“Anybody home? I heard something, and I just—”
Playing the light up ahead, he saw the form on the hall floor almost immediately. Oh, no. But it was the size and shape of a man, not a girl. The man lay on his side, head resting on his right arm, almost as if napping. Horn shined the light on the face. The features were slack and the hair was not lacquered in place as usual, but it was Tommy. He wore boldly striped silk pajamas, and he gave off a sweet and pungent scent. The left side of his midsection glistened with blood. Inches beyond the fingers of his right hand lay a large pistol. He didn’t move, and a moment later Horn saw why. Tommy’s left eye was missing, replaced by a clot of blood that bulged and shone like the ruby eye of a pagan statue.
“Clea!” Oblivious to the danger, Horn rose to his feet and called out. “Clea! Where are you?”
He began going through the one-story house—living room first, followed by both bedrooms. The front bedroom was obviously Tommy’s, its closet containing an array of loud but well-tailored and expensive clothes. Atop the dresser he found a wallet and keys and a bottle of Number Six cologne, the source of the scent on the body. The second bedroom had also been used, and the closet held an odd collection of both girls’ and women’s wear. He checked kitchen, bathrooms, pantry, closets, everywhere. She was not there. Agitated, he went back into the front room and sat in a chair by the fireplace, trying to reconstruct what had happened.
After the two had gone to their separate beds, he theorized, someone began breaking in. Tommy had time to grab his gun and make it out to the hallway, where he exchanged fire with the intruder. The gun on the floor was a .45-caliber semi-automatic, the kind of service pistol hundreds of GIs had smuggled home after the war. It’s a big, loud, brutish weapon, with formidable stopping power but little accuracy—not a bad choice for the night table if you’re mostly interested in scaring someone away. Unless your adversary is not easily scared.
The first shot had come from the .45, Horn was sure, and was answered by something lighter and more accurate, which wounded Tommy and gave the other man time to administer the coup de grace. After that, he had taken Clea. Must have taken her, since there was no other possibility.
Horn considered turning on some of the lights, decided against it. He played the flashlight fitfully around the living room, as if asking the answer to jump out at him. The light glinted off something on the fireplace screen. He went over to see. It was a lightweight chain, about three feet long, with a steel ring on one end big enough for an index finger. It was draped carelessly over the screen, almost as if someone had hurriedly flung it toward the fireplace. The final link at the other end was broken.
He carefully unlocked the front door and stepped off the porch onto the front lawn, where he turned and looked back at the house. Like a lot of bungalows, the place had a gabled roof, and the roof peaked about six feet over the ground floor ceiling. About three feet below the peak in the front wall was an air vent. The house had some kind of attic.
“Hello.” Horn turned to see a stocky man in a bathrobe and slippers standing in the adjacent yard. “Any trouble?”
“Well, hey,” Horn said. “You heard some noises too, huh, and some yelling? I came outside to look around, but I don’t see anything.” He swept the front of the house with the flashlight. “Looks like a false alarm. Or somebody fooling around.”
The other man stood there fiddling with the sash of his robe, looking from Horn to the house and back again. Horn doubted that Tommy had been the kind of man to stand around and jaw with the neighbors over the back fence, but he wondered if this man realized he wasn’t talking to the resident.
“Guess we can sound the all-clear,” Horn said with a laugh, then covered a yawn with a hand. “Don’t know about you, but I’m going back to bed. Good night.”
“Sure. Good night.” Horn felt the other man’s eyes on his as he went back up the steps and into the house. Is he wondering what I’m doing out here after midnight fully dressed? Is he headed for his phone to call the cops? I need to get a move on.
Back inside, he paced the hallway, playing the light along the ceiling. Almost directly over Tommy’s body he found it—the outline of a hatchway with a white-painted steel eye almost invisible in its center. Tommy had just enough time to close the hatch, tear off the chain, and fling it toward the fireplace. To hide something—or someone—in those few seconds he had left to live.
Horn fetched a chair from the kitchen table, stood on it, hooked his forefinger in the eye and pulled. Neatly counterbalanced, the hatch opened and a jointed wooden staircase unfolded and descended slowly to the floor. He went up it.
The place smelled of dust, unfinished wood, and the accumulated heat of the day. With his head above the attic’s floor level, he sent the light around the forms of cardboard boxes and unwanted furniture. In one of the far front corners the beam found her.
She half-lay, half-sat, huddled on a rumpled blanket, barefoot and in pajamas, eyes wide, face frozen. “Clea.” He started up and was halfway over to her when he saw the gun in her hand. It pointed directly at him, the hand shaking wildly, and she pursed her lips with the effort of squeezing the trigger. But the trigger pull was too stiff, and she brought the other hand over to steady the revolver and was squeezing it as he lunged toward her, wrapping one hand around the cylinder as she pulled the trigger, feeling the sudden pinch as the webbed skin near his thumb was caught between the striking hammer and the block.
