Blood Double

by Neil Mcmahon

  But toward the end, Monks stopped and looked closely at one. This was a black-and-white, showing three American soldiers in fatigues, standing outside a large, windowless cinder-block building on a muddy square of ground.

  One of them was Walker Ostrand, with a major’s insignia on his collar. This time, the camera—in spite of the unsophisticated setup, or maybe because of it—had caught something in his face that none of the other photos had.

  Monks recognized that something instantly, his body reacting with a jolt, as if he had realized he was about to step on a rattlesnake. He had only seen it a couple of times before in his life: the sense of an other, a being of chilling inhumanness, living just behind the surface of the eyes. It was not insanity. That was the trouble.

  A deuce-and-a-half truck with a red cross on it was parked nearby, suggesting that the Americans were medical personnel. Several Asian men in civilian clothes, a couple of them wearing white lab coats, stood with them. A sign on the building was written in the distinctive letters of the Korean alphabet. The place looked like a regional health center. Presumably, the Americans were there to give technical support: a goodwill mission.

  Monks had visited a similar place during his own brief stay in Korea. Its functions were severely limited, with only a few beds and a lab that was largely devoted to combating the country’s epidemic tuberculosis. The equipment—a couple of cheap old monocular microscopes, crude-gas Bunsen burners, hand-washed glassware—was half a century behind. All lab testing was done by laborious, obsolete methods, and the stock of medicines was almost nonexistent.

  He remembered stepping outside the building, a young, healthy American officer in a clean uniform, uncomfortable under the gazes of the sick and weary Koreans waiting for treatment. Then an old woman broke from their ranks and hurried toward him, talking fiercely, shaking her hands for his attention. Her fingers were rotted away almost to stumps, and Monks had realized that he was looking at leprosy. The old lady talked on, her eyes both pleading and angry, and he had had to turn away and go back inside, unable to communicate with her, or to bear the sight of a horror he could do nothing about.

  When Monks refocused his gaze on the photo, Walker Ostrand’s face only seemed bland. Monks was left to wonder if he had imagined that look in the eyes, perhaps conjuring it up from an eerie association with that long-gone moment when the old woman had thrust her wretched hands in his face.

  He handed the book back to Clara Ostrand.

  “Was there anybody he was having difficulties with?” Monks said.

  “No. What does that have to do with some person having cancer?”

  “We’d like to know if there’s anybody who might try to distort the situation.”

  She shook her head.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Ostrand,” Monks said. “We’d still like to talk to your daughter.”

  Clara Ostrand had to look up the address. Apparently, communication was not frequent.

  At the door, she said, “Will you call me if there’s going to be any trouble about this?”

  Monks wanted to reassure her, but could not. “You’ll be contacted,” he said.

  Outside, he walked over to join Larrabee and Billy. Larrabee looked as if he had run out of things to admire about the car. Monks gave him a slight nod: The interview was over. Larrabee’s teeth showed again.

  No more Mr. Nice Guy.

  “So how do you figure into this, Billy?” Larrabee said. “Are you family?”

  Billy looked surprised by the sudden shift from cozy car talk. “Walker wasn’t around much,” he said. “Clara hired me to take care of the place.”

  “He went, you stayed?” Larrabee said with an irony that was almost tender.

  “She needed somebody,” Billy said defensively.

  “None of my business, but the place does look like it could use some work.”

  So could Mrs. Ostrand, Monks thought.

  “I’m getting around to it, man. And you’re right, it’s none of your business.”

  Larrabee laid an avuncular hand on Billy’s shoulder. But thumb and forefinger tightened suddenly on the deltoid muscle, high up, toward the neck. Billy’s mouth opened in shock, and his feet made a little shuffling motion, as if he were about to kick.

  “Hey, fuck, man, let go,” he yelped, pawing ineffectively at Larrabee’s hand.

  “I’ve always wondered what’s the deal with wearing the cap like that?” Larrabee said. “You get to turn it around frontward when you start growing pubic hair?”

  Driving out, Monks glanced in the Bronco’s rearview mirror and saw Billy flip them off, hot-eyed and prancing with rage.

  “It looks like young Billy made himself a pretty soft landing,” Larrabee said. “Mrs. Ostrand’s paying for the car.”

  “Did it occur to you that he’s the one who helped Walker fall into the pool?”

  “Possible,” Larrabee said. “But my gut feeling is, that’s giving him too much credit. I think he was just at the right place at the right time to move in on her, and he doesn’t want anybody rocking his boat.”

  It was Monks’s feeling too. More to the point, finding out who might have killed Walker Ostrand was not of interest to them if it did not involve their case.

  “Did you get the daughter’s address?” Larrabee said.

  Monks held up the slip of paper bearing Clara Ostrand’s cramped handwriting.

  10

  The old Haight-Ashbury district had seen its ups and downs, from the flower children and Summer of Love in ‘66, to iron-grated storefronts and hard drugs flooding the streets ten years later. These days, as near as Monks could tell, it was somewhere in between, a mix of hip, gentrified, and dangerous.

