“Just that you might be able to help me find out some information on a woman who grew up here. Unfortunately she's been murdered and the L.A. police have asked me to-”
“Murdered? Who are we talking about?”
“Hope Devane.”
That sucked the color out of her face. She looked back at the dogs and when she turned to me again her expression was a mixture of innocence shattered and pessimism confirmed.
“What happened to her? When?”
“Someone stabbed her in front of her house three months ago.”
“Where?”
“L.A.”
“Figures. Tell me, did she turn out to be a doctor of some kind?”
“She was a psychologist.”
“That's almost the same thing.”
“She had plans to be a doctor?” I said.
She stared past me, across the street, at the dry, empty field. Touching her cheeks with both hands, she drew back the skin, stretching it, and for a moment I saw a younger woman. “Murdered. That's unbelievable. Any idea who did it?”
“No, it's a dead end so far. That's why the police are trying to get as much background about her as they can.”
“So they asked you to come up here.”
“Right.”
“You talk about the police in third person. Meaning you're not one of them? Or are you just pompous?”
“I'm a psychologist, too, Ms. Campos. Sometimes I consult to the police.”
“Got some proof of that?”
I showed her my ID.
She studied it and handed it back. “Just wanted to make sure you weren't a reporter. I despise them because they once did a story on my dogs and painted me as a nut.”
She touched her sharp chin. “Little Hope. I don't claim to remember all my students, but I remember her. Okay, come on in.”
She began walking to the house, leaving me to open the gate for myself. The Bouvier had ambled nearly to the back of the property but as I turned the latch, it wheeled around and raced toward me.
“He's okay, Lee,” said Elsa Campos. “Don't eat him. Yet.”
I followed her up the porch and into a dim parlor crowded with cheap furniture and feed bowls. Shelves full of pottery and glass, the smell of wet fur and antiseptics. A cuckoo clock over the mantel looked more Lake Arrowhead than Switzerland.
Small room, the kitchen was three steps away. She told me to sit and headed in there. On the counter sat a blow-dryer, several squeeze bottles of canine shampoo, a microwave oven, and a plastic dog-crate. Inside the crate was something small and white and still. On top were glass ampules, plastic-capped syringes, rolls of bandages.
“Hey,” said Elsa Campos, sticking a finger through the wire door. The little dog stuck its tongue out and whimpered.
She cooed to it awhile. “Little girl Shih Tzu, one year old. Someone cracked her head with a stick, paralyzed the rear quarters, left her on a trash heap. Her legs got infected. When I got her she was a bag of bones, the pound was ready to gas her. She'll never be normal, but we'll get her adjusted to the others. Leopold will see to that. He's the alpha- head dog of the pack. He's good with weak things.”
“That's great,” I said, suddenly thinking of Milo's heavy face, black brows, bright eyes, slow movements.
“Something to drink?”
“No, thanks.” I sank into a gray-slipcovered easy chair. Feather cushions soft as warm tallow shifted to encompass me. Flanking the cuckoo clock were faded photos of nature scenes. The curtains were brown chenille, the overhead light fixture dusty bulbs in a tangle of yellowed staghorns.
She pulled a beer out of an old Kelvinator fridge. “Worried you're going to catch something because I run a zoo?” Popping the top, she drank. “Well, it's a clean zoo. I can't help the smell but just because I take in hurt animals, why should it mean I want to live dirty?”
“No reason.”
“Tell it to those two.”
“The Botulas?”
“The Botulas,” she said in that same mimicking tone. “Monsieur and Madame Sherlock.” She laughed. “First week they got here, they started driving around in that old car the county gives 'em, as if they had something to do. Like Dragnet-you're probably too young to remember that.”
“Just the facts, ma'am,” I said.
Her smile was briefer than an eyeblink. “What kind of facts are you going to have here? The weeds grew another two inches? Send samples to the FBI?” She sipped more beer. “What a pair. Driving up and down, up and down, up and down. First week they passed by here, saw my herd playing out front, stopped, got out, started rattling the gate. Needless to say, the herd got excited. I had a Golden with three legs back then, really liked to bark, what a symphony.” Smiling again. “I came out to see what the ruckus was all about, there they were trying to count heads, write it down. Then she looks me up and down and he starts reciting the health code- more than such and such in one place means you need a kennel license. I laughed and went inside, had nothing to do with them since. They'll be gone soon enough, just like the others.”
“How many others have there been?”
“Lost count. County sends them over from Fresno to serve a year in Oblivion. No action, no McDonald's, no cable TV, drives them crazy and they're out of here first thing.” She laughed, then turned serious. “The fifty-channel generation. God help the animals and everyone else when they take over.”
She peered inside the crate. “Don't you worry, baby, soon you'll be running with the best of them.”
She shook her head and her braid swung. “Can you imagine anyone wanting to hurt something so harmless?”
“No,” I said. “It's about as unthinkable as murder.”
Straightening, she rested her hand on the counter, put her beer down, and picked up an ampule of medicine. After reading the label, she put it down and came into the parlor. Taking a ragged cane chair, she sat, planting her heels on the linoleum floor.
“Hope, murdered. Do you know what the Greeks did to bad-news messengers?” She ran a finger across her throat.
“Hope you're not Greek,” I said.
She grinned. “Lucky for you, no. I used to teach all my classes about the Greeks but not in the usual way- not that they were cultured and noble and had great mythology and started the Olympics. I used them to make the point that you can be cultured and outwardly noble and still do immoral things. Because they pretty much brutalized everyone they came into contact with, just as bad as the Romans. They don't teach morality anymore in schools except how to have sex without dying from it. Which I guess is okay because what chance do you have to do any good in the world if you're six feet under? But they should also look at other things- what do you expect to learn from me?”
“Something about Hope's background that might help explain her death.”
“Why would her background explain anything?”
Her black eyes were locked into mine, sharp as a falcon's.
“There's some indication she might have been abused as an adult. Sometimes that's related to abuse as a child.”
“Abused how?”
“Physically. Pushed around, bruised.”
“Was she married?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“A history professor, quite a few years older.”
“Is he the one who abused her?”
“We don't know.”
“Is he a suspect in the murder?”
“No,” I said.
“No? Or not yet?”
“Hard to say. There's no evidence against him.”
“A professor and a psychologist,” she said, closing her eyes, as if trying to picture it.
“Hope was a professor, too,” I said. “She'd become pretty prominent as a researcher.”
“What did she research?”
“The psychology of women. Sex-roles. Self-control.”
The last phrase made her flinch and I wondered why.
“I see… Tell me exactly how she was killed.”
I summed up the stabbing and told her about Hope's book, the publicity tour.