F is for FUGITIVE

by Sue Grafton

  I stepped out of the car, leaning back toward the open window. “I have another errand to run and then I’ll pop by.”

  “Good. Meanwhile, I’ll check and see if any of the staff have information to contribute.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  As he took off, I turned to find Ann right behind me. She seemed surprised to see him pull away. “He’s not coming in?”

  “I think he had to get back to the school. I just ran into him over at Joleen Granger’s. How’s your father?”

  Reluctantly, Ann’s gaze flicked back to my face. “About what you’d expect. Cancer’s spread to his lungs, liver, and spleen. They’re saying now he probably has less than a month.”

  “How’s he taking it?”

  “Poorly. I thought he’d made his peace, but he seemed real upset. He wants to talk to you.”

  My heart sank. It was the last thing I needed, a conversation with the doomed. “I’ll try to get up there sometime this afternoon.”

  Chapter 15

  *

  I sat in the vestibule outside Dwight Shales’s office, variously picking my way through the papers in Jean Timberlake’s school file and eavesdropping on an outraged senior girl who’d been caught in the restroom shampooing her hair. Apparently the drill in disciplinary matters was for the culprit to use the pay phone in the school office to notify the appropriate parent about the nature of the offense.

  “… Well, guy, Mom. How was I to know? I mean, big fuckin’ deal,” she said. “… Because I didn’t have time! Guuuyyy… Well, nobody ever told me… It’s a fuckin’ free country. All I did was wash my hair!… I did noooot… I’m not smarting off! Yeah, well, you have a big mouth, too.” Her tone shifted here from exasperation to extreme martyrdom, voice sliding up and down the scale. “Okaaay! I said, okay. Oh, right, Mom. God… Why’n’t you ground me for life. Right. Oh, rilly, I’m sure. Fuck you, okay? You are such an asshole! I just hate you!!” She slammed the phone down resoundingly and burst noisily into tears.

  I suppressed a temptation to peer around the corner at her. I could hear the low murmur of a fellow conspirator.

  “God, Jennifer, that is just so unfair,” the second girl said.

  Jennifer was sobbing inconsolably. “She is such a bitch. I hate her fuckin’ guts…”

  I tried to picture myself at her age, talking to my aunt like that. I’d have had to take out a loan for the ensuing dental work.

  I leafed through Jean’s Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, attendance records, the written comments her teachers had added from time to time. With the weeping in the background, it was almost like having Jean Timberlake’s ghost looking on. She certainly seemed to have had her share of grief in high school. Tardiness, demerits, detention, parent-teacher conferences scheduled and then canceled when Mrs. Timberlake failed to show. There were repeated notes from sessions with first one and then another of the four school counselors, Ann Fowler being one. Jean had spent a large part of her junior year consigned to Mr. Shales’s office, sitting on the bench, perhaps sullenly, perhaps with the total self-possession she seemed to display in the few yearbook photographs I’d seen. Maybe she’d sat there and recollected, in tranquility, the lewd sexual experiments she’d conducted with the boys in the privacy of parked cars. Or maybe she’d flirted with one of the senior honors students manning the main desk. From the moment she reached puberty, her grade point average had slid steadily downward despite the contradictory evidence of her IQ and past grades. I could practically feel the heat of noxious hormones seeping through the pages, the drama, confusion, finally the secrecy. Her confidences in the school nurse ceased abruptly. Where Mrs. Berringer had jotted down folksy notes about cramps and heavy periods, advising a consultation with the family physician, there was suddenly concern about the girl’s mounting absenteeism. Jean’s problems didn’t go unnoticed or unremarked. To the credit of the faculty, a general alarm seemed to sound. From the paper trail left behind, it looked as if every effort had been made to bring her back from the brink. Then, on November 5, someone had noted in dark blue angular ink that the girl was deceased. The word was underlined once, and after that, the page was blank. “Is that going to help?”

  I jumped. Dwight Shales had emerged from his inner office and he stood now in the door. The weeping girl was gone, and I could hear the tramp of footsteps as the students passed between classes. “You scared me,” I said, patting myself on the chest. “Sorry. Come into the office. I’ve got a conference scheduled at two, but we can talk till then. Bring the file.”

