by Rex Burns
Preoccupied, I closed the garage door and went through the small kitchen, half-aware of the house’s silence. The red light on the recorder blinked “message received.” The playback only gave me silence as whoever called listened for a few seconds and then hung up. The blank spaces were repeated a dozen times. I figured anyone that eager to get in touch would call again soon. Upstairs in the master bedroom, I tossed my clothes bag on the bed and began to unpack. I had almost emptied the cloth suitcase when the reading lamp on the nightstand beside the bed tugged at my attention. I paused, studying it. The arm was tilted much farther down than when I had left. Its angle to the bed was changed, an angle I’d fussed over to get just right so that when I lay propped against the pillows, it avoided the page’s glare yet didn’t cast the shadow of my hand and pencil across the print. Stepping back, I surveyed the room and its tiny misalignments. One of Eleanor’s paintings on the wall was at a slight but irritating tilt. The drawers of the dresser were unevenly closed. They were things that—in isolation—wouldn’t be noticed. But when a person lived alone, the things in a room tended to stay at rest. And when they didn’t it meant the restlessness of hurried, searching hands.
The two guest bedrooms showed less—an empty closet door hanging open in the unfurnished room, a wrinkled bedspread on the unmade mattress of the furnished room. Downstairs, I found a sign in the teakettle left on the cold burner with a splash of water in it. Apparently the intruder felt at home enough to have a cup of coffee while he searched. My habit was to empty the kettle of water and let it dry during the day; San Diego water tasted heavily of chemicals when it got stale. In the living room, the books sat in irregular lines as if someone had taken them out three and four at a time to look behind and then quickly shoved them back. The drawers of my desk, too, had been rifled. I had never been the most well-organized desk pilot, but I knew what was in the scattered piles of papers, maps, correspondence, and catalogues that littered its surface. Relying less on files than memory, I could find things when I needed them. But whoever went through my desk didn’t know that. To them the piles were random and it was here that I saw the clearest evidence of a very thorough search.
But I could find nothing missing. A burglar would have stolen my television and stereo system, both portable because of my itinerant life. They weren’t worth a lot, but they were quick to take and easy to sell. Spare checks would be taken, possibly, or the row of sterling silver shooting awards, to be melted into ingots. Certainly the pistols and target rifles. Their padlocked rack wouldn’t keep out a determined thief who had the luxury of a little noise. So they were after something else.
A couple of possibilities: someone from the past who thought I was still in the game—that my “retirement” was faked or even that I had kept documents which might prove embarrassing to the agency or to someone still in Washington. That was the least likely; I had cleared my files and been checked through a very tight security. Moreover, the people with those kinds of suspicions knew no one would keep sensitive material where it could be easily found and burned. It could have been someone worried by my questions about David Gates’s death. A possibility, but I didn’t think I had frightened anyone that much, certainly not Kimberly Goddard and her lawyer husband. The only way that case could be reopened was with a confession from someone who had been there. That left Vengley and company. They might want to know how much I had learned about them or why I was asking. But my reason was Dorcas, and that they already knew. How much I’d found out about them was another issue, however. And what they had to hide was exactly the thing I was after.
I finished my survey of the rooms, the initial shock of anger subsiding into a feeling of violation and uncleanliness. Straightening the things that had been disturbed, I thoroughly rinsed out the teakettle and then surveyed the windows and doors for the point of entry. It was a ground-level window off the back deck: a pane of glass knocked out, the latch open. I thought I had left behind the old need for caution—the knowledge that no place was secure, that any door and every drawer could be opened. Now it was with me again, and I felt myself slip easily into the familiar habits of security as I looked at the doors and windows with new eyes and scanned the Yellow Pages for a glazier.
I made that call and then pulled my mail from the letter drop. Mostly people wanting to sell something to New Homeowner, but also the welcome handwriting of Karen. It was a hurried and chatty note that only a proud father would find interest in. I read the cramped pages twice, smiling at the understated, wry presentation of what were really notable accomplishments for a fledgling lawyer. Karen hoped I was enjoying both retirement and the new house. She and Chuck had been studying calendars and schedules to see how soon they would be able to come down and take advantage of a home on the water. She had received a post card from Rebecca sent from Lisbon, so it looked as if she made the Portugal trip. Said she would be back in Bordeaux on the fourteenth. Which, I noted, was today—yesterday, European time. Rebecca should have the letters now about my retirement and move. That explained the long silence from that young lady.
Other than that and a few other gossipy items, there was little new, according to Karen, and she had to rush to a meeting. I was to remember that there was such a thing as a telephone, and they’d be delighted to hear from me whenever I had time to call. Love … P.S.—why not think of coming up to Sacramento for a visit? Now that I was retired, I should have enough time to do the things I’d been talking of doing. Love.
