the sake of the dancers, who jumped, bobbed, weaved and swayed on the vast floor under yet more swirling galaxies. Arvo noticed a few glazed eyes. Drugs. Ecstasy, probably.

The clientele was an odd mix of cyberpunk — all studded leather and torn T-shirts, shaved or spiky hair, tight black pants or leggings, with a lot of earrings and a more than average percentage of nose-rings — and an occasional computer nerd looking to get laid, badly dressed, with greasy hair, acne and glasses.

It was almost impossible to spot any single individual in such a heaving, throbbing mass of people. Arvo pushed his way to the bar and asked the bartender if he knew where Mitch Cameron was. The bartender just shook his head and went to serve a customer. Either he hadn’t heard through the noise or he didn’t know any Mitch Cameron. Most likely he just didn’t care.

Arvo and Maria were already drawing strange looks from some of the kids, a few of whom quite wisely slunk away from them, maybe to sell their illegal substances elsewhere or flush them down the toilet. No matter what Joe had said, in this crowd they did look like cops.

Had Mitch Cameron been the same size as the man on the door, it would have been easy to spot him, but according to all Arvo’s information he was of average height and rather stocky, muscular. Just because he had had a dyed blond brush-cut a year ago, it didn’t mean he had one now, though dyed blond hairs had been found at the scene of Jack Marillo’s murder.

Arvo and Maria stood by the bar looking over the dancers. The music changed, though not much, and the overhead galaxy started spinning the other way. Searchlights danced over the crowd. A Federation starship passed by on an overhead screen and some of the dancers stopped and cheered.

Then Arvo noticed, over to his left at the far side of the dance floor, a couple of kids facing off. Others were moving away, clearing a space around them. They looked to be fighting over a girl who was standing with them. She seemed to be exhorting one of the kids to mop up the floor with the other, and the more she yelled — though Arvo couldn’t hear what she said over the music and general din — the closer the guys came to throwing punches. Before they got that far, however, the bouncer appeared.

Arvo nudged Maria, who had been scanning the other side of the club.

“That Cameron?” Maria yelled in his ear.

“Could be. Let’s go ask him.”

The bouncer was too busy keeping the two kids apart to notice Arvo and Maria heading toward him. He was about the right size, Arvo estimated, and his hair could have been blond, though it seemed to be plastered down with some kind of gel that made it look darker. He wore it combed straight back, with a greasy ponytail hanging down over his collar.

When they reached him, Maria grasped his elbow and said, “Mitch Cameron?”

Cameron shook her hand off. “Yeah, I’m Cameron,” he yelled without turning around. “Just back off a minute, bitch. Can’t you see I’m busy right now?”

But the tension between the two kids had dwindled away by now. They’d passed the flare-up point and hadn’t caught fire. The girl looked disappointed.

Maria pulled out her wallet and flipped her badge right in front of Cameron’s face. “I think these kids can manage without you for a while, Mitch. Detective Maria Hernandez, LAPD. And my colleague here, Detective Arvo Hughes. We’d like to talk to you.”

Before either Maria or Arvo could see what was coming, Cameron sucker-punched Maria and she went down on her knees with blood pouring down her chin. That drew a gasp from the crowd. Then Cameron took off over the dance floor with the galaxies swirling over him and a couple of Romulan warships casting their shadows across his path. He cut a swathe through the dancers, pushing people aside left and right. Arvo bent to see if Maria was okay and she waved him away. He headed after Cameron.

Cameron was fast, but the crowd between him and the door was thick and it slowed him down. By the time Arvo took after him, he had already cleared a path between the dancers, some of whom were still picking themselves up off the floor looking confused. The music throbbed all around them and the lights went on spinning. Arvo could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead and neck. It was beginning to sting his eyes and he rubbed it from his eyebrows as he ran. He glanced back and saw Maria was behind him now, not more than twenty feet away. She gestured for him to keep chasing.

Cameron broke through the last cluster of dancers and skidded across the few feet of empty space to the door. He was heading for the front exit. Arvo was only about fifteen feet behind him now, Maria maybe thirty.

Cameron collided with a couple of kids walking into the club, but he regained his balance immediately and pushed the front door open. Arvo could almost reach out and grab a fistful of his T-shirt by now, but the heavy door swung back hard and blocked his path for a moment.

Cameron shot out into the street, right into the doorman with the shaved head. The man hardly flinched, and when Arvo and Maria came out a split-second later, panting for breath, he held Cameron up by the ponytail and said, “Take him, why don’t you. I never did like the slimy little cocksucker.” Cameron’s mouth was bloody, and Arvo saw him spit a tooth-fragment on the sidewalk. The bouncer shrugged, raised his eyebrows and spread his hands, dropping Cameron at their feet.

Joe came out of the front door, gun out. “What the fuck’s going on?” he asked. “Couple of kids came running out the back door saying there was some real heavy shit going down inside.” Arvo told him what had happened.

Maria leaned against the car holding a white handkerchief to her mouth. It was already stained red with blood. Joe cuffed Cameron and bundled him into the back of the car. Arvo and Maria got in the front. Arvo put his hand on her shoulder. “Okay?”

She nodded, took the handkerchief away and looked at it. “I’m fine. Bastard split my lip is all. More mess than damage.”

Cameron, who sat twisted forward because of the cuffs, said nothing as they drove to Parker Center. He just kept on staring straight ahead at the taillights on Wilshire, with a creepy smile on his face, and only God knew what he was thinking or seeing.

44

On first impression, Arvo thought, Mitch Cameron wasn’t much different from the white trash he’d arrested any number of times back in Detroit. He had the look of someone who knew how to handle being pushed around. And whatever you said or did to him, it didn’t touch him emotionally because it was nothing in comparison to what he had suffered growing up.

However well he had been treated at the foster home in Eureka, you didn’t have to be told to know that Cameron had endured a deprived and abusive childhood before that. It was in his every sullen, obedient movement, the way he bent with the flow; it was in the smug, cynical smile he wore on his face. Cameron wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even angry. The habit of abuse had inured him to such feelings of weakness.

No matter what indignities the system piled on him, much worse had been done. And he had done worse himself. Out on the streets, he would be every bit as cruel and vicious as whoever had abused him as a child, yet in captivity he took to the handcuffs, the punches and the shoves just as naturally and as meekly as he would take to the shackles and prison routine. You couldn’t touch him; he could no longer feel a thing. In a way, it gave him power. And it made him a supreme manipulator.

It also made him arrogant as hell, which is how they hoped to get him to talk without a lawyer present telling him to shut up every time he opened his mouth. That and the felony rap hanging over his head for assaulting a police officer. But Arvo sensed he wasn’t the type to respond to threats and plea-bargains. No, if it was going to happen, it was going to happen because Cameron wouldn’t be able to contain himself, because he wouldn’t be able to resist showing off.

He looked relaxed and comfortable in the molded orange plastic chair: legs crossed, hands clasped loosely on his lap, mouth cleaned up. Too comfortable, Arvo thought.

The interview room had no windows; the walls were drab olive, not repainted in about five years; and the only furniture consisted of one table, bolted to the floor, and several chairs. The door was closed and the place was stuffy. Arvo leaned against the wall; Maria stood beside him, arms folded across her chest. Their turn would come later.

Joe started. “Mitch,” he said. “You don’t mind if I call you Mitch, do you?”

“Call me what you want, man.”

“Do you prefer Mitchell?”

“Mitch is fine. Mind if I smoke?”

“Sorry,” said Joe. “This building’s a smoke-free environment. Want a toothpick to chew on? I find it helps.”

Cameron laughed and took a toothpick. “Shit. The whole of California’s a fucking smoke-free environment.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Joe, with a smile. “Never mind, you’ll have plenty of time to smoke in San Quentin, Mitch.”

