Laguna Heat

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He skipped ahead nearly ten years, to May 5, 1962:

  Big race to Ensenada today from the Surfside. I’m writing this from aboard Joe Datilla’s boat, the Priceless, which is why the handwriting is so nutty. Maybe the gin too. It’s been a great race and I think we're somewhere in front Joe hates to lose and takes everything so serious. This is supposed to be my turn to sleep, but too much coffee and excitement, I think. Reggie Often said he’d leave his wife for me yesterday, and I told him not to be so silly. Such a sweet little man, and a good neighbor.

  December 7, 1963:

  Whenever I hear this date my blood seems to go metallic and something rings in my ears. I can still remember what I was doing when we were attacked. I was playing with Skeeter in the front yard and dad had just heard on the news about Pearl Harbor. He was screaming and bellowing at mom, then she was crying and quick on the telephone with her friends. I kept looking up in the sky and wondering if I might see a Zero, and dumb Skeeter just barked. What a horrid winter this has been. I can still hear the drums and see that dark processional at John Kennedy’s funeral, and those pictures of Jackie with the blood on her legs and everyone saying what a coward she was for trying to climb out. Poor, poor woman. The wind blew all day here when they buried him and it was a bad day. I feel so low now, I’ll write another time.

  Shephard moved ahead twenty years, to the last entries in the book. Hope Creeley’s handwriting had decayed into a heavy and erratic scrawl, sometimes angling up the page, sometimes down. He could almost feel the pressure of her hand as she tried to keep the pen steady. August 25, the day that Tim Algernon had been killed:

  I’ve never had such a feeling of foreboding in all my life. Today I got out of bed and went to the garden. Someone had pulled off two of my best roses in the night Reggie kept following me up and down the hedge yesterday and tried to kiss me by the perennials. He wants an answer about the movies, I know. So lonely since his wife passed away. Then the afternoon paper came and Tim Algernon dead, I went to the bathroom and was sick but nothing came up. Even Skeeter seemed slowed up today. The first Skeeter was a better dog until the trash truck hit him. The new Skeeter is a good dog and I like the way his tail curls and his ears point I like the barklessness of him. A silent dog is almost a perfect dog. Tim kept calling but I never returned them, and now I wonder if the police should know. I want to be left alone, no Tim and no one but Skeeter and me and he can’t even bark. Poor Tim now. One of the old Surfside gang and such a nice big man. So much bad has happened to so many of us from back then. Bad luck hangs in the air like the pyramids at El Giza. The world is so big, but so empty. The wind especially, like the day they buried the president and it just kept blowing like breeze off the ankles of God. I wonder if part of Burton is flying around in it sometimes. I know now, as I look back, that I held onto him too long after he was gone, just as I held onto him too hard when he was with me. It seems impossible that a person might do something so simple as loving wrong. I’m sure Burton is somewhere out there in that wind. He always wanted flying lessons.

  Then, the last entry, made two days before Shephard had found her body, August 26:

  Been inside for two full days now. Won’t answer the phone and don’t want any more mail. What is happening? Got this very nice Bible in the mail Tuesday with a very bad note inside the cover. I’ve called the police twice but hung up. Joe Datilla said not to worry because it was probably a bad joke or the wrong address but my name was right on the package. Been rubbing my eyes all day for some reason. Called Reverend Shephard today but he was out. I don’t know who would send me such a thing. Joe says just stay home and take care of myself and work on my writing or something even though I told him I was tired of it. He’s always been so respectful since Burton. They were always at odds but such good partners, Datilla and Creeley had such a good ring to it. I’m sure he felt responsible for Burton because he was weaker and they argued and gossip had them enemies but not true at all. There just seems no end to the bad luck. The Shephard boy is now a policeman and working on Tim. I almost called him but I hung up. I am just a foolish old woman and really not that old at all. I remember him when he was little, always baseball and bicycles for little Tom Shephard. Born into all the messes that happened before. We should all move a million miles away from where we start off.