I tucked the letter back into its envelope and gazed at the afternoon light glaring on the distant shore of the bay. What, I should write and tell Karen I was too busy hunting Satanists to make it to Sacramento right now? That I first wanted to find out who had broken into my new home? None of the above. I’d cite the refrain I always used: as soon as things settled down enough to allow me a few days free. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them—God knows I did. But I would feel like an intruder. Karen would go out of her way to make my visit happy and fun and busy. She’d give me time that she could ill afford to lose, and their routines would be totally destroyed. No, best if I waited until they could come down here on vacation when their routines and schedules would be upset anyway.
The telephone clattered and I flipped off the recorder as I answered.
“This is Detective Finch, SDPD. I wonder if I can come over and talk with you, Mr. Steele?”
“Sure. What about?”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
He verified my address and asked a couple of questions about directions, then said it would take about forty-five minutes for him to arrive.
Finch didn’t look like his name. Instead he was a heavyset man with a large, fleshy nose that looked almost purple from broken blood vessels.
“Can you tell me where you’ve been the last few days, Mr. Steele?”
“Colorado. Why?”
The man, solidly filling the chair as he rested a notebook on a crossed knee, ignored the question. “Doing what?”
“Looking for a missing girl.”
The face turned quickly from the notebook. “You a rent-a-cop?”
“No. Just helping a friend.”
Finch used his little finger to scratch at something just inside one nostril. “Want to tell me about that?”
I did. Enough, anyway. “Why all the questions, officer?”
“Want to give me this Henry Wilcox’s address?”
I did.
“And you found this Dorcas Wilcox?”
“That’s right.”
“You got an address where she can be reached?”
“Do you mean can I prove I was in Colorado the last couple days?”
Finch nodded, lips stretched pleasantly and pale eyes studying me without expression.
“She’s staying at the Temple of the Shining Spirit in Aurora, Colorado, on Fourteenth Avenue. I have my airplane ticket upstairs, if you want me to get it.”
“Airline and flight?”
I told him and
he made another note.
“You know a woman named Shelley Aguirre?”
“I’ve talked to her a couple times. She’s a friend of Dorcas Wilcox. Has something happened to her?”
“Why’d you ask that?”
“You’re here asking about her. It’s pretty evident something’s happened, isn’t it?”
“Evident. Yeah.” Finch scratched again as he gazed at me. “When’s the last time you talked to her?”
“Three days ago. I went by her workplace and took her out to lunch. I hoped she could give me a lead to Dorcas.”
“Did she?”
“Not directly, no. Just some background information on some of Dorcas’s friends.” I added, “She’s involved in a cult of some kind. I had the feeling she was afraid to tell me too much about it.”
“A cult?”
“Satanism, I think.”
“I see.” Finch’s ballpoint pen made a brief scratch. “She’s not involved in anything now, Mr. Steele. She’s a homicide victim.” He waited for my reaction.
The suspicion had already crossed my mind. Finch wouldn’t be here unless it was something serious. But still it came with a sense of loss: she was someone I knew and now she was no more. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You think one of these Satanists might have killed her?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what she told me.” I asked, “When was she killed?”
“Sometime yesterday.”
“How?”
“Stabbed. It could have been a burglar in her apartment, but we’re looking at all the leads.” For the first time, Finch smiled, folding his lips back to reveal widely spaced teeth that looked small and oddly dainty in his heavy mouth. “You’re a lead. Her boss at work said you came and talked to her twice.”
“I was a lead. If she was killed yesterday, I was in Colorado.”
“Yeah.” Finch’s smile went away as he folded his notebook. “Okay, Mr. Steele. Thanks for your help.”
I watched the homicide detective plod heavily down the short walk to his plain gray sedan. Swerving a sharp U-turn in the dead-end street, the car pulled away into darkness.
I wasn’t surprised that the officer didn’t ask more questions. I was a lead, not a suspect, and I had a good alibi. There was only so much time to spend on leads that went nowhere. But I also knew that Shelley had been afraid to tell me much about the Kabbal. Quite possibly she had been worried that she’d already said more than she should. But I could think of nothing she mentioned that would lead to her death. The cult members might not want publicity, but as I’d told the admiral, there was nothing illegal in being a devil worshiper and no reason to kill anyone who admitted to such a belief.
I rummaged in the refrigerator for something to thaw for supper, boiling up a pot of rice to go with whatever I dragged out. It took until halfway through the meal to decide, and even then I felt slightly foolish calling Shaughnessy. In fact, I was relieved that the officer wasn’t on duty. Still, I left name and number and said it might have something to do with the Shelley Aguirre homicide. Please call.
CHAPTER 21
THE CALL FROM Shaughnessy came the next morning when I was out running. Wiping sweat from my face, I telephoned back and was told the detective was in conference. By the time Shaughnessy called again, I’d finished breakfast and was trying to figure a way to deliver on my suggestion that Vengley could be the key to getting Dorcas back.
“You say you got something on the Aguirre case, Mr. Steele?”
“I said I might have something. Detective Finch interviewed me last night and I told him that Shelley was involved in a Satanist cult. He didn’t seem too excited at the idea.”
The phone was silent. “But you think something’s there?”
“She was very hesitant to talk to me about the cult or the people in it. I think she was afraid of saying too much. But I don’t know why she should. As you said, it’s no crime to be a Satanist.”
