Bones Read online

  Milo smiled. “How long you been out of the job, Aaron?”

  “Centuries,” said Fox. “To be precise, three years this September. Maybe I should throw a party.”

  “Looks like private enterprise agrees with you.”

  “I don’t argue with it so it’s got no reason to disagree with me.” Touching a silk sleeve. “Yeah, it’s great, Milo. Rewards for initiative and achievement, lots of freedom, the only bosses are the people who write the checks and they’re entitled to make demands.”

  “Nice,” said Milo. “Long as you produce.”

  “So far, so good,” said Fox.

  Moe Reed returned. Edged his chair away from Fox’s and sat down.

  Milo said, “Why’m I thinking you’re not here by accident, Aaron? Or for the food?”

  “Definitely not the food,” said Fox. “Had a late breakfast. Hotel Bel-Air with a prospective client.”

  “Apricot crêpes, that sauce they have?”

  “Nice, but too messy for a first date, Milo. Just eggs—shirred with chives.”

  Reed muttered, “Call the Food Network.”

  Fox said, “You’re right, bro, no more small talk. Nothing small about my intentions, I’m here about Selena Bass.”

  “What about her?” said Milo.

  “Got a suspect for you and asking nothing in return.”

  Reed snorted.

  Milo said, “Who?”

  “Guy named Travis Huck.”

  Reed said, “We’ve already run him through, no history.”

  Fox grinned. “No history under that name.”

  “He’s got an alias?” said Milo.

  “Been known to happen,” said Fox. “Aka Edward Travis Huckstadter.” Taking his time spelling the last name. “No one’s going to write that down?”

  “What’s he running from, Aaron?”

  “What else? His past.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Aaron Fox put down his tea and reached into an inner suit pocket. A wad of newspaper clippings dropped on the table in front of Milo. Great tailoring had hidden the bulge.

  Milo said, “Why don’t you summarize for us civil servants?”

  “Pleasure. Edward Travis Huckstadter grew up in Ferris Ravine, one of those scrubby ranch towns inland from San Diego. Daddy, unknown, Mommy, a crazy drunk. When young Eddie was fourteen he got into a shoving match with a classmate and the other kid died. Eddie got convicted of murder, spent some time in juvey lockup, then got shunted around the foster care system. That’s some psychological history, Doc.”

  “Fourteen,” said Moe Reed. “He’s thirty-seven. We’re talking clean record for twenty-three years—”

  “No arrests doesn’t mean no bad behavior, Moses. The relevant point is he killed one human being and now he’s associated with a homicide victim. On top of that, his whereabouts since he turned eighteen are a big blank. No Social Security card or tax returns until three years ago when he started working for a megabucks fellow named Simon Vander under the alias. Obviously, he lied to get the gig because I don’t see Megabucks hiring some mope with a felony record. You guys met him. You’re telling me he didn’t set off any alarm bells?”

  Milo said, “How do you know we met him?”

  “I pick up things.”

  “You meet Huck yourself, Aaron?”

  “Haven’t had the pleasure yet, but I’ve been watching him for the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Why?”

  “After your case hit the news, someone hired me to do so.”

  “Selena hasn’t been in the news.”

  “Not on TV,” said Fox. “Or the Times. But the Evening Outlook ran a paragraph. Want me to get you a copy?”

  “No, thanks. You pick up anything watching him?”

  “So far all he’s done is shop for groceries, but he’s got a mopey walk and a weird crooked smile.”

  Reed said, “You don’t like his looks. There’s evidence for you.” Huck had been his choice for Prime Suspect but something else was at work here.

  Fox patted the newspaper clippings. “He killed someone at a tender age.”

  “Twenty-three years ago.”

  “You have anyone better?”

  Reed didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought. I’m serving up a serious lead. What you do with it is your own business.”

  Milo said, “Juvey records are sealed. How’d you find all this out?”

  Fox smiled.

  Reed said, “That’s real helpful.”

  Fox’s gold-brown eyes flashed. Shooting a cuff, he glanced at a blue-faced Patek Philippe.

  Milo said, “Sounds like you’re pretty invested in Huck being our bad guy.”

  Aaron Fox took a nanosecond to decide upon an emotion. Settled for placid. “Not invested, just aware of the facts.”

  “Who hired you to research the guy?”

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  Reed said, “We’re supposed to ask for a warrant based on twenty-three-year-old information obtained illegally from an informant too chickenshit to come forward.”

  Both brothers’ bodies tilted like lances.

  Regressed, for an instant, to feuding children.

  Fox broke the stare first, smiling and shrugging. “Moses, however Detective Sturgis deigns to utilize the data with which I am gifting him is not my concern.” He stood. “I’ve done my civic duty. Have a nice rest-of-the-day, gents.”

