Blood Test Read online

  The Retreat still looked like a monastery, with its towering cathedral and high walls. An assortment of smaller buildings sat behind the walls and created a maze of courtyards. A large wooden crucifix topped the belfry of the churchtower, a brand burned into the azure flanks of the sky. The front windows were leaded and supported by wooden balconies. The roofs and the tops of the walls were layered with red clay tile. The walls were fresh vanilla stucco splashed dove white where the sun hit. A great deal of care had been taken to preserve the intricate moldings and borders scored into the stucco.

  A running brook circled the compound like a moat. Above it floated an arched viaduct that bled into a brick pathway at the point where solid ground reasserted itself. The path was hooded by a stone arbor caressed by tendrils of grape vine, ruby clusters of fruit ponderous amid the green leaves.

  To the front of the compound was a small patch of lawn shaded by ancient gnarled oaks. The big twisted trees danced like witches around a fountain that spat into an enormous stone urn. Beyond the buildings were acres of farmland. I made out corn, cucumbers, groves of citrus and olive, a sheep pasture and vineyards, but there was plenty more. A handful of white-garbed figures worked the land. Heavy machinery buzzed wasplike in the distance.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” asked Houten resuming the hike.

  “Beautiful. Like out of another time.”

  He nodded. “When I was a kid I used to climb around the hills, try to get a peek at the monks—they wore heavy brown robes no matter how hot it got. Never talked to anyone or had anything to do with folks in town. The gates were always locked.”

  “Must have been nice growing up here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I shrugged.

  “The open air, the freedom.”

  “Freedom, huh?” His smile was abrupt and bitter. “Farming is just another word for bondage.”

  His jaw set and he kicked at a rock with sudden savagery. I’d hit some kind of nerve and quickly changed the subject.

  “When did the monks leave?”

  He sucked on his cigarette before answering.

  “Seven years ago. The land went fallow. Scrub and brambles. Couple corporations thought of buying it—executive resort and all that—but all of ‘em backed out. The buildings weren’t suited to it—rooms like cells, no heat, looked like a church any way you cut it. The cost of renovation would have been too high.”

  “But perfect for the Touch.”

  He shrugged.

  “Something for everyone in this world.”

  The front door was rounded at the top, a slab of stout boards braced by wide iron bands. Inside was a three-story white-walled entrance floored with Mexican pavers and skylit from above. A smear of color reflected from the stained-glass windows rainbowed the tiles. The spicy aroma of incense suggested itself. The air was cool, almost to the point of refrigeration.

  A woman in her sixties sat at a wooden table in front of a pair of oversized doors that were rounded and banded like the one out front. Above them was a wooden sign that said SANCTUARY. The woman’s hair had been tied back in a ponytail and fastened with a leather thong. She wore a sack dress of raw white cotton and sandals on her feet. Her face was weathered, bland and pleasant, and free of makeup or other pretense. Her hands were in her lap and she smiled, reminding me of a well-behaved schoolchild. The teacher’s pet.

  “Good afternoon, Sheriff.”

  “Hello, Maria. Like to see Matthias.”

  She rose gracefully. The skirt reached below her knees.

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  She led us to the left of the sanctuary down a long hallway unadorned except for potted palms placed at ten-foot intervals. There was a single door at the end, which she held open for us.

  The room was dim and lined with books on three walls. The floor was pine plank. The incense smell was stronger. There was no desk, only three plain wooden chairs arranged in an isosceles triangle. At the peak of the triangle sat a man.

  He was long, lean, and angular and wore a tunic and drawstring trousers of the same raw cotton as Maria’s dress. His feet were bare, but a pair of sandals lay on the floor by his chair. His hair was the waxy, amber-tinted white that is the heritage of some blonds grown to maturity, and was cropped short. His beard was a shade darker—more amber and less snow—and hung across his chest. It curled luxuriantly and he stroked it as if it were a pet. His brow was high and domed and I saw the crease just below the hairline, an indentation you could rest your thumb in. The eyes, cradled in deep sockets, were gray-blue in color, not dissimilar from mine. But I hoped mine gave off more warmth.

  “Please sit.” His voice was powerful and somewhat metallic.

  “This is Dr. Delaware, Matthias. Doctor, Noble Matthias.”

  The imperial title sounded silly. I searched for mirth on Houten’s face but he looked dead-serious.

  Matthias kept stroking his beard. He sat meditatively still, a man not uncomfortable with silence.

  “Thanks for cooperating,” said Houten stiffly. “Hopefully we can clear this thing up and move along.”

  The white head nodded. “Whatever will help.”

  “Dr. Delaware would like to ask you a few questions and then we’ll take a stroll around.”

