F is for Fugitive (18 page)

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.”

 

 

 

 

 

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.

“Sorry I can't interrupt what I'm doing,” he said mildly. “What can I help you with?” His tone had a light mocking quality, as if something amused him that he might or might not reveal.

“I take it your father called. How much did he tell you?”

“That you're investigating the murder of Jean Timberlake
at his request. I know, of course, that he was hired to represent Bailey Fowler. I don't know what you want with me.”

“You remember Jean?”

“Yes.”

I had hoped for something a little more informative, but I was willing to press. “Can you tell me about your relationship with her?”

His mouth curved up slightly. “My relationship?”

“Somebody told me she used to hang out at the Baptist church. As I understand it, you were a classmate of hers and headed up the youth group back then. I thought maybe the two of you developed a friendship.”

“Jean didn't have friends. She had conquests.”

“Were you one?”

A bemused smile. “No.”

What was the damn joke here? “Do you remember her coming to church?”

“Oh yes, but it wasn't me she was interested in. I wish I could say it was. She was very particular, our Miss Timberlake.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning she'd never have tumbled for the likes of me.”

“Oh, really? Why is that?”

He turned his face. The whole right side was disfigured, right eye missing, the lid welded shut by shiny pink and silver scar tissue that extended from his scalp to his jaw. His good eye was large and dark, filled with self-awareness. The missing eye created the illusion of
a constant wink. I could see now that his right arm was also badly scarred.

“What was it?”

“Automobile accident when I was ten. The gas tank blew up. My mother died and I was left looking like this. It's better now. I've had surgery twice. Back then, the church was my salvation, literally. I was baptized when I was twelve, dedicating my life to Jesus. Who else would have me? Certainly not Jean Timberlake.”

“Were you interested in her?”

“Sure, I was. I was seventeen years old and doomed to be a virgin for life. My bad luck. Good looks ranked high with her because she was so beautiful herself. After that came money, power . . . sex, of course. I thought about her incessantly. She was so completely venal.”

“But not with you?”

He went back to his work, sliding pills into the trough. “Unfortunately not.”

“Who, then?”

The lips curved up again in that nearly beatific smile. “Well, let's see now. How much trouble should I make?”

I shrugged, watching him carefully. “Just tell me the truth. What else can you do?”

“I could keep my mouth shut, which is what I've done to date.”

“Maybe it's time to speak up,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“Who was she involved with?”

His smile finally disappeared. “The Right Reverend Haws. What a pal he turned out to be. He knew I lusted after her, so he counseled me in matters of purity and self-control. He never mentioned what he did with her himself.”

I stared at him. “Are you sure of that?”

“She worked at the church, cleaning Sunday-school rooms. Wednesdays at four o'clock before choir practice started, he would pull his pants down around his knees and lie back across his desk while she worked on him. I used to watch from the vestry . . . Mrs. Haws, our dear June, suffers from a peculiar stigmata that originated just about that time. Resistant to treatment. I know because I fill the prescriptions, one right after the other. Amusing, don't you think?”

A chill rippled down my back. The image was vivid, his tone matter-of-fact. “Who else is aware of this?”

“No one, as far as I know.”

“You never mentioned it to anybody at the time?”

“Nobody asked, and I've since left the church. It turned out not to be the kind of comfort I was hoping for.”

 

The San Luis county clerk's office is located in the annex, right next door to the County Courthouse on Monterey. It was hard to believe that only yesterday we were all convening for Bailey's arraignment. I found a parking place across the street, inserted coins in the meter, then headed past the big redwood and into the
annex entrance. The corridor was lined with marble, a cold gray with darker streaks. The county clerk's office was on the first floor, through double doors. I set to work. Using Jean Timberlake's full name and the date of birth I'd pulled from her school records, I found the volume and page number listing her birth certificate. The records clerk looked up the original certificate and, for eleven dollars, made me a certified copy. I didn't much care if it was certified or not. What interested me was the information it contained. Etta Jean Timberlake was born at 2:26
A.M.
on June 3, 1949, 6 lbs., 8 oz., 19 inches long. Her mother was listed as gravida 1, para 1, fifteen years old and unemployed. Her father was “unknown.” The attending physician was Joseph Dunne.

I found a public phone and looked up his office. The number rang four times and then his answering service picked up. He was out on Thursdays, not due in again till Monday morning at ten. “Do you know how I can reach him?”

“Dr. Corsell's on call. If you'll leave your name and number, we can have him get in touch.”

“What about the Hot Springs? Could Dr. Dunne be up there?”

“Are you a patient of his?”

I set the receiver back in the cradle and let myself out of the booth. Since I was already downtown, I debated briefly about stopping by the hospital to see Royce. Ann had said he was asking for me, but I didn't want to talk to him just yet. I drove back toward Floral
Beach, taking one of the back roads, an undulating band of asphalt that wound past ranches, walled tract “estates,” and new housing developments.

There were very few cars in the spa's parking lot. The hotel couldn't be doing enough business to sustain the good doctor and his wife. I angled my VW in close to the main building, noting as I had before the dense chill in the air. The sulfur smell of spoiled eggs conjured up images of some befouled nest.

This time I bypassed the spa entrance and went around to the front, up wide concrete stairs to the wraparound porch. A row of chaise longues lent the veranda the look of a ship's deck. Under a canopy of oaks, the ground sloped down gradually, leveling out then for a hundred yards until it met the road. On my left, in an area cleared of trees, I caught a glimpse of the deserted swimming pool in a flat oblong of sunlight. Two tennis courts occupied the only other portion of the property graced with sun. The surrounding fence was screened by shrubs, but the hollow
pok
. . .
pok
suggested that at least one court was in use.

I pushed through a double-wide door of carved mahogany, the upper half inset with glass. The lobby was built on a grand scale, rimmed with wooden balustrades, flooded with light from two translucent glass skylights. The main salon was currently undergoing renovation. The carpeting was obscured by yards of gray canvas dropcloth, speckled with old paint. Scaffolding erected along two walls suggested that the wood paneling was in the process of being sanded and
refinished. Here, at least, the harsh smell of varnish overrode the pungent aroma of the mineral springs that burbled under the property like a cauldron.

The registration desk ran the width of the lobby, but there was no one in evidence. No reception clerk, no bellman, no painters at work. The silence had a quality about it that caused me to glance back over my shoulder, scanning the second-floor gallery. There was no one visible. Shadows hung among the eaves like spiderwebs. Wide, carpeted hallways extended on either side of the desk back into the gloomy depths of the hotel. I waited a decent interval in the silence. No one appeared. I pivoted, doing a one-eighty turn while I surveyed the place. Time to nose around, I thought.