Ecstasy (31 page)

I pulled up to her house just as a CBS news van was driving away. Norma Jean’s mother answered the door wearing a burgundy
sweat suit, the velour kind with the zip-up jacket and matching pants that you never actually see in a gym—only on out-of-shape
types who crave the elasticized waistband. She led me into the living room, where Norma Jean was lying on the couch, clad
in a warm-up suit of her own. Her face was made up, and not particularly well; mascara clotted her eyelashes, and her cheeks
were striped with cotton-candy pink blush.

The room was a riot of get-well flowers, which looked cheery but saturated the air so the place smelled like a funeral parlor.
Mrs. Kramer settled into an easy chair, a happily expectant look on her face, and I got the feeling that she was enjoying
the spectacle every bit as much as her daughter was.

The first thing Norma Jean did was offer me a glass of instant lemonade, which I took just to be polite. Then she told me
to call her “Jeanie” and indicated a tin of expensive-looking chocolate-dipped cookies, which she said had come in a gift
basket from the mayor’s office. These, I accepted with genuine enthusiasm.

We spent the next two hours going over the life and times of Norma Jean Kramer. And although she turned out to be extremely
sweet and surprisingly funny, I’ll spare you most of the details. She did mention that she was thinking about getting an associate’s
degree in mass communication, that the local Weight Watchers franchise had offered her a free membership, and that her dream
was to be a spokesperson for the company, “just like Fergie.”

But the really interesting part of the conversation didn’t come until the end.

“Jeanie,” I said, “before I go, I was wondering if you’d mind telling me about the circumstances of your buying the LSD.”
Her face took on a blank, slightly confused look, which kind of threw me. “You did buy it, didn’t you? Or did one of your
friends buy it for you or something?”

“No, I bought it,” she said. “It’s just that …none of the other newspeople asked me that before.”

“Oh. Well, I guess for most of them the story is really about you being the only person to survive taking one of those poisoned
tabs. And besides, since Robert Sturdivant is obviously going to get charged with—”

“Hey, who is he, anyway?”

“Sturdivant? He’s…Well, he’s the guy who sold you the drugs. Isn’t he?”

“Gosh, I …I don’t really know.”

“You bought the drugs from a total stranger?” She nodded. “Didn’t you even get his name?”

“Yeah, it was Robbie-something. I guess it could’ve been that Sturdivant guy. I just don’t know for sure.”

“Listen, Jeanie, I’ll be right back, okay?” I went out to my car, retrieved a stack of newspapers from the backseat, and dug
out a story that Ochoa had done on the continuing search for the bail-jumping Sturdy. “Was this the guy?” Jeanie squinted
at the photo. “Does he look familiar to you?”

“Um…yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“He isn’t the guy who sold me the tab, but…I think I saw him one time.”

“When was that?”

“When I was still in the hospital, some nice people from the F.B.I. came by and showed me some pictures—a bunch of little
black-and-white pictures, like six of them together. I’m pretty sure this guy was in one of them.”

“They showed you a photo array and asked you to pick out the person who sold you the drugs?”

“Yeah, I guess. And then they asked me if I knew somebody named Sturdivant, but I told them I wasn’t sure—all I knew was that
I bought the stuff from somebody named Robbie.”

I handed her the paper. “And you’re sure this isn’t the guy?”

“Nah. He was a lot smaller, and he had way more hair. And this Sturdivant guy looks, I don’t know…
mean.
The other guy was kinda cute.”

“Okay, well, thanks for—”

“Hey,” she said, “there he is.”

She’d unfolded the paper and was looking at a story on the facing page.

I followed the direction of her eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. There’s the guy. Omigod, that’s
him.
” She was starting to get upset, and her mother came over to pat her on the back. “That’s the creep who sold me the stuff
that almost killed me.”

She pointed a pink fingernail at the newsprint—hard enough to poke a hole right through the photo of Axel Robinette.

I
WROTE UP THE PIECE
on Jeanie Kramer in my Super 8 motel room, fueled by a mushroom-and-onion pizza and a six-pack of Tab. When I was done, I
made yet another call to Alan Bauer—and, for the fifth time, got the family answering machine. I left another message telling
him to call me on my cell, that it was
important,
but something told me I was wasting my time. If I talked to Bauer, it was going to have to be in person.

