Bones

CHAPTER 22

I took Beverly Boulevard west as Milo phoned Global Investment in Seattle.

Several underlings and one private banker later, he managed to cadge the fact that a Palisades-based service called Happy Hands cleaned both Vander houses on an as-needed basis.

“Who determines when it’s needed?” said Milo.

“How would I know that?” said the banker.

Click.

Milo glared at the phone, stashed it. “So Huck does control the process. My gut’s telling me he’s split. But like I said, going public is always a double edge. With Huck living under the radar from the time he got out of juvey until three years ago, putting on the pressure could get him burrowed deeper.”

I said, “Living underground can be an education.”

“What do you mean?”

“He may have been innocent of what put him in juvey, but the experience and what followed could’ve taught him nasty habits.”

“Strangulation and mutilation for fun and profit… How would a guy like that get in with the Vanders?”

“Maybe they’re kindhearted.”

“Gentle, nurturant rich folk.”

“It happens.”

“Think so?”

“You don’t?”

“I’m sure there are some like that, but I have to wonder if the kind of ego it takes to amass all that dough excludes kindness.”

“Ace Detective Vladimir Lenin.”

“Power to the people.” He thrust a clenched fist, had to bend his arm to avoid hitting the car’s headliner. “Drive to Moghul. All this failure is giving me an appetite.”

“You say the same thing about success.”

“Least I’m consistent.”

We stashed the car in the staff lot, walked to the restaurant. The room was buzzing; two long tables filled with white-collar co-workers and a corner booth occupied by Moe Reed and Liz Wilkinson.

The two of them sat closer together than required for business. Serving bowls were untouched. Reed had his jacket on, but he’d removed his tie, spread his collar. Liz Wilkinson’s unnetted hair was a wealth of glossy ringlets. A teal-blue dress worked well with her skin tone.

He smiled, she laughed. Their elbows bumped. They both laughed.

They saw us simultaneously, startled like kids caught playing doctor.

Reed shot to his feet. “Loo. Doc. Dr. Wilkinson’s got interesting stuff to tell us about those finger bones. ’Bout time we got something, huh?”

Jabbering fast. Liz Wilkinson stared up at him.

Milo eyed a plate of lamb. “I converted you to curry, Detective Reed?”

“She-Dr. Wilkinson likes it.”

Liz Wilkinson said, “It just so happens to be one of my favorite cuisines, so when Moses suggested it, I thought great. I’m adding this place to my list.”

“Join us,” Reed said, with more volume than necessary.

The bespectacled woman emerged from the rear of the restaurant. Today’s sari was blood red. The sight of Milo made her glow. She hurried back to the kitchen.

“She sure looks happy,” said Liz Wilkinson.

“He’s a good customer,” said Reed. “The lieutenant.”

Moments later, a platter of lobster arrived with a flourish.

Liz said, “Whoa, someone’s VIP. Thanks for letting us ride your coattail, Lieutenant.”

“ Milo ’s fine, Doctor. So what do you have for us?”

“We assembled the phalanges from the box and ended up with three complete sets. Given the dimensions of the left hands on all three of your buried victims, it was fairly easy to match everything up. Laura Chenoweth’s digits were noticeably larger than those of the other two. And Number Three-Ms. Montouthe’s-showed clear signs of arthritis. The other finding is the bones were subjected to an acid wash. Sulfuric acid, specifically, diluted to a level where it debrided-removed soft tissue but did no serious damage to the bone. I suspected some sort of treatment right off. The surfaces are much smoother-polished, really-than you’d expect from time and water and decomp. I did a scraping and found traces of sulfuric acid in the outer layer for all three victims.”

Moe Reed said, “Shining them up fits with a personal trophy.”

“So does placing them in a fancy box,” I said. “The question is why go to all that trouble, then abandon the cache in a way that guaranteed discovery? That makes me wonder if they started as souvenirs but changed to something else: a taunt.”

“ ‘Look what I did,’ ” said Milo.

“It’s consistent with the games Hernandez found in the storage unit.”

“Playing with us.”

Liz Wilkinson said, “What kind of games?”

Reed said, “Just the boards-Monopoly, Life.”

“Money and basic existence,” she said. “That’s pretty primal.”