  I gathered up Jean’s records and followed him in.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  His manner had changed. The easygoing man I’d seen earlier had disappeared. Now he seemed guarded, careful of his words, all business ��� slightly curt, as if twenty years of dealing with unruly teenagers had soured him on everyone. I suspected his manner tended toward the autocratic anyway, his tone edged with combativeness. He was used to being in charge. On the surface, he was attractive, but his good looks were posted with warning signs. His body was trim. He had the build and carriage of a former military type, accustomed to operating under fire. If he was a sportsman, I’d peg him as an expert in trap and skeet shooting. His games would be handball, poker, and chess. If he ran, he’d feel compelled to lower his finish by a few seconds each time out. Maybe once he’d been open, vulnerable or soft, but he was shut down now, and the only evidence I’d seen of any warmth at all was in his dealings with Joleen. Apparently his wife’s death had ruptured the bounds of his self-control. In matters of mourning, he could still reach out.

  I took a seat, placing the fat, dog-eared manila folder on the desk in front of me. I hadn’t found anything startling, but I’d made a few notes. Her former address. Birth date, social security number, the bare bones of data made meaningless by her death. “What did you think of her?” I asked him.

  “She was a tough little nut. I’ll tell you that.”

  “So I gathered. It looks like she spent half her time in detention.”

  “At least that. What made it frustrating ��� for me, at any rate, and you’re welcome to talk to some of the other teachers about this ��� is that she was a very appealing kid. Smart, soft-spoken, friendly ��� with adults, at any rate. I can’t say she was well liked among her classmates, but she was pleasant to the staff. You’d sit her down to have a chat and you’d think you were getting through. She’d nod and agree with you, make all the proper noises, and then she’d turn around and do exactly what she’d been reprimanded for in the first place.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Anything you name. She’d ditch school, show up late, fail to turn in assignments, refuse to take tests. She smoked on campus, which was strictly against the rules back then, kept booze in her locker. Drove everybody up the wall. It’s not like what she did was worse than anybody else. She simply had no conscience about it and no intention whatever of cleaning up her act. How do you deal with someone like that? She’d say anything that got her off the hook. This girl was convincing. She could make you believe anything she said, but then it would evaporate the minute she left the room.”

  “Did she have any girlfriends?”

  “Not that I ever saw.”

  “Did she have a rapport with any teacher in particular?”

  “I doubt it. You can ask some of the faculty if you like.”

  “What about the promiscuity?” He shifted uncomfortably. “I heard rumors about that, but I never had any concrete information. Wouldn’t surprise me. She had some problems with self-esteem.”

  “I talked with a classmate who implied that it was pretty steamy stuff.”

  Shales wagged his head reluctantly. “There wasn’t much we could do. We referred her two or three times for professional counseling, but of course she never went.”

  “I take it the school counselors didn’t make much progress.”

  “I’m afraid not. I don’t think you coul
d fault us for the sincerity of our concern, but we couldn’t force her to do anything. And her mother didn’t help. I wish I had a nickel for every note we sent home. The truth is, we liked Jean and thought she had a chance. At a certain point, Mrs. Timberlake seemed to throw up her hands. Maybe we did, too. I don’t know. Looking back on the situation, I don’t feel good, but I don’t know how we could have done it any differently. She’s just one of those kids who fell between the cracks. It’s a pity, but there it is.”

  “How well do you know Mrs. Timberlake at this point?”

  “What makes you ask?”

  “I’m being paid to ask.”

  “She’s a friend,” he said, after the barest hesitancy.

  I waited, but he didn’t amplify. “What about the guy Jean was allegedly involved with?”

  “You’ve got me on that. A lot of stories started circulating right after she died, but I never heard a name attached.”

  “Can you think of anything else that might help? Someone she might have taken into her confidence?”

  “Not that I recall.” A look crossed his face. “Well, actually, there was one thing that always struck me as odd. A couple times that fall, I saw her at church, which seemed out of character.”

  “Church?”

