“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 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.”