He wrenched the gun out of her hand, hurting her, and she yelped. “No!” he said. “It’s me. Honey, it’s me.” Even in the near-panic of the moment, he knew enough to realize, I can’t call myself Daddy any more. He turned the light on his own face, but she only shrank back against the wall, and he knew he must look like a death mask.
He turned it off, and they both sat in the dark, breathing heavily. “It’s John Ray,” he said finally, quietly. “I’ve come to get you. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
It took him minutes to coax her to stand up and make her way toward the stairs. He held her hand as they descended, and pointed the way with the light. Just as he remembered the body on the floor, she saw it, and let out a moan. Reaching the floor, she knelt by Tommy, plucking at his sleeve, running her hand over his hair. It was too dark to see the extent of his wounds, but she clearly understood he was dead.
She turned her face up to Horn, and he heard the beginnings of a scream building in her throat. “No, Clea.” He covered her mouth roughly with his hand. “I didn’t kill him. I swear I didn’t. I found him here.” She fought against his hand, making little noises. “Someone else killed him. We have to go. It’s dangerous to stay here.”
Both her hands gripped his wrist. After a few moments, the noises subsided, and he took his hand away and led her to the back door. “Stay here just a minute,” he said. He went into Tommy’s bedroom and found the man’s wallet again. He extracted the driver’s license, stared at the name: Anthony Del Vitti. He flipped quickly through the assortment of cards and photos, finally plucking out one picture, which he pocketed with the license. Back in the hallway, he considered taking one of the guns but quickly decided against it. An ex-con with a gun, he thought. Just asking for it. Then he and Clea were out the back door and moving along the side of the house to the front, where he looked agitatedly around. No one stirred. For the moment, even the dogs were quiet.
Seconds later they were in the car. He started it up, did a tight U-turn over the shoulder and back onto the pavement, and sped down the hill toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard.
He took a breath, glancing over toward Clea, who leaned against the door, feet tucked under her, staring ahead. “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time. You’ve been a hard girl to find, you know that? It was a lot easier tracking you down out at the beach, that time with Addie, remember?”
“Where are we going?�
� The first words she’d spoken were just a mutter, so indistinct he barely heard.
“I’m taking you home,” he said. “Your mother and father are going to be real—”
“No.”
“Clea, you have to go home.”
“No.” She wrenched at the door handle with both hands, and it flew open. Wildly, she flung her legs out the door just as he leaned over, grabbed a bunch of pajama top in his hand, and dragged her back inside. The car veered, and he fought the wheel as she struggled.
“No!” It came out as a scream, and he slammed on the brakes, wrestling her with both hands now as she pummeled him with her fists. Her screams rose, and he sat there, still gripping her pajama top and wondering what to do next. A light came on in a nearby house.
No time for anything else. Holding her steady with his right hand, he cuffed her once with his open left, then again, harder. The second blow took the breath out of her, and she sank back against the seat, sobbing.
“Little girl, I’m sorry to do that,” he said, using the name he’d called her a long time ago, when things were at their best. “Why don’t you want to go home?”
No answer, just sobs. There was something in her face. He couldn’t read it, but it frightened him. Somewhere in the house with the lights on he heard a voice, and he made several quick calculations—and a decision.
“All right,” he said. “All right.” He gunned the engine, and they descended to the main canyon road. Instead of turning left, he turned right, headed up toward the crest, the route that led to the Valley.
His watch read almost 2 a.m. as he knocked on the door. Maggie opened it, her face blurred with sleep.
“I need some help,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He sat up abruptly on the couch. A rectangle of sunlight on the floor hurt his eyes. Something had awakened him, and then he heard it again: kitchen noises. The smell of coffee hit him, and he looked over the back of the couch to see Maggie beyond the counter, making breakfast.
“Where is she?” His voice came out a croak.
“Good morning,” she said without turning around. “In the bedroom. Thought I’d let both of you sleep.”
“She’s asleep?”
“Yep. Finally. Almost sunup, though, before she dropped off. I made her some warm milk and bourbon, and that did it. I know she’s a little young for that, but I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Something tells me she’s not that young any more. Where’d you sleep?”
“On the bed next to her. She wouldn’t talk to me much, so I just tried to make her comfortable.”
He heard crackling sounds and smelled sausage frying. “She’s barely said two words to me either.”
“She cried some before she went to sleep,” Maggie continued, “and once she woke up making noises. Some kind of nightmare, I guess. Don’t know what’s wrong with her, but she’s been through something.”
“Do you want me to tell you any of it?”
He saw her shrug, her back still turned. “Not unless you want to. I can still help out without knowing every little thing, right?”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
He kicked off the cotton blanket with the Navajo design and stood up, then realized he was wearing only his shorts. He put on pants, shoes, and undershirt and went back to the bedroom to look in on Clea. She lay with her head turned away, the sheet covering all but her head. Her breathing looked regular.
Heading back to the front room, he paused by the tiny kitchen and cleared his throat. “Thanks, Maggie,” he said.