  “Bob Haws’s congregation. I forget who told me, but the word was she had the hots for the kid who headed up the youth group over there. Now what the hell was his name? Hang on.” He got up and went to the door to the main office. “Kathy, what was the name of the boy who was treasurer of the senior class the year Jean Timberlake was killed? You remember him?”

  There was a pause and a murmured response that I couldn’t quite hear.

  “Yeah, he’s the one. Thanks.” Dwight Shales turned back to me. “John Clemson. His dad’s the attorney representing Fowler, isn’t he?”

  I parked in the little lot behind Jack Clemson’s office, taking the flagstone path around the cottage to the front. The sun was out, but the breeze was cool and the pittosporum shading the side yard were being ��� hedged up by a man in a landscape company uniform. The Little Wonder electric trimmer in his hands made a chirping sound as he passed it across the face of the shrub, which was raining down leaves.

  I went up on the porch, pausing for a moment before I let myself in. All the way over, I’d been rehearsing what I’d say, feeling not a little annoyed that he’d withheld information. Maybe it would turn out to be insignificant, but that was mine to decide. The door was ajar and I stepped into the foyer. The woman who glanced up must have been his regular secretary. She was in her forties, petite-nay, toy-sized-hair hennaed to an auburn shade, with piercing gray eyes and a silver bracelet, in a snake shape, coiled around her wrist.

  “Is Mr. Clemson in?”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “I stopped by to bring him up to date on a case,” I said. “The name is Kinsey Millhone.”

  She took in my outfit, gaze traveling from turtleneck to jeans to boots with an almost imperceptible flicker of distaste. I probably looked like someone he might represent on a charge of welfare fraud. “Just a moment, I’ll check.” Her look said, Not bloody likely.

  Instead of buzzing through, she got up from her desk and tippy-tapped her way down the hall to his office, flared skirt twitching on her little hips as she walked. She had the body of a ten-year-old. Idly, I surveyed her desk while she was gone, scanning the document that she was working from. Reading upside down is only one of several obscure talents I’ve developed working as a private eye. “… And he is enjoined and restrained from annoying, molesting, threatening, or harming petitioner…” Given the average marriage these days, this sounded like pre-nups.

  “Kinsey? Hey, nice to see you! Come on back.”

  Clemson was standing in the door to his office. He had his suit jacket off, shirt collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, and tie askew. The gabardine pants looked like the same ones he’d had on two days ago, bunched up in the seat, pleated with wrinkles across the lap. I followed him into his office in the wake of cigarette smoke. His secretary tippy-tapped back to her desk out front, radiating disapproval.

  Both chairs were crowded with law books, tongues of scrap paper hanging out where he’d marked passages. I stood while he cleared a space for me to sit down. He moved around to his side of the desk, breathing audibly. He stubbed out his cigarette with a shake of his head.

  “Out of shape,” he remarked. He sat down, tipping back in his swivel chair. “What are we going to do with that Bailey, huh? Guy’s a fuckin’ lunatic, taking off like that.”

  I filled him in on Bailey’s late-night call, repeating his version of the escape while Jack Clemson pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head in despair. “What a jerk. No accounting for the way these guys see things.”

  He reached for a letter and gave it a contemptuous toss. “Look at this. Know what that is? Hate mail. Some guy got put away twenty-two years ago when I was a PD. He writes me every year from jail like it’s something I did to him. Jesus. When I was in the AG’s office, the AG did a survey of prisoners as to who they blamed for their conviction ��� you know, ‘why are you in prison and whose fault is it?’ Nobody ever says, ‘It’s my fault… for being a jerk.’ The number-one guy who gets blamed is their own lawyer. ‘If I’da had a real lawyer instead of a PD, I’da got off.’ That’s the number-one guy, okay? His own lawyer. The number-two guy that was blamed was the witness who testified against him. Number three ��� are you ready? ��� is the judge who sentenced him. ‘If I’da had a fair judge, this woulda never happened.’ Number four was the police who investigated the case, the investigating officer, whoever caught’im. And way down there at the bottom was the prosecuting attorney. Less than ten percent of the people they surveyed could even remember the prosecutor’s name. I’m in the wrong end of the business.” He snorted and leaned forward on his elbows, shoving files around on his desk. “Anyway, skip that. How’s it going from your end? You comin’ up with anything?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said carefully. “I just talked to the principal at Central Coast High. He tells me he saw Jean at the Baptist church a couple of times in the months before she was killed. Word was she was infatuated with your son.”

