The Murder Book (52 page)

“It does have a ring to it,” I said.

“It does, indeed.” He grew serious. “Before we start, I need you to know something. My Aimee, she’s like a kid. Always been different, always been scorned. I used to scorn her, like everyone else. Back when I was pushing dope and her brothers used to buy product from me. I liked selling to them because it was a nice change of pace for a South Central junkie. I’d meet them up in the hills above Bel Air, and it was so gorgeous, nothing like my usual transaction locales. I used to call it the scenic route. Make some quick money and get a tour of the way the other side lives.”

The same hills where Bowie Ingalls had died in a single-car encounter with a tree. The boys agreeing to meet
him
in a familiar spot.

I said, “Did you have lots of clients on the Westside?”

“Enough. Anyway, that’s how I met Aimee. Once in a while, the boys would bring her along. When their parents were in Europe or somewhere, which was a lot of the time, those parents were always gone. When they did bring her, they’d leave her in the car and make cruel comments. Embarrassed to be seen with her. To be related to her. I went along with the program. Back then, I had not an atom of compassion in my soul, was hollow, cold, manipulative, thinking only of me, me, me, and not very much of myself, at that. Cause if I’d really thought a lot about myself, I wouldn’t have done the things I did.”

He raised his arms with effort. Compressed his face and pressed his palms together.

“I was a very bad person, sir. I can’t say that I’m a good person, now, and I don’t give myself any credit for changing, because it was life that changed me.” A slow smile split his head. “How much sin can a blind man with no feet get into? I’d like to think I wouldn’t be bad, even with eyes and legs. But I can never be sure. I don’t really feel sure of myself, here.” One hand lowered laboriously and touched his belly.

He laughed. “Eye for an eye, leg for a leg. I ruined lots of lives, and now I’m paying for it. Almost ruined Aimee’s life, too. Gave her dope — big dose of LSD, blotter acid. Her brothers’ idea, but I didn’t have to be talked into it. We forced her to swallow it, big joke, hahaha. She hollered and fussed and cried, and I stood around laughing with them.”

He drew a hand over sightless eyes.

“Poor little thing, hallucinated for four straight days. I think it might’ve changed her nervous system. Slowed her down even further, made her life even more difficult, and believe me, life had never been easy for that girl. Next time I saw her was her fourth day of freaking out. Garvey and Bobo wanted to score some mushrooms, and I was the candy man and I met them up in the hills the way we always did and there she was, sitting in the back of the car, but not still, like usual. She was rocking and moaning and crying her little eyes out. Garvey and Bobo just laughed, said she’d been tripping heavy since we blotted her, tried to plunge her hand in boiling water, had almost jumped out of a second-story window, they’d finally tied her down to the bed, she hadn’t had a bath or eaten. Laughing about it, but they were worried because their parents were coming home and even though their parents didn’t like her, they wouldn’t have approved. So I brought her down with barbiturates.”

“Her parents didn’t like her?” I said.

“Not one bit. She was different, looked it, acted it, and they were a nouveau riche family that made a big thing of looking good all the time. Country club and all that. Those boys were bad to the core, but they dressed well and combed their hair and used the right aftershave, and that made everyone happy. Aimee didn’t know how to do any of that, couldn’t be taught to fake it. She was less than a dog in that family, sir, and Garvey and Bobo took advantage of it. Did stuff and blamed it on her.”

“What kind of stuff?” I said.

“Anything that could get ’em in trouble — stealing money, peddling dope on the secondary market to other rich kids, setting fires for fun. They killed a dog, once. Bobo did. Neighbor’s dog. Said it barked too much, annoyed him, so he tossed some poison meat at it, and after it died, he and Garvey had Caroline walk by the dog’s gate a bunch of times when they were sure the neighbor was watching. So the neighbor would assume. Stuff like that. They bragged to me about it, thought it was funny. They talked about her like she was dirt. I don’t know why I started feeling sorry for her ’cause really I was no better than them, but somehow I did. Something about her… I just felt sorry for her, can’t explain it.”

“Obviously you weren’t like them.”

“Kind of you to say so, but I know what I was.” He removed the mirrored sunglasses, revealed sunken black discs split by comma-shaped slits, scratched the bridge of his nose, replaced the glasses.

“You felt sorry for her and started baby-sitting her,” I said.

