Time Bomb (5 page)

I read the ID data.

HOLLY LYNN BURDEN
1723 JUBILO DR
OCEAN HEIGHTS CA 90070
SEX: F HAIR: BRN EYES: BLUE
HT: 5-05 WT: 117 DOB: 12-12-68
RSTR: CORR LENS

“Local girl,” I said.

“Very local. That address is five blocks from the school.”

“Jubilo Drive. Spanish for ‘joy.’ And I think
Esperanza
means ‘hope.’”

“A-plus, Sherlock. You caught the pattern. The street next to Jubilo’s Belleza Court. ‘Beauty.’ Some optimistic urban planner.”

“Hispanophile urban planner,” I said. “Guess the locals don’t share the spirit.”

“Hey,” he said, “street names are one thing; letting them marry your sister’s another.”

I examined the picture again, reread the information. “What do you know about her?”

“Just what you see in front of you. Frisk says ATD will be checking out known associates—going through their subversive files to see if her name comes up. When he left us he was on his way to her house.”

“Nineteen years old,” I said and gave him the paper. He folded it back up and put it away.

“Now forget you saw it, Alex.
I’m
not even supposed to have a copy.”

“Why not?”

“Official ATD document.”

“How’d you get it?”

He shrugged and began sawing his steak. “After the print boys finished, Frisk designated one of the offices as a ‘data collection center.’ Had all the evidence hoarded in there, I just happened to saunter in when he just happened to take a leak. There just happened to be this Xerox ma-chine that kept whispering, ‘Turn me on, big boy.’ You know how I’ve always been a sucker for the soft touch.”

“Why all the obsession with secrecy, Milo? Once Frisk gave you her name, you could have gotten the license yourself. Hell, I could get it
my
self.”

“That’s the way ATD works—comes from spending too much of their time hanging around Washington. The Department sends them there—and to FBI heaven at Quantico. Seminars. Hobnobbing with the cloak-and-dagger freaks. Makes ’em insufferable. But them’s the rules—no sense bucking without any payoff. Besides, it shouldn’t take long for things to ease up. Only a matter of time before the whole case goes public.”

“How long?”

“Unless something interesting turns up about the late Ms. Burden in somebody’s files, Frisk plans on releasing her name to the press around noon tomorrow. Soon as that happens, you can tell your kids the bogeyman looks like their friendly neighborhood babysitter.”

“How’s he going to stall the press in the meantime?”

“The old fashioned way: lie. ‘Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, no definitive ID pending autopsy.’ Which is almost true—she did take a couple of bullets in the face. But you could still tell it was the same face as the one on the license.”

I imagined the young, bland countenance swollen, perforated, bleeding; shook that picture out of my head and said, “Around noon should work out, anyway. I’m meeting with the kids at one.”

“Great. But if, for some reason, Frisk hasn’t gone public, neither do you, okay? I’ve got enough troubles without leaks getting traced back to me this early in the game.”

“What kind of troubles?”

“The usual.” His expression said: Change the subject.

We ate for a while. My mind kept drifting back to the license photo. “A girl sniper,” I said. “Hard to believe.”

“Women’s lib, Alex,” he said with his mouth full. “They’re trying to catch up to us in the asshole division.”

“Then they’ve got a long ways to go,” I said. “I remember County Jail—visiting Jamey Cadmus in the violent psych ward. One thing that impressed me was that they had twenty rooms for males, only two set aside for females, and those two were rarely
used
for females. What percentage of violent crime is committed by women?”

“Less than ten,” he said. “But the stats get interesting when you look at the age pattern—violent offenders under eighteen. The rate for males is still much higher than it is for females, but the overall rate for males is dropping, while for females it’s going up. The gap is closing. And even without the numbers, I’d know there’s something happening, Alex. On the streets. I can sense it—rules of conduct breaking down. Maybe Manson’s girls broke the ice, I don’t know—Squeaky and the other one taking potshots at Ford, those assholettes in the SLA. Now the gangbangers have started using fems as trigger-men . . . trigger
persons.
They figure the courts will go easier on psychopaths in dresses, and they’re right. So far. Meanwhile, more and more Bonnies wanting to be Clydes.”

He cut a large piece of T-bone free and stuffed it in his mouth. “Hell,” he said, still chewing, “nastiest thing I’ve seen this year was some stenographer over in Mar Vista doing in her boyfriend with a Chinese cleaver. Jilted-lover stir-fry. Call the Frugal Gourmet.”