  Reed said, “Your brain’s so functional, you’ll recall the statutes on obstruction.”

  Fox smoothed a silk shirt collar. “Little bro, you get like that and I know you’re blowing more smoke than one of those clunkers you insist on driving.” To Milo: “Word has it there are other victims in the marsh. And that a press conference is on the horizon. It was me at the podium, I’d like a few factoids when those pesky questions start flying.”

  Milo flicked the clippings with a big, square thumbnail. “We’ll be sure to pore over every word, Aaron. You tell us who hired you to scope out Huck and why, we might give them some credibility.”

  “Their credibility isn’t in question,” said Fox. “Only issue is whether you decide to follow through.” Peeling a twenty from an alligator billfold, he let it float to the table.

  Milo said, “Not necessary.”

  “Thanks but no thanks,” said Fox. “I always pay my own way.”

  Snapping a quick salute, he left the restaurant.

  Moe Reed remained canted forward.

  Milo said, “Your brother, huh?”

  Reed nodded. “Vice has nothing on Sheralyn Dawkins but I’d better run over to the LAX stroll, see if I can learn something before I drive to San Diego.”

  Erupting from his chair, he charged out before Milo could answer.

  Milo said, “Ah, the joys of family life.”

  I said, “Huck’s also from the San Diego area.”

  “Funny thing about that. But why give Fox the satisfaction?”

  We examined the clippings in Milo’s office. Three articles from The Ferris Ravine Clarion spaced a month apart, written by Cora A. Brown, the paper’s publisher and editor in chief. One piece covered the tragedy. Two follow-ups added nothing.

  The facts were as Aaron Fox had summarized: On a hot May afternoon, eighth-grader Eddie Huckstadter, considered a shy child and loner by his teachers, had finally responded to months of bullying by an outsized ninth-grader named Jeffrey Chenure. During the schoolyard confrontation, the much smaller Eddie had shoved his quarterback antagonist in the chest. Jeff Chenure stumbled backward, caught his balance, charged at Eddie, fists flailing. Before a blow could land, he cried out, fell flat on his back, lifeless.

  Milo said, “Sounds like an accident or at the worst, self-defense. I’m surprised Huck served any juvey time.”

  I ruffled the clippings. “This is what Fox wanted you to see. Maybe there’s more.”

  The Internet brought up nothing on Eddie Huckstadter, nor did the name appear in any criminal data banks.
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  Milo said, “No surprise, there. If Fox had found any more dirt, he’d have gifted me with it.” He stood. “All that tea, gotta take a detour.”

  During his absence, I phoned The Ferris Ravine Clarion, expecting a disconnected number. A female voice answered, “Clarion.”

  I gave her a capsule I.D., asked for her name.

  “Cora Brown, I’m the editor, publisher, opinion-editorial columnist, classified ad clerk. And I take out the trash. L.A. Police? Why?”

  “It’s about a story you wrote several years ago. A boy named Eddie Huckstadt—”

  “Eddie? Has the poor boy done something—I guess he’d be a man by now. Is he in trouble?”

  “His name came up as a witness in an investigation. When we backtracked we came across your articles.”

  “Investigation into what?”

  “A homicide.”

  “A homicide? You’re not saying because—”

  “No, ma’am, he’s just a witness.”

  “Oh,” she said, “Okay . . . but has he become a criminal? Because that would be tragic.”

  “How so?”

  “The mistreatment he got turning him bad.”

  “Juvenile detention and the foster system?”

  “Yes, but even before that,” said Cora Brown. “That mother of his. So much of life is pure damn luck, isn’t it? Poor Eddie never had much. If you want to know my opinion, he got railroaded from the get-go. That boy he pushed was the son of a rich rancher. The whole family were bullies, used to having their way, no questions asked. They were rough on their migrants, treated them like slaves. Raise a child in that environment, what do you think you’re going to get?”

  “Are the Chenures still around?”

  “Oklahoma, last I heard. Sold out years ago to an agribusiness firm and went into raising Black Angus.”

  “How many years ago?”

  “Right after what happened to Jeff. Sandy—the mother—was never the same.”

  “Rich family,” I said. “Eddie, on the other hand—”

  “Lived in a trailer with a lunatic lush of a mother. What happened that day was one of those schoolyard things, happens all the time.” Pause. “Not that children die from schoolyard things. That was tragic. Jeff was a mean boy, but he was still a child. He must’ve had something wrong with his heart to pass out like that.”

  “Eddie didn’t shove him that hard.”

  “Nope. That didn’t stop him from going into juvenile lockup and being forgotten until he got liberated.”

  “By who?”

  “You said you read the articles, I figured you meant all of them.”

  I read off the dates of the three pieces.

  “No, there’s more, I did a follow-up piece a year later.”

  “Follow-up on what?”

