Over the Edge (20 page)

The Dino finally reached the kerb, and the automotive snarl untangled gradually. At the first opportunity I turned left and cut through the side streets of Westwood until I reached Sunset. Five minutes later I was home.

An envelope from a Beverly Hills messenger service was in the mailbox along with a lot of junk. Inside the envelope

was a cheque for five thousand dollars and a note to call someone named Bradford Balch in Souza's office.

The unproductive interview and the zeroes on the cheque combined to make me feel uneasy. I'd accepted Souza's offer with ambivalence that had never dissipated. Now the doubts rose within me like a rain-swelled river.

I'd developed a rationale for my interviews: By knowing Jamey's past, I'd be able to understand and somehow to help him. I'd believed it when I said it, but now the words seemed hollow. Although history can provide the comfort of hindsight, by itself it seldom unravels the mystery of madness. I wondered if I would ever accumulate enough knowledge to comprehend his deterioration truly, and -more important - if I did, to what use could the knowledge be put? Playing retroprophet, as Souza wanted? Using my doctorate to coat sorcery with a veneer of science?

Even the most brilliant psychiatrist or psychologist who abandons scientific rigour to step into the bog of speculation called diminished capacity can be made to look like a complete idiot on the witness stand by a prosecutor of only moderate capabilities. Yet there's no shortage of psychiatrists and psychologists willing to subject themselves to this type of humiliation. Some are whores, purchased for the day, but most are honourable men and women who've been seduced into believing they're mind readers. I'd always viewed their testimony as - institutionalised quackery, but now I was in danger of joining their ranks.

I couldn't take an oath and say anything definitive about Jamey's state of mind a week, a day, or even a minute ago. No one could.

What the hell had I got myself into?

I knew right then, as I'd known deep down from the beginning, that Souza wouldn't get what he wanted from me. Although I'd made him no promises, I had left the door open for collaboration, and continuing the pretence would be manipulative - his type of game, not mine. I'd have to deal with it soon, but not yet. I simply wasn't ready - out of compulsiveness, sentimentality, or guilt - to walk away from the case, from Jamey.

I stood there, pondering my options, folding and unfolding the cheque until it began to look like abstract origami. Finally I reached a compromise of sorts: I'd finish my interviews, knowing all the while that I was working for myself, but not take the money. Placing the cheque back into its envelope, I went into the library and locked it in a desk drawer. When the time was right, I'd give it back.

I realised suddenly that the house was hot and stuffy. Slipping out of my clothes, I put on running shorts, threw open some windows, and got a Grolsch out of the refrigerator. Bottle in hand, I called Bradford Balch, who turned out to be one of Souza's associates. He sounded like a young man, overly eager, with a high, nervous voice.

'Uh, yes, Doctor, Mr. Souza asked me to call to let you know that the police have approved your visit to the Chancellor estate. Do you still want to go?'

'Yes.'

'All right then. Please be there tomorrow morning at nine.'

He gave me the address, thanked me for calling, and hung up.

I thought about the phone call. It was the first time Souza hadn't called me directly, and I knew why.

For the past week he'd wooed me like an NBA scout pursuing a lightning-reflexed, eight-foot teenager-flattery, the chauffeured Rolls, lunch in his private dining room, and, most important, casting aside the usual crush of underlings and remaining personally accessible. He'd wanted me on his team, but on his terms: He was the captain, and I was supposed to know my place. My insistence upon seeing the murder site had been a bit of unwelcome independence, and although he'd gone along with it, he'd made sure to express his disapproval by having a subordinate deliver the message.

Subtle but pointed. It gave me a small taste of what it would be like to be on his bad side.

When the smog is especially heavy in Southern California, the terrain takes on the illusory look of a photograph shot through a Vaseline-smeared lens. The skies darken to grimy bronze, contours of buildings dissolve into the haze, and the vegetation assumes a malignantly fluorescent hue.

It was that kind of morning as I drove east on Sunset toward the Beverly Hills city limits. Even the grandest mansions seemed to shimmer and soften in the filthy heat, melting columns of Neapolitan ice cream garnished with marzipan palms.

The Chancellor estate sat on five million dollars' worth of acreage, on a hill north of the boulevard, overlooking the Beverly Hills Hotel. Six feet of stone wall topped with three more feet of wrought-iron bars surrounded the property. The bars terminated in gold-plated arrowhead finials that looked sharp enough to eviscerate the overly curious climber.

