Moe Reed mutters, “Go, go, go.”
Huck says, “All because you wanted the gold for yourself.”
Simone smirks. “I’ve got the gold. Loser.”
“A kid, Simone. You hugged and kissed him and played with his hair. You hugged Nadine. Now they’re gooks?”
“They were always gooks—”
“You kissed them.”
Simone laughs. “Like in the Mafia—The Godfather. You get kissed before you get blown away.”
“Was it easy, Simone? Did you look in their eyes—did you look in Kelvin’s eyes?”
Simone laughs louder. “What’s the big deal? Everyone dies the same.”
“Keep talking,” says Milo.
Huck says, “You looked into his eyes.”
“The eyes change,” says Simone, and her own orbs illustrate by taking on a dreamy look. “It’s like watching the light go out. There’s nothing like it.” Arching her back again. “I watched the light go out in her eyes and I came.”
Milo pumps a fist. “Got her!”
She drops the bag on the sand. “Here’s what you want. Have a bad life.”
The camera doesn’t falter.
“What, you think I’m punking you, loser? C’mere, look.”
“What did you do with them, Simone?”
“Ate ’em,” says Simone. “With fava beans and Chianti . . . what did we do? We jammed dynamite up their asses—who cares? Take this and crawl like the maggot you are.”
She bends toward the bag, inserts her hand, comes up with a bound wad of bills.
Tosses it.
Huck doesn’t budge. The money lands on the sand.
Simone stares at it. “What?”
“It’s fine,” says Huck. “Leave it and go.”
Simone studies him.
“Leave it and go,” Huck repeats. “Have whatever life you think you deserve.”
“What’s that, a curse, some kind of hex?” says Simone. “From you, a curse is a blessing.”
She turns to leave. Stops, rotates. Jams her hand into the bag and comes up with something that isn’t money.
Long and thin; she holds it aloft.
“Oh, shit,” said Fox, as she charges Huck.
The camera captures her eyes, hot and frigid simultaneously. The blandness of her face as she thrusts the knife.
Huck’s hands shoot out into the camera’s eye as he grabs for the weapon.
Simone lunges, twists, grunts, blood spurts.
Huck says nothing as she continues to stab him.
Milo runs toward the deck stairs that lead to the beach, Reed races on his heels, overtakes him.
Aaron Fox gapes at the screen.
I catch the look on his face as I run after Milo and Reed.
See him right now, and you wouldn’t know he was ever a confident, elegant man.
The sounds from the screen, wet, thumping, insistent, fill my ears as my feet hit the sand and I’m well out of range and hearing is no longer relevant.
CHAPTER 42
When we get to the spot where Simone Vander has attacked Travis Huck, he is sitting on the sand, cross-legged, like a yogi. His face is calm as he watches blood rain from his hands and arms and chest.
Simone is stretched out several feet away, inches from the water’s edge, flat belly exposed to the moon, twin pierces winking.
The knife protrudes from the side of her neck. Long-bladed, wooden-handled kitchen utensil. Her body is twisted as if in escape. Her eyes are white and dull.
Moe Reed stoops on the sand, like a baseball catcher. Checks, needlessly, for a pulse.
He stands up, shaking his head, joins Milo at Travis Huck’s side.
The run has left Milo panting. Struggling to keep up with Reed, he managed to call for an ambulance.
He and Reed attend to Huck, tearing off their shirts to use as tourniquets. Within seconds Milo’s undershirt and Reed’s broad, bare chest are slathered with blood.
Huck seems amused by the fuss.
Two bound packets of money lie on the sand. Later, we’ll discover both are bundles of singles covered by twenties at both ends.
Seventy dollars each.
Aaron Fox shows up, surveys the scene. Approaching Simone’s body, his look says she’s something alien and slimy, washed up by the tide.
A wave rolls over her, leaves a coating of foam on her face that dissipates as bubbles burst in the warm night air.
No lights have gone on in the neighboring houses. This is a haven for weekenders. By sunrise all blood will be laundered by the ocean, but now the sand is gummy.
Fox and I stand around as Milo and Reed, working silently, in perfect concert, reduce spurt to seep. Huck turns pale, then an odd off-white, begins to nod off.
Milo braces him and Reed holds his hands. The young detective says, “Hang on, pal.”
Huck looks at Simone’s corpse. Moves his lips. “Uh-ah-uh—”
Milo says, “Don’t talk, son.”
Huck’s eyes remain fixed on Simone. He shrugs. Leaks.
“Don’t move,” says Moe Reed.
Huck mutters something.
“Shh,” says Milo.
Huck’s head sways. His eyes close.
He forces himself to form words.
Says, “I did it again.”
I’m thinking about that as movement from the beach house grabs my attention.
