“For John Melvin?”
“And friends,” I said.
“I’ve seen John Melvin,” Spike said. “I don’t need a gun for John Melvin.”
“Carry the gun,” I said. “These guys are dangerous. They made a run at me, and I think they killed a girl in Groveland.”
“You going to tell me about it?” Spike said.
“Not now. I have to think. I’ll tell you later.”
“I don’t like him making a run at you,” Spike said.
“Me either,” I said. “If he makes a run at Melanie Joan you can kill him.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Spike said.
When I hung up with Spike I looked at my dashboard clock. It would be ten past ten in Los Angeles. I called Tony Gault.
“Tony Gault’s office.”
“Is Tony there?”
“Who’s calling please?”
“Sunny Randall.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Randall, Mr. Gault has just stepped out of the office. May I take a message?”
“You may,” I said.
“I’m sure he’ll call you right back.”
“Tell him not to do that,” I said. “Tell him, instead, to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.”
“Excuse me?”
“A flying fuck,” I said. “At a rolling donut.”
And I hung up the phone.
My head felt like a blender. I wanted to collect Rosie and go somewhere. I called Richie. His machine answered.
“It’s me,” I said. “I’m going to stop by for Rosie.”
Richie had a condo in a recycled warehouse on one of the Commercial Street wharfs. From his living room you could watch the harbor. I parked in the visitors’ slot and rang his bell. In a moment he opened the door. Except it wasn’t him. It was her. I stared at her. She stared back.
“May I help you?” she said.
She was great-looking, for a floozie, and she looked nothing like me. Her hair was thick and dark. Her face was oval and her eyes were very big. She had a wide mouth with tiny smile lines at the corners. She was wearing a white terrycloth robe. But her hair was combed and her makeup was exactly right.
I said, “I’ve come to pick up Rosie.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “You must be Sunny. Come in. I hope this isn’t awkward.”
I went in and she closed the door behind me. Her feet were bare.
“I’m Carrie LeClair,” she said. “Richie is working.”
I nodded, and put my hand out. “Sunny Randall,” I said. “Where’s my dog?”
“Rosie’s on the couch looking at the view,” she said and started to show me.
“I know the way,” I said.
We went into the living room. Rosie was sleeping on a big couch that faced the vast picture window that looked out on the gray harbor where the boats glided by. She opened her eyes and looked at me. Then sat bolt upright and stared. Her tail began to thump against the couch.
“Hello, my little twinkle,” I said.
She jumped off the couch and dashed around my ankles then back to the couch and up and off and around my ankles and the length of the living room and back and chased her tail. I sat on my heels and put my arms out and she ran over and lapped my face and chased her tail again and sat down suddenly and looked at me.
“Rosie and I have had a lovely time,” Carrie said.
“Isn’t that swell,” I said.
“We take a lovely walk,” The Floozie said, “every morning along the waterfront. She gets a lot of attention. Everyone loves her.”
She sat on the couch, and tucked her robe around her knees. Her legs were very good.
“Would you care for coffee?” she said.
I could shoot her. I had my gun in my purse. Or I could shoot me. I hated how good-looking she was. How good her legs were. I especially hated how nice she seemed.
“No… thanks. I need to be going.”
“Well, it was good to meet you. Bye-bye, Rosie.”
Rosie, the treacherous little turd, went over and jumped up on the couch beside The Floozie, and settled down. Maybe I should shoot Rosie. I took her leash from my big purse and went over and snapped it onto her cute red nylon collar. Rosie jumped down in anticipation of a walk, her tail wagging a blur. We went to the door. The Floozie stood and smiled and walked to the door with us. I opened it.
The Floozie said, “Bring her back anytime. I love having her here. We get along really good.”
I stood in the hall with the door still open and one hand on the knob and looked at her for a minute, thinking about my gun.
Then I said, “It’s ten minutes to one in the afternoon, lady. Get fucking dressed,” and closed the door and took Rosie to the car. By the time I got there the small part of me that wasn’t enraged and jealous was embarrassed.
I put Rosie in the car on the front seat.
“Didn’t I handle that well,” I said to her, and closed her door and went around and got in my side and drove away.
Chapter 58
“You slut,” I said to Rosie as we drove on 128 toward Gloucester. “You little round heels. You’ll roll over for anyone that will pat your belly and give you a cookie.”
Rosie was lying on the floor in front of the passenger seat with her nose poked up into the heater opening. I had long ago tested it on my hand and been satisfied that she couldn’t get her nose far enough up there to get nicked by the fan. She seemed to be paying no attention, the little traitor.
My sister owned a summer home in Gloucester, near Wingaersheek Beach. Elizabeth didn’t use the house in the off season, nor, in truth, very much in the on season. She valued it mostly because it had been pried away from her ex-husband, as part of the divorce settlement.
I parked in the empty driveway and walked Rosie down to the beach and let her off the leash. She went like a torpedo for about a hundred yards straight down the beach, and stopped and stared at the water and trotted down to it and stood as it rolled in and barked at it.
