The bathroom provoked no comment. In the office he said, "Now, this looks exactly the same. This was Claire's place, she spent all her time here."
"Where was your office?" said Milo.
"I didn't like bringing work home, used a small desk in the bedroom."
That room widened his eyes. "No memories left here. We had a king-size bed, brass headboard, down comforter, antique nightstands. Claire must have realty wanted a change."
His expression said he still took that personally. He looked into the empty closet.
"Where are all her clothes?"
"At the crime lab," said Milo.
"Oh, man... I've got to get out of here." Grabbing his beard for support, he left the room.
Outside, he got the carton of documents from his BMW, handed them over, revved noisily, and barreled down the hill.
"What's your take on the guy?" said Milo.
"He's got his share of problems, but no bells are ringing. And unless Claire wasn't as financially benevolent as he made out-or he's not as rich-where is the motive?"
"Three hundred even after taxes is still serious bread. And guys with big net worth can still get into trouble. I'm going to take a crash course on his finances. What do you mean, problems?"
"Bleeding in public-telling us his life history. Maybe that's what attracted Claire to him. Someone so self-absorbed he wouldn't try to get into her head. Their marriage sounds like a passion-with-a-stranger fantasy gone stale. That shows an impulsive side to Claire, sexually and otherwise. Stargill says they avoided each other for most of the marriage, meaning both of them could've had multiple affairs.
Maybe Claire's been dating strangers for years, and finally met the wrong one."
"The neighbors never saw anyone."
"Neighbors don't notice everything. Pick someone up in a bar, bring them back in your car late at night, who's to know? Or she had liaisons away from home. That would fit with no prints except hers in the house.
"Stargill described her the same way everyone else has: nice but detached," I went on. "But there's one thing he did add: a touch of dominance. She moves into his house, takes over the office; he gets a desk in the bedroom. He shares his past, but
she refuses to reciprocate. When she tires of him, she decides they're going to divorce. And what the settlement is going to be. The fact that Stargill didn't press her on anything tells us something about him."
"A submissive lawyer? That's a novel concept."
"Some people keep work and play separate. Think of the specifics of the settlement:
Claire ends up with the house, gets him to carry the mortgage and the taxes, and he feels grateful because she didn't take more. Even their first meeting has that same lopsided feel: she's sober, he isn't. She's in control, he isn't. He spills his guts about his drunken father and brother, alcoholic tendencies of his own that he keeps in check. The guy's her polar opposite: turns every conversation into therapy. Some women might be put off. Claire goes upstairs with him and gives him the time of his life. Later on, whenever she wants to shut him up, she uses sex. She was clearly drawn to people with serious problems. Maybe she left County because she needed a bigger dose of pathology."
"So," he said, "Maybe she found a nutcase who'd gotten out of the hospital, tried to dominate him, pushed the wrong button. I've got to see if anyone was released from
Starkweather during the last six months. But if nothing turns up, then what?"
He looked worn out. I said, "You ask me to theorize, I theorize. It could still turn out to be a carjacking gone really bad."
We walked to the Seville.
"Something else," he said. "The big taboo she had on talking about her family. To me that says rotten background. Only, unlike Stargill, she kept the bandage on."
"When are her parents coming out?"
"Couple of days. Why don't you meet them with me?"
"Sure." I got in the car.
He said, "She starts out as your basic nice lady, and now we're thinking of her as some kind of dominatrix.... So all I have to do is find some highly disturbed joker with sadistic tendencies who held on to her credit card. Speaking of which, better call Visa."
He looked back at the house. "Maybe she did have visitors no one saw. Or just one sicko loverboy... Her living room woulda been a great playpen, wouldn't it? Plenty of space to roll around in-those floors are baby smooth. No body fluid traces on the wood, but who knows?"
"What's easier to clean than lacquered hardwood?" I said.
"True," he said. "Carpet would have yielded something."
"Stargill said she took the carpeting out."
He rubbed his face. "Ex-patient or ex-con, some bad boy she thinks she can control."
"Both would fit with the fact that she was found in her own car. Someone without his own wheels."
"Putting her in the driver's seat, again." Faint smile. "A late-night pickup-we know from Stargill that she wasn't opposed to being picked up. They go somewhere, things go bad. No semen in her, so it never got to hanky-panky.... Bad Boy cuts her, puts her in the trash bag, stashes her in the trunk and drives her over to West L.A.
Doesn't steal the car, because that's a sure way to get busted. Smart. Meticulous.
Not a Starkweather fellow." He grimaced. "Meaning I'm wasting my time over there.
Back to square one."
His cell phone chirped. Snapping it off his belt, he said, "Sturgis-... Oh, hi....
Yes, thank you- Oh? How so? Why don't you just tell- Okay, sure, that would be fine, give me directions."
Cradling the phone under his chin, he produced his pad, wrote something down, clicked off.
"That," he said, "was young Miss Ott. She does the night shift today at
Starkweather, wants to talk before work."
"Talk about what?"
"She wouldn't say, but I know scared when I hear it."
She'd asked to meet at Plummer Park in West Hollywood. I followed Milo, connecting to Laurel, turning east on Mel-rose. On the way, I passed a billboard advertising a kick-boxing gym: terrific-looking woman in a sports bra drawing back a glove for a roundhouse. The ad line was "You can rest when you're dead." Theology everywhere.
The park was scrubby, crowded, more Russian spoken than English. Most of the inhabitants were old people on benches, heavily garbed despite the heat. A sprinkle of kids on bicycles circled a dry oval of grass in the center, sleepy-looking dog walkers were led by the leash, a few scruffy types in designer T-shirts and cheap shoes hung out near the pay phones trying to radiate Moscow Mafia.