Cameron ignored the jibe and glanced at his watch. “Look, boys and girls, can we cut the crapola and just get on with it, huh? When this is over, I’ve got to go and see if I’ve still got a job left after that stunt you guys pulled at the club.”

“Ever heard of a kid called John Heimar?”

“Nope.”

“He worked the Boulevard.”

“Not my scene, man.”

“You trying to tell me you’re not gay, Mitch?”

Cameron leaned forward. His eyes hardened. “If I was gay, I can’t see that it would be any of your business. A little homophobic, are we, Detective? It’s not politically correct, you know.” He sat back and examined his fingernails. “Besides, an attitude like yours usually indicates latent homosexual desires, did you know that? Is that your problem, Detective? Not been sucking enough cock lately? Or been sucking too much?”

“Cut the amateur psychology, Mitch. I’m not impressed. John Heimar and what happened to him is my business.”

Cameron rested his hands on the table, palms down, and sat up straight, his eyes fixed on Joe. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t know who these other two cops are, but you told me you’re a big shot from Robbery-Homicide. So let me guess: this kid was robbed and killed? Right? And I’m supposed to have done it, right? But you haven’t got enough evidence to charge me with it yet, so you come up with some bullshit felony rap and hope to drag a confession out of me? Am I on the right track, Detective? This is why you’ve probably lost me my job?”

“Where were you on the evening of December 19?”

Cameron slouched back in his chair and looked down at the table. “How the fuck would I know? Probably at work. How do you expect me to remember that far back? Where were you?”

“Did you go down to Santa Monica Boulevard that evening? Did you pick up a kid called John Heimar? Did you kill him, dismember his body and bury it on the beach near Pacific Palisades?”

“No. No. And no. What is this?”

“Where were you over Christmas?”

He shrugged. “At work. At home. Visiting friends.”

“What about your family?”

“I don’t have any family. Well, only Mark, my brother.”

“You were with him over Christmas?”

“Some of the time. We don’t see a lot of each other.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“Work doesn’t stop just because it’s Christmas, you know. The club’s busy. People like to party.”

“What about your sister, Marianne?”

“How’d you know about her?”

“Did you see her?”

“No. She lives in Boston. Besides, we don’t get along.”

“Do you own a hammer, Mitch?”

“A hammer? I guess so. In the toolbox. I don’t—”

“Ever heard of Jack Marillo?”

“Yeah. The TV guy who got killed.” He laughed. “Don’t tell me, you’re going to pin that one on me, too, right? Just pick on old Mitchell Cameron. This is absurd. Tell me, why would I want to kill a TV star I’ve never met?”

“How about last night, Mitch? Where were you then? That’s a bit more recent. Maybe you can remember what you were doing then?”

“Working. At the club.”

“Ten Forward?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sure you weren’t up in Brentwood?”

“Brentwood? What the fuck would I be doing in Brentwood? Who do you think I am, man? Member of the country-club set, maybe playing a few holes of golf in Bel Air? Don’t talk stupid.”

They would check his alibi, of course. But Cameron was good, Arvo thought. Even denied cigarettes, he wasn’t showing any of the traditional signs of stress or of lying. Occasionally, he would probe his broken tooth with his tongue, but that was a normal enough reaction to pressure — and to a broken tooth.

He didn’t sweat, fidget or chew his lips, and for the most part, his eyes remained calm and steady, fixed on Joe. They were very expressive eyes, though, Arvo noticed. Most of the time they showed only amused, cynical detachment, but they could turn hard. Arvo also thought he saw a kind of cruel hunger in them, a hunger for power over people, dominance for its own sake. A manipulator.

The absence of guilty body language proved nothing in itself. If Cameron were the man who had terrorized Sarah Broughton, killed John Heimar and Jack Marillo and stabbed Stuart Kleigman, then he could hardly be expected to react in a normal way to interrogation.

On the other hand, he was showing no outward signs of schizophrenia or manic depression. Perhaps he had learned to hide the symptoms; or perhaps his problem lay elsewhere. A serious delusional disorder might not be so obvious to an outsider. As planned, Arvo let Joe carry on asking Cameron about the murders. His turn would come soon. Cameron did seem to be getting a little confused now and then, and maybe that would give them the edge they needed to crack him. He certainly did like to talk.

“Why did you run when we came to question you?” Joe asked.

“You know why I ran. I’ve got a record. You guys come and roust me, you’re looking for an arrest. I mean, if you look at what’s happening right now, it’s point proven. Pretty soon you’ll have me down for every unsolved murder on your books.”

“We don’t work like that, Mitch.”

“Bullshit you don’t.”

“What have you got to hide, Mitch?”

“Nothing. I told you. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

It was there, Arvo noticed. A chink in the armor. Gone almost the moment he saw it, but there: a slight twitch, no more than a tic, at the corner of one eye. In someone as controlled as Mitchell Cameron, it was a sure sign he was lying.

Joe had noticed it, too. “Come on, Mitch, you can’t expect me to believe that old line.”

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“Sure you do. You want us to believe you’re innocent.”

“I am innocent.”

“So tell the truth.”

“I did.”

“Why did you run, Mitch?”

Arvo could see Mitch thinking, weighing up the pros and cons of making up another story.

“Why did you run, Mitch?”

“I owe some men some money, that’s all.”

“Which men?”

“Just men, okay. Loan sharks. The kind who don’t necessarily do things the legal way.”

“What do you owe them for?”

“Money. I borrowed some money for a new guitar.”

Joe paused, then leaned forward and spoke softly. “But the two officers who came to talk to you at Ten Forward identified themselves as police officers, Mitch.” He turned to face Maria and pointed. Her lower lip was swollen and red. “Yet you punched Detective Hernandez here in the face. That’s a serious matter. Did you think she was lying, showing phony ID?”

Cameron shifted a little uneasily in his chair. “Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me, man.”

“And because of that you hit a woman?”

“Can’t trust nobody these days, man. Women, they can be just as mean as men.” He looked at Maria and bared his teeth in an ugly grin. “Meaner, sometimes.”

“You can do better than that,” said Joe.

“Maybe the guys I borrowed the money from got cops in their pockets.”

“You into conspiracy theories, Mitch? Is that what you’re trying to sell us? I mean, I thought you must be a few cards short of a full deck, but conspiracy theories? Come on, I still think you can do better than that.”

“Oh, yeah? What if I give you names?”

“Cops?”

“Uh-huh. Hollywood Division.”

“Then we’d check them out.”

Cameron gave him two names. Arvo didn’t recognize either of them. Then Joe gave Arvo the signal to ease into his chair and take over questioning. Maria sat beside him, at a sharp angle to Cameron, so he would have to turn his head to look at her. She and Arvo had arranged a signal system for if and when he wanted her to ask the questions.

Arvo took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. Then he loosened his tie.

“You knew Gary Knox, didn’t you, Mitch?” Arvo began.

Cameron hardly reacted at all to the change of questioners; he merely flicked his disdainful eyes in Arvo’s direction, as if he were looking at some sort of lower life form.

“Sure I did,” he said. “Gary and I were close. He liked my songs. If he hadn’t died... ”

“What if he hadn’t died, Mitch?”

“Well, I’d probably be famous, wouldn’t I? A star. He was gonna have me in his band for the next album, record some of my songs.”

“You met him in San Francisco, is that right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“In a bar.”

“Right. Look, if you know all this, why are you asking me?”

“Just want to get it straight, Mitch, that’s all. Do you remember Jim Lasardi, the bass player?”

“Sure.” A guarded look had come into his eyes now, and he shifted in his chair again. He still wasn’t sweating, though, and it was hot in the room.

