Obsession

CHAPTER 44

Eruption, then excavation.

The way I saw it, Law Enforcement ended up with the light shovels.

A key found in the mess Blaise De Paine had left in Perry Moore’s house was traced to a rental storage bin in East Hollywood. Double unit, complete with fluorescent lighting, a sleeper sofa, and electrical hookup.

The refrigerator at the rear hummed nicely. Next to the cooler was a sealed box of heroin packets, a host of over-the-counter painkillers, and thirty-five soap-bar-sized chunks of hashish. Inside the fridge were six-packs of Jolt Cola, a nice variety of microbrewed beers, and a trash bag filled with human bones, some still dusted with desiccated flesh. The bones offered up four distinct DNA patterns, all female. Mitochondrial matches were eventually made to Brenda Hochlbeier and Renée Mittle, aka Brandee Vixen and Rocksi Roll. Those remains were sent back to Curney, North Dakota, where the girls’ families offered thanks for the chance to provide a proper Christian burial.

The other two samples remained Jane Does.

Benjamin Baranelli ran an ad in Adult Film News announcing the reconstitution of Vivacious Videos, initiated by a “re-release tribute five-CD set featuring our beloved Brandee and Rocksi.”

Robert Fisk’s public defender offered to plead his client to obstruction of justice. The D.A.’s office proclaimed its “unalterable” intention to charge Fisk with multiple first-degree murders. The compromise reached four days later had Fisk plead to two counts of voluntary manslaughter with a fifteen-year sentence. The nugget Fisk offered up was the fact that De Paine had bragged about killing “two bitches from Compton.”

Further work on the unidentified bones confirmed likely African American heritage. Attempts to identify the sources continued.

Mary Whitbread was charged with nothing. Within a week of her son’s death, her ground-floor unit on Fourth Avenue was up for lease and she’d moved to parts unknown.

Whispers around town had Mario Fortuno incriminating a horde of Hollywood notables in illegal wiretapping, with indictments to come. East Coast papers covered the rumors with greater enthusiasm than the L.A. Times.

Petra, Raul Biro, David Saunders, and Kevin Bouleau all received departmental commendations. Biro nudged up against a fast-track promotion to Detective II.

When Milo was wheeled into the Cedars E.R., Rick was there to greet him. The surgeon broke his own rule about treating relatives and dug the pellets out of Milo’s arm personally. The procedure turned out to be more complex than expected, with several small blood vessels requiring repair. Milo insisted on nothing stronger than local anesthesia. Conscious sedation made him loopy and he peppered the operating room with a barrage of obnoxious comments.

Days later, he claimed to be healed and threw away his sling, against medical advice. Rick was on call and not there to argue. I didn’t enter the debate, even after I caught Milo wincing when lifting a coffee cup.

My shovel weighed a ton.

I met with Tanya daily, sometimes for hours at a time. When called for, Kyle attended.

Getting therapy off on the right foot meant starting with a lie: Patty had never killed anyone, had merely been referring to the death of a drug-dealing friend of De Paine, at De Paine’s hand. The “terrible thing” was her guilt at not reporting the crime.

I built up Patty’s justification for keeping quiet. Others had already notified the police, with poor results; she’d felt compelled to escape so she could ensure Tanya’s safety. Years later, she’d run into De Paine and he’d smirked, threatened Tanya. Before Patty could do anything about it, she’d fallen ill, had been forced to “get her ducks in a row.”

The deathbed pronouncement, muddled by terminal disease, had been aimed at warning Tanya.

“I’m sure,” I said, “that had she lived she would’ve tried to fill in more details.”

Tanya sat there.

“She loved you so much,” I said. “It all traces back to that.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know. Thank you.”

Next topic: the fact that she’d killed a man.

The crime reconstruction confirmed the scene I’d imagined.

De Paine’s first blast at Milo had been taken from the top of the stairs. Milo, hit, had run backward into darkness, clutching his arm and groping for his service gun.

De Paine had descended several stairs, straining to locate his prey. He’d heard something behind him, or imagined he had. Wheeling, he’d shot through the door from a now-lowered vantage point, destroying wood but leaving the upper window intact.

Tanya, hearing the noise, grabbed up the nine-shot Walther semi-automatic she’d borrowed from Colonel Bedard’s gun room and, ignoring Kyle’s pleas, ran into the kitchen.

Hearing De Paine’s third blast and Milo’s return fire, she’d aimed wobbily through the shattered door and squeezed off all nine shots.

One bullet embedded in the doorjamb and was dug out by the reconstruction crew. Five others sailed clear of De Paine, hit concrete steps, and rolled, defaced, to the bottom of the stairway.

One hit De Paine in his left hand, a nonfatal flesh wound.

Two pierced his gut, demolished his spleen and liver.

Clear case of self-defense. Tanya said she was fine with what she’d done. Maybe she’d eventually believe that.

Kyle Bedard moved into the duplex on Canfield. Iona Bedard protested and was ignored. Myron Bedard remained in Europe but called twice to “make sure Kyle was okay.” When informed of his ex-wife’s resentment of “that girl,” Myron wired Kyle fifty thousand dollars and instructed him to “take your cutie on a nice vacation and don’t tell your mother where you’re going.”

Kyle banked the money and returned to work on his doctoral dissertation.

Tanya told me she loved him, but it took a bit of adjustment to have someone in her bed. Since the shooting, Kyle dozed restlessly.

“He sits up, asleep, but looking terrified, Dr. Delaware. I hug him and tell him everything’s okay and the next morning he doesn’t remember a thing. What is that, a deep-stage night terror?”

“Could be,” I said.

“If it doesn’t clear up, maybe he can come to you.”

“How’re you sleeping, Tanya?”

“Me? Great.”

Further questioning revealed she completed at least an hour of compulsive ritual before bedtime. Sometimes the routine stretched to ninety minutes.

“But that was an exception, Dr. Delaware. Mostly I clock in at sixty or just below.”

“You time yourself.”

“To get a handle on it,” she said. “Of course it’s possible that the timing itself has become part of the routine. But I can live with that-oh, by the way did I tell you I changed my mind about psychiatry? Too ambiguous, I’m thinking about E.R. medicine.”

Over the next month, her compulsive habits intensified. I concentrated on the big issues until, three weeks later, she was ready to work on the symptoms. Hypnosis and cognitive behavior therapy proved useful, but not completely. I contemplated medication. Perhaps she sensed that because she devoted half of one session to a paper she’d written on the side effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Opining that she’d never “mess with my brain, unless I was truly psychotic.”

I said, “In the end, it’s up to you.”

“Because I’m an adult?”

I smiled.

She said, “Adulthood’s kind of a foolish concept, isn’t it? People grow up in all kinds of different ways.”