Rage

CHAPTER 27

At two p.m. Milo strode through the front door that I’d left open. Grabbing an orange juice carton, he said, “I need fresh air.” We went down to the pond.

“I was trying to be well-adjusted,” he said. “As in sniff the petunias. Rick was off so we went walking in Franklin Canyon, then grabbed some brunch at Urth Café. All the beautiful folks, and me for contrast.” He touched his gut. “Whole grain waffles- kind of takes the fun out of overeating.”

He tipped the juice carton to his lips.

I said, “Sorry to spoil your leisure.”

“What leisure? Rick got called to stitch up a kid who fell out of a tree and the whole time I was thinking about the case and faking mellow.” He tossed food pellets at the water, muttered, “Come to Uncle Milo.” The koi swarmed and splashed. “Nice to be appreciated.”

He gulped until the juice was gone, kneeled and picked a few leaves out of the mondo grass that rims the pond rocks. Ground them to dust between his fingers before sitting down. “Malley and Cherish doing the nasty. Good old reliable human frailty.”

“It fits what Allison said about the Daneys not communicating well. With Cherish’s skepticism about the black truck. She was downplaying Barnett as a suspect.”

“Diverting attention from her boyfriend,” he said. “How do you think the two of them got together?”

“Had to be something related to Kristal.”

“They were on opposite sides of the aisle.”

“Love is strange,” I said.

“What, they passed each other in the hallway and clicked? From everything we’ve heard, Malley despised anyone on the defense team.”

“Apparently anyone but Cherish.”

He scratched his nose. “Think it’s been going on for eight years?”

“It’s not brand new,” I said. “They were comfortable with each other.”

“Good old Cherish, woman of the cloth. Meanwhile the cowboy’s cherishing her in some sleazy motel.”

“It was actually a pretty nice place,” I said. “AAA certification, swimming pool- ”

“Yeah, yeah, and water beds that bounce to the rhythm of misbegotten passion. What is it with these religious types, Alex?”

“There’re plenty of decent religious folk doing good works. Some people are attracted to religion because they’re struggling with forbidden impulses.”

“And others see it as a way to make a buck. How much does the county pay to take care of foster kids?”

“It used to be five, six hundred a month per ward.”

“Not a way to get rich,” he said.

“Five hundred times eight kids is four thousand a month,” I said. “Which wouldn’t be chump change to a divinity school dropout. Especially if it was supplemented by other income.”

“Daney’s other jobs. What’d he call them- nonprofits. He runs around to churches while wifey does some motel-schooling.”

“Plus, they might be getting supplementary fees. I’m not versed in the welfare regs, but there could be a homeschooling allowance. Or extra money to take care of kids with A.D.D.”

“So they could be raking in decent dough.” He rolled his jaw. “Okay, Cherish and Malley are a love connection. What does that say about the murders, if anything?”

“The only thing I can think of is that Troy had three visits before he was killed. One from his mother, two from the Daneys. Theoretically, Cherish could’ve made contact with Nestor Almedeira.”

He put down the bag of fish food. Loosened a shirt button, slipped his hand under the fabric, rubbed his chest.

“You okay?” I said.

He turned toward me. “Reverend Blondie acting as Malley’s emissary to arrange the hit? She poses as a thirteen-year-old’s spiritual support and sets him up to be cut like a hog? Jesus, that would make her a four-plus monster.”

“It’s a hypothetical. It’s just as logical to assume Barnett knew Nestor from the drug trade.”

“And Cherish is just a plain old adulteress.” Another chest rub.

I said, “Itch?”

“Self-administered cardiac massage. If Cherish and Malley didn’t hook up during the six months it took for the boys to be sentenced, when would they have the opportunity?”

“They used to live pretty close to each other.”

“What, a chance meeting at Kmart? One look at Cherish and Barnett goes from enraged dad to lover boy?”

I shrugged.

“Okay, let’s put that aside and think about the next body: Lara. That could still be what we theorized- Malley blamed her for Kristal, their marriage was falling apart. But toss in a new girlfriend and you beef up the motivation. Wonder if there was any life insurance out on Lara.”

“If there was Malley didn’t use it to finance the good life.”

He jotted in his pad. Picked up the bag and tossed more pellets to the fish.

I said, “The new girlfriend wouldn’t have to be Cherish.”

“Barnett’s a ladies’ man?”

“He looked pretty jaunty exiting the motel and you felt there was chemistry between him and Bunny MacIntyre. Cherish, on the other hand, seemed pretty tense.”

“The cowboy’s a player,” he said. “Sure, why not. MacIntyre’s crack about not keeping tabs on his comings and goings was gratuitous bullshit. You saw the layout there. He drives his truck through the trees and she’s not gonna notice? Next d.b.: Hannabee. Though I’m still not convinced she’s part of it. Cherish making it with Barnett spin that in any new way?”

“The Daneys were providing support to Jane during the trial. Cherish might have known where Jane slept at night.”

“The fixer, again. Okay, for argument’s sake, Cherish is a charter member of the Very Bad Girls Club. What does that say about the case the city’s actually paying me to work on?”

“It points to another setup,” I said. “If Cherish is dirty, Drew was telling the truth about Rand hearing noises under the window, seeing the black truck. Barnett Malley went after Rand because Rand knew something about Kristal’s murder that threatened him. Something Rand told Cherish because he trusted her.”

“She goes and rats him out to her boyfriend. What would Rand know, eight years later, that threatened Barnett?”

“The obvious answer is Barnett had something to do with his daughter’s death.”

“The boys beat and choked Kristal, no one debates it. Why would Barnett have had anything to do with that?”

