Guilt (42 page)

The girl’s mouth opened. A frog-croak emerged. Then a squeak. Then: “Don-nee!”

No need to shout, Rader was already behind her, materializing from the left, wearing a red silk robe. The robe was loosely belted, exposing a hard, tan body. The pockets bulged. A bottle of something with a booze-tax seal around the neck poked from one. The contents of the other were out of view. Maybe a bag of white powder. Or just a glass. If he bothered with a glass.

He pushed the girl out of the way, did the same eye rub. “Whus happening?”

Big man, larger and more muscular than he came across on the screen. Coarser, with a near-Neanderthal brow shelf, grainy skin, thickened nostrils that flared like a bull’s.

Long, shaggy, ink-black hair flew everywhere. His eyes fought to remain open. Described in the fan mags as black, they were actually deep brown. Just enough contrast to see the pupils. Widely dilated despite the bright afternoon light.

White powder on his face, too, a thick smear on his lips and chin. Snowy dust littered the red robe’s shawl collar. The top seam of the other robe pocket.

Milo said, “Police, Mr. Rader.”

“Whu the fuh!” Throaty growl. The iconic slur.

“Police—”

“Fuh!” Donny Rader backed away.

Milo said, “Hold on, we’d just like to talk—”

“About whu?”

“We’d like to come in, Mr. Rader.”

“Whu the fu—hey! You ain’t cops, you’re some shit from her, trying to mess with my mind—”

“Sir, I can assure—”

“Assure my asshole, get the fuh outta here!”

“Mr. Rader, we really are the police and we—”

Donny Rader shook himself off hard, hair billowing, a hyena clearing its maws of blood. The girl in the bikini had remained behind him, clutching her face and hyperventilating.

Milo stepped forward, aiming to get his toe in the door.

Howling, Rader jammed his hand into the robe pocket that didn’t hold the bottle, yanked out something metallic and shiny.

He faded back, began to straighten his arm.

The last time Milo had faced madness, he’d been caught off-guard and I’d saved his life. That didn’t fit the script of seasoned cop and shrink and despite his acknowledgment, it would scar him.

Maybe that’s why this time he was ready.

One of his hands clamped like a bear-trap on the wrist of Donny Rader’s gun-arm, pushing down and twisting sharply as his foot shot between Rader’s bare legs and kicked laterally to the left. As Rader lost balance, Milo’s other arm spun him around and by the time Tyler O’Shea was ready with cuffs and a now snarling Sally, Rader was down on the ground and the .22 lay safely out of reach.

Rader foamed at the mouth, turned dirt to chocolate soda.

The girl in the bikini whimpered.

Milo said, “Ty, take care of her.”

O’Shea checked out the tight, tan body. “You’re a pal, El Tee.”

He cuffed the girl displaying no particular reverence. Something to the left caught his eye. “El Tee, you better look at this.” Something new in his voice. Fear.

Milo hauled a struggling, howling Donny Rader to his feet. “Hold still and shut it.”

“Fuh you.”

O’Shea walked the girl out of the house. He looked stunned. “You got to see this.”

Milo said, “Check it out, Alex.”

The house was a sty. Piles of trash blanketed the floor and the furniture. The air was putrid with rotted food, body odor, weed, a medicinal smell that might’ve been poorly cut cocaine.

A cat-urine stench that might’ve been cats or crystal meth.

O’Shea had seen and smelled worse, so that wasn’t it.

Not wanting to disturb potential evidence, I stepped carefully over the garbage. Then I saw it. Hanging from a low rafter, the feet dangling a few inches from the floor.

A human skeleton, wired and braced by a steel rod running parallel to the spine.

Stripped and clean but for hair left on the head. Long hair. Dark, curly.

Full-sized skeleton. I guessed it shorter than me by at least six inches.

The pelvic arch left no doubt: female.

The jaws had been positioned to create a gaping cartoonish grin. Exaggerated glee that was the essence of horror.

I made my way through the slop-heap, got right up to the skeleton. Sniffed.

New smell.

Pleasant, sweet. Herbaceous.

Honeybees buzzing in the hive.

M
ilo plastic-tied Rader’s ankles and belted him into the brown van’s second row. Tyler O’Shea positioned Sally up front as a sentry. She enjoyed snapping and growling at the now cringing, weeping actor.

