Dr. Death

"Happy to oblige," said Milo. "Any idea where we can find him?"

"No, like I said, it could be anywhere. He a

"Most of the time?" I said.

"Sometimes she puts her foot down. She doesn't like when her work piles up. When she turns him down, Paul gets all pouty and usually he stays home and keeps pouting. But sometimes he goes off by himself for a day or so… I have no idea where they are, but you could try Malibu. That's the one place Tanya likes to go."

"Where in Malibu?" said Milo, keeping his voice casual.

"Not the beach. We've got-Tanya and I own some land up in the Malibu mountains. Western Malibu, it's more like Agoura, across the Ventura County line and up into the hills. Five, six acres, I don't even know the exact size. Our parents bought it years ago, Dad was going to build a house, but he never got around to it. I never go there because there's really nothing there and it's kind of a mess-dinky little cabin, no phone, gross bathroom, tiny little septic tank. Half the time the electricity lines are down, the road's always washing out. My kids would go crazy from boredom there."

"But Tanya likes it."

"Tanya likes things quiet. When she was recuperating from chemo she went there. Or maybe it was to show she was tough. She can be stubborn. The place is probably worth some money now, I would've sold it a long time ago."

"Does Paul like it?" I said. "Being a Tree Person?"

"Probably. What Paul really likes is to drive, just for the sake of driving-like gas is free and he's got all the time in the world."

"Working for himself in real estate."

"I don't know what he does in real estate-he doesn't seem to work much, but he must be doing okay," she said. "He always has money. Isn't stingy with Tanya, I'll grant him that. Buys her jewelry, clothes, whatever. Plus he cooks and cleans, so what am I complaining about, right?"

Milo copied down directions to the cabin, promised to let her know if her sister was there.

"Great," she said. Then she frowned. "That means she'll know I was here, checking up on her. 'Cause I'm the only one who knows about Malibu."

"Do the people at her job know your number?" he said. "Maybe she listed you as her emergency contact."

Kris Lamplear brightened. "That's true, she did."

"Great. We'll just tell her that's how we reached you."

"Okay, thanks-there's nothing wrong, is there? With Tanya and Paul?"

"What would be wrong, ma'am?"

"I don't know. You just seem awfully eager to talk to them."

"Just what I said, ma'am. Follow-up. It's a high-profile case, we've got to do everything we can to avoid looking stupid."

"That I understand." She smiled. "No one likes looking stupid."

CHAPTER 34

HE SPED ONTO the 405. The intersection with the 101 West was nearly immediate, the heavy traffic was flowing east, and soon we were sailing.

"Malibu," he said. "Sounds familiar."

"Oh yeah."

A few years ago, Robin and I had rented a beach house just over the county line. The mouth of the canyon road Kris Lamplear had described was less than a half mile away. I'd gone hiking up there myself, passing campgrounds, the occasional private property, mostly state land walled by mountainside. I remembered long stretches of solitude, silence broken by birdcalls, coyote howls, the occasional roar of a too-fast truck. Brain-feeding silence, but sometimes it had seemed too quiet up there.

" 'Paul likes to drive,'" he went on. "Your basic prerequisite for Serial Killer School. A neat freak and the bastard likes to drive. Now, why didn't I think of that? Could've arrested him the first time I met him, saved the city a lot of overtime."

"Tsk, tsk. And don't forget his generosity," I said. "Gives his girlfriend jewelry. I wonder how much of it was previously owned."

He gave a dispirited laugh. "Trophies… Lord knows what else he hangs on to."

He exited at Kanan, took it down to PCH and raced north along the beach. The Coast Highway was virtually empty past Trancas Canyon. The ocean was serene, low tide breaking lazily, too blue to be real. We crossed the county line at Mulholland Highway, just past Leo Car-rillo Beach, where a handful of beachcombers walked the tide pools.

Back to Mulholland. End of the trail.

No way to travel Mulholland from start to finish. The road was thirty-plus miles of blacktop, girding L.A. from East Hollywood to the Pacific, choked off in several places by wilderness. Nothing important comes easy… Had Michael Burke/Paul Ulrich thought of that when selecting his kill-spot?

A mile into Ventura, Milo hooked right, veering toward the land side. I caught a peek of my rented house on the private beach just ahead, a wedge of weathered wood visible beyond a sharp curve of the highway. Robin and I had liked it out there, watching the pelicans and dolphins, not minding the rust that seemed to settle in daily. We'd stayed there nearly a year while our house in the Glen was being rebuilt. The moment the lease was up, the landlord had handed the place over to his brilliant aspiring-screenwriter son in hopes of spurring Junior to creativity. The only time I'd met Junior he'd been drunk. I'd never seen anything with his name on it at the multiplex. Kids today.

The car climbed into the mountains. Neither of us talked as we searched for the unmarked road that led to the property. Address on the mailbox, Kris Lamplear had said.

The first time, Milo overshot and had to circle back. Finally, we found it, nearly five miles from the ocean, well past its nearest neighbor, preceded by a good mile of state land.

The mailbox was ten feet up the entrance, concealed by a cloud of plumbago vine. Rusty box on a weathered post, its door missing. Most of the gold-foil address numerals gone, too. The three digits that remained were withered and curling.

Nothing in the box. The air was cool, sweet, and the unmarked's idling engine seemed deafening. Milo backed out, parked on the road, turned off the motor, and we returned to the mailbox on foot. Ahead of us, the dirt road-more of a path-swept to the left and flattened in an S that snaked through the greenery. Nothing in the immediate distance but more vines, shrubbery, trees. Lots of trees.

Milo said, "No sense a

We walked a thousand feet before it came into view, graying clapboard barely discernible through a thickening colo

If Milo was thinking that, he wasn't putting it into words. He trudged steadily but very slowly, mouth set, eyes swiveling from side to side, one arm loose, the other at his belt, inches from his service revolver. More tension than readiness for battle. He'd stashed his shotgun in the trunk of the unmarked.

The path finally ended at an egg-shaped parking area partially edged by large, circular rocks. The border looked like someone's primitive attempt at hardscape, long disrupted by the elements. Two cars: Ulrich's navy BMW and Tanya Stratton's copper-colored Saturn.

Ulrich had told us a tale of another dark BMW stationed on Mulholland.

BMW like ours.

I'd agonized over whether the car had been Richard's. Richard or Eric at the wheel. But it had existed only in Ulrich's lie.

Orchestrating.

The building was just beyond the cars, at the rear of the property, and we approached, trying to shield ourselves behind trees, straining for a better look. Finally, we had a view of the front door. Open, but blocked by a dirty-looking screen.