Milk and Honey (16 page)

Thinking a moment, Tommy rubbed his eye with his shoulder—his hands were gloved—then answered that the smoke might mix with some of the body gases, but the bees had to go. No one could work with thousands of things buzzing around. Arnie had already got stung on his hand right through the plastic glove. He was ready to claim disability. Decker asked him if Arnie was still inside.

“Arnie, he’s a trouper,” Tommy said. “We do as much as we can before you smoke the bugs. Scrapings, tissue samples, fluid samples…anything that might be affected by smoke. With the insects, I collect some maggots and put them in KAAD. I collect a few bees, ants, and beetles, too. And live bugs for control. Then that’s all the bugs I need. You get rid of the rest, so we can work without getting stung.”

Decker nodded. “Seen Detective Crandal around?”

Tommy said, “He was in the house, now he out of the house. Think now he’s in the car.”

Super, Decker thought. Just what he needed. A goldbrick on his team. He forced himself to jog over to Crandal’s car. The old man was sitting in the driver’s seat, windows rolled up, motor running. No doubt he had the air-conditioning on full blast. Decker knocked on the driver’s window, the motor died, and Crandal came out of his cocoon.

“Just taking a break,” Crandal explained.

Sure, Decker thought. He said, “Look, if we’re going to be doing something joint, maybe we should talk about a division of labor?”

Crandal didn’t answer.

Decker said, “I’ll do the mop-up over here. I’ll also handle all the background checks on the victims. We’ve still got one unidentified body. How about you going down to Fall Springs to notify and interview the surviving family? It would sure take a load off of my shoulders.”

“Heaven forbid your shoulders should get too heavy,” Crandal answered.

“Look, this isn’t even my jurisdiction,” Decker said. “It certainly ain’t my idea of a good time. But I found the kid, I’d like to see this through, and it’s what I’m paid to do.” He calmed his nerves. “I’ll tell Forensics to forward us both copies of what they found. You send me your notes, I’ll send you mine.”

Crandal sighed, then nodded agreement.

“I’ll finish up on the outside,” Decker said. “You do a grid search on the living room, I’ll do the kitchen.”

Crandal gave him an unhappy look, but went inside the house. The sheriff didn’t seem too hepped up on working, but Decker went easy with the critical judgment. If it hadn’t been for Katie, Decker would have passed on this one—would have been easy since he was in Sex Crimes, not Homicide, and had a truckload of back cases already crowding his desk. But for some reason, he felt obligated to the little girl. Change a diaper, the kid owns you for life, he laughed to himself. Ah, the hell with it, the kid deserved closure on her parents, facts she could tell the inevitable shrink when she was older. And Decker had done a six-year stint with Homicide way back when. It wasn’t as though stiffs were foreign to him.

The sound of straining engines filled the static air.
Cars—Byron in a wood-sided Ford pickup, Marge in the unmarked. Inside the Ford’s bed were three shopping bags, a 3' × 3' portable smoker leaking charcoal fumes, and over a dozen pine boxes. Decker instructed Marge to help Crandal out with the grid in the living room, and he’d help Byron unload the truck. The smoker was heavy and hot, Decker almost burned his arms. The bags were filled with protective garb and three steel bellows.

Decker said to Byron, “I noticed a bunch of machinery in the barn. What’s all the stuff in there?”

Byron held up his hand and ticked off his fingers. “Extractors, drums, dry-heat cabinets, strainers—” He stopped himself. “Machinery for processing honey.”

“Processing the honey
here
?”

“Yes, sir, we can do it all.” Byron lifted a pine box from the bed. “Shame to let all them bees inside go to waste. Might as well hive them. I’ll give them back to the Darcys, if they want ’em when they come back.”

He looked at Decker, his skin shaded pea green. “They don’t know, do they?”

“I haven’t told them,” Decker said. He asked Byron to give the directions on how to suit up. It took Byron a moment to regain his color, to find his voice. Finally, he explained the procedure and told Decker not to make any sudden moves. Bees get nervous, same as people, he lectured.

