The Crime Writer

My head humming, I flipped through my manuscript. I didn't want to believe it, but there it was, in plain type. Motive. "I'm sorry for the mess. Janice is an only child, both parents passed. We don't get much help."

Janice had no family to act as donors. Which meant that blind luck would have to intervene to stop her from wasting away. And when it hadn't, her husband had.

Lloyd could've just killed Kasey Broach and taken the marrow from her corpse. So why risk using sevoflurane?

I asked, "You have to be alive for a bone-marrow extraction, right?"

Over the sounds of continued typing, Big Brontell said, "That's right."

Please, please, let him have killed Genevieve also. Let him have killed her and then learned afterward that he needed to keep the next one alive for the marrow to be successfully extracted. Let him have evolved as a killer so both murders could be hung on his conscience and none on mine.

Doubt tugged at me. Why would Genevieve have been on the bone-marrow registry? To my knowledge she had no ill relatives, and she was hardly one for invasive charity. Also, if Lloyd had killed her, my brain tumor seemed something of a convenient fluke.

"What are the odds for a bone-marrow match?" I asked.

Big Brontell said, "One in twenty thousand. Give or take. Of course, your pool is limited to people who submit to testing."

"Are there any matches for Janice's type in the registry?" I asked. "People who live in Los Angeles?"

"Lemme check." The phone shifted noisily against Brontell's cheek, and then I could hear him breathing as he typed.

I dug through the manuscript furiously, checking my memory against twelve-point font: "None of us matched." Mrs. Broach waved a hand to encompass the three of them on the couch. "But Kasey did. She was Tommy's angel. She went in time after time, shots in the hip, needle this thick, never complained, not once."

I picture Kasey Broach's blue-tinted corpse, sprawled on the cracked asphalt beneath the freeway ramp: A nasty abrasion mottled her right hip. I racked my brain to recall if a similar scrape had been left on Genevieve in the same location. Wouldn't take much to skim away puncture marks from a cluster of needle perforations, to hide traces of the extractions under a glistening wound. Had I checked? Had anyone?

What had he said at our last good-bye? "I'm sorry, Drew, but Janice and I have to look out for ourselves."

Sorry, indeed.

He was no sadist, though he'd introduced a bondage rope to throw us off course. Sevoflurane to keep them alive and pliant. Xanax so they'd feel relatively calm should they breach consciousness a humane facet of an inhumane act. He wouldn't have wanted the victims to suffer any more than he wanted me to. He just wanted his wife to live, no matter the cost. Had he apologized to his victims as he had to me? Had he wept as he pressed the gas mask over their faces to still their thrashing? As he'd positioned the boning knife for the final plunge?

Big Brontell said, "There are two matches in L.A."

A held breath burned in my chest. I prayed silently. Let Genevieve's name be one of those two, making me innocent.

"Let's see," Big Brontell said, with a deliberateness that made me want to scream. "Kasey Broach, but she took her name off the active list."

But it would've been a snap for Lloyd to get clearance to tap the bone-marrow database, to find matches present and past.

My voice sounded strangled. "And the other?"

"Sissy Ballantine."

I tilted my forehead into my hand, felt it slick and hot.

"She's listed as a sibling donor," Big Brontell said. "Transplant pending."

So her marrow was being reserved for a brother or sister, which meant it wouldn't be made available for Janice. Which in turn meant Lloyd had to take the marrow forcibly from one of the two matches and kill her to cover his tracks. Kasey Broach, long inactive on the donor list and thus further afield of the clue trail, had been the wiser choice.

"Thank you very much, Brontell. I can't tell you "

"Hang on." Then he shouted across the phone. "Get the four-points and the Haldol!" Back to me: "Gotta run, Drew-Drew. My girth is required on the psych unit."

He disconnected, and I folded the phone and set it on the passenger seat.

When I looked up, Lloyd was at my window.

Chapter 42

Lloyd signaled me with one hand to roll down the window. His other arm was out of view, since he was standing half on the curb, bent beneath a wayward bough of the pepper tree. As I hit the switch, I kept my eyes on that hidden hand. From the flex of his arm, he was holding something. The cell phone was sleek and hard in my fist.

"Hey, Lloyd."

A dated weave belt pinched his tan Dockers at the waist. His brickred Polo shirt he wore tucked in, though it had tugged free at one side from recent exertion. His wavy blond hair sparkled with sweat where it met his forehead and temples. "Hello. What do you need?"