Rooney closed Lorraine’s file. She had sunk lower than he could ever have imagined and he felt a certain remorse. The question uppermost in his mind was, had she sunk so low then forced herself back up just to take revenge? Should he warn all officers that she might be dangerous? He knew if he gave that out, and she resisted arrest, she might be shot.
Rooney opened the lowest drawer in his desk, took out his gun, and searched for his holster. He rarely wore it, even though he knew he should. Now he strapped it on, checked the weapon, and slipped it into place. He shrugged back into his jacket and was just about to walk out when Bean returned, still eating his sandwich, his mouth bulging. “We got no record in any Vice section regarding Steven Janklow. This is the second time I’ve checked, so now I’ve asked them to go back in Records to 1986, the year of the first murder. There’s nothing on him or the Thorburns. Nothing. Even if there had been a possible charge, we’d at least have a record or it would have been in the system—that includes if charges were dropped for any reason, like string-pulling.”
Rooney passed Bean, reeking of bourbon. “You got your peppermints handy?” he asked him, guessing what he was thinking from the expression on his face.
“You going home?” Bean asked.
“Nope, I’ll call in. I need some fresh air.”
“Okay. Want me to do anything about your friend? She still hasn’t been brought in, they got a couple of squad cars out looking for her.”
“I’ll bring her in. Just hang out here until I find her.”
“Don’t you want me to drive?”
Rooney turned on him. “No, I fucking don’t. Just stay put—I’ll call in soon as I find her!”
He slammed the door so hard the blinds rattled.
Lorraine asked Rosie to wait. As she walked up the driveway to Andrew Fellows’s home, it was almost one o’clock and another bright, cloudless day, but at least there was a slight breeze. In the daylight the house appeared smaller, with virtually the entire yard taken up by the swimming pool, leaving no space for a lawn, just potted plants. She rang the bell a couple of times before Dilly answered. She was wearing a nightgown with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, are you sick?”
“No, didn’t feel like getting up today, I was just watching TV. Come on in, I’ll get us some tea. Andrew is at work, I suppose, but sometimes he comes home for lunch. Is he expecting you?”
Lorraine sat down within sight of Brad’s portrait. Dilly joined her on the sofa, curling her feet up beneath her. “He went to meet the FBI agents at the station. He gets talking and then he forgets the time.”
Lorraine smiled. She had hoped he would be here because she had called his office and he was not there.
“Dilly, tell me about Brad.”
She giggled. “Oh, another conquest, is it? Well, just let me warn you, he’s some hunk but don’t get too interested. He’s got a terrible reputation—screws them, sometimes marries them, but then he gets icy, and ditches them. He’s ditched more than I can count.”
The kettle boiled and she went to make the tea. The kitchen was sectioned off from the room, all pine cupboards and white-tiled floor, a bar counter dividing the kitchen from the room with stools on the kitchen side. Dilly looked over and saw Lorraine studying the painting.
“He had it all, you see, given to him on a plate. Loaded and handsome, always a fatal combination.” Dilly brought out cups and saucers, then opened a biscuit tin. “He’s so glamorous, motor racing—God, he looks so sexy in those white jumpsuits. Now he’s writing thrillers, or whatever he calls them, but he’ll never finish a book, I know him … Do you like sugar or honey?”
“What about his family?” Lorraine asked.
“Oh, you are hooked—or are you seeing cash registers?”
“Just interested.”
“I bet. His family is mega-rich. I’ll tell you something weird. His brother—he’s got an older brother, did I tell you?”
“No, go on …”
Dilly carried around the tea tray and placed it down on the table in front of the sofa. She poured them each a cup, passing one to Lorraine, and then snuggled back down next to her, curling her feet up. She loved to gossip. “Well, I only met him once. They’re such opposites. He’s quite small whereas Brad is tall and well built, dark. Steven’s blondish, wears glasses, sort of prissy. I only saw him for a few minutes when I was up at their house. They have God knows how many homes—well, Brad does, he was left everything. They had different fathers—obvious, I suppose, they’ve got different names, right? Janklow was her first husband, well off, I think, but it was Thorburn who had the big bucks. She was a great socialite, beautiful, pampered, and I think she was in the movies at one time, very early on. She’s ancient.”
