Джонатан Келлерман - Serpentine

Dara Guzman swung a left at the third door, continued to a windowless room with a brown metal desk and chair and three plastic chairs, and sat down behind the desk. Bare walls; maybe the lack of stimulation comforted her.

“Cop and shrink,” she said. “Must be different.”

Milo said, “It can be.”

She turned to me. “You deal with teen suicides?”

“I have.”

“Any words of wisdom?”

“I wish.”

“Brutal,” she said. “At least you’re honest. The kids who died this morning jumped off a five-story building on Main Street. Fourteen and sixteen, horrible home lives, bad deal of cards for both of them. They were madly in love with each other. Also with heroin.”

She threw up her hands.

I said, “Terrible.”

Milo sighed.

Both of us hoping not to be pressed for wisdom we didn’t have.

“Okay,” said Dara Guzman, “might as well get on with your business.”

Not asking for I.D. the way Greg Alomar had. We’d passed some kind of test.

Milo said, “Whatever you can tell us about Dudley Galoway would be helpful.”

“How about he’s a total asshole? What’d you find out about me and him? And where did you find out?”

“Newspaper clipping.” He summed up the zoning dispute.

She said, “That says it all. Look, I’m not claiming he was the only reason I lost. I was young, stupid, had worked for the farmworkers out of college, went to law school but hated it and dropped out and moved out to the boonies with someone I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with.”

She shrugged. “Not your problem. Anyway, Piro seemed like a sweet little town, I thought I’d grow vegetables and mellow out. No idea what it’s like now but it was close to some serious real estate so for all I know it’s like Calabasas.”

I said, “Lots of golf courses there now.”

“Figures. When I was on the council it was agricultural and depended on seasonal workers. Their living conditions were appalling. Falling-down shacks near the town garbage dump, no indoor plumbing, outhouses that overflowed, raw sewage, you get the picture.”

Milo said, “Nasty picture.”

She studied him, assessing sincerity. He sat there, calm.

Dara Guzman twiddled her fingers and continued. “The heirs to one of the old-time families tried to sell some land to a developer who wanted to build Section 8 housing. It sounds crazy, me siding with a developer, but given how the workers lived, lesser of two evils. The property was vacant, on the outskirts, being used for nothing. From all the uproar you’d think convicts were going to be bused in. I pushed for it, everyone piled up against me, I didn’t stand a chance. But that’s not what bothered me about Galoway and his wife. It was the way they went about it. Attacking me personally during council meetings. No raised voices, just sarcastic insinuations that I was a spy for some radical group, out to ruin the town. The other council members didn’t agree with me but they were decent about it. The issue stayed civil until those two entered the picture. They actually got reprimanded by the other members of the council, but that didn’t change the vote.”

She opened a desk drawer, pulled out a box of staples, removed one and played with it. “I licked my wounds and tried to figure out my future. Then they killed my dog.”

“Geez,” said Milo.

“Geez Louise. Baxter was sixteen years old, big old husky with gorgeous blue eyes. Not doing great, he probably had a year or two. Despite all that coat, when he got old, he got cold. Liked to sit outside and snooze and sun himself. One evening, he’s been out there enjoying himself for a few hours, I come out to take him for his wee-walk and find him on his back, stone-cold.”

Her mouth twisted. A single tear ran down her right cheek. “I figured he’s old, had a heart attack. Then I see white crusty stuff around his mouth and it kind of smells of almonds but it still didn’t register. I bring Baxter to the vet for cremation and she smells it. Didn’t say anything at the time but took it upon herself to do a necropsy gratis and found a big chunk of hamburger in Baxter’s tummy, laced with what turned out to be cyanide. She asks me do I lay down rat poison, I say no way, I’m totally organic. She says do you have apricot trees, cherries, has he been known to chew a lot of pits. I say all I’ve got is one scraggly tangerine and Baxter didn’t stray. She says, then I’m afraid someone killed your dog. I told the sheriffs, including who I suspected, lot of good that did. My property was unfenced, anyone could’ve walked in and fed the meat to Baxter. He loved his food. He had no protective instincts.”

“You told them it was Galoway.”

“Or her. Maybe only her, to my eye she was meaner than him. One of those hard-body types, the formfitting jeans, the cowgirl boots, big blond hair, full of herself. Never smiled. He did but it was sleazy. The two of them were a pair. Are they still in Piro?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“The Valley.”

“Big place,” said Dara Guzman.

“It is.”

“You’re not going to be specific? Fine, I couldn’t care less.”

I said, “Did they own land in Piro?”

“They lived on a couple of acres, big old house, not much in the way of flowers or trees. Most of it was used for their horses.”

“Ranch situation.”

“More like a house with horses, four or five,” said Guzman. “You’d see her prancing into town, tall in the saddle. Using a whip too much for my taste but what do I know? Never rode myself.”

Milo showed her the Azalea photo with Dorothy/Martha’s face isolated.

She said, “She was older when I knew her but could be…yeah, kick it up to probably. Notice the eyes? Mean. They really were a pair. ” To me: “There’s probably a name for that. People building on each other’s meanness.”

I said, “Hooking up with the wrong people.”

She laughed, looked at Milo.

He said, “Should’ve warned you. He hates jargon.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s a plus. You interested in volunteering from time to time, Dr. Delaware?”

“It’s possible.”

“Noncommittal? He says you’re only part-time with him. What else do you do?”

“Private practice and teaching.”

“So you make good money, why not give back? We could use some teaching, here. In-service seminars for staff, maybe counsel some of the kids.”

“Let’s trade cards.” I handed her mine and she scrounged in her desk before coming up with a fuzzy-edged rectangle of cheap paper.

“Got your number, Doc.”

I said, “What name did she go by?”

“Hmm. Don’t know if I ever knew it. He was on the council, she just hung around. I always thought of her as The Bitch.”

Milo smiled, “Anything else you can tell us?”

“Nah,” said Dara Guzman. “I do hope you pin something on them. Tonight I’m going to be thinking about Baxter.”

CHAPTER 35

Red everywhere on Waze, as if the city were bleeding. Time to settle back for the ride and pretend it was leisurely by choice.

Milo said, “Nasty woman, rides horses, maybe poisons a dog just for the fun of it. Add whoever was in the Caddy, the bodies she piled up with Leigh, and possibly Seeger, and she’s a one-woman crime wave.”

He shook his head. “Despite what we said about psychopaths, people like that aren’t good at relationships, right? How’d she and Galoway manage to stick together all these years?”

I said, “Two hammers looking for nails.”

—

He hooked north on Veteran Avenue, driving through a maze of residential streets that traced the U.’s western periphery. More foot traffic than usual for L.A. as skinny-jeaned, backpacked adolescents darted across the street, plugged in and unfocused.