I filled him in on Bailey’s late-night call, repeating his version of the escape while Jack Clemson pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head in despair. “What a jerk. No accounting for the way these guys see things.”
He reached for a letter and gave it a contemptuous toss. “Look at this. Know what that is? Hate mail. Some guy got put away twenty-two years ago when I was a PD. He writes me every year from jail like it’s something I did to him. Jesus. When I was in the AG’s office, the AG did a survey of prisoners as to who they blamed for their conviction-you know, ‘why are you in prison and whose fault is it?’ Nobody ever says, ‘It’s my fault … for being a jerk.’ The number-one guy who gets blamed is their own lawyer. ‘If I’da had a real lawyer instead of a PD, I’da got off.’ That’s the number-one guy, okay? His own lawyer. The number-two guy that was blamed was the witness who testified against him. Number three-are you ready?-is the judge who sentenced him. ‘If I’da had a fair judge, this woulda never happened.’ Number four was the police who investigated the case, the investigating officer, whoever caught ‘im. And way down there at the bottom was the prosecuting attorney. Less than ten percent of the people they surveyed could even remember the prosecutor’s name. I’m in the wrong end of the business.” He snorted and leaned forward on his elbows, shoving files around on his desk. “Anyway, skip that. How’s it going from your end? You comin’ up with anything?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said carefully. “I just talked to the principal at Central Coast High. He tells me he saw Jean at the Baptist church a couple of times in the months before she was killed. Word was she was infatuated with your son.”
Dead silence. “Mine?” he said.
I shrugged noncommittally. “Kid named John
Clemson. I assume he’s your son. Was he the student leader of the church youth group?”
“Well, yeah, John did that, but it’s news to me about her.”
“He never said anything to you?”
“No, but I’ll ask.”
“Why don’t I?”
A pause. Jack Clemson was too much the professional to object. “Sure, why not?” He jotted an address and a telephone number on a scratch pad. “This is his business.”
He tore the leaf off and passed it across the desk to me, locking eyes with me. “He’s not involved in her death.”
I stood up. “Let’s hope not.”
16
The business address I’d been given turned out to be a seven-hundred-square-foot pharmacy at one end of a medical facility half a block off Higuera. The complex itself bore an eerie resemblance to the padres’ quarters of half the California missions I’d seen: thick adobe walls, complete with decorator cracks, a long colonnade of twenty-one arches, with a red tile roof, and what looked like an aqueduct tucked into the landscaping. Pigeons were misbehaving up among the eaves, managing to copulate on a perilously tiny ledge.
The pharmacy, amazingly, did not sell beach balls, lawn furniture, children’s clothing, or motor oil. To the left of the entrance were tidy displays of dental wares, feminine hygiene products, hot water bottles and heating pads, corn remedies, body braces of divers kinds, and colostomy supplies. I browsed among the over-the-counter medications while the pharmacist’s assistant chatted with a-customer about the efficacy of vitamin E for hot flashes. The place had a faintly chemical scent, reminiscent of the sticky coating on fresh Polaroid prints. The man I took to be John Clemson was standing behind a shoulder-high partition in a white coat, his head bent to his work. He didn’t look at me, but once the customer left, he murmured something to his assistant, who leaned forward.
“Miss Millhone?” she said. She wore pants and a yellow polyester smock with patch pockets, one of those uniforms that would serve equally for a waitress, an au pair, or an LVN.
“Yes.”
“You want to step back here, please? We’re swamped this morning, but John says he’ll talk to you while he works, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine. Thanks.”
She lifted a hinged portion of the counter, holding it for me while I ducked underneath and came up in a narrow alleyway. The counter on this side was lined with machinery: two computer monitors, a typewriter, a label maker, a printer, and a microfiche reader. Storage bins below the counter were filled with empty translucent plastic pill vials. Ancillary labels on paper rolls were hung in a row, stickers cautioning the recipient: SHAKE WELL; THIS RX CANNOT BE REFILLED; WILL CAUSE DISCOLORATION OF URINE OR FECES; EXTERNAL USE ONLY; and DO NOT FREEZE. On the right were the drug bays, floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with antibiotics, liquids, topical ointments and oral medications, arranged alphabetically. I had, within easy reach, the cure for most of life’s ills: depression, pain, tenderness, apathy, insomnia, heartburn, fever, infection, obsession, and dizziness, excitability, seizures, histrionics, remorse. Given my poor night’s sleep, what I needed were uppers, but it seemed unprofessional to whine and beg.
I’d expected John Clemson to look like his father, but he couldn’t have been more different. He was tall and lean, with a thatch of dark hair. His face, in profile, was thin and lined, his cheeks sunken, cheekbones prominent. He had to be my age, but he had a worn air about him, an aura of weariness, ill health, or despair. He made no eye contact, his attention fixed on the task in front of him. Using a spatula, he was sliding pills, by fives, across the surface of a counting tray. With a rattle, he tumbled pills into a groove on the side, funnel-ing them into an empty plastic vial, which he sealed with a child-proof cap. He affixed a label, set the vial aside, and started again, working with the same automatic grace as a dealer in Vegas. Thin wrists, long, slender fingers. I wondered if his hands would smell of PhisoDerm.
“Sorry I can’t interrupt what I’m doing,” he said mildly. “What can I help you with?” His tone had a light mocking quality, as if something amused him that he might or might not reveal.
“I take it your father called. How much did he tell you?”
“That you’re investigating the murder of Jean Timberlake at his request. I know, of course, that he was hired to represent Bailey Fowler. I don’t know what you want with me.”
“You remember Jean?”
“Yes.“Yes.”
I had hoped for something a little more informative, but I was willing to press. “Can you tell me about your relationship with her?”
His mouth curved up slightly. “My relationship?”
“Somebody told me she used to hang out at the Baptist church. As I understand it, you were a classmate of hers and headed up the youth group back then. I thought maybe the two of you developed a friendship.”
“Jean didn’t have friends. She had conquests.”
“Were you one?”
A bemused smile. “No.”
What was the damn joke here? “Do you remember her coming to church?”
“Oh yes, but it wasn’t me she was interested in. I wish I could say it was. She was very particular, our Miss Timberlake.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning she’d never have tumbled for the likes of me.”
“Oh, really? Why is that?”
He turned his face. The whole right side was disfigured, right eye missing, the lid welded shut by shiny pink and silver scar tissue that extended from his scalp to his jaw. His good eye was large and dark, filled with self-awareness. The missing eye created the illusion of a constant wink. I could see now that his right arm was also badly scarred. “What was it?”
“Automobile accident when I was ten. The gas tank blew up. My mother died and I was left looking like this. It’s better now. I’ve had surgery twice. Back then, the church was my salvation, literally. I was baptized when I was twelve, dedicating my life to Jesus. Who else would have me? Certainly not Jean Timberlake.”
“Were you interested in her?”
“Sure, I was. I was seventeen years old and doomed to be a virgin for life. My bad luck. Good looks ranked high with her because she was so beautiful herself. After that came money, power … sex, of course. I thought about her incessantly. She was so completely venal.”
“But not with you?”
He went back to his work, sliding pills into the trough. “Unfortunately not.”
“Who, then?”
The lips curved up again in that nearly beatific smile. “Well, let’s see now. How much trouble should I make?”
I shrugged, watching him carefully. “Just tell me the truth. What else can you do?”
“I could keep my mouth shut, which is what I’ve done to date.”
“Maybe it’s time to speak up,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
“Who was she involved with?”