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  “Yeah, I keep forgetting that. Must be unconscious repression, huh?”

  “Must be.”

  “Okay, hypothesis two, then. They weren’t together because the sister snatched the kid. You told me Bev said she didn’t like the parents. Could be it came to a head.”

  “Anything Bev has to say about her needs to be taken with a shaker of salt, Milo. Nona made it with a man she once loved. Down deep she hates the girl’s guts.”

  “You told me yourself the kid was pissed the time you met her, how she lit into Melendez-Lynch. And the picture we get of her after talking to Rambo and Carmichael is one strange little girl.”

  “That’s true. She sounds like she’s got plenty of problems. But why would she abduct her brother? All indications are that she was self-centered, cut off from family feelings. She and Woody didn’t have a close relationship. She rarely visited and when she did it was at night when he was asleep. Her not being there with the others makes sense. But not the rest of it.”

  “Gee, you’re fun to be with,” said Milo. “I’ll call you next time I need a yes man.”

  His face opened in a giant yawn. When he’d taken in enough air he continued. “Everything you say is logical, pal, but I’ve gotta touch all bases. I called Houten in La Vista just before I came here. Woke the poor devil up and told him to scour the town for her and the kid. He was pretty broken up hearing about the parents, said he’d already searched carefully the first time I asked, but agreed to do it again.”

  “Including the Touch’s place?”

  “Especially there. Melendez-Lynch may have been right from the beginning. Even if Houten comes up empty they’re sweet suspects. I’m heading down there today to check them out. Especially the two that visited the Swopes. A couple of my guys are going to the hospital to interview anyone who took care of the Swopes. With special emphasis on squeezing that asshole Valcroix.”

  I told him about Seth Fiacre’s assessment of the Touch as a reclusive group that shunned the limelight and tacked on Mal’s account of the greening of Norman Matthews.

  “They don’t seek converts,” I pointed out. “They seclude themselves. What motivation would there be for them to get involved with outsiders?”

  Milo seemed to ignore the question and expressed surprise at Noble Matthias’s identity.

  “Matthews is the guru? I always wondered what happened to him. I remember the case. It went down in Beverly Hills so we weren’t involved. They locked the husband up in Atascadero and six months later he mixed himself a Draino cocktail.” He smiled mirthlessly. “We used to call Matthews the ‘Shyster to the Stars.’ What do you know?”

  He yawned again and drank more coffee.

  “Motivation?” he repeated. “Maybe they thought they’d convinced the parents to treat the kid their way, there was a change of heart and things got out of control.”

  “That’s pretty far out of control,” I said.

  “Don’t forget what I told you in the motel room. About the world getting crazier and crazier. Besides, maybe the cultists were camera-shy when your professor friend studied them but not anymore. Weirdos change, like anyone else. Jim Jones was everyone’s hero until he turned into Idi Amin.”

  “It’s a good point.”

  “Of course it is. I’m a pro-fesh-you-nole.” He laughed, a good warm sound soon replaced by silence made cold by unspoken words.

  “There’s another possibility,” I said, finally.

  “Now that you’ve mentioned it, yes.” His green eyes darkened with melancholia. “The kids are buried somewhere else. Whoever did it got scared before he could finish dumping them at Benedict and took off. There are coyotes and all sorts of creepy crawlies out there. You could see a pair of eyes and easily get spooked.”

  I’d been heartsick and numb since learning of the killings, my attention vacillating between Milo’s words and the images they evoked. But now the full impact of what he was saying slammed straight into me and I mustered up a wall of denial to block it out.

  “You’re still going to look for him, aren’t you?”

  He looked up at the urgency in my voice.

  “We’re canvassing Benedict from Sunset up into the Valley, Alex, doing door-to-doors on the chance someone saw something. But it was dark so an eyewitness is unlikely. We’re also going to cruise the other canyons—Malibu, Topanga, Coldwater, Laurel, right here in the Glen. About a thousand man hours and unlikely to be productive.”

  I got back on the subject of the parents’ murders because grim as it was, it was preferable to fantasizing about Woody’s fate.

  “Were they shot right there, in Benedict?” I asked.

  “Not likely. There was no blood on the ground and we couldn’t find any spent shells. The rain introduces a little uncertainty, but each of them had half a dozen bullet holes. That much shooting would make a lot of noise and there’d have to be some shells left behind. They were killed somewhere else, Alex, and then dumped. No footprints or tiretracks, but that you can definitely put down to the rain.”

  He ripped viciously at the French bread with small, sharp teeth, and chewed noisily.

  “More coffee?” I offered.

  “No thanks. My nerves are scraped raw as it is.” He leaned forward, thick, spatulate fingers splayed on the table. “Alex, I’m sorry. I know you cared about the kid.”

