To The Bone

by Neil Mcmahon

  Monks believed that Roberta thought she was telling the truth. He speculated about recovered memory – the kind of fantasy that abuse victims sometimes constructed, out of guilt, fear, the need to block out traumatic events. Surely she was familiar with rumors about girls who disappeared. Could she have incorporated that, in a drug-induced psychosis, into a rationalization for the accident and her behavior leading to it? Her religious conversion, soon afterward, indicated that guilt feelings were already present in her.

  But it was so damned outlandish and, at the same time, grounded in real possibility. This was not about sex experiments on alien spacecraft, or human sacrifice at Satanic rituals. Even her admission of not seeing D' Anton's face added the ring of truth.

  And then there was Katie Bensen. Who had been a patient of D'Anton's, and had modeled for Julia D'Anton. Who was also an attractive young woman of about Roberta's age, and also a free spirit who liked drugs and parties.

  Who also had vanished, and D' Anton had been upset enough to get rid of the nurse who knew.

  Interstate 280 was a pretty road along this stretch, if you ignored the fact that it ran right on top of the San Andreas fault. The area was hilly and wooded, with a miles-long wildlife refuge on the coastal side. Traffic was relatively light going north, with the thickening commuter momentum from San Francisco coming the other way.

  Monks reached Burlingame within a few minutes, and then he did something he had promised himself he would not. He took the Trousdale exit toward Martine Rostanov's house. He wanted badly to see her, to be in her presence – to inhale the warmth from her skin and help take away the chill that had settled under his own.

  He approached her driveway slowly and started to turn in. Then he stopped. Another car was parked in the drive behind hers – a handsome black Saab.

  Monks drove on past and went back to the freeway, berating himself. He should have called first. He was acting like a teenager. It was insane to assume that the Saab might belong to a lover, and he had no right to expect otherwise, anyway.

  The urge was upon him to pick up where he had left off last night – to check into one of the Union Square hotels near John's Grill, with its great portrait of Dashiell Hammett, and spend the evening at that fine bar. It was another thing he had not done in a long time.

  But he kept the Bronco pointed north, up Nineteenth Avenue, through the greenery-laced Presidio, into the mist that had settled over the Golden Gate Bridge. The party that he was invited to tonight was at D' Anton's Marin County house – the same house where Roberta claimed to have been abducted. It would be good to get the feel of the place.

  Monks started to realize that something in his mind was calling attention to itself – something Roberta had said that he hadn't paid much attention to at the time.

  She had not been able to describe the person who had led her to the couch where she passed out. But she was certain that it had been a woman.

  Chapter 26

  Monks arrived at D'Anton's Marin County house – the event site – just at dusk. He had driven the last few miles on a narrow asphalt road in the coastal mountains, north of Mount Tamalpais. The road followed a ravine, a creek bed that was dry like most this time of year, until it opened into a small secluded valley. He stopped at the top of the rise.

  The air had the feel of the sea and the fragrance of the surrounding eucalyptus groves. The Pacific was another two or three miles west, glimmering with the day's last light, a hazy sheen of reflection and mirage streaked by the wakes of passing ships. The gray band of fog on the horizon would probably move in again tonight, then burn off by midday. Like the peninsula to the south, it was sunny here most of the year, and rarely too hot or cold.

  The place looked like it originally had been a farm, with a barn and several outbuildings. The house was an ornate Victorian, replete with finely proportioned bay windows and intersecting roof-lines, and a veranda that wrapped around two sides. It was built against a cliff, a natural rock formation, and it was huge. It must have cost a fortune, like the real estate itself.

  Lights showed through the windows and around the grounds, with sconces marking a pathway from the parking area. That was filled with cars, thirty or forty, a canopy of expensive burnished metal. A few people were strolling toward the house. It was a picture of affluence, luxury, the leisure of the upper class.

  And it was the place where Eden Hale, Katie Bensen, and Roberta Massey had all been guests.

  Monks drove down to join the party.

