Blood Test

“He was trying to avoid it. It may end up in court yet.”

He gave his big head a shake and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll keep my ears open. Anything comes up I’ll let you know.”

“I’d appreciate it. And thanks for everything, Milo.”

“It was nothing. Literally.” We shook hands. “Say hello to the entrepreneur when she gets back.”

“Will do. The best to Rick.”

I got out of the car. The Matador’s headlights striped the gravel as Milo swung out of the lot. The truncated patter of the radio dispatcher created a punk rock concerto that hung in the air after he was gone.

I drove north to Sunset, planning to turn off at Beverly Glen and head home. Then I remembered that the house would be empty. Talking to Milo about Robin had opened a few wounds and I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I realized that Raoul knew nothing about what we’d found at the Sea Breeze, and decided now was as good a time as any to tell him.

He was hunched over his desk scrawling notations on the draft of a research paper. I knocked lightly on the open door.

“Alex!” He rose to greet me. “How did it go? Did you convince them?”

I recounted what we’d found.

“Oh my God!” He slumped in his chair. “This is unbelievable. Unbelievable.” He exhaled, compressed his jowls with his hands, picked up a pencil and rolled it up and down the surface of the desk.

“Was there much blood?”

“One stain about six inches wide.”

“Not enough for a bleed-out,” he muttered to himself. “No other fluids? No bile, no vomitus?”

“I didn’t see any. It was hard to tell. The place was a shambles.”

“A barbaric rite, no doubt. I told you, Alex, they are madmen, those damned Touchers! To steal a child and then to run amok like that! Holism is nothing more than a cover for anarchy and nihilism!”

He was jumping to conclusions in quantum leaps but I had neither the desire nor the energy to argue with him.

“The police, what did they do?”

“The detective who ran the show is a friend of mine. He came down as a favor. There’s an All Points Bulletin out on the family, the sheriff in La Vista has been notified to watch for them. They did a crime scene analysis and filed a report. That’s it. Unless you decide to push it.”

“Your friend — is he discreet?”

“Very.”

“Good. We can’t afford a media side show. Have you ever talked to the press? They are idiots, Alex, and vultures! The blonds from the television stations are the worst. Vapid, with paste-on smiles, always trying to trick you into making outrageous statements. Barely a week goes by that one of them doesn’t attempt to get me to say that the cure for cancer is just around the corner. They want instant information, immediate gratification. Can you imagine what they’ll do with something like this?”

He’d gone quickly from defeatism to rage and the excess energy propelled him out of his chair. He traversed the length of the office with short nervous steps, pounding his fist into his hand, swerved to avoid the piles of books and manuscripts, walked back to the desk, and cursed in Spanish.

“Do you think I should go to court, Alex?”

“It’s a tough question. You need to decide if going public will help the boy. Have you done it before?”

“Once. Last year we had a little girl who needed transfusions. The family were Jehovah’s Witnesses and we had to get an injunction to give her blood. But that was different. The parents weren’t fighting us. Their attitude was, our beliefs don’t allow us to give you permission, but if we’re forced to comply we will. They wanted to save their child, Alex, and were happy when we took the responsibility away from them. That child is alive today and thriving. The Swope boy should be thriving, too, not dying in the back room of some scabrous voodoo den.”

He thrust his hand into the pocket of his white coat, removed a packet of saltine crackers, tore open the plastic, and nibbled on the crackers until they were consumed. After brushing crumbs out of his mustache he continued.

“Even in the Witness case the media tried to make a cause célèbre of it, implying that we were coercing the family. One of the stations sent around a moron masquerading as a medical reporter to interview me — probably one of those fellows who wanted to be a doctor but flunked his science courses. He swaggered in with a little tape recorder and addressed me by my first name, Alex! As if we were buddies! I dismissed him and he made the ‘no comment’ sound like concealment of guilt. Fortunately the parents took our advice and refused to talk to them, too. At that point the so-called controversy died a quick death — no carrion, the vultures go elsewhere.”

The door leading to the lab opened and a young woman clutching a clipboard entered the office. She had light light brown hair cut in a page boy, round eyes that uncannily matched the hair, pinched features, and a petulant mouth. The hand holding the clipboard was pale, and her nails were gnawed to the quick. She wore a lab coat that reached below her knees and crepe-soled flats on her feet.