by Twisted
She said, “What’s up?”
Hotshot II said, “Let’s meet and find out.”
Isaac set up his computer at his corner desk. Two other detectives were in the room, Barney Fleischer and a heavy man he didn’t know, wearing an X-shaped, leather gun harness that bit into a tight green polo shirt.
He plugged in, logged on to the Doheny Library database, pretended to have something to do.
Pretended nothing had happened with Klara.
But it had and now he’d fouled things up personally and professionally.
Taking advantage of a vulnerable woman, which by itself was sleazy. The bigger issue was mixing business with . . . pleasure and the risk of a screwup on the June 28 investigation.
He tried to rationalize it away by telling himself that Klara had taken advantage of him. The impressionable student wanting only peace and quiet and musty books, not the clashing of thighs, the moaning . . .
It had been great. The second time, not the first. The first had been over before he could digest the fact that his head throbbed with surprise and orgasm. Klara had kept moving and he’d stayed hard. Cupping his face in both her hands, she’d whispered, “Yes, keep going, keep it going.”
Which, of course, had only charged him up further.
The second time had felt fantastic. For Klara, too, if writhing and mewling and having to muffle her own cries with her hand counted for anything. Afterward, she remained in place, straddling him, trapping his detumescence. Kissing his neck, scratching the back of his shirt with her fingernails, loose strands of red hair tickling his face until he could no longer stand it and he turned his head and she took it for fatigue and said, “You poor guy. All my weight on you, I’m so fat.”
She was smiling but looked about to cry, so he said, “Not at all,” and kissed her and grabbed hold of her pillowy hips through the butterfly dress.
“God, I’m still tingling,” she said. Then the tears came. “I’m so sorry, Isaac. What do you need with a fat, hysterical old woman?”
That led to his reassuring her, caressing her. Kissing her some more, though by that time his emotions had shriveled along with his penis and body contact was the last thing he craved.
She did feel heavy.
“You’re so sweet,” she said. “But this really can’t happen again. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
“You agreed pretty fast.”
At a loss, he said, “I just want what you want.”
“Do you?” she said. “Well, if it were up to me, we’d fuck a hundred more times. But cooler heads must prevail.”
She kissed his chin. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? The way life gets so complicated. I’m old enough to be your mother.”
She frowned at the thought. A blade of shame cut through Isaac’s brain. He fought to banish it, focused on butterflies and flowers. Shifted his weight to let her know he was uncomfortable.
“But,” she said, finally getting off him, stepping high, as if to avoid touching him. Avoiding his eyes, too, as she rolled up her panties and put on her shoes and fluffed her fiery hair.
Isaac fixed his khakis and zipped up his fly and sat there, waiting for the rest of her sentence. Got only a weak smile. Tremulous lips.
“But what?” he said.
“But what?”
“You said ‘but’ and then nothing.”
“Oh,” she said, dropping her hand and grazing his groin with her fingernails. “But it was still fantastic. Even though I’m old enough to be your mother. We can be friends, can’t we?”
“Of course,” said Isaac, not sure what he was agreeing to.
Klara’s grin was crooked and complex. “So can we go out for coffee? As friends.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Now?”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
They left the library together and walked to a coffee shop on Figueroa, across the street from the campus’s eastern border. Passing students and faculty, people walking with people their own age.
Klara’s hips swayed and touched him from time to time. Isaac tried to put some space between them—enough to dispel any image of intimacy but not so much that she’d catch on. She kept bumping into his flank.
At the restaurant, she led him to a booth and ordered mint tea and a mixed green salad, Thousand Island on the side. Isaac, suddenly parched, asked for a Coke.
When the waitress left, Klara confided, “I always get hungry.” Her neck turned rosy. “After.”
For the next hour she proceeded to tell him about her schooling, her childhood, the young marriage she’d once thought eternal, her two gifted children, her wonderful mother who could be controlling but only with the best of intentions, her corporate-attorney father, retired only for a year before he died of prostate cancer.
When she was through, she said, “You’re a great listener. My ex was terrible about listening. Have you ever thought about becoming a psychiatrist?”
He shook his head.
“How come?”
“I haven’t thought about any specialties yet. Too far off in the distance.”
She reached over and touched the tips of his fingers. “You’re a beautiful boy, Isaac Gomez. One day you’ll be famous. I hope you think of me kindly when you are.”
He laughed.
Klara said, “I’m not being funny.”
He walked her back to her desk in the reference section and turned away as she began chatting with her assistant, Mary Zoltan, a mole-faced woman ten years younger than Klara but somehow more cronelike. When Klara saw he was leaving, she ran after him, caught him by the door, touched his shoulder and whispered fiercely that he was beautiful, it had been beautiful, too bad it could never happen again.
Mary Zoltan was staring. No warmth in her rodent eyes.
Klara squeezed his shoulder. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He moved out of her grasp and left the library. Too wound up to concentrate on his doctoral research or June 28 or anything else. As he stepped out into the open air, the bulk between his legs throbbed, and Klara’s scent adhered to his skin, his throat, his nasal passages. He stopped in a men’s room in the neighboring building and washed his face. To no avail; he stank of semen and Klara.
