His name was Earl Benton, and he looked like a big old farm boy who had somehow awakened in the wrong house and had been forced to clothe himself in the contents of a banker’s closet. His blond-brown hair was combed straight back from his temples, fashionably razor-cut — by a stylist, not a barber — but it didn’t look quite right on him; his blocky face and plain features would probably have been better served by a shaggy, windblown, natural look. His seventeen-inch neck seemed about to pop the collar button on his Yves St. Laurent shirt, and he looked awkward and slightly uncomfortable in his three-piece gray suit. His huge, thick-fingered hands would never be graceful, but the fingernails were professionally manicured.
Laura could tell at a glance that Earl was one of those tens of thousands who came to Los Angeles every year with the hope of moving up in life, which he’d probably already done. He would most likely climb higher too, once he wore off some rough edges and learned to feel at home in his designer clothes. She liked him. He had a nice, wide smile and easy manner, yet he was watchful, alert, intelligent. She met him in the corridor, outside Melanie’s room, and after she explained the situation in more detail than she had given his office on the telephone, she said, ‘I assume you’re armed.’
‘Oh, yes, ma’am.’
‘Good.’
‘I’ll be with you till midnight,’ Earl said, ‘and then a new man’ll come on duty.’
‘Fine.’
A moment later, Laura brought Melanie into the hall, and Earl hunkered down to her level. ‘What a pretty girl you are.’
Melanie said nothing.
‘Fact is,’ he said, ‘you remind me a lot of my sister, Emma.’ Melanie stared through him.
Taking the girl’s slack hand, engulfing it in his two enormous hands, Earl continued to speak directly to her, as though she were holding up her end of the conversation. ‘Emma, she’s nine years younger than me, in her junior year of high school. She’s raised up two prize calves, Emma has. She’s got a collection of prize ribbons, probably twenty of them, from all sorts of competitions, including livestock shows at three different county fairs. You know anything about calves? You like animals? Well, calves are just the
cutest things. Real gentle faces. I’ll bet you’d be good with them, just like Emma.’
Watching him with Melanie, Laura liked Earl Benton even more than she had on first meeting him.
He said, ‘Now, Melanie, don’t you worry about anything, okay? I’m your friend, and as long as old Earl’s your friend, nobody’s going to so much as look crosswise at you.’
The girl seemed utterly unaware of his presence.
He released her hand, and her thin arm dropped back to her side, limp.
Earl stood and rolled his shoulders to settle his jacket in place, and he looked at Laura. ‘You say her daddy was responsible for making her like this?’
‘He’s one of the people responsible,’ Laura said.
‘And he’s … dead?’
‘Yes.’
Some of the others are still alive, though?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure would like to meet one of them. Like to talk to one of them. Just me and him alone for a while. Sure would like that,’ Earl said. There was a hard edge in his voice, a chilling light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before: an anger that, for the first time, made him look dangerous.
Laura liked that too.
‘Now, ma’am — Doctor McCaffrey, I guess I should call you — when we leave here, I’ll go out the door first. I know that’s not gentlemanly behavior, but from now on, most times, I’ll be just a couple feet ahead of you wherever we go, sort of scouting the way ahead, you might say.’
‘I’m sure no one’s going to start shooting at us in broad daylight or anything like that,’ Laura said.
‘Maybe not. But I still go first.’
‘All right.’
‘When I tell you to do something, you right away do it, and no questions asked. Understand?’
She nodded.
He said, ‘I might not yell at you. I might tell you to get down or to run like hell, and I might say it in a soft voice the same way I might say what a nice day it is, so you have to be alert.’