Allowing himself the luxury of an unlit cigar clenched between tight jaws, Milo played the phone, calling in jail transport, crime scene techs, the coroners.

The chief’s office, almost as an afterthought. The boss was out; Milo declined to leave a message.

Tyler O’Shea continued to guard the girl in the bikini.

Barbara “Brandi” Podesky, self-described as a “performer and dancer,” had no wants but a warrant did pop out of the database: failure to show up for community service on a first-offense marijuana bust. She’d be heading to West L.A. lockup. The news stunned her and she began whining that she was cold.

O’Shea checked out her body, said, “We’ll get you something soon.” Not a trace of sincerity.

Milo went to look at the skeleton, emerged seconds later and positioned
himself in the doorway. Chewing his lip and wiping his face, he got back on the phone. As he waited for a connection, his facial muscles relaxed and something aspiring to be a smile stretched his lips.

“Ms. LeMasters? Milo Sturgis … yeah, I know it has been, but not to fret, how’re your ace-reporter chops this beautiful day? And are you still in love with your husband? … Why? Because trust me, Kelly, you’re gonna dig
me
more than
him
, do
I
have a scoop for
you
.”

Just as he clicked off, the chief beeped in. Milo began to supply details I already knew so I left him there, figuring to walk off some excess energy.

I circled right of the car-crush. Came face-to-face with Prema Moon.

Milo had instructed her to stay behind. Some leading women didn’t take well to direction.

“Where is he?” she said.

“In the van, but you need to stay away.”

“Why wouldn’t I stay away? So. It’s over.”

For the justice system, it was just beginning.

I said, “Yes.”

No response for a second. Then she winked at me. Turned her back and tossed her hair and offered a frisky shake of her perfect rear.

Laughing—a giddy, knowing, brittle sound—she walked off the set.

O
n TV, it would have been a cinch.

The female skeleton’s DNA tracked to Qeesha D’Embo, that of the baby in the park was linked to both Qeesha and Donny Rader. Bloodstains, bone fragments, skin flakes, and hair found in the double garage that Rader had set up as his taxidermic workshop belonged to mother and child.

Several of the women located through Mel Wedd’s little blue book confirmed that Rader had often retired to the dark, dingy, space after partying, demanding to be left alone with his “projects.”

The bullet pulled from Mel Wedd’s brain matched a .45 in Rader’s firearms closet. Rader’s collection consisted of thirty-seven poorly maintained weapons included an Uzi and a Russian assault rifle.

Milo had hoped that the .22 bullet pulled from Adriana Betts would match the gun he’d taken from Rader. But it didn’t, couldn’t be traced to any of Rader’s armaments. That lent credence to the notion that someone else, most probably Melvin Jaron Wedd, had murdered her.

Most probably at Rader’s request, but good luck proving that.

The more I thought about Rader’s and Wedd’s identical SUVs, the
stronger the hero-worship scenario got. But Deputy D.A. John Nguyen didn’t like it, was intent upon finding something more ominous and premeditated.

“I need creepy psycho stuff, Alex. Give me Manson, bloodlust, a folie à deux, the works.”

Milo said, “Seems creepy enough as is, John.”

“Never enough.” Nguyen grinned. “Maybe I’ll get a book deal out of it.”

Reality was, the case would stretch on for months, maybe years. Donny Rader, despite being buttressed by an army of high-priced legal talent, had failed in his request for bail. But the special cell he occupied at the men’s jail put him safely away from the gangbangers and the lunatics and the trophy-hunters, and stories had begun to circulate about special privileges for the star, mailbags overflowing with love letters sent by severely disturbed women all over the world, female deputies charmed by the artfully slurring actor.

Kelly LeMasters got a serious book deal from a New York publisher and quit the
Times
. Tough luck, John N.

The smart money had Rader avoiding trial via diminished capacity, serving some time in a cushy mental hospital, maybe eventually getting out.

I wasn’t so sure. Then again, I’d been wrong about so much.

At this point, I could live with that.

One month and five days after Rader’s arrest, I drove to Western Pediatric Medical Center, looked for Salome Greiner, found her again in the doctors’ dining room. Late in the day for lunch. Just her and her Jell-O, cottage cheese, and tea. As if she never left the place.

I sat down across from her.

She said, “The prodigal psychologist returns.”

