A punishing breed, p.21
A Punishing Breed, page 21
A few detectives coming off the long Saturday night shift exchanged puzzled glances at the sight of DJ holding his small red dog. One detective came up to him.
“What you got there? Are you like that TV detective with the basset hound?”
DJ stared the man down. He was in no mood for stupid questions or sarcasm.
“I am LAPD, not a TV detective,” said DJ. “And this is Evidence, you got it?”
The man stepped back and away. “Sure, okay, I got it.”
DJ settled his dog into a nearby chair and peered through a small window in the door. A man with a beard and disheveled hair sat alert at the empty table. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt and sweatpants. The man was average height and muscular, though time and gravity had done their work. Crepey skin clung to muscles on his arms, a beer belly strained against his shirt. Bill Ballentine appeared dazed. He should be in his kitchen drinking coffee with his wife, not sitting in a police station poised to hear about the end of his world.
They went into the room accompanied by the night watch supervisor, who was relieved to hand over Bill Ballentine to DJ and Talbot so he could go home to his own Sunday morning of pancakes and bacon.
The dread that had pooled into DJ’s feet at the murder scene now spiked into his entrails, up his lungs, and pounded his heart. He pulled one palm across his face, donning the mask of executioner to Bill Ballentine’s future.
“Mr. Ballentine,” said the sergeant before leaving the room. “I want to introduce you to Detective Arias and Detective Talbot. They’re going to take over, ask you a few questions.”
Ballentine lifted an expectant face to DJ and Talbot. “My wife, Trish, is missing. Have you found her? Have you found Trish?”
They sat down opposite Bill Ballentine. Their chairs scraped the floor, a scream of old wood on worn linoleum.
“Well?” Ballentine asked. “That police sergeant said there was a development.”
DJ paused for a beat, looked at Mr. Ballentine. Anxiety and hope flickered in the man’s eyes. DJ clasped his hands together under the table as if praying.
“Mr. Ballentine, I’m very sorry. I regret to inform you that your wife, Trish Ballentine, was found dead this morning. It appears to be a homicide.”
Bill Ballentine’s mouth fell open. He stared at DJ as if he spoke in a foreign language. He shook his head, slowly at first, then more violently.
“No, no, no. I don’t believe it!”
“Detective Talbot and I identified her. But we will need a next-of-kin ID.”
Ballentine’s hand slapped the table.
DJ flinched.
“No! It can’t be my Trish. Where did you find this . . . woman?”
“Sir, she was found off Mulholland Highway a few hours ago,” said Talbot.
“No, it isn’t Trish,” argued Ballentine. “You see, Trish was sitting next to me in bed last night. Her car is still in her parking space. How could she possibly get up to Mulholland?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Ballentine,” DJ said.
“Now, who the hell are you again?” asked Bill Ballentine.
“Detective Arias,” said DJ. “My partner, Detective Talbot, and I are investigating the murder of Will Bloom at Hesperia College.”
“Oh! Oh, I know who you are now. Trish told me about you. She said you were a nasty piece of work.”
DJ looked down at the table stained with old coffee rings and dents from a hundred fists pounded in despair. It was an accurate description.
Bill Ballentine continued his monologue. Talking more to himself than DJ or Talbot. “It’s not Trish, I know it’s not her. She wouldn’t be out there alone on Mulholland in the middle of the night.”
“Mr. Ballentine, when was the last time you saw your wife?” asked DJ.
“I already told the other officer. Last night around nine. We were in bed. Trish was watching one of her shows. Real Housewives. She likes to watch her shows at night in bed with a glass of wine.”
“And then what happened?”
“I had a couple of beers; I was out like a light. But she was right there next to me.”
“And you didn’t hear her leave your condo?”
“No,” he said. “I woke up at five thirty. Trish wasn’t in bed. I figured she was in the bathroom, or on the balcony. But the condo was empty. It was too early for the newspaper—but I went down to the lobby anyway, and then I went to the garage and her car was still there. I went back upstairs.” Mr. Ballentine gulped down a qualm of disbelief. “It was like she disappeared into thin air.”
