The Murder Book (9 page)

They asked directions of a teacher, got the same icy reception, not much better at the principal’s office. As Schwinn talked to a secretary, Milo studied girls walking through the sweaty corridor. Tight or minimal clothes and hooker makeup seemed to be the mode, all those freshly developed bodies promising something they might not be able to deliver, and he wondered how many potential Janies were out there.

The principal was at a meeting downtown, and the secretary routed them to the vice principal for operations, who sent them farther down the line to the guidance office. The counselor they spoke to was a pretty young woman named Ellen Sato, tiny, Eurasian, with long, side-winged, blond-tipped hair. The news of Janie’s murder made her face crumple, and Schwinn took advantage of it by pressing her with questions.

Useless. She’d never heard of Janie, finally admitted she’d been on the job for less than a month. Schwinn kept pushing and she disappeared for a while, then returned with bad news: no
Ingalls, J.
files on record for any guidance sessions or disciplinary actions.

The girl was a habitual truant, but hadn’t entered the system. Bowie Ingalls had been right about one thing: No one cared.

The poor kid had never had any moorings, thought Milo, remembering his own brush with truancy: back when his family still lived in Gary and his father was working steel, making good money, feeling like a breadwinner. Milo was nine, had been plagued by terrible dreams since the summer — visions of men. One dreary Monday, he got off the school bus and instead of entering the school grounds just kept walking aimlessly, placing one foot in front of the other. Ending up at a park, where he sat on a bench like a tired old man. All day. A friend of his mother spotted him, reported him. Mom had been perplexed; Dad, always action-oriented, knew just what to do. Out came the strap. Ten pounds of oily ironworker’s belt. Milo hadn’t sat comfortably for a long, long time.

Yet another reason to hate the old man. Still, he’d never repeated the offense, ended up graduating with good grades. Despite the dreams. And all that followed. Certain his father would’ve killed him if he knew what was
really
going on.

So he made plans at age nine:
You need to get away from these people.

Now he mused:
Maybe I was the lucky one.

“Okay,” Schwinn was telling Ellen Sato, “so you people don’t know much about her—”

The young woman was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, sir, but as I said, I just… what happened to her?”

“Someone killed her,” said Schwinn. “We’re looking for a friend of hers, probably a student here, also. Melinda, sixteen or seventeen. Long blond hair. Vo
lup
tuous.” Cupping his hands in front of his own, scrawny chest.

Sato’s ivory skin pinkened. “Melinda’s a common name—”

“How about a look at your student roster?”

“The roster…” Sato’s graceful hands fluttered. “I could find a yearbook for you.”

“You have no student roster?”

“I — I know we have class lists, but they’re over in V.P. Sullivan’s office and there are forms to be filled out. Okay, sure, I’ll go look. In the meantime, I know where the yearbooks are. Right here.” Pointing to a closet.

“Great,” said Schwinn, without graciousness.

“Poor Janie,” said Sato. “Who would do such a thing?”

“Someone
evil
, ma’am. Anyone come to mind?”

“Oh, heavens no — I wasn’t… let me go get that list.”

The two detectives sat on a bench in the counseling office waiting room, flipping through the yearbooks, ignoring the scornful eyes of the students who came and went. Copying down the names of every Caucasian Melinda, freshmen included, because who knew how accurate Bowie Ingalls was about age. Not limiting the count to blondes, either, because hair dye was a teenage-girl staple.

Milo said, “What about light-skinned Mexicans?”

“Nah,” said Schwinn. “If she was a greaser, Ingalls would’ve mentioned it.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t like her, would’ve loved to add another bad point to the list.”

Milo returned to checking out young white faces.

The end product: eighteen possibles.

Schwinn regarded the list and scowled. “Names but no numbers. We’ll still need a fucking roster to track her down.”

Talking low but his tone was unmistakable and the receptionist a few feet away looked over and frowned.

“Howdy,” said Schwinn, raising his voice and grinning at the woman furiously. She flinched and returned to her typewriter.

Milo looked up Janie Ingalls’s freshman photo. No list of extracurricular activities. Huge, dark hair teased with abandon over a pretty oval face turned ghostly by slathers of makeup and ghoulish eye shadow. The image before him was neither the ten-year-old hanging with Mickey nor the corpse atop the freeway ramp. So many identities for a sixteen-year-old kid. He asked the receptionist to make a photocopy, and she agreed, grudgingly. Staring first at the picture.

