Blood Test

“Interesting,” he reflected, chewing on his pencil. “So this could be anything. The parents taking the kid out of town in a hurry, which might not be a crime at all unless the hospital wants to make a thing out of it. Except if that was the case, they wouldn’t leave the car behind. Hypothesis B is the cultists did the job with the parents’ permission, which is still no crime. Or without, which would be good old-fashioned kidnapping.”

“What about the blood?” I asked.

“Yeah, the blood. The techs say O positive. That tell you anything?”

“I think I remember from the chart,” said Beverly, “that Woody and both of the parents are O. I’m not sure about the Rh factor.”

“So much for that. It’s not a hell of a lot anyway, not what you’d expect if someone got shot or cut—” He saw the look on her face and stopped himself.

“Milo,” I said, “the boy’s got cancer. He’s not terminally ill — or wasn’t as of yesterday. But his disease is unpredictable. It could spread and invade a major blood vessel, or convert to leukemia. And if either of those occur, he could suddenly hemorrhage.”

“Jesus,” said the big detective, looking pained. “Poor little guy.”

“Isn’t there something you can do?” demanded Beverly.

“We’ll do our best to find them but to be honest it won’t be easy. They could be just about anywhere by now.”

“Don’t you put out A.P.B.’s or something like that?” she insisted.

“That’s already been done. As soon as Alex called I got in touch with the law in La Vista — it’s a one-man show run by a sheriff named Houten. He hasn’t seen them but he promised to keep a lookout. He also gave me a good physical description of the family and I put it over the wire. Highway patrols got it, as well as L.A. and San Diego P.D.s and all the decent-sized departments in between. But we’ve got no vehicle to look for, no plates. Anything you’d like to suggest in addition to all of that?”

It was a sincere request for ideas, devoid of sarcasm, and it threw her off guard.

“Uh, no,” she admitted, “I can’t think of anything. I just hope you find him.”

“I hope so, too — can I call you Beverly?”

“Oh, sure.”

“I don’t have any brilliant theories about this, Beverly, but I promise to give it a lot of thought. And, if you think of anything, call me.” He gave her a card. “Anything at all, okay? Now, can I have one of the men give you a lift home?”

“Alex could—”

He flashed her a wide, loose-lipped smile. “I’m going to be needing to talk to Alex for a while. I’ll get you a ride.” He went out to the six patrolmen, selected the best-looking of the bunch, a trim six-footer with curly black hair and shiny teeth, and brought him back to the office.

“Ms. Lucas, this is Officer Fierro.”

“Where to, ma’am?” Fierro tipped his hat. She gave him an address in Westwood and he guided her to his squad car.

Just as she was getting in, Milo rummaged in his shirt pocket and called out, “Hey, Brian, hold on.”

Fierro stopped and Milo bounded over to the car. I jogged along with him.

“This mean anything to you, Beverly?” He handed her a match-book.

She examined it. “Adam and Eve Messenger Service? Yeah. One of the nurses told me Nona Swope had gotten a job as a messenger. I remember thinking it was strange — why would she get a job when they were only in town temporarily?” She looked at the matchbook more closely. “What is this, a hooker service or something like that?”

“Something like that.”

“I knew she was a wild one,” she said angrily, and gave him back the matchbook. “Is that all?”

“Uh huh.”

“Then I’d like to go home.”

Milo gave the signal and Fierro got behind the wheel and started up the engine.

“Uptight lady,” said Milo after they drove away.

“She used to be a sweet young thing,” I said. “Too much time on the cancer ward can do things to you.”

He frowned.

“Quite a mess in there,” he said.

“Looks bad, doesn’t it?”

“You want me to speculate? Maybe, maybe not. The room was tossed by someone who was angry. But couldn’t it have been one of the parents, furious at having a sick kid, all scared and confused about pulling him out? You worked with people in that situation. Ever see anyone freak like that?”

I reeled back a few years.

“There was always anger,” I told him. “Most of the time people talked it out. But sometimes it got physical. I can recall at least one intern getting slugged by a father. Plenty of threats. One guy who’d lost his leg in a hunting accident three weeks before his daughter came down with kidney tumors carried a couple of pistols into the hospital the day after she died. It was usually the ones who denied it and held it in and didn’t communicate with anyone who were the most explosive.” Which fit the description Beverly had given me of Garland Swope. I told him so.

“So that could be it,” he said uneasily.

“But you don’t think so.”

The heavy shoulders shrugged.