Gone (2 page)

The carjacker forced them to stumble down a steep hillside to a densely wooded area, where the young woman tied up the young man at gunpoint and was subsequently bound herself. Sexual assault was implied but not specified. The assailant was described as “white, medium height, and stocky, thirty to forty, with a Southern accent.”

Malibu was county territory, sheriff’s jurisdiction. The crime had taken place fifty miles from LASD headquarters, but violent whodunits were handled by major crimes detectives and anyone with information was requested to phone downtown.

A few years back, when Robin and I were rebuilding the house in the hills, we’d rented a place on the beach in western Malibu. The two of us had explored the sinuous canyons and silent gullies on the land side of Pacific Coast Highway, hiked the oak-bearded crests that peaked above the ocean.

I remembered Latigo Canyon as corkscrew roads and snakes and red-tailed hawks. Though it took a while to get above civilization, the reward was worth the effort: a wonderful, warm nothingness.

If I’d been curious enough, I could’ve called Milo, maybe learned more about the abduction. I was busy with three custody cases, two of them involving film-biz parents, the third starring a pair of frighteningly ambitious Brentwood plastic surgeons whose marriage had shattered when their infomercial for Facelift-in-a-Jar tanked. Somehow they’d found time to produce an eight-year-old daughter, whom they now seemed intent on destroying emotionally.

Quiet, chubby girl, big eyes, a slight stammer. Recently, she’d taken to long bouts of silence.

Custody evaluations are the ugliest side of child psychology and from time to time I think about quitting. I’ve never sat down and calculated my success rate but the ones that work out keep me going, like a slot machine’s intermittent payoff.

I put the newspaper aside, happy the case was someone else’s problem. But as I showered and dressed, I kept imagining the crime scene. Glorious golden hills, the ocean a stunning blue infinity.

It’s gotten to a point where it’s hard for me to see beauty without thinking of the alternative.

My guess was this case would be a tough one; the main hope for a solve was the bad guy screwing up and leaving behind some forensic tidbit: a unique tire tread, rare fiber, or biological remnant. A lot less likely than you’d think from watching TV. The most common print found at crime scenes is the palm, and police agencies have only started cataloging palm prints. DNA can work miracles but backlogs are ferocious and the data banks are less than comprehensive.

On top of that, criminals are wising up and using condoms, and this criminal sounded like a careful planner.

Cops watch the same shows everyone else does and sometimes they learn something. But Milo and other people in his position have a saying:
Forensics never solves crimes, detectives do.

Milo would be happy this one wasn’t his.

Then it was.

When the abduction became something else, the media started using names.

Michaela Brand, 23. Dylan Meserve, 24.

Mug shots do nothing for your looks but even with numbers around their necks and that trapped-animal brightness in their eyes, these two were soap-opera fodder.

They’d produced a reality show episode that backfired.

The scheme unraveled when a clerk at Krentz Hardware in West Hollywood read the abduction story in the
Times
and recalled a young couple paying cash for a coil of yellow nylon rope three days before the alleged carjacking.

A store video confirmed the I.D. and analysis of the rope revealed a perfect match to bindings found at the scene and to ligature marks around Michaela and Dylan’s limbs and necks.

Sheriff’s investigators followed the trail and located a Wilderness Outfitters in Santa Monica where the couple had purchased a flashlight, bottled water, dehydrated food packets designed for hikers. A 7-Eleven near Century City verified that Michaela Brand’s nearly depleted debit card had been used to buy a dozen Snickers bars, two packets of beef jerky, and a six-pack of Miller Lite less than an hour before the reported time of the abduction. Wrappers and empty cans found a half mile up the ridge from where the couple had staged their confinement filled in the picture.

The final blow was the report of an emergency room physician at Saint John’s Hospital: Meserve and Brand claimed to have gone without food for two days but their electrolyte tests were normal. Furthermore, neither victim exhibited signs of serious injury other than rope burn and some “mild” bruising of Michaela’s vagina that could’ve been consistent with “self-infliction.”

Faced with the evidence, the couple broke down, admitted the hoax, and were charged with obstructing officers and filing a false police report. Both pleaded poverty, and public defenders were assigned.

