Time Bomb Read online

  The cashier was young, chubby, and fair. Without looking up, she said, “In the back.”

  We made our way past PASTA and BREADSTUFFS. Next to the DAIRY case was a green wooden panel door with a brass lock dangling from an open hasp. Milo pushed it open and we stepped into a short, dark hall, cold as a refrigerator, rank with an old lettuce smell, and filled with generator noise. At the end was another door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  Milo knocked and opened it, revealing a small windowless office paneled in imitation knotty pine and furnished with an old mahogany desk and three red Naugahyde chairs. The desk was crowded with papers. A brass balance scale served as a paperweight for an inch-thick stack. An assortment of commercial calendars hung on the walls, along with a couple of faded hunting prints and a framed photo of a pleasant-looking, slightly overweight brunette woman kneeling next to two white-haired, ruddy boys of preschool age. A pine-ridged expanse of lake was in the background. The boys struggled to hold on to a fishing rod from which a healthy-looking trout dangled.

  The obvious genetic source of the children’s pigmentation sat behind the desk. Early thirties, pink-skinned, with thin, near-albino hair cut short and parted on the right. He had broad, beefy shoulders, a nub of a broken nose above a bushy mustache the color and consistency of old hay. His eyes were large, colored a curious tan-gray, and had a basset droop. He wore a blue broadcloth button-down shirt and red-and-blue rep tie under a green apron. The shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows. His forearms were pale, hairless, Popeye-thick.

  He put down a hand calculator, looked up from a pile of invoices, and gave a weary smile. “Weights and Mea-sures? We passed just Last week, gentlemen.”

  Milo showed him his police ID. The blond man’s smile faded and he blinked several times, as if forcing himself awake.

  “Oh.” He stood and extended his hand. “Ted Dinwiddie. What can I do for you?”

  Milo said, “We’re here to talk about the sniping at Hale Elementary, Mr. Dinwiddie.”

  “Oh, that. Horrible.” His wince seemed involuntary and sincere. He blinked a couple more times. “Thank God no one was hurt.”

  “No one except Holly Burden.”

  “Oh, yes. Sure. Of course.” He winced again, sat down, and pushed aside his paperwork.

  “Poor Holly,” he said. “It’s hard to believe she’d go and do something like that.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “As well as anyone, I guess. Which means not much at all. She used to come in here, with her dad. I’m talking years ago, when she was just a little girl. Just after her mom died. Back when my dad was alive.” He paused and touched the balance scale. “I used to bag and check after school and on Saturdays. Holly used to stand behind her dad’s legs and peek out, then draw back. Really shy. She always was kind of a nervous kid. Quiet, as if she was in her own little world. I’d try to talk to her—she never answered back. Once in a while she’d take a free candy, if her dad would let her. Most of the time she ignored me when I offered. Still, there was nothing...”

  He looked up at us. “Sorry. Please, sit down. Can I get you some coffee? We’ve got a new European roast brewing out in front in the sample pot.”

  “No thanks,” said Milo.

  We sat in the red chairs.

  Milo said, “Any more recent impressions of her?”

  “Not really,” said Dinwiddie. “I didn’t see much of her. They were usually delivery customers. The couple of times I did see her wandering around the streets, she looked kind of... detached.”

  “Detached from what?”

  “Her surroundings. The external world. Not paying attention to what was going on. The kind of thing you see in creative people. I’ve got a sister who’s a writer—very successful screenwriter. She’s getting into producing. Emily was always like that, fantasizing, off in her own world. We used to kid her, call her Space Cadet. Holly was spacey but in her case I don’t think it was creativity.”

  “Why’s that?”

  The grocer shifted in his chair. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but basically, Holly wasn’t very bright. Some of the kids used to call her retarded—which she probably wasn’t. Just dull, a little below average. But in her family that had to be especially tough—the rest of the Burdens were all pretty intellectual. Her dad’s downright brilliant—used to work for the government as some kind of high-level scientist or mathematician. The mom did, too, I think. And Howard—her brother—he was a scholastic ace.”

  “Sounds like you knew the family pretty well.”

  “No, not really. Mostly I’d just deliver the groceries or go over there for tutoring. From Howard. He was a math whiz, totally brilliant with numbers. We were in the same class but he could have taught it. Lots of kids went to him for help. Everything came easy for him, but he really had a thing for math.” He gave a wistful look. “He actually stuck with what he loved, became some sort of statistician. Has a great position with an insurance firm out in the Valley.”

  Milo said, “When you say you and he were in the same class, was that at Nathan Hale?”

  Dinwiddie nodded. “All the kids went to Hale back in those days. Things were different.” He fussed with the knot of his tie. “Not necessarily better, mind you. Just different.”

  I said, “How so?”

