“But he chose Sprentzel as a Fellow.”
“He didn’t know when he chose him. Sprentzel wasn’t one of those nelly-fairy types, flouncing around. In fact, I’m not sure how we all found out about him. Probably from Terry. Terry always made a big point of it.” He looked downward. “All that bluster. That knife.… Yes, poor Sprentzel was definitely low man.”
“Was Mellors a tough guy, too?”
“No, not really—university type. Devious, but not nasty.”
Trying to figure out how to ask what he looked like, I said, “I’ve seen pictures of Trafficant, but none of Mellors.”
“Yes, Terry became quite a celebrity for a while. The book.”
“What about Mellors? Did he ever publish his book?”
“I have no idea.” Shrug. “As I said, Buck encouraged isolation.”
“What did he look like—just to help me form a mental picture.”
“Big. Muscular. Light for his race.”
“He was black?”
“Tan,” he said. “What the South Africans call ‘colored.’ Black features but tan skin. Blond hair. Nice-looking fellow, actually.”
“Facial hair?”
“I think so. It’s been a long time.”
“A beard?”
“A mustache, I believe. He didn’t like being thought of as black. Didn’t like to talk about race. One time Sprentzel brought it up—all that German guilt—and Mellors just walked away. Then Terry showed up with his knife and went into his little fag routine. It was really a boring place.”
“Why were Trafficant and Mellors high-status?”
“Denny because he went around telling everyone what a genius Buck was. With Terry it was something else—almost as if Buck looked up to him. As if he represented something Buck admired.”
“Such as?”
“Who knows?”
“Hatred of women?”
He stared at me. “Hatred of everything, I suppose. The two of them would drink together, get pissed, and take walks in the woods singing filthy songs.”
“Did Trafficant ever get into any trouble while up there?”
He ran his fingernails over the ridges of the celery stalk. “Other than playing with that knife and making our lives miserable, I never saw anything. Why?”
“Trying to flesh him out,” I said. “I still think it’s strange the way he vanished.”
“As I said, check the jails. Or the cemeteries. He had a very nasty temper. Anything could set him off. Person like that, the chance of leading a long, peaceful life goes down. That’s my business now: risk assessment. Figuring out who’ll make it and who won’t. Anyway, I must be going. It’s been fun, but time to get back to reality.”
CHAPTER
32
Milo’s exhaustion saturated his phone voice.
“Task-force blues?” I said.
“Nothing-accomplished blues. The coroner gave us zero on Nicolette Verdugo. Our copycat’s being obsessive-compulsive.”
“What about the feces on the corpse?”
“The feces,” he said, “are of the canine variety. Another one of those charming details we’re withholding from the media.”
“Do any of the Bogettes have a dog?”
“They have a goddamn pack of dogs, but try getting hold of a single turd. They’re holed up at some dirt ranch out past Pacoima, belongs to one of Shwandt’s death penalty lawyers. Mangy mutts and cats and horses behind chain link and barbed wire.”
“A commune? At least having them all in one place should make surveillance easier.”
“Not really. There’s no real cover. Too much open space. Girls come out the front door wearing skimpies and flipping us off. The investigation has not progressed apace, sir. How’s Lucy?”
“Haven’t seen her today, she’s out driving with Ken. And someone else took a drive last night.” I repeated what the boys had told me about Doris leaving with Tom Shea.
“They also said she loves to gamble. So if there was some sort of payoff, that could explain why the Sheas live well and she doesn’t.”
“You said she didn’t seem to like the Sheas. Now Tom picks her up?”
“If she’s taking a temporary vacation because my questions shook things up, Tom and Gwen could be looking over shoulders, too. They might help her split ’cause it’s in their best interests.”
“Could be your questions combined with our chat with Mo Barnard. She lives right up the hill from the restaurant. If she dropped in for dinner and let on that Karen’s file was being opened … wonder if the Sheas’ll rabbit, too.”
