Rage (45 page)

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 Daney 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?”