  “It’s like a bad dream,” I admitted. “I’m trying not to think of him.” Perversely, the small pale face floated into consciousness. A game of checkers in a plastic room...

  “When I saw the motel room I really thought they’d gone home, that it was a family thing,” he was saying morosely. “From the looks of the bodies, the M.E. guessed they were murdered a couple of a days ago. Probably not too long after the kid was pulled out of the hospital.

  “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Milo,” I said, trying to sound supportive. “There was no way anyone could have known.”

  “Right. Let me use your john.”

  After he left I set about pulling myself together—with meager success. My hands were unsteady and my head buzzed. The last thing I needed was to be left alone with my helplessness and my anguish. I searched for absolution through activity. I’d have gone to the hospital to tell Raoul about the murders but Milo had asked me not to. I paced the room, filled a cup with coffee, tossed it down the sink, snatched up the paper and turned to the movie section. A revival house in Santa Monica was featuring an early matinee, a documentary on William Burroughs, which sounded sufficiently bizarre to crowd out reality. Just as I was stepping out the door Robin called from Japan.

  “Hello, lover,” she said.

  “Hello, babe. I miss you.”

  “Miss you too, sweetie.”

  I took the phone to the bed and sat down facing a framed picture of the two of us. I remember the day it had been taken. We’d gone to the arboretum on a Sunday in April and had asked a passing octogenarian to do us the favor. Despite his trembling hands and protestation of ignorance about modern cameras it had come out beautifully.

  We held each other against a backdrop of royal purple rhododendrons and snowy camelias. Robin stood in front, her back to my chest, my arms around her waist. She wore tight jeans and a white turtleneck that showed off her curves. The sun had picked up the auburn highlights in her hair, which hung long and curly, like coppery grapes. Her smile was wide and open, the perfect teeth a crescent of white. Her face was a valentine, her dark eyes liquid and dancing.

  She was a beautiful woman, inside and out. Hearing the sound of her voice was sweetly painful.

  “I bought you a silk kimono, Alex. Gray-blue, to match your eyes.”

  “Can’t wait to see it. When are you coming home?”

  “About another week, honey. They’re tooling up to actually manufacture a gross of instruments and they want me here to inspect them.”

  “Sounds like things are going well.”

  “They are. But you sound distant. Is something wrong?”

  “No. Mus
t be the connection.”

  “You sure, baby?”

  “Yes. Everything’s fine. I miss you, that’s all.”

  “You’re mad at me, aren’t you? For staying so long.”

  “No. Really. It’s important. You have to do it.”

  “It’s not like I’m having fun, you know. The first couple of days they entertained me, but after the amenities were over it was strictly business. Design studios and factories all day. And no male geishas to help me unwind at night!”

  “Poor baby.”

  “You bet.” She laughed. “I have to admit, though, it’s a fascinating country. Very tense, very structured. Next time I go you have to come with me.”

  “Next time?”

  “Alex, they love my designs. If the Billy Orleans does well they’re sure to want another. We could go during cherry blossom time. You’d love it. They’ve got beautiful gardens—larger versions of ours—in the public parks. And I saw a koi almost five feet long. Square watermelons, sushi bars you wouldn’t believe. It’s incredible, hon.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Alex, what’s wrong? And stop saying nothing.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. I was so lonely, sitting by myself in this sterile hotel room, drinking tea and watching ‘Kojak’ with Japanese subtitles. I thought talking to you would help me feel alive again. But it’s only made me sadder.”

  “I’m sorry, babe. I love you and I’m really proud of you. I’m trying really hard to be noble, to put my needs aside. But as it turns out, I’m just another selfish, sexist bastard, threatened by your success and worried that it won’t be the same.”

  “Alex, it’ll always be the same. The most precious thing in my life is us. Didn’t you once tell me that all the busy little things we do—career, achievement—are just trim around the edges? That what’s important is the intimacy we establish in our lifetime? I bought it. I really believe that.”

  Her voice broke. I wanted to hold her near.

  “What’s this about square watermelons?” I said.

  We laughed together and the next five minutes were long-distance heaven.

  She’d been traveling around the country but was now settled in Tokyo and would be there until returning to the States. I took down the address of her hotel and her room number. Her travel plan included an overnight stopover in Hawaii before the final flight back to L.A.. The idea of my flying to meet her in Honolulu and our spending a week together on Kauai came up as a lark but ended up as a serious possibility. She promised to call when her departure date had been determined.

  “Do you know what’s been keeping me going?” she giggled. “Remembering that wedding we went to last summer in Santa Barbara.”

  “The Biltmore, room three fifty-one?”

  “I’m getting wet right now just thinking about it.”

  “Stop or I’ll be limping all day.”

