The cameraman said, “All right, Ardis, I’ve got enough background. One way or the other, let’s do the cunt.”
The auburn-haired woman opened her good eye. Saw Milo. Moved her mouth around the red ball, as if trying to spit it out. I knew who she was. Sheriff Haas’s wife-Marvelle Haas.
Mail on the table, one day, maybe two. One car gone, the wife left alone.
She began shivering violently.
The young girl remained glazed.
The cameraman turned toward Marvelle, gave us a full view of his profile. Deep lines scored the sides of a lipless mouth. Grainy, tanned skin, several shades darker than the white, hairless head. The head accustomed to wigs. Small but aggressive chin.
Beak nose sharp enough to draw blood. No facial fat, but loose jowls, stringy neck.
Forearms wormed by veins. Big hands. Dirty nails. Derrick Crimmins was turning steadily into his father. His father had been a sour, grasping man, but nothing said he’d been anything other than a flawed human being.
Here in front of me was monstrosity.
Yet open him up and there’d be unremarkable viscera. Bouncing around the vault of his skull would be a lump of gray jelly, outwardly indistinguishable from the brain of a saint.
A man-it always came down to just a man.
Marvelle Haas closed her eyes again. Whimpers struggled to escape from behind the red ball. All that emerged were pitiful squeaks. Milo crouched, ready to shoot, but
Crimmins was still too close to the line.
“Open your eyes, Mrs. Haas,” said Crimmins. “Give me your eyes, honey, come on. I want to catch your expression the moment it happens.”
He checked the tape around Peake’s hand. Adjusted the gun barrel so that it centered on Marvelle Haas’s left temple.
She squeaked.
He said, “Come on, let’s be professional about this.” Moved toward her. Away from the fishing line.
“Used to fish,” he said, arranging her hair, parting her housedress. Slipping a hand under the fabric and rubbing, pinching. “Look what I caught here.”
Still within arm’s reach of the line.
“Back when I fished,” he said, “a tug on the line meant you’d caught something. This time it means throwing something away.”
She turned away from him. He moved to the left, focusing, filming.
Away from the line. Far enough away.
“Don’t move! Drop your hands! Drop ’em drop ’em now!”
Derrick Crimmins froze. Turned around. The look on his owlish face was odd: surprised-betrayed.
Then the flush of rage. “This is a private shoot. Where’s your pass?”
“Drop your hand, Crimmins. Do it now!”
“Oh,” said Crimmins. “You talk so I’m supposed to listen, asshole?”
“Drop it, Crimmins, this is the last time- ”
Crimmins said, “Okay, you win.”
He shrugged. The lipless mouth curved upward “Oh well,” he said.
He lunged for the fishing line. Milo shot him in the smile.
41.
THE EXPLORER SHOWED up on a Hollywood Division want list. Stolen from a strip mall at Western and Sunset two months before. In the rear storage area were five sets of license plates, three phony registrations, two videocams, a dozen cassettes, candy wrappers, soda cans. Wedged in the spare-tire case, barbiturates, Thorazine, methamphetamine.
Hedy Haupt was traced to a family in Yuma, Arizona. Father’s whereabouts unknown,
Welfare Department clerk mother, one brother who worked for the Phoenix fire department. Hedy had earned a B average during her first three years at Yuma High, played a starring role on the track and basketball teams. After she “fell in with a bad crowd” during her senior year, her grades had plummeted and she’d dropped out, earned a GED, gotten a job at Burger King, run away. During the ensuing eight years, her mother had seen her twice, once for Christmas five years ago, then a one-week visit last year, during which she’d been accompanied by a boyfriend named Griff.
“Had a bad feeling about him,” Mrs. Haupt told Milo. “Carried a camera around and did nothing but take our picture. Wore nothing but black, like someone died.”
Milo and Mike Whitworth found the tapes while excavating the mounds of stolen goods in the garage at Orange Drive. Sixteen cassettes in black plastic cases, buried under thousands of dollars’ worth of motion picture gear that Derrick Crimmins had lacked the will, or the ability, to master.