I looked at the sirloin on my fork and put it down.

“
Bon
appétit
,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Of course,” he said, “the distaff does have a long way to go. We’ve got thousands of years of experience behind us. Tankfuls of testosterone. But they’re working on it—the whole goddam culture’s changing. Female wrestlers, girls pumping iron, shooting steroids, talking dirty. Hell, you ever see women flipping off truckers on the freeway till recently? They’re feeling their oats, pal.”

I made another go at my steak.

“Prime, huh?” he said, taking another mouthful.

“Prime.”

“Private stock. Management knows me.” He patted his gut. “Which is to love me. Big tips and it’s cholesterol heaven.”

He dipped a piece of meat in steak sauce. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have a thing against the fairer sex. Just telling it the way I see it.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes people assume, you know?”

“I swore off assumptions for Lent.”

He gulped another gargantuan piece of steak. The meat was bloody-rare and some juice dribbled down his chin. He dabbed at it. “Did I ever tell you I once had a girlfriend?”

“Never.”

“Yup. High school days.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“No? What the hell
does
it take to surprise you?”

“How about an honest politician?”

His laugh was harsh. “Yeah, find one, put him in the cage next to the condor.”

I said, “Why bother?”

He laughed some more.

“Any indication the Burden girl was aiming at Latch or Massengil?”

“Ye olde participatory democracy?”

“I’m serious, Milo. Being able to tell the kids they weren’t the targets would make my job easier.”

“Then, by all means, go ahead and tell ’em.”

“No,” I said. “If I say it, I want it to be true.”

“Sorry, then,” he said. “Nothing solid to give you. She didn’t leave any political message at the scene, far as I know. No fringies have called yet expressing solidarity, and Frisk said he didn’t recognize her name offhand from his subversive lists, though like I said, they’ll be running her through the software. Maybe he’ll turn up something at her house—some diary, or wacko manifesto. Mean-while, all we’ve got is one dead girl and lots of question marks.”

He thought for a moment. “If she
was
trying for one of them, my guess would be Massengil. Looks like no one except Latch’s insiders knew their boy was going to be there.”

“The press knew.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Only about Massengil. That much I confirmed from talking to the reporters. The invite came from Massengil’s staff this morning. It was supposed to be a one-man show. Latch didn’t announce he was coming. The idea was to surprise the enemy.”

“How’d Latch find out Massengil was going to be there?”

“Once the press knew, it wouldn’t be too hard for anyone to find out, would it?”

I said, “Anyone?”

“Anyone in the grapevine. Frisk does his job correctly, that’s the first thing he’ll check about her. Maybe she once worked for Massengil—or Latch. Or knew someone who did. No one on either staff recognized her name, but she could have been been low-level—stuffing envelopes, whatever. Some meek little gofer they treated like shit, never took the time to notice. She swallows it for a while, then quits. No one notices she’s gone. Meanwhile, she’s smoldering, making plans for vengeance. Fits the mass-killer profile. Then again, maybe the political thing was coincidental—Latch and Massengil had nothing to do with it. Maybe all she wanted to do was kill kids, and bigger game intruded.”

“Local girl makes bad,” I said. “Wonder if she attended Hale.”

“Revenge for a bad report card?”

“Got anything that makes more sense?”

“As a matter of fact I don’t,” he said. “So far this is your quintessential senseless crime—as opposed to all the real sensible ones we get.”

“Were the reporters there when the shooting started?”

He shook his head. “No. The press conference wasn’t called until one. Massengil showed up half an hour before, walking around the yard, ‘observing.’ Latch dropped in on him a few minutes later.”

I said, “If Latch’s intention was to upstage Massengil, why not arrive when the media were in place? Make a dramatic entry.”

“We wondered about that too. According to Frisk, Latch’s explanation was that his object wasn’t to confront Massengil but to
defuse
him. He was giving Massengil a chance to call the whole thing off before the cameras showed up.”

“Saint Gordon.”

“Yeah, and I’m Mother Teresa. My guess is his real intention was to
spook
Massengil, work him up good. Massengil’s got a reputation for having a short fuse—got into a punch-out with another politico couple of years ago, likes to yell back at hecklers, go head to head. Latch probably figured in half an hour he could get the guy
apoplectic
by the time the media showed.
Really
make a jerk out of him. Then the shooting started and took the edge off their little drama.”