Wide-brimmed hat, long steel veil, thick gloves, rubber boots, Decker was drenched in sweat before he took a step. Looking through the wire mesh, he felt as if he were in jail.

Byron took the lead, Decker followed. Inside, Arnie was scraping blood off the living-room floor. Marge was scribbling in her notepad, Ozzie Crandal was examining a footprint on the floor.

“Did anyone order an impression of this?” he asked.

Decker said, “Not yet.”

“Then I’ll order an impression of it,” Crandal said.

“Good idea,” said Marge. She’d almost managed to keep the acerbic edge out of her voice, but Ozzie picked it up.

He added, “Someone was walking out of the scene, not in. The toe directed to the front.”

Marge said, “How come there’s only one print?”

Crandal seemed stumped. Decker said, “There’s a bunch of prints in the kitchen. Maybe someone realized he was tracking blood into the living room and took his shoes off.”

“That’s the way I see it, too,” Crandal added.

“Way I see it, too,” Marge aped him.

Crandal said, “Look, lady—”

“Everyone cool it,” Decker said. “I’m as hot as hell in this getup, and my patience is about to snap, too. So how about we all keep our mouths shut, okay?”

“Fine by me,” Marge said, between clenched teeth.

Crandal muttered something, then went back to work.

Decker knew Crandal had done a lulu to unglue Marge, but now was not the time to ask her about it. Instead, he steered Byron toward the kitchen. Dressed in his work garb, doing what he knew best, Byron was no longer the broken-up man Decker had witnessed a half hour ago. He was the consummate professional, blowing soft puffs of smoke on sections of bees, then gently pushing them into his pine boxes with gloved hands. He worked slowly, and it took around an hour and a half, Decker constantly reminding him to watch his hands and feet so as not to mess up evidence. When Byron was done, almost all the bees and wasps were boxed, the corpses for the most part denuded of the winged creatures. Marge was right. With the bees gone, Decker could see the heinousness of the crime in all its glory—yards of bloodless entrails, open shotgun blasts in the abdominal and thoracic regions, half a heart dangling out of one of the women’s chests. The faces had become blackened with exposure, maggots crawling out of noses and eye sockets.

Decker felt his head go light, and looked down for a moment. By the time he felt his breath coming back, Byron had left. Decker thought about running after him, questioning him on the spot, but squelched the notion. Unless he was prepared to grill him hard, use all the authoritative muscle he had, Byron would keep quiet. It seemed more logical to pry information from the loquacious women of the Howard household or catch the beekeeper when he was off-guard.

Decker kept on the hat, but removed the veil and thick gloves and stuffed them in his shoulder harness. He slipped on a pair of thin surgical gloves, then began the arduous search for evidence, scanning the dead for shotgun wadding, spent shells, evidence from any other weapons that might have been used. He pulled out evidence bags and slipped them over the corpses’ hands—those that still had intact digits. He felt his insides kicking up, anger brewing and boiling deep within him. But his overwhelming emotion was sadness.

Poor, poor Katie.

At the top
of the hill, just as the unmarked was about to descend into LAPD territory, Decker turned to Marge and said, “Are you going to tell me about Crandal, or are you still too pissed off to talk?”

Marge gripped the wheel, stared out the windshield, the late afternoon sun still a hot spot in the asphalt. The tar seemed to bake before her eyes, the mountains flanking the road quivering in the heat. A depressing fact since once the car hit bottom, the temperature would rise ten degrees. She’d turned off the air-conditioning twenty minutes ago; the car had begun to overheat as they had climbed out of Sagebrush Canyon. Hot wind blew across her face. Marge sighed, wished she’d called in sick this morning.

She said, “He addressed me as ‘little lady.’”

“And that set you off?” Decker asked.

“I’m not little, Pete.”

“And you certainly ain’t no lady.”

Marge laughed hollowly.

