“This one bothers me,” says Ortiz. “Young woman like that. It’s not even that so much as the perverse staging of it. How old you think that tape is? Gallagher and Jamieson look young.”
“Crime lab’s working on it. Maybe eight, ten years.”
“What was the opera in the background?”
“Così fan tutte, by Mozart.”
“Not on my playlist,” says Ortiz, no smile.
“Jamieson was a classics guy. Architecture, music. I told you about the paintings in his office and the statue by his pool.”
“The rape of somebody by Zeus, right?”
“Rape of Proserpina. Pluto kidnaps a maiden to the underworld. Greek mythology. You ever get into it? I was addicted to it as a kid. Bernini did the statue in Rome.”
“Whatever. You find anything on the escort service Jamieson used? He rough up a lot of girls? More videos?”
“That’s the only one we’ve got.”
“I can’t stop thinking about that mask. Sick fucks. Sick rich guys thinking they run the world.”
“Not anymore—at least two of them, anyway.”
“But they knew they were gonna. You could see it. Brazen contempt. Looking right at the camera. Glad they got wasted.” He fidgets with his mustache and sighs. “So what are you thinking?”
“The doer’s that woman. Probably never knew what happened that night, could never be sure, and then somehow, sometime, she comes across the video. Maybe she’s the one who hacked Gallagher’s computer a couple years ago. Remember, he threw it in the ocean. Jamieson’s kept his files on a flash drive. She must have a copy too.”
“She planned it?”
“Vengeance.”
“Who is she? The mask never comes off.”
“They never mention her name. No reference to her at all. We don’t know who she is.”
“Or even if she’s the doer.” Ortiz sighs. “They could have killed her. We don’t know what happened after the video ended. Killer could be someone else—not likely, but I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility. Could be a boyfriend or husband who found out. Could be a bunch of people. Could still be some turf battle between architectural firms—again, not likely, I know, but a lot of money at stake in these contracts.”
“But we have surveillance video of a woman in a fedora coming out of the Grand Street building the night Jamieson was killed. We know she went into his apartment. We have a witness who saw her on the sidewalk. Earle something, the barber-bookie I told you about.”
“The guy who thought she was up there on a movie shoot?”
“Yes. And now we have the rape video.”
“I don’t know,” says Ortiz, moving pieces in his mind. “How about this. Hear me out before you say anything. How about Jensen as the doer, or at least, he has a connection to the doer. He didn’t want to be there that night. He didn’t want to do it. Not really. He was young and drunk and scared. Jamieson and Gallagher are threatening him. Egging him on. Guy was scared of them. He didn’t have a mask; you could see the disgust on his face.”
“But he does it. He rapes her.”
“I said let me finish. Yeah, he does. He’s pretty aggressive too, once he gets going. I just think he broke. Snapped. He wanted it to be over fast, and he did it as hard as he could. He hated those guys. Didn’t you say Jensen’s wife …”
“Wanita.”
“Didn’t you say she and Jamieson’s boss, that old architect, the guy with the tailored suits, told you about a falling-out between Jensen and the other two? Didn’t you say Jamieson told you the same thing at Gallagher’s funeral and was real cagey about it? Gallagher’s wife also said something happened between them, right? Here’s what I’m thinking. Jensen and this woman somehow come across the video. They reconcile and make a plan. The video’s bad for both of them. They want to destroy the two who made it.”
“That’s a stretch. Why would she do that? He raped her.”
“She’s seen the video. She knows he didn’t want to. Maybe he wants revenge too.”
“I don’t know, Ortiz. I don’t buy it. Besides, he never saw her. Jensen got there and the mask was on. We saw him rush out of the house while Gallagher and Jamieson still had her naked.”
“They told him who she was later. Could be.”
