The Golem of Paris

Chapter eleven

Sunday morning Jacob got up early and drove out to Valley Traffic. The squad room was quiet, and he borrowed a colleague’s computer, combing the databases for crimes matching the Duvall/White homicide.

He kept widening his parameters, finding nothing even remotely similar.

He was surprised, and disappointed. He assumed that this was not the killer’s first rodeo. Mutilation that precise required practice. And the staging spoke to an internal logic, however warped.

He’d heard of serial murderers cutting out eyes. A typical profiler’s interpretation would be: rage, followed by shame, the bad guy unable to bear the gaze of his victims.

With Marquessa and Thomas, the opposite seemed true. He wanted them to watch him. He took pride in his workmanship.

Who were they to him?

Who were they, period?

Ballard’s notes included the name of Marquessa’s mother, address in Watts, and a phone number that rang twice before a young girl picked up.

“Duvall residence.”

“This is Detective Jacob Lev, LAPD. I’m trying to reach Mrs. Dolly Duvall.”

“Hold, please.”

An older, sharper voice came on. “This is Mrs. Duvall.”

Jacob reintroduced himself, saying he’d come across Marquessa and Thomas’s file and was hoping to ask a few questions.

“I’ve answered all the questions,” Dolly said. “Too many times.”

“I’m sure you have, ma’am. I hate to bother you.”

“It’s my daughter and my grandson,” Dolly said. “It wouldn’t be a bother, if I believed you had something new to offer me. What does that mean, you ‘came across’ their file? That sounds like it happened by accident.”

Aware that he was talking to a woman with an exquisitely tuned BS detector, he took care with his words. “I’ve been reviewing open cases, and theirs hit me square in the chest. I can’t promise I’ll solve it, ma’am, but I’ll give it my best.”

Silence.

Dolly Duvall said, “It’s not a good time. We just got back from church and I have to start on dinner.”

“Is there a day that works for you this week?”

“You can come tomorrow at noon.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Another thing.” Dolly exhaled. “The previous detectives brought photographs. Please don’t do that.”

Before leaving the station, he ran the tag of the green Mazda near the 7-Eleven. It came back stolen, taken from the owner’s driveway in La Mirada.

He called the mini-mart. Someone other than Henry answered.

“Tell him Jacob said if he sees the car again, he should phone it in right away.”

“Okay, boss.”

“You’ll make sure he gets the message.”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Jacob Lev.”

“Yeah.”

Marquessa Duvall’s LAST KNOWN address was a pink stucco cottage on Berryman Avenue, in Culver City. Like the rest of the houses on the block, it’d had some money pumped into it during the most recent boom. The roof looked new. Geometric topiaries flanked a short front walk. It might have been a nice place to live, save the fact that it backed up to an eighteen-foot cinder-block wall, behind which roared the 405 South.

The noise would make it easy to miss a couple of shots.

Forensics of the residence had come up blank. No blood. No forced entry. No sign of struggle. No foreign DNA, or none that could be linked to anyone on the suspect list.

As a crime scene, it was arid.

What Jacob wanted was a launching point for sympathy.

If he was totally honest, he had nowhere else to turn.

The house’s current occupants, a young couple with a kinetic Shetland sheepdog, had never heard of Marquessa. Jacob’s presence alarmed them, so after a walk-through, he left them in peace.

The next-door neighbor was a mid-sixties man named Jorge Alvarez.

“I remember her,” he said.

He invited Jacob in and settled himself in a melon-green La-Z-Boy. The living room smelled like cat.

“She wasn’t here long,” Alvarez said. “Year, year and a half. Nice gal, great smile. The boy, TJ, he was cute, too. Very bright.”

Jacob mentally cataloged it: she called him TJ. A simple fact that made both mother and child that much realer.

That was good, and that was awful.

Alvarez said, “I used to throw the ball around with him. I felt bad knowing his father was out of the picture.”

“Were there other men around?”

“Oh, sure. She was a good-looking woman. A knockout, truth be told.”

“Anyone who stands out?”

“It’s not like I was keeping records,” Alvarez said. “For a while there was a limo coming to pick her up. They used to block my driveway.”

Not in the file. “Did you mention that to the police?”

“I really can’t remember,” Alvarez said. “Probably I did. I’ll tell you, Detective, I didn’t appreciate the way you guys handled it, storming in here, crawling all over the place. I’m not sure what I was asked and what I wasn’t. A few times I offered my help and got the feeling I was being a nuisance.”

“A limo,” Jacob said, writing it in his pad, wanting this talkative man to know he was being taken seriously.

“Whale of a car,” Alvarez said. “She’d go out in a tight dress. The dress I remember because it was shiny. Shiny little gold thing.”

“Did you see who was driving or riding?”

Alvarez shook his head.

“Any idea where they went?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Jacob said, “Who took care of TJ while she was out?”

