four Styrofoam Chicken McNuggets boxes and half a quart of lowfat milk. An open box of plastic forks and a package of paper plates sat on the counterbeside the sink The sink was empty, but that’s probably because there were no pots or pans or dishes. I guess Riggens had made the choice to go disposable. Why clutter your life with the needless hassle of washing and cleaning when you can use it and throw it away?
It had taken me all of four minutes to look through Riggens’s apartment. I went back into the main studio and stood in the center of the floor and felt oily and somehow unclean. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this, and it left me feeling vaguely depressed, as if this wasn’t a place where someone lived, but more a place where someone died. I went to the sleeping bag and squatted. A photograph had been pushpinned to the wall. It was an older picture and showed Riggens with a plain woman about his age and three kids. A boy and two girls. The boy looked maybe fourteen and sullen. The oldest girl was maybe twelve, and the youngest girl was a lot younger. Maybe four. She was tiny compared to the others, with a cute round face and a mop of curly hair and she was holding up a single bluegill on a nylon cord. She looked confused. Riggens was smiling and so was his wife. Margaret. They were standing in front of the bait shop at Castaic Lake, maybe twenty miles north of L.A. in the Santa Susana Mountains. The picture looked worn around the edges, as if it had been handled often. Maybe it had. Maybe Riggens lived here but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he brought his body here, and drank, and slept, but while the body was here he looked at the picture a lot and let his mind go somewhere else. Castaic, maybe. Where people were smiling.
I closed the apartment as I had found it, went down the stairs, and picked up the Ventura Freeway east through the Glendale Pass and into La Cañada in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains.
It was mid-afternoon when I got there, and knots of junior high school kids were walking along the sidewalkswith books and gym bags, but no one looked very interested in going home or doing homework.
Margaret Riggens lived in a modest ranch-style home with a poplar tree in the front yard in the flats at the base of the foothills. It was one of those stucco-and-clapboard numbers that had been built in the mid-fifties when a developer had come in with one set of house plans and an army of bulldozers and turned an orange grove into a housing tract to sell “affordable housing” to veterans come to L.A. to work in the aerospace business. The floor plan of every house on the block would be the same as every other house. The only differences would be the colors and the landscaping and the people within the houses. I guess there is affordability in sameness.
I parked at the curb across the street as a girl maybe thirteen with limp blonde hair walked across the Riggenses’ front lawn and let herself into their home without knocking. That would be the oldest daughter. A white Oldsmobile Delta 88 was parked in the drive. It needed a wash. The house looked like it needed a wash, too. The stucco was dusty and the clapboard part was peeling and needed to be scraped and painted. I crossed the street, then went up the drive to the front door and rang the bell. It would have been shorter to cut across the lawn, but there you go.
A tired woman in a sleeveless sun shirt and baggy shorts opened the door. She was smoking a Marlboro. I said, “Hello, Ms. Riggens. Pete Simmons, Internal Affairs, LAPD.” I took out my license and held it up. It would work, or it wouldn’t. She would read the ID, or she wouldn’t.
Margaret Riggens said, “What’d that sonofabitch do now?” Guess she didn’t bother to read it.
I put the license away. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. It won’t take long.”
“Ain’t that what they all say.” She took a final pullon the Marlboro, then flipped it into
It had taken me all of four minutes to look through Riggens’s apartment. I went back into the main studio and stood in the center of the floor and felt oily and somehow unclean. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this, and it left me feeling vaguely depressed, as if this wasn’t a place where someone lived, but more a place where someone died. I went to the sleeping bag and squatted. A photograph had been pushpinned to the wall. It was an older picture and showed Riggens with a plain woman about his age and three kids. A boy and two girls. The boy looked maybe fourteen and sullen. The oldest girl was maybe twelve, and the youngest girl was a lot younger. Maybe four. She was tiny compared to the others, with a cute round face and a mop of curly hair and she was holding up a single bluegill on a nylon cord. She looked confused. Riggens was smiling and so was his wife. Margaret. They were standing in front of the bait shop at Castaic Lake, maybe twenty miles north of L.A. in the Santa Susana Mountains. The picture looked worn around the edges, as if it had been handled often. Maybe it had. Maybe Riggens lived here but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he brought his body here, and drank, and slept, but while the body was here he looked at the picture a lot and let his mind go somewhere else. Castaic, maybe. Where people were smiling.
I closed the apartment as I had found it, went down the stairs, and picked up the Ventura Freeway east through the Glendale Pass and into La Cañada in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains.
It was mid-afternoon when I got there, and knots of junior high school kids were walking along the sidewalkswith books and gym bags, but no one looked very interested in going home or doing homework.
Margaret Riggens lived in a modest ranch-style home with a poplar tree in the front yard in the flats at the base of the foothills. It was one of those stucco-and-clapboard numbers that had been built in the mid-fifties when a developer had come in with one set of house plans and an army of bulldozers and turned an orange grove into a housing tract to sell “affordable housing” to veterans come to L.A. to work in the aerospace business. The floor plan of every house on the block would be the same as every other house. The only differences would be the colors and the landscaping and the people within the houses. I guess there is affordability in sameness.
I parked at the curb across the street as a girl maybe thirteen with limp blonde hair walked across the Riggenses’ front lawn and let herself into their home without knocking. That would be the oldest daughter. A white Oldsmobile Delta 88 was parked in the drive. It needed a wash. The house looked like it needed a wash, too. The stucco was dusty and the clapboard part was peeling and needed to be scraped and painted. I crossed the street, then went up the drive to the front door and rang the bell. It would have been shorter to cut across the lawn, but there you go.
A tired woman in a sleeveless sun shirt and baggy shorts opened the door. She was smoking a Marlboro. I said, “Hello, Ms. Riggens. Pete Simmons, Internal Affairs, LAPD.” I took out my license and held it up. It would work, or it wouldn’t. She would read the ID, or she wouldn’t.
Margaret Riggens said, “What’d that sonofabitch do now?” Guess she didn’t bother to read it.
I put the license away. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. It won’t take long.”
“Ain’t that what they all say.” She took a final pullon the Marlboro, then flipped it into
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