She had clear authority. The kind that imprints early? The scars … young for a face lift. But not for patching old injuries?
“Clean yourself up,” she said. “Take an upper, then come back and give me a hand.”
He complied.
“Big sis?” I said. “Hi, Jo.”
Silence. That same smug smile I’d seen at Sanctum.
“One pair against the other,” I said. “What are we talking about here? Going for the gold in sibling rivalry?”
She chuckled. “You have no idea.”
“Must have been tough,” I said. “Daddy leaving your mother for their mother. Then she got so depressed, she escaped to Europe and left you behind. With him, of all people. You and Ken end up locked in a dinky little cabin while the other two get to stay in the big house.”
“Free psychoanalysis,” she said. “Sit down on that couch—on your hands, keep your butt on your hands.”
“Such gratitude. I saved your life.”
“Gee, thanks.” She laughed. “What have you done for me today?”
Meaning it.
A part of him—genetically. Raising selfishness to an art form.
I thought of the way she’d tended her father. Absorbing his sexual comments. Changing his diapers.
Jocasta. Turning his Oedipal joke against him, secretly.
Lowell so estranged from his own child that he didn’t recognize her.
The scars remnants of the fall down the mountain. New face.…
Nova. New person.
“Anyone with you when you fell off that cliff?”
No answer.
“Wouldn’t have been Ken, would it? He tends to damage women. How can you be sure he didn’t push you?”
A toilet flushed. Ken came out of the guest bedroom with his hair slicked like a country kid’s on Sunday.
Nova said, “I’ll take care of him. You get her.”
“She’s out like a light. I’ll have to carry her.”
“So?”
He touched his lower back and grimaced.
“Do it.”
He left and climbed the stairs.
I said, “He’s really the walking wounded, isn’t he?”
“He’s a dear.” The gun hadn’t moved, and she was just out of reach.
“Dangerous business being a member of your family. Then again, that’ll work to your advantage. Only two slices of the pie, if you and he don’t kill each other first.”
She smiled.
I said, “Yeah, you’re probably right. You and Kenny will find a nice quiet place, get all cozy, and give in to what you’ve been wanting to do for such a long time. What you wanted to do to Daddy. Changing diapers’ a poor substitute for the real thing, isn’t it, cutie?”
She was tough and she knew what I was doing, but her eyes wavered for just a fraction of a second. Her grip on the gun must have loosened, too. Because when I chopped down hard at her wrist, she cried out and the weapon fell to the carpet.
She was a strong woman, full of rage, but there are few women who can handle even a small man physically. That’s part of rape and battering and a lot of the tension between the sexes.
This time, it worked out for the best.
CHAPTER
50
Milo said, “Can’t talk long, got a promising suspect on the copycats. Roofer who was working at the courthouse during the trial.”
“Does he have a dog?”
“Big surly mutt,” he said gleefully. “Aren’t you glad you weren’t the poor clown who had to give him an enema?”
“How’d you get on to him?”
“One of the bailiffs gave us the lead. Says the guy used to sit in on afternoon sessions, doodle, and write things down; always had a weird feeling about him. Asshole lives in Orange County and has a bunch of DUI’s, Peeping Toms, and a five-year-old attempted rape conviction. Santa Ana says their first interview was encouraging. I’m sitting in on the next one in half an hour.”
“So it had nothing to do with the Bogettes.”
“Not necessarily. Bailiff thinks he saw the asshole talking to some of the girls a couple of times. Shitbag denies any connection to them, but his room was full of their press clippings and a videotape of a TV interview with the head harpy—Stasha. Plus sundry other toys. That and the bailiff’s say-so is enough for us to pull those hags in for questioning and sweat them big-time. We’re asking for a pretty inclusive warrant before we come knocking. My bet is we find weapons and dope at that ranch, should be able to put ’em away for something.”
“Good luck.”
“Either way, I like this bastard for Shannon and Nicolette. Santa Ana found a hoop earring that might have been Nicolette’s, as well as receipts for three storage lockers in Long Beach. Be interesting to see what the scrote finds worth storing. Forensic’s still going over his place with their vacuum cleaners; it’ll be awhile before all the fibers are analyzed. Anyway, I wanted you to know.”
“Appreciate it. I can always use a little good news.”
“Yeah … something else. We finally ID’d Ms. Nova’s prints. Sorry to shatter your shrink’s intuition, but she’s not the sister.”