  He fidgeted some more and lowered his voice. “Listen, I work here, live here, lived here all my life—it’s a great neighborhood in many ways, great place to raise kids. But the people here pretend nothing will ever change. That nothing should ever change. And that’s not too realistic, is it?” Pause. “Standing behind the register, or making a delivery, or coaching Little League, kind of gives you the chance to observe—you hear all sorts of things—ugly things from people you thought were decent, people your kids play with and your wife has coffee with.”

  “Racial comments?” Milo said.

  Dinwiddie gave a pained look. “That’s not to say it’s any worse here than anywhere else—racism’s fairly endemic in our society, isn’t it? But when it’s your own neighborhood... you’d just like it to be better.”

  Fairly endemic in our society.

  It sounded like a phrase out of a textbook.

  Milo said, “Do you think any of that—the local racial attitudes—are related to the sniping?”

  “No, I don’t,” Dinwiddie said quickly. “Maybe if it had been someone else, you could make the connection. But I can’t see Holly being racist. I mean, to be racist you’d have to be political, at least to some degree, wouldn’t you? And she wasn’t. Least as far as I knew. Like I said, she wasn’t too in touch with her surroundings.”

  “What kind of political attitudes did her family have?”

  “No idea if they had any,” he said quickly. His hand flew to his tie again, and he blinked several times in succession. I wondered if something about the discussion was putting him on edge.

  “Really, gentlemen, I just can’t see any political connection,” he said. “I truly believe whatever Holly did came from inside her—her own problem. Something intrapsychic.”

  “Mental problems?” said Milo.

  “She’d have to be crazy to do something like that, wouldn’t you say?”

  I said, “Besides being ‘spacey,’ did she ever show signs of other mental problems?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you,” said Dinwiddie. “Like I said, I haven’t seen her in a long time. I was just talking theoretically.”

  Milo said, “When you saw her walking around the neighborhood, was this at night or during the day?”

  “Day. I’m only talking a couple of times. I’d be on my way to make a delivery and she’d be making her way down the street, kind of a loose shuffle, staring down at the sidewalk. That’s what I meant by spacey.”

  “Anything else you can tell us about the family that might relate to the shooting?”

  Dinwiddie thought. “Not really, Detective. They were never real social. Marched to their own drummer, but basically they w
ere decent people. You can tell a person’s character when you check their groceries. When he was alive, my dad had a system for classifying folks—Grumblers, Skinflints, Nitpickers, Tomato Squeezers.” A sheepish smile spread under the mustache. “Kind of an us-them thing. Happens in every profession, right? Don’t let on to my customers or I’d be out of business.”

  Milo smiled and ran his finger across his lips.

  Dinwiddie said, “It’s funny. When I was younger I used to hear my dad come home and grouse, and think he was being intolerant, just didn’t understand people. I majored in sociology in college, had all sorts of theories and explanations for why he’d become so misanthropic, how what he really needed was more intrinsic satisfaction in his work. Now here I am, doing the same job he did, and I find myself using the same labels.”

  I said, “Which of your dad’s labels would you apply to the Burdens?”

  “None, really. They were easy to deal with, never complained, always paid their bills right away with cash. Mr. Burden always had a generous tip ready, though he wasn’t much for conversation. He always seemed busy with something, doing his own thing.”

  “Another spacey one?” said Milo.

  “Not like Holly. With him, you always felt he was lost in thought. Thinking about something important. With Holly, it just seemed—I don’t know—stuporous. As if she were withdrawing from reality. But if this is making her sound like some dangerous psychotic, that’s not what I mean at all. She’d be the last person I’d expect to do anything violent. On the contrary, she was timid, a real mouse.”

  Milo said, “When did her mother die?”

  Dinwiddie touched his mustache, then tapped a fingertip absently to his tongue. “Let’s see. I think Holly was four or five, so that would make it about fifteen years ago.”

  “What’d she die of?”

  “Some sort of stomach condition, I think. Tumors or ulcers or something—I’m not sure. Only reason I remember it being the stomach is she used to buy a lot of antacids, really stocked up on them. Whatever it was, it wasn’t supposed to be fatal, but she went in for surgery and didn’t come out. Howard was pretty freaked out—all of us were. It was the first time anyone in the class had lost a parent. We were in high school—sophomores. Howard had never been much of a joiner, but after his mom died he really pulled away, dropped out of Chess Club and Debate Club, gained a whole lot of weight. He kept on getting good grades—that was like breathing for him—but he cut himself off from everything else.”

  I said, “How did Holly react?”

  “I can’t say I remember anything specific. But she was just a little kid, so I’d expect she was devastated.”

  “So you can’t say if her spaciness was due to her mother’s death?”

  “No—” He stopped, smiled. “Hey, this sounds more like psychoanalysis than police work. I didn’t know you guys did this kind of thing.”

  Milo hooked a thumb at me. “This gentleman’s a noted psychologist. Dr. Alex Delaware. He’s working with the kids at Hale. We’re trying to get a picture of what happened.”

  “Psychologist, huh?” Dinwiddie said. “I saw a psychologist being interviewed about the kids on TV. Heavyset fellow, big white beard.”

