Blood Test

“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.”