  “Eddie’s redemption. A public defender from L.A. got interested in the case, what was her name . . . Deborah something . . . hold on, let me get on the computer, my grandson’s one of those technical geniuses, his science project was scanning and cataloging fifty years’ worth of our issues for an online base, going back to when my dad was the publish . . . okay, here it is. Debora with no ‘h’ Wallenburg.” She spelled the surname. “Give me your e-mail and I’ll send it to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Pleasure. I do hope Eddie hasn’t turned bad.”

  When Milo returned, I waved the attachment I’d printed. “Here’s the part Fox left out. A PD was handling the appeal of another ward at the youth camp and one of the counselors told her about a kid who was being brutalized, had received several concussions.”

  “Huck’s neurological symptoms.”

  “Quite likely. The guard said Eddie didn’t belong there in the first place. The lawyer—Debora Wallenburg—looked into Eddie’s conviction, agreed, and filed an emergency writ. A month later, Eddie was released and the charges were expunged, he got sent to foster care because his mother was unfit. I looked Wallenburg up on the bar association website and she’s private now, practices in Santa Monica.”

  “Do-gooder lawyer actually does some good,” he said.

  “Maybe Fox never found the follow-up. Or he did and chose to withhold. What kind of guy is he?”

  “Don’t know him that well. He worked Wilshire Division for a while, had a rep as a hotshot, smart, ambitious. He transferred to West L.A. maybe . . . four or so years ago, but quit soon after.”

  “Quit or asked to leave?”

  “I heard quit.”

  “Not much family resemblance to Reed,” I said. “And I’m not talking about race.”

  “Tortoise and hare,” he said. “No business like sib business. Fox sure loved goading ol’ Moe. And Reed responded exactly like he was supposed to.”

  “Showing up Reed was a side benefit for Fox. Now he can go back to his client and say mission accomplished.”

  “Someone’s paying to get us focused on Huck.”

  I said, “Paying well. Fox wears custom-made duds and a ten-thousand-dollar watch.”

  “Maybe someone in the Vander household knows we were sniffing around the manse and wants to make sure we look in a certain direction.”

  “Huck comes across odd, so he’d be a natural. On the other hand he really could be your guy. The first thing Cora Brown asked was whether poor little Eddie had become a criminal. Because of what he went through.”

  Shoving black hair off his brow, he read the articles. “Railroaded and vindicated, but he got stuck in the same place as serious delinquents and had his brains scrambled.”

  “Toss in maternal deprivation and drifting around the foster system and all kinds of things can happen.”

  “He stays under the radar until three years ago . . . yeah, that adds up to what you guys call high risk for deviant behavior.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “A lead.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The press conference aired on the eleven o’clock news.

  Milo stood by woodenly as D.C. Weinberg made love to the cameras during a steely-eyed request for public participation.

  The public facts were thin: Selena Bass and three unidentified bodies in the Bird Marsh, no mention of amputated hands. All four network affiliates topped off fifteen seconds of public-interest sop with rehashed coverage of the progressive billionaires’ attempt to buy the land followed by stock footage of egrets, herons, and ducks.

  Milo knew what was going to happen, and he pulled Moe Reed back from the trip to San Diego. The two of them split the phone chores. By one a.m. sixty-three tips had come in. The next half hour earned five more. By three a.m., every call but one naming Sheralyn Dawkins’s “main man” had been classified as worthless.

  Reed’s request for surveillance on Travis Huck had been sent to Pacific Patrol. No answer, so far. He said, “Guess we should start with this guy, Duchesne.”

  “Pimp in the morning,” said Milo. “Something to wake up for.”

  Joe Otto Duchesne rejected the job description.

  “Think of me as a human resources manager.”

  Duchesne’s stats put him at forty-three as of March. Emaciated, gray-skinned, white-haired, and gap-toothed, he looked old enough to be his own father. Vice said he worked four or five women along the LAX stroll, had high turnover.

  Duchesne sat comfortably in the interview chair. Surprisingly articulate. Surprisingly shabby clothes. His record was a mundane twenty-year paean to heroin addiction, though he claimed “seven months of utter sobriety.” Despite a hot morning, his shirt cuffs were buttoned at the wrist.

  He’d come in voluntarily and Milo gave him plenty of space, pushing the table into a corner, keeping the whole thing low-key. Moe Reed and I watched on closed circuit from an adjoining room. The young detective followed every word, like a paid attendee at a get-rich seminar.

  It was Reed who’d found Duchesne after six hours of grunt work: questioning local patrol, hookers working the periphery of the airport, other low-grade pimps loitering near hourl
y rate motels.

  It was one of the women who remembered Sheralyn Dawkins and confirmed that the missing woman had worked for “that skinny white boy, Joe Otto, you gonna find him on Centinela.”