No way could he face Petra.
He had nothing to offer her, anyway.
Why was he feeling as if he’d been unfaithful to her?
He walked back to Figueroa, caught the Metro 81 bus to Hill and Ord, picked up the 2 at Cesar Chavez and Broadway, and bypassed the Sunset/Wilcox exit for the station house. Continuing to La Brea, he got off and walked all the way to Pico Boulevard. There, he caught a Santa Monica Blue Line 7 to the beach.
It was nearly six by the time he arrived at the pier, where he bought a chewy corn dog, crisp fries, and another Coke, walked a while, checked out the few old Japanese guys fishing from the far end. Then he just hung out. His grad-student clothes and briefcase drew stares from tourists and tough-faced teens and vendors.
Or were they seeing something else?
The person who never fit in, never would.
If they only knew what bounced at the bottom of the case.
Leaving the pier, he walked down to the beach, got sand under his socks and didn’t care as he continued to the shoreline where he rolled up his khakis and got barefoot and waded out into the cold surf.
Standing there until his feet grew numb, he thought about nothing.
That felt great.
Then he flashed back to June 28.
Petra thinks I’m right, but I could still be wrong. It would be good to be wrong once in a while.
He walked back onto the sand, put his socks and shoes back on without bothering to dry his feet.
By the time he got back home it was close to ten and his mother was sulking because he’d missed the dinner she’d prepared. Albondigas soup teeming with meatballs and herbs, beef tamales, a big pot of black beans with salt pork. As Mama hovered and counted every forkful,
he ate as much as he could stomach. When his guts were about to burst, he wiped his chin, told her it was great, kissed her cheek, and headed for his room.
Isaiah was already asleep in the upper bunk, lying on his back snoring rhythmically, his left arm flung across his eyes. For the past year, Isaiah, an apprentice roofer, had bounced from one construction job to another, working for barely above minimum wage, acquiring a permanent reek of tar. Generally, Isaac was used to it, but tonight the tiny space smelled like a freshly asphalted freeway.
His older brother snuffled and rolled over and returned to his original position. The job demanded rising at five A.M. in order to be in place at the pickup spot when the shift boss drove by in his panel truck and collected day laborers.
Isaac removed his shoes and placed them down on the floor quietly. His younger brother Joel’s rollaway cot was empty, still made-up from the morning. A part-time city college student when he wasn’t clerking at the Solario Spanish Market on Alvarado, Joel had taken to staying out late without explanation. The same transgression committed by the older Gomez boys would’ve brewed a parental storm. But Joel, good-looking, with a Tom Cruise smile, got away with everything.
Isaiah snuffled again, louder. Muttered something in his sleep. Went silent. Isaac disrobed carefully, folded his clothes over a chair, and slipped into the lower bunk.
A slurred “Hmmm” came from above and the bed frame squeaked. “That you, bro?”
“It’s me.”
“Where you been? Mom’s pissed.”
“Working.”
Isaiah laughed.
“What’s funny?” said Isaac.
“I can smell it all the way up here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You smell like heavy-duty fucking, man. Yo, little bro. Right on.”
The following day, he returned to the library, determined to meet Klara’s eyes forthrightly.
We’re all adults here.
She wasn’t at her desk.
“Sick,” said Mary Zoltan.
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“When she called in this morning, she sounded pretty bad.”
“A cold?” said Isaac.
“No, more like . . .” Mary stared at him and Isaac felt his face catch fire. He’d showered for a long time but if Isaiah, half-asleep, could smell it . . .
“Whatever,” said Mary. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“No, thanks.”
She smirked.
Sick. More than a cold.
A woman on the edge and he’d driven her over.
Bad enough on its own, but there goes June 28.
As he made his way down to the third subbasement, nightmare scenes tumbled out of his brain like a payoff of slot-machine quarters.
Klara, having convinced herself she’d been sexually exploited—by a young, ambitious man—had plunged into a deep, dark depression.
And dealt with it by self-medicating.
Overdosing.
Or, she’d drowned her sorrows in pills and alcohol—pills and white wine.
Yes, that fit: tranqs and chardonnay. Besotted, she staggers to her minivan. Another car heads her way but it’s too late.
Two gifted children left orphaned.
A police investigation ensues: What had led a middle-aged librarian to engage in such rash behavior?
Who was the last person she’d been with?
Mary knew. From the way she’d looked at him, Mary knew.
He stopped midway down the second flight. What if the two of them hadn’t been as discreet as they’d believed and someone, some botany scholar, some damned chlorophiliac, lured to Isaac’s quiet, dark corner by a crumbling, antiquarian text on molds or marigolds or whatever, had seen everything?
Career-killing publicity.
Bye bye med school.
Bye-bye Ph.D., for that matter. He’d be standing with Isaiah at five-thirty A.M., waiting for roofing jobs.
The shame. His parents . . . the Doctors Lattimore. Everyone at Burton Academy. The university.
Councilman Gilbert Reyes.
By the time he reached his corner, he’d conjured a vivid image of Reyes calling a press conference in order to distance himself from his prodigal project.
