Victims (29 page)

Additional hits on the disappearance described futile searches conducted by law enforcement and a cadre of Eagle Scouts. A picture of Wainright showed him grim, gray-haired, and bearded with a strong jaw and outdoor skin.

“Dr. Hemingway,” said Petra. “Walking with his dog, just like Quigg. And our boy has a thing for animals.”

Milo said, “Let’s make sure Wainright didn’t eventually show up.”

He phoned the Morro Bay Police Department. A desk officer named Lucchese remembered Wainright because the surgeon had once removed a fatty tumor from his back.

“Good surgeon?”

“Not really,” said Lucchese. “Left me a lump scar. No bedside manner, either, just get in there and slice. Only reason I used him is he had a contract with the union.”

“Any theories about what happened to him?”

“That was some pretty rough terrain he was climbing. Best guess is he broke a leg or fainted or had a heart attack or a stroke or whatever, lay there without anyone noticing and either died outright or from dehydration or hypothermia. Eventually he probably got taken care of by mountain lions or kye-oats or both.”

“Human suspects were never on the radar?”

“No reason for them to be. Why’s this interest you, Lieutenant?”

“A former patient of Wainright’s is a suspect in a killing down here.”

“That so. Who?”

“Former inmate at Ventura State in Camarillo, back when Wainright worked there.”

“A nutter? We got plenty of those over at Atascadero and I guess one of them could’ve known Wainright from there. But those guys never get out, they’re the least of our problems.” He chuckled. “Best therapy: Lock ’em up and toss the key.”

“Wainright worked at Atascadero?”

“Part-time,” said Lucchese. “Guess he had a contract there, too. But there were no escapes around the time he went missing, no alerts, nothing. I’ll ask around for you but I won’t learn anything.”

Milo thanked him and clicked off.

Petra said, “Oh, my.”

I said, “Shacker was first, then as soon as Huggler got out, they went after Wainright. The trespassing bust delayed but didn’t deter them. A year later, Wainright was dispatched.”

“Easy to stalk the guy while he hiked,” said Milo. “Why would he fear a vengeful patient from almost twenty years before?”

“Even Huggler’s arrest wouldn’t have alerted him. If he even remembered—or knew—Huggler’s name. Morro Bay PD figured Huggler for an addict out to score, no reason to I.D. him to Wainright after they picked him up. Even if they had, why would Wainright connect a grown man to a kid he’d operated on years before?”

“Surgeon becomes patient,” said Petra. “God, how many others are out there?”

Milo said, “If Huggler and his mentor could wait to handle Wainright and Quigg and whoever else they might’ve done in between, why’d Shacker have to go right away?”

I said, “Shacker was a solo act by Pitty so Pitty could prove himself to Huggler and cement their bond. For that, he needed a quick, dramatic result.”

“Look what I did for you, Little Buddy,” said Petra.

“There was also time pressure: Shacker was elderly and he’d just been fired, meaning he would’ve left town. So Pitty reverted to something that had worked for him a few months before.”

“Poisoning, as in Eccles’s lady friend,” said Petra. “Two people
drop dead within moments of leaving the hospital. What kind of poison could be calibrated that precisely?”

I said, “It wouldn’t have to be poison, per se. With a man of Shacker’s age and dietary habits, a huge dose of a strong heart stimulant could do the trick. As an alcoholic and a cocaine abuser, Eccles’s wife would also be vulnerable to cardiac insult.”

Milo said, “No poison, per se, means nothing on the tox screen.”

He got up, paced, tugged an earlobe. “Everything you’re saying makes sense, Alex, but unless one of these two monsters confesses, I don’t see Mentor going down for anything other than I.D. theft and practicing without a license. And Men
tee
could get away clean. He’s left no trace evidence and all we have on him are ambiguous sightings and a V-sign he shot to John Banforth that could be interpreted any number of ways.”

I said, “Find them and separate them. Huggler could be crackable.”

“Your mouth FedExed to God’s ears,” said Petra. “I’ve got another timing issue: If Pitty got slimed one too many times by Eccles and took it out on Eccles’s wife, why wait all these years to get the slimer himself?”

