‘Did he ever go there with anyone else? Maybe show people around the zoo?’
Marianne shrugged. ‘I think maybe, yes. Yes, he did. I didn’t pay much attention but one time I do remember him telling me how much someone had liked the place. I’ve no idea now who it was. I just remember him telling me as if pointing out that I’d been wrong. That was very Ethan.’
‘What about Angels Point?’
‘Where?’
The very question punctured O’Neill’s growing confidence that they were on to something.
‘Angels Point. It’s a lookout point in Elysian Park.’
Another shrug. ‘I’m sorry. No. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. Should I have?’
‘Perhaps not. It’s on a hiking trail. Was hiking a big thing for Ethan?’
‘Not really. The zoo was the only place I can remember him hiking to. I’m sorry, Detective. It might have been a place he went to, but I don’t remember him ever mentioning it.’
‘It’s a public art installation,’ she persevered. ‘A platform on the edge of the point? It directly overlooks Dodger Stadium.’
‘The Dodgers? Well, yes, in that case I wouldn’t be at all surprised. He was crazy about the Dodgers. Had been since he was a kid. A real ball team in a real ballpark, that’s what he always said. These new franchises and new stadiums, he’d get all angry and say how they weren’t real, just corporate America and all about the money. It didn’t matter to Ethan that the Dodgers had been ripped out of Brooklyn. They were in LA when he was born and that was all that mattered.
It wasn’t Angels Point at all, O’Neill realised. It was the stadium.
‘So, Ethan wasn’t a fan of change in the city?’
‘He wasn’t much of a fan of change, period. He always got very uncomfortable with it and would complain that there was no need for change, that things were better as they’d been. He used to say that Los Angeles was the centre of the world in the fifties and sixties, that it was the place that no one was from but where everyone wanted to be. But then LA kept reinventing itself, kept trying to become the thing it dreamed of without ever knowing what that was.’
‘Who did he blame for that?’
‘Apart from me? He blamed the chasers, that’s what he called them. The people who came out here and just added another car to the road, the ones who chased a dream with minimal chance of catching it. He blamed anyone who came after he did, anyone who changed things, built anything new or said anything new or did anything new. And that’s Los Angeles. It’s built on being different to what it was yesterday. Ethan used to say he loved LA, but the truth was he hated it and just didn’t know it. He loved something that wasn’t here anymore.’
O’Neill nodded sombrely, sure the women’s hostility and her answers were coming from the heart. But she wanted to be sure.
‘Can I ask you about another place, Marianne? El Coyote, the Mexican restaurant on Beverly Boulevard. Was that somewhere that Ethan might have had a connection to?’
Marianne looked doubtful then apologetic. ‘Well, I’m sure it’s the kind of place Ethan would have approved of, being around as long as it has, but I can’t say I remember him ever talking about it as if it held any special significance for him. I’m really sorry, Detective. I wish I could say differently. I’m not sure I remember him even mentioning the place.’
‘That’s fine, Marianne. Don’t worry about it at all. It doesn’t matter.’
It didn’t matter at all and O’Neill felt a stab of guilt at having tried to trick the woman, but she couldn’t take the chance that Marianne was simply saying yes to everything in the hope that it was what she wanted to hear.
‘Okay, let me try one more. There’s a hill in Altadena that the locals call Gravity Hill. Does that name mean anything to you?’
‘Oh God, yes. That’s the place where if you put your car in neutral on the slope it seems to roll up the hill when it’s actually going down, right? It’s some trick of the landscape. That’s what Ethan told me. His dad took him up there in his Chrysler Valiant and pulled the trick on him. Ethan said it blew his mind, especially when his dad told him the stories about it being the ghosts of schoolkids that pushed them back up the hill. Ethan loved that, being how he was. His dad took him a bunch of times before Ethan finally figured out that it was something else at play. I had a young cousin visit from Missouri once, I think Tom was about twelve at the time, and Ethan drove him out to Altadena and showed him Gravity Hill. I thought that was a nice thing for him to do, although I wasn’t happy with him filling Tom’s head with the old stories of dead kids and told him so. He blew up at me, of course, raged at me for days, and told me I didn’t understand kids or anything else.’
Another box was ticked, and O’Neill made it a full set. Five locations that they knew of, four dump sites and a kidnap point, and all five were places that Garland had some sentimental attachment to from his youth.
Was there a sixth place? Yes, she’d no doubt that there was. The trick was going to be finding it. For that, they were going to need all the help that Marianne Ziegler could give them.
‘Marianne, you’ve been really helpful but I’m going to have to ask you for more. I need you to come back to the city with me tonight. Will you do that? We’ll put you up somewhere near headquarters, make you comfortable, and talk to you a lot. Okay?’
She nodded, resigned to whatever it would take.
‘Thanks, Marianne. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t so important. Let me ask you one more thing before we go. You said earlier how Ethan was such a big fan of the Dodgers. That he had been since he was a kid. But how did that happen? Did he ever say?’
‘It was his dad. His old man used to take him when he was a kid.’
His dad. Always his dad.
CHAPTER 39
Why are you talking to me, Matthew?
What do you mean?
You must know that chatting to me is going to get you caught.
It took a while to get an answer even though the screen showed he was writing. She guessed words being written, deleted and rewritten.
Maybe I want to get caught.
It took Narey by surprise and she turned to look at Dakers for confirmation. He pursed his lips and nodded. Could be. She pushed back in her chair and swore quietly before returning to the keyboard.
Well, Matthew, if you want to get caught, I can help you with that.
No answer. She tried again.
Why do you think you want to be caught?
I don’t. It was just a thought. I wonder why I do things sometimes.
Dakers leaned forward in his seat and Narey knew he was interested.
You feel guilty?
No.
Never?
Sometimes, yes. I don’t know. I don’t always know what guilt feels like. Not the way I think other people do.
Do you sometimes wish you hadn’t done it?
Sometimes. Afterwards. Not during. Never during.
She sensed he was open and took a chance.
What about Eloise Gray? Did you feel bad about killing her after it?
I didn’t say I killed her.
Did you?