A Hopeless Case

by K. K. Beck

  “No. What makes you think that?”

  “You never know,” she said. “God, it’s been so many years, but I’m still frightened of them.”

  “Why? What did they do?”

  “They’re just so ruthless.”

  “What did they do to Linda?”

  “Besides take all her money?”

  “Yes. What else happened? Robin, how did she die?”

  “I’ll never know. I was hoping you’d tell me. What have you found out? Tell me what you know.”

  “Nothing. Just that she drowned and gave her money to the Fellowship shortly before.”

  “We were separated that night.”

  “What happened? What happened after you left Linda’s house? She said good-bye to her husband and her baby. Then what happened?”

  “I drove her over to a meeting.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember.”

  “At the farm on Vashon? Was it there?”

  “That’s right. We had to take a ferry.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “We all dropped acid. The rest of the evening was a blur. I only remembered one thing.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Linda, she told me”—there was a sob in her voice— “she told me the Flamemaster had put her down. Said she wasn’t spiritual enough. He’d thrown her out of the group and she said she didn’t want to go.”

  “Did anyone try to stop her?”

  Robin seemed to be openly weeping. The phone was silent, except for a gasp, and then she said, “I was too messed up. I should have helped her. She got a ride back to town with a couple of guys. Later, they told me they dropped her off downtown and she told them she was really miserable. That’s what she told them.”

  “Robin, why didn’t you tell anyone at the time? Why didn’t those guys who gave her a ride come forward?”

  “The Flamemaster told us not to. He said she’d been thrown out, and that it wasn’t our problem. He said we might be investigated. It might come out we were dropping acid. I was afraid. And besides, what good would it have done?”

  Jane wasn’t sure how long Robin would stay on the line. She wanted to nail down a few points while she had the chance. “Let me get this straight, Robin. She gave them the money, her inheritance.”

  “Yes. In cash.”

  “She said she didn’t want to go on living.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you heard from two guys later they’d driven her to town and she’d been despondent.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wish we could meet,” said Jane. “It would mean a lot to Linda’s daughter.”

  “No way,” said Robin. She was completely self-possessed now, and her voice had taken on a hard quality. “I’m happily married, I’ve got a couple of kids, and a career. I don’t want anyone to know I was mixed up with the Fellowship back then. It wouldn’t bring Linda back. She killed herself, it’s that simple.”

  “The Fellowship—are they still around?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How do I know you’re Robin?”

  “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “No, I don’t. I know you have a black mole. Where is it?”

  There was a longish pause. “On the back of my left leg,” said Robin. “About four inches above the back of my knee. Who told you that?”

  “Who told you I was looking for you, Robin?”

  “You don’t want to know,” said Robin. “If you’re smart, you’ll drop it.”

  “Did you know Richard English?”

  Robin hung up.

  Chapter 25

  She sat for a minute. Somewhere, somehow, she’d bumped into someone who knew Robin. And that someone had lied and said they didn’t know her. Was that someone part of the Fellowship of the Flame? Apparently not. Because Robin seemed afraid of her old friends at the Fellowship. Presumably, whoever had told Robin about Jane was also afraid of them.

  There was another possibility. Richard English could have told Robin before he died that Jane was looking for her. There could well be some connection between them. It was when Jane had asked her about Richard English that Robin had hung up.

  The phone rang again. Her heart was beating faster. She hoped it was Robin calling back with second thoughts. Jane would attempt to get through to her, sell her on the idea of a meeting. She should come forward. A man was dead.

  It was a male voice. “Mrs. da Silva?” he said in polite, measured tones.

  “Yes.”

  “We know all about you,” he said. “We know that you are asking about the Fellowship of the Flame. The Fellowship lives, Mrs. da Silva, forced below the surface until the time is right. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” He sounded remarkably casual about the whole thing. Somehow, that made it more chilling.

  “I can understand that,” she said. “But can we meet? I have some questions. I want to find the Flamemaster.”

  “The Flamemaster is a very important man,” said the caller, rather peevishly.

  “I respect his desire for privacy,” said Jane. “Tell him that I’m looking for him, and that if we can meet then I won’t have to keep looking, perhaps threatening your privacy.”

  “Threaten?” The man’s voice became indignant. “You? Threatening the Flamemaster?”

  “I just meant—”

  “Listen, you stupid bitch,” he said now, almost in a whisper, “back off. Back off now. Don’t even think about trying to find us. And remember, we’ve already found you.”

  “I’ll find you sooner or later,” she said. “Tell the Flamemaster that.”

  “That’s a really dumb answer,” said the voice. “I guess you still don’t get the point. We’ll have to make it more clear. When we finish, you’ll get the point all right. It’s real simple. The difference between us and other people is, we’re not afraid. We’re not afraid to hurt people. We’re not afraid to hear people scream. When we finish, you’ll have so much respect for the Flamemaster you’ll never dare utter his name again. You’ll know that compared to him, you’re nothing. Just a little speck. A dirty little speck.”

