“For that I need DNA to prove what Daney did to Valerie,” he said. “Or one of the other girls coming forward.”
“You saw him with Valerie at the clinic.”
“I saw him waiting and picking her up. It’s suggestive but not probative. Any progress on Beth Scoggins?”
“No.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
“Allison’s adamant?”
“Let’s leave it at ‘just like that,’ ” I said.
Silence. “Any other suggestions?”
“Isolate Cherish and talk to her. Don’t mention the murders right off, tell her you know about Valerie’s abortion and that you suspect Drew was the father. She might be willing to acknowledge her suspicions about the molestations or even go all the way and talk about Kristal.”
“If she’s so intent upon clearing herself, why didn’t she come forward after Rand was murdered?”
“Like Rand, she’s living under the same roof with Drew. Maybe she’s worried she doesn’t have enough evidence to ensure he’d be put away.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “But we’ve left something out: Cherish and Malley. If he’s her squeeze, why wouldn’t she tell him? And if she did, why didn’t he cooperate with me? Something’s still wrong with the picture, Alex. I’m not ready to put Barnett or Cherish on the good-guy list.”
“We know what list Drew’s on and he’s living with eight underage girls. Then there’s Miranda.”
“I am not unaware of the exigencies.”
“Didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.”
“Let me sleep on this. So to speak. In the morning, I’ll get Binchy to watch the Daney house really early, which ain’t gonna be a snap, Galton Street being so quiet. If Cherish leaves first, Sean’ll follow her and hand her off to me. If Drew leaves, Sean’ll stay on him and I’ll pay Cherish a little visit.”
“Either way, let me know.”
“You might very well be there.”
CHAPTER 41
The doorbell, followed by spirited knocking, woke me at seven a.m. My clouded brain knew what was happening: Allison had come by before work, wanting to make up.
I stumbled out of bed, padded to the door in my boxers, flung it open with a welcoming smile.
Milo stood there, wearing a tired green blazer, gray cords, yellow shirt, brown tie. In one hand was a box of Daffy Donuts, in the other two extra-large cups of the same outlet’s coffee. He squinted at me as if I were a rare and unsavory species.
“Revenge?” I said.
“For what?”
“Last night’s wake-up call.”
“Huh— oh, that. No, I was just dozing in the chair. Stayed up till three, working over a bunch of scenarios.”
He stepped past me. I left him in the kitchen and put on a robe. When I returned, the box was open, revealing a jarringly vivid assortment of fried things. Milo’s paw was wrapped around a coffee. He’d made admirable progress on a bear claw the size of a puppy.
Same thing he’d ingested during the second meeting with Drew Daney and I said so.
“Yeah, I was inspired,” he said, spewing crumbs. “Give grease its due.” He pointed at the other cup. “Drink and awaken, lad.”
“Daffy instead of Dipsy?”
“My local purveyor, indie outfit. I’m doing my bit for free enterprise.”
I sipped the coffee, tasted copper and dishwater and something vaguely javalike. Fighting the urge to spit, I said, “Decide on any new scenarios?”
“No, I’ve decided to go steady with the one you gifted me with: Cherish tried the shrink bit, moved too fast, scared the hell out of Rand, Drew caught on.” He stuffed what was left of the bear claw in his mouth. Sugary lips twisted upward. “Here I was thinking all that pacing you therapy folk do— all those months of ‘Uh huhs’ and ‘I hear you’s’— was to keep the payment rolling in.”
“Here I was thinking cops didn’t always sacrifice their pancreases to sucrose.” I yawned. “Are we off somewhere this morning or is there more to talk about?”
“We’re off when Sean calls.”
“When’s that?”
“I told him to start watching the house at seven and touch base hourly. Finish your coffee, get cleaned up and dressed.”
“Two out of three ain’t bad,” I said, and left the cup on the table.
* * *
When I got back he was sprawled in the living room, cell phone to his ear, nodding and pumping his left leg. “Thanks, great, really great.” Snapping the phone shut, he stood. “You still look half-asleep.”
“You don’t,” I said. “What’s fueling you?”
“The remote possibility that things could fall into place. That was Sue Kramer, God bless her. She was up with the birds, too, following leads in other time zones. If I were of the hetero persuasion I’d betroth her.”
“She’s already married.”
“Picky, picky. Anyway, she found out a few things about both our boys. Let’s get going, I’ll tell you in the car.”
He asked me to drive and when I started up the Seville, his head dropped onto his chest. As I took the Glen toward the Valley, he snored with gusto. At Mulholland, his head shot up and he began reciting as if there’d been no lull.
“The cowboy was born in Alamogordo, like I said. Moved to Los Alamos when he was ten because the ranch where his dad worked shut down and Pops got a janitorial gig at the nuke lab. The family lived there for ten years. One sib, an older sister, married with kids, works for the city of Cleveland. After high school, Barnett did a couple of years as truck driver, then he got a job with Santa Fe P.D.”
