Chapter 27

Deirdre left Tyler’s office feeling numb. She barely registered his parting words: “Call me if there’s anything more I can do.” He added, “Anytime.” Really? And then, as if he’d read her mind, he’d written his home and office phone numbers on the accident report and repeated, “Anytime.”

She sleepwalked from City Hall out to her car, nearly missing a step off the curb. When she settled into her car, she gripped the steering wheel tightly, holding on to the present as if it were a life preserver as piece by piece her memories bumped up, at last, against facts. She’d gone for so many years assuming she’d never know exactly where the car had crashed, and now, just like that, she had the answer.

So much for the fantasy that her father had taken a wrong turn leaving the Nichols’ estate. One thing was clear. She hadn’t been taken to Northridge Hospital because of their trauma unit. She’d been taken there because it was the closest hospital.

So where had it come from, her vivid memory of her father helping her down the Nichols’ dark back stairs and out to the car? Of curling up on the passenger seat, shivering with cold because the top was down and she was wearing only her pajamas? Of her father’s voice telling her to “sleep tight,” followed by a kiss on her forehead? Of feeling so sick and dizzy when the car started to move that she’d had to close her eyes? Had she simply imagined her father’s silhouette at the wheel?

She closed her eyes now. Were her memories of what came next as tainted? The sound of metal on metal at the moment of collision. She didn’t remember being airborne, only the bone-jarring impact as she landed. The horrifying sound of her femur cracking. And then pain. Pain so intense she was afraid to move. Afraid to look.

She’d heard a groan in the dark, and her name: “Deirdre?” If it hadn’t been her father’s voice, then whose was it?

She must have passed out because the next thing she remembered was pebbles and grit hitting her face. Footsteps scrabbling. Hands reaching for her. She’d tried to reach back.

“It’s a girl,” a man’s voice had called out. “She’s hurt bad. Better call an ambulance, quick. I’m afraid to move her.”

A motorcycle revved in the distance, somewhere above her, and roared off. Then quiet enveloped her. Crickets. The rustling of a breeze through tree branches. And pain, still so much pain.

The voice that called to her from somewhere in the dark as she lay on the embankment, trying not to lose consciousness as she waited for help, could not have been her father’s. The labored breathing must have been her own.

She’d heard the first siren, a cry, deep in the night. She imagined pulling it toward her, reeling it in like a hawk caught on a fishing line. Finally, bright lights. Voices. The crunch of feet on unstable hillside. A reassuring hand on her shoulder. Gentle pressure. Antiseptic smell. Then pain like lightning seared through her as she was jostled and lifted, brush pulling at her clothing and snagging in her hair. That was her own voice that she heard, screaming into the night.

“It’s going to be all right.” A woman’s voice. “We have to get you out of here. I know you’re hurt. This should help. Hold still. Just a pinch.” She’d felt a prick on her arm and slowly, gradually, she disconnected. The pain took shape and pulsed in front of her as the stretcher was lifted, more like heat lightning than jagged spikes, a phantom that grew ever more transparent with each step closer to the light. To the street.

“Deirdre . . .” A man’s voice. She’d strained to see behind her, but her head was too heavy and it hurt too much to move. Finally she floated into the ambulance, from noise to stillness, from shadow to bright. The slam of the doors was muffled, and she was in another world of whiteness and stainless steel and blood.

The next morning Deirdre had woken up heavily sedated and still in pain. Her head ached and dark circles under her bloodshot eyes made it look as if she’d been punched in the face. Her father sat grim-faced by her bed. He’d emerged from the accident unscathed. He’d been belted in—that’s what he told her. She hadn’t.

At the knock on the window, Deirdre jolted out of the past. A woman in a dark uniform was peering in at her through the windshield. A meter maid.

The last thing she needed was another parking ticket. Deirdre rolled down the window and called out, “Thank you! I was just leaving.” As she backed out, she realized she still had the accident report clutched in her hand, along with her number 142 from the Records Office.

The night Tito was killed she might have gotten into her father’s car and, upset and disoriented, ended up on Mulholland. Now she drove there deliberately. It was all she could do to keep from blowing through stop sign after stop sign as she crossed the empty intersections between residential blocks, driving north on Beverly.

Could her fifteen-year-old self have driven off in her father’s car? Her gut said no way. Drive without a driver’s license? Not the good girl who’d detour a half block to avoid jaywalking. Who’d never been tardy to school, never ventured into the school hallway without a pass, never borrowed a library book she hadn’t returned. Not the girl who’d walked all the way back to J.J. Newberry in the rain to return a tube of Passionate Pink lipstick that her best friend had slipped into her pocket.

No. She’d never have taken off in her father’s car, not unless she’d been running from the devil himself. And no matter how drunk she’d been, she’d have remembered that.

By the time Deirdre was above Sunset her grip on the wheel had loosened. The mystique of Mulholland Drive had spawned urban legends: tales of a headless hitchhiker, of a depraved sex maniac with a hook for an arm who stalked couples necking in their cars at the overlooks, of a phantom Ferrari that led motorists off cliffs. As if the road’s twists and turns weren’t hairy enough, many a driver saw bodies hanging among the dangling boughs of willow trees that lined Mulholland’s edges. It didn’t help that the Mafia really had used the road’s steep banks to dispose of corpses.

It would take some of the fun out of it, driving an automatic. But with only one good leg, operating a stick shift was impossible. It was like trying to hitchhike without a thumb. She passed a grassy park and kept on going. There was the gate that her father told her led to what had once been Jimmy Cagney’s estate. A driveway that disappeared into the bushes led to the home of Mel Torme. Arborvitae lined the driveway to Charlton Heston’s estate.

By the time Deirdre reached the turn onto Mulholland she was calm. In the zone. She waited at the stop sign as a motorcycle flew past. Then another. Mulholland was dangerous for motorcycles, and yet this was where they all came to be challenged.

She flipped on the radio. As if summoned from the underworld, there was Mötley Crüe. Shout! Shout! Shout! The pounding beat filled the car. Deirdre’s heart kicked into gear as she turned and accelerated, her tires spitting gravel. She pictured the overlook where she was headed. Grasping the wheel with two hands, she eased into the first curve, the Valley rising before her. She accelerated past the entrance to Coldwater Canyon Park, then took the next curve a bit too fast and felt the rear wheels start to slide toward a rock face.

Adrenaline pulsed in her ears along with the Crüe’s sinister chant. She amped the volume until she could feel the bass drums and snares vibrating through the steering column. Under her, the road undulated and straightened, tilting and righting itself. Mentally she tracked her path as she beat the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. She sped past one overlook, then another. She knew she was getting near where Tyler had stuck the white pushpin in the map.