Time Bomb

9

The children greeted me with eagerness, talking freely. I had the younger ones build replicas of the storage shed with blocks, manipulate figurines representing Holly Burden, Ahlward, the teachers, themselves. Acting out the shooting, over and over, until boredom set in and visible anxiety diminished. The older students wanted to know what had caused Holly Burden to go bad, caused her to hate them. I assured them she hadn’t targeted them, had been deranged, out of control. Regretted having little with which to back that up.

A sixth-grader said, “What made her crazy?”

“No one knows.”

“I thought that was your job, knowing what makes people crazy.”

I said, “Trying to know. There’s still a lot we don’t understand about craziness.”

“I got an aunt who’s crazy,” said a girl.

“She got it from you,” said the boy next to her.

And they were off…

I walked out of the last classroom sapped but feeling a sense of accomplishment, wanted to share that feeling with Linda and brighten up her day. But her office was locked and I left the school.

As I got in the Seville I noticed a car turn a corner and approach. Slowly. Silver-gray Honda. Dirty. Black windows.

It pulled up alongside me, stopped.

I power-locked the Seville. The Honda remained in place, engine idling, then suddenly drove off.

I snapped my head around and made out four digits and three letters of a license number. Held the information in my head until I could retrieve pen and paper from my briefcase and write it down. Then I sat there trying to figure it out.

Some kind of intimidation?

Or just a curious local, checking out the carpetbaggers?

I thought of the racist filth Linda had shown me and wondered if there could be a connection.

I looked over at the school grounds, graying in the autumn twilight. A handful of students remained in the yard, waiting to be picked up, playing under the watchful eyes of a teacher’s aide. The school buses were gone, transporting kids from suburbia back to the mean streets- but which streets were meaner?

I watched the children frolic. Enjoying their newly paroled schoolyard.

Hide and seek.

Kickball. Hopscotch.

Losing themselves in the game of the moment.

So trusting it hurt.

I looked up and down the street before pulling out. Drove home too fast and kept checking my rearview mirror.

The first thing I did when I got in the house was pick up the phone and dial West L.A. Robbery-Homicide.

This time, the new D-Three was in.

“Hey, Alex. Got your message, tried to call. Kind of crazy right now-”

“Strange things are happening, Milo. Let’s talk.”

“Sure. Later,” he said, in a voice that let me know he wasn’t alone. “Let me handle a few things and I’ll get back to you on that.”

He rang the bell shortly before seven and, operating on reflex, went straight into the kitchen. I stayed on the leather sofa, watching the roundup of the news.

Nothing new on the shooting: just close-ups of Holly Burden’s yearbook picture, a School Board official reporting that a “detailed and extensive manual search of several years of school records” had confirmed her attendance and graduation from Nathan Hale Elementary School but revealed no new insights. Then more psychiatric speculation, including one theory that she’d returned to Hale to take revenge for some imagined slight. When asked to fill in the details, the psychiatrist demurred, saying he was speaking theoretically- in terms of “classical psychodynamic wisdom.” Dobbs came on again, in a segment that looked prerecorded. Caressing his watch fob, still talking about his treatment program at Hale, blasting “society.” I wondered how long he’d keep up the charade.

Milo returned with a comice pear in his mouth, one of a dozen sent me each year as a gift by a grateful patient now living in Oregon.

He chomped. “Nice to see you’re buying good healthy food again.”

“All for you,” I said. “Nutrition for a growing boy.”

He patted his belly and sat down, scowling.

The camera drew back from Dobbs’s rubber face. The psychologist was stroking his beard, had put on a sad, sanctimonious expression- part mourner, part huckster.

Milo snorted and began humming “Jingle Bells.”

I said, “Yeah, the resemblance is striking, but this guy’s no saint.”

“Better be careful. He knows if you’re naughty or nice.”

Dobbs’s pronouncements on spirituality dissolved into a commercial.

Milo stretched his feet out and said, “Okay, you promised me strange. Time to deliver.”

I started with my encounter with Massengil and Dobbs.

He said, “I don’t know that I’d classify any of that as strange, Alex. Seems like good old politics as usual: the asshole feels the school is his turf, wants his boy in on anything that goes on there. You have to think like these guys do- power’s their dope. You’ve infringed. Of course he’s gonna get offended.”

“So what should I do about it?”

“Not a goddam thing. What can he do to you?”

“Not much,” I said, “but he might be able to do something to you. He talked about how your promotion had caused resentment.”

“I’m quaking,” Milo said, and wiggled his hand. “But he’s right in one regard. The troops are not happy with my ascension up the administrative ladder. One thing to tolerate a faggot; whole other ball of wax to take orders from one. Make things worse, the other D-Threes are getting antsy with my ‘approach to the job.’ Most of them are your basic desk jockeys, marking off time. My wanting to work the streets makes them look like the comatose slugs they are. The only other guy who stays active is the Homicide D-Three out in West Valley. But he’s a born-again, doesn’t like deviates, so there’s no bonding potential there. Still, no sense pissing and moaning, right? Don’t do the crime if you can’t hack the slime. Besides, getting rid of me would be more trouble than it’s worth- Department’s like one of those dinosaurs with the pea-sized brains. Impossible to budge, real easy to get around if you watch your step. So don’t worry about me, do your job, and forget it.”

“That’s exactly what Linda said.”

He grinned. “Linda? We’re on first-name basis, hoo-hoo.”

“Down, Rover.”

“Linda. All that fluffy blond hair, the southern accent. But feisty- gives her an appealing edge. Not a bad choice at all, pal. Time for you to be getting back into the social swing, anyway.”