“Doubt it. They didn’t want him to know. It was Jamieson and Gallagher’s schoolboy secret. Jensen was the weak one. They wanted to keep him guessing. Toy with him. They had him on video. He doesn’t know her identity. He can’t confess, contact her. They have him. He wasn’t going to talk, but he breaks from them. And they say fine, screw him, and time goes by.”
“Then, where is he?”
“Wife says Montana. He often goes off the grid.”
“Pretty convenient, wouldn’t you say?” says Ortiz, lighting another cigarette, yawning. “He’s the doer. If not, he’s dead and she, or whoever, has a trifecta.”
“No body. We found the other two quick. Jensen disappeared days ago.”
Ortiz runs a hand through his hair, leans back in his chair, uncomfortable, edgy.
“The shit that goes on inside people, huh?” he says. “The shit we do to one another.”
“Who you telling about the video?”
“Nobody.”
“Mayor’s office?”
“Nope. Can’t afford a leak. That video gets out, and boom, it’s viral. You know what kind of shit comes with that. I’ll tell the chief we’ve got a significant lead. Getting close.”
“Are we?”
“Better be.”
“This one’s getting to me,” I say, looking away a second and then back to Ortiz. “I feel a pull, you know. When I saw her on the surveillance video in that raincoat and hat, she’s this woman disappearing into the night. The way she walked away and vanished. Then the sex tape. Is it the same person? What happened to her between then and now? How do you go on? How do you look at yourself and not think back? Where do you put that horrific experience? Every time someone touches you, a burn, a memory. You think that?”
“Jesus, Carver. You got a thing for this woman? Listen, man, we get over shit. No matter how bad. It’s what people do. Get on. Put it in a box. How else you gonna make it? You got over your father; I got over stuff; we all do.”
“This is a different kind of box. I don’t know if this one did. You kill like that, you didn’t get over much.”
“Maybe this is how she gets over it. What do they say in yoga? A cleansing breath.”
“Didn’t know you did yoga.”
“Tried it once. Didn’t take,” says Ortiz, standing and finishing his coffee.
A girl in cutoffs and black boots kisses a bearded guy wearing an earring. He hands her an iPad and tells her she’s got to read an article on vacationing in the Galapagos Islands. She smiles and twirls and kisses him again. She holds up the screen and slides under his arm. They walk toward the neon and the steam rising from the Pupusa Stand, and a woman in a ponytail selling artisanal bread and sea salt.
“Hey,” says Ortiz. “For the hell of it, let’s try one of those egg sandwiches. The line’s not too long. I’m buying.”
Chapter 21
Sunday.
A hushed, pleasant ache.
Not yet dawn. Still and silent as a cat, I sit at the window with a coffee, looking out. A headlight, a bus. Latino voices gathering at the corner. A priest heads toward mass. The blue-black sky, a break of orange in the east. I am warm, serene. I don’t know why. It’s like a pause in a war, I guess. Guns go quiet and nothing moves. There must be those days in a war, momentary reprieves to remind you that you’re human. You do terrible things, but you are human. Soldiers must feel that on the battlefield. I feel it now.
Sam is looking for me. The city wonders where I am. Who I am. This woman who leaves a man naked, takes his finger. Leaves another
man on a sidewalk, a dark pool around his neck. Yes, they look. Here I am in this window in Angelino Heights. Sought but not seen. So much power in that, to stray through crowds, anonymous.
I sketched a small church last night, with a cross and overhead beams and circles of stained glass. Simple, the lines symmetrical and clean. My first church was built years ago in Chaparral out near Joshua Tree. This one is another in an evolution of small churches in unexpected places, like the one I saw with my father in New Mexico when I was a girl.
I like this coffee, this roast, this bean. It’s just right. What shall I wear to meet Sam? I shouldn’t think about that now, but with him I get ahead of myself. Don’t rush. I am a rusher. The running, weights, punching bag—my muscles are tight, lean, like when I played tennis but more so. Sam will be impressed.