“Do you remember an incident in Santa Barbara, where you broke Jim Lasardi’s nose and hit a hotel manager?”

“Yes, I remember. Lasardi was ragging me. Had been all evening. The guy was an asshole. A has-been. He couldn’t stand to see the new talent coming in. I could’ve had his job if Gary hadn’t OD’d, you know that?”

“You play bass?”

“Sure. Bass. Lead. Rhythm. You name it.”

“But that’s not the way I heard the story, Mitch. I heard that Lasardi made some joke about you writing your autobiography on the back of a postage stamp, and you sat and drank and sulked and brooded over it all night, then you hit him.”

“I told you, the man was insulting me, insulting my background and my talent.”

“What talent?”

Cameron snorted. “What the fuck do you know about music?”

“But don’t you think that’s a bit strange, Mitch? A little bit odd? Sitting and brooding all evening over some petty remark? Isn’t it a bit of an overreaction? Maybe a bit obsessive?”

Cameron probed his broken tooth and said nothing.

“Do that a lot, do you?” Arvo asked.

“Do what?”

“Brood. Sit and think about things, get ideas in your head. Ideas you can’t seem to shake, things you just have to follow through on.”

“Are you trying to say I’m some kind of a crazy? And that’s why I killed these people? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Ever suffered from mental illness, Mitch? Ever been treated for schizophrenia?”

“No. What the fuck is this?”

Arvo paused to write some notes on his pad, just for effect, then raised his eyes and asked, “Do you remember Sarah Broughton?”

“Sarah who?”

“Sarah Broughton. The actress. She was Gary’s girlfriend at the time of the tour. You came down to LA with them, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Sure I remember her now. Sal. She wasn’t called Sarah then. I remember Sal.”

“What was your relationship with her?”

“What do you mean? I didn’t have a relationship with her. She was Gary’s girl.”

“Were you friends?”

“Friendly. I wouldn’t exactly say friends.”

“Did you hold doors open for her?”

“If I did, I was just acting like a gentleman, which is more than I—”

“Did you have pet names for her?”

“I mean, shit, is it a crime to act like a gentleman these days? What you mean, pet names?”

“Did you call her ‘My Lady,’ ‘Princess’?”

“Maybe I did, just for a joke. What’s this—”

“‘Little Star’?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you call her ‘Little Star’?”

“It’s the kids’ song. Don’t you know it?” He sang, “‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.’ Sometimes, you know, she seemed about as far away as a star.”

“So you called her ‘Little Star’?”

“I said maybe I did. Where are you going with this? I’m not admitting anything till you tell me what this is all about. First you’re trying to pin murders on me, now you’re talking about Sal. I don’t get it. What’s the connection?”

“Did you address the letters to ‘Little Star’?”

“What letters? What are you talking about?”

Arvo gave a discreet signal to Maria, who slipped a file from her briefcase, opened it and started to read. “‘As I labor to prove myself to you, you will remember me and you will come to me. Then, my love, will we lie together and I will bite your Nipples till the Blood and Milk flow down my chin. We will hack and eat away the Corrupting Flesh, the Rank Pollution of Tissue and Sinew, and go in Moonlight shedding our Skin and spilling our Blood on the Sand through the Mirrors of the Sea where all is Peace and Silence and no one can harm us or tear us apart ever again Forever and Forever.’”

Cameron seemed confused to hear a woman’s voice reading the letter. He frowned at Maria, then looked toward Arvo again.

“I’d call that rather flowery, poetic, if a little overwritten, wouldn’t you?” Arvo said. “Sort of Hallmark gothic. Sounds like just your style to me. Did you write that, Mitch?”

“Fuck, no.”

“How about this?”

Arvo looked toward Maria, who turned to the next sheet of paper and read softly, as if it were a love poem. “‘The boy wanted Death. Every night he cruised the Boulevard looking for Death, for someone who would deliver him to his Destiny. The Boulevard of Death. I put him to sleep like a kind Anesthetist before I performed my Operation. My Knives were sharp. I spent hours sharpening them. I was gentle when I bent over him. He didn’t feel a thing. Please believe me.

The disentanglement of Spirit from Flesh has a Scent and an Aura all of its own, my Love. One day I will show you, let you Smell and Taste it with me. We will disentangle our Spirits from our Gross Bodies and entwine forever, cut away the wretched excess.’”

“This is crazy,” Cameron said.

“Sounds to me like you were talking about John Heimar, the kid you picked up on Santa Monica Boulevard on December 19,” Arvo said.

“I didn’t pick no kid up. And I didn’t write that shit, either. It’s not me, man.”

“How about this one.”

Again Maria read in her low, husky voice. “‘I surround myself with your Image. I stand against my wall and I project your Image onto my Skin. I feel the warmth of the Light brush over me and I think it is you gently caressing me. But you were so far from my Arms and I saw you kiss him. I watched him put his Arms around you. I couldn’t bear it. You know what I can do, you have seen the Fruits of my Labors.’” As she read, the cut opened on her lower lip and a thin trickle of blood oozed down her chin. She wiped it away with a tissue.

“Real purple prose, that one,” said Arvo. “Sound familiar?”

“What is this? This is sick, man.”

“Let’s get back to Sally for a minute. You treated her well, did you?”

“I already told you. I behaved like a gentleman.”

“Why were you so good to her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why treat her with such respect? You didn’t show the same esteem for Detective Hernandez here. Anyone would think you hated women.”

Cameron glanced at Maria and said nothing.

“But you looked out for Sally, didn’t you?”

“Because there wasn’t anybody else to do it.” He ran his hand over his hair and wiped it on his jeans. “She was a stranger over here. She had that English accent and all, looked lost half the time. And she was so vulnerable.”

“But she had Gary, didn’t she?”

“He couldn’t always be around, could he? Gary was busy. People hit on her, you know, Sal. Good-looking chick like that. People hit on her all the time.”

“And you stopped them?”

“If I could. If I was around.”

“How did she react to that?”

“To what?”

“You using your muscle to keep guys from hitting on her.”

“How would I know? She never said.”

“Was she impressed?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You mean she never even thanked you?”

“That’s not why I did it, man.”

“What’d she do? Just ignore you?”

“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know.”

“But you still protected her to the best of your ability?”

“Yes. But I didn’t kill anyone for her. Is that what you’re getting at. Someone says I killed someone? Is that what this is all about? Well they’re a liar. They’re a fucking liar.” His eyes flashed with anger and he banged his fist on the table.

“Hey,” said Arvo. “Calm down, Mitch. Tell me, how did you feel when you found out that someone else hit on her?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Someone told me she was the tour mattress. Everyone fucked her. Everyone but you. She just ignored you.”

“Hey, I don’t like—”

“I don’t care what you don’t like, Mitch. Tell me how you felt when you knew someone else had fucked her.”

“I didn’t feel anything. Why would I?”

Arvo rested his hand on the table as a signal for Maria to take over. She did it smoothly. “Did you wonder what you could do to make her like you?” she asked softly. “Do you think women are impressed by tough guys, Mitch? Do you think they like it when people kill for them?”

He sneered at Maria. “Women like men to fight over them, sure they do. Like those two guys in the club tonight, when you came over. You must’ve seen what was happening there. Fucking peacocks preening themselves. Strutting their stuff.”

“Like to see some blood flow, do they?”

“Sure they do.”

“Is that what you like, too, Mitch. See a little blood flow? Is that why you hit me?”

“Look, I already explained about that. Sorry, my mistake.”

Maria sat back and let Arvo pick up the reins again. Cameron glanced between the two of them. He was getting so he didn’t know where to look. “Gary didn’t treat Sal very well, did he?” Arvo asked.