  “That’s good. You’ll appreciate me.”

  “Believe me, I already do.”

  We prolonged the good-byes and then she was gone.

  I hadn’t told her about my involvement with the Swopes. We’d always had an open relationship and I couldn’t help feeling that holding back had been an unfaithful act of sorts. Still, I rationalized, it had been the right thing to do, because hearing about such horror from so great a distance would only have burdened her with intractable anxiety.

  In an attempt to quell my guilt I spent a long time on the phone with a histrionic florist, arranging for a dozen coral roses to be sent halfway around the world.

  14

  THE PERSON on the phone was female, agitated, and vaguely familiar.

  “Dr. Delaware, I need your help!”

  I tried to place her. A patient from years back reaching out in the throes of crisis? If so, not being remembered would only compound her anxiety. I’d fake it until I figured out who it was.

  “What can I do for you?” I said soothingly.

  “It’s Raoul. He’s gotten himself into terrible trouble.”

  Bingo. Helen Holroyd. Her voice sounded different when heated by emotion.

  “What kind of trouble, Helen?”

  “He’s in prison, down in La Vista!”

  “What!”

  “I just spoke to him—they allowed him one call. He sounds terrible! Heaven knows what they’re doing to him! A genius locked up like a common criminal! Oh God, please help!”

  She was falling apart, which didn’t surprise me. Icy people often freeze themselves in order to hold in check a volcanic stew of disturbing and conflictual feelings. Emotional hibernation, if you will. Crack the ice and the stuff inside comes pouring out with all the discipline of molten lava.

  She was sobbing and began to hyperventilate.

  “Calm down,” I said. “We’ll clear it up. But first tell me how it happened.”

  It took a couple of minutes for her to regain control.

  “The police came to the lab late yesterday afternoon. They told him about those people being killed. I was there, working on the other side of the room. Hearing about it didn’t seem to affect him. He was at the computer, typing in data, and he didn’t stop the entire time they were there. Just kept on working. I knew something was wrong. It’s not like him to be that impassive. He had to be really upset. When they were gone I tried to talk to him but he shut me out. Then he left, just walked out of the building without telling anyone where he was going.”

  “And drove to La Vista.”

  “Yes! He must have thought about it all night and left early in the morning because he got there by ten and had some kind of altercation with someone. I’m not sure who, they wouldn’t let us talk long and he was so agitated he wasn’t making much sense. I called back and talked to the sheriff but he said they were holding Raoul for the Los Angeles police to question. He wouldn’t tell me more, said I was free to get a lawyer, and hung up. He was rude and insensitive, talking about Raoul as if he were a criminal and my knowing him made me a criminal, too.”

  She sniffled, remembering the indignity.

  “It’s all so—Kafkaesque! I’m so confused, don’t know how to help him. I thought of you because Raoul said you had connections with the police. Please tell me, what should I do?”

  “Nothing for the time being. Let me make a few calls and get back to you. Where are you calling from?”

  “The lab.”

  “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I rarely do.”

  Milo wasn’t available and the desk man at the station wouldn’t tell me where he was so I asked for Delano Hardy, my friend’s occasional partner, and was connected to him after being put on hold for ten minutes. Hardy is a dapper, balding black man with an easy wit and a ready smile. His skill with a rifle had once saved my life.

  “Hey, Doc.”

  “Hi, Del. I need to talk to Milo. The guy at the desk was all hush-hush. Isn’t he back from La Vista?”

  “He’s not back because he never went. Change of plans. We’ve been working on a very hot case and a big break came through yesterday.”

  “The stomach-shitter?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got him cold and Milo and another guy have been locked up with the prick all morning playing good-cop, bad-cop.”

  “Congratulations on the bust. Could you give him a message to call me when he’s free?”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  I told him.

  “Hold on. Lemme see if he’s gonna break soon.”

  He returned to the phone moments later.

  “He said give him another half hour.

  He’ll call you.”

  “Thanks a lot, Del.”

  “No sweat. By the way, I’m still digging that Strat.”

  Hardy was a fellow guitarist, a first-rate musician who gigged with an R & B group after hours. I’d bought him a vintage Fender Stratocaster in gratitude for his marksmanship.

  “Glad you’re enjoying it. Let’s jam again.”

  “Absolutely. Come by
the club and bring your axe. Gotta go now.”

  I called Helen and told her it would take time. She sounded shaky so I talked her through it by getting her to tell me about her work. When the chill came back into her voice I knew she’d be okay. At least for a while.

  Milo called an hour later.

  “Can’t talk long, Alex. We’ve got the asshole nailed. A Saudi Arabian student, related to the royal family. It’s gonna get hairy but I’ll be damned if this one is gonna slither away on diplomatic immunity.”