  Dead silence. “Mine?” he said.

  I shrugged noncommittally. “Kid named John Clemson. I assume he’s your son. Was he the student leader of the church youth group?”

  “Well, yeah, John did that, but it’s news to me about her.”

  “He never said anything to you?”

  “No, but I’ll ask.”

  “Why don’t I?”

  A pause. Jack Clemson was too much the professional to object. “Sure, why not?” He jotted an address and a telephone number on a scratch pad. “This is his business.”

  He tore the leaf off and passed it across the desk to me, locking eyes with me. “He’s not involved in her death.”

  I stood up. “Let’s hope not.”

  Chapter 16

  *

  The business address I’d been given turned out to be a seven-hundred-square-foot pharmacy at one end of a medical facility half a block off Higuera. The complex itself bore an eerie resemblance to the padres’ quarters of half the California missions I’d seen: thick adobe walls, complete with decorator cracks, a long colonnade of twenty-one arches, with a red tile roof, and what looked like an aqueduct tucked into the landscaping. Pigeons were misbehaving up among the eaves, managing to copulate on a perilously tiny ledge.

  The pharmacy, amazingly, did not sell beach balls, lawn furniture, children’s clothing, or motor oil. To the left of the entrance were tidy displays of dental wares, feminine hygiene products, hot water bottles and heating pads, corn remedies, body braces of divers kinds, and colostomy supplies. I browsed among the over-the-counter medications while the pharmacist’s assistant chatted with a customer about the efficacy of vitamin E for hot flashes. The place had a faintly chemical scent, reminiscent of the sticky
coating on fresh Polaroid prints. The man I took to be John Clemson was standing behind a shoulder-high partition in a white coat, his head bent to his work. He didn’t look at me, but once the customer left, he murmured something to his assistant, who leaned forward.

  “Miss Millhone?” she said. She wore pants and a yellow polyester smock with patch pockets, one of those uniforms that would serve equally for a waitress, an au pair, or an LVN.

  “Yes.”

  “You want to step back here, please? We’re swamped this morning, but John says he’ll talk to you while he works, if that’s all right.”

  “That’s fine. Thanks.”

  She lifted a hinged portion of the counter, holding it for me while I ducked underneath and came up in a narrow alleyway. The counter on this side was lined with machinery: two computer monitors, a typewriter, a label maker, a printer, and a microfiche reader. Storage bins below the counter were filled with empty translucent plastic pill vials. Ancillary labels on paper rolls were hung in a row, stickers cautioning the recipient: SHAKE WELL; THIS RX CANNOT BE REFILLED; WILL CAUSE DISCOLORATION OF URINE OR FECES; EXTERNAL USE ONLY; and DO NOT FREEZE. On the right were the drug bays, floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with antibiotics, liquids, topical ointments and oral medications, arranged alphabetically. I had, within easy reach, the cure for most of life’s ills: depression, pain, tenderness, apathy, insomnia, heartburn, fever, infection, obsession, and dizziness, excitability, seizures, histrionics, remorse. Given my poor night’s sleep, what I needed were uppers, but it seemed unprofessional to whine and beg.

  I’d expected John Clemson to look like his father, but he couldn’t have been more different. He was tall and lean, with a thatch of dark hair. His face, in profile, was thin and lined, his cheeks sunken, cheekbones prominent. He had to be my age, but he had a worn air about him, an aura of weariness, ill health, or despair. He made no eye contact, his attention fixed on the task in front of him. Using a spatula, he was sliding pills, by fives, across the surface of a counting tray. With a rattle, he tumbled pills into a groove on the side, funneling them into an empty plastic vial, which he sealed with a child-proof cap. He affixed a label, set the vial aside, and started again, working with the same automatic grace as a dealer in Vegas. Thin wrists, long, slender fingers. I wondered if his hands would smell of PhisoDerm.