“Maybe he figured he’d get more immediate pleasure from watching Eccles suffer than from dispatching him. From having Eccles know what had happened and being powerless to do anything about it.”

Milo said, “Who the hell’s gonna pay attention to some lunatic’s ravings?”

I said, “Pitty could’ve planned to do Eccles after Eccles was discharged but Eccles went underground and Pitty couldn’t find him. As to why didn’t Eccles try to get back at Pitty, maybe his mental illness got in the way—too disturbed and scattered to devise a plan.”

“Or,” said Petra, “he was scared and got the heck out of Dodge.”

Milo said, “Then Pitty just happens to spot Eccles years later in Hollyweird?”

I said, “It’s not that big a coincidence. You’ve got a tip placing Huggler at a Hollywood clinic. The neighborhood’s a magnet for drifters and short-term residents. With Shacker renting a Beverly Hills office, I’ve been figuring him for a nice crib. But maybe he economizes in order to afford that office and he and Huggler are bunking in some pay-by-the-week.”

“On my turf,” said Petra. “Thrilling.”

Milo said, “We could write screenplays all night but at this point we don’t even know if Huggler was actually transferred to Atascadero, let alone Pitty or whatever his name is moving to be with him. So let’s stake out this fake shrink, nab him on I.D. theft, and see what shakes out. B.H. business district is small, we’ll need to be subtle, meaning more sets of eyes, extra-low profile. I’m gonna have Moe and Sean with me and whoever B.H. wants to send, assuming they cooperate. Wouldn’t mind Raul, either, if it’s okay with you.”

Petra made the call. “Done.”

I said, “Did you manage to get hold of Eccles’s last arrest report?”

“Sure did and the complainant wasn’t named Pitty or close. Something Stewart.”

“What’d he list for an address?”

“You really think he could be Pitty?”

“Something about him got Eccles hyped up.”

Back to her iPhone. “Mr. Loyal Steward. With a
d
.” She read off a phone number and a street address and her eyes got tight. “Main Street, City of Ventura. That’s commercial, isn’t it?”

“It’s also two towns north of Camarillo.”

Her aerial GPS confirmed it. “Big old parking lot, guys.”

She checked the phone number Loyal Steward had given to the arresting officers. Inactive, and a call to the phone company revealed it had never been in use.

“Loyal Steward,” said Milo. “That’s gotta be phony.”

I said, “It’s not a name. It’s how he sees himself.”

CHAPTER
33

M
ilo played database piano on my computer with the grim concentration of a lonely kid at an arcade.

No residential listings, driver’s license, or criminal record for Loyal Steward.

He said, “Big surprise,” and called Deputy Chief Maria Thomas. She was miffed about being interrupted at home and balked at disturbing the chief. Milo began with tact, eased into bland persistence, ended up with barely veiled menace. Like a lot of bureaucrats, she had a weak will when confronted with dedication.

Within minutes, the chief had phoned Milo and Milo was doing a lot of blank-faced listening. Soon after, a senior Beverly Hills detective named Eaton rang in.

Milo started to explain.

Eaton said, “It came straight from my boss, like I’m gonna say no?”

When Milo hung up, Petra said, “Maybe one day
I
can be a
loo-
tenant.”

“That’s like wishing for wrinkles, kid.”

Six the following morning found eight people surveilling the office building on Bedford Drive where a yet-to-be-identified man pretended to be Dr. Bernhard Shacker. Downtown Beverly Hills was yawning itself awake, vanilla swirls of daylight scratching their way through a gray-satin sky. A few delivery trucks rumbled by. But for a scatter of joggers and put-upon citizens ruled by the intestinal tracts of fluffy dogs, the sidewalks were bare.

BHPD knew the building, couldn’t recall a problem there since three years ago when a plastic surgeon and his wife had been hauled off for mutual domestic violence.

“They start whaling on each other in the waiting room,” said B.H. detective Roland Munoz. “Anorexic women with stitched-up faces are sitting there, freaking out.”