She acknowledged with a little wave of her spatula, and a minute later she was bringing out plates loaded with scrambled eggs, grilled sausage patties and corn bread. She laid them on the table in front of the couch, added mugs of coffee, then sat down beside him. “I’ve got a lot to do today,” she said. “One of my mares is about to foal. If you can’t be around, I’ll look in on Clea every now and then, okay?”
“Sounds fine.” They ate, and halfway through the meal, he began telling her. This time, he included the discovery of the photos, Scotty’s death, Sykes’ bloody encounter, the murder of the man now known as Anthony Del Vitti.
“Godalmighty, John Ray,” Maggie said, wiping her mouth with a paper towel. “This is very scary, you know that?” Without waiting for an answer, she rushed on: “But who’s doing this?”
He made a face, as if to acknowledge how little he knew for sure. Nevertheless, he laid out all his guesswork for her—the link between Scotty’s death and the forbidden photos, the likely involvement of Vincent Bonsigniore and, through him, the ex-con/stuntman Gabriel Falco.
“The thing is,” he went on, “I don’t know why Tommy—Del Vitti, I mean—wound up dead last night. Anybody who goes around with a phony name has got something to hide. And since he hung out with Falco, he was likely connected with Bonsigniore too. But who would want to kill him?”
“Maybe there’s no connection,” Maggie said. “Maybe he just made the wrong enemy, and it’s got nothing to do with all of this. But here’s something I just thought of: He was keeping Clea at his place, right? Maybe someone who belonged to the group from the lodge didn’t like that. So maybe there is a connection.”
Horn looked distracted. “But that picture of Clea is years old,” he said. “I don’t see how she’s mixed up in this at all. I think about it til my head hurts, and the pieces don’t fit.”
“You’ve got too many missing,” she said with a smile. “But this all started with the little girls.”
“Right. The trips up to the lodge. Arthur Bullard was there for sure. And let’s say our friend Vinnie. Another one on my list was Wendell Brand, Clea’s father. He used to work for old man Bullard. Besides Iris, he’s the only one who could have gotten Clea involved in this, and Iris just isn’t capable of it. I think he took his four-year-old daughter up there, turned her over to those. . . .”
He stopped, saw he was gripping his fork so tightly the food had shaken off onto the floor. “Sorry.” He reached down and cleaned it up.
“You’ve named three,” Maggie said.
“Right. I thought about Falco and Del Vitti. But Falco came out here from New York a few years ago, and the trips to the lodge have been going on for at least ten, if you go by that picture of Clea. Del Vitti seems—seemed—too young for that too, and I don’t know if he has any connection to any of these other men. But those three I named needed somebody to take the pictures and develop them, since they aren’t the kind of thing you could just take down to your local camera shop. I think I’ve got a good candidate for that—man named Calvin St. George. He runs a rare book store in Hollywood, sells dirty books under the counter, and he’s also a good photographer—pictures of little girls, among other things. He acted a little shifty when I talked to him.”
“What’s his connection to the others?”
Horn chewed his lower lip. “I’m not sure.”
“Well. . . .”
“It’s just an idea.”
She pushed her plate back on the table and looked at him. “What are you thinking?”
“Del Vitti. Just before he died, he made sure Clea was safe. Most of what I know about him is bad, but he did that one good thing.”
“I suppose.” She finished her coffee. “What do you do next?”
“I’ll take her home, soon as she’s ready.”
“From what you said, she doesn’t sound ready.”
“I know. At least nobody could say we kidnapped her. But I’ll need to tell her folks where she is pretty soon. I’ve got to find out what’s wrong at home. Iris’ husband told me Clea and her mother were fighting about something. Maybe that’s all it is. We can clear it up, and once Clea sees how glad they are to have her back. .
. .”
“Do you want to know what happened to her? To those other girls?”
“You mean the details? Not if it means asking her about it. I know what I need to know.”
“Are you going to the police about any of this?”
He went out to the kitchen to refill his cup before he answered. “No,” he said. “They can all go to hell.”
“What about Scotty? He used to be your best friend. Don’t you want to—?”
“Now that Clea’s found, the thing I want most is to find whoever killed Scotty. When I do, I mean to fix him. But every time I see a cop, and he finds out who I am, he treats me like I’m horseshit. I never met one I’d give the time of day to.”
“Well, then, what can you do?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly. “Scotty’s mother. Do you know who she is? She wants real bad to know what happened to him, who’s behind it. She’s a very elegant lady who helps war orphans and serves great lemonade, but she’s got a hard side to her. I wouldn’t want her after me. She says she doesn’t want to go to the police about any of this because of what might come out about her husband’s hobby. But she has a lot of connections. And I have a feeling that if I get some stuff together and turn it over to her, she could find the right way to get it into the hands of the police without mussing up old Arthur’s reputation. I think that’s what I’ll do. Then I won’t have to get in the same room with any cops, breathe the same air, see that expression on their faces when they find out who I am.”
“You’re pretty mad about what happened, aren’t you? Prison, I mean. And Iris.”
“Damn right,” he said, smiling humorlessly. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“I suppose. But don’t you think it’s time you moved on?”
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