Chapter 26
“You sure you don’t want me to wait?” Royce said. He’d pulled up in front of the squat, two-story office building on Ventura, just east of Coldwater Canyon.
“I’ll take the bus,” Chuck said. “I may be awhile.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Thanks for coming to court.”
“Always happy to help the criminal element,” Royce said.
Chuck tried to smile.
“Call me if you need me,” Royce said.
Chuck nodded, got out and went through the glass double doors. The offices of
LAEye
were on the second floor. Chuck took the elevator and went to the secure door. It was open. Some security. In the reception area was a desk with no one behind it.
Even better security. Why not just put a neon sign out in front that said
Drifters Welcome?
There was a door to the inner sanctum, also unlocked. Chuck went through. He’d been here a couple of times before. It was a typical hive of cubicles, with the sound of keyboards and a slight hum from the ceiling lights. Julia had worked at a cubicle in the back, next to Octavia Butler. Chuck walked back, getting hardly a look from the staff, thinking how easy it would be to wipe this place out.
Octavia was at her monitor, back to him.
“Clinton did have sex with that woman,” Chuck said.
She spun around in her chair. “Chuck!” She stood and hugged him. “How long’s it been?”
“Since the funeral, I guess.”
“That’s right.” She had soft brown eyes. Her skin was smooth café au lait, her hair plaited. Chuck always thought she’d have made a good model. But all she wanted to do was be an investigative journalist, like Julia.
“How’s that novel coming?” Chuck said.
Octavia smiled. “Still trying to work out the middle. Writing a novel’d be easy if you only had to do the beginning and end.”
“Life too,” Chuck said.
“Can we go out for coffee or something?”
“This isn’t really a social visit, Octavia. I need to ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“Julia was working on a story when she was killed.”
Octavia hesitated. She looked at the floor as if trying to remember. “Something about alligators.”
“Did she give you any details about this story?”
“Not really. In fact, she didn’t say much of anything at all. It was kind of strange.”
“Why strange?”
“She usually talked to me a lot about her stories. This one she was kind of tightlipped about. I figured she just didn’t want to say anything, but I remember thinking at the time that was a little odd for Julia.”
A surge of electricity went through him. “Octavia, I really need you to help me think this through. Is there anything that you remember about this period in her life that raises any questions?”
“Questions like what?”
“Anything.”
She bit her lower lip and sat on the edge of her desk. “I’m really trying to think here, Chuck.”
That, or trying not to say something. Chuck had the impression she was defensive.
“When was the very last time you saw her?” he asked.
“I remember that. It was the day before she was killed. I saw her in the office.”
“What time?”
“Afternoon, maybe around three or four o’clock.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Just a normal
Hi, how you doing?
Nothing more than that. I was working on something too. I remember when she left she leaned over my desk and gave me one of these.” Octavia made a bye-bye motion with one hand.
“And then?”
Octavia said nothing, but Chuck thought he saw a desire in her expression, like words were on the edge, wanting to get out.
“What is it?” he said.
Octavia turned her head.
“Tell me,” Chuck said.
“Chuck . . .”
“Come on.”
“Dammit, why’d you have to surprise me like this?”
“Octavia!” The voice came from a doorway halfway across the room.
“The boss,” Octavia said.
“He can wait.”
“Are you kidding?”
Chuck put a hand on her arm, hard. “Tell me.”
“Don’t do this,” she said.
“Please.”
She looked at him and the pain in her eyes was palpable.
Behind him, the voice said, “Hey.”
He was late twenties, with shag-thick black hair. He wore Ivy League style glasses, and a white shirt with tie and blue jeans.
“Van, this is a friend,” Octavia said.
“How’d he get in?” Van asked.
“Mind giving us a minute?” Chuck said.
“Yeah, I do,” Van said. “We got work to do here.”
“Five minutes.”
“No. Good-bye.”
Chuck wanted to grab the guy’s shirt and explain in journalistic detail to his face everything that was happening, and then shake him into silent compliance.
He realized later he might have done it, but Octavia said, “Wait for me downstairs. I’ll take a break in a few.”
.
It wasn’t a few. In fact, it was half an hour, and Chuck’s rear end went through several iterations of numb on an iron bench outside the front doors. When Octavia finally came down, she looked frazzled.
“Your boss is a real law-and-order type,” Chuck said.
She took his arm.
There was a walkway between buildings. The warm-bake smells from the pizza place next door filled the space. It made Chuck hungry and sick at the same time. He couldn’t eat until he knew what Octavia was holding onto.
“Sorry about what happened,” she said. “Van’s a little intense.”
“What about Julia?”
Octavia got a pained look on her face. “Chuck, how are you getting along?”
“What?”
“You and your brother.”
“Why are you asking—”
“You still teaching at that school?”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She looked at the sky. “Chuck, I’m a journalist. I’m supposed to report facts. I have no facts for you.”
“Opinion then?”
“What does it matter what I think? The thing is you and Julia were together, and now you move on.”
“I don’t need a Dr. Phil moment. Tell me what you think, and tell me now.”
“That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know. I only saw him once.”
“Who?”
“Chuck––”
“Tell me!”
“She was seeing someone!”
The force of the words cut the air, leaving a momentary silence in its wake. Chuck took in a deep breath. “What do you mean
seeing?”
“You know what I mean,” Octavia said. “Why’d you have to ask me, Chuck?”
He had no answer. His insides were tearing a jagged line from heart to throat. The bile-taste of betrayal burned in him. Never had he suspected anything like that. Not from Julia.
He had never lied to her, not once. He’d been many things—difficult, distant, withholding. But he had never deceived. He thought that was at least one thing he and Julia had in common at the end. But what if it wasn’t?
Octavia’s words came from a distance. “Chuck, I didn’t want to tell you. Ever. Why couldn’t you just leave it the way it was?”
He took Octavia by the shoulders. “Tell me what you know.”
“Let go,” she said.
“Please.”
Octavia shook out of his grasp. “Like I said, I only saw him once. He was kind of a big guy, long hair, shoulder length. I didn’t see his face. I saw his back. He wore a black vest with a big sun on it.”
“A sun?”
“Big yellow sun. And Julia got on the back of his motorcycle. It was a Harley. I know that sound. When I casually asked her about it the next day, she told me it was nothing, just an old friend.”
“How do you know she was
seeing him?”
“I wish you hadn’t come here.”
“Just tell me!” His mind was playing tricks on him now, a face of Julia was laughing in a distant corner of his brain, his own face next to it, melting like candle wax under a flame.
“Chuck, come on, I—”
“You’re no friend of mine.”
“That hurts, Chuck.”
“What about me? You think this is cotton candy?”
“All right,” she said quietly, looking at the ground. “I don’t have anything else to tell you but that, and when I asked her about it she got a look on her face, and there are just some things one woman knows about another woman, that’s all. She was telling me to leave it alone and I did.”
Chuck ran his fingers through his hair, hard, like a kid digging for sand crabs at the beach. “Did Julia leave any notes? Any computer files?”
“I think you got all that. You still have them?”
“Whatever I had is now toast.”
“What?”
“My house burned down.”
“Oh, Chuck . . .”
“Octavia, will you try to think? Think who might know who this guy was? Maybe some other staff writers or something?”
“I can ask around if you want me to.”
“I want you to. Please.”
She looked at him a long time then, her brown eyes at once sympathetic and foreign. Then she put her arms around his neck and rested hear head on his shoulder. “Chuck, why’d it have to happen?”