An hour into the watch, a custodian unlocked the building’s brass front doors. Tenants had keys and the alarm code and could come and go 24/7 but none had appeared after nine the night before when Munoz and Detective Richard Eaton had earned overtime watching the last trickle of weary health-care providers, none of them Shacker, exiting. Between nine and this morning, hourly drive-bys by B.H. patrol cars had spotted no activity in or around the structure. Not an ironclad assurance, but confidence was high that the identity thief had yet to appear.

The rear alley door was also key-operated and Sean Binchy watched it from the front seat of a borrowed Con Edison van, accompanied by Munoz, a jovial man whose mood was even rosier because he’d rather be doing this than responding to false intruder calls phoned in by hysterical rich people. Lost cats, too; last week a woman on North Linden Drive had 911’d on “Melissa.” Making her sound like a human in jeopardy, not an Angora up a tree.

The building offered no on-site parking but doctors and their staffs got a discount at the private pay facility two doors south that
opened at six thirty. This early, plenty of metered street parking remained available but only seven vehicles had seized the opportunity. Milo ran the tags. Nothing interesting.

He and I were stationed on the east side of Bedford Drive, twenty yards north of the brass doors, in a silver, black-windowed Mercedes 500 that he’d borrowed from the LAPD confiscation lot. The former owner was an Ecstasy dealer from Torrance. The interior was spotless black calfskin, the brightwork polished steel, the white bunny-rabbit headliner and matching carpeting sucked free of lint. A strong shampoo fragrance lingered, mixed in with the smell of honey-roasted peanuts.

Milo had told me to “dress B.H.”

“Meaning?”

“Knock yourself out so you blend in with the hoohahs.”

The best I could come up with was jeans and a gray wool pullover emblazoned with an Italian designer’s surname. The sweater was a ten-year-old gift from the sister I never saw. Other people’s names on my clothing make me feel like an impostor; this was the first time I’d worn it.

Milo’s costume consisted of a royal-blue velour tracksuit piped with thick strands of silver lamé resembling rivulets of mercury. Oversized designer logo on the sleeves and on one thigh, some sort of hiphop artiste I’d never heard of. The outfit managed to be too large for him, settled in folds, tucks, and wrinkles a shar-pei would covet.

I’d controlled myself but now I said, “Congrats.”

“For what?”

“High-bidding on Suge Knight’s storage bin.”

“Hmmph. Got it at the Barneys sale. VIP night, if you will. In case you find that relevant.”

“My job, everything’s relevant. How’d you get vipped?”

“Store manager was in a car crash, Rick saved his nose.”

A slim, dark figure zipped past us, heading north.

Petra dressed in black bicycle pants and pullover neared completion of her second square-block jog. The role Milo had assigned her was a variant of her normal morning routine and she ran like she meant it.

Up near Wilshire, a grubby homeless person in shapeless gray-brown tatters shuffled, bobbed his ski-capped head, gazed up at the morning sun, jaywalked east.

Moe Reed had volunteered for that part.

Milo’d said, “Clean-cut kid like you?”

“I did it last year, El Tee. Checking out a bad guy in Hollywood.”

Petra had said, “He was convincing, trust me.”

“Fine,” said Milo. “We’ll get you some bum duds.”

“No need,” said Reed. “Still have the threads from last year.”

“Wash ’em?”

“Sure.”

“Then you won’t be authentic, but hey, go for it.”

Observers Seven and Eight were two female B.H. officers patrolling in a black-and-white on a ten-minute circuit. Shimoff’s second drawing of Grant “Shearling” Huggler was taped to their dashboard along with a description of faux-Dr.-Shacker that I’d supplied. Nothing unusual about a conspicuous police presence in Beverly Hills. Response time was three minutes and citizens liked seeing their protectors.

By six thirty, the pay lot had opened and cars trickled in. Thirteen more street spots had been taken. Every tag checked out clean except for a woman with an address on South Doheny Drive who owed over six hundred bucks in parking tickets. This morning, her Lexus was being driven by an Asian woman in a white housekeeper’s uniform doing a pickup at the deli on the corner.