Crossing the yard, Dollard walked even farther ahead. Big Chet was on the yard and he started to come over, gesticulating and laughing, rugging at his hair like a toddler.
Dollard’s palm shot out. “Stay back!”
The giant halted, pouted, yanked a clump of hair out of his head. The yellow filaments floated to the ground like dandelion petals.
His expression said, Look what you made me do.
“Idiot,” Dollard growled.
Chet’s eyes slitted.
Dollard waved and two techs jogged over from across the yard. Chet saw them, froze, finally skulked away. Four steps later, he stopped, looked at us over his shoulder.
“Mark my words,” he bellowed. “Cherchez la femme Champs Elysees!”
Dollard threw the gate open, slammed it after us, left without a word.
As we waited to get Milo’s gun and my knife, I said, “Something sure yanked his shorts.”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” he said. The moment we got in the Seville, he was on
the cell phone, asking for the number of the Hemet police department. I let the car idle as he talked. The car seat was a griddle and I cranked the air-conditioning to an arctic blast. Milo got transferred half a dozen times, maintained collegia! cheer through every step, but he looked as if he’d swallowed something slimy. The air inside the car cooled, hit my face, turned my sweat icy. Milo was drenched.
He hung up. “Finally got a supervisor who’d talk. Heidi was right. Dollard was a major-league goldbrick: ignored calls in his zone, took unauthorized leaves, put in for unjustified overtime. They couldn’t prove anything serious enough to prosecute him-probably didn’t want to. Easier just to ask him to leave.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Four years ago. He went straight to Starkweather. Supervisor made a crack about nutcases being perfect for Frank, no one to complain when he slacked off.”
“Swig likes him,” I said. “Tells you something about Swig.”
“High standards, all around.”
I drove out of the parking lot. Convection waves rose from the asphalt.
“What did you do to get Peake to play Jesus in the school play?”
“Mentioned the Ardullos’ names. After I got a response to Claire’s name-eye tics, tensing up. When I whispered Brittany’s and Justin’s names into his ear he jumped up, ran to the wall, assumed the pose. I’d been thinking of him as lethargic, stuporous, but he can move fast when he wants to. If he’d jumped me, I’d have been unprepared.”
“So he’s not a total veg. Maybe he’s a sneaky bastard, playing all of us. Makes sense when you think about how he walked in on his mother. She’s sitting there coring apples, he gets behind her, she has no idea what he’s going to do.”
“He surprised the Ardullos, too,” I said. “Sheriff Haas said they left their doors unlocked.”
“Everyone’s nightmare. Right out of a splatter flick.”
The eucalyptus forest appeared, a big gray bear split by a yawning mouth of road.
“So,” he said, “was he crying real tears?”
“Copiously. But I’m not sure it was remorse. When he turned and stared at me, I started to feel something else: self-pity. The Jesus pose fits that, too. As if he sees himself as a martyr.”
“Sick bastard,” he said.
“Or maybe,” I said, “hearing the kids’ names evoked an overpowering memory. Recall of not acting alone. Of taking the rap for something the Crimmins brothers put him up to. Maybe he communicated that to Claire. I didn’t see anything close to speech, but with a lowered dosage…”
He cooled his hands on the air-conditioning vent. “Why do you think Dollard turned so hostile?”
“Antsy about our return visit. Something to hide.”
Milo didn’t answer. We exited the forest and summer light whitened the windshield.
The trees shimmered as they broiled. I could sense the heat trying to claw its way in.
“What about some kind of hospital scam?” I said. “Financial mismanagement. Or
trafficking in prescription drugs. Claire found out about it and that’s what put her in jeopardy. Maybe Peake knew, too. Learned someone was going to hurt Claire and the
‘prophecy’ was his way of warning her.”
We were free of the hospital grounds, heading toward the sludge yards and the freight barns. I wondered where the rear forest behind the annexes led, was unable to see the tall dark trees from here.