Brief flash of activity below the house, where a bulb fastened to the bottom of the deck casts weak light on the pilings and the bulkhead beneath the main structure.
Something shifting. No one else notices. I go over.
A Zodiac raft hangs on chains from a rafter. Behind the boat is a door, slightly ajar, cut flush with the plywood that veneers the bulkhead.
No lock, some sort of storage space, it probably blew open.
But no wind, tonight. Maybe it’s been that way for a while.
I make my way between the pilings, smelling salt and tar and wet sand. Enter the cave-like space created by the overhang of the deck. The Zodiac is fully inflated. Other things dangle from the rafters, like sausage at a deli. A small metal rowboat, two sets of oars. An old Coca-Cola sign, rusted beyond easy recognition, nailed to a listing, warped crossbeam.
Things go better with . . .
I approach the door. Barely wide enough to squeeze through. No movement, no light from within, and unlikely to be deeper than the few feet allowed by the bulkhead.
Blown open, who knows how long ago.
I swing the door open, just to be sure.
Come face-to-face with a black figure eight.
Double shotgun barrel. Above the lethal tube, a face, slack in spots, unnaturally taut in others.
Hairless. No eyebrows, no lashes.
A visage turned mask-like by the tickle of indirect light.
Bald head, pale eyes. Dark T-shirt and sweats, dark running shoes.
Big diamond ring on one of the fingers gripping the trigger.
What I can see of the shotgun’s stock is shiny and burled. Engraved metalwork elevates the weapon to art. A whole different level from my father’s bird-slayer.
One of the pricey weapons Simon Vander got rid of when his new wife asked him to.
Buddy Weir’s diamond ring bounces as his finger tightens.
“Easy,” I say.
Weir mouth-breathes. It’s his turn to sweat.
A soft-looking, slope-shouldered man, stinking of sulfurous fear.
More dangerous than if he’d been angry.
Pale eyes look past me at the scene on the beach. He seems about to cry.
The ring bounces again. The barrel moves closer, stops inches from my nose.
A strange, wonderful numbness takes over as I hear myself speak.
I say, “Wrong eye.”
Confusion freezes Weir’s hand.
“You’re right-handed, but you might be left-eyed. Close one, then the other, see which one makes my face jump more. Also, you need to stop fighting the gun, guns
don’t like to be wrestled with, lean in, embrace, be part of it—go ahead, blink, test your eyes.”
Weir’s look is scornful, superior, but his eyes effect unconscious compliance and the shotgun wavers.
I duck, hit him hard as I can, low in the gut, follow with the most vicious kick I can muster, connect with his groin. He gasps, doubles over, the gun points upward.
Thunder.
Wood shreds.
Weir is still in pain as I put all my weight into a two-handed blow to the back of his neck.
He crumbles to the sand. Still holding the shotgun.
I stomp his arm, break some bones, free the weapon.
Lovely trap gun, probably Italian. The burl is glorious walnut, the metal engravings scenes of Renaissance hunters stalking mythical beasts.
Weir moans in agony. Later, I will learn that his ulna shattered like glass, will never be the same.
I watch him writhe, allow myself a moment of satisfaction that I will never disclose to anyone.
Milo has heard the shotgun go off, arrives with his nine-millimeter in hand.
He flips Weir, uses plastic ties to bind Weir’s wrists and ankles, just as a Malibu EMT squad arrives.
One squad, one stretcher. Travis Huck gets priority.
Weir suffers.
During a brief pause in his wails, I hear something.
From the bulkhead.
Faint, bashful knocking. A higher tide would’ve obscured it.
Milo hears it, too. Keeping his gun in hand, he points at the doorway, stops, peers in, vanishes.
I follow.
The boy is propped against cement block. The stench of feces and urine and vomit is overpowering. He has been wrapped in black garbage bags, bound with loops of nylon cord, like a pot roast. The blindfold over his eyes is black muslin. The rubber ball in his mouth is bright orange. His nostrils are unobstructed but snot-smeared. His head has been shaved.
He kicks small, bare feet against the front plywood wall of the storage area.
Six feet square; convicted murderers live in bigger spaces.
Milo and I hurry to free him. Milo gets there first, calls him by name, tells him he’s safe, everything’s okay. As the blindfold is peeled from dark, almond eyes, Kelvin Vander looks up at us.
Dry-eyed.
In another world.
I touch his cheek. He screams like a trapped raccoon.
Milo says, “Everything’s fine, son, nothing to worry about, you’re safe now.”
The boy’s eyes bore into his. Acute, studious. His cheeks sport finger marks, welts, small cuts.
He has both his hands.
Milo says, “You’re gonna be okay, son.” Tilts his own face away from the child’s.
Hiding the lie.
CHAPTER 43
Case closed. Big case. The police chief was happy. Or some reasonable facsimile of such.
