Blood Test

13

The next morning, Milo knocked on my door and woke me at six forty-five. The sky was alley-cat gray. It had rained all night and the air smelled like damp flannel. The glen harbored a relentless chill that seeped into my bones the moment I opened the door.

He wore a thin shiny black raincoat over a wrinkled white shirt, a brown and blue tie, and brown slacks. His chin was blued with stubble, his eyelids weighted by fatigue. There was mud on his brogues, which he scraped off along the edge of the terrace before coming in.

“We found two of the Swopes, the mother and father, up in Benedict Canyon. Shot in the head and back.”

He talked rapidly without making eye contact and walked past me into the kitchen. I followed him and put up coffee. While it brewed I washed my face in the kitchen sink and he chewed on a log of French bread. Neither of us spoke until we’d sat down at my old oak table and punished our gullets with large swallows of scalding liquid.

“Some old character with a metal detector found them a little after one a.m. He’s a rich guy, a retired dentist, has a big house off Benedict but likes to roam around in the dark prospecting. His gizmo picked up the coins in the father’s pockets — the two of them weren’t buried very deep. The rain had washed away some of the dirt and he could see part of a head in the moonlight. Poor fellow was shaking.”

He looked downward, dispiritedly.

“Another detective picked up the squeal but when they identified the bodies he remembered my involvement and called me. He was scheduled for vacation anyway and more than happy to hand it over. I’ve been there since three.”

“No sign of Woody and Nona?”

Milo shook his head.

“Nada. We combed the immediate area. The place we found them is just before the road climbs toward the Valley. Most of Benedict’s pretty well built up but there’s a small gully on the west side that the developers haven’t gotten to. It’s concave, kind of like a saucer in the ground, covered with brush and layered with about a foot of dead leaves. Easy to miss if you drive by quickly ‘cause it’s blocked from the road by big eucalyptus. We used the grid approach, went over it foot by foot. Funny thing is, we did dig up another body, but this one was all bones. From the shape of the pelvis, the M.E. says a woman. Been there for at least a couple of years.”

He was concentrating on details to avoid dealing with the emotional impact of the murders. Taking a large gulp of coffee, he rubbed his eyes and shivered.

“I’m soaked. Lemme peel out of this.”

He pulled off the raincoat and draped it over a chair.

“Let’s hear it for sunny goddamn California,” he snarled. “I feel like I’ve been marinating in a rice paddy.”

“Want a warm shirt?”

“Nah.” He rubbed his hands together, drank more coffee, and got up for a refill.

“Not a sign of the kids,” he reiterated upon returning to the table. “Several possibilities present themselves: one, they weren’t with the parents and escaped what went down. When they got back to the motel, they saw the blood and ran scared.”

“Why wouldn’t the family stick together if they were returning home?” I asked.

“Maybe she took him for an ice cream. While the parents packed.”

“No way, Milo. He was too sick for that.”

“Yeah, I keep forgetting that. Must be unconscious repression, huh?”

“Must be.”

“Okay, hypothesis two, then. They weren’t together because the sister snatched the kid. You told me Bev said she didn’t like the parents. Could be it came to a head.”

“Anything Bev has to say about her needs to be taken with a shaker of salt, Milo. Nona made it with a man she once loved. Down deep she hates the girl’s guts.”

“You told me yourself the kid was pissed the time you met her, how she lit into Melendez-Lynch. And the picture we get of her after talking to Rambo and Carmichael is one strange little girl.”

“That’s true. She sounds like she’s got plenty of problems. But why would she abduct her brother? All indications are that she was self-centered, cut off from family feelings. She and Woody didn’t have a close relationship. She rarely visited and when she did it was at night when he was asleep. Her not being there with the others makes sense. But not the rest of it.”

“Gee, you’re fun to be with,” said Milo. “I’ll call you next time I need a yes man.”

His face opened in a giant yawn. When he’d taken in enough air he continued. “Everything you say is logical, pal, but I’ve gotta touch all bases. I called Houten in La Vista just before I came here. Woke the poor devil up and told him to scour the town for her and the kid. He was pretty broken up hearing about the parents, said he’d already searched carefully the first time I asked, but agreed to do it again.”

“Including the Touch’s place?”

