Ballou’s next notation identified the origin of the call as the pay phone around the corner from the theater.
Isaac, reading over Petra’s shoulder, said, “Doebbler could’ve driven from the Valley to Hollywood, called Marta from the booth, and waited by her car. What if he agreed to have his phone records inspected because he knew they wouldn’t incriminate him?”
Petra said, “I wonder if Mr. Doebbler has ever owned a dog.”
She called Valley SPCA. No dog registrations at the Doebbler household, but plenty of people didn’t register their pets.
Next, she phoned the numbers Ballou had listed for Marta’s friends, Melanie Jaeger and Sarah Casagrande. Both were now owned by new parties.
Transitory L.A.
DMV records showed no listings for Jaeger anywhere in California, but a Sarah Rebecca Casagrande was listed on J Street, in Sacramento. Petra got her number from the Sacramento directory and phoned it.
The receptionist at a family medicine clinic answered. Doctor Casagrande was with a patient.
“What kind of doctor is she?”
“Psychologist. Actually, she’s a psych assistant.”
“Is that like a nurse?”
“No, Dr. Casagrande is a new Ph.D. She’s supervised by Dr. Ellis and Dr. Goldstein. If you’d like an appointment- ”
“This is Detective Connor, Los Angeles Police. Would you please have her call me?” Petra recited her number.
“The police?”
“Nothing to worry about,” said Petra. “An old case.”
Next, she tried Emily Pastern, the sole friend Ballou hadn’t reached.
A machine picked up on the fifth ring and a perky female voice said, “This is Emily and Gary Daisy’s place. We’re not in now, but if you’ll leave…”
Petra sat through the message. Blocking out the words because the background noise had captured her attention.
Running canine commentary as Emily Pastern chirped away.
A dog barking.
As she hung up, Mac Dilbeck passed her desk, shot her a long, unhappy look, and kept going toward the men’s room.
She followed, waited in the hallway, was there when he exited the lav. He was only mildly surprised to see her.
“Something up, Mac?”
“For the record,” he said, “I thought your point about photography was good.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“It’s at least something, Petra. Which was more than those yahoos had to offer.” His eyes glinted. “I just got a call from one of the victims’ mother. The Dalkin kid, that freckled boy trying to look punk. Poor lady was sobbing. Begged me to say we’ve made some progress. So what could I tell her?”
He slapped his hands together hard. The sound, as sharp as a gunshot, nearly made Petra jump.
“You know what’s happening, don’t you, Petra? We hand them their prime suspect on a silver platter, they take over but don’t have the smarts to move their sorry butts and find him.” He looked around, as if seeking somewhere to spit. “Task force. All they’re going to do is keep taking meetings, with their easels and their diagrams. Like it’s a football play. They’ll probably give themselves a sweet little name. ‘Operation Alligator,’ some garbage like that.” He shook his head. Brylcreemed hair didn’t budge but his eyelids fluttered like crepe banners.
“Taking their sweet time,” he went on, “until word gets out to Selden that they’re coming for him and he rabbits. If he hasn’t already.”
He looked old, tired, miserable. Petra didn’t console him. A man like Mac wouldn’t take well to consolation.
“It’s a drag,” she said.
“It’s a super-drag. Regular Cagé au Follies.” His smile was nervous, fleeting. His neck tendons flexed and lumps formed under his ears. “That was a joke. By the way.”
Petra smiled.
Mac said, “I crack wise like that at home, everyone tells me I’m inappropriate. Believe it or not, I used to be a funny guy. Back in the service, I was part of this theater review, we had this little stage set up- in Guam- I’m talking bare-bones but we got some laughs.”
“Musical review?” she said.
“We had ukuleles, whatever we could come up with.” He colored. “No one dressed up as women, nothing like that, that’s not what I’m getting at. Just that I used to know my way around a joke. Now? I’m a humorless geezer. Inappropriate.”
His discomfiture made Petra edgy. She laughed, more for herself than him. “Come over and joke any time, Mac.”
“Sure,” he said, walking off. “We call that police work, right?”
Petra watched him vanish around a corner. People. They could always surprise you.
Returning to her desk, she saw Isaac hunched over his laptop.
She returned to the Doebbler file, studied it as if it was the Bible.
By five-thirty Friday, neither Dr. Sarah Casagrande nor Emily Pastern had returned her calls. She tried again with no success. Everyone gone for the weekend.
Suddenly all the energy generated by her brainstorm with Isaac was gone. She walked over to his desk. He stopped typing, cleared his screen. An Albert Einstein screensaver popped up. Genius in a funny bow tie. Wild hair. But ol’ Albie’s eyes…
Isaac closed the laptop. Something he didn’t want her to see?
She said, “Want some dinner?”
“Thanks, but I can’t.” He looked down at the linoleum and Petra prepared herself for a lie. “Promised my mother I’d spend some time at home.”
“That’s nice.”
“She cooks these enormous meals and gets deeply hurt if no one’s around to eat them. My father does his bit but it’s not enough, she wants all of us. My younger brother tends to stays out late and sometimes my older brother eats on the job, comes home and goes straight to sleep.”
“Leaving you,” said Petra.
He shrugged. “It’s the weekend.”
“I really do think it’s nice, Isaac. Mothers are important.”
He frowned. Klara, her kids…
“You okay?” said Petra.
“Tired.”
“You’re too young for that.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I don’t feel very young.”
Petra watched him tramp off, lugging the laptop and his briefcase. Something was definitely weighing him down. That junkie, Jaramillo, putting on some kind of pressure? Maybe she’d disobey the Downtown gang guys and confront the kid.
No, that would be a really bad idea.
Still, they’d put her in a bad position. Drafting her into the unpaid job of keeping an eye on the kid with no authority to do anything.
Babysitting, just as it had been all along.
Could she let Isaac go down without a warning? Could she afford not to?
Meanwhile, she’d use him on the June 28 killings.
The mess he’d foisted on her in the first place.
Her head hurt. Time for dinner. Another solitary night. Maybe Eric would call sometime during the weekend.
As she cleared her desk, he phoned, as if she’d conjured him. “Free?”
“Just about. What’s up?”
“Doing things,” he said. “I’d like to tell you about them.”
“I’d like to hear about them.”
They met just after six at a Thai café on Melrose near Gardner, a place favored by faux-depressed hipsters and wannabe performers. But the food was good enough to override the self-conscious atmosphere.
Petra figured she and Eric fit in, at least superficially. He was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, black jeans that drooped on his skinny frame, the crepe-soled black oxfords he favored on stakeout, his oversized, multizone military wristwatch.
Eric was as far as you could get from hip. But add up the clothes, the close-cropped haircut, the indoor complexion, the deep-set eyes and emotionless face and he looked every bit the misunderstood artiste.