“No, of course not.”
“Why of course not?”
“Kelvin has a busy schedule,” said Huck. “Wasting time driving would be out of the question.”
“The piano lessons weren’t on a set schedule.”
“Correct, it depended,” said Huck. “It could be once a week or every day.”
“Depended on Kelvin’s needs.”
“If he had a recital, Selena would be here more.”
“Kelvin give a lot of recitals?”
“Not too many… I still can’t believe… she was a nice person.”
“What else can you tell us about her, sir?”
“Nice,” Huck repeated. “Quiet. Pleasant, she always showed up on time.”
Moe Reed said, “She got paid well to teach Kelvin.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“You don’t sign checks?”
“I just take care of the house.”
“Who signs the checks?”
“Mr. Vander’s accountants.”
“Who’s that?”
“They’re in Seattle.”
Milo said, “You take care of the houses, plural.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s also a place on the beach.” Hooking a thumb toward the ocean.
“Oh, that,” said Huck. “That was Mr. Vander’s house before he got married. He doesn’t use it much.”
“He keeps a car there.”
“The old station wagon? Battery ’s probably dead.”
“A pad right on the sand,” said Milo. “Pity not to use it.”
“Mr. Vander travels extensively,” said Huck.
“Part of Kelvin’s homeschooling?”
“Pardon?”
“Enrichment-seeing the world, learning about other cultures.”
“Sometimes.” Huck’s brow gleamed as if brushed with egg yolk. “This is really upsetting.”
“You liked Selena.”
“Yes, but… it’s a matter of someone you know-and then they’re…” Huck threw up his hands. “Mr. Vander needs to know about this. Kelvin and Mrs. Vander, too. They’re going to be-where can I reach you?”
Reed handed over a card.
Huck mouthed Reed’s name silently.
Milo said, “We’re trying to locate Selena’s next of kin. Any idea where we can find them?”
“No, I’m sorry,” said Huck. “Poor Kelvin… he’ll need another teacher.”
We drove back down to PCH, traveled a few minutes to La Costa Beach, where Reed hung a U-turn and parked in front of a cedar plank wall.
Forty-foot lot, a few paces from the highway. To the right of the wall was a cedar garage. A pedestrian door was dead-bolted. Milo rang the bell. No answer. He left his card wedged under the handle.
As we returned to the city, Moe Reed said, “What’d you think of Huck?”
“Different kind of fellow.”
“He sure sweated a lot. And something else… can’t put my finger on it, but… like he was too guarded. Am I off here, Lieutenant?”
“Guy was definitely antsy, kiddo. But that could just be employee nervousness-afraid to upset the boss. Wanna weigh in, Alex?”
I voiced the nerve damage theory.
Reed said, “Wearing a hat on a hot day is what caught my eye. There didn’t seem to be much hair under it. Medium-build white guy, he could be the shaved-head dude Luz Ramos saw with Selena.”
Milo thought about that. Reached for the MDT.
No criminal record on Travis Huck, and his DMV photo showed him with a full head of curly black hair. The license had been renewed three years ago. He’d listed his address as the house on Calle Maritimo.
Milo kept typing. The Internet had never met the man. “Shaving his head and being a little off ain’t exactly grounds for a warrant, but let’s keep him in mind.”
Reed said, “What about that loudmouth from the marsh, Duboff? He’s got a thing for the place like you said, Doctor. Obsessive, even. What if it has some kind of sexual significance for him so he dumps his bodies there?”
Milo said, “Serial conservationist.”
I said, “I’d keep him in mind, too, but like you said, Moe, he didn’t try to avoid attention. Just the opposite, he got right in our faces, admitted to being at the marsh right around the time Selena was dumped.”
“Couldn’t that be reverse psychology?” said Reed. “Or just plain arrogance-thinking he’s smarter than us? Like those idiots who mail messages? Or return to the scene to gloat.”
“It’s possible.”
Milo ’s fingers were already dancing along the keyboard. “Well, look at this. Mr. Duboff has a record.”
Silford Duboff had been arrested seven times in ten years, every instance a confrontation at a protest march.
Anti-globalization ruckus at the Century Plaza, pay raises for hotel housekeepers in San Francisco, sit-in opposing the expansion of the nuclear power plant at San Onofre, resisting coastal development in Oxnard and Ventura. The seventh bust was fighting the billionaires’ grab for the Bird Marsh.
Six of the arrests were for resisting, but at the anti-globalization fracas he’d been charged with assaulting a police officer, pled to misdemeanor battery, paid a fine. Conviction reversed two years later when an appeals judge hearing a class-action suit ruled LAPD at fault for the near-riot.
“I remember that one,” said Milo. “Big mess. So the guy likes to sit in the middle of the street and chant. But there’s no serious violence on his sheet. Doesn’t even merit being called a sheet. More like a pillowcase.”
Reed said, “Anti-globalization attracts anarchists and those types, right? Which brings me back to Huck’s cap. Those guys wear stuff like that. What if Huck and Duboff were protest buds and found out they had a common interest in nastier stuff?”
“They attend the same marches, Duboff gets busted, but Huck doesn’t?”
“Duboff’s an in-your-face guy, no subtlety. Huck’s more the sneaky type. Maybe that’s what I was smelling about him.”
“An unholy duo,” said Milo. “By day, they agitate for liberation, when the sun goes down they kill women and chop off the hands and toss the bodies in the muck.”
Reed drove faster. “I guess it is far-fetched.”
“Kiddo, at this point far-fetched is better than nothing. Sure, look into both of them. You find Senor Huck’s name on the membership rolls of any group Senor Duboff marched with-any link between the two of them, whatsoever-and we’ll go the kill-team route.”
I said, “A pair of killers would make the dump easier. One guy parks, the other hauls the body. Or they both haul, are able to do it quickly and get out of there.”
Moe Reed said, “Think I should also talk to Vander’s accountant, find out about the other teachers making house calls?”
“Someone Selena met on the job did her in?” said Milo.
“More like someone on the job could tell us more than Huck did. Maybe we didn’t find any evidence of an