A.D.A. John Nguyen’s work was just beginning, but he was also smiling. For all their scheming and planning, Simone Vander and Buddy Weir had left a lovely evidentiary chain: over a year of phone calls and another rented storage unit, this one in the heart of West L.A., paid for faithfully each month with Weir’s personal check.
Inside were more box games and paperwork attesting to Weir’s national rankings in Scrabble and backgammon and bridge. Credit card records documenting monthly trips to Vegas, often with Simone. Weir’s blackjack and poker winnings appeared to exceed his losses—though Nguyen’s staff, still digging into Weir’s finances, hadn’t unearthed all the details.
One nice detail: The shoe prints at the western side of the marsh matched to a pair of six-hundred-dollar Legnani driving shoes found in the closet of Weir’s Encino home.
Three polished wooden boxes were also found in the bin, not unlike the cache that had held the finger bones. Each receptacle offered up a trove of photos.
Weir and Simone in full S&M regalia.
Women, five of them, partially clothed, then naked. Three of the subjects were easily matched with mug shots of Sheralyn Dawkins, Lurleen “Big Laura” Chenoweth, and DeMaura Montouthe. The remaining two were phenotypically consistent with the bones found on the west side of the marsh, but took longer to identify. With help from Vice, Milo and Moe Reed finally I.D.’d them as Mary Juanita Thompson, twenty-nine, and June “Junebug” Paulette, thirty-two, prostitutes known to work the airport stroll. The news didn’t grab a single second of media interest, nor did the department choose to issue a press conference.
The depiction of each victim’s involvement with Weir and Simone spelled out a sequence so stereotyped it had clearly been scripted: initial exchange of cash, smiling participation, a gradual morph into gagged, bound terror, death by strangulation. Postmortem close-up of a pair of green-handled garden shears, sometimes in Weir’s hand, others in Simone’s.
Bones.
Milo was too smart to think in terms of happy endings, but a call from the chief’s office to review five more cold cases sent him off to ponder and grumble.
Moe Reed applied for transfer to West L.A. but an executive order to get something done on the Caitlin Frostig disappearance kept him in Venice.
He called and asked if I could help.
I agreed to meet to review the case, but my attentions were focused elsewhere.
One day, driving to the station to deliver my proofread statement on the marsh murders, I spotted Reed walking hand in hand with Dr. Liz Wilkinson. Both of them laughing. Up to that point, I’d never seen the young detective crack half a smile.
That night, I took Robin out to dinner at the Hotel Bel-Air.
She wore her pearl.
Travis Huck spent two months at Cedars-Sinai. Most of his stab wounds had sliced muscle and a few had damaged nerves, leading to residual weakness and soreness. Deep gashes in his left arm would probably render the limb useless and prone to infection. His doctors raised the specter of amputation somewhere down the line, a possibility confirmed by Richard Silverman, M.D., director of the E.R.
Rick, asked by Milo to keep tabs on Huck’s progress, said the patient was healing physically.
“But I don’t have a feel for him psychologically, Alex. Kind of inappropriate affect, no?”
I said, “The smiles.”
“Exactly. No matter what. Even after refusing painkillers.”
“For him it could be the best choice.”
“Guess so, but it’s got to hurt.”
When I visited Huck, I found him at peace, his face so slack and serene that most of the droop was gone. The nursing staff voted him their favorite patient. On a busy ward, that translates to compliant.
He watched a lot of TV, read and re-read all seven volumes of Harry Potter, ate some of the fruit and candy Debora Wallenburg messengered over, gave most of it away.
Wallenburg volunteered her services in the prosecution of Buddy Weir. John Nguyen declined respectfully. Confided to me that he’d probably “screwed my chance of going corporate.”
One time I approached Huck’s room and encountered Kelly Vander and Larry Brackle leaving. Seeing me flooded Kelly’s face with shame and she hurried past. Brackle held back, seemed to want to talk.
I smiled.
He ran after Kelly.
The hospital security guard who sat near Huck’s door when time permitted hustled over. “Hi, Doc. When she gave me her name, I didn’t want to let them in.” Crooking a thumb. “Mr. Huck said it was okay, so I searched her purse, nothing iffy.”
“How long were they in there?”
“Twenty minutes,” said the guard. “I was listening, Doc, no problems whatsoever. Once I took a peek, they didn’t see me. She was holding Mr. H.’s hand. Toward the end, she cried a bunch and I think he was asking her to forgive him or something like that and she was saying no, it was she who needed forgiveness. Then there was a whole bunch of crying.”
“What did the other guy do?”
“Just sat there.”
I thanked him and cracked the door.
Huc
k was on his back, sleeping peacefully. He hadn’t roused by the time I reviewed his chart and chatted with his physical therapist. I left and drove to another hospital.
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