Rage

CHAPTER 32

Talking about his sister had left George Ramos pale and worn.

Milo apologized for intruding. Ramos said, “You’re just doing your job,” and stared at the grass.

I said, “Did you have any contact with the Daneys?”

“I called them once after Lee died. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I thought they’d care.”

“They didn’t?”

“I spoke to the wife- Charity, Chastity, something like that- ”

“Cherish.”

“That’s it,” he said. “She broke down, sobbed, got damn near hysterical. Maybe I’m cynical but I thought it was a little over the top.”

“Putting on an act?” said Milo.

“They only had Lee for a few months and obviously they didn’t do a very good job.”

“You tell her that?”

“No,” said Ramos. “I didn’t- wasn’t in a mood to talk.”

“Cherish do anything to make you think she was faking her grief?”

“No, but who knows?” said Ramos. “Who knows about anything?”

“Ever speak with her husband?”

“Nope, just her.” Ramos stood and snatched up his books and his laptop.

I said, “Did Lee ever hint around about getting pregnant?”

Ramos’s long face turned sad. “Don’t you guys get it? We didn’t talk.”

He let the books dangle, clutched his laptop to his chest, and bird-walked away. Other law students continued to stream out, some chatting in tight little groups, a few preoccupied loners forging their own trails.

Milo got up and stretched. “I just creaked.”

“Didn’t hear a thing.”

“So the Daneys take on too many wards but don’t supervise. Fits with moral laxity.”

“It does.”

“Ready to go?”

I stayed on the bench.

“Alex?”

“What if?” I said.

He sat back down.

A group of students passed us. When they were gone, he said, “What evil thoughts have seized that brain of yours?”

“George Ramos assumes Lee got pregnant on the street. It could’ve happened in-house. Literally.”

“Daney?”

“He was the only male in the house. Which, come to think of it, is a haremlike situation. All those teenage girls from troubled backgrounds. Maybe there’s a reason the Daneys ask for female wards.”

“Oh, man.”

“We know Daney’s a fraud and an adulterer, and we’ve just raised suspicions about his involvement in murder. Impregnating a minor under his care doesn’t seem out of character. He’d have been sure to terminate the pregnancy, which fits with Lee Ramos’s abortion. It could also explain her suicide. We’re talking about an extremely troubled girl whose relationship with her father was hostile. She’d be looking for a compassionate substitute. The state found her one but if he betrayed her, then had her sweep away the evidence, that would’ve been traumatic.”

“Surrogate incest.”

“Precisely the kind of violation that could have led to serious depression.”

“Slashing her arms on her birthday,” he said. “If it was suicide.”

“You’re thinking it wasn’t?”

“I’m letting my imagination run free.”

He phoned the Santa Barbara coroner, spoke to the forensic pathologist who’d conducted Lee Ramos’s autopsy, did a lot of listening, hung up shaking his head.

“Doesn’t seem to be any doubt about suicide. She locked herself in the room from the inside, put on music, the only window was painted shut. No sign of struggle, no defense wounds, just deep longitudinal gashes on her arms- serious intent. Beforehand, she polished off a pint of Southern Comfort and swallowed a bottle of Valium. If the razor hadn’t done it, the dope would’ve. The kids she lived with said she’d been really down for the last few weeks. They’d tried to get her to go party with them- it was for her birthday. Lee begged off at the last moment, said she was feeling sick.”

My eyes got tight. A girl I’d never met. “Birthday suicide,” I said. “Unable to face another year.”

Milo put his weight on the back of the bench, showed me the back of his head, folded his arms across his chest. A breeze ruffled the trees behind us. The grass responded a few seconds later.

“She always had some cash, so the roomies suspected she’d been turning tricks. Sixteen years old. It doesn’t get that way overnight, does it?”

Before I could answer, he shot to his feet, marched away slapping his notepad against his thigh. Nothing avian about his walk.

Bear on the prowl. Definitely a bear.

I followed, not sure what I was.

We returned to the car and cruised along the campus’s eastern periphery.

I said, “Daney works the system. I wonder if he’d dip into his own pocket for an abortion.”

Milo slowed. “Bastard knocks up a ward and bills the state? He’s been getting away with everything else, sure, why not?”

“It’s one thing,” I said, “that we could elevate from theory to fact.”

Olivia said, “Officially, the files are confidential, so I’m not sure you could use it in court.”

“Let’s see if there’s anything to use,” I said.

“Your call, darling. It could take some time.”

“You’re always worth waiting for.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “My girlish allure.”

My cell squawked as we drove up the Glen, a mile before my house. “Some time” had been five minutes.

“Nothing under ‘Ramos,’ ” Olivia said, “but the termination of Wilfreda Lee Monahan’s pregnancy was indeed billed to the taxpayers. The provider’s in North Hollywood. The Women’s Wellness Place.”

She recited an address on the six thousand block of Whitsett. Short ride from the Daneys’ house, more of that same tight net.

“Did an adult accompany her?” I said.

“That wouldn’t be in there. State supreme court nixed parental consent back in 1998.”

“Even with her being in foster care?”

“Even with. In fact, with the girl already on the rolls, billing would’ve been a cinch, just toss another code into the mix. Codes, plural. Looks like she also got a full physical, ob-gyn checkup, pregnancy counseling, and AIDS education.”

“Thorough,” I said.

“Sounds like major league chutzpah at play here.”

“You don’t want to know, Liv. Would you do me a favor and run another name through? Leticia Maryanne Hollings, seventeen years old.”

