white shirt, a brown and blue tie, and brown
slacks. His chin was blued with stubble, his eyelids
weighted by fatigue. There was mud on. his brogues,
which he scraped off along the edge of the terrace
before coming in.
“We found two of the Swopes, the ,mother and
father, up in Benedict Canyon. Shot in the head
and back.”
He talked rapidly without making eye contact
and walked past me into the kitchen. I followed
him and put up coffee. While it brewed I washed
my face in the kitchen sink and he chewed on a log
of French bread. Neither of us spoke until we’d sat
169
at t able and punished our gullets
with large swallows of scalding liquid.
“Some old character with a metal detector found
them a little after one a.m. He’s a rich guy, a re-
tired dentist, has a bighouse off Benedict but likes
to roam around in the dark prospecting. His gizmo
picked up the coins in the father’s pocketsthe
two of them weren’t buried very deep. The rain
had washed away some of the dirt and he could see
part of a head in the moonlight. Poor fellow was
shaking.”
He looked downward, dispiritedly.
“Another detective picked up the squeal but when
they identified the bodies he remembered my in-.
volvement and called me. He was scheduled or
vacation anyway and more than happy to hand it
over. I’ve .been there since three.”
“No sign of Woody and Nona ?”
Milo shook his head.
“Nada. We combed the immediate area. The place
we found them is just before the road climbs
toward the Valley. Most of Benedict’s pretty well
built up but there’s a small gul/y on the west side
that the developers haven’t gotten to. It’s concave,
kind of like a saucer in the ground, covered with
-.brush and layered with about a foot of dead leaves.
Easy to miss if you drive by quickly ’cause it’s blocked
from the road by big eucalyptus. We used the grid
approach, went over it foot by foot. Funny thing is,
we did dig up another body, but this one was. all
bones. From the shape of the pelvis, the M.E. says a
woman. Been there for at least a couple of years.”
He was concentrating on details to avoid dealing
with the emotional impact of the murders. Taking
BLOOD TEST 171
a large gulp of coffee, he rubbed his eyes and
shivered.
“I’m soaked. Lemme peel out of this;”
He pulled off the raincoat and draped it over a
chair.
“Let’s hear it for sunny goddamn California,” he
snarled. “I feel like I’ve been marinating in a rice
paddy.”‘
“Want a warm shirt?”
“Nab:” He rubbed his hands together, drank more
coffee, and got up for a refill.
“Not a sign of the kids,” he reiterated upon
turning to the table. “Several possibilities present
themselves: one, they weren’t with the parents and
escaped what went down. When they got back to
the motel, they saw the blood and ran scared.”
“Why wouldn’t the family stick together if they
were returning home?” I asked.
“Maybe she took him for an ice cream. While the
parents packed.”
“No way, Milo. He was too sick for that.”
“Yeah, I keep forgetting that. Must be uncon-
scious repression, huh?”
“Must be.”
“Okay, hypothesis two, then. They weren’t to’
gether because the sister snatched the kid. You ‘told
me Bev said she didn’t like the parents. Could be it
came to a head.”
“Anything Bev has to say about her needs to be
taken with a shaker of salt, Milo. Nona made it
with a man she once loved. Down deep she hates
the girl’s guts.”
“You told me yourself the kid was pissed the
time you met her, how she lit into Melendez-Lynch.
172 Joathaa Kt/maa·
And the picture we get of her after talking to Rambo
and Carmichael is one strange little girl.”
“That’s true. She sounds like she’s got plenty of
problems.-But why would she abduct her brother?
All indications-are that she was self-centered, cut
off from family feelings. She and Woody didn’t
have a close relationship. She rarely visited and
when she did it was at night when he was asleep.