“They already left once. Though now they’ve got community ties. It’s possible they view Doris as a loose cannon and feel once she’s gone they can handle the pressure. All her ties are out of town: two sons in the army, both master sergeants, one in Germany, one near Seattle. I don’t know if they go by Reingold. She could be with either one of them or somewhere in Nevada, playing. She told me she liked it, was thinking of moving there.”
“Early retirement, huh? Okay, when I get a chance, I’ll look into her. Nothing new on Trafficant, by the way. I can’t hit every jail, but so far he hasn’t shown up in any of the major ones.”
“I learned a little more about him today. Managed to locate one of the Sanctum Fellows, a sculptor named Christopher Graydon-Jones. He’s become a biggie at an insurance company in Santa Monica. We had drinks. He remembers Trafficant as a knife-wielding bully and Lowell’s pet. Trafficant and Lowell used to get drunk together and take walks in the forest. And the third man in the dream may be a writer named Denton Mellors. Only critic to give Lowell’s last book a good review. He had a mustache—though it doesn’t match the one Lucy describes in the dreams—and he idolized Lowell. He and Trafficant were a clique at the retreat. So my money’s on him as Hairy Lip and Trafficant as the man with his back turned. Graydon-Jones said something else that supports that: Lowell looked up to Trafficant. It wasn’t a standard student-teacher thing. Last session I had with Lucy, she described the third man as talking roughly to Lowell. Ordering him to roll the girl into the grave. From what I heard today, Trafficant could’ve done that and gotten away with it. What do you think?”
“I think,” he said, “that you’ve got threads. Getting closer to a weave. But with all these people gone, so many years passed, it may not happen. Then again, who’m I to criticize? I spent today praying for wisdom in dog shit.”
Denton Mellors had been a graduate student at Columbia, but it was too late to call the university. On the chance that he’d returned to New York, I tried Information in all the New York boroughs and New Jersey but found nothing. Then I wondered if he’d stayed in L.A. and gotten a writing job on a newspaper or magazine or in film. Before I could get any further with that, my service called.
“Emergency from Mr. Ken Lowell, doctor. He couldn’t stay on the line, sounded pretty upset. Here’s the number.”
My heart lurched as I copied down the 818 exchange and called it. Another suicide attempt. Or worse. Lucy more vulnerable than I’d thought, hypnosis a terrible mistake, weakening her defenses—
“Van Nuys Division.”
The police. Worse.
“This is Dr. Delaware returning Ken Lowell’s call.”
“Who’s he?”
“Probably a victim’s brother.”
“Probably?”
“I’m a doctor returning an emergency call to this number.”
“What was the person’s name?”
“Lowell.”
Four unbearable minutes later, Ken said, “Thank God they reached you. We’re in real trouble.”
“Lucy?”
“No, no, it’s Puck. We found him, Lucy and I. It was horrible. She didn’t actually see him, I closed the door before she could, but—”
“What happened, Ken?”
“They’re saying overdose. He must have gotten hold of some strong stuff or something. He—the needle was still sticking out of his arm.” I heard him gag. “Sorry.”
“Take your time.”
“He was all—but you could see the damned needle.” His voice broke, and I heard him choke back sobs. “It wasn’t even an arm anymore,” he said, gulping. “But you could see the damned needle.”
CHAPTER
33
The Van Nuys station is part of the municipal complex on Sylvan, just off the boulevard, where thrift shops, pawnbrokers, bail bondsmen, and discount Western-wear barns prevail. Posted just inside the door among the bulletins and wanted posters was a xeroxed flier from a local gang threatening to assassinate officers. Someone had written on it Come and get it, lowlife. The front room was noisy and active. Several handcuffed men waited to be booked.
It took a while to get past the desk. Finally, a detective named Almondovar came out and walked me through the squad room to the Robbery-Homicide area. Thirty-five or so, he was compact and stubby, with neat graying hair and curious eyes. His Ultrasuede sportcoat was gray, his slacks a darker gray, and he wore lizard-skin cowboy boots.