  He parked, and was walking toward the house, when someone called, "Hey, how's it going?"

  Monks turned and recognized Todd, the maintenance man from the clinic, unlocking the door of an older-looking cinder-block building. Monks glimpsed inside and realized it was a wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles in racks and cases stacked up against the walls.

  "This is my third run in the last hour," Todd said. "They're going through it fast." If he was surprised to see Monks here, it didn't show.

  "Gwen told me you're the man they can't do without. Are you the bartender, too?"

  "Naw, I just help take care of the place. When they have a party, I set up tables, keep the supplies coming, all that."

  D'Anton's devoted staff, Monks thought.

  "This your first one of these?" Todd asked.

  "Yes."

  "Knock yourself out. There's a lot going on." Todd stepped into the wine cellar and picked up one of the cases, tucking it under a muscular arm. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans, still in surfer mode. He was handsome, vital, and it occurred to Monks that Todd might attract a fair amount of attention from D'Anton's female clientele. And that he probably knew a lot about what was going on behind the scenes at the clinic.

  "You've been with Dr. D'Anton several years now?" Monks asked.

  "Going on six. Why?"

  "You get to meet the movie stars, all that?"

  "I'm not a toy boy." The words came out suddenly and sharply, with a hostile glance.

  Monks was taken aback. "I wasn't suggesting anything like that. Just – you know. It must be interesting," he finished lamely.

  "I've got my own interests," Todd said. He heaved the case of wine up onto his shoulder and turned his back, heading toward the party.

  Monks followed more slowly. Flattery was usually an effective way to start probing for information, but apparently he had hit a nerve.

  He nodded sociably to other guests, but no one offered introductions, which was fine with him. There was the sense that they all knew each other. The dress was informal but elegant, Armani jackets and open shirts for the men, summer dresses for the women, with a lot of jewelry on display. He had put on his one decent sport coat, a Harris tweed – hardly in this style range and a little warm for the weather, but serviceable.

  He reached the house and stepped to a window, to see if Gwen Bricknell was inside. This was evidently the party's center, a large old-fashioned drawing room. White-clothed tables set with liquor, wine, and hors d'oeuvres lined the walls. The room was crowded with figures who looked posed in a tableau. Those at the periphery stood in pairs or small groups, talking, drinking, eating.

  But at the center, a man and a woman presided, like a high priest and his acolyte at the altar. The man was Dr. D'Anton. The woman was the nurse, Phyllis, whom Monks had encountered at the clinic.

  He realized that there was a gradient of the sexes in the room – mostly men at the periphery, more women closer to the center. He guessed that many of them were D' Anton's patients. Most were in their forties, or older, but their beauty was almost surreally enhanced. There was a lot of collagen and silicone walking around in that room.

  Phyllis was preparing something with her hands. She turned to D'Anton, presenting the glimmering object to him solemnly. He lifted it to the light and inspected it, as if offering a chalice. Now Monks realized what it was – a syringe.

  D' Anton leaned over a woman who was sitting in a chair, with her head tilted back. His hands, holding the
syringe, moved to her face.

  Botox, Monks thought. Party favors.

  He stared, thinking about Roberta Massey. I remember those hands, real specifically.

  D' Anton finished the injections and returned the syringe to Phyllis. The woman in the chair rose, and another postulant took her place, leaning back to receive D' Anton's blessing.

  Monks moved on, looking for Gwen.

  He could see another cluster of guests, outside, toward the far end of the house. The area was a large flagstone patio, discreetly lit, with more tables of food and drink. Monks heard splashing and realized that there must be a swimming pool there. He started toward it.

  Then his gaze was caught by a figure, a woman, off to his left, moving away from the crowd, toward the shadows at the edge of the lawn. She paused, cupping her hands to light a cigarette. A nearby sconce highlighted her coppery skin and long mane of silky black hair.

  She was dressed differently than she had been yesterday – soft sleeveless pullover, skintight flared jeans cut below her navel – but there was no doubt that this was Coffee Trenette.

