Her hazel eyes finally meet mine. They are full of an ancient bitterness, her loveliness like a halo around it. “Be careful,” she says. “Don’t take any chances for Shaw. It’s not your job.”
Then she slams the door and turns the car on. The air between us fills first with the roar, then the taste of oil and fumes.
17
Steve Curtain does not exist in Los Angeles. There are dozens of Stephen Curtins—a spelling variation—in the United States, but mostly in Massachusetts. A doctor named Stephen Curtin in Pleasanton, California, and a doctor named Stephen Curtin in Arizona appear to be the same person. A Stephen Curtin is a district judge in Idaho. Another is an online consumer watchdog with an expression of such fake, shiny pleasure that he reminds me of the plastic sushi in the windows of Little Tokyo.
Juanita could have heard the name and written it down like the noun is spelled. Or she could have written the notation as shorthand for a name and a place, but I can’t find anything for Curtain—no restaurants, no cafés, no galleries. Nothing except a factory outlet for drapes in El Monte.
My screen glows with cold light. The Internet streams beneath the glass, shifting with the clicks of my mouse.
Greg Shaw Ferguson was arraigned late yesterday in connection with the disappearance of Kim Lord. He had no comment for the press. Photos taken outside the courthouse show him gaunt, with lank hair that hangs in his eyes. Most articles detail the same four things about him: he was Kim Lord’s boyfriend; he is a “young entrepreneur” whose gallery and studios were “hot” or “edgy” or “up-and-coming”; a cloth with blood matching Kim Lord’s AB blood type was found in the basement of his gallery; and he allegedly made more than seventy phone calls or texts to Lord on the day before she disappeared, demanding to see her.
Seventy. Every time I see the number, I get a fresh shock.
A statement by Detective Ruiz crops up frequently: “Greg Shaw Ferguson is currently our only suspect.” Kim Lord’s phone was found in the bushes in Echo Park, less than a mile from Greg’s gallery. Her texts beg him to leave her alone.
A few articles probe deeper: Greg Shaw Ferguson graduated from Williams College and worked as an office assistant for a New York art festival before moving to Thailand to teach English. The years skip ahead to Los Angeles, to Greg’s job for the Beans, the famous movie star and his art collector wife. The Beans said, “We can’t imagine that this is the same Greg Ferguson who worked for us. He was exemplary in every way. A real gentleman.” A photo shows seventy-year-old, whitehaired Sandahlia Bean with Greg at an art fair, her frail, crepe-sleeved arm around him, smiling. These articles also mention Greg’s fondness for papaya salad; his warm, scratchy voice; the death of his mother; the make of his car; his admiration for Jack White’s guitar; the philosopher he’s never read (Nietzsche); and his recent sunset horseback ride over the Hollywood hills.
No one in the media should have access to the texts Greg sent Kim Lord, but nonetheless two texts are often quoted: You have to see me. If you don’t meet me, I will come find you. And You have no right to do this.
I think about what Jayme told me in the parking garage, and what she didn’t tell. It sounded like someone stalked her, maybe some man she knew. She escaped, but also she didn’t. Jayme’s alive, she’s even highly successful by all external indicators, and yet I can’t imagine her without her rigid self-control, her isolating sense of privacy. I don’t know who she would be.
I look up statistics on stalking: One in six women have been stalked, and more than half of those before the age of twenty-five. The average duration of stalking is almost two years. Stalkers of domestic or intimate partners are more likely to use violence than are stalkers of strangers. Homicide occurs in only two percent of stalking cases, but when it does, the stalker is usually an intimate partner: a husband, a boyfriend.
As I read this, my head grows dizzy and dizzier, as if the oxygen in the room is draining away.
I scan the e-mails from my parents and brothers, asking me to return their calls. My mother writes three times: first casually, about wrapping chicken wire around the apple tree that she and I once planted so that the deer won’t eat the buds; then worried that I am letting the news overburden me; then forcefully reminding me that she is my mother and she has a right to know if I’m safe.
In my mind’s eye, I can see her furrowed brow, her blond hair wound up in rollers, her trimmed but unmanicured fingers clattering the keys. I picture her on the day I learned of Nikki Bolio’s death. I am hiding in my bed in my cramped Burlington apartment when my mother storms in, her mud-season boots thudding the floor. “Are you in danger, too?” she demands. “Because if you are, I’m picking you up in my arms and taking you home.” And then she did, without waiting for a reply.
I’m safe, I type now. I’m doing okay. Really.
John also sends me a sample itinerary. I can fly out on Friday if you need me. I tell him no. I love John, but I can’t translate my life for my family right now. I just need to press deeper into it.
I read about why med school applicants get rejected: no clinical experience, lackluster academics, badly written documents. I’ll offer to edit Don’s application if he tries again next year.
I look up Rachel Lord, Toronto. There’s a record of a Rachel Lord arrested for being a public nuisance. Nothing else.
I look up Bas Jan Ader, and there’s a photo of a young man holding his head and weeping. I’m too sad to tell you is written across the frame in a delicate hand.
I get an e-mail from Ray Hendricks, who wants to interview me at nine tomorrow morning. A Ray Hendricks was an almost-famous musician in 1930s and ’40s Los Angeles. He played with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. A Ray Hendricks once pitched a no-hitter for a minor league baseball team. A Ray Hendricks is mentioned in an obituary in an Asheville, North Carolina, newspaper as the surviving half brother of a Calvin Teicher, a young art history lecturer, who was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel; it appears he fell in his bathroom and struck his head. Teicher also left behind his mother, Willow Teicher, sixty-two; his son, Nathaniel, four; and an ex-wife who lives in Florida. I search “Ray Hendricks North Carolina” and find another mention, in an article about state police busting up meth labs in the Smoky Mountains. Special Agent Ray Hendricks, a Boone native now working for the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation, calls meth “a scourge in our rural counties.” No picture accompanies either article, but I can’t help feeling it’s the same Ray Hendricks who is working as Janis Rocque’s private investigator.
Special Agent sounds impressive. A big career for a guy from a small mountain town like Boone. Is he out here for his job or for his half brother? Either way, I don’t buy his sleepy, laconic mask; underneath it, there’s something else playing on a loop, some huge grief or desperation. I’m too sad to tell you.
It’s getting colder and I want to go to bed, but my mind is not tired and I won’t sleep. I sit in the dark, staring into a box of illuminated fog, and hope for the miracle of Kim Lord’s life—hiding out or locked away, waiting to be found—instead of the commonplace fact of her death.
One last peek at my inbox.
A note from Yegina: Don said he’ll come. (!)
A note from Evie, who says she has unearthed a perplexing pattern in the provenance of Kim’s work: I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ll show you the list tomorrow.
TUESDAY