“Especially there. Melendez-Lynch may have been right from the beginning. Even if Houten comes up empty they’re sweet suspects. I’m heading down there today to check them out. Especially the two that visited the Swopes. A couple of my guys are going to the hospital to interview anyone who took care of the Swopes. With special emphasis on squeezing that asshole Valcroix.”

I told him about Seth Fiacre’s assessment of the Touch as a reclusive group that shunned the limelight and tacked on Mal’s account of the greening of Norman Matthews.

“They don’t seek converts,” I pointed out. “They seclude themselves. What motivation would there be for them to get involved with outsiders?”

Milo seemed to ignore the question and expressed surprise at Noble Matthias’s identity.

“Matthews is the guru? I always wondered what happened to him. I remember the case. It went down in Beverly Hills so we weren’t involved. They locked the husband up in Atascadero and six months later he mixed himself a Draino cocktail.” He smiled mirthlessly. “We used to call Matthews the ‘Shyster to the Stars.’ What do you know?”

He yawned again and drank more coffee.

“Motivation?” he repeated. “Maybe they thought they’d convinced the parents to treat the kid their way, there was a change of heart and things got out of control.”

“That’s pretty far out of control,” I said.

“Don’t forget what I told you in the motel room. About the world getting crazier and crazier. Besides, maybe the cultists were camera-shy when your professor friend studied them but not anymore. Weirdos change, like anyone else. Jim Jones was everyone’s hero until he turned into Idi Amin.”

“It’s a good point.”

“Of course it is. I’m a pro-fesh-you-nole.” He laughed, a good warm sound soon replaced by silence made cold by unspoken words.

“There’s another possibility,” I said, finally.

“Now that you’ve mentioned it, yes.” His green eyes darkened with melancholia. “The kids are buried somewhere else. Whoever did it got scared before he could finish dumping them at Benedict and took off. There are coyotes and all sorts of creepy crawlies out there. You could see a pair of eyes and easily get spooked.”

I’d been heartsick and numb since learning of the killings, my attention vacillating between Milo’s words and the images they evoked. But now the full impact of what he was saying slammed straight into me and I mustered up a wall of denial to block it out.

“You’re still going to look for him, aren’t you?”

He looked up at the urgency in my voice.

“We’re canvassing Benedict from Sunset up into the Valley, Alex, doing door-to-doors on the chance someone saw something. But it was dark so an eyewitness is unlikely. We’re also going to cruise the other canyons — Malibu, Topanga, Coldwater, Laurel, right here in the Glen. About a thousand man hours and unlikely to be productive.”

I got back on the subject of the parents’ murders because grim as it was, it was preferable to fantasizing about Woody’s fate.

“Were they shot right there, in Benedict?” I asked.

“Not likely. There was no blood on the ground and we couldn’t find any spent shells. The rain introduces a little uncertainty, but each of them had half a dozen bullet holes. That much shooting would make a lot of noise and there’d have to be some shells left behind. They were killed somewhere else, Alex, and then dumped. No footprints or tiretracks, but that you can definitely put down to the rain.”

He ripped viciously at the French bread with small, sharp teeth, and chewed noisily.

“More coffee?” I offered.

“No thanks. My nerves are scraped raw as it is.” He leaned forward, thick, spatulate fingers splayed on the table. “Alex, I’m sorry. I know you cared about the kid.”

“It’s like a bad dream,” I admitted. “I’m trying not to think of him.” Perversely, the small pale face floated into consciousness. A game of checkers in a plastic room…

“When I saw the motel room I really thought they’d gone home, that it was a family thing,” he was saying morosely. “From the looks of the bodies, the M.E. guessed they were murdered a couple of a days ago. Probably not too long after the kid was pulled out of the hospital.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Milo,” I said, trying to sound supportive. “There was no way anyone could have known.”

“Right. Let me use your john.”

After he left I set about pulling myself together — with meager success. My hands were unsteady and my head buzzed. The last thing I needed was to be left alone with my helplessness and my anguish. I searched for absolution through activity. I’d have gone to the hospital to tell Raoul about the murders but Milo had asked me not to. I paced the room, filled a cup with coffee, tossed it down the sink, snatched up the paper and turned to the movie section. A revival house in Santa Monica was featuring an early matinee, a documentary on William Burroughs, which sounded sufficiently bizarre to crowd out reality. Just as I was stepping out the door Robin called from Japan.