“No, I did it for the money,” he said. “Told the boys I’d hang with her when the parents were out of town if they’d pay me. They laughed, and said, ‘You could turn her out, you should pay us, bro,’ figuring I wanted to do sexual things to her or maybe I was going to pimp her. And that was agreeable to them. I started coming by the house in my old Mercury Cougar and taking her places.”

“She just went along?”

“She was happy to be getting out. And she was like that — easygoing.”

“She wasn’t in school?”

“Not since fifth grade. Severe learning problems, she was supposed to be tutored but never really was. She still can’t really read much or do numbers. All she can do is cook and bake, but man, does she do that good, that’s her God-given talent.”

“Where’d you take her?” I said.

“Everywhere. The zoo, the beach, parks, she’d keep me company when I did deals. Sometimes we’d just ride around and listen to music. I’d be high, but I never gave her anything again — not after I saw what that blotter did to her. Mostly, I’d talk — trying to teach her stuff. About street signs, the weather, animals. Life. She knew nothing, I never met anyone who knew less about the world. I was no intellectual, just a stupid junkie-pusher, but I had plenty to teach her, which tells you how pathetic her situation was.”

He craned his neck. “Could I trouble you for another Diet Snapple, sir? Always thirsty. Sugar-diabetes.”

I brought him another open bottle, and he finished it within seconds and handed me the empty. “Thank you much. The thing you should know is I never did anything sexual to her. Not once, never. Not that I get any credit for that. I was a junkie, and you being a doctor knows what that does to your sex urge. Then the diabetes took over, and the plumbing went south, so I haven’t been much for sex in a long time. Still, I’d like to think it wouldn’t have made a difference. Respecting her, you know? Not taking advantage of her.”

“Sounds like you respected her from the beginning.”

“I’d like to think so. You sound just like Dr. H. Trying to tell me something good about myself… anyway, that’s the story with my Aimee. I like that name for her, chose it for her. Her family gave her the old name and they treated her like dirt so she deserved a new beginning. Aimee means friend in French and I’ve always wanted to go to France, and that’s what she’s been to me, my only real friend. Outside of Dr. H.”

He managed to place his hands on the wheels of the chair, rolled back an inch, and smiled. As if the merest movement was pleasure. “I’m going to die soon, and it’s nice knowing Dr. Harrison will be here to take care of my Aimee.”

“He will.”

The smile dissipated. “Course, he’s old…”

“Have you and he made plans?”

“It hasn’t come to that, yet,” said Bill. “We better do it soon… I’ve chewed your ear off, and you don’t want to know about my personal problems. You’re here to find out what happened to the Ingalls girl.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Poor Janie,” he said. “I can see her face as clear as day, right here.” Tapping a mirrored lens. “Didn’t know her, but I’d seen her around, thumbing on Sunset. She and this friend she was always with, this good-looking blonde. I figured the two of them were hooking, because the only girls still thumbing were hookers and runaways looking to be hookers. Turns out they were just careless girls. The night I found them, I was driving to the party, ready to do some heavy business, saw them standing around on Sunset all confused. Not on the Strip, Bel Air, cross the street from the U. They were just a walk from the party but had no idea. So I gave ’em a lift. I still think about that. What if I hadn’t?”

“You brought them to the party, then what?”

He smiled. “Move it right along? Yeah, I brought ’em, tried to get ’em high. Janie smoked some weed, dropped some pills, drank, the blonde one just drank. We hung around together a little, it was a lunatic scene, rich kids and crashers, everyone high and horny, doing their thing in that big, old, empty house. Then Aimee showed up. Attaching to me like she always did. She was there in the first place because I’d agreed to watch her. The parents were off in India, or some place. Had just bought a bigger house, and the boys decided to give themselves a little good-bye bash. Anyway, Janie and her friend — I think her name was Melissa, something like that — were getting into the scene.”

“Melinda Waters,” I said.

He cocked his head, like a guard dog on alert. “So you know plenty.”

“I don’t know how it happened.”

“How it happened is Janie got noticed. By one of the brothers’ buddies, a mean kid. You know his name, too?”

“Vance Coury.”

“That’s the one,” he said. “Sweet piece of work, he wasn’t any older than the others, but he had this seasoned bad guy’s way about him. He noticed Janie, and that’s the reason she died. Because he’d had her, before, wanted her again.”

“Had her how?” I said.

“He picked her up when she was thumbing. Took her to some hotel his old man owned downtown, tied her up, did her, whatever. He bragged about it.”

