To the Bone by Neil McMahon Page A

Monks. D’Anton had gone through the charade of not remembering the name, but in fact he knew perfectly damned well who Monks was.
    â€œCall that Dr. Monks,” D’Anton said to Gwen. “Tell him I apologize for being rude. Stress, all that. He’s welcome to look at Eden’s records. We’ll have them ready if he cares to drop by.”
    Gwen’s eyebrows rose. “Mind if I ask why the sudden chumminess?”
    â€œBecause he’s got a reputation for causing trouble. I want him to know I have nothing to hide. To leave me the hell alone.” He looked at his watch. It was 9:47 A.M. , a time when he would normally be brimming with energy, even excited, lost in the full swing of the morning’s work. “How many more appointments?”
    â€œThree.”
    â€œSend in the next one,” he said. “Let’s get this day over with.”
    Â 
    Monks drove toward nowhere, heading west out of a vague wish to get near the ocean, as if that would ease the constriction he felt around him. He kept turning on unfamiliar streets, working his way farther from the city, until he topped the bluffs that crested the coastline to the south. He was not familiar with the area; it was somewhere in Pacifica.
    He found a place to pull off the road and got out of the Bronco, leaning across the hood on his forearms. He watched the long white-capped breakers roll in, remembering some thirty years ago, when he had shipped out to tend the wounded in Vietnam, and come home with his own inglorious million-dollar wound, delivered by the tiny saber of an anopheles mosquito.
    To the east, the traffic on Interstate 280 streamed nonstop down the long depression of the San Andreas Fault, an endless speeding line of hot little bumper cars darting in and out of clusters of eighteen-wheelers, sleek luxury European sedans, RVs towing boats or second vehicles. They all had one thing in common, the one thing that, right now, looked better than just about anything in the world. They were all on their way to someplace else.
    There were plenty of things bothering him about Eden Hale’s death, but now he pinned down an elusive one that had been growing underneath the others. Several different people had weighed in so far, all with their own very different perspectives. Most of their interests were self-oriented—Baird Necker’s in protecting the hospital; Gwen Bricknell’s, the plastic surgery clinic; D’Anton’s, his reputation. Ray Dreyer seemed mainly concerned about the marketable commodity he had lost. And a lot of what was driving Monks himself, he admitted, was a desire to justify his own actions in the ER.
    But in this shuffle, Eden had gotten lost. She was the seed that had started it all, but then she had been pushed aside, ignored, while the players squared off to pursue their own aims.
    Monks got behind the Bronco’s wheel and punched a number on his cell phone. While it rang, his gaze fixed on a welded patch on the opposite door panel, where on a rainy evening last fall, a 9-millimeter bullet had exited while he lay huddled on the floor, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other frantically jamming down on the accelerator, trying to escape the ambush he had driven into.
    After four rings, he got the answering machine of Stover Larrabee, a private detective and Monks’s partner in insurance investigations.
    â€œI need a favor, Stover,” Monks said. “There’s a young actress named Eden Hale. It looks like she’s going to figure into my life, so I’d like to know more about hers.”
    Monks paused. “Did I say ‘There is’? I should have said ‘was.’”

6
    I n Stover Larrabee’s darkened office, a computer screen was showing a video. A pretty young woman, wearing a fiery red wig and nothing else, was down on all fours, mouthing the erection of a panting man with a weight lifter’s torso. Another, similarly built,