“And she’s still alive?” Lorraine spooned in the honey, and stirred her tea.
“Oh, yeah, in some expensive home. I’ve never met her but I think Andrew has. But he’s useless, I ask him all these questions about his patients and he won’t gossip, but I love it.”
“She was a patient?”
“Oh, no—well, I don’t think so. I just knew he met her once and she sometimes stays with Brad. She has this bedroom, very Greta Garbo-style, different from Brad’s taste. His part of the house is all macho wood and the bare essentials.”
Lorraine was getting impatient.
“How long will Andrew be, do you think?”
Dilly shrugged. “You’re asking me? I’m not his secretary, he just comes and goes when he pleases, but most days he comes home for lunch. What time is it now?”
Lorraine looked at her watch, it was one-thirty. Dilly sipped her tea, watching her like a cat. “Do you want another cup of tea? Look, if it’s important, I can call his office.”
Lorraine smiled. “No, no, I’ll wait a while longer if it’s no trouble to you.”
“It’s no trouble to me. Have another cup of tea.”
Brad offered Fellows a glass of wine, which he refused. They walked into the living room.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
Fellows sat down, unsure how to begin. “Is Steven home?”
Brad looked perplexed. “He may be. He keeps to his part of the house. Why do you want to know?”
Fellows fiddled with the fringe on the sofa. “Just something I overheard today. I was at the station—FBI agents, they’ve been brought in to oversee these murders. Have you read about them?”
Brad sipped his wine. “Be hard not to. Are you working on them?”
Fellows tugged frantically at his ear. “They brought up this guy Norman Hastings, one of the victims. Did we talk about him?”
Brad leaned back. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, I suggested they dig deep—maybe they’d missed something. As it turned out, I was right.” He smiled. “He was a cross-dresser, you know, a transvestite.”
“And?” Brad said softly.
Fellows looked away. “I don’t think I was supposed to hear it, about this Hastings guy. Did you know he parked his car at your garage?”
Brad frowned. “Somebody mentioned it to me, but I have no idea who parks there half the time. It’s supposed to be just for the employees.”
“Have you been questioned?”
“No, but the police have been talking to all the employees—in fact, I was meaning to talk to you about it … because I’m trying to write something, and given the work you do with the Homicide Squad, I thought maybe you could help me.”
Fellows stood up. “Maybe I’ll have that glass of wine, after all.”
“Sure,” Brad said easily. He uncoiled his perfect body, picked up his glass, and walked out toward the kitchen. Fellows followed. As he passed the stairs he looked upward, instinctively, as if he knew someone was looking down at him, but there was no one in sight. “Is Steven home?” Fellows asked again. Brad poured two glasses of Chablis and offered one to him. “Just thought I saw someone on the landing.”
“You asked th
at already, Andrew! You tired or something? You never did say why you came. Are you canceling our squash game?”
“Oh, no, that’s fine, it was—”
Brad walked ahead of him. “Remember the last time we played? That woman was waiting to see you—Lorraine Page? Maybe I should have told you, she came here.” Brad was sprawled on the sofa again. “She was looking for someone who lives in the neighborhood.”
Fellows sipped his wine, wondering if he should tell his friend what he had come to say. He couldn’t make up his mind.
Brad balanced his glass on the sofa arm, twisting the stem between his fingers. “Actually, she’s rather attractive, has an odd way of looking at you, sort of sly but not …”
Fellows drained his glass and stood up. “Stay away from her, she’s bad news. She’s not what she seems.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I thought she was a friend of yours. She was at your place for dinner, wasn’t she?”
