Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Hello, children,” he said. “What’s new?”

“This and that.” Mike squeezed my hand. “What’s new with you, Guido?”

“My friend the computer nerd generated an interesting picture for us.” He led us inside. “Until I saw it, I hadn’t realized the political implications of the case.”

Guido was grinning. I knew we had to let him play his joke to the end before we could move forward. He winked at me.

“You look good, Maggie,” he said. “Even better than yesterday. You been running or something?”

“Why?”

“Well, your hair’s a little damp in the back there. Thought maybe you ran all the way over.”

“I just got out of the shower, Guido,” I said, glaring a little. “So did Mike. You want a play-by-play?”

He winked again. “Why should I care?”

“Indeed,” I said. “Can we see the picture now?”

“On the table.”

Mike lifted a file folder from the coffee table and opened it. He looked, grimaced, and passed it to me.

I looked. I sighed. “Very funny, Guido. Richard Nixon was driving the red Corvette I taped?”

“Sorts.” He bounced up next to me and peered over my shoulder. With his thumbnail, he outlined the face. “See this furriness along the jaw, around the eye sockets, and around the hairline? The computer couldn’t read it. My nerd and I speculate that your man – or your woman – was wearing a mask.”

Mike put on his glasses to look closer. “Son of a bitch.”

“Surely someone would have noticed,” I said.

“I didn’t. You didn’t.” Guido shrugged. “Anyway, this is L.A. If you saw some guy wearing a mask, you wouldn’t think a lot about it. Especially a guy trolling for poontang in a car like that ‘vette. Looking for a little anonymity.”

“What do I owe your nerd?” I asked.

Guido shook his head. “Nada. He assigned this as a class project. They got a big yuk out of it. Helped his image a lot. If he gets a date with a student, I think he should owe you.”

“Good, because I have something else you might pass along to him.” I handed him the two rolls of exposed film I had in my bag. “I shot one of these rolls of the slasher this afternoon. The other one is Mike. I didn’t mark them, so I don’t know which is which. Would you develop them all for me?”

He frowned. “Okay. But there’s a one-hour processor down on Cahuenga. Wouldn’t that be faster?”

“Here’s the problem,” I said. “I never got the subject’s full face.”

“Mike’s or the slasher’s?” Guido grinned.

“I got all of Mike, Guido. Buck naked, in the moment of ecstasy.”

“Maggie!” Mike blushed. “You did not.”

I turned to him. “I was simply offering Guido some incentive. Next time, though, I am taking the camera to bed with us.”

He laughed. “When was the last time we made it all the way to the bed?”

Guido was comically round-eyed.

“So, Guido,” I said, “the program is this: I want you to go through every shot and isolate the face parts. Then I want you to reassemble them and make a whole face for me.”

“Like a jigsaw puzzle?”

“Something like that. Can you do it?”

“We can do something, my computer nerd and I. Something beyond cut-and-paste.” He looked down at the film in his hand, and I knew the film was talking back to him. Guido sometimes seems really hyper. He isn’t, exactly. It’s just that when his mind is working on overdrive, the excess electricity he generates makes him bounce. All the springs in his taut body cannot be stilled. He could never play poker.

I grabbed his hard forearm, anchoring him like the string on a helium balloon.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, Guido?” I said.

“Interesting? God, there’s an understatement.”

Mike frowned. “I don’t get it. I mean, it’s pretty damned amazing Maggie might have this guy’s face on film. But that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

“What do you see, Guido?” I asked.

“Same as you. A collage. Fragments cut and pasted together. In the end, when you sort it all out, what will you have? The truth? Or another mask?”

“Or another sort of mask?” I said. “I believe the only naked truth lies under those blurry edges your computer nerd couldn’t read. When you stitch me together a new face from this film, are you going to show me what’s under the blur, or just more obfuscation? What’ll it be, truth or a new lie?”

“Just don’t mess up the negatives,” Mike said. “They’re evidence.”

“Trust me,” Guido said. “How much time do I have?”

“None,” I said. “We need it now.”

“Let me call my friend and see if I can lure him back to campus.” Still bouncing on his springs, Guido went to the next room to use the telephone.

Mike was giving me a dark look. “You two were talking in some sort of code. What’s up?”

“Basically, the structure of this film project. More than that, though, it’s the whole question of what happened to Hillary.” I let out a breath and studied the grotesque parody of a face lying on its manila folder on the table. Then I turned to Mike.

“When I moved into my house,” I said, “there were ten layers of wallpaper on the kitchen walls. I was interested in seeing the old patterns, to get some idea what the kitchen used to look like, what I might try. I started stripping it. But every time I had cleared away a goodly patch and could almost get some effect, I would break through to the next layer, and the next. Each layer obscuring the others. So you know what I did?”

“Tell me.”

“I said fuck it. I rented a steamer and stripped the walls down to the plaster.”

“Seems consistent with the woman I know and love.” He smiled. “What is the point of this story?”

“This Hillary thing is like that, layers. Peel one away, find another.”

“Most police work is like that.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You never get the whole picture. You just hope for enough pieces so you can put the bad guys away.”

“We were set up, Mike.”

“How?”

“You said it last night when Randy was found. We were meant to find him. There are two overlapping layers here, two chronologies of events. The first is the chronology of discovery: Hillary is found first, then Randy. Then there is the chronology of death: first Randy, then Hillary.”

“Right. So?”

“So, it’s time to rent a steamer, Mike. Find the bare walls.”

“Where do you think you’ll find this steamer?”

“Hanna Ramsdale’s mother.”

He nodded with a sort of weary resignation. “I have to talk to her. She probably hasn’t been told her granddaughter is dead.”

“She should know. What were you waiting for?”

“Daylight, I guess. I hate bringing bad news to old ladies.” Guido came back just then.

“All set,” he said. “I’m meeting nerdo at the computer lab in fifteen minutes. It’s a twenty-minute drive, so I’m out of here. Maggie, how do I reach you?”

“Mike’s machine.”

“Mi casa es su casa. Stay here if you like. Bye.” He ran, or rather he sprang, out the front door and banged it behind him. “Shall we raid the refrigerator?” Mike said.

“Let’s get something on the way.”

“On the way to?”

“Pasadena. Isn’t that where Hanna’s mother is?”

Somewhere between Highland Park and South Pasadena, Mike’s pager went off. He unclipped it from his belt and handed it to me.

“Can you read it?” he asked. If he put his reading glasses on, he wouldn’t be able to see beyond the hood of the car.

I had to wipe double-cheese Bingo Burger slime from my hands before I could take it. I punched the read-out button. “Your office,” I said.