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  “Bye, Docka Alek.”

  “Bye, honey. If you ever want to talk to me, tell your mommy. She’ll help you call.”

  She said okay and crawled back to the pillowy sanctuary of her mother’s thighs.

  Ricky’d moved to a far corner where he stood alone, staring out the window. I walked over him, put my hand on his shoulder, and spoke softly so only he could hear: “I know you’re really mad about having to do this.”

  He thrust out his lower lip, stiffened his neck, and crossed his arms across his chest. Darlene got up, still holding April, and started to say something but I motioned her down.

  “It must be real hard not to see your dad,” I said.

  He stood as straight as a Marine, trying hard to look tough and grim.

  “I heard you ran away.”

  No reply.

  “That must have been a real adventure.”

  The hint of a smile danced across his lips and escaped.

  “I knew you had strong legs, Ricky, but to go five miles all by yourself. Whew!”

  The smile returned, staying a little longer this time.

  “See anything interesting?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  He looked back at the others.

  “Not here,” I assured him. “Let’s go to another room. We can draw and play like the last time. Okay?”

  He frowned but followed me.

  Mal’s office amazed him and he circled the immense room several times before settling down.

  “Ever see a place like this?”

  “Uh huh. In a movie.”

  “Oh yeah? Which one?”

  “It was about bad guys who were taking over the world. They had an office with lasers and stuff. It looked like this.”

  “Bad guy headquarters, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think Mr. Worthy’s a bad guy?”

  “My dad said he was.”

  “Did he tell you anyone else was a bad guy?”

  He looked uneasy.

  “Like me? And Dr. Daschoff?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Do you understand why your father said that?”

  “He’s mad.”

  “That’s right. He’s really mad. Not because of anything you or April did, but because he doesn’t want your mom and him to get divorced.”

  “Yeah,” the boy said with sudden ferocity, “it’s her damn fault!”

  “The divorce?”

  “Yeah! She kicked him out and he even paid for the house with his money!”

  I sat him down, took a chair opposite him, and put my hands on his small shoulders as I spoke:

  “Ricky, I’m sorry everything is so sad. I know you want your mom and dad to get back together. But that’s not going to happen. Do you remember how they used to fight all the time?”

  “Yeah, but then they’d stop fighting and be happy to us.”

  “When that happened it was nice.”

  “Yup.”

  “But the fighting got worse and worse and there wasn’t much happiness left.”

  He shook his head.

  “Divorce is terrible,” I said. “Like everything’s falling apart.” He looked away.

  “It’s okay to be angry, Ricky. I’d be angry, too, if my parents were getting divorced. But it’s not okay to run away because you could get hurt that way.”

  “My dad’ll take care of me.”

  “Ricky, I know you love your dad very much. You should. A dad is someone special. And a dad should be able to be with his children, even after a divorce. I hope some day your dad can see you a lot, and take you places and do fun stuff with you. But right now—and this is really sad—it’s not a good idea for him to spend a lot of time with you and April. Do you understand why?”

  “Cause he’s sick?”

  “Right. Do you know what kind of sickness?”

  He ruminated on the question.

  “He gets mad?”

  “That’s part of it. He gets real mad or real sad or real happy all of a sudden. Sometimes without a good reason. When he’s real mad he could do mad things that wouldn’t be right, like fight with somebody. That could be dangerous.”

  “Uh uh! He could beat ’em up!”

  “That’s true, but it would be dangerous for the person he beat up. And you or April could get hurt, accidentally. Do you understand?”

  A grudging nod.

  “I’m not saying he’ll always be sick. There are medicines he can take that can help. And talking to doctors, like me, can help, too. But right now your dad doesn’t want to admit that he needs help. So the judge said he couldn’t see you until he got better. That made him really mad and now he thinks everyone is a bad guy trying to hurt him. But we’re really trying to help him. And to protect you.”

  He stared at me, stood, found the drawing paper, and proceeded to construct a fleet of paper airplanes. For the next quarter hour he waged a solitary battle of epic proportions, destroying entire cities, massacring thousands, stomping and shouting and shredding paper until Mal’s antique Saruk was covered with confetti.

  After that he drew for a while but wasn’t happy with any of his creations and tossed them, crumpled, in the trash. I tried to get him to talk about the runaway episode but he refused. I reiterated the danger and he listened, looking bored. When I asked him if he’d do it again he shrugged.

  I brought him back and took Darlene into the office. She wore a pink pantsuit with a faint diamond pattern and silver sandals. Her dark hair was piled high and sprayed in place. She’d spent a lot of time on her makeup but still looked tired and worn and scared. After seating herself she pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and passed it from hand to hand, kneading and squeezing.