The day was bleak. It wasn’t so cold that we couldn’t stand it, but there was a wind off the water and the sky was low and dark, and drizzling. I had on an ankle-length black wool coat with a big collar. I turned the collar up and buttoned the coat to the neck and stuck my hands in the side pockets. The water was the same color as the sky, and they merged somewhere infinitely far out where there no longer seemed to be an up or down. I walked slowly along the beach, watching Rosie dash and stop and sniff and spin and dig. There were a couple of gulls and she froze when she saw them. They hopped around paying her no attention until she charged them, at which time they soared disdainfully into the air and glided away. Rosie stood looking after them, with her tail wagging furiously.
There was something about the ocean with its ceaseless movement and its blank entirety that made me feel as if I were looking at eternity. I could feel its movement. I could feel my mind begin to mingle with the movement and the sound and smell and look of it. I could feel the hard clench of my self begin to loosen.
I felt as if Melanie Joan and I had blended a little bit. I was afraid of John Melvin, too. It made me mad. I knew Melvin was a monster. I was sure that Melanie Joan wasn’t his only conquest. I was convinced that he had killed Sally Millwood with an overdose. I was sure he and his two friends had been behind the ski masks. I didn’t know if they intended to kill me or drug me. If they had drugged me, what would have happened? It made the inside of me feel a little bit jagged. Drugged was somehow scarier than killed. I had a fearful flash of myself immobilized before them. I shook my head. I needed to put this away. Maybe I should tell Richie. He would speak to his father and in a little while Uncle Felix… I smiled on the cold beach… I enjoyed the image of Melvin confronting Felix Burke… for a moment it made me feel good… But only for a moment… I remembered almost regretfully that if I were to be relieved of whatever this was, I was the one that needed to do it.
Rosie found a ratty tide-mauled tennis ball, and brought it to me in her self-impor
tant trot. I threw it for her and she chased it madly.
I thought about Richie… I thought about Brian Kelly and Tony Gault… I thought of men I’d slept with… I liked men… I felt as if I had been enveloped by the gray wind on the personless shore beside the evocative ocean… I thought about my mother and father… The beach stretched uncluttered and empty for miles. There was no one but Rosie and me. I stood for a while and listened to my breathing. I watched Rosie scooting around the beach, her nose near the sand. I looked at the ocean and looked at the ocean and after a while I called Rosie and we went home.
Chapter 59
I called Dr. Copeland. I got his service and left a message and in forty minutes he called me back. Well ahead of Tony Gault.
“I’ve talked to Dr. Chou,” he said. “At Mass General.”
“And?”
“Theoretically,” he said, “there’s no reason that Dilazaplin, taken shortly prior, shouldn’t prevent the effects of Xactil.”
“Theoretically?”
“Normally it is administered to reverse the effects of Xactil when those effects are no longer needed,” Dr. Copeland said. “There has been very little reason to investigate its preventive effects.”
“But it should work.”
“It should,” Dr. Copeland said.
“How long will it be effective?”
“It would need to be taken shortly before the Xactil was administered to have its full potency. Or promptly afterwards before the Xactil set in.”
“How shortly?”
“Five minutes, ten at the outside.”
“Side effects?”
“Some people feel nausea from conventional dosages of Dilazaplin,” Dr. Copeland said.
“And taking it the way I suggest?” I said.
“It should not make any difference.”
“How big a dose would I need?”
“It would depend on how much Zack you received,” he said.
“Enough to make someone conscious but immobile.”
“Is the someone you?”
“Say it is.”
“You are what, about a hundred and twenty pounds?”
“Around,” I said.
“So the Zack dosage would be about five milligrams. The Dilazaplin would be two point five milligrams.”
“And it can be given in a tablet?”
“Yes it can.”
We didn’t speak for a moment. The open connection between us made its non-noise.
“Can you prescribe some for me?” I said.
“Are you planning to use yourself as bait?” Dr. Copeland said.
“Yes.”
“You understand the danger,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. I didn’t answer.
“The danger would be heightened,” Dr. Copeland said, “if he were to discover that Sunny Randall and Sonya Burke are one and the same.”
I didn’t say anything.
He said, “You are swimming in uncharted waters, Sunny.”
I felt a little thrill. He had used my first name. Why was that thrilling?
“And,” he said, “no one can guarantee that the antidote taken before the sedative will prevent its effect.”
“But you think it will,” I said.
“I think it will. But there’s insufficient science to prove it.”
“Melvin is a monster,” I said.
“Yes,” Dr. Copeland said.
“Will you give me a prescription?”
“Yes.”
Chapter 60
A state police detective named Meyer came to call on me. I offered coffee, he accepted, and we drank it at my dining nook in the bay window of my loft. Rosie joined us.
“What the hell is that?” Meyer said.
“That’s Rosie,” I said.
“Did you trap her?”
“Of course not.”
“I got possums in my grape arbor,” Meyer said. “She looks like one of them.”
“She absolutely does not look like a possum,” I said. “She is a purebred miniature English bull terrier and an unusually attractive one.”