Fellows decided he’d tell Brad, whether it was ethical or not. “She’s a hooker and a police informer. She’s also wanted in connection with these murders. But there’s something else.… The cops were discussing your garage and the fact that Hastings parked his car there.”
“They don’t suspect anyone at the garage, do they?”
“They were discussing your brother. Apparently he knew Hastings. He was found dead in his own car so maybe someone at your place had access to it. Look, I’m just repeating what I overheard. Maybe you can tip Steven off, talk to him about it.”
Brad walked Fellows to the front door. “He hasn’t mentioned any of this to me, and we’re not exactly best friends, but thanks, I’ll have a word with him.”
Fellows stood on the porch. “This is advice, Brad. I’d stay clear of Lorraine Page if she should make contact. The lady may be desirable but her past life isn’t.”
Brad watched Fellows drive away. He stood there wishing his friend had given him the full story, but then he saw Steven standing on the second-floor balcony. Brad banged the gate with his fist and walked back into the house. He ran up the stairs two and three at a time until he reached his brother’s quarters. He tried the door; it was locked. “Steven, open the door—I know you’re in there so open the fucking door. I want to talk to you.” He waited, hit the door again, but there was silence. “Steven, open the door or I’ll get the master keys. Steven?”
He pressed his ear to the door. He could hear water running. He ran and got the spare keys. He returned to his brother’s bedroom and slipped in the key. He walked inside, barefoot, leaving the door wide open behind him.
As Brad looked around the immaculate room, he could still hear the sound of the bath water running. He’d wait, Steven would have to come out sometime. The room was different from his own, but similar to his mother’s—floral drapes at the windows, a canopied bed with swathes of silk caught in a coronet and tied with large satin bows. The carpet was oyster pink, as were the silk-covered walls. The stereo equipment was built into banks of mirrors; the television section was mirror-fronted to match the rows of built-in closets. Steven’s tapes and videos were neatly stacked and listed in alphabetical order, hundreds of CDs, old records, and tapes. Brad caught his own reflection over and over again. There was no corner of the room in which you couldn’t see yourself. It was all elegant, expensive, even tasteful, if you liked that kind of decor. Brad hated it.
He looked over the dressing table—more fitting for a woman than a man, with jars of creams and perfumes in neat symmetrical rows, silver-backed mirrors and hairbrushes, and rows of silver-framed photographs. Brad had entered this room only two or three times and now he looked around slowly, taking everything in. He opened one closet door after another to reveal rows of linen jackets and a vast array of shirts, each one covered in plastic. The shoes were packed in boxes with color coordinations labeled. There were racks of ties, silk handkerchiefs, even straw hats, a few he recognized as having belonged to his father.
He could hear the bath water draining away. He knocked, waited a moment, then knocked again. The softly playing classical music was turned off.
“Come on, Steven, I have to talk to you. It’s important.” He punched the bathroom door. “Okay, fucking stay in there. You can come to me, I’m not waiting any longer. But you’d better come and see me, you hear? That was Andrew Fellows, my friend who’s the UCLA professor. He’s working with the police. He had something to tell me about you, about that Norman Hastings friend of yours. If you want to know what he told me, then … screw you, Steven!” Brad waited another few minutes, then spotted the briefcase, placed neatly at the side of the dressing table. He picked it up and tried to open it, but it was locked. He looked over the table and found a thin letter opener. He pried open the lock, removed a file of papers, and then replaced the briefcase. His brother had still not made a sound, so he left.
Two minutes later the bathroom door opened and Janklow walked out draped in a silk dressing gown, naked beneath it. He bolted the bedroom door, to ensure his privacy, then walked casually toward the dressing table and sat on the small frilled stool. He opened a bottle of lotion and began carefully to cream his hands. Every move was studied, each finger massaged, each perfectly manicured nail scrutinized. He used Q-tips to wipe around the cuticles and then looked along his row of clear polishes, choosing one and carefully painting each nail. His hands were steady; he was calm. He slipped off the robe and stood naked, surveying himself in the mirrors. His slim body was still pinkish from the bath, a pale, white-skinned body, but muscular. He never went in the sun, unlike Brad—he never did any of the things Brad did, not as a child or as a man.
