Strawgirl

by Abigail Padgett

  Bo made a stab at digesting Eva Broussard's words, and then merely filed them for later. "If you're saying he has a mental disorder, like command voices in schizophrenia or something, that accounts for his behavior, it's like nothing I've ever seen."

  "He has none of the major psychiatric disorders, least of all schizophrenia, as I've said," Broussard went on. "If anything, he'd be diagnosed with one of the personality disorders— borderline, narcissistic, one of those. But he's quite sane." She appeared to study a patch of succulent ground cover spilling over the edge of the patio. "Terms like 'personality disorder' are just categories for the inexplicable. Categories that define the ways in which some people simply cannot feel normal concern and interaction with others. But this man is plagued less by disorder than by an absence of personality altogether. He feeds on power, nothing else. His power to manipulate reality. Sexual gratification with children is an almost pure exercise of power. But now he may have found something better ..."

  Bo inhaled slowly, Eva Broussard's train of thought finding completion in her own mind. "Cold-blooded murder," she exhaled. "He's found a source of power in killing." The sun-warmed beach seemed suddenly wintry. "And just as he's certainly molested more than one child, he'll kill more than once as well."

  "It's quite possible that what we have here," Broussard completed her assessment carefully, "is the birth of a serial killer."

  Overhead a gull dipped and squawked, wheeling out over the sea as if to avoid the grim pronouncement hanging in the air. Bo closed her eyes and shivered.

  Inside, Hannah continued to work on an elaborate enclosure made of Legos. In the space of silence as the taped music stopped and reversed, Bo heard the child's voice through the screened windows, humming tunelessly. As Hannah hummed, her lips moved. "There," she pronounced, snapping Lego to Lego. "And there."

  "She's talking," Bo whispered.

  "Not exactly." Broussard smiled. "She isn't aware that she's forming words as she hums. Her mind is occupied with play. But eventually she'll hear herself, and if no attention is brought to the fact that she's speaking, if it's treated as perfectly normal and unremarkable, I think she'll abandon her mutism. And then even more care must be exercised as she begins to verbalize her pain and loss. Hannah will need professional care for some time."

  Bo smiled. "And love, Eva. Look what your love has done for her already."

  The Indian woman's face was pensive. "Like many Americans you tend to romanticize everything, Bo. This wasn't included in my plans. After surgery for a breast cancer that may or may not have been caught in time, I determined to devote the remainder of my life to researching a particular human experience. I was content with my decision, excited about the project. Then Samantha Franer was killed, her mother a suicide, Paul in jail. These people weren't especially close to me, Bo. I'm essentially an intellectual, not what you Americans would call a people person. I would have avoided this love if there had been any way to do so, but there wasn't." She looked curiously into Bo's eyes. "I think most of us will avoid the responsibilities of love in favor of less troubling attachments, don't you?" A twinkle visible in the dark eyes was a dead giveaway.

  "I understand Dr. LaMarche stayed with you and Hannah last night after Ganage's murder." Bo accepted the challenge. "Can it be that he mentioned his harebrained intentions regarding me?"

  Eva Broussard's smile became a grin. "He brought Hannah the Legos but said little about you," she answered, "although his discomfiture at your not being alone last night was rather too obvious. The male ego is perhaps the most fragile construct on the planet, you know. And hopelessly transparent."

  "Precisely why I don't want—"

  "You owe me no explanation, Bo. That debt is to yourself, no one else. I assume you're clear on your reasons for spurning his advances?"

  "The problem is, he doesn't make advances." Bo sighed. "He's like something out of Godey's Ladies Book—the perfect gentleman. Besides, I like him. I'd rather keep that. And this case is a bit distracting ..."

  "Of course," Eva Broussard agreed, rising. "So what is the next move?"

  Bo stretched and checked her watch. "I'm meeting my coworker, Estrella Benedict, at the daycare center in forty-five minutes. If the woman who runs the place has returned, Estrella can interview her in Spanish. Then we're going to the memorial service for Samantha and Bonnie. Reinert thinks there's an off chance our killer will attend, if it's not Zolar. Reinert's got cops scouring San Diego for him, too. I hate it that I involved him in this."

  "Your Zolar is unmedicated and miserable," Broussard noted crisply. "If he's found and gets help, it may be his salvation."