Meyer shrugged and scratched Rosie behind her ear. He drank some coffee, took a lemon square, had a bite, and chewed thoughtfully. He was gray-haired, and clean-shaven, and pushing sixty, though he seemed to be in good shape.
“You’re Phil Randall’s kid,” he said.
“One of them,” I said.
“I done business with Phil over the years. How’s he doing?”
“He’s retired,” I said. “Seems to like it.”
“He make captain?” Meyer said.
“He did.”
“Phil was a wonderful cop,” Meyer said.
“Yes,” I said.
He drank some more coffee, swallowed, and ate the rest of his lemon square.
“Got a dead body out in Concord,” he said.
I felt stiff inside.
“Concord?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Probable cause?” I said.
“ME says heart failure, but she was only thirty-three years old. We just want to be sure he’s right,” Meyer said.
The stiffness had spread. It was hard to speak.
“What brings you to me?” I said carefully.
“You were the last entry on her calendar.”
“Kim Crawford?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Autopsy?”
“Inconclusive,” he said. “Does rule out heart failure. Doesn’t demonstrate it.”
“Drugs?”
“No sign.”
“Needle marks?”
Meyer looked at me without speaking for a moment.
“Coroner didn’t find any,” he said.
“Tell him to look again.”
“You know something,” Meyer said.
“I do. It’s a case I’m working on.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There are no facts,” I said, “that will help you.”
“Impressions help,” he said. “Suppositions help. Suspicions help. Sometimes when we have those we find the facts.”
“And sometimes you don’t,” I said.
“And sometimes we don’t,” he said. “I know you used to be on the job.”
I raised my eyebrows, the way Dr. Copeland did.
“I called your father before I talked to you.”
“I’m sure you meant well,” I said. “But I’d prefer to be treated as Sunny Randall, instead of as Phil Randall’s daughter.”
Meyer looked tired. He smiled slightly.
“It wasn’t about you,” he said. “It was about Phil.”
“Yes,” I said, “of course it was. I take it back.”
“Fine,” Meyer said. “Tell me about your case.”
“The thing is,” I said, “is that I am working on a suspect undercover. I’m close. If he finds out about me, we lose him.”
Meyer nodded.
“And,” I said, “I have a client who will be badly damaged if we don’t handle this right.”
Meyer nodded again.
“Well,” he said. “Usually I blab everything I know to anybody I can find, but being as how you’re Phil Randall’s daughter, I’ll keep it to myself this time.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
“So?” Meyer said. “Talk to me.”
I did.
“And they didn’t autopsy in Groveland.”
“No. She’d used drugs in the past. When her boyfriend found her she was maybe still alive, or very recently dead, and she was still displaying OD symptoms.”
“And this Xacwhatever, it leaves no residue?”
“Xactil,” I said. “You never heard of it?”
“Nope. Roofies, I know. G-Juice. Special K. But no Xactil.”
“State of the art,” I said. “It doesn’t leave a trace.”
“You think this doctor might have injected her?”
“She could have been a witness,” I said. “I
f I ever get him to court.”
“Would the dog have known him?” Meyer said.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Almost took the arm off the first Concord guy that responded. Wouldn’t let anyone near her. They had to finally get the dog officer and dart him.”
“Where’s the dog now?”
“Ex-husband.”
“That weasel.”
Meyer shrugged.
“Dog was glad to see him,” he said.
“Any port in a storm,” I said.
“Should I look into him?”
“No. I doubt he’s anything worse than an asshole.”
“Lot of that going around,” Meyer said.
“If Kim had let the doctor in and welcomed him, the dog would have let him alone,” I said.
“You want to tell me the doctor’s name?” Meyer said after a moment.
I didn’t want the cops in it yet. Meyer was probably good at his job. But it was too delicate. If Melvin got scared, he’d close down like a trunk lid and I’d never catch him. And I wanted the son of a bitch, for everything he’d done to women, including scaring me. I didn’t like being scared.
“Not yet,” I said.
Meyer looked at me for a while.
“And you’ve got nothing that would let us arrest him,” Meyer said.
“Intuition,” I said. “Circumstance, things people have told me that they won’t repeat in public. The way he acts with me. But absolutely nothing that could get you an arrest warrant. Nothing.”
Meyer stood and went to my kitchen counter and poured himself some more coffee and came back and sat down and stirred in sugar and skim milk. Rosie stayed seated by his chair, but she turned her head to watch him. One never knew when food might appear.
“I need to be the one,” I said.
Meyer sipped his coffee.
“Well,” he said. “Being Phil Randall’s daughter gets you something.”
“Thank you.”
“But not everything,” Meyer said.
Chapter 61
I called Richie in the morning.
“Are you alone?” I said.
“Yes,” Richie said. “Carrie’s not here.”
“May I come over?”
“Of course.”
I opened my mailbox on the way to the car and took out my mail. Folded the long way, so it would fit, was another manila envelope. In the manila envelope was another picture. Another naked woman, lying on a couch. It might have been the same one. Again she had my face, and this time someone had drawn a slash mark across her throat with a red Magic Marker. It was clumsy. But it made my stomach tighten.
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