Cameron crossed his arms again. “They weren’t getting along. They were close to splitting up by then.”

“Way I heard it is he liked to humiliate her, force her to go with other guys. Even women. Do threesomes, gangbangs, that sort of thing.”

“This is bullshit, man. I don’t have to listen to this.” Cameron stood up but Joe pushed him back down again. “You’re not free to go,” he said. “Sit down.”

“Hey, that’s police brutality.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Joe. “Stay seated and answer the man’s questions.”

Arvo went on. “You admit that Gary didn’t treat Sal well, and that bothered you, made you protective toward her?”

“I’m not saying anything against Gary. Look, some guys just have problems relating to women, you know. That’s all.”

Arvo scratched his cheek and Maria took over again. “What do you mean by that, Mitch?” she asked. “Exactly what do you mean?”

He glanced at her quickly, then looked down at the table. “Well, Gary was a genius, right? He wasn’t like you and me.”

“And that gives him permission to humiliate women, does it?”

“I’m not saying that. You’re twisting my words. That’s just what a fucking woman would say.”

“What are you saying, then?” Maria pressed on. “I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from, Mitch.”

“Just that people like Gary are different, that’s all. You can’t judge them by ordinary standards. Like Miles Davis. He was another genius, but I read a biography said he wasn’t that much of a gentleman to the women in his life either.” He looked up at Maria again and fixed her with his eyes.

Maria didn’t even blink. She just went on slowly, softly and insistently. “So being a genius allows men to beat and degrade women. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that people like Gary are different, and sometimes they have, like, problems relating to women. They’re a bit fucked up, that’s all. Genius and madness, they’re pretty closely related. I’m not saying it should be condoned or anything.”

“That’s an interesting point, Mitch. How would you describe yourself: genius or madman?”

Cameron shrugged.

“Or maybe it doesn’t matter. The way you just described it, they’re pretty much the same, aren’t they?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m no crazy.”

“Did you want to make up to Sal for the way Gary treated her?”

“I never thought about it that way. I was just being nice, you know. It’s my nature.”

Arvo picked up the questioning again. “What happened after she went away? Did you lose touch with her?”

“Everyone lost touch with her, man.”

“Ever try to find her?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“Maybe you just couldn’t stop thinking about her?”

“What?”

“Watch much TV, Mitch?”

“Not a lot, no.”

“We noticed you got two TVs in the house. Big screen in the living room and a smaller one in your bedroom.”

“My what?”

“Your bedroom. The room with all your computer stuff. All the weird pictures on the wall. The room you keep locked.” Arvo sat forward, lowered his voice and rested his hands on the table. “See, we know all about you, Mitch. Maybe you’d like to talk about that now, the pictures, the little altar to Sarah Broughton? Want to tell us about that now, Mitch?”

Cameron turned pale and his jaw dropped. “You guys went to my house, broke into the bedroom?”

“We had a legal search warrant.”

“And you broke into the bedroom, the room with the lock on?”

“Yes. Like I said, we had a warrant. We had to break in. There was nobody there to let us in.”

Cameron shook his head. “Look,” he said, “I don’t understand any of this, and I don’t care about your fucking warrant. Is this what this is all about? All that stuff about me and Sal?” He glanced back and forth between Arvo and Maria. “You saw the photos on the wall?”

“More than that,” said Arvo. “You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty weird, Mitch: the altar, the fanzines, all those collages. Pretty bizarre. Want to tell us about it?”

Cameron started to laugh.

“Want to tell us about it?” Arvo repeated.

“Sure, I’d love to tell you about it. Problem is, I don’t know much about it. I’ve hardly even been past the door.”

Arvo frowned. All of a sudden, he felt his heart lurch and his mouth go dry. “What do you mean?”

“What I say. The room’s not mine, and unlike you assholes, I respect people’s privacy.” He leaned forward and rested his hands on the table.

“Mitch, you’re feeding us a line. What do we look like, Boy Scouts? It’s your house, Mitch. You rent it.”

“Sure I rent it. But I sleep on the sofa-bed in the front room. That other room’s Mark’s. He lives with me. And the lease is in his name, too. You guys should do a bit more investigating before you come around rousting innocent people, maybe losing them their jobs.”

“Mark? Your half-brother.”

“Yeah. Mark Lister. I don’t fucking believe this, man. I don’t believe it. Are you trying to tell me you think Mark’s been killing people because he’s a fan of Sal’s? No way. Sure, the kid has an active fantasy life. What’s wrong with that? It’s harmless enough, a few photos on the wall. All kids do that. He never had much else going for him except computers. He’s a real whiz with those.” He shook his head. “This is crazy.”

“Are you saying that you didn’t rent a silver Toyota from Dollar Rentals out at LAX?”

“Sure I’m saying that. What are you talking about?”

“Because we talked to the rental company and they told us it was you, Mitch. Mitchell Lorne Cameron rented that car on January 2 and returned it January 3. You saying that’s not you, Mitch? You saying you didn’t rent a car just like Sarah’s bodyguard’s, run him off the road, then stab Stuart Kleigman out in Brentwood?”

“The fuck I didn’t. Little asshole must’ve borrowed my driver’s licence again.”

“But he’s blind.”

“Who’s blind?”

“Mark.”

“Like fuck he is. Listen, I’m telling you, man, I didn’t rent no car. Mark doesn’t have his own licence so he does that sometimes, even though I told him he could get us in trouble.”

Arvo felt it slipping away from him. Martha, back in San Francisco, had told him she thought Mitch’s brother had some physical disability, but she had only guessed that it was blindness. Arvo had swallowed the assumption. “What does Mark look like?” he asked.

“We’re only half-brothers, but we both take after our mother. And Mark sort of looks up to me and copies me, you know, like dyeing his hair blond, working out, wearing the same kind of clothes and shit. I guess we look sort of alike. Enough so he can get away with using my driver’s licence. Look, this is really crazy, man. I can’t believe that Mark—”

“You’ve been taking care of him since Eureka?”

“You know about that, too? Yeah, since then. I mean, he’s a really bright kid, special schools and all that. They said he was a computer genius. He just has a problem communicating.”

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t speak.”

“You mean he’s mute?”

“I mean he doesn’t speak. Hasn’t for years. Give him a modem and he’s off and running, but the kid never opens his mouth. Shit, Mark’s just a computer nerd. That’s all he does. He works out of home. Desktop publishing, customized programs for small businesses, that kind of thing. Does pretty well, too. Look, this is obviously ridiculous. Mark wouldn’t hurt—”

Arvo felt a shiver run up his spine. He stood up. “Where is he, Mitch?” he asked “Where is Mark right now?”

“How should I know?”

Arvo could think of one place he might be.

Joe was already opening the interview-room door yelling for backup and a police helicopter. Arvo and Maria followed him as fast as they could go down to the car.

45

He parked his car by a restaurant on the coast Highway. No point following any further and risking getting caught by the cop. He knew where they were going.

His heart leapt as he walked down to the beach. She had come home! Just for him! She had finally convinced them to let her go after all this time. Let her go and meet her destiny.

Earlier that evening, keeping watch on the hotel, he had been mystified at what was happening. First he saw the detective pull up in his tan convertible and a wave of hatred surged through his blood. He knew he should have killed him when he had a chance, lit a bigger, better fire. This was the man most responsible for keeping Sally prisoner, for trying to turn her against him. Maybe he should still kill him? But no. Concentrate on the here and now. Remember the True Purpose.

Next he had seen a black-and-white pull up and watched Sally come out with the detective and get into it.

She was going home! To him.

She had finally told them she didn’t want to be a prisoner any more; she wanted to be free to come to the one who loved her. They wouldn’t like it, he knew that, but they had to respect her wishes. This was America, after all, land of the free.