Then I tried Glenn Shardik again, this time at home. His wife answered, said he was out, but she’d be glad to give him another
message.

The headline to my page-one piece (
ROBINETTE SOLD DEADLY DRUGS
,
SAYS VICTIM
) blared out of the
Monitor
vending boxes as I drove into town the following afternoon. I made it to the newsroom just in time for the afternoon editorial
meeting, during which I got a slightly malevolent stare from Ochoa and high fives from everybody else.

Five hours later, when we’d repaired to the Citizen Kane, the reporter in question was still mouthing the phrase
sob sister
at me.

“Oh, piss off,” I said. “And while you’re at it, how about you buy me a drink?”

“Fat chance.”

“Don’t be such a sore loser. Besides, all I did was interview the Kramer girl. Robinette’s death is completely in your beat.
And as far as I’m concerned, you can have it.”

“Since when are you so generous?”

“Since I saw his goddamn body floating in the water.
Twice.
”

“Yeah, well, right now I’m as stalled as the cops are.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve been nosing around for a week and I’ve hardly been able to find out anything beyond what the cops released.”

“Which is that he died of hypothermia from falling into the Deep Lake Cooling pool.”

“Right. Whether it happened accidentally or on purpose—according to my buddy in the coroner’s office, they’re not having much
luck nailing it down.”

“And if he was pushed in on purpose,” I said, “which I assume that he damn well was, did it have anything to do with the fact
that he sold the drugs to Kramer? Or was it about Deep Lake somehow? And what’s the connection to Mohawk Associates?”

“Goddamn Robinette,” Mad said. “Seems to me like the son of a bitch is at the middle of everything. Too bad he’s in no shape
to talk.”

“The Axis of Axel,” I said, mostly because it sounded so clever. “Let’s count them up. First, he was at Melting Rock. He was
the one who sold the drugs to Norma Jean, and presumably to the boys as well. His initials were on one of the payoff lists
in the festival office, but there’s no M.A. next to his name. He was one of the demonstrators on opening day at Deep Lake—in
fact, he’s one of the people who shut down the system with goddamn Jell-O. And to round out the list, one of the J-burg girls
has a massive crush on him, and he’s best buddies with our missing drug dealer, Rob Sturdivant.”

“And while we’re on the subject,” Ochoa said, “where the hell is he?”

“Rob Sturdivant,” I said. “Goddamn Axel Robbee-nette. I was thinking about it on the whole drive up, how Axel pronounced his
name that way when I talked to him at Café Whatever. That’s even how some of his stupid slacker friends said it when I interviewed
them for his news obit.”

“And?”

“And the only evidence that Sturdivant sold the drugs to those boys was double hearsay—Cindy said that Shaun told her he did
it. But Shaun was dying, and Cindy was hysterical, and maybe…”

Mad raised an eyebrow. “And maybe,” he said, “she misunderstood him. He said ‘Robinette,’ and she heard ‘Rob Sturdivant.’
”

“People must’ve known he was a dealer, so it was probably a natural mistake.”

“Sturdivant swore up and down he hadn’t sold the acid to those kids,” Ochoa said. “Maybe he was actually telling the truth.”

“It’s what I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I mean, I suppose it’s possible that Sturdivant sold three tabs and Axel sold the
other—after all, they were buddies and everything. And to tell you the truth, I kind of hope that was the case. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise,” Ochoa said, “the only person we can directly connect to the drugs is Axel, and he’s dead.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Jesus, it would be nice if somebody in the coroner’s office could figure out just what the hell happened
to him.”

“Right now, all they know is that Robinette fell into the pool, where a witness”—Ochoa’s eyes rotated toward me—“sees him
floating dead. Eventually, his wet clothes drag him down to the bottom of the pool, where he gets sucked into the outflow
pipe and goes shooting out into the lake. The cops are looking for a body, and they have the Benson engineers check the pipe,
but of course by then it’s all clear. They send down some divers, but it’s damn deep and dark, and they don’t find anything,
so they figure somebody fished it out of the pool and buried it someplace. But after a while, the body gets dislodged from
whatever it was snagged on, and between that and the decomposition gases, he pops up to the top. End of story.”