  "Spoken like a true shrink." Bo laughed. "It's clear that you've never been tied down and shot full of Haldol. But maybe you're right. And Eva ...? " Bo couldn't resist asking. "You seem to know quite a bit about the killer, the way his mind works. But I've checked out your credentials. All your work has involved social interaction, religious mysticism, stuff like that. Nothing published on pederasts or serial killers. How do you know so much?"

  "One becomes, in a sense, what one researches," Broussard answered. "A long time ago I chose to avoid research into the dark side of human behavior. I chose to avoid it precisely because it fascinates me. Too dangerous. For one who lives by choice outside the usual interpersonal frameworks of marriage and family, intense research in psychopathology can create a distorted view of the human condition. Surely you've seen that, among some of your coworkers who've come to view the world as nothing but a cesspool. Nonetheless, I keep up on others' work. Sometimes it's impossible to understand the up side without some comprehension of the depths."

  "Oh," Bo replied. It was the answer she had expected. Sort of. Forty minutes later she nosed her ratty old BMW into the curb behind Estrella Benedict's immaculate silver coupe. Estrella herself paced in the driveway of the Kramer Day Care Center, her high heels popping like BB shots. Estrella pacing was not a good sign.

  "What's happened?" Bo asked, hurrying from her car to the driveway. "Was she here? Was the woman here?"

  "Si," Estrella answered, singing the monosyllable in two notes. Her cheeks twitched with something like anger. "She was here."

  "So? What happened? Where is she?"

  Estrella curled her lips inward over her teeth and looked at the sky. Bo could see white oleanders reflected in her friend's sunglasses. "She's gone," Estrella announced.

  "Gone? You mean you talked to her and then just let her walk away? She's our only witness. She's the only person who can identify this pervert. I asked you to try talking with her, in Spanish. I didn't really think she'd be here, but—"

  "She didn't think I'd be here, either," Estrella went on. "And I wish I wasn't. Bo, I hate it when you get me involved in these crazy schemes of yours. Why can't you just do your job like everybody else and then go home? You always have to go too far, know too much. You get too involved."

  Estrella appeared to be on the verge of tears.

  "Es, tell me what happened," Bo said, leading her coworker to lean on the BMW. "What's going on?"

  Estrella smoothed a black linen skirt obviously selected for the memorial service they were about to attend, and crossed her arms over a white silk blouse pinstriped also in black. "I told her I just got a job as a secretary to a Latino lawyer, and needed day care right away for my two little girls. I said the lawyer wanted me to start next week and wouldn't wait. I said I was desperate. And you know what she told me? You know what this illiterate peasant woman from some village in Chihuahua told me?"

  "What?" Bo asked. Estrella had bowed her head, Bo realized, to avoid smearing her eye makeup with tears.

  "She told me to take my babies back to wherever I came from, to get out of the U.S. no matter how bad things were at home. She told me the devil had bought her soul here for a thousand dollars a month. That's what he paid her, Bo, to run this place and look the other way. She said he let her live here with her two kids for free, and paid her a thousand a month, cash. And
sometimes he'd come by at noon and take one of the children, usually a girl but not always, for walks in the canyon. She thought it was strange, but Bo, she didn't know until Samantha's death what he was doing to the kids. She said they'd act funny, sometimes vomit later, at snack time. But no evidence of injury. He was probably ..."

  "Oh, God," Bo breathed through her nose to fight the familiar nausea, "how can something like that just walk around?"

  Over Estrella's shoulder the gray house seemed to be watching from behind its white bars.

  "So where is she now?" Bo went on. "Why did you let her go?”

  "She told me she took her kids to Tijuana yesterday and left them overnight in an orphanage with some nuns. Then she just walked around, tried to think what to do. She's been supporting about fifteen family members back in her village with that money, Bo. Their situation is desperate. She decided to leave her children in T.J. for a week, come back and try to get more money out of the creep before taking off for home."

  "My god. You mean even after she knew ...? "

  Estrella squared her shoulders and looked at Bo over the top of her sunglasses. "Yes," she replied. "And I have to tell you that I advised her to leave before you got here, to get over that border and home with her kids before she wound up in jail. I told her who I really am and I told her what would happen when the police finally put this picture together. She's gone, Bo. She's safe."