Michaela’s D.P.D. was a man named Lauritz Montez. He and I had met nearly a decade ago on a particularly repellent case: the murder of a two-year-old girl by two preadolescent boys, one of whom had been Montez’s client. The ugliness had resurfaced last year when one of the killers, now a young man, had phoned me out within days of his release from prison and turned up dead hours later.

Lauritz Montez hadn’t liked me to begin with and my digging up the past had made matters worse. So I was puzzled when he called and asked me to evaluate Michaela Brand.

“Why would I kid, Doctor?”

“We didn’t exactly hit it off.”

“I’m not inviting you to hang out,” he said. “You’re a smart shrink and I want her to have a solid report behind her.”

“She’s charged with misdemeanors,” I said.

“Yeah, but the sheriff’s pissed and is pushing the D.A. to go for jail time. We’re talking a mixed-up kid who did something stupid. She feels bad enough.”

“You want me to say she was mentally incapacitated.”

Montez laughed. “Temporary raving-lunacy-insanity would be great but I know you’re all pissy-anty about small details like facts. So just tell it like it was: She was addled, caught in a weak moment, swept along. I’m sure there’s some technical term for it.”

“The truth,” I said.

He laughed again. “Will you do it?”

The plastic surgeons’ little girl had started talking, but both parents’ lawyers had phoned this morning and informed me the case had been resolved and my services were no longer necessary.

“Sure,” I said.

“Seriously?” said Montez.

“Why not?”

“It didn’t go that smoothly on Duchay.”

“How could it?”

“True. Okay, I’ll have her call and make an appointment. Do my best to get you some kind of reimbursement. Within reason.”

“Reason’s always good.”

“And so rare.”

M
ichaela Brand came to see me four days later.

I work out of my house above Beverly Glen. In mid-November the whole city’s pretty, nowhere more so than the Glen.

She smiled and said, “Hi, Dr. Delaware. Wow, what a great place, my name’s pronounced Mick-
aah
-la.”

The smile was heavy firepower in the battle to be noticed. I walked her through high, white, hollow space to my office at the back.

Tall and narrow-hipped and busty, she put a lot of roll-and-sway into her walk. If her breasts weren’t real, their free movement was an ad for a great scalpel artist. Her face was oval and smooth, blessed by wide-set aquamarine eyes that could feign spontaneous fascination without much effort, balanced perfectly on a long, smooth stalk of a neck.

Faint bruising along the sides of the neck were masked by body makeup. The rest of her skin was bronze velvet stretched across fine bones. Tanning bed or one of those spray jobs that last for a week. Tiny, mocha freckles sprinkled across her nose hinted at her natural complexion. Wide lips were enlarged by gloss. A mass of honey-colored hair trailed past her shoulder blades. Some stylist had taken a long time to texturize the ’do and make it look careless. Half a dozen shades of blond aped nature.

Her black, stovepipe jeans hung nearly low enough to require a pubic wax. Her hip bones were smooth little knobs calling out for a tango partner. A black jersey, cap-sleeved T-shirt rhinestoned
Porn Star
ended an inch above a wry smile of navel. The same flawless golden dermis sheathed a drum-tight abdomen. Her nails were long and French-tipped, her false lashes perfect. Plucked brows added to the illusion of permanent surprise.

Lots of time and money spent to augment lucky chromosomes. She’d convinced the court system she was poor. Turned out she was, the debit card finished, two hundred bucks left in her checking account.

“I got my landlord to extend me a month,” she said, “but unless I clear this up soon and get another job, I’m going to get evicted.”

Tears welled in the blue-green eyes. Clouds of hair tossed and fluffed and resettled. Despite her long legs, she’d managed to curl up in the big leather patient’s chair and look small.

“What does clearing it up mean to you?” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Clearing it up.”

“You know,” she said. “I need to get rid of… this, this mess.”

I nodded and she cocked her head like a puppy. “Lauritz said you were the best.”

First-name basis with her lawyer. I wondered if Montez had been motivated by more than professional responsibility.

Stop, suspicious fellow. Focus on the patient.