“Don’t know.” The two of us sat staring at the fish that I’d put in the pond because I thought it would help me relax. Once in a while, it does.

Milo said, “Even if there is something to that, why eight years later. What are we talking about? One of those recovered memories?”

“Or a young man making sense of something that had confused him for years. Rand could have come to it long before his release, but who would he tell? The prison staff was unresponsive, they never even followed through on teaching him to read. His only confidante was Cherish. But his trust was misplaced.”

“Once he was out, he thought of someone else,” he said. “A guy with a Ph.D. who’d been fair and warmhearted and objective.”

He looked at me. “The meeting he never made. Maybe that was the point of killing him.”

We walked back up to the house, popped a couple of beers, and sat at the kitchen table.

Milo finished his bottle and put it aside. “How’s this for ugly, Alex: What if Cherish and Malley didn’t meet at the trial. They were getting it on before Kristal’s murder. She wanted to marry him, needed to get rid of the competition. As in his existing family. So she found herself a little killer for hire and started with the offspring.”

“Cherish paid Troy to murder Kristal?”

“She knew Troy from before. She’s into psychology, went looking for a cold-eyed little psychopath and found one. Troy told you he was gonna get rich. Cherish strung him along by promising to get him out early, with some pot of gold at the end of the goddamn rainbow. Instead, she got him bumped. Six months later, phase two: Lara goes down.”

“Lara was shot with Barnett’s gun,” I said.

“So either Barnett did her himself, or Cherish, being his girl, had ample opportunity to pick the thirty-eight out of the collection. My bet’s on them both being dirty. Remember how pissed Nina Balquist was about Barnett cremating Lara instead of holding a funeral? Why be in such a rush unless you had something to hide? And if Barnett abducted Rand, he’d have to know what was going on.”

“The only problem is,” I said, “it’s eight years later and Cherish and Barnett aren’t married. Why would they go through all that for the sake of an illicit affair?”

“Hey,” he said, “relationships are tough. The passion cooled, whatever.”

“Not enough to stop the motel trysts.”

“Okay, they discovered that hot-bedding it is more fun than going domestic. Or Cherish doesn’t want to give up all that county money and the income from Drew’s moonlighting. Divorce usually hurts the woman, right? Look at Weider. Cherish keeps the house, the kids, the holy-roller persona, and has her fun on the side.”

“Could be,” I said. “It sure fits with Allison’s guess about premeditation. Troy was paid and brought Rand along as backup. Rand wasn’t in on it from the beginning, but somehow he figured it out.”

He rubbed his face hard. “Still, it’s a tough one, pinning Kristal on Barnett. Here’s a guy waited years to be a father. He went so far as to borrow money for fertility treatment.”

“Nina Balquin suspects the money was never used for treatment.”

“Barnett and Lara must’ve done something, Alex. They had a kid. If Cherish is Little Miss Hitler I can see her trying to eliminate the other chimp’s baby. But Barnett doing his own kid for her?”

I heard the question but my brain was somewhere else. His mention of Nina Balquin had flashed me back to her house. The rear wall.

I said, “Oh, my.”

“What?”

“Kristal’s baby photo. Her eyes. Big and brown. Barnett’s blue-eyed and so was Lara. I remember seeing her in court, she had huge, gray-blue eyes that she was constantly wiping because she was always tearing up. Two brown-eyed parents can produce a light-eyed child but the opposite’s only remotely possible, through spontaneous mutation.”

“Kristal wasn’t the cowboy’s kid?”

“It wasn’t until six years after they borrowed the money that Lara got pregnant.”

“Lara got herself a different kind of fertility treatment.” His smile was vicious. “Both of them fooling around but Lara left evidence and Barnett couldn’t handle it.”

“Barnett dominated and isolated Lara,” I said. “Another reason for her to go looking for love elsewhere. Any husband would be enraged by his wife having another man’s baby, but someone like Barnett- asocial, bad temper, gun freak- would’ve been especially prone to a violent reaction. He punished Lara twice. First by eliminating the fruit of her infidelity, and when that didn’t put out the fire in his belly, he got rid of her. And if he needed encouragement, Cherish was there to egg him on.”

“Pillow talk,” he said. “ ‘I’ve got a solution, honey.’ Yeah, makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“It makes stomach-crawling sense.”

“So how did Rand figure it out?” he said.

“He must’ve recalled something from the time of the murder,” I said. “Spotting Cherish with Troy shortly before the abduction. Or seeing Cherish and Barnett together. For all we know one of them went to the mall that day to make sure everything went down smoothly. Or Barnett’s involvement was more direct. Lara said she only turned her head for a minute before Kristal disappeared. What if someone Kristal knew and trusted lured her away?”

“Come to Daddy,” he said. “Then Daddy hands her over to Troy and Rand. Jesus… and Rand came to all this spontaneously, after years of sitting behind bars?”

“ Rand knew he was behind bars because he’d been part of something terrible. Isolation and maturation got him ruminating. He began to assess his share of the guilt. To try to feel like a good person. Barnett and Cherish had no reason to worry about him because he hadn’t been in on the plot. Until he began talking to Cherish. Troy, on the other hand, was an immediate threat, and was eliminated quickly.”

“What’s the name of that seminary she went to?”

“ Fulton.”

“Any idea where it is?”

I shook my head. “According to Cherish, Troy ’s buried there. She convinced the dean to donate a plot.”

“Oh, I’ll bet she did.” He laughed and cracked his knuckles. “Cherish is a word I use to descri-ibe…”

“On the other hand,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s a great house of cards, but all we really know about Cherish is that she’s sleeping with Barnett Malley.”

His face got hard. “So we find out more. That’s what life’s all about, right? Broadening one’s horizons.”