  Matthias remained in repose.

  Houten turned to me.

  “It’s your show.”

  “Mr. Matthias,” I began.

  “Just Matthias, please. We eschew titles.”

  “Matthias, I’m not here to intrude upon you or your—”

  He interrupted me with a wave of his hand.

  “I’m well aware of the nature of your visit. Ask what you need to ask.”

  “Thank you. Dr. Melendez-Lynch feels you had something to do with the removal of Woody Swope from the hospital and the family’s subsequent disappearance.”

  “Urban madness,” said the guru. “Madness.” He repeated the word as if testing it for suitability as a mantra.

  “I’d appreciate hearing any theories you might have about it.”

  He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, opened them, and spoke.

  “I can’t help you. They were private people. As are we. We barely knew them. There were brief encounters—passing each other on the road, perfunctory smiles. Once or twice we purchased seeds from them. In the summer of our first season the girl worked for us as a scullery maid.”

  “Temporary job?”

  “Correct. In the beginning we were not yet self-sufficient and we hired several of the local youngsters to help. Her duties were in the kitchen, as I recall. Scrubbing, scouring, readying the ovens for use.”

  “How was she as a worker?”

  A smile vented the cotton-candy beard.

  “We are rather ascetic by contemporary standards. Most young people would not be attracted to that.”

  Houten broke in. “Nona was—is a live one. Not a bad kid, just a little on the wild side.”

  The message was clear: she’d been a problem. I remembered Carmichael’s story about the stag party. That kind of spontaneity could wreak havoc in a place that prized discipline. She’d probably come on to the men. But if that had anything to do with the issue at hand I couldn’t see it.

  “Anything else you could tell me that might help?”

  He stared at me. His gaze was intense, almost tangible. It was hard not to look away.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Houten shifted restlessly in his chair. Nicotine fidgets. His hand went up to his cigarette pocket then stopped.

  “I’m gonna take some air,” he said and walked out. Matthias didn’t seem to notice his exit.

  “You didn’t know the family well,” I went on. “Yet two of your people visited them at the hospital. I’m not doubting your word but it’s a question you’re bound to be asked again.”

  He sighed.

  “We had business in Los Angeles. Baron and Delilah were assigned to handle it. We felt it would be gracious for them to visit the Swop
es. They brought the family fresh fruit from our orchards.”

  “Not,” I smiled, “for medicinal purposes.”

  “No,” he said, amused. “For nourishment. And pleasure.”

  “So this was a social call.”

  “In a sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re not sociable. We don’t make small talk. Visiting them was an act of good will, not part of some nefarious scheme. No attempt was made to interfere with the child’s medical care. I’ve notified Baron and Delilah to join us momentarily so you’ll have a chance to obtain additional details.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  A vein throbbed in the center of the crater in his brow. He held out his hands as if to ask, What next? The remote look on his face reminded me of someone else. The association triggered my next question.

  “There’s a doctor who treated Woody by the name of August Valcroix. He told me he visited here. Do you remember him?”

  He twirled the ends of his beard around one long finger.

  “Once or twice a year we offer seminars on organic gardening and meditation. Not to proselytise, but to enlighten. He may have attended one of those. I don’t remember him specifically.”

  I gave him a physical description of Valcroix but it didn’t evoke recognition.

  “That’s it, then. I appreciate your help.”

  He sat there, unblinking and unmoving. In the stingy light of the room his pupils had expanded so that only a thin rim of pale iris was visible. He had hypnotic eyes. A prerequisite for charisma.

  “If you have any more questions you may ask them.”

  “No questions, but I would like to hear more about your philosophy.”

  He nodded.

  “We are refugees from a former life. We’ve chosen a new life that emphasizes purity and industry. We avoid environmental poisons and seek self-sufficiency. We believe that by changing ourselves we increase the positive energy in the world.”

  Standard stuff. He rattled it off like some New Age pledge of allegiance.

  “We’re not killers,” he added.

  Before I could reply, two of them came into the room.

  Matthias stood up and left without acknowledging their presence. The man and woman took the two empty seats. The transaction was oddly mechanical, as if the people were interchangeable parts in some smoothly functioning apparatus.

  They sat, hands in laps—more good schoolkids—and smiled with the maddening serenity of the born-again and the lobotomized.

  I was far from serene. Because I recognized both of them, though in quite different ways.

  The man who called himself Baron was medium-sized and thin. Like Matthias, his hair was cut short and his beard left untrimmed. But in his case the effect was less dramatic than untidy. His hair was medium brown and wispy. Patches of skin showed through the sparse frizzy chin whiskers and his cheeks were covered with soft fuzz. It was as if he’d forgotten to wash his face.