“Well, bless my soul,” Decker said. “A seasoned detective like yourself. This one really got to you.”

Marge didn’t answer. A moment later, she said, “You know what pisses me off about cop films?”

“What?”

“Those cutesey ones where there’s all this calm, witty banter around stiffs. Know which ones I’m talking about?”

Decker nodded. Marge threw the car out of low gear as the hillside inclines began to level. The overgrown canary shrubbery had thinned out, replaced by fields of crabgrass and dandelion weeds. Houses could be seen about five hundred yards up.

“Crandal was doing that,” she said. “Making jokes. I didn’t like it.”

“Not that I’m sticking up for the guy, Marge, but he might have been doing that as a defense.”

“Yeah,” Marge said. “I know. And maybe I am acting a little weepy. But seeing it that close, that putrid. I don’t know, I’m not used to working Homicide, and I didn’t care for Crandal’s attitude.”

“Understandable,” Decker said.

“So how’d you manage to live with corpses in your dreams for six years?”

“I thought I was managing just fine until Jan asked me for a divorce.”

Marge laughed, genuinely this time. “So let me ask you this, Mr. Experienced Homicide Dick, what do you think? A family thing, or a burglary that went afoul?”

Decker didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “I’ll tell you what I don’t think. I don’t think it was a psycho case—another Manson gang hacking up the family and loving every minute of it. No smeared blood, no satanic signs. The homicides, as horrible as they were, seemed like an impulsive thing. Three in one pile, probably murdered where they stood. Luke pushed up against the fridge. Know what impressed me?”

“What?”

“All that spilt milk, the scattered bottles. Someone actually seemed to take time out to prepare bottles for Katie. Someone was planning on taking her, then changed his or her mind.”

“Or maybe someone interrupted Linda when she was making bottles.”

“Linda was trying to split with Katie and someone stopped her?” Decker asked.

“Just throwing out a thought,” Marge said.

“Lots of possibilities with a family affair,” Decker said. “Someone plugged them all, then impulsively decided to rescue Katie.
Or
someone saw what had happened, rescued the kid, and dropped her off at Manfred, not wanting to call the police. Family protecting one another.”

“Or Byron Howard,” Marge said. “I bet he’d be as protective as family. He doesn’t cotton to strangers.”

“Yeah,” Decker said. “Think he was faking his reaction?”

“I think the reaction was real,” Marge said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. He could have done it in a fit of madness, then been truly shocked when he saw what he had actually done.”

Decker nodded.

Marge passed six blocks of tract homes, then turned right onto Foothill Boulevard, back to civilization—fast-food stands, wholesale outlets, and shoddily built apartment housing, the plaster already cracking in the hot sun. Two blocks later, she hooked a right onto the 210 Freeway west, the traffic thick with rush-hour mob. They sat in silence, battling the stop-and-go rhythm for a quarter hour. As soon as traffic eased a bit, Marge asked, “What about Darlene as a suspect?”

“She certainly hated Linda.”

“And if she did it,” Marge said, “Byron would definitely be protective of her. Maybe even feel he caused Linda’s murder indirectly because of his affair.”

“The logic is there,” said Decker. “The jealous-wife angle. But can you picture Darlene using a shotgun?”

“I’ve seen stranger things,” Marge said.

So had Decker. He said, “Know what occurred to me a minute ago?”

“What?”

“Luke might have killed the others, then turned the gun on himself.”

“No weapon was found at the scene, Pete. And we’ve got all these different bloody footprints in the kitchen. If everyone was dead, who made the footprints?”

“I don’t know. Maybe somebody walked into the kitchen after the fact, and took the gun and Katie away.”

“More than one person to justify all those footprints.”

“Some of the footprints are bound to match some of the victims,” Decker said. “Someone might have stepped in blood before he or she was gunned down.”

Marge said, “Okay. So let’s examine your theory. Luke killed the others, then himself. I could understand Luke being homicidal with Linda after hearing about her reputation. But why would Luke whack his sister and that other dude?”