“She took him with her.”

“In the limo?”

Alvarez nodded.

“What did you make of that?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not necessarily what I would expect.”

“Did you grow up with a single mother?” Alvarez said.

Jacob nearly replied single father. He shook his head.

“I did,” Alvarez said. “I know the sacrifices they make. So, no, I didn’t think it was strange. I figured she was doing what she needed to do. It wasn’t that often. Couple times a month, maybe.”

“What time of day did they leave?”

Alvarez skimmed a hand over his pate. “Now you’re making me think. Evening, I guess. And don’t ask me when they came back because I never saw that. I go to sleep early. I’m retired.”

“From what?”

“I was a teacher over at Stoner Avenue Elementary.” Alvarez smiled at the memory. “Math and science, fifth and sixth grade.”

Jacob hesitated. “I need to ask this, sir: did you ever get the impression Marquessa was charging for her services?”

Alvarez said, “I couldn’t say.”

“But not a definite no.”

“Look, I was her neighbor. That was it. I don’t judge people. What she did with her free time wasn’t my affair. The limo? Maybe she took her son because she had a rich boyfriend who was okay with that. In that case, more strength to her.”

“Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“Only what I told the detectives a few years ago,” Alvarez said. “I can’t imagine anyone who’d want to hurt that woman.”

Jacob worked the rest of the block without success, finishing as the sun sawed into the horizon. Avoiding a freeway dense with red lights, he navigated Venice Boulevard, slowing as he came up on the apartment complex where Dr. Divya Das lived.

He couldn’t blame her for the long stretch of silence between them — longer, in fact, than the freeze between him and his father. There had been no official reason for her to get in touch. She worked at the Coroner’s, and he no longer worked murders.

She belonged to Special Projects, and to Mallick.

Still, she could have called. She could have checked up on him during those early months when he nightly thrashed himself awake; could’ve sent the occasional e-mail. Her withdrawal felt personal, and while his attraction to her had largely faded, her rejection continued to sting.

I’m not like you, Jacob.

Understatement. She was tall and smart and charming and beautiful, and ultimately untrustworthy. He’d made the mistake of allowing himself to think of her as a friend, probably because she was the best actor in the troupe.

He hadn’t contacted her, either.

Vanity and bullshit.

Tonight, he pulled over outside her building. He thought about buzzing up, called instead and got her voicemail.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m in your neighborhood, wondering if I could drop by. No worries, though. Hope you’re well.”

He arrived at the care facility after seven, stopping to retrieve the packet of Plasticine from his mother’s nightstand. Out on the patio, Bina sat beneath the fig tree, gazing up at the branches, her tray of food finished and awaiting removal.

“Hey, Ima.”

An extraordinary thing happened: her hands stopped fiddling.

She turned to face him.

He stood still, his heart shouting with wild hope.

Because damn if she didn’t look surprised.

It wasn’t his regular day.

Surprise implied expectation. Expectation implied awareness.

Awareness implied more than anyone had given her credit for.

“Ima,” he said.

She looked back up at the tree.

Desperate not to lose her, he hurried over to the bench, dropping his backpack on the ground. “Hey there, hey. How are you? I wanted to see you. See how you’re feeling.”

She was slipping away, cheeks slackening, eyes going hazy.

“It’s cold out here. Do you want another blanket? Ima? I can get you one. Ima. A nice warm blanket...”

He kept yammering. He wanted to shake her, to scream in her ear: come back.

Limp. Mute. Gone.

Gutted, he slumped on the bench, and for a few moments the two of them were equally vegetative. Then her hands resumed their hollow march.

A passage of Talmud, memento of a previous life, leaked into his mind.

Since the destruction of the Holy Temple, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to children and fools.

“Marquessa,” he said.

No reaction.

“Marquessa Duvall,” he said. A click in his throat. “Ring a bell?”

Bina knitted air.

“Thomas White? TJ? He was Marquessa’s—”

Why was he doing this?

“He was her son.”

Nothing.

He pressed on: “You saw their pictures.”

Silence, broken by the distant blare of a car horn.

“You saw the pictures. Ima, are you hearing me?”

He ripped off a chunk of Plasticine and began softening it between his palms. It had dried out, colors mashed together to produce a dirty brownish swirl.

“You made a bird.”

He pressed the ball of clay into her jittery right hand.

“Do it again. Please. Make me another beautiful bird?”

He let go of her fingers. They fell open and the wad plopped to the ground.

He tried again. She wouldn’t hold on.

He had the file in his backpack, the crime scene photos.

He asked himself a brutal question: did he want to help her or use her?

Use her to what end, though? The more he thought about her outburst, the more convinced he felt that it had been nonspecific. Showing her the photos would be pointless.

Pointless, and cruel.

He needed to get out of there before he did or said something he’d regret.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said, standing. “I’ll see you Friday.”