Moonbird Boy (31 page)

"But why...?" Bo spluttered as Bird, Ann Lee Keith, Estrella, and Andrew hurried into the suddenly crowded room.

"Our plane leaves in an hour, but I had to see you," Ann Keith said through tears as Zach and his mother politely left. "Thank you for everything you've done. What a courageous friend my son found out there in the desert!"

Bo nodded. "Hey, Moonmuffin," she grinned at the raven-haired boy inspecting the lid of a plastic pitcher on her nightstand, "which bird are you today?"

"Moonbird," he announced, spilling ice water into a box of tissues. "I'm Moonbird, like the Indians said. Moonbird is the son of Raven, and that's my dad. I'm going to go to his same school, Bo, and take some medicine so I can learn to read like the other kids. Then I'm going to write down my poems, like Baudelaire!"

"And I want to see every single poem," Bo told him as Estrella rattled car keys and shook her head fondly.

"Madge is furious about that case you closed yesterday," she said. "Thinks you should have thrown the mother in jail for having a spider tattoo. She told me to tell you she's ordered a plant as a get-well gift. A cactus."

"Great," Bo grinned. "I can make it into jelly and dump it in her procedures manual."

"She'll just get another one. Hey, I've gotta get your friends to the airport. Try to stay out of trouble until I can get back, Bo: I want to hear all about this later."

In minutes no one was left in the room but Andrew LaMarche, pensive in a three-piece suit.

"Molly's at my apartment, and I've phoned Dr. Broussard," he said. "She wants you to call her as soon as you can. As soon as the anesthesia wears off."

His gray eyes were tired and shadowed with worry. "Bo, that man nearly killed you."

"Do you know why?" she asked softly.

"The police were able to go through his home and office before his lawyer knew he was dead. They found some things... literature, the rifle he used to kill Mort, and a list, Bo. I have a copy."

From his jacket he took a folded sheet of paper and handed it to her.

Bo shook it open with her left hand and read four names. "Hopper, Mort Wagman, Bird Wagman, Bo Bradley."

"Life unworthy of life," Randolph Mead had written beneath the names "Exterminate."

"Ann Keith was right when she said Bird's life was in danger," Bo wept. "But she had the wrong perpetrator. Why, Andy? Mead was the one trying to drive me crazy as well, the one with the tape of the barking dog, Tucker's dog. And then he was going to kill me. Why?"

"We'll know more later," Andrew sighed, "but it appears that he became obsessed with the idea that his sister would marry Mort and produce 'defective' children. He was always a loser, Bo. Failed at everything he tried and thought the world owed him a parade anyway. This think tank he funded was a sham, nothing but a forum for his own half-baked social theories. About a year ago when his sister began seeing Mort Wagman, he went off the deep end into the old Nazi eugenics thing. 'Genetically defective people,' all that. When he heard there might actually be a marriage, he apparently knifed Hopper on her yacht and threw her into the water. The blood would draw sharks. It did."

Bo watched the gauze balloon over her right hand inflating and deflating, pushing blood around the multiple incisions necessary to extract more cholla spines than she wanted to count.

"I found his wetsuit buried in a canyon," she nodded. "And a diver's knife. He must have swum to shore after killing his sister and then taken the evidence out to the desert for hiding."

"The police have the wetsuit and knife. They'll run tests ..."

"All this because Mort had a psychiatric illness," Bo interrupted, incredulous. "The Hadamar sign, stalking me, two murders ..."

"There are always people who thrive on an imagined sense of superiority to others, Bo. Randolph Mead was one of them. When his deluded beliefs reached obsessive proportions he felt justified in his decision to kill. I'm afraid our society is full of people just like him."

Bo remembered a vicious chuckle lurking in fog. "But why the dog tapes, Andy? Why did he do all that to me?"

Andrew LaMarche pressed his palms together under his chin and looked out the room's curtained window. "I discussed that with Eva," he said. "It's her guess that Mead became aware of you as he watched you and Mort during your walks to Yucca Canyon. He had no twisted personal resentment of you as he did of Mort and the boy, but he became curious about you, about what it would take to... to... "

"To break my back psychologically, reduce me to the quivering mess he thought I was anyway," Bo finished the sentence, noticing Andrew's fingertips turning white from the force with which he was pushing his hands together. "He was experimenting with me, is that it?" Inside its gauze balloon her own right hand twitched jubilantly.

"Eva suspects it was something like that, at least in the beginning. But then when you denied him the pleasure of that power over you, when he lost at a game built on his fantasied superiority, he added your name to the list. He had to obliterate you as well. It became personal."

"I'm only going to say this to you and to Eva," Bo whispered through clenched teeth. "I'm glad that cholla was there! Now, what about Ghost Flower? How does this affect what's happening to the Neji? Since MedNet wasn't behind Mort's death after all, nothing's changed, right? They're still taking over?"

Andrew LaMarche relaxed and grinned, showing even white teeth under his trim mustache. It was a handsome grin, Bo thought. Magical.

"Well, I don't quite understand what's happened, but MedNet's PR man, this Bob Thompson, seems to know Zach's mother from somewhere. Neither one of them will say anything about it except how meaningful they found the singing of some monks. Then they laugh. It's difficult to imagine a less likely pair in the company of singing monks, but they clearly have a mutual history. She's, umm, a sort of businesswoman. Escort services. It may be that Thompson has met her in that capacity."

"Oh dear," Bo replied, knitting her brow, "I thought she got away from that life years ago when she left San Diego with Zach's father."

"In a way," Andrew hedged. "She owns a number of escort services, manages them."

"She's a madam?"

"Obsolete term, Bo. The point is, Thompson's hiring her to manage the PR for MedNet's interests in the Ghost Flower program until the Neji's attorney can untangle the legalities of Mead's loan. Mort's offer of financial help still stands, according to his attorney. The legal mess will take months, but meanwhile the proceeds remain with the Indians. Thompson's not playing hardball with them, Bo. He actually seems to want to help."

"And Henderson?"

"Thompson sent him packing. Henderson didn't think it was a battle worth fighting and backed off. The Neji are throwing a powwow this weekend to celebrate. Would you like to be my date?"

"I'd be honored," Bo replied, extending a swollen wad of gauze for him to kiss. "I really would."