  “This must be really hard on you,” I said.

  Tears oozed out of her eyes. Up went the handkerchief.

  “He’s a crazy man, Doctor. He’s been getting crazier all along and now he won’t let me go without doing something really crazy.”

  “How have the kids been doing?”

  “April’s a little clingy—you saw her out there. She gets up a couple of times at night, wants to come into our bed. But she’s a sweet thing. He’s my problem, just angry all the time, refusing to mind. Yesterday he said the ef word to Carlton.”

  “What did Carlton do?”

  “Told him he’d whip him if he did it again.”

  Great.

  “It’s not a good idea to get Carlton involved in discipline at this point. Having him there is a big adjustment for the kids in the first place. If you let him take over they’ll feel abandoned.”

  “But Doctor, he can’t use language like that!”

  “Then you need to handle it, Mrs. Moody. It’s important for the children to know that you’re there for them. That you’re in charge.”

  “Okay,” she said, without enthusiasm, “I’ll try it.”

  I knew she wouldn’t comply. The word try was the tipoff. In a couple of months she’d be wondering why both children were ornery and miserable and impossible to manage.

  I did my job anyway, telling her that both of the children could benefit from professional help. April, I explained, showed no serious problems but was insecure. Therapy for her was likely to be short-term and could reduce the risk of more severe problems in the future.

  Ricky, on the other hand, was a troubled little boy, full of anger and likely to run away again. She interrupted at that point to blame the running away on the boy’s father and said that come to think of it he reminded her of his father.

  “Mrs. Moody,” I said, “Ricky needs the chance to blow off steam on a regular basis.”

  “You know,” she said, “Carlton and him are starting to get along better. Yesterday they were playing catch in the backyard and having a great time. I know Carlton’s gonna be a good influence on him.”

  “Great. But that won’t take the place of professional help.”

  “Doctor,” she sai
d, “I’m broke. Do you know how much lawyers cost? Just being here today is draining me dry.”

  “There are clinics that operate on a sliding scale based on ability to pay. I’ll give some numbers to Mr. Worthy.”

  “Are they far? I don’t drive freeways.”

  “I’ll try to find one close to you, Mrs. Moody.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” She sighed, picked herself up, and let me hold the door for her.

  Watching her trudge down the hall like an old woman it was easy to forget she was twenty-nine years old.

  I dictated my findings to Mal’s secretary as she typed silently on a court stenographer’s machine. When she left he brought out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and poured us each a couple of fingers.

  “Thanks for coming by, Alex.”

  “No problem, but I don’t know that it did any good. She won’t follow through.”

  “I’ll see to it that she does. Tell her it’s important for the case.”

  We sipped Scotch.

  “Incidentally,” he said, “the judge hasn’t gotten any nasty surprises so far—apparently Moody’s crazy but not stupid. But she’s mega-pissed about the whole thing. She called the D.A. and ordered him to get someone on it. He dumped it on Foothill Division.”

  “Who said they’d been looking for him already.”

  “Right.” He looked surprised. I told him about Milo’s call to Fordebrand.

  “Very impressive, Alex. More?” He picked up the bottle. I declined a refill. Good Scotch is hard to resist but talking about Moody reminds me of the importance of staying clear-headed.

  “Anyway, Foothill claims to be looking for him seriously but they think he’s gone into Angeles Crest.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Angeles Crest National Forest is 600,000 acres of wilderness bordering the city to the north. The Moodys had lived in nearby Sunland, and the forest would be familiar territory to Richard, a natural place to escape. Much of the acreage was impenetrable except on foot and a man could stay lost there for as long as he pleased. It was a haven for hikers, campers, naturalists, and climbers, as well as for packs of outlaw bikers who partied all night and sacked out in caves. And its ravines and washes were favorite dumping spots for bodies.

  Just before we’d scuffled in the court parking lot, Moody’d talked about surviving in the wilderness, clearly including his children in the fantasy. I let Mal know that.

  He nodded grimly.

  “I’ve instructed Darlene to take the kids and get out of town for a while. Her folks have a farm up near Davis. They’re leaving today.”

  “Won’t he be able to figure that out?”

  “If he comes out in the open. I’m hoping he decides to play mountain man for a while.”

  He threw up his arms.

  “It’s the best I can do, Alex.”

  The conversation was taking an unsettling turn. I got up to go and we shook hands. At the door I asked him if he’d ever heard of a lawyer named Norman Matthews.

