“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. Must 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.
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.”