And she had come to the place where she knew he would find her. Their first real home together. He thought of it like that even though he hadn’t even been inside the beach house.

And now, as he walked along the quiet shore toward that same house, the fine sand shifting under him, he felt a little sadness mingled with his joy. After all, he knew it was too late. Too much had happened.

Maybe the police had let her go, but they would probably start watching her; they certainly wouldn’t stop looking for him. He wasn’t a fool. He knew he’d broken some of their petty rules and they would punish him if they could.

If only he could make them understand about love, how it must be bought with blood, how it could only end in blood. But they would never understand the glory and the holiness of his vision. Dull, plodding, pedestrian minds.

The waves broke at the shoreline and smashed into a million pieces, each one shouting her name.

No. It was too late for earthly happiness. Could there ever be such a thing, anyway? Through his love for Sally, he had discovered that to find true happiness one had to push further and further beyond the petty human boundaries. It was the only way. Through his love for her, he had learned not to fear the unknown but to embrace it openly.

They would go beyond the mirrors of sea and everyone would remember them like the other great tragic, doomed lovers of history and myth. Like Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Abelard and Heloise, Othello and Desdemona, Tristan and Isolde. For what was love without courage and sacrifice? Without blood?

He hurried along the beach. Close ahead, she was waiting for him.

46

The patrolman who escorted Sarah home checked out the house and grounds, then got back in his black-and-white and drove away. Alone and safe in her own home at last, Sarah first phoned Cedars-Sinai again and found out that Stuart was doing fine.

Inside the house, nothing had changed. Except the half-full coffee cup she’d forgotten to wash before going to stay at Stuart’s had started growing mold. The place smelled musty, too, but then it had been shut up for a few days. Sarah opened the sliding glass doors and walked out onto the deck. The gate to the beach was still closed.

Mitch Cameron, her tormentor, was in police custody, Arvo had said, and she was finally free. So why did she feel so edgy?

She was also hungry. She checked the fridge. Nothing but curdled milk, a few eggs, probably stale. Maybe she’d order in. There was the Thai place that had delivered to her before. Maybe some pad thai noodles, garlic squid and yellow chicken. That sounded good. Or burn her taste buds with chicken in red sauce.

First, though, she went into the front room, turned on the dim reading lamps and adjusted the lighting the way she liked it. She put some Chopin Nocturnes on the CD player. She wanted to create the right sort of mood for relaxation.

Then she walked around the place, looking at her paintings, adjusting them a little, running her hands over the soapstone Inuit sculptures and the smooth planes of wood. She took some of her favorite books from the shelves, opened them, sniffed the pages, then put them back.

With the sliding glass doors open, she could smell seaweed and hear the rumbling of the waves below. It was a beautiful, clear evening, with just enough of a cool sea breeze to make her wrap a shawl around her shoulders.

She made some hot chocolate and curled her legs under her on the sofa. Glancing around the room, she thought vaguely about redecorating, now the nightmare was over, or at least buying a new painting for the wall. A Hockney would be great, but not at the prices he was fetching these days. And to think he was just a working-class lad from Bradford, not so far from Barnsley.

Sarah thought she would like to go and visit Hockney. She wondered if he would receive her. Didn’t he live quite near her, in the Hollywood Hills? She had heard that he was a bit of a recluse. But surely they could talk about the old days, about growing up in Yorkshire. Maybe he’d even sell her a painting cheap. Or if he liked her, he might even give her one. But why stop at that: maybe he would even want to paint her. In the nude, beside a swimming pool, perhaps? Enough foolish fantasies, she told herself.

Her reverie drifted. She also wanted to phone Paula and persuade her to come over with the family as soon as possible, take the kids out of school for a couple of weeks, if she had to. Perhaps she was being selfish, but since her Christmas visit, circumstances aside, she realized how much she had missed her family since the rift, how much a part of her they were, squabbles, irritations and all. And she also knew just from looking at him that her father didn’t have long to live.

To keep her occupied, she started making a list of things to do tomorrow:

Sarah thought she heard a sound outside on the deck. When she looked up, she saw only her own reflection in the dark glass and chastised herself for jumping at shadows. Still...

She walked over and pulled the doors fully open. It took her only a split-second to realize that it was no longer her reflection she was staring at.

It was him, the one she had seen at Stuart’s house, the one Arvo said had been caught.

Sarah screamed and staggered backwards. He came in and put his hand over her mouth. His skin smelled of Pears soap. She struggled briefly but he was too strong. He pushed her gently down into the armchair and he stood over her, hands on the chair arms, closing her in.

He reached forward gently and touched her hair. She flinched. He looked at her with sadness in his eyes, and she knew that whatever it was he was seeing, it wasn’t what she saw when she looked in the mirror.

She remembered him now. The silent one, always in the shadows: Mitch’s brother.

“What do you want?” she asked. “Why have you been hurting my friends? Why don’t you leave me alone?”

He said nothing, just kept looking at her in that twisted, adoring way.

“Look, this is crazy,” she rushed on, trying to keep the hysterical edge from her voice. “I don’t love you. I’ve never loved you. I’ve never even given you cause to think I loved you. Why are you doing this to me?”

But whatever he was hearing, it wasn’t what she was saying. She wished to God he would speak. His silence and his fixed, loving eyes were making her even more scared than she had been to begin with.

Then he took her hand. She tried to resist, but he grasped her wrist tightly and pulled her up from the chair. She screamed and struggled, knocking over a small table and one of the Inuit sculptures, but he held on to her and dragged her across the floor, through the doors and over the wooden deck. She managed to make him slow down enough for her to stand up. He seemed to want her to go with him down to the beach. He had obviously climbed up the rocks beside the gate, and he wanted her to go back down with him that way.

Sarah didn’t want to get dragged and bumped over the rocks, and she also realized that if she could play for time, then the police might find out they had made a mistake and come looking for her.

“Wait a minute. There’s a key,” she said. “For the gate. Let me get it.”

He thought for a moment, then nodded and held on to her as she went back inside slowly and took the key from the hook by the doors. Then they walked back out, hand in hand, down the rough-hewn stone steps.

The sky was clear and the moon bright. Sarah opened the iron gate. When they walked out onto the sand, she thought she might be able to make a break for it and run for help, maybe dash toward the first place that would give her access to the road. She didn’t know what she would do when she got there. Run out and flag down a car if she could, if anyone would stop. There were lights on in some of her neighbors’ houses, she noticed, and she tried shouting for help, but the combination of the sea and whatever TV programs they were watching drowned her cries.

He didn’t seem to notice her screaming, or care; he was completely intent on taking her toward the sea. She felt as if his powerful fingers were crushing her wrist. She screamed again, louder this time, hoping someone in one of the nearby houses would hear between commercials or the canned laughter and come to help her, but still nothing happened, no one came.

She tried to kick him in the shins and fell on the sand. He dragged her behind him, the same relentless pace. The more she struggled, the tighter his grip became, until she could hardly feel her hand.

God, how she wished he would speak, wished he could explain what he was doing and why, what he wanted. Never before had she felt so much in the dark, felt such a desire to understand.

When they reached the shoreline, he stopped, turned and faced her, now gripping both her hands in his.

“Please,” she begged above the crashing of the waves around their feet. “Please let me go. I’ll do what you want. Whatever you want. Don’t hurt me.”

She could make out his expression in the moonlight, and she could see from his eyes that he was trying to tell her he didn’t want to hurt her. But she also knew he was going to kill her. It might seem like something else to him, something grandiose and romantic and transcendental, but he was going to kill her. She remembered his letter: “But you must not think I enjoy causing pain. No, that is not it at all, that is not my purpose, surely you can see?... My Knives were sharp. I spent hours sharpening them. I was gentle when I bent over him. He didn’t feel a thing. Please believe me.” She believed him now.