DJ cleared his throat.
“How was your relationship with your wife?” asked DJ.
“What? What did you say?” asked Ballentine.
“How were you getting along?”
“My Trish and I get along just fine,” said Ballentine, bristling. “She is the love of my life.”
“No arguments over money or other entanglements?”
“What?” he asked. “No! What are you talking about?”
“Nothing else?” DJ sighed. “I have to ask, did you or your wife have other involvements? Was there anybody else?”
Bill Ballentine stood up, hands curled in fists and ready to fight.
“How dare you!”
“We have to ask, Mr. Ballentine,” said Talbot rising. “Just routine questions.” His voice was calm, steady. “Please sit down.” Ballentine fell back into his chair.
“Did Trish have any trouble with friends, or people at work?” Talbot asked.
“No, of course not. Everyone loves Trish. She’s worked at Hesperia for almost fifteen years.”
“Did she feel threatened by anyone? Had her behavior or routine changed recently?”
“No!” said Bill Ballentine. He frowned, then continued, “Well, the last few days she was upset, kind of excitable. She told me about Will Bloom’s murder, and everyone being questioned. She didn’t much like her boss. She said whoever killed Bloom probably had their reasons. And then she said . . . oh my God!”
“What, what did she say?” asked Talbot.
“She said, ‘What if I wrote down the name of the murderer in my notebook.’ Trish has this blue spiral thing, a secret diary. She says she’s chronicling the sins of a Casanova. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but you can’t tell Trish. I mean, what is she going to do with some silly notebook, anyway?”
The notebook wasn’t a secret, thought DJ, and it wasn’t silly. It was dangerous to someone, to the murderer.
“Did she have the notebook with her this weekend?” asked Talbot.
“Yes. Yesterday afternoon, she was on the balcony while I watched football. She was looking through it.”
“Did she indicate who she thought killed Will Bloom?” Talbot asked.
“No,” said Mr. Ballentine. “She said there were plenty of angry women and their boyfriends and husbands.”
“We’ll need to see it,” said DJ. “Is the notebook at your home?”
Bill Ballentine looked up at him, his animosity lessened by a tinge of alarm. “I don’t know where it is,” he said. “When I was searching for Trish this morning, I looked to see if her purse was missing. She has a large work bag, it’s quilted with some paisley design, and then she has a smaller leather purse. The work bag, where she keeps the notebook, was empty. Her leather purse and wallet were gone.”
“We’ll need to search your condominium,” said Talbot. “Make sure she didn’t put it somewhere else.”
“Yeah, fine. Who cares about the notebook,” said Ballentine. “Where is Trish?” he pleaded. “Where did she get to?”
There was a quick knock at the door. Ballentine looked up expectantly.
Talbot rose, opened the door, and whispered to a waiting officer.
“We’re ready, Mr. Ballentine,” he said. “For the identification.”
Hope was fading in Bill Ballentine, the fear edging in, and the comprehension that he would have to view a human body. A woman these fools believed was his wife. The dead woman who could not be his Trish.
“Are you okay to do this now or would you like to take a few minutes?” Talbot asked.
“No,” said Bill Ballentine, shaking off these men’s belief that his dead wife was waiting for him in a dark corner of this building. “I’ll do it now. It can’t be her.” He took a breath, stood up, and with restrained dignity straightened his T-shirt, adjusted his sweatpants, smoothed down his hair.
Mr. Ballentine followed the uniformed officer down a long corridor, the detectives bringing up the rear.
The officer stopped before a double door, turned, and nodded. They entered a waiting room with a torn leather couch and three mismatched chairs. None of them sat down. The light fixture on the ceiling buzzed as if electricity was a fly caught in the harsh fluorescent light. No one spoke.