“To you?”

“To all of us. The brothers were with him, coupla other buddies, too. They’d come over to me to score, when Coury spotted Janie. She was off dancing, by herself, tank top half-off, pretty much in dreamland. Coury spots her and gives out this big grin, this big wolfy grin, and says, ‘Look at that, the slut.’ And the other boys check out Janie and nod, cause they know who she is, heard the story before, but Coury tells it again, anyway. How easy it was, like it was some safari and he’d bagged big game. Then he tells me not only did he do the slut but so did his old man. And the other guys crack up and tell me their daddies did her, too. Seems Janie’s own dad was a lowlife scum who’d been selling her since she was twelve.”

Fighting revulsion, I said, “The other guys’ daddies. Do you remember which ones?”

“The brothers, for sure — Garvey and Bobo’s old man, and this other creep, this nasty nerd named Brad something-or-other. He piped up and said his daddy’d had her, too. Laughing about it. Proud.”

“Brad Larner.”

“Never knew his last name. Skinny, pale nerd. Mean mouth.”

“Any other buddies in the group, that night?”

“One other, this big doofus, this surfer type… Luke. Luke the Nuke, was my name for him cause he always looked bombed, would eat anything I sold him.”

“Luke Chapman,” I said. “Had his father had sex with Janie?”

He thought. “I don’t recall his saying so… no, I don’t think so, ’cause when the others were going on about it, he looked a little uneasy.”

Multigenerational rape. Michael Larner’s assault on Allison Gwynn had been more than a passing fancy. Garvey Cossack Sr. had harbored similar tastes and I was willing to bet Slumlord Coury played in that league, too.

Like father, like…

Bowie Ingalls had primed his only child by abusing her, then trafficking in her flesh. I thought about Milo’s description of Janie’s nearly empty room. A place she didn’t — wouldn’t think of as home.

Ingalls had been evil and calculating but stupid. Showing up at the meeting with his blackmail targets, drunk and overconfident.

I said, “What happened when they finished bragging?”

“Coury made some crack about, ‘Honor thy father.’ Went after Janie — just grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. The others followed.”

“She resist?”

“Not much. Like I said, she was pretty much out of it. I took Aimee and got out of there. Not because I was a good man. But all that talk about ganging up on a girl, taking sloppy seconds from their daddies made me feel… uncomfortable. Also, Aimee had to go to the bathroom, had been pulling at my arm for a while, complaining she needed to go. But finding a bathroom wasn’t so easy in that place, every toilet was being used for getting high or having sex or throwing up or doing what a toilet’s for. So, I took her out of the house, over to the backyard, all the way in back, to the bushes and trees, told her to go in there, I’d keep watch.”

He shrugged. The movement caused him pain, and he winced. “I know it sounds crude, but we’d done that before, Aimee and me. I’d be driving her somewhere far from the city — we used to like to go up into the mountains, out in the San Gabriels or over in the West Valley near Thousand Oaks, or up on Mullholland Highway or Rambla Pacifica, top of Malibu. Anywhere we could find empty space and just enjoy the quiet. And no matter how many times I’d tell her to go to the bathroom
before
we set out, wouldn’t you believe she’d have to go where there was no facilities?”

Big smile. “Like a kid. So I was used to leading her into the bushes and keeping watch and that’s what I did out in the backyard and when we were heading back to the house, we heard voices over the wall — her brother’s voice, Garvey, whooping and laughing. Then the others. They were outside, too, going to the next-door property. I knew that because they’d taken me there, it was this huge place, acres, this estate, the owner was some rich European who was never there and most of the time the house was empty. They used to go there to party because no one would bother them. They had a way of getting in, this side gate, up toward the back with a bolt that was easy to wiggle loose and once you were back there you were so far from the house no one could spot you.”

“Party spot.”

“I partied with them, there,” he said. “Like I said, I was the candy man. Anyway, Aimee wanted to tag along and go over there, like she always did — anything those boys did, she thought was cool. No matter how they treated her, she’d want to be with them. I tried to talk her out of it, brought her back inside the party house and sat down and tried to groove on some music. ’Cause while Aimee was in the bushes, I’d shot up, was feeling mellow. But when I opened my eyes, she was gone, and I knew where she’d gone and I was responsible for her so I went after her. And found her. Looking. From behind some trees, into a clearing. She was shaking really bad, teeth chattering, and when I saw what she was looking at, I dug why.”