Arched iron gates bisected the wall. They were flung wide open and guarded by a uniformed Beverly Hills patrolman. I drove the Seville to within an inch of his outstretched palm and stopped. He walked over to the driver's side and, after I'd given him my name, stepped back and muttered into his walkie-talkie. A moment later he nodded and waved me through.

All that was immediately visible beyond the gate was a hairpin curve of gravel drive shadowed by walls of burgundy eugenias. As I rounded the curve, the eugenias gave way to low borders of white sun azaleas and the drive flattened to a broad S that cut through a rising swath of emerald lawn. At the peak of the lawn sat a Greek Revival mansion the size of a stadium - marble steps leading up to a wide colonnade; a formal reflecting pool perpendicular to the steps; strategically placed statuary, all of it celebrating the male figure. Despite the smog, the place shone blindingly white.

The landscape favoured geometry over spontaneity: circular beds of white roses; barbered privet hedges; ballon-pedestal topiary; marching columns of Italian cypress. It was the kind of stuff that required constant attention, and attention had been lacking recently, as evidenced by stray shoots, wayward boughs, wilted petals, and dry patches

that seemed especially scabrous against the velvet of the lawn.

A black-and-white, an unmarked Plymouth, and a pearl grey Mazda RX-7 were parked at the base of the steps. I pulled up next to the Mazda, got out, and walked through an open courtyard toward white-lacquered double doors. A man and woman were standing by the doors, leaning against a replica of Michelangelo's David, laughing and smoking. The woman wore a BHPD uniform, snugly tailored; the man, a hound's-tooth jacket over black slacks. I picked up a snatch of conversation ('Yeah, Sagittarians are always like that') before they heard me and turned. The man's eyes were obscured by aviator shades. I recognised him: Richard Cash, the detective who'd come to my house with Whitehead.

'Hey, Doc,' he said amiably, 'ready for the grand tour?' 'Anytime you are.'

'Okay,' he said, and ground out his cigarette on the marble floor. Turning to the female officer, who was young and blonde, he smiled and smoothed back his hair. 'All right, Dixie, let's definitely do it, catch you later.'

'Sounds exceptional, Dick.' She grinned and, after tucking a loose strand of hair under her hat, saluted and walked away.

Cash observed her retreating form and gave a low whistle.

'Love that affirmative action.' He winked and pulled open one of the doors.

We walked into a snowdrift. Everything - walls, floors, ceilings, even the woodwork - had been painted white. Not a subtle off-white softened by hints of brown or blue but the . pure, pitiless gleam of calcimine.

'Pretty virginal, huh?' said Cash as he led me past a circular staircase, under a marble arch and through a bright, wide foyer that divided a cavernous living room from an equally cavernous dining room. The milk-bath motif continued: white furniture; white carpeting; white mantel; white porcelain vases filled with albino ostrich plumes. The only exceptions to the glacial surfaces were

occasional patches of mirror and crystal, but the reflections they projected accentuated the absence of colour.

'There are thirty-five rooms in this place,' said Cash. 'I assume you don't want to see all of them.'

'Just where it happened.'

'Righto.'

The foyer ended at a wall of glass. Cash hooked to the right, and I followed him into a large atrium backed by a pillared loggia. Beyond the loggia was an acre of terraced lawn and more topiary. Below the terrace an Olympic-sized rectangular swimming pool sparkled turquoise. The decking around the pool was white marble, and naked cherubs were stationed at either end. Each cherub held aloft an urn brimming with white petunias. A white sea horse had been painted at the bottom of the pool, which ran to the edge of the property and appeared to float into the sky. The cityscape below was obscured by brownish pinkish vapour.

'Here we are,' said Cash in a bored voice.

There were no plants in the atrium. The room was high-ceilinged, floored with hardwood painted white and furnished in white rattan. Several chairs were overturned, and a leg on one of the sofas was broken. Suspended from the ceiling were whitewashed crossbeams. An inch-wide grey mark bisected one of them.

'That where the rope was knotted?'

'Uh-huh.'

The white walls were mottled with rusty stains that repeated themselves across the glossy floor in Rorschach splotches and pinpoint spatters. So much blood. Everywhere. As if a washerwoman had entered with a mopful of it and splashed with abandon. Cash watched me take it in and said:

'Finally some colour, huh?'

