Compulsion

CHAPTER 36

I spent most of the day after at Western Pediatric Medical Center, listening to Felicia Torres, guiding her through the hospital system. Observing Emilio.

The little boy clung to his mother, mute and tense.

Physically okay, according to Dr. Ruben Eagle, an old friend and head of the Outpatient Division. We agreed that Rochelle Kissler, a brilliant young psychologist who’d been my student, would be perfect for the long term.

I introduced both of them to Felicia, stayed with her after they left, and asked if there was anything else she wanted to talk about.

“No… I’m so tired.”

“Is there someone who can stay with you?”

“My mom,” she said. “She lives in Phoenix, but she’ll come if I ask.”

I dialed the number, sat there as she talked.

She hung up, smiling wearily. “She’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Do you need someone till then?”

“No, I’ll be fine… this is so nice of you.”

“We’re all here to help you.”

She began shaking.

“What is it?”

“The way you said that, Dr. Delaware. Being helpful. That’s what he pretended. What kind of sick joke was that?”

I didn’t answer.

“I never trusted him, Doctor. Not from the minute I met him.”

Milo and I decompressed at a bar in Santa Monica. Eleven p.m.; he’d spent his day with Raul Biro and two other Hollywood detectives, going through the house on Altair Terrace.

One of the homes Dale Bright had bought as Nicholas Heubel. The other was a cabin near Palmdale, where he’d confined Felicia Torres in a bathroom. Forced her to imagine what he was doing to Emilio.

Mostly, he’d ignored the child. Letting him cry, then scream. No food or water. Then a quick drop into a shipping carton.

Airholes, to prolong the ordeal.

Milo said, “I know I’m supposed to have a reaction to shooting anyone. But, God help me, Alex, I wish I’d had more bullets.”

Three of five rooms on Altair were filled with mementos. Nice view of the Hollywood sign from a corner of the deck. White Lexus in the garage.

The Bentley had been moved from the LAPD motor lab to the same department-sanctioned tow yard where Kat Shonsky’s car had been ignored.

I said, “Maybe the chief can use it as his official ride.”

Milo said, “Harness a couple of thoroughbreds to the front bumper, be perfect.”

Ansell “Dale” Bright’s medicine cabinet yielded nothing stronger than aspirin and over-the-counter sinus remedies.

Under the sink was a polished black-walnut box filled with ampules of synthetic testosterone. Its bird’s-eye maple mate held plastic-sealed hypodermic needles.

“Pumping himself up?” said Milo. “To go with a dress?”

I threw up my hands.

He finished his Martini and told me about the passports under half a dozen aliases, the trove of documents that traced Bright’s path from New York to London, then Paris, Lisbon, back to England, Ireland, Scotland. Final stop: Zurich.

Trammel Dabson was another pilfered identity. Same DOB as Bright and the unfortunate Nicholas Heubel.

The original owner of the identity, an infant buried in the Morton Hall Cemetery in Edinburgh.

Bright had done a gravestone rubbing, mounted it in a scrapbook.

One of fifteen scrapbooks.

Chronicle of a life lived in costume.

The souvenirs weren’t limited to paper. In a small basement cut into the hillside behind the house, Milo discovered a trio of footlockers filled with firearms, knives, two acetylene blowtorches, stout rope, surgical gloves and tools, scalpels, probes, tissue spreaders, vials of poison.

Newspaper clippings from foreign papers created another chronology.

Unsolved murder of the landlord of a rooming house in the Eleventh Arrondissement of Paris.

Disappearance of an Oxford publican with a famously nasty disposition.

An article in Portuguese yet to be translated. But the grainy snapshot of a heavyset woman and the recurrent word “assasinato” said plenty.

The Brentwood house had served as a front and yielded nothing of forensic value. Upscale address for the social life Bright-as-Heubel had hoped to live as a financial advisor. Soraya Hamidpour had a client “from the industry” ready to move in.

Access to Bright’s computer was easy. No encryption and his password was “Bright Guy.”

His hard drive contained mostly financial files – algorithms for trading, performance histories, linkups to bourses around the world – and a scatter of sadistic pornography.

In a separate folder were five drafts of a prospectus “Nicholas St. Heubel, III” had composed and dated two years previous. Plans to start Hydro-Worth, a hedge fund emphasizing oil commodity trading. Bright had appended a puffed-up bio, lied about attending Eton, Harvard, and Wharton, termed himself “a brilliant tactician and financial soothsayer.”

The boast had some basis in fact. Upon arrival in London from New York, he’d used fake credentials to get a job at a brokerage house in London. Learned to trade futures well enough to earn enormous performance bonuses and a letter of commendation from the managing director.

Within eighteen months, he’d quit, was investing for himself. Nine years after inheriting $1.36 million, his savings had grown to $7.1 million.

Not counting the Swiss bank account, which would take a while to access.

Something else from Switzerland: Mounted at the back of one of the scrapbooks was an elegantly handwritten receipt from a clinic in Lugano. Nothing itemized; the franc conversion translated to fifty-five thousand American dollars.

“Maybe a drug problem, one of those high-end rehab places,” said Milo. “But except for the macho-juice, we didn’t find anything iffy.”

“Could’ve been successful rehab,” I said. “If so, too bad for society.”

“What do you mean?”

“He got his head clear enough to chop off other people’s.”

Despite Nicholas St. Heubel III’s financial acumen, he’d picked up no clients and Hydro-Worth remained a scheme.

I said, “Superficially charming but maybe when they got to know him, he spooked them like he did the sisters.”

“Too cute for his own good.”

“The game was too much fun.”

“Raul found something he wrote on a hard copy of the prospectus. ‘Time for a frugal lifestyle, funnel in on what’s important.’”

“Getting his priorities straight,” I said.

He said, “Another too bad.”

As we worked on our second round of drinks, Milo ’s phone vibrated on the bar.

Inaudible above the drone of bar-talk and an old football game on ESPN Classic.

He watched it jump like a Mexican bean, chewed his olive, swallowed, picked up.

“Sturgis… you’re up late, Doc… That so? Oh, man… I do appreciate it, anything else? True… I’ll ask him, thanks for letting me know.”

Emptying his glass, he waved for a refill.

I said, “Which doc was that?”

“Steinberg, at the coroner’s. Ol’ Dale’s autopsy was prioritized, orders from the chief.”

“All those bullet holes, an autopsy was necessary?”

“Police-involved shootings must be treated with utmost care,” he pronounced as if talking about someone else.

His drink came. He sipped. Hummed something I couldn’t make out.

I said, “What?”

He placed his glass on the bar, twirled the stem. “Turns out Dale-Nick-Mr. Bizarro had no balls. Literally. Surgically removed, nice neat job all healed over.”

“The Swiss clinic.”

“I hear money buys you anything there.”

“He pays to get castrated,” I said, “takes testosterone to stay masculine.”

“No doubt, you’ve got an explanation based on your training and expertise.”

Above us, on screen, someone made a thirty-yard run for a touchdown. Ancient history but some of the drinkers at the bar got excited.

I said, “I could theorize about the desire for total control. Regulating his dosage, enjoying the fluctuation.”

“But?”

I snagged the bartender’s attention. Pointed at Milo ’s glass.

Mouthed, “Me, too.”