“Please,” she said, “talk to me. Tell me what you want me to do.”

Then he put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. My God, she realized, he couldn’t speak. But at least he could hear her.

Pleading would do no good. Sarah tried to invoke something of Anita O’Rourke’s coolness and competence. Think, she told herself. You’re an actress, goddammit, so act. She couldn’t tackle him herself; he was far too strong. Her best bet was still to play for time. Just stay alive.

He relaxed his grip on her right hand. Not completely at first, but enough to get the circulation flowing again. Then, when he saw she wasn’t going to run away, he let go of both hands completely. He didn’t seem to have a gun or anything, at least no weapon that was immediately visible.

Sarah stood before him and massaged her wrists, the water lapping around her bare feet. What could she do? Run? No, he was powerful and would soon catch her. He wanted to kill her, but how? Walking out into the sea together, or some such sentimental love-sacrifice? He wouldn’t see that as hurting her. People said drowning in salt water was like going to sleep. But how did they know? Sarah had always wondered.

Again, she remembered the letter. He didn’t like to cause pain. But he had killed Jack. Knocked him out with a hammer and stabbed him. And he had stabbed Stuart. Even so, she could already sense that he was sorry he had grasped her wrists so tightly. Could she play on his sympathy?

Between waves, she could hear loud rock music from one of the houses and cars roaring by on the Coast Highway. So near.

His eyes locked with hers and he seemed to be drinking in her presence, inhaling her nearness. She realized in that moment that no amount of pleading or playing on sympathy could delay the consummation for much longer. He had one purpose and one purpose only: their eternal union through death.

Sarah thought she could hear sirens in the distance. Were they for her? Was she hearing things?

Then he reached in his pocket and took something out. His arm moved quickly by the side of his head. Sarah thought she saw something flash in the moonlight. Was that whirring sound coming closer really a helicopter? Was it coming to save her?

He handed her something. It felt like a mixture of hard calamari and soft tomato. She held her palm open in the moonlight and looked. It was an ear. His ear, cartilage and lobe. She dropped it on the wet sand, screamed and stumbled backward. Then she saw him pointing the knife toward her.

He reached out and grabbed her wrist again, the blade in his other hand coming closer. But instead of stabbing her or cutting her, he handed the knife to her, wrapped her fingers around it and stood before her.

My God, she knew what he wanted now. He wanted her to do the same, to cement their love by parting with a limb. A token.

The sirens were getting closer. She could hear cars screech to a halt by the nearest access point. And the helicopter was flying low, shining a cone of light over the beach about a mile to the south.

Still he just stood there, hands out, waiting for her to prove her love with a token of her flesh. She felt violated by his thoughts and desires; somehow, they seemed to have insinuated themselves into her consciousness.

Again she tried to think what Anita would do, then something snapped inside her, the way it had in the trailer that day. Dammit, he wasn’t Van Gogh and she wasn’t Anita O’Rourke. She was Sally Bolton, fighting for her life. And she would bloody well win. After all, he had given her the means. Holding the knife out in front of her with both hands, she pushed it forward with all her strength into his stomach.

For a moment, he didn’t move, then shock spread across his features and he fell to his knees, the blade sticking out of his flesh. It hadn’t gone very far in, Sarah noticed, but it was far enough. She felt sick. She had never hurt anyone before, let alone stabbed them, and as soon as she had done it she felt an awful guilt start to grow inside her. She had hurt another human being, however bad, however twisted he had been. He looked so pathetic now, on his knees in the foam. Not the monster who had written those letters, stalked her, murdered John Heimar and Jack Marillo, stabbed Stuart. He couldn’t be the man who had made her life hell for the past few weeks; he was just a lonely and pathetic figure, hurting, dying.

She looked around. There were cops with flashlights swarming all over the beach now, and the helicopter had landed about a hundred yards away. It was like a scene from a war, she thought, or the invasion of a small island. Men in military fatigues jumped out onto the beach, sand whipping up in the downwind from the helicopter blades, and hurried forward, rifles in their hands. Behind her, she could hear voices barking loud orders.

She was safe now. But when she looked back at the man on his knees in the sea, she still felt that she was caught in some sort of perverse mummers’ play that hadn’t reached its final act yet.

He got to his feet and stood in front of her, swaying a little. He had pulled out the knife and was holding it loosely by his side, but she wasn’t afraid any more. He wasn’t going to try to kill her now. His great vision, his intricate web of delusions, had collapsed, shattered. She had smashed it. They weren’t going anywhere together.

What did he see now, she wondered? Her betrayal or his triumph? His expression was almost unreadable — the religious ecstacy of a St. Sebastian pierced by arrows, crossed with all-too-human shock and surprise. Had he really expected her to cut off an ear and hand it to him? She knew that he had.

His eyes brimmed with pain, sadness and loss. He stretched his hand out to her again and she became so mesmerized by his eyes that she found her own hand reaching out to take it. She could see blood from where he had clutched at the stomach wound, blood shining in the moonlight.

She almost put her hand in his, almost got his blood on her. Christ, now she felt that she wanted to hold him, rock him in her arms, say she was sorry she stabbed him, tell him everything was going to be all right, sing him a lullaby.

What the hell was wrong with her? This man had terrorized her, killed people in her name. And all she wanted to do was hold him and ease his pain, maybe let him take his illusions to the grave. Then she snapped out of the spell and snatched back her hand before it touched his.

“No!” she yelled. But she didn’t know if he heard her or not. Arvo and Maria had come up behind and grabbed her by her arms. They were leading her back toward the police line. He was backing the other way, toward the ocean.

So many men, and they all had their guns out, pointing past Arvo, Maria and Sarah at the man. “Jesus Christ,” Sarah heard one of the uniformed policemen say as she neared him. “What the fuck do we do, shoot him to stop him from killing himself?”

Like Lot’s wife, Sarah looked back.

She saw the knife blade flash in the moonlight before he plunged it into his abdomen, just below the stomach wound, with all his remaining strength. Then, with both hands, he dragged it slowly up as far as his breastbone.

She was only about twenty feet away from him, and the moonlight and flashlights gave his eyes an eerie glow, like an animal’s eyes caught in the headlights.

All the time he was pulling the knife through his flesh, he was looking at Sarah, and at the last moment, as something dark and glistening slid out of his stomach into the moonlit water like a grotesque parody of birth, he opened his mouth and emitted a long, high-pitched wail and fell to his knees. It was the only sound she had ever heard him utter and it sounded like “Sally.” Then the light in his eyes went out like a spent candle, a strong wave knocked him over, and the water covered him.

47

Chicken pieces sizzled as they hit the hot grill and released the mingled smells of cumin, coriander, garlic and ginger. Fat and marinade dribbled onto the coals, hissed and turned to smoke. Above, a few milky swirls of cloud decorated the pale blue sky. Seabirds wheeled and squealed over the rippled blue water, which winked with diamonds of sun. Breakers crashed in a chaos of foam on the beach. Like the postcards said, it was “Just another day in paradise.”

It was only two weeks after that terrifying night on the same beach, and even now Sarah found it hard to look out there in the moonlight, especially when she was alone.

But she wasn’t alone now. As soon as Sarah had given her a brief account of what had happened, Paula had taken the kids out of school and brought them and her father over to visit.

They had been here a week now and were taking off to see the Grand Canyon for a few days before coming back to LA then heading home. Paula had some idea that the air in Arizona would be beneficial for their father’s health. Sarah doubted it. Her father was probably past that kind of help; besides, from what she had read, the air in Arizona was getting just as bad as it was in Los Angeles, thanks to all the Angelenos and their automobiles moving out there. But she didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to discourage Paula, especially when she seemed to be on a rare optimistic streak.