“I don’t know. I’m just thinking of the layout—Luke’s on one side, the others huddled together in the middle. I see this big finger just pointing at Luke.”

“What about the Kleenex fibers found on Katie?” Marge said. “Kid didn’t wipe her own PJs.”

“Obviously, someone took her away,” Decker said. “Someone dumped her over the hill. The kid couldn’t have walked it by herself.”

“Pete,” Marge said, “I just thought of something. The kid may have witnessed the whole thing.”

“Think so?” Decker said. “She didn’t seem traumatized. I’d have thought she might be, after seeing her mother and father murdered like that.”

“Even so,” Marge said, “don’t you think we should consult someone?”

“Sure,” Decker said. “Call up a local kiddy shrink. See what words of wisdom he has to impart to us.”

“You don’t like shrinks, do you?” Marge said.

“Fifth on that one,” Decker said.

They rode for a minute in silence. Marge broke it.

“Our second-guessing isn’t worth too much without all the evidence. Once Ozzie Crandal notifies the family, one of them will no doubt come by for Katie tomorrow. Prelim forensics will have come back by then, also. Crandal will interview the immediate family down there. By this time tomorrow, we should know a lot more than we know now.”

“Good point, Detective,” Decker said. “So the upshot is, I’m going to go home and try to forget about it until then.”

“Let me know how successful you are.”

Decker didn’t answer. Instead, he thought of Rina. If anyone could temporarily obscure today’s ugliness, it would be her.

He smelled the coals burning before he killed the Plymouth’s motor.

Shit.

Rina was barbecuing.

Even though he was starved, the thought of red meat—
rare
red meat—made his stomach churn. All he wanted for dinner was a couple of bowls of cereal. Anything that didn’t
bleed
. But he had to be nice, excited, enthusiastic that she’d taken the initiative to be domestic.

He parked the car in the driveway, got out, and shouted a hullo as he walked toward the back.

Rina turned around, her hair pinned up, covered by a kerchief, her face sooty from smoke residue. She looked so earthy, so
good
, he forgot about his growling stomach.

“I didn’t know if your grill was
pareve
or
fleishig
, so I bought trout. You like trout, don’t you?”

Fish, Decker thought. God bless her, barbecued trout didn’t sound half bad.

“Trout is perfect.” He walked over, gave her a short kiss on the lips, and regarded his supper. Five fillets. The fish had been butterflied, the heads removed. Sharing the grill with the fish were two potatoes, the skins baked crackling
crisp. The smell activated his salivary glands. “It’s too hot to eat meat anyway.”

“That’s what I figured.”

She’d covered his slab redwood table with a white paper tablecloth, had set red-checkered paper dinnerware, matching napkins and cups, and plastic cutlery upon the cloth. Gracing the tabletop were a pint of coleslaw, a pint of macaroni salad, a basket of French rolls, and a platter of green grapes mixed with cut canteloupe and watermelon. In a bowl of melting ice were cans of diet cola for her, brown bottles of Dos Equis for him.

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he said.

Rina smiled. “Doesn’t take much to make you happy.”

“You make me happy,” he said. “I really needed this.”

“You certainly couldn’t have timed it better. It’ll be ready in about two minutes. Take a shower, Peter, and put on something cooler. You can’t be comfortable in those clothes.”

He looked at his wilted brown suit and agreed. He showered quickly, then changed into a polo shirt and a pair of jeans. He would have preferred wearing a T-shirt and shorts, but he knew Rina wasn’t wild about him wearing such informal clothing to a meal. A small sacrifice to make for a waiting meal and a willing woman. He pinned a yarmulke onto his hair and patted his stomach. His juices were flowing now, so much so that he almost managed to push aside the wretchedness of the day.

By the time he was outside, Rina was putting the trout on a serving plate.

“You can wash if you want,” she said.

“I’ll wait for you.”