“Whose doctor are you?” he said.
“Lucy Lowell’s. Was it an accidental OD?”
“Did you know the victim?”
“Just by reputation.”
“Big-time addict?”
“Long-term addict.”
“From the shape he was in, you couldn’t tell much—here we are.”
He opened the door of an interrogation room. Lucy and Ken sat next to each other at a folding card table, looking like prisoners of war. Before them were two cups of coffee, untouched.
“Hey, folks,” said Almondovar.
Ken’s eyes were red and his blond-stubbled face looked swollen. Lucy didn’t move or blink. Her dull gaze went right through me.
Almondovar said, “We already took statements from them, doctor. If there’s anything more we need, we’ll let you know.”
Neither Ken nor Lucy budged.
“What I mean, doctor, is they can go.”
“We’ll get going soon as possible,” I said.
Almondovar whispered in my ear, “We might need the room soon.” To Lucy and Ken: “Sorry, folks, we’ll do what we can to clear this up.”
He walked out.
Ken covered his face and shook his head.
I patted his shoulder. He looked at me, trying to smile, then turned to Lucy. She was staring at the wall. Her eyes were glassy.
I took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. She squeezed back. Then she took a very deep breath and stood up.
She seemed unsteady. Ken was out of his chair, grabbing her elbow, but she was okay.
I walked them out through the station. A few cops looked up but most didn’t.
We left Ken’s Taurus in a city pay lot and I drove them to Rockingham Avenue.
When we got in the house, Lucy said, “I’m tired.”
“I’ll settle you in,” said Ken. The two of them disappeared and I waited in the living room, leafing through a coffee-table book on the great mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. A quarter hour later, Ken came down. He’d removed his jacket and his shirt was wrinkled.
“Can I get you a drink or something?”
“No, thanks. Do you want to sleep, too?”
He made a hard, angry sound that could have been a laugh or a cough. “I guess I should tell you what happened.”
“It doesn’t have to be now.”
“Might as well,” he said. “It’s not going to get any easier.”
We went through the kitchen into the breakfast room and sat down at an oak table.
“We were going to drive out to look at some horse land I’m foreclosing on,” said Ken. “First we went out to breakfast this morning. Lucy seemed very uptight. When the food came, she didn’t touch it. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she couldn’t stop worrying about Puck. Then she started crying.”
He gave a pained look. “Sure I can’t get you some coffee?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.… Where was I?” Rubbing his chin. “So I said, ‘Why don’t we go over to his place and see if he left any indication where he went?’ She said she didn’t know if that was a good idea, in case people were looking for him; she didn’t want to tip them off. Didn’t want to put me in danger either.” He wiped his eyes.
“Drug people?” I said.
“I guess. We never actually talked about his problem. I never even realized he was addicted until later. I mean, when I met him I knew something was wrong. Thin, always coughing, his nose running. I wondered about AIDS.… Anyway, we ate for a while—at least I did. Then Lucy said, Maybe we should go. We could look around to make sure no one was watching the apartment, and if there wasn’t, we could go in—excuse me.”
He got up, fixed a cup of instant coffee, and brought it to the table. “Then she said she was sure he was in some kind of danger. Otherwise he would have called her at least once. I asked her what danger. She said she really didn’t know, Puck tried to keep his problems to himself, but probably some kind of debt situation. So we went to his place. Lucy had a key.” Wiping a tear. “What a rathole. Basically an abandoned building. The store below was vacant. To get to Puck’s place you had to climb up some rear stairs near the trash bins.”
He ran his hands through his hair and swallowed hard.
“We went in and there was this smell, right away—like stale laundry mixed with badly rotting food—but the place was a mess, open cans, crap all over the carpet, so I didn’t think anything of it. It was a surprisingly big place—two bedrooms. But no real furniture. Lucy said the rear bedroom was Puck’s, so we went back there. The door was closed but we heard something behind it, like an electric shaver. We looked at each other, scared out of our minds. Then I figured, maybe it’s good news, he just got back, he’s shaving, cleaning up. So I opened the door.…”
He blinked and put the cup down.