I said, “Jimmy Asherwood was a wonderful man who led a tragic life. I can see why you’d want to protect him. I have no desire to smear his memory. He did nothing to deserve that. Quite the contrary.”

She sighed. For all her vitality, an old woman. I felt like a troublesome son. Continued, anyway.

“I know about his war injury, know that any relationship you and he had wasn’t sexual.”

Anger caused her mandible to jut. “From you,” she said, softly, “I’d expect a bit more imagination.”

That threw me.

She said, “What exactly do you want?”

Rather than answer, I said, “Jimmy respected the right of a woman to control her own body but he was aware that sometimes women—girls—could be pushed into decisions they really didn’t want. Girls from a certain social caste who’d created an inconvenience for their families. Enter, Swedish Hospital.”

“Goods and services for cash, darling. What could be more patriotic?”

“When the girls decided to terminate, Jimmy went along with it. But unlike the other physicians, he tried to find out what they really wanted. Stepped in when he felt they were being steamrolled. How’d he convince the parents?”

“You’re the expert on human nature.”

“My guess is he told them the procedure could endanger their daughter’s life. And I’ll bet some parents didn’t care and found themselves another doctor because for a certain genre of alleged human being, stigma trumps everything.”

Her response was to saw a cube of Jell-O.

I said, “When the babies were born, Jimmy’s involvement didn’t end. Just the opposite, he took care of everything. With the help of Eleanor Green, a compassionate soul who loved kids. Exactly the type of person who should become a nurse.”

“Ellie,” she said. A liver-spotted hand rose to her breast.

I said, “Ellie and you. Maybe others.”

“Army of the just,” she said. “We were a little battalion of … idealistic meddlers.” She put down her fork. “After Dachau, I felt I needed to.”

I touched her hand. She pulled away. “Are you satisfied, Alex?”

“Sometimes Jimmy delivered the babies, sometimes you did. When the infants were up to the journey, they were transferred to Ellie’s care. In a big house in a nice neighborhood that Jimmy rented for that purpose. After being medically screened for a few months, they were given to families who wanted them. People who’d been screened. Not official adoptions, everything had to be off the record.”

“Thirty-three,” she said. “That’s how many we placed. People all over the country. Thirty-three adults who have no idea.”

“Thirty-three minus one,” I said. “What happened?”

Shaking her head, she got up. I expected her to leave but she walked to the hot-water urn, filled a fresh cup, unwrapped a tea bag, watched it dangle.

When she returned to the table, I said, “Salome, I’m sorry if—”

“Crib death. That’s what we called it then, later we got fancy, the way we always do, and it became sudden infant death syndrome. That didn’t explain what caused it but it sounded more scientific, no? Nowadays we have our theories but we still don’t really understand it. We do know how to prevent a significant amount of it.”

“Sleeping on the back, never the stomach.”

She smiled. “All those babies with flat heads, parents get all exercised, thinking their little gift’s going to grow up looking funny and not get into Harvard. I tell them relax, stop worrying about stupid things.”

She shook her head. “No sleeping on the tummy, so simple. That’s how she—how Ellie found him. On his belly, not moving. A boy, boy babies are more vulnerable than girl babies. Maybe that never changes, eh, Alex?”

I said, “You live longer than we do, that’s why we get to postpone our maturity.”

Now her hand rested on mine. “You were always a witty one.”

I got myself some coffee. The two of us drank for a while before she said, “Ellie thought it was her fault. Jimmy and I found her rocking the baby, he’d been dead for a full day, she’d sat with him all that time, didn’t want to let go of his body.” Shivering. “I had to pry it from her.”

“So you allowed her to bury him in the backyard.”

She gripped both my hands, exerted astonishing pressure. “Why not, Alex? Her grief was monumental and we couldn’t exactly report it to the health department.”

“Of course not,” I said.

“We had a little ceremony. At night. Nondenominational. Each of us offered a prayer. Whispering to avoid alerting the neighbors. Jimmy dug the hole. I planted a little sycamore tree I’d purchased at the nursery. And flowers. Clivia. Around the base. They’re beautiful orange, love the shade. We wanted Sam—we gave him a name, so he’d be someone—we wanted to place him in a miniature coffin, but we couldn’t figure out where to find one without arousing suspicion. So we used … something else.”