Breakdown

Chapter 43

Enid DePauw and J. Yarmuth Loach remained in jail. He began refusing food and had to be intubated in the medical ward. Flip Moftizadeh persisted in filing requests for bail based on a variety of theories. All were refused.

Prisoner DePauw, the once-popular, self-described “mentor of disadvantaged girls,” saw her social status slip when it was learned that two of her victims were Latina and that one, Imelda Soriano, had been distantly related to a neighbor of a member of the Chicas Locas gang. On the thirteenth day of her incarceration, she was ambushed and beaten and ended up in the infirmary. Once treated, she was sent to a one-prisoner isolation cell and compelled to wear orange scrubs.

Going to trial would take a while, but John Nguyen felt serene about his prospects. Milo said, “I’m on an optimism diet but I’ll splurge.”

I added my enthusiasm to the mix but my heart felt as if dry rocks had replaced tissue and blood. The likeliest reality was Ovid Chase had met a terrible end — despite what Chet Brett had told me, one of those living-rough horrors of the street.

Or, even worse, something cold and horrific at the hands of DePauw and Loach.

Either way, long buried where he’d never be found.

I needed to stop imagining.

I was working on that with little success when John Nguyen called and asked me to submit to an interview by an L.A. Times reporter. The four murders had captured the public’s attention and the paper wanted a “human interest follow-up.”

I said, “She the one Milo talked to?”

“Myrna Strickland. She talked to both of us.”

“He said she was annoying.”

“She’s a journalist, Alex.”

“What exactly does she want?”

“Your name came up in the court docs and she’s curious about a psychologist’s take, the whole mental health thing, oppression of the helpless. My advice is talk to her, otherwise she’ll find someone else who tells her what she wants to hear. She asked for your private number, I said I’d talk to you first. Can I give it to her?”

“Okay. What shouldn’t I tell her, John?”

“Anything beyond the basics of the case.”

“Meaning?”

“Try not to get too emo, if you know what I mean. Newspaper hacks are zombie aliens who steal our thoughts and mutate them into something they can digest.”

Myrna Strickland called me that day and said, “A phoner will be fine, Doctor.”

She was clear about her goal: I was to expound on “entitled white perpetrators versus low-income victims of color and those from the disabled community.”

I said, “What about Rod Salton?”

A beat. “The Mormon? Well, he’s a minority, too. At least, if you’re not in Utah. But I’m going to concentrate on the others.”

I stuck to the basics and she grew bored.

“That’s all, Doctor. Thanks.”

“There’s another victim no one’s talking about.”

“Like who?”

“The most vulnerable victim of all. A child.”

“There’s no child mentioned in anything I got from the D.A.”

“Zelda Chase had a son who’d be eleven if he was alive.”

A beat. “You’re saying he’s not?”

“He hasn’t been seen for several years. He’d also be an heir to the DePauw estate. So there’d be a motive to kill him.”

“Wow,” she said. “I’m putting my tape recorder back on.”

When I finished, she said, “Prince and Pauper, totally consistent with my theme.”

The story ran two days later, with “the tragedy and mystery of a throwaway child repeatedly victimized by the system” its primary focus.

The following afternoon, my service phoned with a message to call a Maureen Bolt.

Unfamiliar name, no reason stated, a 310 number. I’d just finished a session with one of the kids in the latest custody dispute, was collecting my thoughts and trying to figure out what to write down and what to leave out. Another couple of hours was spent on my report. It was early evening before I returned the call.

A melodious female voice said, “Hello.”

“This is Dr. Delaware returning Ms. Bolt’s call.”

“Hello, Alex. If I might. You don’t know me but I know about you. You worked with my husband, Lou Sherman.”

“I actually tried to reach you. The med school had you listed as Maureen Sherman.”

“I was working as a clinical social worker under my maiden name when I met Lou, by the time I retired, changing it didn’t make sense. Now here I am, contacting you. I suspect for the same reason you looked for me. Can we meet? I’m pretty much open time-wise and I’m not far from you, Studio City, just over the hill, half a mile east of Beverly Glen.”

“That is close.”

“Lou told me about your house in the Glen, said you’d described a great view. He always wanted a place with a view. We never got around to that. Would you be able to come over tomorrow?”

“I could drop by tonight.”

“No,” she said, “tomorrow would be better. Say four p.m.?”

“I’ll be there.”

“I figured you would,” she said. “Lou said you were one of the most thorough people he’d ever met.”