  "Well, well," Bo said. "The voice of doom who thinks I'm crazy even when I'm not has just joined the ranks. And for what it's worth, you did the right thing. The woman could have lost her kids, spent years in a California prison as an accessory to crimes she didn't know were being committed. More innocent lives ruined pointlessly. I would have done the same thing, Es."

  "I know," Estrella grimaced, kicking the tire of Bo's car. "That's what's so upsetting."

  Chapter 23

  St. Theresa's Church, a 1950s A-frame featuring a rose window Bo suspected had been pieced from old wine bottles, given the preponderance of green, was barely visible behind four TV sound trucks lining the curb. One of the trucks bore an L.A. logo. The story was, unfortunately, gaining momentum. On the residential sidewalk across the street from the church, twenty people dressed in black held aloft hand-lettered posters. "Satan Is Loosed out of His Prison," one poster announced. "And Whosoever Is Not Found Written in the Book of Life Will Be Cast into the Lake of Fire," another picked up the refrain. From the looks on the demonstrators' faces, Bo would have bet they'd invest in a lake of fire if they could just throw into it everybody who didn't agree with their view of the world. She was sure she'd be among the first to be flung.

  "Comforting, aren't they?" she muttered to Estrella after finding her coworker in the milling crowd outside the church. More than half of those milling had that white-sock aura Bo associated with cops.

  "Revelation," the familiar voice of Madge Aldenhoven mentioned behind them. "Written by the Apostle John while in exile on Patmos."

  "There's every reason to believe the book of Revelation was actually written by an ancestor of mine." Bo smiled at her supervisor. "It's so nice to see you, Madge. But what a sad occasion."

  "Madre de dios." Estrella said under her breath.

  "Don't forget that you're on probation, Bo," Madge murmured, narrowing her eyes. "I can tell from your attitude that you're up to something. I have to stress that I think you'd be more comfortable in another line of work. Surely you agree."

  Bo saw Dar Reinert beckoning from the church steps.

  "I had almost come to that conclusion on my own, but now I don't think so." Bo slid out of the conversation. "We'll know tomorrow. Right now I hope you'll excuse me while I chat with Detective Reinert."

  "What did she mean by 'we'll know tomorrow'?" Madge asked Estrella.

  "I have no idea," Estrella answered, shaking her head.

  Dar Reinert, commandeering the church steps by sheer bulk, could not have looked more obviously official if he'd been in uniform. "You're gonna like hearing this," he grumbled into Bo's ear. "We found your nut-case Zolar last night, sleeping in a tree in Balboa Park. And here's the weird part. When we got him out of County Psychiatric and took him down to the canyon this morning, just to see if he'd say anything, this seventy-year-old retired schoolteacher who looks like she pumps iron comes crashing through the shrubbery. Says she has a house on the other side, hikes in the canyon a lot. Says she knew this psycho was there, that she gave him vitamins or something."

  Bo swallowed an erupting lecture on the meaningless term "psycho" and remembered Zolar's cache of wholesome supplies. So that's where he got them. But the schoolteacher had bombed with the premoistened towelettes. They wouldn't have helped much anyway.

  "Here's the part you're gonna love," Reinert went on as a small pipe organ began the Guardian Angels' Song from Humperdinck's “Hansel and Gretel”. "This schoolteacher says your nut was in her backyard sleeping on a picnic table Tuesday afternoon from 1:30 to about 6:00. Bonnie Franer said she picked up Samantha from the daycare center at about 5:15. Your guy's got an alibi for the whole afternoon the day of the rape."

  Bo couldn't tell if the news or the sentimental music were responsible for the tears in her eyes. Probably both, she decided. There had been a guardian angel for Zolar. She made a mental note to take the old schoolteacher a fifth of good Irish whiskey.

  "Bradley, I didn't know you were gonna cry for chrissakes," Reinert spluttered. He seemed amazed when the handkerchief he pulled from the breast pocket of his jacket turned out to be a small fan of paisley stapled to a piece of cardboard. Grimacing, he wadded the object into a ball and dropped it behind one of the Hollywood junipers bending over St. Theresa's steps.

