He summarized the news of the Vanders’ return and disappearance.

Reed said, “Simon’s sounding more like a victim than a bad guy. Unless he did bad things and needs to keep a low profile… to me, it still smells like Huck’s our prime guy. We need to find him, we really do, Milo.”

First time he’d addressed the boss by name.

Optimal workplace adjustment.

CHAPTER 26

At seven p.m. the following day, an LAPD press release offered Travis Huck’s name to the media. The timing was fine-tuned: too late for the papers or the six o’clock news, early enough for a feed to the eleven o’clock broadcast. Or in D.C. Henry Weinberg’s words, “a trickle, not a flood, we’re vulnerable, Lieutenant.”

Departmental spinners described Huck as a “person of interest” and included “a prior felony conviction.” None of the four women found in the marsh was mentioned by name. The Vanders never came up.

In the interim, Milo and Reed and I did walk-throughs of both Vander residences. We hit the beach house first, found no evidence the family had ever lived there. Soggy leather furniture sat on purple wall-to-wall. The smell was salt, rust, an old-paint sourness that shouted disuse. Oars and a man’s wetsuit in the closet said the place hadn’t progressed much past bachelor pad.

Heavy twin doors at the mansion on Calle Maritimo opened to a loose chain of high, broad vanilla rooms, tastefully if blandly furnished, floored with golden limestone. Family photos tilted on a couple of mantels, abstract art hung in the spaces where windows didn’t dominate. A grand piano took up a corner of a cavernous back room. A spinet piano sat in Kelvin’s sky-blue bedroom.

Travis Huck’s quarters consisted of a smallish room past a vast caterer’s kitchen and a lav. Twin bed, IKEA dresser, aluminum reading lamp. Monastic, but cheered by an ocean view. Placement in the service wing said the space had been designed as a maid’s room.

No signs of struggle or body fluids there, or anywhere else, but Milo called for a crime scene team. The legal assistant Buddy Weir sent to keep watch looked alarmed, but she checked with the attorney and he told her to cooperate.

Given a huge backlog, the techs were expected “within days,” and Milo ’s call to the crime scene office didn’t change that. He tried the chief, couldn’t get through, smiled grimly.

Moe Reed said, “Keeping it in low gear?”

“Heaven forbid, kiddo.”

Reed smiled. “I’m learning.”

I left the detectives to their frustration and drove home. The discovery of Selena’s lover had scrambled my theories about the three other women being a rehearsal for her; the case was boiling down to another hideous pattern of sexual sadism.

A killer building up his confidence. Selena, the unlucky upgrade.

I phoned Marc Green to see if there was anything more to tease out.

He’d been hovering on the brink of rage. My voice pushed him over.

I waited until he stopped shouting. “I know it’s tough, but I still need to ask. Is there anything more you-”

“More? All that shit I just told them isn’t enough?”

Slam.

I drove to the Crenshaw District and paid a second visit to Beatrix Chenoweth, Big Laura’s mother. Ready to serve as an anger receptacle again. If anyone was trained for that, I was.

She saw me in graciously, served coffee and chocolate wafers. Waited me out as I approached the topic with as much tact as I could muster.

She said, “Let me understand this: You want to know if Lurlene liked being hurt?”

“We’ve found evidence of that in other victims, so-”

“The answer is yes, Doctor. I didn’t mention it the first time because… because I was so stunned when you all dropped in. I’ve been thinking about calling, but talking about that kind of thing is hard. I won’t pretend Lurlene and I were close, but she was my child. Imagining what happened to her hurts me terribly.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Any progress?”

“Not so far.”

“But you’ve got other victims who… oh, Lord… Lurlene’s time on the streets, part of me has been waiting for this.” Thin, square shoulders rose and fell. Her hands shook. “Did she like being hurt? When she was a child, just the opposite, Lurlene was the one hitting other people and getting in trouble over it. I kept telling her being big meant she needed to be doubly responsible.” Frown. “It wasn’t until later, when I realized what a problem her weight was, that I knew I’d said exactly the wrong thing… did she like being hurt… apparently, yes. I’m talking about later, when she was out of the house. Working.”

She grabbed for a hankie, stanched a sudden burst of tears. “As if that’s a job.”

Clearing her throat, she put steel in her voice: “A couple of times when she came by-for money-I noticed bruises. Here. Here.” Fingering both sides of her own neck. “At first I wasn’t sure they were bruises. Lurlene was dark, took after her father. And the first time she was trying to cover it, wearing a scarf. Which is exactly why I noticed, Lurlene never wore scarves. I spotted something purple beneath the fabric, put my finger there, and she slapped it away.”

Wincing. “Hard, not just a love pat. But I can be as pigheaded as she can and I persisted and she got terribly angry and ripped it off-the scarf-and said, ‘Happy?’

“I said, ‘I’m not happy if someone hurt you, Lurlene.’ She said, ‘No one hurt me in any way I don’t want to be hurt.’ Then she smirked. I was appalled and that amused her. She rolled up her sleeves and I said here it comes, she’ll show off her needle marks, what else does this girl have planned to disappoint me? But instead, she displayed more bruises on her wrists. I was repelled and turned away and that fueled her up. She told me people were willing to pay for extras and she had the confidence to handle anything. So of course, I got preachy. Told her dangerous ways led to-why bore you? She laughed at me and left.”

Smiling. “That’s the whole of it, sir.”

I said, “You’ve been through a lot.”

“My other girls are doing well. May I pour you more coffee?”

“Laura, too, now it’s a hat trick,” said Milo.

I’d pulled up to the station just as he stepped out the front door and began walking.

“All this exercise,” I said. “I’m starting to worry about you.”

“Afternoon constitutional at a non-aerobic pace,” he said. “Walls tend to close in when I’m feeling useless. You probably jogged five miles this morning.”

We passed the same houses and apartments. This time the sky stayed gray and the air was soupy and lazy.

He said, “Airport cops found the Vanders’ Lexus in the LAX longterm lot, but we can’t find evidence Huck flew anywhere.”

“Oldest trick in the book.”

“Young Moses and I have been canvassing nearby hotels and motels anyway. Same for fancy places from S.F. to Santa Barbara, looking for the Vanders. We also tried private charters. Zippo on all counts. This is smelling like a wild man on a rampage and he’s long gone.”

“Four sadistic sexual murders, playing with the bones of three victims,” I said. “Then Duboff, then the Vanders? Hard to see a theme there.”

“Does there need to be?” he said. “That asshole in Kansas killed women, men, kids, whoever he found in the house. Same for Ramirez, Zodiac, blah blah blah.”

“In those cases the males were collateral damage.”

“The same could be true here. How about this for a theoretical: Huck works for the Vanders for three years, develops a letch for Nadine. Before he can have his way with her, he needs to get rid of Hubby and Kid.”

“He manages to get them back from Asia?”

“He lied about something that got them back. These guys, it’s all about control, right? Can you think of a better power trip than moving rich folk around like chess pieces? We come nosing around about Selena, he figures it’s only a matter of time, so he splits.”