“Know her, ma’am?” Milo asked her as pleasantly as possible.

“No. Here you go. It didn’t come out too good. Our machine needs adjusting.”

Ellen Sato returned, freshly made-up, weak-eyed, forcing a smile. “How’d we do?”

Schwinn bounded up quickly, was in her face, bullying her with body language, beaming that same hostile grin. “Oh, just great, ma’am.” He brandished the list of eighteen names. “Now how about introducing us to these lovely ladies?”

Rounding up the Melindas took another forty minutes. Twelve out of eighteen girls were in attendance that day, and they marched in looking supremely bored. Only a couple were vaguely aware of Janie Ingalls’s existence, none admitted to being a close friend or knowing anyone who was, none seemed to be holding back.

Not much curiosity, either, about why they’d been called in to talk to cops. As if a police presence was the usual thing at Hollywood High. Or they just didn’t care.

One thing
was
clear: Janie hadn’t made her mark on campus. The girl who was the most forthcoming ended up in Milo’s queue. Barely blond, not-at-all voluptuous Melinda Kantor. “Oh yeah, her. She’s a stoner, right?”

“Is she?” he said.

The girl shrugged. She had a long, pretty face, a bit equine. Two-inch nails glossed aqua, no bra.

Milo said, “Does she hang around with other stoners?”

“Uh-uh, she’s not a social stoner — more like a loner stoner.”

“A loner stoner.”

“Yeah.”

“Which means…”

The girl shot him a
you-are-a-prime-lame-o
look. “She run away or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Well,” said Melinda Kantor, “maybe she’s over on the Boulevard.”

“Hollywood Boulevard?”

The resultant smirk said,
Another stupid question,
and Milo knew he was losing her. “The boulevard’s where the loner stoners go.”

Now Melinda Kantor was regarding him as if he were brain-dead. “I was just making a
suggestion
. What’d she do?”

“Maybe nothing.”

“Yeah, right,” said the girl. “Weird.”

“What is?”

“Usually they send over narcs who are young and cute.”

Ellen Sato produced addresses and phone numbers for the six absent Melindas, and Milo and Schwinn spent the rest of the day paying house calls.

The first four girls lived in smallish but tidy single homes on Hollywood’s border with the Los Feliz district and were out sick. Melindas Adams, Greenberg, Jordan were in bed with the flu, Melinda Hohlmeister had been felled by an asthma attack. All four mothers were in attendance, all were freaked out by the drop-in, but each allowed the detectives access. The previous generation still respected — or feared — authority.

Melinda Adams was a tiny, platinum-haired, fourteen-year-old freshman who looked eleven and had a little kid’s demeanor to match. Melinda Jordan was a skinny fifteen-year-old brunette with a frighteningly runny nose and vengeful acne. Greenberg was blond and long-haired and somewhat chesty. Both she and her mother had thick, almost impenetrable accents — recent immigrants from Israel. Science and math books were spread over her bed. When the detectives had stepped in, she’d been underlining text in yellow marker, had no idea who Janie Ingalls was. Melinda Hohlmeister was a shy, chubby, stuttering, homely kid with short, corn-colored ringlets, a straight A average, and an audible wheeze.

No response to Janie’s name from any of them.

No answer at Melinda Van Epps’s big white contemporary house up in the hills. A woman next door picking flowers volunteered that the family was in Europe, had been gone for two weeks. The father was an executive with Standard Oil, the Van Eppses took all five kids out of school all the time for travel, provided tutors, lovely people.

No reply, either, at Melinda Waters’s shabby bungalow on North Gower. Schwinn knocked hard because the bell was taped over and labeled “Broken.”

“Okay, leave a note,” he told Milo. “It’ll probably be bullshit, too.”

Just as Milo was slipping the
please-call-us
memo and his card through the mail slot, the door swung open.

The woman who stood there could have been Bowie Ingalls’s spiritual sister. Fortyish, thin but flabby, wearing a faded brown housedress. She had a mustard complexion, wore her peroxided hair pinned back carelessly. Confused blue eyes, no makeup, cracked lips. That furtive look.

“Mrs. Waters?” said Milo.

“I’m Eileen.” Cigarette voice. “What is it?”