Paula had seemed like a woman with a mission the moment she arrived. Gently, she had assumed command, given Sarah space to heal and talk when she wanted to talk. She had already rented a car and taken the kids to Disneyland and all the way to Sea World in San Diego. She seemed to have taken to driving on the wrong side of the road, even on the freeways, like a fish to water.

Sarah was amazed at the transformation in her sister. The last time she had seen Paula, at Christmas, she had been bitter, mean and unadventurous. Also, like a lot of Brits, she hadn’t had a good word to say for Americans or anything American.

Still, it was a good thing that Paula had determined to be so independent over here, because Sarah had been so busy on the series most days that she hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her family as she would have liked. She had fixed up a visit to the studio, of course, and the kids had loved that. Paula had been impressed, too, Sarah could tell. In fact, she could also tell that Paula liked it here.

Visitors often did, Sarah knew, maybe because they only saw the paradise and not the inferno, just as she had for so long. And, of course, Brits loved the weather. Especially in January. As it turned out, they were in the fourth day of a heatwave — the high 80s — after a week of heavy rains had washed half of Malibu onto the Coast Highway. Paula hadn’t even complained about the rain.

If her father had still been well he would probably have been spending his time in the King’s Head in Santa Monica, Sarah thought, drinking Boddington’s pub ale. Maybe he would even join the cricket club. He had been a fair pace bowler in his day. Still, he had seen the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, and that had brought a smile to his face and a tear to Sarah’s eye.

Wearing cut-off denim shorts and a white Good Cop, Bad Cop T-shirt, Sarah turned the chicken pieces, basting them with tandoori sauce as she did so. A big pot of rice was cooking on the kitchen stove, in chicken stock with turmeric and salt, and Paula was back there in the kitchen, mixing up a salad.

The children were playing on the beach, throwing pebbles, running at the waves and back, as if being chased by them, squealing with delight. A few yards further down, a man stood up to his thighs in water, holding a fishing rod. Optimist, Sarah thought. And to think what had happened on that same beach only a couple of weeks ago. Sarah gave a little shudder. She looked at her watch. He should be here by now. She realized she was anxious to hear what had happened.

Her father sat in his wheelchair at the other end of the deck, wrapped in a light blanket, staring out to sea. He looked lost in his own sense of impending death. Though it had exhausted him, he had made the journey to what must have seemed like the other side of the earth, and Sarah knew he had forgiven her. She loved him and wished there were something she could do other than watch him die, but she knew there wasn’t. All the doctors in California couldn’t cure what he had.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Paula yelled from the kitchen.

“Okay,” Sarah shouted back.

A moment later, Paula walked through to the deck with Arvo in tow.

“Look what I found on the doorstep,” she said. “Is he yours?”

Sarah blushed and thumped her sister on the arm. “Paula!” She turned to Arvo. “Please forgive my sister,” she said. “She never did learn any manners.” Then she introduced him to her father, who nodded and shook hands. The children stayed on the beach. They had already eaten hot dogs for lunch, having fallen immediately in love with real American junk food, and they were easy to keep an eye on down there. They knew not to go out into the sea, and even if they hadn’t been told, the size of the waves would have given them ample warning of the danger.

“You can put those beers in there, if you like,” Sarah said to Arvo, pointing to the cooler. Arvo did so, detaching a can for himself first. “Anyone else want one?” he asked.

“Can’t stand that weak American stuff,” said Paula. “Tastes like gnat’s piss.”

Sarah smiled. Ah, good old Paula, back on form now she’s got a new audience.

“I suppose it’s too cold for you,” Arvo said. “Don’t you English like your beer warm?”

“Get away with you,” she said, laughing. “Do you know, you sound just like one of those blokes on telly.”

“Which one?”

“Americans. On telly, back home.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I am an American, I guess. You sure you won’t have a cold beer?”

Paula gave a coy smile. “Oh, go on then. You’ve twisted my arm.” He passed her a can of Michelob.

Paula actually looked quite attractive, Sarah thought, without condescension. It wasn’t that she had changed her style much: Frederick’s of Hollywood might have beckoned, but Paula was a Bullock’s girl at heart. Still, she had a good enough body to look good in her jeans and Disneyland T-shirt, and she had picked up a tan very quickly. But it went deeper than that, Sarah thought. Paula was more relaxed, she was actually enjoying herself, and the frown and worry lines that had seemed so deeply etched in her face had faded.

“Want one?” Arvo asked Sarah.

“No, I mustn’t,” she said. “I’ve got a Diet Coke on the go somewhere. I hope you like Indian food.” She turned the chicken pieces again.

“If it tastes as good as it smells,” he said, “I can’t see any problems there.”

“Sit down.”

“Sure I can’t do anything?”

“No. Everything’s under control. Paula’s making a salad, aren’t you, dear?”

Paula stuck her tongue out and went back inside.

Arvo sat and put his feet up on the low wooden railing of the deck. He cradled the can of Michelob with both hands on his lap. He was wearing white cotton slacks, sandals and a dark green golf shirt with a tiny knight on horseback embroidered on the breast pocket.

“You a copper, then?” Arthur Bolton wheezed.

“Yes,” Arvo answered. “A detective.”

“Never did like coppers. Never friends of the working man, they weren’t. And certainly no friends of the miners.” Then he went back to staring out to sea. Sarah looked at Arvo and winked, giving a “What can I do with him?” shrug. Arvo shook his head and smiled.

Soon the food was ready and they all sat around the wooden picnic bench to eat. Sarah helped herself to a glass of chilled white wine. Arvo and Paula stuck with beer. Arthur Bolton tried a Michelob but didn’t drink much of it.

“It’s okay to talk about it,” Sarah said to Arvo. “You know, about what happened. I’ve told them just about everything. But there’s still a lot I don’t know.”

Arvo nodded and tasted some chicken. “Delicious,” he said. “How’s Stuart?”

“He’s at home. I think he’s still on fluids. The knife did some intestinal damage. The doctor says it’ll be a while before he’s up to par. It’ll certainly be a while before he’s up to Indian food. Can you imagine Stuart having to change his diet?” Sarah took a mouthful of rice and smiled at Arvo. “What did you find out?” she asked.

“Quite a lot, really. Mitchell Cameron was pretty keen to talk after he found out Mark was dead. I believe he really did care for his kid brother, in an odd sort of way.”

“Why did he run away from you?”

Arvo shrugged. “It’s habitual with some people. Mitch is a small-time felon. When he left San Francisco, he owed a lot of people money, people who wouldn’t go that easy on him if they found him. He also owed the phone company and utilities. That’s why he put them all in Mark’s name here in LA. Mark Lister. Which is also why we couldn’t track him through phone or utility records. Anyway, Mitch had been into dealing drugs with a couple of crooked cops from Hollywood Division. They’d arrest someone, take their stash as evidence, then it’d find its way back onto the street again via Mitch and his club connections. Trouble was, he’d been robbing them blind, and he thought they’d finally found out and sent someone over to get him. These people break limbs and shoot kneecaps. That’s why he ran.”

“And meanwhile, Mark had come out here?”

“That’s right. He must’ve thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he saw you come home. We screwed up. I’m sorry.”

Sarah said nothing. She was remembering her confrontation with Mark on the beach. Heaven? She doubted it. “Why?” she asked. “What made him do what he did?”

Arvo took a sip of beer before answering. “You’d have to ask a psychiatrist that,” he said. “And I doubt if even they would be able to give you the full answer. I don’t know. His family background was one factor. His mother was a real piece of work.”