“He was a cop?”
“Worked patrol for eighteen months until a couple of complaints about undue force brought him and the department to a mutual understanding.”
“He quit, no prosecution.”
He nodded. “After that, there were some years when he reported no income, as best as Sue can tell, he drifted around as a laborer. He got on the dude ranch circuit ten years ago, moved to California. After he got married, he switched to swimming pool maintenance. Other than a short temper with suspects when he was twenty-one, he’s got nothing iffy in his background. The surface impression seems to be all of it: a taciturn loner whose life hasn’t turned out so great.”
“As opposed to Daney.”
“Reason he was hard to trace is he changed his name. He was born Moore Daney Andruson, is five years older than he claims on his driver’s license. Grew up in rural Arkansas, one of seven kids, at least three of whom have ended up in prison for violent crimes. His folks were itinerant preachers on the hillbilly circuit.”
“The part about growing up in the church was true,” I said.
“More like growing up in revival tents. With reptiles. His daddy was one of those rattlesnake handlers, religious rapture supposed to protect him against venom. Until it didn’t.”
“How’d Sue find all this out?”
“Despite being a scumbag the name change was legal and Daney has been reporting income with the IRS, on and off since he was eighteen. His credit history as Moore D. Andruson bottomed out twelve years ago. Lots of unpaid bills, a couple of bankruptcies.”
“Wonder why he bothered to file returns,” I said.
“He didn’t have much choice. His early jobs were salaried, required withholding, SSI, all that good stuff. Now that he bills the state, there’s different paperwork required.”
“What kind of jobs are we talking about?”
“Guess.”
“Youth work.”
“Camp counselor, substance abuse counselor, substitute teacher, Sunday school teacher, gym coach, always in small towns. He put bogus degrees on his applications and that eventually got him kicked out of three jobs in three different towns. After that, he tried suburbia, drove a school bus for a girls’ preppie academy in Richmond, Virginia.”
“What a surprise.”
“That’s where he met Cherish. He was Drew Dan
ey by then. She’d gotten a degree from Bible college, was teaching retarded kids at another school.”
“He’s got no southern accent,” I said. “More reinvention. His employers discovered his phony credentials after they’d hired him. Meaning they got suspicious about something else and checked him out.”
“No doubt, but no one’s being free with the details. Sue had to work just to get them to admit they knew him.”
“Meaning they kept it in-house. Anyone report the credentials scam?”
“Nope, they just sent him packing.”
“To his next victim.”
“So what else is new?” he said. “He did manage to acquire a police record, but not the type that would get entered in NCIC or any other national file. Indecent exposure pled down to a misdemeanor trespassing in Vivian, Louisiana; bad checks settled by reimbursement, no jail time, in Keswick, Virginia; sexual assault in Carrol County, Georgia. That one was dismissed. Sheriff said he knew Andruson did it but the girl he was accused of seducing had cerebral palsy and could barely talk. They figured she wouldn’t make the grade as a witness, wanted to spare her the ordeal.”
“Moral of the story: go for the vulnerable.”
“I asked Sue to find what she could on that missing girl, Miranda. Gave her Olivia’s number. Talk about your meeting of the minds.”
Out of his jacket pocket came tinny music. No more Beethoven, some sort of Latin beat. He reached in and extricated his cell phone. It kept tangoing as he checked the caller’s number. He had reprogrammed the ring. I’d thought it was mostly kids who did that.
“Sturgis . . . yeah, hi. No, there’s no parking on the property. I’m sure, Sean. You’re positive you didn’t miss anything? Well, that definitely complicates things . . . hope not . . . yeah, yeah, check all that out, our E.T.A.’s fifteen, twenty, I’ll call you unless you learn something earth-shattering.”
Click. “Sean’s been in place since six forty-five. Neither Daney’s Jeep nor Cherish’s Toyota are in sight. Ditto for Malley’s black truck. The gate’s closed so he can’t tell if anyone’s home. No sight or sounds of any kids, but he’s a hundred feet up. I told him to list the plates of any cars on the block and run them.”
“Both gone, separate cars,” I said.
“Maybe they went for doughnuts. Why don’t you drive a little faster?”
I sped over the canyon, raced through morning traffic, finally reached Vanowen just after eight. Milo got back on the phone and asked Binchy about the vehicle registrations. “No, keep going . . . no, no . . . hold on, repeat that one . . . interesting. Okay, stay there until we show up. Thanks mucho, lad.”
“Something come up?” I said.
“Cream-colored Cadillac DeVille parked right in front of the house,” he said. “And guess who pays the sticker fees.”
* * *
The Reverend Dr. Crandall Wascomb looked as if his faith had been tested and he wasn’t sure he’d passed.
