“How do you know she’s good for him?”
“He’s started getting a little happy.”
CHAPTER 44
We headed back to the road and Milo did another BOLO check as I started up the Seville. Shook his head. “Now I’m manhandling crones.”
“She’ll survive.”
“Thanks for the support,” he said. “Where’s your sensitive side?”
“Dormant. Want me to head over to Santa Clarita, find the garage that worked on Barnett’s other truck?”
“Too much work for too little payoff. Malley and Cherish are already out on the open road. The question is which road.”
“There’s also the matter of Cherish’s Toyota.”
“You think they’re traveling separately? You heard MacIntyre. Barnett’s happy.”
“It would take more than romance to bring joy into his life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe he refused to cooperate with you because he had his own plan. The word ‘closure’ should be dropped from the English language, but a guy in his position might figure getting some sort of satisfaction could ease his pain. And Cherish could help him.”
“Payback,” he said.
“That’s another word for it.”
By the time I made it back to the Valley, the sun was starting to drop. I drove straight to the park where Kristal Malley had been murdered, hoping for simple bloody symmetry. Instead of Drew’s body we found only a scrubby, sad space pocked with trash.
Milo had his little penlight out and he washed the skinny beam over the same public lavatories described in Sue Kramer’s police report, the same Dumpster, now reeking of waste.
The same swings, where a pair of young killers had sat smoking and drinking beer.
No kids here, tonight. No people at all. Off in the distance, the crumbling, flat-roofed units of 415 City were top-lit harshly, security bulbs spanking the darkness. A police siren howled, then dopplered to silence. Shouts and laughter and drumbeats filtered through the night. The air was heavy and oppressive and dangerous, like hands around a throat.
Milo pocketed the penlight. “Nice try. They could be anywhere. Maybe Cherish really did want to go to Vegas.”
I said, “Where exactly was Lara found?”
He sat down on one of the swings. The chain howled in protest. Phoning Sue Kramer, he asked her the same question, listened intently. Made some notes and hung up and handed them to me. “For what it’s worth.”
The Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve is 225 acres of what passes for natural habitat in L.A. Created by a dam filled with undrinkable water and army-engineered flood-drainage channels, and planted with native vegetation, the refuge is sandwiched between two freeways yet motion-picture gorgeous. Birds love it and a couple hundred species migrate in and out. People are welcome with qualifications. No hunting, no fishing, no bikes, no feeding the ducks. No straying off the well-marked paths.
Following Sue Kramer’s directions, I entered on Balboa Boulevard, just below Birmingham High School, cruised a treeless stretch of road. A short while later, the L.A. River appeared, an empty, graffiti-marred trough in this drought-plagued winter.
Milo said, “She parked right there.” Pointing to a spot bordering the river, half-hidden by an initial planting of eucalyptus.
No sign of any vehicles.
I kept driving.
He said, “Where now?”
“Maybe nowhere.”
“Then why bother?”
“Got anything better to do?”
Continuing south to Burbank, I hooked a left and traversed the southern border of the reserve. Lots of trees here. Signs pointed toward the dam. No more birds than we’d seen in Soledad Canyon. Maybe they knew something.
We both saw it at the same time.
White Jeep, on the far end of a small parking lot on Burbank.
The only vehicle in the lot. Signs said legal parking had ended an hour ago.
Milo said, “Right out in the open. Take that and stick it in your BOLO. Where are the parking nazis when you need them?”
I pulled behind the Jeep.
He said, “Sitting right here and no one notices.”
I said, “There’s your invitation to search.”
Out came another set of plastic gloves. How many did he carry? He walked around the Jeep, checked the underbody, then the windows. The doors were locked and the interior was empty. Clear view of the rear storage area through the hatchback window. Nothing.
Milo said, “In the mood for a hike?”
A dirt trail capped the top of the dam. Thicker trees- more eucalyptus, gnarled sycamore, wild oak that enjoyed the drought, evergreens that didn’t. Plenty of opportunity to exit at paved paths feeding to Burbank and Victory but we stayed on the dirt. Twenty yards in, the planting thickened even further and the trail blackened and Milo ’s penlight cast a sickly beam that died three feet in front of us.
Rocks and dirt and scampering bugs.
“You came well-prepared,” I said.
“Boy Scout days,” he said. “Made it all the way to Eagle. If they’d only known.”
We’d traipsed halfway through the reserve, finding nothing. The excitement that had pinged my chest when we’d found the Jeep began to fade.
We were just about to turn back when the sound gave it away.
Low, insistent buzzing, nearly drowned out by freeway roar.
Flies.
Milo made use of his long legs and was there within seconds.
When I caught up, the penlight was focused on a forty-foot sycamore tree.
Stout-trunked thing, with spavined, mottled branches. Unlike the surrounding evergreens and wild oaks, bare of