He looked around. No one in the Botany section. As usual. But what did that mean? During the whole thing—the entire damned orgiastic fifteen minutes or however long it had taken—his eyes had been shut.
He shut them now, as if to bring back the moment. Opened and saw high library stacks. Dim, empty corridors.
But everything felt wrong; the air smelled reproachful.
He turned face and ran back to the stairs. Tripped and nearly tumbled but managed to maintain balance.
Or something that passed for it.
He couldn’t be here today. Back to the beach, the beach had been good. He’d return, stuff his face with junk food, play video games like an everyday bonehead, numb his feet, and whatever else demanded numbing, in the vast, relentless Pacific.
He did it. But by noon, he craved the police station.
CHAPTER
35
The second meeting was worse for Petra.
Five minutes after it started a Valley Gang Unit rep arrived, a uniformed three-striper, a huge man with a shaved bullet-head, ice eyes, and all the charm of a virus. He kept inspecting his nails as Hotshot I gave more speeches about gang behavior.
The search for Omar Selden and associates was now an official task force.
Schoelkopf had decided to sit in.
Not that the captain said much. For the most part he looked sleepy and small, and Petra, knowing about his third wife, felt sorry for him. She started nodding off as Honcho droned on. Finally, the guy slapped his notepad shut and motioned for his buddy to collapse the easel.
“So,” he said, tightening the knot of his tie, “we’re all on the same page.”
Petra looked at the big gang sergeant and said, “One thing you might want to check out: Our boy Omar took college courses in photography and when I saw him in Venice he had camera equipment with him. He listed a phony address in NoHo, so maybe he’s got some kind of connection there.”
“It was a phony address,” Schoelkopf cut in. “That was the point of lying, Detective Connor. To throw you off.”
Which was utter nonsense. Criminals lacked imagination, made stupid mistakes all the time. If they didn’t, police work would be an exercise in futility.
No one backed her up.
She said, “Still, sir—”
The gang guy stood to his full six-four and broke in: “Never seen any bangers in NoHo, except for a few straggling in when there’s a street fair. No street fairs till next month.”
He left the room.
The head Downtown guy said, “Onward.”
When Petra returned to the detectives’ room, Isaac was waiting for her. Now she did need to walk and she told him so. They left the station and headed south on Wilcox. Isaac was smart enough not to talk as she stomped her way toward Santa Monica. Eventually, she cooled down and noticed that he was keeping his distance from her. She was probably scaring him. Time to force a smile.
“So,” she said. “June 28. The date has to mean something—a birthday, an anniversary, something personal to the bad guy. Or some historical event that turns him on. I checked DMV stats on all the principals in the files. None of the vics were born that day. So maybe our boy is a history freak.”
She waited for him to comment. He didn’t.
“Any ideas?”
“Everything you’re saying sounds reasonable.”
Was he losing interest? Distracted by his other life?
“What keeps coming to me,” she said, “is an extremely seductive killer. Someone subtle, really careful about the way he sets things up. Marta Doebbler being called out of the theater, Geraldo Solis possibly being conned by a phony cable appointment. If the cable guy is our suspect, he was canny enough to case the house and
come back later. Maybe he was also canny enough to use a dog as a lure.”
She told him about the two kinds of canine hair found on Coral Langdon, recounted her friendly neighborhood dog-walker scenario.
“The setups,” she said, “could be as much a turn-on as the kill.”
“A choreographer,” he said.
“That’s a good way to put it. So what do you think?”
“You’re right about the subtlety.”
“Until he blitz-attacks the victims from behind and bashes their brains out. That’s anything but subtle, Isaac. To me that says (a) cowardice—he’s afraid to look them in the eye so he avoids the usual sex-psycho strangulation thing—and (b) he’s got lots of rage beneath the surface that he’s able to control in everyday life. More than control. He functions well until he’s triggered. We know the date is one trigger, but there has to be something about the victims.”
They walked for a while before she said, “Anything you want to add is okay.”
He shook his head.
“You okay?”
He startled. She’d shaken him out of some sort of reverie. “Sure.”
“You seem a bit spacey.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“No apology necessary. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” She smiled. “As your mentor—not that I’ve mented much. Is that a verb?”
Isaac smiled back. “Nope. Mentored.”
“Feel free to speculate about what I just said.”
“Everything you’re saying makes sense. I wish I had something to add, but I don’t.”
A half-block later, he said, “One thing does occur to me. There’s a discrepancy between Marta Doebbler and the others. If the killer was able to disguise himself as a cable repairman to get into Mr. Solis’s place, Mr. Solis obviously didn’t know him. If the dog theory’s true, the same could go for Coral Langdon: She met a man walking his dog in her neighborhood, chatted, turned to go, and got bludgeoned. The killer could’ve rehearsed the scene by dog-walking previously in order to familiarize himself with the surroundings. But he still could’ve been a relative stranger. That can’t be true of Marta Doebbler. She wouldn’t have left the theater in the middle of the show unless she knew who had called her. Plus, a stranger wouldn’t have known Marta was going to the theater.”