Rina put the trout on the table and wiped her hands on a napkin. “Okay.”

They ritually washed their hands outside from a bucket of water that Rina had set up, then broke bread. Rina heaped three trout and mounds of salad and fruit on
Decker’s paper plate as he sat there, a stupid grin on his face, thinking, I could get used to this. She poured him a beer, then served herself a half-piece of trout, half a baked potato, and fruit.

“Now I remember how you stay so thin,” Decker remarked. He noticed his voice had a slight lecherous tone. He gobbled down his first trout in three bites, and went to work on number two. “But I’m not complaining,” he continued. “More food for me. Although I wouldn’t mind if you’d fatten up a bit.”

“You think I’m too thin?” She opened up a can of soda.

“When I met you, you seemed a little more curvacious.”

“I was ten pounds heavier.”

“I didn’t mind,” Decker said. There it was. That same horny tone. He finished off half of his baked potato.

Rina smiled and speared a piece of watermelon. “Should I ask about your day?”

Decker shook his head.

Rina said, “Can I just ask if you found that little girl’s parents?”

Decker winced. “Yeah, we found them all right.”

His voice had tightened. Rina said, “Erase the tape. Forget I asked.”

Decker took a swig of beer and asked, “You visit your parents?”

“Erase that tape, too,” Rina said.

“So much for conversation,” Decker said, laughing.

“Well, I’ve got something interesting to tell you,” Rina said.

“What’s that?”

“I met an old friend of yours, today.”

“A friend of
mine
?”

“Abel Atwater,” Rina said.

Decker’s fork froze midair. He tried to keep his voice casual. “Really?”

“Yep, as you might say,” Rina said.

“How’d you meet him?” Decker asked. He lowered his fork.

“He was working in your barn, fixing the flooring, I think. He said he was in the army with you. I didn’t know you were in the army.”

Decker didn’t answer right away, rolled his tongue inside his cheeks. Then he said, “And how long did you talk to him?”

Rina stared at him quizzically. His eyes had gone hard. At first, Rina thought she detected jealousy, but a second later she decided it wasn’t that at all. “Gee, I don’t know…five, ten minutes. Is something wrong?”

“Well,” Decker laughed, “I don’t know. I just think it’s kind of strange that you’d carry on a conversation with a man you’ve never seen before, given your previous experiences with men.”

Rina was shocked into silence. Decker went on.

“I mean, really, honey, this guy could have been
anyone
.”

“He mentioned your name before I did….”

“So he knew my name. I’m a cop. Thousands of jackasses out there know my name, and any one of them could have had a personal reason for being here, and I don’t know how in hell you talked to this guy—”

“Peter, I—”

“What you
should
have done the minute you saw some unknown jerk in the barn was rush into the house, lock the door, and call me. What the hell were you thinking when you talked to this dude? Rina, I have put a lot of
bad
men behind bars. Now, it’s unlikely that one of them could have turned up for the big get-even, but it’s a possibility. So unless you know who’s who, you don’t go around being Miss Congeniality.”

“Peter—”

“I mean, let’s face facts, honey. Your former friend-turned-rapist, your asshole brother-in-law, you seemed to have a knack for attracting weirdos.”

Rina took her napkin off her lap and threw it down on her plate. “Doesn’t say much for you, does it?”

She stormed into the house.

Decker sat there for a minute, calming down. It took him around a minute to realize that
he
had completely blown it. He heard Marge’s voice:
So how do you manage
…

He rubbed his face, took another bite of trout, then stood up and headed for the house. He found her in his bedroom, sitting on his red-quilted bedcover, arms folded across her chest. She’d made the bed, polished his bedroom furniture—as if it were worth polishing. Just some knotty pine he’d slapped together for a dresser and a couple of nightstands. But she had told him how impressed she was, how talented he was. The afternoon sun was pouring through the window, casting a white spotlight upon the dresser. She’d polished the wood with care, rubbed it until it gleamed. He sat down beside her, his stomach in a knot.