  He stood with Larrabee on the stoop of a three-story Victorian on Frederick Street. This building and its immediate neighbors had not shared in any high-grade upkeep. The window in the foyer door was grilled too; most of the mailboxes had several names, scrawled or taped on or half torn off.

  Larrabee rang the buzzer of apartment six. Monks was a little surprised that it worked. After a moment, a scratchy voice came through. It was female and spoke a single syllable of query that he could not quite catch.

  “I’d like to speak to Trish Roberson,” Larrabee said.

  “Who’s ‘I’?”

  “A friend of her mom’s.”

  “Not here. Sorry.”

  “Any idea where she is?”

  “Nope.” The static stopped. Monks realized that the communication was ended.

  Larrabee rang again.

  “Could I come in for just a minute? Leave a note asking her to call?”

  “What’s this about?” the voice said.

  “Her mom’s got a problem.”

  “I can believe that. How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

  “How would I know she’s called Trish?” Larrabee countered. “I’d say Patty, or Patricia.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t be, after you tell me that, right? I mean, that would be entrapment.”

  The two men exchanged glances: a law degree from TV University.

  “Right,” Larrabee said.

  The door buzzer sounded.

  They walked in, past a cardboard box of unclaimed mail with several ominous “Final Notice” embossments highly visible, and climbed the dim, creaky stairway. The balustrade was scarred from generations of moving furniture and god knew what else. Paint peeled in patches from the walls. The thump of heavy bass music came from somewhere, like the pulse of a huge, overcharged heart.

  The door of apartment six was open just enough to give a glimpse of a female face under a shock of black hair, and a whiff of marijuana smoke. There were several locks, and on the inside, a chain stretched taut.

  “You didn’t say there was two of you,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “You look like cops.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Larrabee said. He grinned, with a boyish
look that could take him a long way. “Are you Trish?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  Her tone got a notch friendlier. “What kind of trouble’s Mom in?”

  “I didn’t say she was in trouble. I said she had a problem.”

  “Same thing,” she said, but apparently it swayed her. “Hang on.” The door closed, then opened again, this time all the way. Trish was about twenty, with a thinness that hinted at anorexia, enhanced by her tight vest and jeans. Monks had never seen anything as black as her hair. If black was the absence of color, this was the absence of the absence. Several tattoos and piercings which were visible led to speculation about others which were not. The overall package was not unattractive, but it took him some getting used to.

  The room had another occupant attached to a pair of leather sandals with feet in them, dangling over the arm of an old couch pulled up in front of a TV which played a Star Trek rerun. Their owner’s face rose into sight, looked them over incuriously, and disappeared again.

  “Is there a place we could talk in private?” Larrabee nodded toward a bamboo curtain screening off another door, the hallway to the interior, the portal to another world.

  She hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

  Trish led them down a hallway to a room where the furniture seemed to consist mainly of cushions. A coffee table sprouted candle stubs solidified into pools of wax, with a couple of incense burners amidst them. The walls were plastered with film and rock music posters. The floor was a pile of clothes.

  “This is like a flashback to a Dennis Hopper movie,” Larrabee muttered.

  “What do these kids do?”

  “Work in shops and restaurants. Deal dope. Maybe a check from home here and there. It’s probably fun for a while.”

  And then, Monks thought, they were thirty.

  She turned to them when they stepped inside, hands behind her back. Her tongue wet her lips nervously, gaze flicking around at the two men and the room.

  “You both coming in at once?”

  “Is that a problem?” Larrabee said.

  “I guess not. Who told you about me?”

  “Your mother, Trish.”

  “No, really, who? I don’t do this that much.”

  The dawn began to break in Monks’s mind as to why Trish Roberson might be nervous about callers she did not know. Cops, for instance. Larrabee, ahead of him as usual, was already taking out his wallet.

  “We’re not here for what you think,” Larrabee said. “But thanks anyway.” He handed her a fifty-dollar bill.

  She took it, looking relieved if perhaps slightly disappointed. “So, what do you want?”

  “To talk about Walker Ostrand.”

  “Wow.” She stepped back, almost jumping. “Major creep.”

  “Is that why you moved away from home?”

  “Mostly.”

  “How long did you live there with him?”

  “I was, like, fifteen when Mom and him got married. At first it seemed great, we were living in this dump in San Mateo, and he moved us to Mill Valley. He had money, he seemed like a nice guy. Then it got to where I couldn’t stand being home. It was like—you ever see one of those ant farms? Where you can watch them through the glass? It was like living in one of those.”

  “Was he, ah, if you’ll excuse me being personal, a voyeur?” Larrabee said.

  “Nothing that obvious. Things he’d do that seemed accidental, but they bugged you. Then you’d start thinking, that’s why he did it, he’s pushing buttons.”

  “Like what, Trish?”

  “The worst was my mom. He started her on Vicodin for some little pain. When she was hooked, the bastard cut her off. Then, after she was good and strung out, he’d start her up again. It was always, like, what was “good” for her, but I finally saw what he was doing. She’s a mess, man. At least she got some money when he died.”

  Monks added some grains of salt for the anger of a hostile stepdaughter, but it had an uncomfortable ring of truth.