  “Stormin’ Norman? That’s a golden oldie. I went up against him at least a dozen times. Biggest ballbreaker in Beverly Hills.”

  “He was a divorce lawyer?”

  “The best. Super-aggressive, had a reputation for getting his clients what they wanted no matter who he offended in the process. Handled lots of Hollywood dissolutions with big bucks at stake and got to thinking of himself as a star. Very image conscious—an Excalibur and a Corniche, conspicuous clothes, blonds on each arm, blew Dunhill latakia through a thousand-dollar meerschaum.”

  “He’s a bit more spiritual nowadays.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Got a weird group down on the border. Calls himself Grand Noble Poobah or something like that.”

  “Noble Matthias. Why’d he leave law?” He laughed uneasily.

  “You might say it left him. This was five or six years ago. It was in the papers. I’m surprised you don’t remember. Matthews was representing the wife of some playwright. The guy had just hit it big—a smash on Broadway—after ten years of eating air sandwiches. At that point the wife found another loser to mother and filed. Matthews got her everything—a huge chunk of royalties from the play and a healthy percentage of everything the guy would bring in for the next ten years. It was a publicized case and there was a press conference scheduled on the courtroom steps. Matthews and the wife were headed there when hubby came out of nowhere with a twenty-two. He shot them both in the head. She died but Matthews squeaked by after half a year of touch and go. Then he dropped out of sight, resurfaced a couple of years later as a maharishi. Your basic California story.”

  I thanked him for the information and turned to leave.

  “Hey,” he asked, “why the interest?”

  “Nothing important. His name came up in conversation.”

  “Stormin’ Norman,” he smiled. “Sanctification through brain damage.”

  13

  THE NEXT morning, Milo knocked on my door and woke me at six forty-five. The sky was alley-cat gray. It had rained all night and the air smelled like damp flannel. The glen harbored a relentless chill that seeped into my bones the moment I opened the door.

  He wore a thin shiny black raincoat over a wrinkled white shirt, a brown and blue tie, and brown slacks. His chin was blued with stubble, his eyelids weighted by fatigue. There was mud on his brogues, which he scraped off along the edge of the terrace before coming in.

  “We found two of the Swopes, the mother and father, up in Benedict Canyon. Shot in the head and back.”

  He talked rapidly without making eye contact and walked past me into the kitchen. I followed him and put up coffee. While it brewed I washed my face in the kitchen sink and he chewed on a log of French bread. Neither of us spoke until we’d sat down at my old oak table and punished our gullets with large swallows of scalding liquid.

  “Some old character with a metal detector found them a little after one a.m. He’s a rich guy, a retired dentist, has a big house off Benedict but likes to roam around in the dark prospecting. His gizmo picked up the coins in the father’s pockets—the two of them weren’t buried very deep. The rain had washed away some of the dirt and he could see part of a head in the moonlight. Poor fellow was shaking.”

  He looked downward, dispiritedly.

  “Another detective picked up the squeal but when they identified the bodies he remembered my involvement and called me. He was scheduled for vacation anyway and more than happy to hand it over. I’ve been there since three.”

  “No sign of Woody and Nona?”

  Milo shook his head.

  “Nada. We combed the immediate area. The place we found them is just before the road climbs toward the Valley. Most of Benedict’s pretty well built up but there’s a small gully on the west side that the developers haven’t gotten to. It’s concave, kind of like a saucer in the ground, covered with brush and layered with about a foot of dead leaves. Easy to miss if you drive by quickly ‘cause it’s blocked from the road by big eucalyptus. We used the grid approach, went over it foot by foot. Funny thing is, we did dig up another body, but this one was all bones. From the shape of the pelvis, the M.E. says a woman. Been there for at least a couple of years.”

  He was concentrating on details to avoid dealing with the emotional impact of the murders. Taking a large gulp of coffee, he rubbed his eyes and shivered.

  “I’m soaked. Lemme peel out of this.”

  He pulled off the raincoat and draped it over a chair.

  “Let’s hear it for sunny goddamn California,” he snarled. “I feel like I’ve been marinating in a rice paddy.”

  “Want a warm shirt?”

  “Nah.” He rubbed his hands together, drank more coffee, and got up for a refill.

  “Not a sign of the kids,” he reiterated upon returning to the table. “Several possibilities present themselves: one, they weren’t with the parents and escaped what went down. When they got back to the motel, they saw the blood and ran scared.”

  “Why wouldn’t the fam
ily stick together if they were returning home?” I asked.

  “Maybe she took him for an ice cream. While the parents packed.”

  “No way, Milo. He was too sick for that.”