There was a woman on his sofa, snoring softly. Not his wife. Melody, a slender, tattooed arm hanging out from beneath a throw his mom had crocheted for him before his first tour in Afghanistan. A piece of home, she’d said proudly as she’d presented it to him. He would never tell her the truth, that he hadn’t taken it with him on either tour because he didn’t want it despoiled by war, and it had been the right decision.
Apparently, the early morning thud of the Los Angeles Times hitting the front stoop had stirred Melody awake because it was lying on her chest, opened to a headline that read: “Third Woman Found Mutilated—Is There a Monster in Miracle Mile?”
A really stupid article because of course there was a monster in Miracle Mile; he’d butchered two women since April, and today’s grisly discovery on June tenth made it three. One a month. There had been a low-level frisson in the city, people on edge, waiting to see if there would be another. When there would be another. And now, in their incalculable idiocy, the press had granted him a moniker, further motivation to keep up the great work.
Sam squinted against the sunlight coming through the partially opened living room blinds, felt a wicked headache start to gnaw at the fringes of his scrambled brain. He noticed the black Jeep Rubicon parked across the street again, morning dew pearling on all the tinted windows except for the driver’s side that faced his house. He’d been seeing it intermittently for the past few months, and as stupid and irrational as it was, its presence agitated him. Then again, a lot of things agitated him lately; topping the list were his uncertainty about his mental stability and his ambivalence toward his future.
Sam closed the shade and gathered twelve empty beer bottles from the coffee table. It had been a long night. More for Melody than for him. He’d had five beers, the rest were hers. No wonder his screaming hadn’t wakened her.
Chapter Six
VIVIAN EASTON SERVED COFFEE FROM HER great grandmother’s Tiffany sterling service, pouring into delicate Limoges cups. The pieces were such beautiful relics of a bygone era, a part of her inheritance she rarely used. It was so nice to finally have an occasion to open the glass-front hutch and revisit her family history, as ignominious as it was.
Their association with William Mulholland and the Los Angeles Aqueduct project at the turn of the twentieth century had made fortunes for all involved by desiccating and destroying entire towns through chicanery and propaganda. She wasn’t particularly proud of that legacy, and her mother had rebelled violently against it, joining the 60s counterculture and never leaving, even when it was long dead. Quite an overreaction in her opinion.
In spite of some personal misgivings about her family wealth, it still frosted her that Mulholland had a famous road named after him when it was her great-grandfather who’d really made the aqueduct a reality. He’d done so much for the city, helped make Los Angeles what it was today. He’d also made golf courses in the former desert of Southern California possible, which in her mind was redemption of a sort for past sins.
“Do you take cream or sugar these days, Lee?”
“No, but thank you, Vivian.” General Leland Varney was a broad and effusive man, and his florid cheeks impressed on people the appearance of perpetual anger. But Vivian had always found him to be a magnanimous and jolly soul despite his rank and the political maneuvering it had undoubtedly taken to get there.
He took a sip from his flowered china cup and gestured expansively, as if bestowing upon the world the graces of her lovely Pasadena yard. “This is such a beautiful place. The gardens are glorious. I always remembered you had quite a green thumb, but I don’t recall the pool.”
“Jack and I put it in the year before he died. It was his favorite thing in the world. I couldn’t keep him out of the water.”
“I don’t doubt that Jack loved it. Water was in his soul. I always wondered why he chose the Army instead of the Navy. Whenever I asked, he was vague about it.”
Vivian raised a brow circumspectly. “That surprises me. I never considered Jack to be vague about anything. He never mentioned his father?”
“Oh, he did, but always in passing. Colonel Dean Easton, very decorated, a Vietnam war hero.”
“And an intransigent Army man. Dean’s influence was encompassing, and he wouldn’t hear of the Navy. It was West Point or nothing.”
Lee shook his head ruefully and let his gaze drift to the pergola, riotous with lush pendulums of lavender wisteria. “God, I miss Jack. Horribly unfair, him being taken from us so young.”
Vivian nodded solemnly. It was unfair, a fit and vibrant man taken down by a faulty heart. Humans were all just ticking genetic time bombs, waiting to explode. Jack had told her that in the hospital in the presence of his doctors, who’d given bland smiles and uneasy nods. They knew. Life was short, and if the capricious lottery of DNA didn’t favor you, it was much shorter. “I thought it would get easier with time, that’s what they tell you, but sometimes I think it gets harder. Is it the same for you with Katherine?”
“It’s been ten years, and I still wake up every morning expecting her to be there. And in a way, I guess she still is. What do you do to fill your time now, Vivian?”
She pushed a silver tray of pastel macarons toward her guest. “I’ve been trying my hand at baking. And of course, I golf quite a bit.”
Lee chuckled. “Jack was never a fan.”
“He thought it was dreadfully boring. But of course, anything would be boring after combat, he was a bit of an adrenaline junkie.”
“Yes, he was.” Lee shook his head in disapproval. “I can’t believe we’re still in the goddamn sand after all these years. Sorry for the language.”
“No need to apologize. I feel the same.”
His eyes shifted from the wisteria to a grouping of agapanthus. “Jack and I started our careers over there in the first Gulf War. That’s almost thirty years ago.”
“A long time. Too long.”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and recaptured her gaze. “I’ve always believed that peace is a utopian delusion, an anomaly and antithetical to human nature. Somebody always has something worth killing over, and any serious student of history will tell you that.”
“Put that way, peace does seem naïve.”
“But I still pray for it even though it would put my kind out of a job. But I’m not here to discuss world affairs or philosophy. I want to know about Sam, I think of him every day. How is he faring?”
Vivian allowed herself a distressed sigh. “He seems to be doing much better, at least he tells me so. But I’m his mother, so of course I worry about him constantly.”
“A tragedy and a hell of a thing to recover from, but Sam’s got it in him. When I visited him at Walter Reed, I saw a fine, brave young man with a fighting spirit, just like his father. His docs there agreed with me.”
“He was grateful for your visits. Being hospitalized for that long was extremely difficult for him.”
“No gratitude necessary. You’re both family to me. Is Sam still having trouble with his memory? I know it was frustrating for him, but things like that have a tendency to resolve as the brain heals.”
“I think that aspect is improving, but unfortunately he keeps his struggles from me. I don’t know if he really believes he’s fooling me or if he’s trying to protect me.”