“Lara Malley’s deceased. Seven years ago, suicide by firearm. Women are shooting themselves more, nowadays, but back then it was a little unusual, right? Pills were the ladies’ choice.”
“Not always, if the ladies were serious,” I said.
“Mommy cashes in a year after Kristal’s murder. Enough time to see life wasn’t getting any better. The Malleys ever get any therapy, Alex?”
“Don’t know.”
He began punching his computer keyboard as if it was a sparring partner, logged onto the state firearms registration file. Squinted and stared and copied something down and drew his lips back in a strange, hollow smile that made me glad I wasn’t his enemy.
“Mr. Barnett Melton Malley has amassed quite an arsenal. Thirteen shotguns, rifles, and handguns, including a couple of thirty-eights.”
“Maybe he lives alone in a secluded area. He’d have more reason than most to be vigilant.”
“Who says he lives alone?”
“Same answer,” I said. “If he started a new family, he’d want to protect it.”
“Angry, bitter guy,” he said. “Loses his entire family to violence, moves out to the boonies with a stash of firepower heavy enough to outfit a militia. Maybe he’s in a militia- one of those survivalist yahoos. Am I overreaching if I use the term ‘high risk’?”
“If he intended to murder someone, why would he register his weapons?”
“Who says he registered all of them?” He fumbled in a desk drawer, pulled out a wooden-tipped cigar, rolled it between his palms.
“The way Rand was shot,” he said. “Contact wound, left side of the head, the killer at approximately the same height. Taken by surprise like you suggested. That conjure up an image?”
“The killer was sitting to his left,” I said. “Close to him. As in the driver’s seat of a vehicle.”
He pointed the cigar at me. “That’s the channel that switched on in my head. In terms of premeditation, maybe Malley didn’t think it out. Maybe he started out wanting to talk to Rand. To confront the guy who’d ruined his life. We both know victims’ families sometimes crave that.”
I said, “Malley had eight years for that, but perhaps Rand’s release triggered old memories.”
“Malley picks him up, drops him off, drives around and finds out he’s still got unfinished business with Rand. They drive up somewhere in the hills and something goes wrong.”
“Rand wasn’t articulate. He said the wrong thing to Malley and triggered big-time rage.”
“ ‘I’m a good person,’ ” he said.
“I can see that coming out wrong.”
He bolted up, tried to pace the tiny office, took a single, attenuated step, reached my chair, and sat back down. I was an obstruction. My thoughts drifted to New York on a crisp, snowy day. Gallivanting.
I said, “If Malley came armed, on the other hand, there might’ve been premeditation.”
“He was meeting up with his daughter’s murderer. Like you said, he’d have good reason to be careful.”
“A good lawyer could make a pretty good case for self-defense.”
He tossed the cigar onto the desk. “Listen to this, we’re psychoanalyzing the poor bastard and neither of us has ever met him. For all we know, he’s a pacifist Zen Buddhist vegan transcendental meditator living out in the woods in the name of serenity.”
“With thirteen guns.”
“There is that minor sticking point,” he said. “Man, I’d love to have the techies go over that black truck of his. Love to have grounds for it- Alex, how about we scotch lunch. For some reason my appetite’s waning.”
I said, “Sure.”
He turned away and I left.
When I was ten feet up the hall I heard him call out, “Eventually, we’ll do the tandoori bit. I’ll have my people call your people.”
He phoned that evening at seven-forty.
I said, “What happened to your people?”
“On strike. Did more background on Malley. “Eight years ago he ran his own pool-cleaning service, then it stopped a year later.”
“After Lara shot herself. Maybe he dropped out.”
“Whatever the reason, given no workplace, I figure to set out at ten tomorrow morning. The grinning fool who reads the weather on TV says warm air’s coming in from Hawaii. Closest I’m gonna get to a tropical vacation. Sound good?”
“Want me to pick you up at home?”
“No, you’re doing the psychology bit but I’m the wheelman,” he said. “It’s time to be somewhat official.”
He arrived at ten-fifteen looking as official as he was ever going to be: baggy brown suit, white shirt, putty-colored tie. The desert boots. I had on my courtroom outfit: blue pin-striped three-button, blue shirt, yellow tie. Whether Barnett Malley was a vengeance-sworn gun freak or a quietly grieving victim, wardrobe wasn’t going to make a difference.
Milo grabbed a stale bagel from my kitchen and chewed at it as he drove down to Sunset then turned right, toward the 405 North. This time, he slowed and pointed out the spot where Rand Duchay’s body had been found. Shrubby patch on the east side of the rise that paralleled the on-ramp. No tall trees, just ice plant and juniper and weeds. No serious intent to conceal.
The route from the dump spot to Soledad Canyon would take you right past here.
Milo spoke the obvious: “Do your thing, dump him, go home.”
The trip was fifty-eight minutes of easy driving under blue skies. The weatherman had been righteous: eighty degrees, no smog, the air blessed by one of those faintly fruity tropical breezes that blows in all too rarely.
We passed through the northern edge of Bel Air, lush, green hills studded with optimistically perched houses. Then, the stunningly white cubes that make up the Getty Museum. It’s an architectural masterpiece funded by a venal billionaire’s trust, housing third-rate art. Pure L.A.: might makes right and packaging is all.
Traffic stayed light all the way through the Valley. The freeway fringe shifted to the massive Sunkist packaging plant, smaller factories, big-box stores, auto dealerships. Not far east was the Daney house where Rand had slept for three nights of alleged freedom. By the time we transitioned to the 5 it was mostly us and eighteen-wheelers who had veered off onto the truck route. Three minutes later we were on Cal 14, speeding northeast toward Antelope Valley. The mountains got majestic, lush green giving way to wrinkled brown felt. The scenery off the highway was scrap yards, gravel pits, the occasional “De-Luxe Town-Home” tract and little else. Wise people say expansion to the northeast is the future of L.A. And some day the notion of open space will be shattered. Meanwhile, the hawks and ravens do their thing overhead and the earth lies flat and still.
Fifteen degrees cooler. We closed the windows and wind whistled through the seal.
Ten miles later, Milo exited at Soledad Canyon and hooked a left away from the boomtown development of Santa Clarita and toward peace and quiet. The road climbed and curved and curled and hooked. Isolated stands of spruce and the occasional windbreak eucalyptus hugged the west side of the highway, but the big players were California oaks glorying in their dry-earth beds, gray-green crowns shimmering in the wind. Copses of the majestic trees ran clear to the next ridge of mountain. They’re tough, ancient creatures that delight in self-denial; when you spoil them with too much water they die.
As the foliage thinned, the road demanded more respect, hairpin curves wrapping around acute edges of sere mountains, spillover from rock slides pasting Milo’s eyes to the road. The wind’s whistle grew to an insistent howl. The big birds swooped lower, flew more assertively. Nothing to hamper them but the occasional power pole.