by A. D. Miller
Freed looked first at his wife, then at Nyman, then at the concrete floor of the patio. He said in a hollow voice:
“How long have you two been out here?”
“Not long,” Sarah said. “I’ve been explaining to Tom that you’re not a murderer, despite your best efforts to look like one.”
His gaze swung upward. “I’m not trying to look like one. Why would you say that?”
“I know you’re not, Michael. Relax. Sit down and have a glass of wine.”
“Where are the boys?”
“Playing,” she said. “They’re fine.”
“Marcella’s car isn’t in the driveway.”
“I know. I sent her on vacation.”
“Vacation?”
“She’s been working too hard. Like you. Sit down and have some wine.”
“I don’t want any goddamn wine,” he said with sudden anger. “And I don’t want to answer any goddamn questions. You’re not welcome in this house,” he added to Nyman.
“Michael,” he wife said sharply. “There’s no reason to talk like that.”
“Oh really? Do you know what this man’s been doing? Filling a kid’s head with so many lies that somebody murdered him this weekend.”
Nyman said: “I didn’t give Trujillo any ideas, professor. If anyone did, it was Alana Bell.”
Freed pretended not to hear him. To his wife he said: “I forbid you to talk to him anymore. Especially in this house.”
“Since when did you start forbidding me things?”
“Since now. This isn’t a game, Sarah.”
“I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m trying to help you.”
Nyman said: “Can you tell me what Meridian is, professor?”
“No, I can’t. The word means nothing to me. And I’d like you out of my house.”
“It would be better for you,” Nyman said, “if you were more cooperative. There are three departments working on the case, and I’m sharing information with all of them.”
“Three?”
“The coroner’s office, the Vista Hills police, and the L.A.P.D. Last night Detective Timmons told me that Trujillo’s murderer was probably driving a red sedan. What color of car do you drive, professor?”
Freed’s voice was hoarse. “Black. They’re both black. You can see for yourself in the garage.”
His hands were clasping and unclasping in an unconscious rhythm. Rising from her chair, Sarah put her glass on the table and said to Nyman:
“We should try this again tomorrow. My husband isn’t himself at the moment. He hasn’t been sleeping very well.”
From somewhere inside the house came the barking of a dog and peals of laughter. Nyman said he would show himself out.
“No,” Sarah said. “I’ll go with you.”
Michael Freed ignored them and walked into the backyard, passing from shadow to harsh sunshine. He walked to the wall of azaleas and stood staring at the pink and purple flowers, his hands clenched.
Nyman followed Sarah into the kitchen, where her purse was lying on the counter. She took a brochure from one of the pockets and handed it to him.
“From the Surf House,” she said. “They’ll tell you he couldn’t have done any of those things. And I’ll make sure he gets some sleep. He’ll give you a call in the morning.”
“I’m not sure he’ll want to.”
“I don’t care if he does; I’ll make him. Once he’s calm, you’ll see that he’s innocent.”
“Are you sure of that, Mrs. Freed?”
“Absolutely. My husband’s a very gentle man. He could never hurt anyone.”
“No?”
“Never.”
“What about yourself?”
She gave a startled laugh. “Christ. You mean I’m still a suspect?”
“Of course you are.”
“And what’s my motive?”
“Jealousy,” Nyman said. “At the thought of your husband with another woman. You put up a sophisticated front, but it must’ve bothered you on some level.”
“It did a hell of a lot more than bother me, but that doesn’t mean I’d kill someone because of it. You’ve never been married, have you, Tom?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Really? Your wife must be very loyal and devoted, then.”
“My wife,” Nyman said, “is dead.”
Spots of color appeared on Sarah’s face and neck. She opened her mouth to speak but Nyman told her not to bother. Taking the pen and notebook from his pocket, he tore out a sheet of paper and wrote down a phone number.
“My phone was stolen in Vegas,” he said, “so this is the number to call if you need to reach me.”
She looked at the paper, then at Nyman. “Listen, I’m sorry I—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He turned and walked out of the house. Crossing the driveway to his car, he climbed in and started the engine. He reached for the rust-colored bottle in his jacket, took out a pill, put the pill in his mouth, and turned north on the first street he came to.
Chapter 36
The street took him to Griffith Park. He followed a twisting road to the top of Mount Hollywood and turned off into an empty lot beside the observatory.
He sat for a time with the engine still running and his hands still on the wheel. Then he seemed to notice the sound of the engine; he turned off the car and took out his phone and the Surf House brochure.
A jovial-sounding man answered the call. He said that he remembered the Freeds very well: an attractive couple, very polite, very good tippers. They’d stayed in Sunset Cottage and had seemed very much in love. No, they hadn’t taken any trips back to L.A.: they were there for a romantic weekend.
Nyman thanked him and hung up. Getting out of the car, he walked to the wooden fence that stood at the edge of the lot.
Below him the city lay flat and glinting in the sunshine. Far to the west, the ocean was a blurred white band of air. Directly ahead were the towers of downtown; farther south, obscured by gold smog, were the neighborhoods where Alana Bell had spent her life.