  “What did he do at work, Trish?”

  She shrugged. “Some kind of soft money deal, consulting, like that. He was a doctor, but he didn’t have any patients. No big surprise, he had to leave the army because of something. If they’ll kick you out, you’ve really got to be fucked up.”

  It did not necessarily follow, but Monks conceded that it was rarely a gold star.

  “Your mom said he was proud of his military service,” Monks said.

  “Yeah, well, Mom was zonked most of the time. She didn’t know much about what was going on.”

  “Did he ever give you any idea why he left the army?”

  “A couple times when he was drunk, he’d start bragging that he’d been in on these top-secret experiments,” she said. “That’s what he was proud of—figuring out how to make disease-bombs that would kill zillions of people. Then some general got in trouble, and they cleaned house; got rid of everybody underneath, to get the general off the hook. I didn’t know whether to believe it or not.”

  Monks recalled Ostrand’s “Special Operations” classification. The reason he gave for the discharge might have been self-serving, but the possibility that he had been involved in biological warfare was real.

  “We have information that he was involved in a research experiment these past few years,” Monks said. “A group of people, maybe twenty-some adults—” Monks was about to add, and some children, but caught himself. “He’d have seen them pretty frequently. You know anything about that?”

  “Nope. He never said a word about work, and I didn’t ask.”

  Monks was starting to feel the closeness of the room, a sign that another interview had dead-ended. Larrabee was starting to fidget too.

  “Anything else you can think of, Trish?” Larrabee said. He was gazing past her at a wall, the question perfunctory, his mind on where to take this next. “Anybody he was arguing with? Anybody who might know something about this?”

  “Well, you could try Gloria. I don’t know if she’d help. She’s not good people.”

  Larrabee was watching her again, his interest quickened. “Not good people” were just what he wanted. “Who’s Gloria?”

  “She worked for him, doing secretarial stuff. Worked on him too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Walker brought her around the house a few times. No reason, I think he just wanted us to see him with a younger babe. Twist Mom a little more.”

  “And?” Larrabee prompted.

  “One night, after I moved out, I had a fight with my boyfriend and went home,” Trish said. “It was late—Mom was passed out—but I could just see through the living room curtains, something moving up and down. Like a basketball being dribbled. It was Gloria’s head, bouncing in his lap. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe she’d do it. She’s maybe twenty-eight. I got out of there. Slept in the car.”

  Monks wondered if Clara Ostrand had forgotten to mention Gloria—or if she had known more about what was going on than Trish seemed to think, and did not want it coming to light.

  “Did she have any medical training?” Monks said.

  “I don’t think so. She was an army brat. That’s how Walker knew her, he’d been in Korea with her dad.”

  “Why did you say she’s not good people, Trish?”

  “She’s nice on the outside, but you can tell. Like Walker.”

  “Do you know her last name?” Larrabee said. “Where we could find her?”

  “Gloria Sharpe. She’s opening a shop in SoMa.”

  Larrabee’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, really?” Monks was impressed too. SoMa was a trendy little neighborhood.

  “Yeah. She had the nerve to give Mom as a reference for the lease.”

  “What kind of shop?”

  “Stuff. Antiques, jewelry, like that. I think she does feng shui too.”

  Larrabee handed Trish another fifty, along with one of the Commonwealth Insurance business cards.

  “Yo
u want to give me your phone number, Trish?”

  “It got cut off.”

  “Okay,” Larrabee said. “Call if you think of anything else. Otherwise, you never heard of us, huh?”

  Abruptly, she sat on the unmade bed, leaning back on her hands, knees spilling a little apart. Naughty, Monks decided, was the word for her expression.

  “You going to tell me who I never heard of?” she said.

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option.”

  “Oh. So you know me, but I don’t know you?”

  “For now.”

  She smiled saucily. “I thought you guys were weird at first. But this is kind of cool. You should come back.”

  They returned through the gloomy hallway. The volume of music from somewhere in the building rose with each step.

  Monks said, “How about you, Trish? Have you got plans?”

  She shrugged, looking suddenly despondent. “I’m working at a video parlor. It sucks.” She swept her hand to take in the apartment. “This sucks.”

  “Maybe your mom could use some help. You could go back to school, something like that.”

  “Yeah, well, first there was Walker, and now there’s Billy,” she said. “I think that’s just how Mom is.”

  They reached the door. The feet hanging over the couch arm had gone limp, their owner no longer even at a minimal level of awareness.

  Larrabee said, “You’d better be careful, doing—what you’re doing.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, but the defiance was forced.

  Outside, the streets were a tapestry of movement, cars threading along the narrow patched pavement, strolling pedestrians finding their way to the bars and cafés. It all seemed relaxed and peaceful, and yet Monks imagined a covert sharpness in the gazes he met, the sense that this was a place where people carried secrets with hard edges.

  “Feng shui in SoMa,” Larrabee said. “Interesting career change for a secretary. I’d hate to suggest that when you’ve got a young lady blowing her employer who’s twice her age, it’s more likely to be for money than true love.”