“Just a crack, but this cloud came out at me. Flies. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. That was the sound. And maggots. The whole bed was covered with them. On the floor, on the drapes, like someone had tossed rice all over. Then I saw—underneath a big mound of them, on the bed—this … thing. The needle sticking out of it. Shiny and clean. The only clean thing in there. He was—under them, on the bed. And on the floor. It was hard to tell what was him and what was—he’d melted!”
Milo said, “It’s called purge fluid. Stuff leaks out when putrefaction’s well under way. It means he’d been there for a while.”
We were in the living room of the Brentwood house. He’d just arrived, nearly two hours after I’d brought Ken and Lucy back. Both of them were sleeping.
“How long?” I said.
“Hard to say, there was no air-conditioning in the apartment. Coroner says the most we can expect is an estimate, three- to eight-day range.”
“Well, we know it’s closer to three, because before that he was in New Mexico. Looks like he came back soon after he called Lowell. But he still didn’t call Lucy.”
“Came back after scoring,” he said. “Van Nuys found a nice little chunk in the toilet tank. Mexican brown, but very strong. Small corner chipped away.”
“Sampling the goods and he OD’d,” I said. “Too stoned to call Lucy.”
He looked around the room. “How long’s she been asleep?”
“Hour and a half.”
“Ken, too?”
“He went up to see how she was doing a half hour ago and didn’t come down.”
“Escape to sleep,” he said.
“Old Buck tends to nod off when he’s under stress, too.”
He cracked his knuckles. “Some people just have shitty lives, don’t they? And the rest of us live off them. Hey, why don’t we blow this joint, go to the circus or something? Did I ever tell you I once busted a clown when I was on patrol? Peeping Tom. Never worked that into his act.”
He got up and paced the room. “Nice place the scamsters set up for themselves.”
“Crime almost paid.”
Ken came do
wn the stairs, holding on to the banister. His hair was combed but he looked sick. “Guess I dozed off—hi, detective.”
They shook hands.
“Is Lucy awake?” I said.
“Just up. She said if you wanted to come up it was okay. She’s at the end of the hall.”
I went up the stairs. Lucy’s room was pale blue with white trim, smallish, with a canted ceiling and a big four-poster with lace-edged covers. She was sitting on the edge, staring out the window.
I sat next to her. She didn’t react. Her eyes were dry and her lips were chapped.
“I’m so sorry, Lucy.”
“Gone,” she said. “Everything.”
I patted her hand. Fingers cold as Puck’s junkie digits.
“Heard the doorbell,” she said.
“That was Milo.”
She nodded, then kept the movement going, a faint rocking.
“No surprise,” she said. “Guess I always knew, but …”
“It’s never easy.”
“Like being stripped … one thing at a time … empty world.”
I squeezed her fingers.
“He can come up,” she said. “Milo.”
Almost pleading.
I stepped out to the landing. Milo and Ken were still in the entry. It didn’t look as if either of them had moved.
“She’d like to see you.”
He bounded the steps two at a time. When we were alone, Ken touched his belly and gave a squeamish look. “Stomach’s off, can’t hold on to anything. Maybe I’ll finally take off some blubber.”
I smiled.
“Gained way too much. Fifteen pounds during the last year. My divorce. It hasn’t been a friendly one. Kelly—my wife—met another guy. She’d been complaining about being bored, so I suggested she take some classes at the junior college. She met him there, some out-of-work construction guy. I tried to get her to go to counseling, but she wouldn’t. When I finally realized we were going to break up, I tried to keep it amicable, for the kids. But she bad-mouthed me to them.”
“That doesn’t help the kids.”
“It’s been going on over a year, and we’re still in court. Her dad’s got lots of money, lawyers on retainer. She says she won’t give up until she has everything.”
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