“Except,” I said, “that they have no idea how he got into the pool in the first place.”

“From what my source tells me,” Ochoa said, “all the damage they found on the body was postmortem, from getting banged around
on the trip through the pipe. They didn’t find any evidence that anybody beat on him or anything.”

“So maybe it really was an accident,” Mad said. “Could be he was there waiting to show Bernier how they doctored the water
with goddamn Jell-O, and he fell into the pool in the dark. Couldn’t see to climb up the safety ladder, and three minutes
later,
poof
—the guy’s a goner.”

“Okay,” I said, “so how did they do it?”

Mad stopped tilting the beer pitcher in midpour. “Do what?”

“How did they doctor the water?”

“What difference does it make?”

“And come to think of it, how did Axel get into the Deep Lake building in the first place?”

Mad shrugged. “Probably had somebody on the inside, don’t you think? I mean, somebody had to give him the key, or at least
open the place for him, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but presumably the cops’ve looked into that, and if they’d nailed somebody, whoever it was would’ve been
canned in a minute. You heard anything about one of those guys getting fired?” Mad shook his head. “Me neither.”

“Okay,” Ochoa said, “so the question is, how does a lowlife like Axel Robinette get his hands on a key? It’s not like he had
the money to bribe anybody.”

“True,” Mad said, “but we’re not just talking about him. We’re talking about all the goddamn Mohawk Warriors, whoever they
are.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But the night he died, it was Robinette who got in there. And think about
why
he was there—to show some reporter how they did their trick with the intake pool. Do you really think if some halfway-sane
person in the group had the key, they would’ve given it to him for
that?
”

Mad finally finished pouring his beer. “Hey, the guy was no prince. Maybe he lied about why he needed it. What difference
does it make?”

“Yeah, but—”

Ochoa held up a hand. “There’s something else,” he said. “Another detail I got from this chick in the coroner’s office that
I, um… hadn’t really wanted to mention.” There was a funky tone in his voice, though I had no idea why. “Er…okay. If he was
really there to show Alex how they filled up the pool with Jell-O mix, how come he didn’t have any on him?”

“Good question,” I said, “and maybe the answer is obvious, which is that it got washed down the outflow pipe along with him.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but anyway, they never found any trace of it. But, well…they
did
find something else. Something in his pockets which might, um… indicate what his plans were.”

“Which is?”

“A whole lot of, well…condoms.”

It took a second for his meaning to sink in, and when it did, I thought I might toss my Beer Nuts.

“Are you telling me that Axel’s whole point in meeting me at Deep Lake in the middle of the night was that he thought he was
going to get
lucky?
” Ochoa nodded. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t seem to be enjoying this as much as I would’ve expected. “God, I…
yuck.
” I took a slug of red wine to try to get the nasty taste out of my mouth. “That little prick did consider himself quite a
goddamn ladies’ man. Far as I could tell, the only person who ever agreed with him was—
holy shit.
”

“What?” Mad said. “Yo, Bernier, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just…I think maybe I know where Axel got the key.”

“And…?”

“There was this girl he had wrapped around his finger,” I said. “And her last name just happens to be Benson.”

I
WAS SITTING AT OCHOA’S TERMINAL
the next morning, subtly gloating about my Norma Jean scoop while ostensibly helping him with a follow-up to the Axel story,
when the photo editor appeared at my shoulder.

“Hey, Alex,” Wendell said, “do you know where Melissa’s at?”

“Er…no. Why?”

“She’s late. Way late.”

“Well, she’s not much of a morning person….”

“Like I don’t know it. Late’s no big deal, but it’s not like her to screw up an assignment.”

I stood up to face him. Since he’s as short as I am, we were nose to nose—though his Gene Wilder hairdo gave him an extra
three inches on me. “What did she miss?”

“She was supposed to shoot an enterprise thing at the high school—metal-shop kids made a car. Page-three stand-alone for tomorrow.”

“And she didn’t show up?” He shook his head. “Maybe she got the time wrong or something. Did you try her on her cell?”

“Cell, home phone, yeah. No answer. So I was wondering if she said anything to you this morning about—”