  The old pictures make me sad. Going to pack all this up today and take to Dorothea at the Historical. I’m sick of writing, and who cares about the old times anyway? Time for me to be rid of it all and start on something else. Perhaps knit more. Who would send me such a bad thing as that Bible? I feel safe in the house here like Joe said. Saw Wade Shephard’s sermon on the TV last week and really very good. He’s grown into such a strong, good man after all the hell he was in after Colleen died. Skeeter misses his walks. Just thought of it now, but it’s been three years since I’ve been to the beach, although I can see a little bit of it from the third floor here, and with the white all around me and the quiet, the ocean doesn’t seem as terrifying as it used to. Tried to get my life as white as could be. That sounds like laundry. Always think of parts of him being in the ocean. But that is over now. Everything seems over now for some reason. I’m tired. Good night Burton.

  As if approving an official statement, Hope Creeley had signed the last page. Shephard saw that the signature, unlike the scribbled entry, was clear, confident, and graceful. A final testimony to spirit over gloom, hope over despair. In some small way, he thought, she had won.

  And so, in a way, had he. A path was opening before him now, and it pointed straight to the Surfside.

  Behind him, Shephard heard the door open, the jingling of a tiny bell, and Dorothea Schilling’s frail voice welcoming a new browser to the Society. The voice of the man who answered her was deep, clear, and unmistakable.

  “I’m Toby Benson with the Times, doing a story on Hope Creeley. I understand she made a donation to the Society recently. May I see it?”

  Mrs. Schilling explained that the contributions available to the public were already being enjoyed by one history buff, and that Mr. Benson could join him in the back room. A moment later, Mr. Benson’s large and well-dressed form was standing over Shephard, his face hardening as he looked down. Shephard stood up and left the diary and clippings on the couch.

  “Bruce Hard-on, buddy, chum. How the hell are ya?”

  Bruce Harmon reddened, and Shephard was aware of the rage percolating through the big man’s body. In the cramped room, he looked even larger than before, and less predictable.

  “It’s public record now,” he said slowly. “Public record now that the Historical Society has it.” Dorothea Schilling’s wide-eyed face peeped from around a wall.

  “They don’t have it, Bruce. I do. If you want a look, tell me who sent you to take it.”

  Harmon’s eyes found the diary and box of photos laying on the couch beside Shephard. His instincts told him to smash what was in his way, Shephard guessed; his brains told him to wait. And Shephard’s own instincts told him to arrest Harmon for obstruction and hold him forty-eight hours before not bringing charges, which would be thrown out by the district attorney anyway. But something beyond instinct told him that Bruce Harmon was worth more left alone, that the free are at liberty to make mistakes. Cop and ex-cop read each other’s thoughts with identical speed and accuracy. At the same time, they offered each other the slow, premeditated smiles used by police officers throughout the world, smiles as dry and mirthless as sand, meant to lull, confuse, disarm.

  On his way out, Harmon nearly capsized Dorothea Schilling, who had just come around the corner bearing another cup of scalding coffee. He grunted past her, slamming through the door. She watched him in cowed embarrassment.

  “So many of them lose interest,” she said confidentially. And she reluctantly consented to let Detective Shephard keep the Creeley diary for “a day or two at the most.”

  From a pay phone on the highway, Shephard called Pavlik and found that a red 1964 Coupe de Ville h
ad been ticketed outside Forest Avenue Books at 2:12 P.M. on Monday, August 25. The car was a convertible and the plates read 156 DSN, California. And due to Sacramento’s usual computer logjam, Pavlik lamented, he still didn’t have the name of the registered owner. It had not been reported stolen.

  A busy killer, Shephard thought as he hung up. He walked to the Mustang and leaned against the black body, hot in the late morning sun. Looking across Coast Highway to the ocean that twinkled silver-blue on the horizon, Shephard took out his notebook and charted the killer’s movements. Nine days ago, the man had mailed a Bible to Algernon from Sacramento. On Saturday, three days later, he had rolled Steinhelper and taken his wallet. Sunday, he arrived from Sacramento in Laguna on Greyhound line 52. By six Monday morning he had removed Algernon from the realm of the living. By seven he had checked into the Hotel Sebastian, washed up, paid in advance for three days, and left his can of turpentine and his stolen identification in the night-stand drawer. A very busy man.