“One of the kids told me it sounded like war,” I said.

“How would he know?”

“She. From Cambodia.”

“Oh. Tell you one thing, old Holly was no pro-warrior. The rifle was a Remington Seven-hundred Classic. Bolt action, scoped. Nine pounds, stripped—one of the heavier ones they make, lots of kick. Not a girl’s gun. You just don’t pick up something like that, go boom, and hope to hit your target.”

“Even with the scope?”

“Sighting and aiming wouldn’t have been the problem, Alex. Holding
on
to the damned thing would be. According to the license she weighed under a hundred and twenty. And she hadn’t gained anything since applying for it. I saw the body—skinny, no muscle on her. Unless she had plenty of practice, she might as well have brought a cannon to shoot mice. Women succeed in the shooting game, they get up nice and close, use a comfortable little handgun. Not that a handgun would have been of much use in a sniping situation.”

“The license also said corrective lenses. Was she wearing her glasses?”

“Yup. Took a bullet in one of them, glass went right into the eye socket. Like shrapnel.”

“How many shots did she get off before Ahlward stormed the shed?”

“Looks like three out of six rounds—though to listen to the teachers and kids, she had a machine gun; it was a regular blitz. But panic’ll do that, magnify things. And some of what they heard was probably Ahlward shooting
her
—he put eight right in her.”

“There’s your pro,” I said, remembering the redheaded man’s calm. “Ex-cop?”

“Nope. Frisk said some kind of ex-military commando.”

“Hard-ass type for a guy like Latch to employ.”

“Not if Latch is a pragmatist. It’s like that old bumper sticker that used to be on half the lockers at the academy: ‘Mugged? Call a hippie.’ Latch may spout the love
-
and-compassion line, but when it comes to saving his ass he ain’t gonna hire Cesar Chavez.”

“How’d Ahlward get into the shed?”

“Same back door Burden used. She left it unlocked—I told you she was no pro. He ran around the back, waltzed right in, and pow.”

I thought again of the face on the driver’s license. Superimposed a mesh of blood and glass over the dull face.

“What is it?” said Milo.

“Nothing.”

“My, my, my. You feel
bad
for her, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“Not
really
?” He clucked his tongue. “Jesus, Alex, you turning mushy on me? I thought by now I’d raised your consciousness.”

I said, “The whole thing’s pathetic, Milo. A girl, holed up with a rifle she couldn’t handle—God knows what’s going through her head.”

“So?”

“So I guess it just would have been nicer for the bad guy to be badder.”

He put his fork down and stared at me. “Oh, she could have been plenty
bad
. No thanks to
her
she wasn’t real
bad
. Just imagine a couple of lucky shots—couple of those cute little kids catching rifle slugs in—”

“Okay,” I said, “I get the point.”

“Good,” he said, crumpling his napkin. “Get it and keep it. Situation like this, got to keep the old priorities straight. Now, how about some dessert?”

5

I got home by eight, picked up calls, did paperwork and chores, then spent half an hour with a new acquisition:
a
cross-country skiing machine. A genuine implement of torture that left me a sopping ball of sweat. In the shower I kept thinking about terrified children and evil babysitters. So much for aerobic cleansing.

At nine I watched the news on one of the local stations. The shooting at Nathan Hale was the lead story: file clips of weeping kids followed by the official LAPD statement delivered by Lieutenant Kenneth Frisk. The ATD man was articulate and at ease with the cameras as he sidestepped questions; his designer duds and mustache, prop-room photogenic. New-age cop. Lots of style, very little substance.

Armed with few facts and needing to stretch the broadcast, the newspeople flashed more file clips: a segment on Massengil’s State House fistfight, a year before, with an assemblyman from the northern part of the state named DiMarco. The bout had taken place in the chambers of the legislature, the two of them going at it verbally—some esoteric issue having to do with gerrymandered districts. Massengil had come out of it without a scratch; DiMarco had suffered a bloody lip. The camera showed the loser pressing a crimson handkerchief to his mouth, then cut to footage taken today: DiMarco leaving his Sacramento office. Asked about Massengil’s temper and how he thought it related to the sniping, he passed up a chance for retribution, said it wouldn’t be prudent to comment at this time, got in his state-issued car and drove away. Discretion, or a loser’s reticence.