  “Change of plans,” said Milo. “Dr. Delaware’s the one.”

  Dinwiddie looked at me. “How are they? The kids.”

  “Doing as well as can be expected.”

  “That’s real good to hear. I send my own kids to private school.” Guilty look. Shake of the head. “Never thought I’d be doing that.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Another tug at his tie knot. “Truth be told,” he said, “I used to be pretty much of a radical.” Embarrassed grin. “For Ocean Heights, anyway. Which means I voted Democrat and tried to convince my dad to boycott table grapes in order to help the farm workers. That was back when the last thing I wanted to do was run a grocery. My actual goal was to do what you do, Doctor. Therapy. Or social work. Something along those lines. I wanted to work with people. Dad thought that was soft work—the ultimate put-down. Said eventually I’d come back to the real world. I set out to prove him wrong, did volunteer work—with crippled kids, Job Corps Inductees, adoption agencies. Became a Big Brother for a kid out in East L.A. Then Dad dropped dead of a heart attack, left no insurance, just this place, and Mom was in no position to run it, so I stepped in. One semester short of my B.A. It was supposed to be temporary. I never got out.”

  His brow creased and his eyes drooped lower. I remembered his comment about Howard Burden, the wistful look: He actually stuck with what he loved....

  “Anyway,” he said, “that’s about all I can tell you about the Burdens. What happened over at Hale was a real tragedy. Lord only knows Mr. Burden didn’t need any more. But hopefully time will heal.” He looked to me for confirmation.

  I said, “Hopefully.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “people will even learn something from all of this. I don’t know.”

  He picked up his calculator, tapped the buttons.

  “One more thing, Mr. Dinwiddie,” said Milo. “There’s a young man who works or used to work for you, making deliveries. Isaac or Jacob?”

  Dinwiddie’s thick shoulders tightened and his breath caught. He let it out a moment later, slowly, deliberately. “Isaac. Ike Novato. What about him?”

  “Novato,” said Milo. “He’s a Hispanic? We were told he was black.”

  “Black. A light-complected black. What’s that... what’s he got to do with any of this?”

  “We were told he was friendly with Holly Burden.”

  “Friendly?” The shoulders hunched higher and shrugged.

  Milo said, “He still work for you?”

  The grocer glared at us. “Hardly.”

  “Know where we can find him?”

  “It would be difficult to find him anywhere, Detective. He’s dead, cremated. I scattered the ashes myself. Off the pier at Malibu.”

  Dinwiddie’s gaze was angry, unyielding. Finally he looked away, down at his desk, picked up an order blank, gave it an uncomprehending look and put it aside.

  “Funny you shouldn’t know,” he said. “That I should be telling you. Though I guess not, considering the size of this city, all the homicides you get. Well, he was one of them, gentlemen. Last September. Shot to death, supposedly in a drug burn, somewhere down in South Central.”

  “Supposedly?” said Milo. “You have doubts?”

  Dinwiddie hesitated before answering. “I guess anything’s possible, but I seriously doubt it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He was a straight arrow—just wasn’t the dope type. I know cops think all civilians are naïve, but I did enough volunteer work with juvenile offenders to be a pretty good judge. I tried to tell that to the police but they never bothered to come down here and talk to me about him face to face. I only found out about the murder because when he hadn’t showed up for work for two days running, I called his landlady and she told me what had happened, said the police had been by, told her it was a dope thing. I got the name of the detective on the case from her. I called him, told him I was Ike’s employer, volunteered to come down to the station and give information. His attitude wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. A couple of weeks later he called me back, asked me if I wanted to come down and identify the body. ‘A formality’—his words—so that he could clear it. It was obvious that to him this was just a routine ghetto shooting—another case number. What really surprised me when I got there was that the detective himself was black. He hadn’t sounded black over the phone. Smith. Maurice Smith. Southeast Division. Know him?”

  Milo nodded.

  “Classical self-hatred,” said the grocer. “Turning all that rage against the self. All oppressed groups are at risk for it. Minorities in official capacities are really vulnerable. But in Smith’s case it may be getting in the way of his doing his job.”

  “Why’d he need you to identify the body?”

  “Ike had no famil
y anyone could locate.”

  “What about the landlady?”

  Dinwiddie shrugged again and stroked his mustache. “She’s pretty old. Maybe she couldn’t handle the stress. Why don’t you ask Smith?”

  “What else can you tell us about Novato?”

  “Top-notch kid. Bright, charming, learned fast, not a lick of trouble. Always willing to do above and beyond the call of duty, and believe me, nowadays that’s rare.”

  “How’d you hire him?”

  “He answered an ad I put up on the bulletin board at the Santa Monica College job center. He was taking courses there, part time. Needed to work to support himself. The all-American work ethic, exactly the kind of thing Dad used to extol.” The gray eyes narrowed. “Course, Dad never would have hired Ike.”