  Shephard realized with modest but welcome clarity that the stolen identification had been left behind on purpose. Good, he thought, our man is thinking of us.

  By nine, Shephard figured, the suspect had left—just after Bruce Harmon, and just before Shephard himself, had arrived. At two o’clock he went to Forest Avenue Books, purchased the used Bible, possibly sat under the shade of one of the city’s venerable eucalyptus trees as he penned the brief but terrifying note to Hope Creeley, then walked across the street to the post office and mailed the book. It had arrived at Creeley’s mansion a day later.

  One day after that, he had gone to Creeley and done what he said he would do, and the misery he made hers was considerable. Had he cut off her eyelids so she would have to watch? Shephard shivered.

  Sometime before Monday at 2 P.M. he had found a car.

  And sometime before Tuesday he had found a safe place to sleep.

  He was working methodically, accurately, quickly. Working like he knew the city.

  Shephard pulled the now-wrinkled Identikit sketch from his pocket and studied it under the glare of the sun. The wry, confident face studied him back.

  TWELVE

  His father had insisted on an early lunch. The table of his Arch Bay Heights home was set for two, and the Reverend Wade Shephard, tanned and serene, was quick to offer his son a glass of white wine. Wade, by personal decree an alcoholic, no longer drank, but the wine was present at every meal as an invitation to guests and as a test for himself. The liquid splashed tunefully into the goblet; his father smiled. It was the reverend’s smile, not the policeman’s, Shephard thought as he sat down. As a boy he had been intrigued by his father’s smile, its wariness and suspicion, its taunting secrecy. But the smile of Wade the Reverend was forgiving, warm, public.

  “I apologize for the early hour, but I’ve got a wedding this afternoon,” he said. “Two young people from the congregation, charming couple. How’s the head, son?”

  “Healing rapidly.”

  “Good, good. Wouldn’t hurt to lay off the booze,” Wade said with encouragement. “You sounded pretty hammered the other night. It’s so good to see you again, Tommy. What do you hear from Louise, anything?”

  “A little. She moved into a friend’s home in time for the peak tanning season. Malibu.”

  Her friend was Robert Steckman, the movie producer, and his smooth voice returned to Shephard’s ears as he sipped the wine. She’s too beautiful to be unseen by this town, he had told Shephard at a party one night. Steckman had “found” Louise at Bullock’s Wilshire, where she worked, and they had developed a quick and cheerful friendship that Shephard mistrusted and felt excluded from. Too beautiful to be unseen, he thought. And now, a year later, Steckman had taken her into his Malibu home, undoubtedly to be seen.

  “You sound bitter, son. A door is closed and a window opens. When you find a young woman whose soul is your soul, take her as a wife and love her with all your heart.” Wade’s voice was the same mellifluous, optimistic one that he used for his televised sermons.

  Shephard nodded. “I did that,” he said.

  “Only a fool would close the window,” his father said quietly.

  “You haven’t raised a fool.”

  “No. I haven’t.” Wade sipped his coffee, and as his father lowered his face, Shephard saw a change of expression so subtle only a son might register it. For an instant, the face of Wade the Cop passed across the face of Wade the Reverend, like the shadow of a bird across water. Then it was gone and Wade looked up. “You know, I think that everything I’ve done in my life—from the time I married your mother and every day after she left us—I did in some way for her. Even before I met her. Somehow I was acting for her, anticipating her. And judged by some standards, I have done wonderful things. The power of the Lord has given me a large congregation that grew from almost nothing. Do you remember the first sermon in that makeshift chapel that still smelled like popcorn? With Little Theodore sitting there in a sweat?” He paused, as he did on television, for effect. “Then a huge chapel in which to worship. And the beginnings of a hospital in Yucatan, where we can carry the mercy of God to those who need it most. And I have been given some beautiful things, too. A lovely house in a beautiful city, good friends, health. But you know something? I would trade it all to have her back with me.”