  Another link in that chain that kept leading back to Eden Hale.

  The match she was holding flared. But Monks saw that what she was lighting was not a cigarette – it was aluminum foil twisted into a conical pipe. Whatever was on the foil glowed briefly as she inhaled. She shook the match out, then let her head hang back in bliss. Maybe crack, Monks thought. Maybe heroin.

  He walked over to her. She was half turned away and didn't see him.

  "Small world, Ms. Trenette," he said.

  Her hand moved quickly to thrust the pipe into her purse. She turned to him, face cool. Then recognition came to her, and she jerked away as if she had been hit with an electric shock.

  "What are you doing here?" she hissed.

  "Nice to see you, too."

  "Don't you fuck with me, asshole."

  "All right, I'll get straight to it," Monks said. "Of all the guys out there, how was it you happened to pick Ray Dreyer on that one particular night? The way he tells it, you wouldn't have spit on his shoes before then."

  Her eyes gleamed with the feral look of a threatened animal. Her cultivated air was gone, too.

  "You got a problem with that, you better lose it," she said. "I got some people be pleased to deal with you."

  "Eden was your friend, Coffee, and now she's dead. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

  "You don't make friends in that world." She spun away, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly with her quick breaths.

  Then, with her back still to him, she said more quietly, "You think I don't feel bad? Eden was nice to me."

  "Even though you got a break, and she never did?"

  Her head moved, in a nod that might have meant yes. "She was too nice, you know what I'm saying? People walked on her."

  "What really happened that night, Coffee?" Monks said. "After your fight with your boyfriend?"

  "There ain't no boyfriend, honey," she said scornfully. "Unless you count the ones come around wanting smoke and pussy."

  "Then why did you call Ray?"

  She stepped away from him, her forearms rising to cross her breasts, hands clasping her slender upper arms. Then she glanced back to him, with her gaze cool again.

  "Because I'm a bitch," she said. But it had the feel of bluster this time.

  She walked away, toward the crowd around the swimming pool. Monks almost felt sorry for her. Under her hardness and arrogance, there was a girl who had been given too much too fast. It had gone to her head, and she had made bad choices. Like Eden, she was a casualty of a world that glittered on the surface but was lined with broken glass.

  But his pity stayed at almost. There were too many real victims who had never had anything but bad choices to make.

  So – there hadn't been any boyfriend or fight. Something else had impelled her to sleep with Ray Dreyer that night, and guilt about it was softening her. Monks decided that he and Larrabee would be calling on Coffee again.

  "I didn't realize you two knew each other," a sultry voice said.

  Monks turned to see another young woman walking toward him. Like Coffee, she was dressed very differently than the older guests, in a thigh-high leather skirt and black tube top under an open white blouse. A wide belt with a big brass buckle encircled her narrow waist. Her dark hair was done up in a tousled ponytail.

  He realized, with astonishment, that this was Gwen. He had only seen her before in her professional mode, beautiful, but sedately dressed and clearly almost forty. Now, in this light, she could have been in her twenties.

  When she reached him, she leaned forward, offering her cheek to be kissed. Monks obliged, catching the scent of that same perfume she had worn at the clinic, deep and heady, musky rather than sweet.

  "You look ravishing," Monks said.

  "Tell me how you met Coffee," she said teasingly. "I need to know if I should be jealous."

  "No worry there. My partner and I found out that Eden's boyfriend spent the night with her, while Eden was dying."

  Gwen stepped back in shock. "My God, that's awful. That's why he wasn't with Eden?"

  Monks nodded. "We asked her to confirm it. She did, but she wasn't happy about it."

  "No, I don't suppose she would be. Coffee's not doing very well anyway."

  "Drugs?"

  "Big-time. And money. She's about to lose her house."

  Monks remembered the air of neglect around the place. "I heard she had a very promising future."

  "There's a million luscious young girls with promising futures out there, darling. Some of them get lucky, for a while. But only a few are good enough and smart enough to stay on top."