The water boils. I make new coffee—a wonderful phrase—and press it slow, and the scent rises, fills me. I reach into the cupboard for another mug. I pour. A bit of cream. I put on my mask and open the basement door. I descend. My feet creak on the steps. I hear him rustle, the sound of his chain.
I walk toward him in the dark. He scurries away, rattle, rattle. He’s breathing hard, almost gasping. “Who are you? What do you want?” A sniffle, like a little boy. A whimpering dog. I set the coffee beside him and step back to a chair—his chain won’t reach that far—and turn on a lamp. The light is soft and yellow. He squints toward it. I sit. Still as a statue. I feel my breath inside the mask, warm moisture on my face. I breathe. Calm. It is the moment I have waited years for. He turns and looks at me. His face contorts; a shiver runs through him. He pushes himself against the wall as if he might find a crack, an opening; then, after a few moments, his expression goes slack, a look of disbelief and dark wonder. Fear, sorrow, hurt, pity, and, yes, I would say terror, all at play on his face, as if an apparition deep within had arisen and appeared before him. Me. In my mask.
I stand and slip off my robe. Naked. I want him to see my body, a bit aged but strong, tall and lean like before, when he first saw me. I turn and bend over. Slow. So he can see. Remember. I feel no shame. That is over. I am using my body to shame him. Let him study me, take me in. Let him be broken. I rise and turn. He looks away, closes his eyes. I slip on my robe and sit by the lamp. I wait. He turns toward me. I nod to the coffee. He doesn’t reach for it, his face twisted and amazed. He leans against the wall. He feels his chain, rubs his eyes, and weeps. His chest heaves. A long time goes by. He quiets like the air at the end of a storm. He looks at me. He wants to climb through my mask eyes to see who I am. There is power in the mask. I feel it. Not the first time I wore it, but now … oh, yes. Note to self: it radiates.
“It’s you,” says Jensen. “From that night.”
I am like a sphinx.
“I never saw your face,” he says. “Only the …” He looks down, back to the mask. “I see it every day.”
No words from me.
He pushes back tears, swallows.
“They never told me your name. Not in all that time. They kept you a mystery.”
Silence from the mask.
“I’m sorry,” he says. The words small, quiet; they hang for a bit. A new sentence begins but stops. I hear him breathe. “Sorry” is a nothing word. He must be thinking that. To say something so ridiculous. Sorry. A coward’s word. “I should have stopped it,” he says, shaking his head. “We were young and drunk.” Another pathetic phrase. Does he know how he sounds to the girl from that night? I did feel like a girl. Young. Clever in many ways, unsuspecting in others. I saw so much before me then, the outline of a life I had imagined in a new city. “We were all just starting out. I admired their talents. I wanted to be in their circle,” says Stephen Jensen. He doesn’t know what to say, how to take all this in and find a starting point, a context for then and now, to squeeze history through a prism so the colors may speak. “They were terrible people,” he says. “But I wanted their praise. That makes no sense, I know, but …” He trails off. His sentences have run out of air. He breathes in. “They sent me a video. To keep me quiet. I didn’t remember much of what happened that night. I watched it and went to Jamieson. I asked if you were a prostitute or someone hired to act out what they wanted. He said no. He said, ‘Don’t be a fool. You weren’t that drunk. You did it too, Stephen. Don’t forget, you did it too.’ I didn’t know what to believe.” He lowers his head. “They wanted to shame me. I realized that later. I was the weak one. I watched the video again and then I destroyed it. I saw myself doing a thing that was not me. But it was. I was that.”
I cross my legs.