The outline of a human body had been drawn across the floor, but instead of white chalk, a black grease pencil had been used. The outer perimeters of the outline were smeared with rust. An especially large dark stain was situated below the rope mark. Speckles of blood dotted the crossbeams. Even in this desiccated state the stains conjured up horrific images.

I walked forward. Cash restrained me with his arm.

'Look, no touch.' He smiled. Starbursts of light bounced off his shades. The arm smelled of Brut.

I drew back.

At the rear of the atrium were sliding glass doors. One had been left slightly ajar, but no breeze entered from the loggia. The room smelled stale and metallic.

'All of it happened here?' I asked.

'Basically.'

'Was there any ransacking elsewhere?'

'Uh-huh, but that's off-limits.'

'Anything taken?'

He smiled, condescendingly.

'This was no burglary.'

'Where'd the rope come from?'

'One of the pool lifesavers.'

'What kinds of weapons were used?'

'Stuff from the kitchen: butcher knife; meat skewer; cleaver. A little purple silk thrown in for fun. Hellacious wet scene.'

'Multiple wounds?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Same as the other Slasher murders?'

Cash's thin lips parted. His teeth were cosmetically perfect but nicotine-mottled.

'Love to get into that with you, but I can't.'

I stared some more at the room, then let my gaze wander through the glass doors. Dead leaves and brown-edged petunia petals floated on the surface of the pool. Somewhere in the distance a crow squawked.

Cash took a cigarette and lit it. Casually he let the match fall to the floor.

'That about do it?' he asked.

I nodded.

I drove back home, went down to the garden, sat on a moss-bordered rock, and fed the koi. The sound of the waterfall lulled me into a trancelike torpor - alpha state, like one of Sarita Flower's hyperactive train runners. Sometime later the sound of human voices snapped me out of it.

The noise was coming from the front of the house. I climbed halfway up the terrace - high enough to look down but still out of sight.

Milo and another man were talking. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but their body postures and the looks on their faces said it wasn't a friendly chat.

The other man was in his early forties, deeply bronzed, medium-sized, and solidly built. He wore designer jeans and a glossy black windbreaker over a flesh-coloured T-shirt that nearly succeeded in simulating bare skin. His hair was coarse and dark and cut military-short. A full, thick beard covered two-thirds of his face. The chin hairs were grey, the rest of the beard reddish brown.

The man said something.

Milo responded.

The man sneered and said something else. He shifted his hand toward his jacket, and Milo moved with incredible quickness.

In a second the man was down, flat on his stomach, with Milo's knee in the small of his back. Deftly the detective jerked his arms back and cuffed him, patted him down, and came up with a gravity knife and a nasty-looking handgun.

Milo hefted the weapons and said something. The man arched his back, raised his head, and laughed. He'd scraped his mouth going down, and the laughter emerged through bloody lips.

I climbed back down, quickly jogged back through the garden, and out to the front of the house.

The man on the ground was still laughing. When he saw me, he laughed harder.

'Hey, Dr. Delaware, look at this fucking police brutality!'

His beard was purpled with blood, as he talked, he emitted a fine pink spray. Craning back to look up at Milo, he taunted:

'Ooh, sweetie pie, such fury!'

'Beretta nine-two-six,' said Milo, ignoring him and examining the gun. 'Sixteen rounds. Figuring on a shoot-out, Ernie?'

'It's registered and legal, faggot.'

Milo pocketed the weapons and drew out his service .38. Standing, he jerked the bearded man to his feet.

'Stay back, Alex,' he said, and jabbed the revolver into the man's kidneys.

'Alex?' the man giggled. 'How cosy. He's one, too?'

'Move it,' barked Milo. With one hand on the scruff of the man's neck and the other on his weapon, he prodded his prisoner down the hill. I followed several paces behind.

Two cars were parked on the turnaround: Milo's unmarked bronze Matador and the grey RX-7 I'd seen at the Chancellor house. Milo's eyes searched the area, then settled on a eucalyptus. Keeping the .38 pressed into the bearded man's sacrum, he pushed him against the trunk of the tree, face forward, and kicked the insides of his feet until they spread. Then he undid the cuffs and slammed one of the man's arms around the tree.