He began to do his yoga exercises, studying every posture in his mirrors. His testicles were small, like marbles, and his penis flaccid. He knelt forward, squeezing his thighs together, pushing his penis out of sight and then watched his reflection as he knelt upward, seemingly devoid of any sex organ. His nipples were erect, pink, and he slowly massaged his breasts, breathing deeply. The only blemish on his hairless skin was the mark at the side of his neck. He had used oil of arnica, even makeup to disguise the toothmarks of the bitch who had bitten him. He had been desperate to find her again. She could hurt him much more than the bite had. He breathed deeply, not wanting to become agitated.
It was almost over, he was almost free. It had been a terrible long nightmare. He had even thought of suffocating his mother just so she would never find out; he had done it all for her, because he loved her with an all-consuming passion. But they were not like mother and son, they were one. That was why he couldn’t kill her. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, just as he could not tolerate her knowing about him.
Brad stood in his mother’s room. He wasn’t sure why he had come here, possibly because it reminded him of Steven’s. He stood at her dressing table looking at the photographs and then slipped his finger into the small drawer in the center. Everything here had a place and not one perfume bottle was out of line. He sniffed a cut-glass stopper and recognized the same smell from his brother’s room. As he was about to replace the stopper, he accidentally knocked over the bottle, which tipped into the open drawer, perfume splashing over the leather jewel boxes. He swore, snatched a tissue from the white-embroidered box, and dabbed at the leather, then took out the large, fan-styled box to make sure it was not stained. He clicked it open. The velvet-lined case that had once contained four fabulous ropes of perfectly matched pearls was empty. He closed it and then opened the other boxes. All were empty.
He whistled softly as he shut the drawers. He checked that the perfume bottle was once more in line with the others and walked out.
Just as Brad left his mother’s room, he heard the front door close. “Steven? Steven?” He ran down the stairs just in time to see his brother drive out in the Mercedes.
* * *
Lorraine hadn’t seen it coming. She was totally taken aback when Dilly Fellows, midway through talking about Brad Thorburn, burst into tears. She sobbed loudly
, hands over her face. “This is so stupid, but just talking about him hurts so much because I love him. I don’t know what to do about it sometimes. I can usually control it but sometimes it just bursts out of me.”
Lorraine stood up. “Look, I’d better go. My friend’s waiting outside.”
Dilly sniffed. “You should have brought her in. I don’t know what’s happened to Andrew and I’m so sorry about this, I don’t know what you must think of me. Andrew doesn’t know. Oh, God, you won’t tell him, will you?” Lorraine shook her head. “He’s got no idea. He knows I had a passion for Brad—well, it was obvious to begin with—but he doesn’t know just how much I care. I think about him all the time, I make up excuses to call him. I’m like a teenager, but I like it. I like this feeling. It’s like a pain, it’s almost sexual it gets so intense, and then when he comes here with Andrew, I have an orgasm just looking at him. I do, I honestly do, and it’s an incredible feeling. I put it back into my work when he’s been around, I can paint for hours. Did he touch you?”
Lorraine felt more and more uneasy. Dilly was overbright, overexcited; her voice was verging on hysterical. “Why did you ask me all those questions about him? Did you fuck him?”
Lorraine picked up her purse. “No, I didn’t, and I have to go. Thank you for the tea.” She couldn’t wait to get back to the car.
“Jesus, you took your time, I was just about to come in and get you. A few minutes, you said,” Rosie growled. She was hungry and it was way past lunchtime.
Lorraine apologized. “That woman is freaky. I really liked her at first—she seemed so warm and friendly, so totally normal.”
Rosie started the car. “Where to next, we can’t go home and I’ve been thinking, I could be arrested for wheeling you around, couldn’t I?”
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