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 said, “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.”
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 family 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.”
“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.”