“Another one,” she said. “So it’s worse than chutzpah.”

Leticia Hollings’s abortion had taken place a month before Lee Monahan’s. Same comprehensive billing.

Same clinic.

The Women’s Wellness Place stuck in my head but I couldn’t say why. I asked Olivia to cross-reference the two girls who’d left the Daneys and had reached majority.

One, a girl named Beth Scoggins, now nineteen, had also terminated a pregnancy at the Women’s Wellness Place. Two years ago, when she’d been a foster ward.

Olivia said, “This is getting yucky.”

I told Milo about Scoggins. His eyes blazed and I could hear his teeth grinding as he snatched the phone. From the soft, gentle way he thanked Olivia, you’d never have known.

We pulled up in front of my house and I rushed ahead of him into my office.

Thirty-eight hits for Women’s Wellness Place. Most citations referred to legitimate programs at major hospitals. Three matched the North Hollywood clinic.

The first explained my déjà vu.

I’d come across it before, researching Sydney Weider. Fund-raiser, eight years ago. Weider and Martin Boestling among the donors. Publicity photo taken during better times.

The other two citations were dated two years later, also parties to finance the “compassionate, nonprofit programs” of the clinic. No mention of Weider or Boestling; by then they’d split up and dropped several social rungs.

What the two hits did offer was a roster of Women’s Wellness’s professional staff.

Alphabetized list. A name as blatant as a scar, sandwiched among M.D.s and Ph.D.s, chiropractors, counselors, art therapists, massage specialists.

Drew Daney, M.Div., Pastoral Consultant.

The growling noise behind me raised the short hairs on the back of my neck.

” ‘I do some work with nonprofits,’ ” Milo said. “Sure you do, dude. You’re a regular fucking saint.”

“Maybe he gets a kickback,” I said. “Percentage of total billings. An additional incentive to get them pregnant and terminated.”

“Additional?”

“Something like that is never just about money.”

We moved to the kitchen and I brewed coffee.

“At the very least, this guy’s abusing young girls,” said Milo. “If he’s done everything we’ve wondered about, he’s a dimestore Manson. Problem is I can’t do a damn thing about it because officially I’m not allowed to have access to the girls’ medical files. Even with the files there’s no proof Daney was responsible for the pregnancies.”

“As a psychologist, I’m obligated to report abuse,” I said. “The rules of evidence don’t apply.”

“How much proof do you need in order to report?”

“The law says suspicion of abuse. What that means is unclear. Every time I’ve tried to get clarification- from the medical board, my lawyer, the state psych association- I’ve failed. I know colleagues who’ve gotten into trouble for reporting and those who’ve been screwed because they didn’t.”

“The law’s an ass,” he said, bypassing the coffee and getting a beer from the fridge. “One thing puzzles me, Alex. Even with kickbacks, Daney getting all those girls pregnant would be dangerous. Be easier to get them birth control, or use some himself, than risk their telling someone.”

“They haven’t told yet,” I said. “Or maybe they did and no one listened.”

“The poor Ramos kid.”

I nodded. “Even if Daney didn’t murder anyone else, if he was the father of her child, he’s responsible, on some level, for her death.”

He popped his beer but didn’t drink. “So how do I find out?”

“How about this: I could try to talk to Leticia Hollings and Beth Scoggins. Couch it as a general inquiry into foster care. If they mention or hint about being exploited, I’ll have a clear obligation to notify the police.”

“Any police in particular?”

“In a pinch, you’ll do.”

He smiled weakly. “The problem is, Alex, if you approach them as a police surrogate, the confidentiality thing will still get in the way of a criminal investigation.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “I began as a police consultant but veered off to independent research.”

“Thought that was a cover story.”

“It could be real.”

He looked up. “How so?”

“I learned about Lee Ramos’s suicide working with you and got intrigued on an intellectual level.”

“Intrigued about what?”

“The relationship between foster care and suicide. The articles I published years ago on stress and abuse would make it a natural.”

“You still do research?”

“Haven’t for a while, but I’m a full professor and full professors get to do what they want.”

“When did you get promoted?”

“Last year.”

“You never mentioned it.”

“No big deal,” I said. “It’s a clinical appointment. What it boils down to is once in a while they ask me to supervise an intern or a grad student, serve on an ad hoc committee, or read a research proposal.”

“You get paid for that?”

“No,” I said. “It’s my way of giving back.” I formed a halo with my hands and held it over my head.

“What a guy,” he said. “You don’t look a day over associate professor.”

His phone beeped. “Sturgis. Oh hi… yeah, long time… you’re kidding. That’s great. Thanks a mill. I owe you big time.”

Wide smile. Long time since I’d seen that.

“That was Coroner’s Investigator Nancy Martino, R.N. She found tissue samples from Kristal Malley’s autopsy stored in a cooler. Kidney and stomach sections. Some of it looks degraded but there might be enough for analysis. They’ll hold it until I give them the word.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“For what it’s worth.” His smile died.

“Now what?”

“What’s the DNA really gonna do, Alex? Confirm what we already know from the eye color: The cowboy wasn’t Kristal’s daddy. What it won’t accomplish is get me any closer to Malley for Rand. Or to Daney for whatever bad stuff he did.”

He tapped a calypso beat against the beer bottle. “Two bad guys, no leads, life is beautiful.”

“Better than no bad guys.”

“How comforting,” he said. “You must be a therapist.”