Devil’s Waltz. By: Jonathan Kellerman

I stuck around for a few more minutes, listening to a story about her

dogs. But I was thinking about two-legged creatures.

It was 3:45 when I drove out of the parking lot. A few feet from the

exit a motorcycle cop was giving a jaywalking ticket to a nurse. The

nurse looked furious; the cop’s face was a blank tablet.

Traffic on Sunset was obstructed by a four-car fender-bender, and the

accompanying turmoil wrought by rubberneckers and somnolent traffic

officers. It took almost an hour to reach the inanimate green stretch

that was Beverly Hills’ piece of the boulevard. Tile-roofed ego

monuments perched atop hillocks of Bermuda grass and dichondra,

embellished by hostile gates, tennis court sheeting, and the requisite

battalions of German cars.

I passed the stadium-sized weed-choked lot that had once housed the

Arden mansion. The weeds had turned to hay, and all the trees on the

property were dead. The Mediterranean palace had served briefly as a

twenty-year-old Arab sheik’s plaything before being torched by persons

unknown-aesthetic sensibilities offended by puke-green paint and

moronic statuary with blacked-in pubic hair, or just plain

xenophobia.

Whatever the reason for the arson, rumors had been circulating for

years about subdivision and rebuilding. But the real estate slump had

taken the luster off that kind of optimism.

A few blocks later the Beverly Hills Hotel came into view, ringed by a

motorcade of white stretch limos. Someone getting married or promoting

a new film.

As I approached Whittier Drive, I decided to keep going. But when the

letters on the street sign achieved focus, I found myself making a

sudden right turn and driving slowly up the jacarandalined street.

Laurence Ashmore’s house was at the end of the block, a threestory,

limestone Georgian affair on a double lot at least two hundred feet

wide. The building was blocky, and impeccably maintained. A brick

circular drive scythed through a perfect flat lawn. The landscaping

was spare but good, with a preference for azaleas, camellias, and

Hawaiian tree ferns-Georgian goes tropical. A weeping olive tree

shaded half the lawn. The other half was sun-kissed.

To the left of the house was a porte-cochere long enough to shelter one

of the stretches I’d just seen at the hotel. Beyond the wooden gates

were treetops and the flaming red clouds of bougainvillea.

Prime of the prime. Even with the slump, at least four million.

A single car was parked in the circular drive. White Olds Cutlass,

five or six years old. A hundred yards in either direction the curb

was vacant. No black-garbed callers or bouquets on the doorstop.

Shuttered windows; no sign of occupancy. The placard of a security

company was staked in the perfect, clipped grass.

I drove on, made a U-turn, passed the house again and continued home.

Routine calls from my service; nothing from Fort Jackson. I called the

base anyway and asked for Captain Katz. He came on quickly.

I reminded him who I was and told him I hoped I hadn’t interrupted his

dinner.

He said, “No, that’s fine, I was going to call you. Think I found what

you’re after.”

“Great.”

“One second-here it is. Influenza and pneumonia epidemics over the

last ten years, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, far as I can tell, we only had one major flu epidemicone of the

Thai strains back in 73. Which is before your time.”

“Nothing since?”

“Doesn’t look like it. And no pneumonia, period. I mean, I’m sure

we’ve had plenty of isolated flu cases, but nothing that would qualify

as an epidemic. And we’re real good about keeping those kinds of

records. Only thing we usually have to worry about, in terms of

contagion, is bacterial meningitis. You know how tough that can be in

a closed environment.”

“Only one I observed personally was two years ago, and that was serious

enough-soldiers died.”

“What about sequellae-brain damage, seizure disorders?”

“Most probably. I don’t have the data handy but I can get hold of

them. Thinking of changing your research protocol?”

“Not quite yet,” I said. “Just curious.”

“Well,” he said, “that can be a good thing, curiosity. At least out in

the civilian world.”

Stephanie had her hard data, and now I had mine.