Jonathan Kellerman - Devil's Waltz

“When exactly did she terminate?”

“That I can tell you.” She flipped a few pages and pointed to a code that I couldn’t comprehend. “Here we go. You’re right — about her being here in February. But that was her last month — she gave notice on the fifteenth, went officially off payroll on the twenty-eighth.”

“The fifteenth,” I said. The day after pulling Chad Jones’s chart.

“That’s right. See right here? Two slash fifteen?”

I stuck around for a few more minutes, listening to a story about her dogs. But I was thinking about two-legged creatures.

It was 3:45 when I drove out of the parking lot. A few feet from the exit a motorcycle cop was giving a jaywalking ticket to a nurse. The nurse looked furious; the cop’s face was a blank tablet.

Traffic on Sunset was obstructed by a four-car fender-bender, and the accompanying turmoil wrought by rubberneckers and somnolent traffic officers. It took almost an hour to reach the inanimate green stretch that was Beverly Hills’s piece of the boulevard. Tile-roofed ego monuments perched atop hillocks of Bermuda grass and dichondra, embellished by hostile gates, tennis court sheeting, and the requisite battalions of German cars.

I passed the stadium-sized weed-choked lot that had once housed the Arden mansion. The weeds had turned to hay, and all the trees on the property were dead. The Mediterranean palace had served briefly as a twenty-year-old Arab sheik’s plaything before being torched by persons unknown — aesthetic sensibilities offended by puke-green paint and moronic statuary with blacked-in pubic hair, or just plain xenophobia. Whatever the reason for the arson, rumors had been circulating for years about subdivision and rebuilding. But the real estate slump had taken the luster off that kind of optimism.

A few blocks later the Beverly Hills Hotel came into view, ringed by a motorcade of white stretch limos. Someone getting married or promoting a new film.

As I approached Whittier Drive, I decided to keep going. But when the letters on the street sign achieved focus, I found myself making a sudden right turn and driving slowly up the jacaranda-lined street.

Laurence Ashmore’s house was at the end of the block, a three-story, limestone Georgian affair on a double lot at least two hundred feet wide. The building was blocky, and impeccably maintained. A brick circular drive scythed through a perfect flat lawn. The landscaping was spare but good, with a preference for azaleas, camellias, and Hawaiian tree ferns — Georgian goes tropical. A weeping olive tree shaded half the lawn. The other half was sun-kissed.

To the left of the house was a porte-cochere long enough to shelter one of the stretches I’d just seen at the hotel. Beyond the wooden gates were treetops and the flaming red clouds of bougainvillea.

Prime of the prime. Even with the slump, at least four million.

A single car was parked in the circular drive. White Olds Cutlass, five or six years old. A hundred yards in either direction the curb was vacant. No black-garbed callers or bouquets on the doorstop. Shuttered windows; no sign of occupancy. The placard of a security company was staked in the perfect, clipped grass.

I drove on, made a U-turn, passed the house again and continued home.

Routine calls from my service; nothing from Fort Jackson. I called the base anyway and asked for Captain Katz. He came on quickly.

I reminded him who I was and told him I hoped I hadn’t interrupted his dinner.

He said, “No, that’s fine, I was going to call you. Think I found what you’re after.”

“Great.”

“One second — here it is. Influenza and pneumonia epidemics over the last ten years, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, far as I can tell, we only had one major flu epidemic — one of the Thai strains — back in ’73. Which is before your time.”

“Nothing since?”

“Doesn’t look like it. And no pneumonia, period. I mean, I’m sure we’ve had plenty of isolated flu cases, but nothing that would qualify as an epidemic. And we’re real good about keeping those kinds of records. Only thing we usually have to worry about, in terms of contagion, is bacterial meningitis. You know how tough that can be in a closed environment.”

“Sure,” I said. “Have you had epidemics of meningitis?”

“A few. The most recent was two years ago. Before that, ’83, then ’78 and ’75 — almost looks cyclical, come to think of it. Might be worth checking that out, see if someone can come up with a pattern.”

“How serious were the outbreaks?”

“Only one I observed personally was two years ago, and that was serious enough — soldiers died.”

“What about sequelae — brain damage, seizure disorders?”

“Most probably. I don’t have the data handy but I can get hold of them. Thinking of changing your research protocol?”

“Not quite yet,” I said. “Just curious.”

“Well,” he said, “that can be a good thing, curiosity. At least out in the civilian world.”

Stephanie had her hard data, and now I had mine.

Cindy had lied about her discharge.

Maybe Laurence Ashmore found some data too. Saw Cassie’s name on the admission and discharge sheets and got curious.

What else could have caused him to take another look at Chad Jones’s chart?

He’d never be able to tell me, but maybe his former assistant could.

I called 213, 310, and 818 Informations for a listing on Dawn Kent Herbert and got nowhere. Expanded my search to 805, 714, and 619 with the same result, then phoned Milo at Parker Center. He picked up and said, “Heard about your homicide last night.”

“I was at the hospital when it happened.” I told him about being questioned, the scene in the lobby. Feeling as if I’d been watched when I left the parking structure.

“Be careful, bucko. I got your message on Bottomley’s hubby, but I’ve got no domestic violence calls to her address and there’s no one on NCIC who could be her hubby. But she does have a troublemaker living there. Reginald Douglas Bottomley, D.O.B. ’70. Which would probably make him her son or maybe an errant nephew.”

“What’d he do to get in trouble?”

“Lots — he’s got a sheet long enough to cover Abdul-Jabbar’s bed. Sealed juvenile file, then a bunch of DUIs, possession, shoplifting, petty theft, burglary, robbery, assault. Lots of busts, a few convictions, a teensy bit of jail time, mostly at County. Got a call in to a detective over at Foothill Division, see what he knows. What’s the relevance of Bottomley’s home situation to the little kid?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “Just looking for stress factors that might get her to act out. Probably because she was getting on my nerves. ’Course, if Reggie turned out bad because Vicki abused him, that would tell us something. Meanwhile, I’ve got something that definitely is relevant. Cindy Jones lied about her military discharge. I just talked to Fort Jackson and there was no pneumonia epidemic in ’83.”

“That so?”

“She might have had pneumonia, but it wasn’t part of any outbreak. And she made a point about the epidemic.”

“Seems a stupid thing to lie about.”

“The Munchausen game,” I said. “Or maybe she was covering up something. Remember I told you the discharge seemed a sensitive topic for her — how she blushed and yanked her braid? The public health officer at the army base said there was an epidemic in ’83 — just about the time Cindy would have been in. But it was bacterial meningitis . Which can lead to seizures. Giving us a link to another organ system Cassie’s had problems with. In fact, she had a grand mal seizure last night. In the hospital.”

“That’s a first.”