  People were filing in to take seats in the little church as Bo became aware of something covered in fawn-colored cashmere, nudging her side. It was an arm, attached to the shoulder of Dr. Andrew LaMarche.

  "May I?" he offered in a calm baritone.

  Behind him Estrella and Madge Aldenhoven formed a smiling wall.

  Bo nodded demurely, placed her left hand through the doctor's arm, and wished she were in Dixie, wherever that was. At the holy water font inside the door she dipped her fingers and touched her forehead out of childhood programming before recalling that she hadn't been attached to Roman Catholicism in any meaningful way since her first bra. The holy water ran over her left eyebrow and into her eye. Never fond of funerals, Bo measured the possibility that this might be the worst yet. In less than a minute the merely possible became hard fact.

  In a quiet frenzy of courtesy LaMarche stood aside as Madge and then Estrella entered a pew followed by Bo and finally the elegant doctor. Estrella quickly dropped to the kneeler, pulling Bo with her as if for comfort.

  "Don't freak," Estrella whispered into clasped hands, "but isn't that the ACLU guy sitting in front of LaMarche?"

  "Oh, God," Bo breathed. A heartfelt prayer. The unkempt mop of sandy curls in the next pew belonged to Solon Gentzler. It was going to be the funeral from hell.

  "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost," Father Frank Goodman pronounced as everyone settled into blond and oddly Scandinavian pews. Sunlight filtering through the predominantly green rose window created an aquarium-like atmosphere. The effect was not diminished by a robed figure of Christ ascendant above the altar. In sparkling green light, the statue seemed to be drifting upward from the depths of a pale sea. Behind her Bo heard Dar Reinert's gruff whisper.

  "Keep your eyes open, Bradley. See if anything looks fishy to you."

  Only an invitation from Frank Goodman to join in singing "We Shall Overcome" saved Bo from an inappropriate grin tormenting the corners of her mouth. Too much watery imagery. And now the anthem of the civil rights movement? What next?

  Solon Gentzler's enthusiastic and off-key rendering of the familiar song, audible above everyone else, only made matters worse. Bo was glad to cover her face with her right hand as Frank Goodman began his homily, which had to do with overcoming an evil
that had destroyed a little girl and her mother. When she was certain of her composure, Bo placed her hand properly in her lap and scanned the assemblage. Lots of cops. Some of the staff from St. Mary's surgical floor. Lots of media types. A number of nuns.

  Bo scanned the nuns closely for any who might not be what they seemed. If Samantha's killer were stupid enough to attend the service, an old-fashioned religious habit might make an interesting disguise. Of the twenty-seven nuns in the church, representing Benedictine, Carmelite, and Sacred Heart orders, not one could conceivably have been a man.

  Frank Goodman was doing something with two roses—one creamy white, the other a tiny pink bud. He was tying the roses together with a broad silver ribbon. Estrella dabbed at running mascara with a handkerchief; LaMarche looked waxen. Bo didn't want to hear the priest's words. Didn't want to think about the lost mother and child the flowers were meant to represent.

  "Humph," Dar Reinert snorted behind her.

  Turning to see what had caused the detective's reaction, Bo noticed two men taking seats at the rear of the church. One was short, well muscled, and had obviously suffered a broken and badly set nose in the past. His eyes behind black wireframe glasses were somber. His companion was taller, blond, and wore a Hollywood-style silk Armani jacket with more grace than most talk show hosts. On the jacket's lapel was a tiny gold and enamel rainbow flag.

  "You know those guys?" Reinert whispered over the back of Bo's pew.

  "No," she answered, turning to face the detective. "Neither one of them's from CPS. And I haven't seen them at St. Mary's, either."

  "Shh," Madge admonished as everyone dropped to the kneelers while Frank Goodman led them in prayer.

  Bo grabbed a program from St. Theresa's morning services out of the hymnal rack on the pew behind Solon Gentzler and carefully read announcements for a youth group car wash, a marriage encounter group for seniors, and the sung rosary group's need for an alto and a bass. As an MTV video, she mused, the sung rosary might be an unexpected hit. Anything was better than attending to Frank Goodman's words, which were about a child Bo had seen in the transitional moments just after death. Between the medical ritual and those that would follow—the closing of the eyes, the covering of the face. Rituals incongruous and horrible when performed for a tiny child.