Bill Ballentine’s face was a map of singular tremors; lips, nose, eyes twitching and clenching, trying to comprehend why he waited in this godforsaken room of scuffed walls and scarred furniture, standing with men he didn’t know and wouldn’t like if he did.
Finally, he reached out his right arm as if expecting his wife, Trish, to take his hand, assure him she was all right. His fingers flailed in the air, curled into an empty fist, then fell to his side.
A woman emerged from the interior set of doors. She introduced herself.
“I’m Gail Torrez, sir. You are Mr. William Ballentine?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His posture straightened as if reporting for duty.
“Come in, Mr. Ballentine. I know this is extremely difficult.”
This room was bright white, acrid with the stink of disinfectant, the floor tacky with years of old wax. A gurney sat near one wall that held an immaculate steel counter and sink. The industrial faucet had a swan neck. They heard the drip, drip, drip of water hit the metal sink, circle the drain, slip into the black bloody plumbing of what this place really was: a charnel house.
A white sheet covered the body.
The assistant coroner positioned Bill Ballentine a few feet from the gurney.
“Are you ready, sir?”
Bill Ballentine would never be ready. A sudden vision of Trish, his lovely wife, standing on their balcony, spritzing her orchids came to him. He took a deep breath. “Yes.”
The woman pulled down the sheet to expose Trish Ballentine’s face. Her eyes were open, her mouth ajar, the skin a chalk-like pallor. Purple bruises bloomed on her neck at the edge of the crisp white sheet.
Bill Ballentine began to shake, an inner earthquake threatening to disassemble the man, his bones, his life. A harsh bark of pain tore out of Mr. Ballentine’s throat as he plunged forward. DJ and Talbot, positioned on each side of the man, tried to catch Bill Ballentine by the elbows and shoulders.
Ballentine screamed, a high-pitched feral sound. “No!”
His legs gave out; a dead weight, he fell to his knees on the floor. The old wax thirsty for another rain of tears, another layer of sorrow to add to its luster.
DJ stood, ineffectually cupping the man’s elbow. Talbot held Mr. Ballentine’s other arm, waiting quietly until the shaking lessened, then stopped.
Talbot helped Mr. Ballentine stand up.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I have to ask if you can make a positive verbal identification,” said Gail Torrez. “I know it’s hard, but is this your wife, Patricia Ballentine? Just a simple yes or no.”
“Yes.” Bill Ballentine’s voice was a whisper.
The woman covered the body’s face with the sheet.
Patricia “Trish” Ballentine was officially deceased.
Bill Ballentine, Talbot, and DJ exited, walked down the long endless corridor. At the end was the interrogation room, a black hole where no answers waited.
Trish Ballentine was killed because she wrote down the murderer’s name in her notebook. DJ knew it. The notebook was gone, and the woman’s death lay at his feet.
Talbot and DJ would continue the interrogation, the Van Nuys detectives would search the Ballentine’s condo. It was their jurisdiction. Suspicion, as usual, would center on the husband. Like a vulture circling carrion, the police would probe and render the facts of Bill Ballentine’s life, then move on when the bones were picked bare.
It was procedure, it was brutal, and it stunk.
CHAPTER 38
Up All Night
Someone had been up all night.
A screech reverberating in the dark.
Tidying loose ends. Righting the ship. Doing what must be done.
For Will Bloom, one downward thrust. Necessary and righteous. Ridding the world of gluttony and lust.
A coup de grâce.
But murder’s tentacles grew like cancer.
As birth begets another birth. Murder spawned another death.
Trish.
“Give me the notebook.”
“No,” she said, “it’s mine.”
The drug administered by tequila in a silver flask.
Trish laughed,
“I know all the secrets.”
She snorted.
“Don’t be pathetic, dear. I won’t tell yours.”
There was a meanness in this world.
“History repeating itself.”
The woman devolved into giggles, then snorted again.
“I’m sorry. It’s just so ironic.”
Nastiness wiggled in Trish’s heart like a worm in compost.
The words, the giggling, the snorts.
At the devastation of a soul.