This patient was leaning forward and smiling shyly, loose breasts cupping black jersey. I said, “What did Mr. Montez tell you about this evaluation?”

“That I should open myself up emotionally.” She poked at a corner of one eye. Dropped her hand and ran her finger along a black-denim knee.

“Open yourself up how?”

“You know, not hold back from you, just basically be myself. I’m…”

I waited.

She said, “I’m glad it’s you. You seem kind.” She curled one leg under the other.

I said, “Tell me how it happened, Michaela.”

“How what happened?”

“The phony abduction.”

She flinched. “You don’t want to know about my childhood or anything?”

“We may get into that later, but it’s best to start with the hoax itself. I’d like to hear what happened in your words.”

“My words. Boy.” Half smile. “No foreplay, huh?”

I smiled back. She unfolded her legs and a pair of high-heeled black Skechers alit on the carpet. She flexed one foot. Looked around the office. “I know I did wrong but I’m a good girl, Doctor. I
really
am.”

She crossed her arms over the
Porn Star
logo. “Where to start… I have to tell you, I feel so exposed.”

I pictured her rushing onto the road, naked, nearly causing an old man to drive his truck off a cliff. “I know it’s tough to think about what you did, Michaela, but it could be really helpful to get used to talking about it.”

“So you can understand me?”

“That,” I said, “but also at some point you might be required to allocate.”

“What’s that?”

“To tell the judge what you did.”

“Confession,” she said. “It’s a fancy word for confession?”

“I guess it is.”

“All these words they use.” She laughed softly. “At least I’m learning stuff.”

“Probably not the way you wanted to.”

“That’s for sure… lawyers, cops. I don’t even remember who I told what.”

“It’s pretty confusing,” I said.

“Totally, Doctor. I have a thing for that.”

“For what?”

“Confusion. Back in Phoenix —
in high school —
some people used to think I was an airhead. The brainiacs, you know? Truth is, I got confused a lot. Still do. Maybe it’s because I fell on my head when I was a little kid. Fell off a swing and passed out. After that I never really did too good in school.”

“Sounds like a bad fall.”

“I don’t remember much about it, Doctor, but they told me I was unconscious for half a day.”

“How old were you?”

“Maybe three. Four. I was swinging high, used to love to swing. Must’ve let go or something and went flying. I hit my head other times, too. I was always falling, tripping over myself. My legs grew so fast, when I was fifteen I went from five feet to five eight in six months.”

“You’re accident-prone.”

“My mom used to say I was an accident waiting to happen. I’d get her to buy me good jeans, and then I’d rip the knees and she’d get upset and promise never to buy me anything anymore.”

She touched her left temple. Caught some hair between her fingers and twisted. Pouted. That reminded me of someone. I watched her fidget and it finally came to me: young Brigitte Bardot.

Would she know who that was?

She said, “My head’s been spinning. Since the mess. It’s like someone else’s screenplay and I’m drifting through the scenes.”

“The legal system can be overwhelming.”

“I never thought I’d be
in
the system! I mean, I don’t even watch crime stuff on TV. My mom reads mysteries but I hate them.”

“What do you read?”

She’d turned aside, didn’t answer. I repeated the question.

“Oh, sorry, I spaced out. What do I read…
Us
magazine.
People, Elle,
you know.”

“How about we talk about what happened?”

“Sure, sure… it was just supposed to be… maybe Dylan and I took it too far but my acting teacher, her big thing is that the whole point of the training is to lose yourself and enter the scene, you really need to abandon the self, you know, the ego. Just give yourself up to the scene and flow.”

“That’s what you and Dylan were doing,” I said.

“I guess I started out
thinking
we were doing that and I guess… I really don’t know what happened. It’s so crazy, how did I get into this
craziness
?”

She slammed a fist into an open hand, shuddered, threw up her arms. Began crying softly. A vein throbbed in her neck, pumping through cover-up, accentuating a bruise.

I handed her a tissue. Her fingers lingered on my knuckles. She sniffled. “Thanks.”

I sat back down. “So you thought you were doing what Nora Dowd taught you.”