Reed said, “Money, existence, ending someone else’s existence.” He shifted closer to her. She didn’t mind.

I said, “Selena’s murder also supports an exhibitionist angle. Up until her, the killer chose victims he considered throwaways, buried them where they could’ve remained indefinitely. Selena’s murder was called in, her body left out in the open, with I.D. in her purse. He wanted us to know who she was and what he’d done to her.”

Reed said, “And with her there, he was hoping we’d search the marsh, find the others.”

“If you didn’t, there’d be other prompts.”

Milo said, “He stops paying for storage, knows the unit will come up just around the time he’s gonna do Selena. Whole damn thing’s a production?”

Liz Wilkinson grimaced. “Treating the fingers with acid means he kept the bodies. Maybe to play with them.”

Reed said, “You okay?”

“Fine. I just usually don’t see this side of it.” As she moved to smooth hair from her face, her fingers brushed his cuff. “People ask me all the time if I get grossed out working with remains. When I tell them I love it, they look at me funny. But down at the tissue level, you can deny. Once I start thinking about a human being connected to what’s on the table…” She pushed her plate away. “Guess I’d better be getting back. If you want, Moses, we can talk about that other stuff later.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

When Reed returned to the restaurant, Milo said, “What other stuff?”

“Pardon?”

“What you’ll be talking to the good doctor about.”

Reed went scarlet. “Oh, that. She’s putting together a forensics reading list. I figured it’s something I should know.”

“The power of education-you eating any of that lamb?”

“All yours, Loo. Guess I should also be booking.”

“Why?”

“Thought I’d go by the Vander house, maybe I can catch Huck coming or going.”

Milo shook his head. “I’ll go through His Eminence, get some patrol officers into civvies to run shifts. You’re meant for bigger and better.”

“Like what?”

“Go nationwide on unsolveds featuring missing limbs, body parts treated with chemicals. Start with hands but don’t limit yourself.”

Reed said, “Legs, arms, whatever.”

“Heads, shoulders, knees and toes. I don’t care as long as something got cut off.”

“You’re figuring he could’ve switched techniques?”

“As Dr. Delaware likes to remind me, patterns are for fabric.” He turned to me. “If the bodies were kept around to play with, the Vanders’ property probably isn’t the crime scene. Estate manager or not, setting up Dr. Frankenstein’s lab in that place would be too risky.”

Reed said, “Not if the Vanders are also involved in weird stuff.”

“Even so, Moses. They’ve got a kid on the premises. Kinky parties after Junior’s gone to bed is one thing-and even there, I’m doubtful because we’ve got no evidence saying these people are bizarre. But hacking up corpses in the manse with Junior around is over the top.”

“So Huck has another place.”

“Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen him, he’s hiding out in his kill-crib. Check with the assessor, see if he pays property tax on anything. Rentals are a problem, no way we’ll be able to trace unless we go public on him and I’m not ready for that.”

I said, “When we were at Pacific Storage you made a crack about people living there and the attendant denied it. But I’m sure it happens.”

Milo thought about that. “Worth checking out. Including back at Pacific itself. We never showed the clerk Huck’s picture. Your plate getting too full, Moe?”

“Not even close,” said Reed. “Give me more.”

“Nothing more. Sure you don’t want any lunch?”

“No thanks, let me get going.”

After finishing Reed’s and Wilkinson’s food, Milo topped off his meal with the lobster and two bowls of rice pudding. He returned to his office. I went home and repeated searches on Travis Huck, Edward/ Eddie/Eddy/Ed Huckstadter, came up empty.

Keywording Simon Vander pulled up the eight-figure grocery chain sale and a couple of mentions of Vander and his wife on charity committees: the art museum, the zoo, Huntington Library. Your basic genteel philanthropy.

If Simon and Nadine Vander had a dark side, they’d hid that fact from cyberspace.

At four thirty, I logged off, talked to Robin about dinner. Pasta sounded good to both of us. She kept working and I made a run up to the market at the top of the Glen, called my service.

One message from Alma Reynolds.

The operator said, “She said if you didn’t remember her name, she’s Sil Duboff’s lover.”

“I remember her.”

“Interesting way to label yourself, don’t you think, Dr. Delaware? Someone’s lover? Then again, you deal with all types.”