“No one’s made any choice.”

“Uh-huh.” He made rude sounds. “Leenda. Muy leenda.”

“How’s Rick?”

“Fine. Don’t change the subject.”

I said, “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” I told him about the silver Honda. He looked unimpressed.

“What did it do other than stop for a few minutes?”

“Nothing. But the timing was weird. It was there when I arrived, driving by when I left.”

“Maybe someone thinks you’re cute, Alex. Or could be it’s just one of the locals, playing paranoid posse, checking out the neighborhood for strangers, thinking you’re the weirdo.”

“Could be.”

“If it would make you feel better,” he said, “give me the license number.”

I did and he copied it down.

“Service with a smile,” he said. “Anything else I can do for you?”

I said, “Massengil seemed sure he was the target. You hear anything backing that up?”

“Nothing- not that Frisk has opened his files to me. Maybe the old coot knows something, but what’s more likely is that he’s got an inflated sense of self-worth, thinks he’s actually worth shooting. Or maybe he’s the paranoid one and that’s what Santa’s treating him for.”

He ate more pear, said, “Some milk would go well with this,” and went to get some. He returned, drinking out of the carton.

“Something else you should know about,” I said, and told him about the hate mail.

“Your basic bedbugs,” he said. “Too bad she has to go through it.”

“She said Frisk didn’t take it too seriously.”

“To tell the truth, Alex, there’s not much you can do with that kind of garbage. Now if it turns out the Burden girl was affiliated with some racist group, that’ll be different.”

“Would Frisk tell you if she was?”

“Not until after he put on his Giorgio suit, smiled into the camera, and told the greater metropolitan area first. But chances are, if she was highly political he’d know already. ATD’s got everything computerized, would have moved on her known associates and I would have heard it through the old interoffice rumor transport system.”

“Is there anything now you can tell me about her, Milo? The kids are asking.”

“I’ve learned a few things by way of my source at the coroner’s but I doubt it’s the kind of info that’ll help you. She was wearing black- jeans, sweater, shoes, everything down to the undies.”

“Sounds like a commando getup.”

“Or ninja nutcase. Or her taste in couture ran to basic black and a string of bullets. Or maybe she just didn’t want to be seen in the dark- who the hell knows? What else- yeah, she was clean, drug-wiso and booze-wise, an intact virgin, in excellent physical health prior to being perforated. Stomach contents showed she’d eaten around six the previous evening. There was a paper cup with urine in it in the shed. The chemical composition of the pee implied she’d been camped out there some time during the night, sipping and waiting. Sound like something you want to tell the kids?”

I shook my head. “I learned something too. She had a black boyfriend.”

He put down the milk carton. “Oh, yeah? Where’d you hear that?”

“One of the teachers at Hale lives in the neighborhood, taught her years ago. She told Linda about the boyfriend and Linda told me. Linda told Frisk but he wasn’t any more interested than he’d been in the hate mail.”

He ran his hand over his face. “Boyfriend, huh? Active or ex?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. If he was recent, he might know something, right? But the teacher never said.”

“Not that active, anyway,” he said. “The intact virgin part. Got a name?”

“No. Just what I told you.”

“Well,” he said, “interracial dating’s no crime. Officially.”

I thought back to the hate mail. Racemixer biches. “Even casual interracial dating would be considered a felony in Ocean Heights, Milo. Meaning she might have gotten a lot of social punishment for it- nasty comments, ostracization, or worse. And it also implies she was anything but a racist- wouldn’t have been likely to be shooting at those kids.”

“Unless she and the boyfriend had a nasty breakup and she started resenting all minorities.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Here’s a more likely scenario: What if coming face to face with local racism radicalized her and turned her against someone she viewed as racist. A racist authority figure.”

“Massengil?”

“Maybe she and Massengil even had some kind of confrontation before the shooting. Something he’d never admit to. You should have seen how he reacted when I accused him of drawing a killer to the school, Milo. It definitely struck a nerve. With his temper, even a minor confrontation with her could have gotten ugly. Combine that with her history of psychological problems… By the way, where did Frisk come up with that?”

He shook his head in disgust. I resolved to stop evoking feelings of impotence.

“Anyway,” I said, “mix those elements and you’ve got something potentially explosive. It would explain why Massengil was so sure he was the intended target.”

Milo thought about it, said, “Guess it’s feasible, but good luck proving it.”

I said, “Don’t you think it’s worth talking to the boyfriend? Checking out known associates?”

“Sure. But it’s possible Frisk has already done it.”

“He didn’t mention it to Linda.”

“He wouldn’t. Guy would swear off orgasms if it gave him the upper hand.”

“He who dies with the most secrets wins?”

“You got it.”

“Must be a blast working with him.”

“Oh, yeah. Like a cattle prod to the prostate. Anyway, what’s this teacher’s name?”

“Esme Ferguson. She teaches fourth grade. She called in sick this morning. You can get her home number from Linda.”

He copied down the name. “She have anything else to say about the late Ms. Burden?”

“Lousy student, used to space out in class, not too social. Fits with what the neighbors told the papers about her hanging around the house all day.”

“How,” he said, “does she meet a black guy if she spends all her time just hanging around the house? In that neighborhood.”

“Good question.”

He closed his pad, put it back in his pocket. “Only good question, my friend, is one that can be answered.”

“Profound.”

“Yeah. Someone profound said it- Heidegger, Krishnamurti. Or maybe it was Harpo Marx. Squeak squeak.”

He finished the pear with two ferocious bites and emptied the milk carton.

“Sounds more like Zeppo,” I said. “Care for some dessert?”