He stood staring at the city as the shadows lengthened around him and the light started to change. A hawk, gliding upward on a thermal, gave a rasping cry. Nyman watched the hawk until it met the disc of the sun; then he shut his eyes and turned back to his car.
* * *
Valerie Bell's house stood on a deep, narrow lot in Carver Manor, a mile south of Watts. Elms had been planted along either side of the street and stood tall enough to throw shadows over the peaked rooflines of the houses. Nyman passed through a neatly clipped hedgerow and made his way up to the front door, which opened before he had chance to knock.
Valerie stood in the doorway. She looked calmer than she had four days ago and better rested. Examining Nyman’s face, she smiled grimly.
“Looks like you’re doing about as well as I am. You’d better come in.”
Bookcases lined the walls of the front room. The shelves were filled with framed photos, most of which showed Alana—in church clothes, in a softball uniform, in a graduation gown—along with Valerie and a tall older man who’d presumably been Alana’s father.
Valerie waved Nyman toward a sofa and sat down across from him. “Well, you said on the phone you had information for me.”
“Lots of information,” Nyman said.
He told her all that he’d learned. She listened calmly at first, then with a look of mounting anger as he described Alana’s trip to Las Vegas with Freed.
Nyman said: “I’m sorry if this is painful. I thought you’d want to hear all of it, though.”
“Of course I do. Go on.”
He went on. When he was finished, she gave a curt nod, asked if he would like some coffee, and went into the kitchen. She came back a few minutes later with two mugs and a bowl of sugar. The look of anger was gone, replaced by one of resignation.
“I suppose I don’t have any right to be upset,” she said, handing him the coffee. “It’s nothing but wha
t I deserve.”
Nyman asked her what she meant.
“Hiring a detective to go digging into my own daughter’s past. It’s a sort of desecration, isn’t it? Desecrating the dead instead of leaving them in peace?”
He said that he supposed it was, in a way. “But there’s already been a second murder. We have to do what we can to prevent a third.”
“You’re assuming Allie’s death was murder.”
“You don’t think it was?”
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Nyman, I don’t know what to think. All these businessmen you’re talking about: why would they care enough about Allie to hurt her? She was only a girl. She wasn’t a threat to anybody.”
“She might’ve been,” Nyman said, “if she had information. Do you remember her mentioning something called Meridian?”
Valerie shook her head. “She didn’t do a whole lot of talking to me over the last year or so, though. A phone call once in a while, maybe, or else she’d come on Sunday for church. But her head was always up in the clouds.”
“Up in the clouds about what?”
“Oh, just about anything. Whatever issue she’d taken up for the day. Allie always took after her father. She was always ready for a crusade.”
“Her father was involved in politics?”
“Not unless you count union meetings. He worked in a factory for thirty-six years. He and I bought this house together.”
“It’s a nice house.”
“It’s small and cramped and filled with too many memories. If you know anybody who’s looking, you can tell them it’ll be available soon enough.”
“You’ve decided not to stay?”
“Yes—that’s exactly what I’ve decided. But my plans aren’t any of your business. And since I’m paying for your time,” she added with a trace of a smile, “I’d better not waste it. So you’d better get out there and do whatever it is you do.”
Nyman said that talking to her was more helpful than anything else. “I need to know everything I can about the last few months. Anything Alana might’ve told you.”
She shrugged. “We’d been growing apart, like I said. Or she’d started growing away from her family. I kept telling myself it was a phase.”
“What do you think was causing it? Her relationship with Freed?”
“If there was a relationship, I’m the last person she would’ve told about it. That was the kind of thing we never talked about. Which is my fault, I know.”
“Not everything can be your fault, Mrs. Bell.”
“Not everything, but a lot more than you’d think. I could’ve kept after her. When she stopped calling, I could’ve gone to check on her. I could’ve made her come and see me. I was her mother, wasn’t I?”
After a pause, Nyman said: “You don’t know why she stopped calling?”
“No. I thought she was just busy with her schoolwork. Last week she finally agreed to come to lunch, and at the last minute she cancelled. Like every other time.”
“Did she give a reason?”
“I don’t know. Something she had to do at the clerk’s office, I think.”
“Clerk?”
“The city clerk. Los Angeles city clerk. She said she was down at their office and couldn’t make it for lunch.”
Nyman leaned forward. “Do you remember which day this was?”
She frowned. “Monday, I think it must’ve been. Yes, definitely Monday. She called to say she was at the clerk’s office and couldn’t meet me. I asked why, and she asked if I’d read the paper that day. I said no, and she started talking about something or other—some issue she was upset about. I told her we’d have to reschedule, and she said she’d call me as soon as she could. And that was the last time I ever heard her voice.”
Valerie Bell’s own voice, on the last word, dropped to a whisper. She closed her eyes and sat in silence, breathing unevenly.
When she opened her eyes again, Nyman asked her if she knew which issue it was that had made Alana so upset.
“No. I’m afraid I don’t. I’d gotten into the habit of tuning it all out.”