  “Just tell him this speck wants to talk,” she said. Then, before she was hung up on for the second time that evening, she replaced the receiver.

  She’d been indignant when she’d been talking, but now that she’d hung up, she had a sick feeling in her stomach. She’d brushed up against something very nasty. She was unaccustomed to blatant, arrogant rudeness, and felt there was never any excuse for it. Never. Even a declaration of war could be phrased politely. She half expected the phone to ring again. She was relieved it didn’t. She had a lot to think about. They had found her.

  But now what? The chances of getting Leonora’s money back from someone who viewed the rest of humanity as a collection of dirty specks seemed remote.

  At the same time, the group was obviously vulnerable. They were in hiding, for one thing. And nervous about it. Claire had pried some money out of them. It sounded like she’d blackmailed them, with Bucky’s help. But how could they have any money? If they were underground, their opportunities for fund-raising were limited, unless they were robbing banks or something. Had they killed Richard English?

  The more she thought about it, the more she decided she’d better find them first. First thing tomorrow, she’d go downtown to the One-Ten Institute and rattle their cage. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. She was angry. The man who’d talked to her on the phone sounded like such a jerk.

  Maybe, she thought, it’s the Flamemaster himself. No, it couldn’t be. Claire had said he’d had a terrific voice. This guy sounded young and whiny.

  And how had he found out about her? Someone she’d talked to must have told him about her interest in the Fellowship of the Flame. Robin and Calvin Mason’s anonymous friend had both sounded frightened.

  Was the person who’d tipped off the Fellowship the same person who’d tipped off Robi
n? They weren’t in the same camp at all. Jane sighed. She was missing something.

  She had two links between Linda and Richard English: the picture he’d painted of her vision, and what he’d blurted out in group therapy years ago. Not a lot to go on.

  And now, some person or persons had talked to Robin and the Flamemaster about her. The disquieting thing was that someone had lied to her when they said they didn’t know who or where Robin was.

  Claire was the only one who’d admitted knowing about the Flamemaster. But Claire had a plausible reason not to tell what she knew, and Bucky had backed her up. Actually, it had been damn nice of Claire to help her at all.

  It was hard to sleep, but Jane went through the motions, anyway. She undressed, brushed her teeth, hung up her black dress, lay in bed, stared at the ceiling, wondered who had lied and what she missed. It seemed as if her dinner with Bucky had happened in another lifetime.

  Suddenly, she felt like talking to Calvin Mason. She checked the clock, decided it might be too late, then decided she didn’t care if it was. The phone rang three times and his machine came on. “It’s Jane da Silva,” she said, lingering in case he was really there. If he was, he still wasn’t picking up. It would have been nice to talk to him about what had just happened. “Call me if you get a chance,” she said. “I’ll be up late.”

  At first, when she’d started looking for Linda’s past, the trail had seemed so cold and stale. It had been difficult even to conjure up a picture of Linda herself. She was long gone and not terribly missed. All she’d left behind was a big hole in Leonora’s life—a hole where a mother should have been.

  Now, after two anonymous phone calls, the forces that had been swirling around Linda at the time of her death seemed as if they were kicking back to life. Somewhere under a pattern of lies and secrets lay the truth. Jane had only seen flickers of that truth behind the patterns.

  Some of the truth had died with Richard English. She was sure of it. Thinking of him, the sight of his body laid out on that table, the pain and anger of his widow, Jane was engulfed all of a sudden with a sense of evil. Why hadn’t she felt the horror of it before? She sat up in bed, frightened. Although she knew she should be, she wasn’t frightened of the physical danger in which she might find herself once again. She was frightened of the evil.

  Trembling, she turned on the light at the side of her bed. Detective Cameron had told her to call him anytime. And she’d just been threatened by an anonymous phone call. It was late, but he had said to call whenever. Why did she have to do everything alone, the hard way? Perhaps because it always seemed easier. But was it?

  He’d given her his card before, with his home number on the back. It was in the nightstand. She glanced at the clock. Midnight.

  He answered on the first ring. She assumed he must have been in bed. There was a TV on in the background. It painted kind of a lonely picture.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you at home at this hour,” she said. “This is Jane da Silva.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asked in his calm voice.

  She felt better immediately. Better than she had any right to feel, she thought to herself.

  “I got a phone call. From the Fellowship of the Flame. They—they threatened me.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? Did they identify themselves?”

  “No. It was a man. He said they’d hurt me if I kept looking for them. He said they knew I was looking for the Flamemaster.”

  “Are you?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so.” She ran a hand through her hair and felt foolish. “Listen, I’m sorry I called you now. I was scared I guess.”

  “Want me to come over?”

  “I should have called you at your business number in the morning,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you. I just thought it might have some bearing on your case.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” he said. “I said, do you want me to come over?”

  “It would be silly.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” he said patiently. “Do you want me to come over?” he asked for the third time.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m on my way,” he said, and hung up.