“I can’t imagine—”
I jump up and kick him in the face. Twice. He doesn’t turn from the blows. He accepts them. He bleeds from the lip. I sit. Heat runs through my skin; my eyes water. I breathe in. I need to calm. Focus. I look toward the stairs and around the unfinished basement. Beams and cobwebs and circuit breakers and washer and dryer and boxes of things, some too old to remember. I should go through them. I haven’t decided what to do with the basement. No design has come to me. I think I’ll leave it as it is. Raw, dark, the scent of the earth through the walls. Basements can’t become something else. Not really. I turn back to Jensen. He pulls his legs up under him. He looks at the wrist clasp fastened to his chain. He doesn’t pull on it or try to break away. He doesn’t yell. He sits, transfixed by the mask. He doesn’t curse me. He doesn’t plead. He is my prisoner, my man on a leash. He came quite easily into my possession.
I knew he was going to Montana—the merits of computer hacking cannot be overstated—on one of his get-off-the-grid mind-cleansing trips. I parked down the street from his Santa Monica home. Dressed in black Lycra—the same style I wore to kill Gallagher—I knelt and waited beside the hedges along his driveway. He came out about four a.m., with a backpack. He opened the Range Rover door and tossed it in. He went back inside the house. I slipped into the well behind the driver’s seat, tucked myself small, pulled down the visor of a ball cap to hide my face, and waited. He came out of the house with a coffee, and we were off. He turned on NPR, a Chopin sonata, faint and mournful. A bit of news. The scent of aftershave. When we were on the 10, I eased up behind him and put a gun, a 9mm bought at a Walmart in the Valley, to his neck. He nearly drove off the highway. He steadied. I told him to break off the rearview mirror. He did. We went down the highway in darkness. Fast and sleek. Barely a trickle of traffic as we merged onto the 110 toward the 101. I’d sit back for a couple of miles, then lean in and press the gun to his neck, then sit back. Kept him guessing. I led him to my house. He said nothing. The radio played. Beethoven, I think. And news about Trump and Putin and spies. I reached for the door opener in my pocket, and we pulled into my garage—everything planned, just like with Gallagher and Jamieson. He shut off the engine. I stayed behind him as he got out. I jammed the gun into his back. Tugged down the brim of my hat again. It was dark, the cover so cool and sweet. We slipped out the side garage door. No one saw. I walked him inside the house, down to the basement, pricked him with a needle. Not as strong a concoction as I used with Jamieson. He went down on his knees, then drooped. He never saw my face. I chained him to the wall. Gave him a pitcher of water and a bucket to pee in. If he chose.
“What will you do?” he says. “I have a wife.”
The mask speaks: “Are you a good architect?”
The question startles him. He’s quiet for a while.
“Not the one I wanted to be.”
“What do you design?”
“Homes.”
“For the rich?”
“Along the coast.”
“Are they original?”
“A few.”
“You’re going to need to talk more. Two-word answers are boring, and if I’m bored … well, who knows what could happen.”
“I try to make angles and curves fit the coast,” he says. He’s thin like jerky, hazel eyes—bullied as a
child, I’m sure. He’s taller up close. Long arms, winglike hands, pinched nose, hair brown and thinning. Not ugly, not beautiful—a bland, in-between man. A bit of blood runs from his mouth; a bruise rises beneath his eye. He’s taken my warning and is talking as if we were out for coffee, imagining himself far from here. Strange. A way of coping, I suppose. I need him to talk. But really, how is one supposed to act when chained to a basement wall? “I want them to feel organic, you know, to be part of nature. It’s hard to be both subtle and dramatic with the earth, if you understand what I mean.”
“Nature is beautiful and unyielding.”
“Yes,” he says. “It won’t conform. You have to conform to it.”
“Like religion.”
“I never thought of it—”
“What about Frank Lloyd Wright?” I say, cutting him off so we don’t veer into the ecclesiastical. “He was one with nature. He designed houses.”
“Well, yes, but I thought I would do bigger things. When I was younger, I saw cities in my head.”
“Back when you first saw this mask.”
“Yes, back then, and much before.”
He turns away.
“What kind of cities?” says the mask.
“I don’t see them anymore.”
“You gave up.” The mask shakes her head. “You’re a pussy. This seems to be a recurring theme with you.”
My Detective Page 17