“Hello, lover,” she said.

“Hello, babe. I miss you.”

“Miss you too, sweetie.”

I took the phone to the bed and sat down facing a framed picture of the two of us. I remember the day it had been taken. We’d gone to the arboretum on a Sunday in April and had asked a passing octogenarian to do us the favor. Despite his trembling hands and protestation of ignorance about modern cameras it had come out beautifully.

We held each other against a backdrop of royal purple rhododendrons and snowy camelias. Robin stood in front, her back to my chest, my arms around her waist. She wore tight jeans and a white turtleneck that showed off her curves. The sun had picked up the auburn highlights in her hair, which hung long and curly, like coppery grapes. Her smile was wide and open, the perfect teeth a crescent of white. Her face was a valentine, her dark eyes liquid and dancing.

She was a beautiful woman, inside and out. Hearing the sound of her voice was sweetly painful.

“I bought you a silk kimono, Alex. Gray-blue, to match your eyes.”

“Can’t wait to see it. When are you coming home?”

“About another week, honey. They’re tooling up to actually manufacture a gross of instruments and they want me here to inspect them.”

“Sounds like things are going well.”

“They are. But you sound distant. Is something wrong?”

“No. Must be the connection.”

“You sure, baby?”

“Yes. Everything’s fine. I miss you, that’s all.”

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you? For staying so long.”

“No. Really. It’s important. You have to do it.”

“It’s not like I’m having fun, you know. The first couple of days they entertained me, but after the amenities were over it was strictly business. Design studios and factories all day. And no male geishas to help me unwind at night!”

“Poor baby.”

“You bet.” She laughed. “I have to admit, though, it’s a fascinating country. Very tense, very structured. Next time I go you have to come with me.”

“Next time?”

“Alex, they love my designs. If the Billy Orleans does well they’re sure to want another. We could go during cherry blossom time. You’d love it. They’ve got beautiful gardens — larger versions of ours — in the public parks. And I saw a koi almost five feet long. Square watermelons, sushi bars you wouldn’t believe. It’s incredible, hon.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Alex, what’s wrong? And stop saying nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“Come on. I was so lonely, sitting by myself in this sterile hotel room, drinking tea and watching ‘Kojak’ with Japanese subtitles. I thought talking to you would help me feel alive again. But it’s only made me sadder.”

“I’m sorry, babe. I love you and I’m really proud of you. I’m trying really hard to be noble, to put my needs aside. But as it turns out, I’m just another selfish, sexist bastard, threatened by your success and worried that it won’t be the same.”

“Alex, it’ll always be the same. The most precious thing in my life is us. Didn’t you once tell me that all the busy little things we do — career, achievement — are just trim around the edges? That what’s important is the intimacy we establish in our lifetime? I bought it. I really believe that.”

Her voice broke. I wanted to hold her near.

“What’s this about square watermelons?” I said.

We laughed together and the next five minutes were long-distance heaven.

She’d been traveling around the country but was now settled in Tokyo and would be there until returning to the States. I took down the address of her hotel and her room number. Her travel plan included an overnight stopover in Hawaii before the final flight back to L.A.. The idea of my flying to meet her in Honolulu and our spending a week together on Kauai came up as a lark but ended up as a serious possibility. She promised to call when her departure date had been determined.

“Do you know what’s been keeping me going?” she giggled. “Remembering that wedding we went to last summer in Santa Barbara.”

“The Biltmore, room three fifty-one?”

“I’m getting wet right now just thinking about it.”

“Stop or I’ll be limping all day.”

“That’s good. You’ll appreciate me.”

“Believe me, I already do.”

We prolonged the good-byes and then she was gone.

I hadn’t told her about my involvement with the Swopes. We’d always had an open relationship and I couldn’t help feeling that holding back had been an unfaithful act of sorts. Still, I rationalized, it had been the right thing to do, because hearing about such horror from so great a distance would only have burdened her with intractable anxiety.

In an attempt to quell my guilt I spent a long time on the phone with a histrionic florist, arranging for a dozen coral roses to be sent halfway around the world.