Schwinn showed her the badge. “We’d like to talk to Melinda.”

Eileen Waters’s head retracted, as if he’d slapped her. “About what?”

“Her friend, Janie Ingalls.”

“Oh. Her,” said Waters. “What’d she do?”

“Someone killed her,” said Schwinn. “Did a right sloppy job of it. Where’s Melinda?”

Eileen Waters’s parched lips parted, revealing uneven teeth coated with yellow scum. She’d relied upon suspiciousness as a substitute for dignity and now, losing both, she slumped against the doorjamb. “Oh my God.”

“Where’s Melinda?” demanded Schwinn.

Waters shook her head, lowered it. “Oh, God, oh God.”

Schwinn took her arm. His voice remained firm. “Where’s Melinda?”

More headshakes, and when Eileen Waters spoke again her voice was that of another woman: timid, chastened. Reduced.

She began crying. Finally stopped. “Melinda never came home, I haven’t seen her since
Friday
.”

T
he Waters household was a step up from Bowie Ingalls’s flop, furnished with old, ungainly furniture that might’ve been hand-me-downs from some upright Midwestern homestead. Browning doilies on the arms of overstuffed chairs said someone had once cared. Ashtrays were everywhere, filled with gray dust and butts, and the air felt sooty. No beer empties, but Milo noticed a quarter-full bottle of Dewars on a kitchen counter next to a jam jar packed with something purple. Every drape was drawn, plunging the house into perpetual evening. The sun could be punishing when your body subsisted on ethanol.

Either Schwinn had developed an instant dislike for Eileen Waters or his bad mood had intensified or he had a genuine reason for riding her hard. He sat her down on a sofa, and began peppering her with questions.

She did nothing to defend herself other than chain-smoke Parliaments, was easy with the confessions:

Melinda was wild, had been wild for a long time, had fought off any attempts at discipline. Yes, she used drugs — marijuana, for sure. Eileen had found roaches in her pockets, wasn’t sure about anything harder, but wasn’t denying the possibility.

“What about Janie Ingalls?” asked Schwinn.

“You kidding? She’s probably the one introduced Melinda to dope.”

“Why’s that?”

“That kid was stoned all the time.”

“How old’s Melinda?”

“Seventeen.”

“What year in school?”

“Eleventh grade — I know Janie’s in tenth but just because Melinda’s older doesn’t mean she was the instigator. Janie was street-smart. I’m sure Janie’s the one got Melinda into grass… Lord, where could she
be
?”

Milo thought back to his search of Janie’s room: no evidence of dope, not even rolling paper or a pipe.

“Melinda and Janie were a perfect pair,” Waters was saying. “Neither of them gave a damn about school, they cut all the time.”

“What’d you do about it?”

The woman laughed. “Right.” Then the fear came back. “Melinda will come back, she always does.”

“In what way was Janie streetwise?” said Schwinn.

“You know,” said Waters. “You can just tell. Like she’d been around.”

“Sexually?”

“I assume. Melinda was basically a good girl.”

“Janie spend much time here?”

“No. Mostly she’d pick up Melinda, and they’d be off.”

“That the case last Friday?”

“Dunno.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was out shopping. Came home, and Melinda was gone. I could tell she’d been here because she left her underwear on the floor and some food out in the kitchen.”

“Food for one?”

Waters thought. “One Popsicle wrapper and a Pepsi can — I guess.”

“So the last time you saw Melinda was Friday morning, but you don’t know if Janie came by to pick her up.”

Waters nodded. “She claimed she was going to school, but I don’t think so. She had a bag full of clothes, and when I said, ‘What’s all that?’ she said she was going to some party that night, might not be coming home. We got into a hassle about that, but what could I do? I wanted to know where the party was but all she told me was it was fancy, on the Westside.”

“Where on the Westside?”

“I just told you, she wouldn’t say.” The woman’s faced twitched. “Fancy party. Rich kids. She said that a bunch of times. Told me I had nothing to worry about.”

She looked to Schwinn, then Milo, for reassurance, got two stone faces.

“Fancy Westside party,” said Schwinn. “So maybe Beverly Hills — or Bel Air.”

“I guess… I asked her how she was getting all the way over there, she said she’d find a way. I told her not to hitch, and she said she wouldn’t.”