He opened the gate within seconds of Milo’s pounding, stepped back, stunned.
“Dr. Delaware?”
Milo’s badge made his shoulders drop. Not dismay, relief. “Police. Thank goodness. Cherish called you, as well?”
“When did she call you, sir?” said Milo.
“Early this morning,” said Wascomb. “Just after six.”
His white hair floated above his brow and he had dressed haphazardly: heavy gray cardigan buttoned out of sequence so that it bunched mid-chest, white shirt with one bent collar point, maroon tie knotted well short of his neckline. Behind his black-framed glasses, his eyes were watery and uncertain.
“What did she want, Reverend?”
“She said she needed my help immediately. Mrs. Wascomb’s not well and I keep the phone in the hallway rather than at bedside so as not to wake her. The ring got me up, but at that hour I assumed it was a wrong number and didn’t get out of bed. When it rang again, I answered and it was Cherish, apologizing for disturbing me. She said something had come up, implored me to come to her house as soon as I could. I tried to get her to explain. She said there was no time, I simply needed to believe her, hadn’t she always been a faithful student.”
Wascomb blinked. “She had been.”
I said, “Was she distraught?”
“More like . . . anxious, but in an efficient way. As if she was faced with a sudden challenge and was rising to the occasion. I wondered if one of the children, or Drew, had taken ill. I asked her again what was wrong and she said she’d tell me when I showed up. If I’d come. I said I would and went to get dressed. Mrs. Wascomb had stirred and I told her I was having one of my insomnia episodes, she should go back to sleep. I instructed the housekeeper to keep an eye on her, got myself presentable, and drove over.”
His eyes compressed as they traveled from Milo to me. “When I arrived, the gate was open but no one was in the house. The front door had been left unlocked so I assumed Cherish wanted me to come straight in. The house was empty. I looked around, came back out. I was growing quite alarmed. Then a young woman came out of there.”
He cocked his head toward the pair of outbuildings. Converted garage painted pale blue to match the house. Off to the side, the odd-looking cement block cube.
The door to the cube was ajar.
“I left it open so the girls wouldn’t feel confined,” said Wascomb. “There’s only one window and it’s bolted shut. Two of them were in that other building, the blue one, but I assembled them all in one place until help arrived.”
“Have you called for help?” said Milo.
“I was thinking about who to call when you arrived. There doesn’t seem to be any crisis, other than Cherish and Drew not being here.” Another look at the block structure. “None of them appear to know what’s going on, but perhaps she didn’t want to worry them.”
“Them being the kids.”
“Yes, the flock.”
“The flock?”
“That’s how Cherish referred to them in the instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“Oh, dear,” said Wascomb. “I’m getting ahead of myself, this has all been so . . .” From a pocket of the cardigan he pulled two sheets of paper folded to postcard size.
Milo unfolded them, read, jutted his lower jaw. “Where’d you find this, sir?”
“When I looked around the house, I peeked into the bedroom and saw it on the desk.” Wascomb licked his lips. “I noticed it because it lay in the center of the desk, atop a piece of blotting paper. As if she wanted me to see it.”
“Was it folded?”
“No, flat. It really seemed as if she’d intended for me to read it.”
“Anything else on the desk?”
“Pens, pencils,” said Wascomb. “And a strongbox. The type banks use for safety deposit. That, of course, I didn’t touch.”
Milo handed the papers to me. Two pages of neat, forward-slanting cursive.
The Flock: Instructions for Daily Care
1. Patricia: Lactose-sensitive (soy milk in the fridge). Needs special help with reading and penmanship.
2. Gloria: Ritalin 10 mg. before breakfast, 10 mg. before dinner, self-esteem issues, doing well in all remedial areas but needs a lot of explicit verbal encouragement.
3. Amber: Ritalin 15 mg. before breakfast, 10 mg. before dinner, Allegra 180 mg. as needed for hay fever, penicillin allergy, shellfish allergy, doesn’t like meat but should be encouraged to eat some chicken; math, reading, penmanship . . .
Milo said, “Looks like she’s been preparing to be gone for a while.”
Wascomb said, “Cherish was always an organized student. If she did leave for an extended period, I’m sure her reason was sound.”
“Such as?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Lieutenant. But I do have the utmost respect for her.”
“As opposed to Drew.”
Wascomb’s jaw set. “I’m sure the doctor has told you of our problems with Drew.”
“He’s gone, too,” said Mil
o.
“They are husband and wife.”
“You think they left together.”
“I don’t know what to think, sir,” said Wascomb.
“When Cherish called she mentioned nothing about going away, Reverend?”
“No— Is it lieutenant? No, she didn’t, Lieutenant. I fully expected her to be here when I arrived. If Cherish didn’t call you, sir, may I ask why you’re here?”
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