Fugitive Nights(47)

Another twelve hundred was due for the home mortgage, and a thousand dollars in office rent was due. Her landlord was the kind of guy who would tip a parking attendant fifty cents and expect to be thanked for it. When she'd complained about her rent the old geek had rolled his watery eyes, leaned over his desk until she was breathing his ghastly cologne and said, "Breda, we could work out something, you and me."

Breda cooled him down by saying, "Melvyn, I'm going to have to trim your nose hair if this conversation is to continue. I've painted my kitchen table with smaller brushes than that."

The crap a woman alone had to put up with to stay in business!

Breda's wildest hope was that Jack Graves would tail Clive Devon to a tryst and videotape it with the camera she was going to provide. She felt certain that if she had absolute proof of a lover, Rhonda Devon would be satisfied enough to confront her husband and deal with the sperm bank question on her own. By now, Breda was certain that the sperm bank must have something to do with an heir and money.

She was also sure that, in her own strange way, Rhonda Devon wanted to keep her husband even though she probably had more affairs than the Rolling Stones, and probably with both sexes. Breda hadn't forgotten the way her client had looked at her while drinking that martini. Maybe it wasn't exactly love that Rhonda Devon had for him, but a need for something more than his money.

Well, it was silly to try to understand people who were that rich. They were different, Breda was sure of it. So she'd be there in the morning with the video camera and hope that Jack Graves might get the chance to use it. She had faith in him.

Jack Graves. Breda wondered if he and his wife had split up before or after the shooting of the child. She hoped it was before, that a wife wouldn't abandon a man after something like that. He wasn't the first cop to get involved in that kind of a shooting. She could've done it herself once.

Breda and two male detectives had been attempting to serve a felony warrant for murder on a gangbanger at a housing project in Watts. They believed he was at home, but nobody answered their knock at 1:10 a. M. One of the detectives slipped the lock with a credit card and all three entered, guns drawn. Breda took the back bedroom. She heard footsteps. She wheeled and aimed! It was a rabbit.

A white, pink-eyed rabbit was hopping around a bedroom in the ghetto of Los Angeles. There was rabbit shit everywhere, but no suspect. She'd come within an ounce of trigger pull of blowing that bunny's ears off and a lot more. The rabbit stood in front of an infant lying on the floor in a nest of blankets, where she'd been left by her addict mother.

According to Lynn, Jack Graves had killed a twelve-year-old Mexican kid. His bunny had been a human child. Maybe Lynn was right, that getting out of the mobile home and back into something that at least approximated police work would help him. But Breda didn't think it would.

She'd worked with a cop who had the same look as Jack Graves. Stan McAffee, her old partner, used to complain of migraines for which they could find no physiological source. She'd liked Stan, everyone did. They'd go to ball games, movies, even out to dinner. She'd allowed herself to have a belated romance with him, but it was too late. The headaches had grown unbearable, or so he claimed. Three weeks after retiring from LAPD, he'd swallowed The Big .38 Caliber Aspirin.

She'd cried her eyes out at his funeral when the solitary police bagpiper played a somber march while they lowered the casket. Stan had eyes like Jack Graves.

When he got back to his mobile home in Windy Point, Jack Graves carefully watered all his indoor plants. Today was the day to do it, but he hadn't because he'd been busy helping Breda Burrows. He'd have to set the alarm for 5:30 a. M. to allow himself enough time for a bowl of cereal and two cups of coffee. He wouldn't have time to read the paper but he could take that with him. While sitting in his car on Clive Devon's street he'd probably have lots of time to read the paper. He did everything carefully, meticulously. He'd developed an overriding need for order.

The yip yip yip of coyotes. Then a keening, almost lost in the wind. Then more coyote voices, a pack of twelve sounding like a hundred. Jack Graves opened the door and stepped out into the desert night to listen. The wind was howling down the pass and the moon flooded the foothills with white light. And there was a white glaze across the sky but beyond it he could see the dipper. Perhaps the brooding wind or the eerie light was stirring the wild hearts of the little desert wolves. They sounded deliriously happy.

The coyotes were full of themselves all right, singing their songs, wild young songs. Jack Graves felt old, and cold to the bone. His teeth clicked together when he walked shivering back inside the mobile home.