Two hands went around Trish’s throat and squeezed.
“Shut. Your. Piehole.”
Her neck was birdlike, fragile as a bundle of twigs. So easy to crush.
One last pitiful screech. No more snorts. No more laughter.
Just blessed silence.
Up all night.
A flashlight in the dark grove of trees. A glancing beam flitting and swerving.
The blanket.
Ripped free from the sword standing sentry in the body.
Where was the blanket?
Running, lungs bursting, adrenaline spiking. Almost there, almost home.
Then collision! The stupid girl. The pathetic cripple!
Tangled in a tumble of humans.
“Run!” the cripple screamed.
The blanket torn away, thrown up into the trees, the darkness.
The blanket was missing.
And fear was a metronome.
It beat in the heart, pulsed through veins, pooled in the brain like sepsis.
Blood and DNA.
On the fibers of the blanket.”
“Clean up loose ends!” Who had it? The girl? The cripple?
What was one more death?
To an accountant with a bloody balance sheet.
Up. All. Night.
Sunlight broke to the east.
A screech reverberated across the olive grove. Like a gathering of spirits, wild parrots settled on swaying branches.
Feeding on buds, leaves, insects. Necks nodding right, then left, blunt eyes flush on feathered heads.
Following the human’s footsteps.
Watching it turn in desultory circles, stagger, shake its fist at the sky, crying to a god that didn’t answer.
PART FOUR
Filament
The Watcher ached from old wounds. His skeleton pieced together with rods and bolts. Metal staples embedded bone, muscle.
Back home, he touched the tender places where skin grew thick over bits of steel.
He couldn’t reach the deeper wounds.
The ones inside.
Today, he discovered the truth.
The one that glittered in the deepest night.
He was just a monster to the girl.
What he was, who he would always be.
Something broke inside of him.
Perhaps his heart.
Shards of pain, embedded in his soul.
Cape sodden, necklace leaden on his chest. He fell into exhausted sleep.
Always the same dream.
Warren Worthington alive in the hum of speed.
His body, his bicycle; a bullet on the highway. Face forward. His smile stretched across a bridge of teeth. The shush of wind in his ears. The night bloom of jasmine.
An intersection. The signal clicked from red to green. No slowing down, he stretched both arms, balance perfect. His head rolled back to drink in the stars.
He heard it first. The rumble at his left. Then he saw it, a dark blur at the edge of his vision, a UPS truck.
Time slowed; seconds elongated. Warren turned his head, the headlights flashed on, he saw the driver’s face, a grimace of exhaustion, then terrified eyes opened wide.
Cacophony.
The squeal of brakes, metal crumpling, glass shattering.
Bones splintering, muscles ripping, asphalt sluicing skin.
Three percussive pops.
Boom, boom, boom.
A metal hubcap loosed on the road, a circled ring, velocity dying.
Silence.
He was once again awake in this world.
The Watcher sat up in his perch by the window.
Eyes adjusting to the night. Streetlights dusted the sidewalk.
Two shadows, doppelgängers, billowed, became whole, then human.
He recognized the man. He had named him the hollow man. Blank eyes, blank face. Home to work, work to home. Always alone. He and the man were the same. The Watcher’s afflictions outside, the hollow man’s inside. Like brothers.
Now a girl was with him. The Watcher’s girl, the one he’d saved. She walked beside the hollow man. Her arm touching his. They stopped. The girl looked at the man, hollow no more. They walked on. Side by side. Shoulders, arms touching.
Passing him by.
The Watcher felt a stab to his heart, a keening filled his chest. The necklace dragged him to ground. He rocked back and forth. Then he was still.
The Watcher knew what he must do.
The girl was never his. He pulled the necklace out from his collar. Gold glimmered in dim light.
“You thought she would thank you.”
He heard the ever-present voice of his dead father, the neighborhood brats, the mocking teens.
“You thought you were worthy?”
Hahahahahaha!
“Of love?”
They all laughed.
He was a fool, a broken-down freak.