Heidi Ott stood by herself under a sad-looking carrotwood tree, arms crossing her chest, checking out the terrain in all directions. When she spotted us, she gave a small wave and headed for the only vacant bench in sight. A pile of fresh dog turd nearby explained the vacancy. Wrinkling her nose, she moved on and we followed her to a shady spot near the swing set, under an old Chinese elm. The surrounding grass was bruised and matted. A lone young woman pushed her toddler in a gently repeating arc. Both she and the child seemed hypnotized by the motion.
Heidi leaned against the elm and watched them. If I hadn't been looking for the fear, I might not have noticed it. She wore it lightly, a glaze of anxiety, hands knotting then releasing, eyes fixing too intently on the swinging child.
"Thanks for meeting with us, ma'am," said Milo.
"Sure," she said. "My roommate's sleeping, or I would've had you come to my place."
She moistened her lips with her tongue. She wore low-slung jeans, a ribbed white
T-shirt with a scalloped neck and high-cut sleeves, blunt-toed brown boots. Her hair was drawn back, just as it had been at Starkweather, but in a ponytail, not a tight bun. Dangling earrings of silver filigree, some eye shadow, a smear of lip gloss.
Freckles on her cheeks that I hadn't noticed on the ward. Her nails were clipped short, very clean. The T-shirt was form-fitting. Not much meat on her, but her arms were sinewy.
She cleared her throat, seemed to be working up the courage to speak, just as a tall, thin man with long hair came loping by with a panting mutt. The dog had some
Rottweiler in it. The man wore all black and his coarse hair was a dull ebony. He stared at the ground. The dog's nose was down; each step seemed to strain the animal.
Heidi waited until they passed, then smiled nervously. "I'm probably wasting your time."
"If there's anything you can tell me about Dr. Argent, you're not."
Squint lines formed around her eyes, but when she turned to us they disappeared.
"Can I ask you one thing first?"
"Sure."
"Claire Dr. Argent was anything done to her eyes?"
Milo didn't answer immediately, and she pressed herself against the tree trunk.
"There was? Oh my God."
"What about her eyes concerns you, Ms. Ott?"
She shook her head. One hand reached back and tugged her ponytail. The man with the dog was leaving the park. Her eyes followed him for a second before returning to the swinging child. The boy squalled as the young woman pulled him off, struggled to stuff him into a stroller, finally wheeled away.
Just the three of us now, as if a stage had been cleared. I heard birds sing; distant, foreign chatter, some traffic from Fuller Avenue.
Milo was looking at Heidi. I saw his jaw loosen deliberately and he bent one leg, trying to appear casual.
She said, "Okay, this is going to sound weird but... three days ago, one of the patients-a patient Dr. Argent woñed with-said something to me. The day before Dr.
Argent was killed. It was at night, I was double-shifting, doing bed check, and all of a sudden he started talking to me. Which by itself was unusual, he's barely verbal. Didn't talk at all until Dr. Argent and I began-"
She stopped, pulled the ponytail forward so that it rested on her shoulder, played with the ends, squeezed them. "You're going to think I'm flaky."
"Not at all," said Milo. "You're doing exactly the right thing."
"Okay. This is the situation: I'm just about to leave his room and this guy starts mumbling, like he's praying or chanting. I pay attention because he hardly ever talks-never really talks at all. But then he stops and I turn to leave again. Then all of a sudden, he says her name-'Dr. A.' I say, 'Excuse me?' And he repeats it a little louder. 'Dr. A.' I say, 'What about Dr. A?' And he gives this strange smile-till now, he never smiled either-and says, 'Dr. A bad eyes in a box.' I say,
'What?' Now he's back to looking down at his knees the way he always does and he's not saying anything and I can't get him to repeat it. So I leave again and when I reach the door he makes this sound I've heard him make a few times before- like a bark-nth nth ruh. I never knew what it meant but now I get the feeling it's his way of laughing-he's laughing at me. Then he stops, he's back in space, and I'm out of there."
Milo said, " 'Dr. A bad eyes in a box.' Have you told anyone about this?"
"No, just you. I planned to talk to Claire about it, but I never got to see her because the next day..." She bit her lip. "The reason I didn't mention it to anyone at the hospital was because I figured it was just crazy talk. If we paid attention every time someone talked crazy, we'd never get any work done. But the next day, when Claire didn't come to work, and later in the afternoon I heard the news, it freaked me out. I still didn't say anything, because I didn't know where to go with it-and what connection could there be? Then when I read the paper and it said she'd been found in her car trunk, I'm like, ' "Boxed up" could be a car trunk, right?
This is freaky.' But the paper didn't mention anything about her eyes, so I thought maybe by 'bad eyes' he meant her wearing glasses, it probably was just crazy talk.
Although why would he say something about it all of a sudden when usually he doesn't speak at all? So I kept thinking about it, didn't know what to do, but when I saw you yesterday, I figured I should call. And now you're telling me something was done to her eyes."
She exhaled. Licked her lips.
Milo said, "I didn't exactly say that, ma'am. I asked why Dr. Argent's eyes concerned you."
"Oh." She slumped. "Okay, so I'm making a big deal. Sorry for wasting your time."
She started to walk away. Milo placed a big hand on her wrist.
"No apologies necessary, Ms. Ott. You did the right thing." Out came his pad.
"What's this patient's name?"
"You're going to pursue it? Listen, I don't want to make waves-"
"At this point," said Milo, "I can't afford to eliminate anything."