Blood Test

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.”

“Including the Touch’s place?”