  Jane felt like an idiot. There wasn’t anything to tell him she couldn’t have told him on the phone. But she was glad he was coming. Excited almost. She got out of bed, fished in a drawer for her one nightgown, a plain white cotton which she owned primarily for calling room service in hotels, and put on her robe, a masculine navy blue wool with white piping. Then she went into the bathroom and brushed her hair. She examined her face critically in the mirror and wondered if this was one of those days she looked older or one of those days she looked younger. There were both kinds of days at her age.

  She knew why she was wondering, too. It didn’t please her to realize she wanted Cameron to think she was pretty. Damn. She had to make sure he didn’t know. She had to keep any trace of sexuality out of her demeanor. It was humiliating, but there it was. She was lonely and frightened and he was lonely too and she wanted to collapse against him and comfort him and be comforted.

  The doorbell rang.

  He was wearing jeans and a sweater and he didn’t look like a cop at all, except for that calm face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Stop apologizing. Are you going to ask me in?” His eyes flickered over her robe. She wondered if she should have dressed. She held the lapels together in a nervous gesture. “Of course.”

  They sat down opposite each other.

  “So tell me what this caller said.”

  She repeated the conversation as well as she could. He nodded as she told him, interrupting only to say, “He called you a dirty little spic?”

  She laughed. “No. A speck.”

  “I thought maybe because your name is da Silva—it might have meant he only knew your name and hadn’t seen you. You’re very fair complected. Go on.”

  She finished her narrative, and he was silent for a while. “Did you get the sense there was someone with him? You can sometimes tell.”

  She thought for a moment. “I couldn’t tell, one way or the other.”

  He looked pensive again. “We’d better look into this. To tell you the truth, I thought this Flamemaster business was a little farfetched.”

  “Maybe it still is,” she said. “Maybe whoever it is was just trying to scare me off searching.”

  “I wish they would,” he said. “I wish you’d drop the whole thing.”

  “That would be the sensible thing to do,” she answered.

  “Something tells me sensible isn’t the way you operate.”

  “I’m very sensible,” she said, slightly miffed.

  “You’re shrewd and smart, but you’re a flake at the same time. I know the type.” Before she had a chance to sound miffed again, he smiled disarmingly. It was really rather a lovely smile, and she smiled back. They sat there looking at each other like a couple of teenagers for a few minutes, and then she coughed and said, “Well, I really appreciate your coming over. It wasn’t that important.”

  “Listen, most women”—he corrected himself—“most people would be scared to death to get a call like that. I’m not a bit surprised you called. Usually, though, I don’t go out and check it out. But this is a murder case. And besides, I was hoping you’d offer me a drink.” He rose. “But it’s late and you’re all ready for bed, so I guess I’ll run along.”

  “I could use a drink myself,” she said, walking over to the liquor cabinet. He followed her into the kitchen when she went for ice. She wondered if she should have offered him the drink, instead of waiting for him to ask. He stood there awkwardly as she made the drinks and they went back into the living room.

  “I wasn’t scared. The guy on the phone didn’t scare me. He just made me mad. It was something else,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “A sense of—evil.”

  “A kind of sick, cold, helpless feeling in your gut?”

&nbs
p; “Yes. And fear. Fear of the evil.”

  “The fear goes away. That feeling in your gut doesn’t.” He took a sip. “But you learn to live with it.” He shrugged. In that shrug, Jane saw a sort of lonely bravery. She supposed she was projecting it onto him, imbuing him will all sorts of nobility so she could count on him emotionally.

  She stared at him. She felt tears forming in her eyes, and she wasn’t sure why. They could have been for her. Or because she had been touched by what he had just said. She felt giddy and on the brink.

  He look alarmed, the way men often do when confronted with the sight of tears. “What?” he said.

  Now the tears formed and spilled warmly onto her face. She closed her eyes and bent down her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just all so overwhelming, I guess.”

  He put down his glass and came to her side. “It’ll be okay,” he said. To her shame, she felt her body collapse into a sob. He put his arms around her and she fell against him, weeping. She felt a surge of relief, warm and comfortable with his arms around her, and she let herself weep just a little longer while he patted her back. Then she disentangled herself from him and wiped her face with her fingertips, closing her eyes hard to make the tears stop. It worked. She opened her eyes again and found herself staring into his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “You apologize too much,” he said, pushing a strand of wet hair from her cheek. He let his hand linger on her face.

  “You must think I’m one of those hysterical women who call the cops and say they heard a prowler just so they can have a man to lean on.”

  He laughed. “There are plenty of those. Usually they wear slinkier bathrobes when they answer the door, though. And then the robes fall open accidentally on purpose.” They both laughed and then he stopped laughing and pulled her toward him and kissed her.

  It was a friendly, tentative kiss, the kind that could have just ended. But it didn’t. Driven by a kind of desperation, she made it into something more. By the time she realized what was happening, he was kissing her throat and pushing aside the lapels of her scratchy wool robe and touching her breasts. She felt her body relax and her head go back, and then he stopped.