“Why did Finch interview you?”
I told him about questioning Aguirre and went into greater detail about my trip to Colorado. “Nothing in the Temple suggested Satanism. But for some reason Vengley lied to Dorcas to get her to the Temple.”
“That’s pretty slim.”
“While I was in Colorado, someone broke into my house and searched it. I don’t know who, or what they were after. I can’t find anything missing.”
“But you think it has to do with your search for the Wilcox girl?”
“Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe not. But whoever broke in knew I wouldn’t be coming home soon—they took time to do a long and careful job.”
Shaughnessy hesitated. “The Aguirre case isn’t mine, but let me do a little asking around. You going to be at this number for a while?”
“Yes.”
It was several hours before Shaughnessy called again. “Can you come over to the police department?”
I could and did. The block-sized building had dark glass angled at a conventionally modern tilt, and its white concrete pillars gave the lower level an open and utilitarian appearance. The sergeant at the counter took my name and phoned upstairs for the detective. In a few minutes, Shaughnessy stepped out of the elevators and through the security gate.
“I got the okay to visit the crime scene—lab people are through with it, and they’re ready to turn it back to the landlord, so no problem.”
“And you want me to look at it?”
He nodded. “Finch is convinced it’s a burglar killing—place was torn up by somebody looking for goodies, and he figures Aguirre came home at the wrong time.” He led me to another bank of elevators that carried us into the parking garage under one wing of the building. “He doesn’t buy the cult killing idea.” There was no bitterness in Shaughnessy’s voice, just stating a fact. As he had told me before, cult and ritual killings were foreign ideas to a lot of cops.
We said little on the way to Aguirre’s apartment. Shaughnessy asked a few more questions about Dorcas and the Temple. That gave me the opening I’d waited for and I asked for help in locating Dwayne Vengley.
“What you want him for?”
“If I can show Dorcas he’s still involved in Satanism, she might quit the Temple and come home.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
We turned off 94 onto the Dekema Freeway south, then into a tangle of side streets that led into the dry, brown arroyo of Paradise Hills. The apartment complex was a modest frame horseshoe, two stories high and built around the inevitable swimming pool and patio. Aguirre’s rooms were on the second floor away from the patio. The door opened to a covered breeze-way. An orange warning was pasted at eye level. Shaughnessy worked the combination to the key-safe that dangled from the doorknob and then unlocked the door.
We stood in the stuffy, ripe air and surveyed the room. A numbered marker on the short nap of green carpet showed where the girl’s body had been. The source of the smell was a small but deep stain dried into a brown crust. From the small writing table that filled a far wall, papers lay scattered. The screen of the dark television set reflected tossed cushions from the sofa. An upturned waste-basket had spewed its litter. “Somebody was sure as hell searching for something,” said Shaughnessy.
“Or trying to seem like a burglar. Can I look around?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
I wandered through the several rooms. Living/dining, kitchenette separated by a breakfast shelf, bath, bedroom. Someone had looked in every conceivable place. Even the toilet tank lid was ajar and the medicine cabinet’s contents tumbled into the sink.
“Did the autopsy show she was a user?”
“Why?”
I pointed to the toilet. “Looks like someone was searching for a stash.”
Shaughnessy glanced at me and nodded. “The autopsy report’s not available yet. I’ll check when we get back.”
The closet, too, had been ransacked. Clothes dangled from hangers and littered the cramped floor. I pick
ed through dresses and blouses. Then, suddenly aware, I started going through the apartment again, this time with a sense of purpose.
Shaughnessy watched silently.
“It’s not what is here,” I told him. “It’s what’s not.”
“Like what?”
“A ceremonial robe. Books on Satanism. Candles. There’s not one thing to indicate she ever belonged to a cult.”
The policeman looked around. “Not even a pentagram or an upside-down crucifix. You’re right.” He asked, “She admitted she was a Satanist?”
“Was proud of it. She even implied that LaVey and his people weren’t true Satanists. Dabblers, she called them.”
“Jesus.”
I began another circuit. This time I sifted through the papers around the desk and the drawers of the nightstand by the bed. On the wall of the living room, I found what I was looking for: a rectangle of slightly paler wallpaper. “Something else not here: photographs of her boyfriend.” I pointed to the small hole that had held a picture hanger of some kind.
Shaughnessy stared at the rectangle. “What boyfriend?”
“One Steven Glover. They went to college together and apparently have been dating since. She said he was in the Kabbal, too.”
Shaughnessy jotted down the name. Then he looked at me again. “What kind of work you say you’re in?”
“I’m retired.”
“Military?” When I nodded, he said, “Yeah. You don’t look old enough to be a retired civilian. What’d you do in the military?”
“Mostly intelligence operations.”
“Ah.” That explained a few things.
We spent another half hour poking around and then headed back downtown. At headquarters, the detective asked me if I wanted to wait in the lobby a few minutes while he checked to see if the autopsy was filed yet. When he came back, he shrugged. “The killing doesn’t look like a ritual. One stab wound under the ribs and up into the heart. No other wounds, no defense marks.”