  In graduate school I’d known him as Barry Graffius. He was older than I, in his early forties, but had been a class behind, a late starter who’d decided to become a psychologist after trying just about everything else.

  Graffius’s family was wealthy, big in the movie business, and he’d been one of those rich kids who couldn’t seem to settle down— inadequate drive level because he’d never been deprived of anything. The consensus was that family money had gotten him in, but that may have been a jaundiced view. Because Barry Graffius had been the most unpopular person in the department.

  I’ve always tended to be charitable in my evaluations of others but I’d despised Graffius. He was loudmouthed and contentious, dominating seminars with irrelevant quotes and statistics aimed at impressing the professors. He insulted his peers, bullied the meek, played devil’s advocate with malicious glee.

  And he loved to flaunt his money.

  Most of us were struggling to get by, working extra jobs in addition to our teaching assistantships. Graffius delighted in coming to class in hand-tailored leather and suede, complaining about the repair bill on his XKE, lamenting the tax bite. He was an outrageous name dropper, recounting lavish Hollywood parties, offering a teasing glimpse into a glamorous world beyond the grasp of the rest of us.

  I’d heard that after graduating he’d gone into practice on Bedford Drive—Beverly Hills Couch Row—planning to capitalize on his connections and become Therapist to the Stars.

  I could see where he’d run into Norman Matthews.

  He recognized me too. I could tell by the flurry of activity behind his watery brown eyes. As we looked at each other that activity crystallized: fear. The fear of being discovered.

  His former identity was no secret in the strict sense. But he didn’t want to be confronted by it: for those who imagine themselves reborn, bringing up the past has all the appeal of exhuming one’s own moldering corpse.

  I said nothing, but wondered if he’d told Matthias about knowing me.

  The woman was older, but uncommonly pretty despite the pony-tail no-makeup look that seemed to be de rigueur for Touch women. Madonna-faced with ivory skin, raven hair now streaked with silver, and brooding gypsy eyes. Beverly Lucas had called her a hot number who’d lost it but that seemed unfairly bitchy. Perhaps knowing the woman’s true age would have softened the critique.

  She looked a well-preserved fifty but I knew she was at least sixty-five.

  She hadn’t made a film since 1951, the year I was born.

  Desiree Layne, Queen of budget films noirs. There’d been a revival of her movies when I was in college, with free screenings during finals week. I’d seen them all: Phantom Bride, Darken My Doorstep, The Savage Place, Secret Admirer.

  An eon ago, before my early retirement, I’d been a frantic, lonely man, with little free time. But one of the few pleasures I’d allowed myself was a Sunday afternoon in bed with a tall glass of Chivas and a Desiree Layne flick.

  It hadn’t mattered who the leading man was as long as there were lots of closeups of those beautiful evil eyes, the dresses that looked like lingerie. The voice husky with passion...

  She emitted no passion now, sitting statue-still, white-garbed, smiling vacantly. So goddamned harmless.

  The place was really starting to spook me. It was like walking through a wax museum...

  “Noble Matthias told us you have questions,” said Baron.

  “Yes. I just wanted to hear more about your visit to the Swopes. It could help explain what’s happened, aid in locating the children.”

  They nodded in unison.

  I waited. They looked at each other. She spoke.

  “We wanted to cheer them up. Noble Matthias had us pick fruit—oranges, grapefruit, peaches, plums—the best we could find. We put it all in a basket, wrapped it with gay paper.”

  She stopped talking and smiled, as if her narrative had explained everything.

  “Was your graciousness well received?”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Oh yes. Mrs. Swope said she was hungry. She ate a plum—a Santa Rosa plum—right there. Said it was delicious.”

  Baron’s face hardened as she prattled on. When she paused he said, “You want to know if we tried to talk them out of treating the boy.” He sat passively but there was an aggressive edge to his voice.

  “Matthias told me you didn’t. Did the subject of medical treatment come up?”

  “It did,” he said. “She complained about the plastic room, said she felt cut off from the boy, that the family was being divided.”

  “Did she explain what she meant?”

  “No. I assumed she was talking about the physical separation— not being allowed to touch him without gloves, only one person in the room at a time.”

  Delilah nodded in assent.

  “Such a cold place,” she said. “Physically and spiritually.” To illustrate she gave a little shudder. Once an actress...

  “They didn’t feel the doctors treated them like human beings,” added Ba
ron. “Especially the Cuban.”

  “Poor man,” said Delilah. “When he tried to force his way in this morning I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Overweight and flushed red as a tomato—he must have high blood pressure.”

  “What were their complaints about him?”

  Baron pursed his lips.

  “Just that he was impersonal,” he said.

  “Did they mention a doctor named Valcroix?”