Alma Reynolds’s phone rang eight times. I was just about to hang up when she answered.

“Lieutenant Sturgis didn’t call back, I figured I’d get the same from you,” she said. “I’m running out to the mortuary. They’re releasing Sil in a few days. He always talked about cremation, as long as it could be done in an eco-respectful manner. The ideal, of course, would be if all of us were just placed in the compost heap.”

“What’s up?”

“Anything new on the case?”

“Not yet, sorry.”

“Well, I thought of something. Been ruminating about what could’ve gotten Sil over to the marsh that night. Not that he needed prodding, he was always going there. To clean up trash, make sure no one had trespassed. He had a thing for that place. Truth is, he was somewhat obsessed. I know why. His parents were beatniks who moved from Ann Arbor to a rural part of Wisconsin. The family lived in a cabin near a guess-what.”

“Freshwater and reeds.”

“A huge marsh, fed by one of the Great Lakes. Sil said it was perfect-idyllic, until a paper mill opened up nearby and polluted the hell out of it. All the fish died, the air smelled horrible, and eventually Sil’s family had to move to Milwaukee. Both his parents died of cancer and he was convinced it was the toxic air and water. Even though his father was a three-pack-a-day smoker who got lung cancer, and breast cancer ran in his mother’s family. But try telling Sil that. Try telling him anything.”

I said, “I can see why the Bird Marsh would be important to him.”

“Obsessed,” said Alma Reynolds. “Sometimes it got in the way.”

“Of what?”

“Us. We’d be relaxing and he’d jump up suddenly, say he needed to drive over, make sure everything was okay. It annoyed me, but I rarely said anything because I could see the psychology behind the idealism. But the night he was-that night, I really didn’t want to go and he defied me. So it had to be something major.”

“He told you the caller promised to solve the murders.”

“And I believed him. When those bodies showed up, Sil took it personally, as if he’d allowed something to happen to his baby. He was also worried the murders would be used to say the marsh was no longer pristine and that would open the door to development. I know it sounds paranoid, but Sil didn’t dance to anyone else’s beat. Just the opposite, the world waltzed, he two-stepped.”

I said, “With that level of anxiety, he’d follow any lead.”

“Exactly. I’m glad I reached you and not Sturgis.”

“Did Sil give any indication he knew who’d called?”

“No,” she said. “I thought about that, trying to remember if he indicated one way or the other, and he didn’t. You’re thinking someone he respected might’ve gotten him over.”

“Someone who supported his work. Do you have a list of Save the Marsh members?”

“Never saw one, don’t know that one exists.”

“Who’s in charge of the office now?”

“Don’t know, don’t want to know,” she said. “I wash my hands of all of it.”

No one answered at Save the Marsh.

The group’s board of directors listed the progressive billionaires who’d tried to build on the land, in addition to Silford Duboff, a woman named Chaparral Stevens, and two men: Tomas Friedkin, M.D., and Lionel Mergsamer, Ph.D.

Chaparral Stevens was a Sierra Madre-based jewelry designer, Dr. Friedkin was a ninety-year-old ophthalmologist, emeritus at the U.’s med school. Professor Mergsamer was a Stanford astronomer.

Not a likely bunch, criminal-wise, but I printed their names.

I looked for fund-raisers held for the marsh, found three Westside cocktail parties, no listed guests.

Backing away from the trees, I thought about the forest: Why had Silford Duboff been lured to his death?

Dispatching him didn’t fit with the thrill-seeking aspect of a sexual psychopath. The only motive that made sense was he’d known too much-knowledge that came about innocently or otherwise.

More bones beneath the muck? Aerial photos had revealed nothing, but the earth had a way of swallowing and digesting death.

Or Alma Reynolds was right and Duboff’s desire to play savior-to undo his childhood trauma-had led him to walk into a trap.

That felt analytically pat, but I turned it over and came up with nothing further. A soft rap on my office door snapped the tape loop.

“You look engrossed,” said Robin.

“No, I’m finished.”

“If you’re not, I can cook.”

I got up and we walked to the kitchen.

She said, “Co-Op-E-Ration, just like on Sesame Street. Want to be Bert or Ernie?”

“Maybe Oscar.”

“That kind of day, huh?”

Blanche waddled in and smiled.

I said, “She can set the table.”