“How?”

“She hung around with a rough crowd, bikers mostly. Liked to live fast and dangerous. She died of a drug overdose.”

“What happened to the children?”

“Fostered. Best thing that could have happened to them. They got fed, schooled, well taken care of.”

“Then why did they turn out the way they did?” Sarah asked.

“Again, we don’t know,” said Arvo. “Maybe it was just too late. They’d suffered abuse and neglect when they were kids, in their most formative years. The sister turned out best of the three. Lives in Boston, got a good job with a publishing company. She wants nothing to do with her half-siblings. And who can blame her? When you get right down to it, Mitch is just another asshole with an attitude, a petty criminal. Only Mark was genuinely sick and nobody really knew because he didn’t talk.” Arvo took another sip of beer to cool the heat of the spices and went on. “Mitch told me a story which might explain part of what happened, though I don’t think we’ll ever be able to explain it all.

“Apparently, when Mark was a kid he was on a picnic with his mother and the bikers, so the story goes. They were on a remote beach, somewhere in Mexico. A fight broke out between his father and one of the other bikers. A fight over his mother. Apparently this guy had been sniffing around her for some time. Anyway, she egged them on and the other biker killed Mark’s father. Stabbed him.”

“While he was watching?” Sarah said in disbelief.

“It gets worse.” Arvo cast a glance at Paula and Arthur Bolton.

“It’s all right,” Sarah said. “Go on.”

“As soon as he’d killed Mark’s father he and the mother... well... they did it, made out, right there in the sand. He was still covered in the father’s blood. Everyone cheered them on. Mark hasn’t spoken a word since. Mark’s father was the only one Marta Cameron had actually married. That’s why he has his father’s name: Lister.”

Sarah paled and pushed her plate aside. “My God.”

“I’m sorry,” said Arvo. “You asked.”

“Please, it’s all right. What did they do with the body?”

“Cut it up and buried it under the sand.”

Sarah had a sudden image of the body she had found on the beach what seemed like decades ago. Let’s bury Daddy in the sand. “How did Mitch know this?” she asked.

“He says one of the bikers who was there told him when he was older. Apparently this was one guy who didn’t cheer them on but didn’t do anything to stop what was happening either. Mitch wasn’t there himself that day. He was in school. But remember, Mitch is a compulsive liar. It could be just a story he made up to try and give his half-brother an excuse for his behavior.”

“Except that it makes so much sense.”

“Yes. Do you want me to go on?” he asked.

“Yes. please. I just feel as if a cloud passed over the sun, that’s all.” Sarah looked down to see the children still playing on the shore.

“Mark was mentally ill, but because he didn’t speak and his brother protected him, he slipped through the cracks. At school he was bright and well behaved. And a loner. They say it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Mark Lister never made a sound. How could anybody know what was going on in his mind?”

“But surely Mitch should have known? They did live in the same house, didn’t they?”

“Yes. But, remember, I said Mitch protected Mark. Mostly that just meant giving him a home, a roof over his head, taking him out occasionally. The big difference between them was that Mitch was active, outgoing, and Mark wasn’t very sociable. He preferred to be left alone with his computer and fantasies most of the time. They also kept very different hours. Mitch worked most of the evening and night in clubs and slept during the day, when Mark did most of his computer work. They hardly saw each other. And Mitch said he didn’t pry into Mark’s everyday life, let alone into his deepest fantasies.

“He hadn’t actually been inside Mark’s room and seen the shrine and all the computer collages. He didn’t know about the letters. And he certainly hadn’t seen John Heimar’s wallet and Jack’s coke spoon, trophies on the altar. He’d stood on the threshold, yes, and he’d seen the photos. But like he said, what’s so unusual about that? Plenty of teenagers cover their walls with posters and photos of rock stars and movie stars. Mark was his little brother and he wasn’t that long out of his teens. Besides, he was different, he was gifted, a computer genius.” He glanced at Paula, then back at Sarah. “Would you believe your sister was a stalker and a murderess if you saw a few pictures on her walls?”

“He’s right, you know, love,” Paula said. “A person overlooks a lot of things in a brother or sister. We make excuses for our own, maybe when we should be helping.”

“I suppose so,” Sarah said. “How did he find me?”

“We think he got your address through a computer bulletin-board. It makes sense. He didn’t speak, so he couldn’t go around asking. And a bulletin-board would be more discreet, too.”

Sarah cleared the plates and passed out more beer, then she helped herself to another glass of wine. The way things were going, she felt she needed it. The hell with the diet. She’d start her new regimen tomorrow.

They all drifted away from the table and sat in the lounge chairs, listening to the waves and looking out at the diamonds dancing in the sea.

Love. Love. Love. Sarah would never, so long as she lived, understand love. She loved her family, no matter what. They were kin and blood, and she was happy they were with her now. In his way, she supposed Mitch Cameron had also loved his disturbed, silent half-brother, Mark, too.

And she had loved Gary, yet she had watched that love die the way a patient, anesthetized but still conscious, might watch a surgeon cut out a malignant tumor. They say that happens sometimes, that you wake up during an operation and feel it, but you’re still paralyzed by the anesthetic and you can’t communicate your pain. That was what happened. And she had walked away. Since then, family aside, she hadn’t been capable of loving anyone. Maybe that, too, would change.

And unknown to her, someone had been standing in the wings taking it all in, twisting and coloring it all until it took on the form he wanted and needed for his own obsession. And in his own way, this someone had loved her. Mark Lister had loved her so much that he had killed for her. Now he had died for her, too.

No, she would never understand love.

She felt someone nudge her. It was Paula. “Sorry, I was miles away.”

“He’s going now,” she said, nodding toward Arvo.

Sarah stood up. “Oh, must you?”

“I’ve got a few things to do.”

“Okay. Let me see you out.”

“No need,” Arvo said.

Sarah stood awkwardly. “Well, then... ” she said. She might never have another reason to see this man again. She didn’t even know if she wanted to. She liked him now, but the thought of a relationship, even a date, terrified her.

And she had a feeling that he might be involved with Maria. She didn’t know why, it was just something she had sensed when she saw them together, something in the way they related to one another.

On the other hand, Sarah did feel something between herself and Arvo, some kind of spark, and after everything that had happened, she didn’t feel she could bear it if he just walked away, right out of her life forever.

Christ, she was shifting from one foot to another like a silly teenager. She could feel Paula mentally urging her to say something.

But Arvo spoke first. “What next?” he asked.

“Work,” she said, feeling silly as soon as the word was out. “I mean, I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on, what with Jack’s replacement and all. We’re really behind. The public can only stand reruns for so long.”

“Right,” he said. “Well, good luck.” He stuck out his hand, and they shook.

Arvo began to walk through the sliding glass doors toward his car. Paula nudged Sarah and pointed after him. “Go on,” she mouthed.

Then, like that policeman on television, the one with the rumpled raincoat, Arvo popped his head back through the doors. “Just one more thing before I go,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Do you think I could give you that driving lesson sometime? And maybe afterwards we could go to dinner?”

Sarah found herself smiling. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, to both. I’d like that.”

“Have you got a friend?” Paula yelled after him as he left, then collapsed giggling on her lounge chair.

The children came running up the steps, smelling of the salt water and making wet footprints on the wooden deck. Sarah could still smell traces of the Indian spices from the meal. She took another sip of wine.

There was a lot to take in, yes, and a lot of personal demons to grapple with. But today the sun was shining, the waves were crashing on the beach, her family was with her, she still had her job, Stuart was recovering, and a handsome man was going to give her a driving lesson. On the whole, she thought, allowing herself a private smile, things weren’t looking too bad right now. Things weren’t looking too bad at all.