  It seemed clear that Gwen included herself in that select group.

  "Let's have a drink," she said. "I've got a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice. I've been saving it for a special occasion."

  "I'd better stick with club soda for now," he said.

  "Come on, just one glass. You'll be more fun if you relax."

  "You mean, I'll have more fun?"

  "No, be more fun, for me," she said. "I'm very selfish."

  Monks smiled. "All right. Just one."

  "It's inside. I'll get it."

  She left him, walking to a side door of the house, her long slim legs flexing gracefully with a model's fillylike stalk.

  Monks heard another loud splash from the swimming pool.

  "It's great," a young woman's voice called invitingly. "Like a bath."

  He moved quietly closer. The pool was like a grotto, springing out of a rocky cliff, lit by underwater lamps. It had a distinctly Mediterranean feel. Quite a few of the guests were standing around it, drinking and talking.

  By now Monks had started to notice that there were two fairly distinct groups – the older and more affluent, and a younger set, dressed casually and even flamboyantly, like Gwen and Coffee Trenette. Tight jeans and tops that accentuated breasts or pectorals seemed to be the prevailing uniform. They were mostly quite attractive – they looked like they were, or could be, actors and models.

  One of them, a man, was looking back at him pointedly – glaring, in fact. He had on wraparound sunglasses, and it took Monks a moment to realize that it was Ray Dreyer, Eden's ex-boyfriend.

  Dreyer was wearing a black silk jacket over a T-shirt. Monks walked over to him.

  'Thoughtful of you to dress in mourning," Monks said quietly.

  'Tuck you," Dreyer mouthed. Monks braced himself, thinking that Dreyer might want to pick up their fight where it had left off. But he turned away and went the other direction, farther into the shadows.

  Another old friend who was glad to see him, Monks thought.

  Then he noticed a slight flare of light, from the other direction. The main front door of the house was opening and closing. A man was coming out.

  D'Anton.

  Monks walked quickly back that way and intercepted D'Anton as he reached the bottom of the porch steps.

/>   "Good evening, Doctor," Monks said.

  D'Anton glanced around impatiently. The glance turned to an icy stare as he recognized Monks.

  Monks was very aware that he might be looking into the eyes of a man who was capable of mutilating a living human being.

  "How dare you come to my house," D'Anton said.

  "Gwen Bricknell invited me."

  "And you actually accepted?" D'Anton said, with withering disbelief.

  "I was watching you inside there. It must be quite a feeling, being surrounded by your own creations."

  Unexpectedly, D' Anton smiled. It was filled with pity for Monks.

  "Do you know what they would tell you?" D'Anton said. "What they have told me! That they belong to me. Any fool can give them money, but I can give them what really matters – youth and beauty."

  "So you figure you have the right to do anything you want with them?"

  D'Anton's smile vanished. "I don't know what you're getting at, but I have had enough of you," he said. "If you come around me again, you'll be hearing from my attorney."

  "The same errand boy you sent to scare Roberta Massey?"

  D'Anton recoiled, a tiny backward jerk and widening of his eyes. But he recovered instantly. Monks had to hand it to him.

  "That name means nothing to me," D'Anton said.

  "Oh, right, you're not good with names, are you."

  "I remember yours, now." D'Anton held Monks's gaze with his own, steely and unwavering, for a few seconds longer. Then he turned away and continued his brisk walk, fading into the night.

  D'Anton had recognized Roberta's name, there was no doubt about that. Monks considered that he might have played that card too early. But it would increase the strain on D' Anton, and strain could lead to mistakes.

  Monks moved back toward the pool, but stayed a little apart from the crowd. In another couple of minutes, Gwen came back out, carrying two flutes of pale effervescent champagne.

  This time, as she passed the crowd at the pool, she was accosted by a thickset, balding man in his sixties, who leered at her like a satyr.

  "Jesus, sweetheart, you look like jailbait tonight," he said in a loud, raspy voice.