Most Californians smugly believed that they were perfectly adjusted to life in earthquake country; but in ways of which they were not aware, the psychological stress continued to shape and change them. Fear of the impending catastrophe was an everpresent whisper that propagandized the subconscious mind, a very influential whisper that molded people’s attitudes and characters more than they would ever know.
Of course, it was just one whisper among many.
***
Hilary wasn’t surprised by the police response to her story, and she tried not to let it upset her.
Less than five minutes after Tony placed the call from a neighbor’s home, approximately thirty-five minutes before the morning earthquake, two uniformed officers in a black-and-white arrived at Hilary’s house, lights flashing, no siren. With typical, bored, professional dispatch and courtesy, they duly recorded her version of the incident, located the point at which the house had been breached by the intruder (a study window again), made a general listing of the damage in the living room and the dining room, and gathered the other information required for the proper completion of a crime report. Because Hilary had said that the assailant had worn gloves, they decided not to bother calling for a lab man and a fingerprint search.
They were intrigued by her contention that the man who attacked her was the same man she thought she had killed last Thursday. Their interest had nothing to do with a desire to determine if she was correct in her identification of the culprit; they made up their minds about that as soon as they heard her story. So far as they were concerned, there was no chance whatsoever that the assailant could have been Bruno Frye. They asked her to repeat her account of the attack several times, and they frequently interrupted with questions; but they were only trying to determine if she was genuinely mistaken, hysterical and confused, or lying. After a while, they decided that she was slightly mixed up due to shock, and that her confusion was exacerbated by the intruder’s resemblance to Bruno Frye.
“We’ll work from this description you’ve given us,” one of them said.
“But we can’t put an APB on a dead man,” said the other. “I’m sure you understand that.”
“It was Bruno Frye,” Hilary said doggedly.
“Well, there’s just no way we can go with that, Miss Thomas.”
Although Tony supported her story as best he could without having seen the assailant, his arguments and his position with the Los Angeles Police Department made little or no impression on the uniformed officers. They listened politely, nodded a lot, but were not swayed.
Twenty minutes after the morning earthquake, Tony and Hilary stood at the front door and watched the black-and-white police cruiser as it pulled out of the driveway.
Frustrated, she said, “Now what?”
“Now you’ll finish packing that suitcase, and we’ll go to my apartment. I’ll call the office and have a chat with Harry Lubbock.”
“Who’s he?”
“My boss. Captain Lubbock. He knows me pretty damned well, and we respect each other. Harry knows I don’t go out on a limb unless I’ve thoroughly tested it first. I’ll ask him to take another look at Bruno Frye, get some deeper background on the man. And Harry can put more pressure on Sheriff Laurenski than he’s done so far. Don’t worry. One way or another, I’ll get some action.”
But forty-five minutes later, in Tony’s kitchen, when he placed the call, he could not get any satisfaction from Harry Lubbock. The captain listened to everything that Tony had to say, and he didn’t doubt that Hilary thought she had seen Bruno Frye, but he couldn’t find any justification for launching an investigation of Frye in conjunction with a crime that had been committed days after the man’s death. He was not prepared to consider the one-in-ten-million chance that the coroner had been wrong and that Frye miraculously had survived massive blood loss, an autopsy, and subsequent refrigeration in the morgue. Harry was sympathetic, soft-spoken, and endlessly patient, but it was clear that he thought Hilary’s observations were unreliable, her perceptions distorted by terror and hysteria.
Tony sat down beside her, on one of the three breakfast bar stools, and told her what Lubbock had said.