  Wade brought a napkin to his mouth, patted, set it down on the table in front of him. Shephard poured himself another glass of wine. His father smiled.

  “I think, of all the joys on earth, that the love shared by a man and a woman is most sacred, Tommy. And human, too. When I loved Colleen I told myself that it was the best of what I would ever do. I was your age when I thought that. And now, it’s thirty years later and I feel the same thing. I would trade it all to have her back in this house with me. You’ll never hear that in a Sunday sermon, or maybe you will, but it’s true. The times we had, the laughter. Even the sorrow we shared …” Wade smiled again and it wasn’t the public version, but a private reminiscence, a reverie about something fine.

  Shephard felt like a man listening to an advertisement for something he couldn’t buy. The image of Louise reclining on a Malibu sun deck flitted into his mind, followed by one of Jane Algernon standing in waders, aiming her lovely and hurtful smile across the yard at him.

  “The hospital in Yucatan,” he said, “will it be big?”

  “Two hundred beds, Tommy. And the donations keep rolling in. We’re about to break ground, and she’s going to be beautiful. I decided to call it the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Come back to the den, I’ll show you the blueprints.”

  Wade led him from the dining room into the living room, then down the familiar hallway to the den. The presence of his old house, the home of his boyhood, brought back to Shephard a horde of memories that fought for attention all at once: walking down this same hallway in his baseball cleats and getting a wild bawling out by Wade; the same hallway where Pudgy, Shephard’s beloved mutt, had scampered a million times and slammed into the wall, unable to negotiate the sharp turn to Shephard’s bedroom; that bedroom, first on the right, where he had retreated to play with Christmas presents, cried at the first heartbreak of romantic love in the fourth grade, slept long and feverishly through the chicken pox, constructed out of cardboard his first motorcycle, stared through the window when the rain fell so hard in 1960 that three houses in the Heights had slipped into the street, and sat benumbed before the small television set the day of John Kennedy’s funeral watching the motorcade labor through the streets—Hope Creeley had been right, the wind was foreign and merciless that day.

  Even the smells seemed haunted: his father’s invariable Sunday morning menu of pancakes, bacon, and eggs; the dank and muted smell of sulfur brought up in the water system; the undercurrent of saltwater that was always stronger in summer; the smell of dried eucalyptus leaves, Wade’s favorite, which were always placed around the Shephard house in vases; even—and Shephard believed as they stepped into the den that he could smell it stil
l—the high-pitched stink of his father’s bourbon.

  As they went into the den, he realized that what was so strangely timeless about the old house was simply the obvious. Wade hadn’t changed it in thirty years. No new paint, no new carpets, no drapes, no new furniture. Why hadn’t he noticed it before, he asked himself. Because there was nothing to notice?

  The Sisters of Mercy blueprint hung from the den wall by thumbtacks. Wade trained the beam from a track light—one new addition, Shephard noted—onto the smeared design and put on his glasses.

  “Two stories and two hundred beds,” he said proudly. “One hundred private, the rest in groups of four, six, and eight. A full maternity ward and pediatrics section because the birth rate in Mexico is phenomenal. The hospital itself will be on Isla Arenillas, south of Cozumel. Ten years ago, the villages around were nothing but a few huts and a Pemex station. Now they’re towns. Five years from now they’ll be wonderful little cities full of tourists who are going to pay good money and bring good business to places you’ve never even heard of yet. The Yucatan is going to be the new Mexican Riviera, and the Sisters of Mercy will be there to help.” Wade turned to his son with a contented but oddly skewed grin. “I don’t really know where I got the idea to do this. I just woke up one morning and that’s what I wanted to do. I believe I was guided by the spirit in my decision. Strange, but I’d never even been to Mexico.”