“There’s nothing you remember? The name of the paper she’d read, for instance?”
“No. Nothing.”
Her friendliness had gone away. She stared at the floor and seemed to forget about Nyman’s presence. He asked another question, got no response, and said that he should probably be leaving.
“But I’d like to call you again later, if that’s all right.”
Glancing up, Valerie said in a distracted voice: “Fine. But not tonight.”
“No. Not tonight.”
Chapter 37
Leaving his car in a lot off Bradbury Square, Nyman walked between columns of cypress trees and passed under the two statues—Phosphor and Hesper in coffin-like niches—that looked down from the portico of the Central Library.
In the lobby he stopped beside a map of the collections. A circulation aide, her arms filled with books, asked him if she could help.
Nyman said he was looking for newspapers. “Local editions from last Monday.”
“Of the Times, you mean?”
“Of anything you have.”
She glanced at the clock above his head. “We close at eight, and it’s already seven-thirty. You won’t get much reading done.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Shifting the books in her arms, she led him to a table and said that she’d talk to someone in Periodicals.
Nyman used the time to make a note of the things Valerie Bell had told him, starting with Alana’s visit to the city clerk. A few minutes later an older man with hair tied back in a ponytail came to the table with five or six newspapers.
“This is all we’ve got,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “They don’t let us keep them around very long anymore, with everything online. People today like to have everything online.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“If it isn’t on their phones, they won’t even look at it.”
“It’s a shame.”
“I notice you’re not using a phone.”
“I gave mine to a man in Nevada.”
“Good for you. That was smart thinking.”
Nyman arranged the papers on the table.
The first was the Times. He turned to the local section and scanned the headlines, finding nothing of interest. He did the same with the Daily News, the L.A. Weekly, and the Sentinel. When he opened the L.A. Independent it was five minutes to eight and a voice on the loudspeaker was announcing that the library was closed.
He found what he wanted in the opinion section. At the bottom of the cheaply printed page was a column by one of the paper’s reporters, Richard Voss.
Council Proposal Hints at Salas’ Wider Ambitions
Next time you’re suffering from a bout of insomnia, try reading the minutes of the latest City Council meeting.
In dry legalese, the minutes keep tabs on the rusty machinery of local government, documenting each creaky motion, every sputtering attempt to get the municipal wheels turning.
For the last several years, the biggest wheel on the Council has been Grace Salas (CD-16), who’s been grinding gears on behalf of the residents of District 16, heaping public money on the district in the form of parks and transit lines and other perks.
Now, however, Salas seems to be looking beyond CD-16’s borders.
According to the minutes from last Friday’s meeting, Salas filed a motion to use $230,000 from the district’s Real Property Trust Fund to give financial support to more than two dozen community organizations, most of them 501(c)(3) charities.
The only trouble? Some of those charities aren’t in District 16.
The Gilman Center for Women and Children, for instance, is in Leimert Park, in District 8, but Salas plans to give the center $10,000. The Robinson Repertory Theatre is in Mar Vista, but Salas thinks it deserves $5,000 of her discretionary fund money.
The same goes for Westchester Food Bank, Children United, and
Meridian Resources—none of which can be found within Salas’ legal domain.
Which makes you wonder why she’s so eager to expand her influence. Could it have anything to do with the looming mayoral election? Could Salas be paving the way for a citywide campaign, spreading goodwill in the direction of deep-pocketed voters?
Given her handiness with the levers of local power, the smart money says yes.
Nyman looked up. The other patrons were gone; he was alone in the reading room. Copying down the address and phone number from the Independent’s masthead, he made his way out of the library and into the gardens.
The air was thick with the smell of cypress. Pausing on the steps, he called the Independent’s number. After half-a-dozen rings, a woman came on the line and said that the office was closed.
Nyman said that he was trying to reach a reporter.
“Sorry. All the reporters went home. We’re closed.”
“Do you know how I can reach Richard Voss at home, then? It’s important.”
Her tone changed. “Oh, you want Voss? He’s not a reporter; he’s the editor. He’s always here.”
She hung up.
* * *
He found the offices of the Independent on a street in Van Nuys, surrounded by warehouses and pot dispensaries. The door was locked and tagged with fresh graffiti. Nyman, after pressing the bell, heard the sound of footsteps inside and someone shouting indistinctly.
The man who opened the door was taller than Nyman and twice as heavy, with long brown hair brushed back from a widow’s peak. His eyes were small and dark and wary. His age might’ve been anything between thirty and fifty.
Blocking the doorway with his body, he said: “Where’s the food?”
“What?”
“You’re the delivery guy?”
“No. I’m looking for Mr. Voss.”
“I’m Mr. Voss.”
Nyman introduced himself. “You wrote a column last week about Grace Salas. I wanted to ask you some questions about it.”
The mention of his work brought a friendlier light to Voss’ eyes. “You read my column?”
Before Nyman could answer, a hatchback pulled to the curb and a man got out holding a sack of styrofoam containers. Voss met him at the curb, signed a receipt, brought the sack back to the door, and motioned for Nyman to follow.