“What?”
“The real Jocasta Lowell was printed when she was a student at Berkeley. Busted at a demonstration. And again after her body was shipped back from Nepal, so there’s no doubt. Ken was there with her, by the way, so maybe he did push her off. But our nasty girl’s a piece of work named Julie Beth Claypool. Nude dancer, druggie, biker babe, bad-check artist. String of arrests back to when she was sixteen. Wrote poetry in stir. Ken met her in Rehab, couple of years ago. Love at first bite.”
“She pushes him around,” I said, still in shock.
“I wouldn’t doubt it. SFPD says she’s been known to go for the whips and chains.”
“The scars,” I said. “God, I missed the boat completely—using the Oedipal wedge to throw her off balance—maybe I wanted her to flinch so badly I imagined it.”
My heart was hurling itself against my chest wall. I’d broken out in a cold sweat.
“Talk about operating on false premises,” I said.
“What’d you tell her, exactly?”
“That she wanted to screw Ken the way she’d wanted to screw Daddy.”
“Well,” he said, “SFPD says she comes from a real shitty family. Suspected incest—brothers and Dad, back to when she was real little.”
“Oh, man. The same old story.”
“In this case, lucky for you.”
“Yeah … maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.”
Lucy said, “Are peaches okay? I’ve already got pears.”
The woman next to her said, “Put them in, honey. Those old people, the fruit’s good for them.”
They were standing at one of a series of long tables piled high with groceries, along with a dozen other people. Sorting canned goods and boxes of rice and beans and cereal. The Church of the Outstretched Hand’s hub was a run-down warehouse.
Men and women of all ages and colors, working side by side, quietly and cheerfully, putting together boxes for delivery and loading them into a couple of old pickups out in back.
There were other places like it, all over the city.
Newspapers, especially those in the cold-weather zones, love to portray L.A. as a Balkanized smog-blinded armed camp with no more substance than a sitcom and no more altruism than a politician. It’s not any closer to the truth than a lot of the other stuff in the papers.
Sherrell Best was packing along with his parishioners, distinguishable as the leader only because he had to break to take frequent phone calls.
He came over to us. “This is a wonderful person.”
Lucy blushed. “Saint Lucretia.”
“The kind of good she’s created has to come from a beautiful soul, Dr. Delaware.”
“I know.”
“Please,” said Lucy, placing a packet of cookies into the box.
“Wonderful,” said Best. “Can I s
teal the good doctor from you for a second, Lucy?”
“Only if you bring him back.”
He took me into a cubbyhole office and closed a particle-board door that didn’t cut out much of the noise. On the wall were some of the same type of biblical pictures he’d had in his kitchen.
“I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve done,” he said.
“It was my pleas—”
“It was exceptional, the way you stuck by her. She’s blessed to have met you and so am I.” He gave me a troubled look.
“What is it, Reverend?”
“You know, for a time I thought if I ever found what happened I’d take the law into my own hands. The Bible exhorts against revenge, but it also permits the Blood Redeemer his due. There were times I thought I’d do something terrible. My faith was lacking.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I could have been a better father. I could have given her money so she didn’t need to—”
“Stop,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m no Solomon, but I know the difference between a good father and a bad one.”
He cried some more, softly, then snapped out of it. Drying his eyes, he took my hand in both of his. “How selfish of me—so much work to be done. Always hunger.”
I returned to the packing line.
Lucy’s hands moved like a weaver’s at a loom. She was trying to smile but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “Guess I’ll be seeing you at the beach tomorrow.”
“Here, too,” I said. “I think I’ll stick around for a while.”
To my daughter Ilana,
a fine and magical mind, a sweet soul,
and, always, music
BOOKS BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN
FICTION:
Billy Straight (1998)
Survival of the Fittest (1997)
The Clinic (1997)
The Web (1996)
Self-Defense (1995)
Bad Love (1994)
Devil’s Waltz (1993)
Private Eyes (1992)
Time Bomb (1990)
Silent Partner (1989)
The Butcher’s Theater (1988)
Over the Edge (1987)
Blood Test (1986)
When the Bough Breaks (1985)
NONFICTION:
Helping the Fearful Child (1981)
Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980)
FOR CHILDREN, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED:
Jonathan Kellerman’s ABC of Weird Creatures (1995)
Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JONATHAN KELLERMAN, America’s foremost author of psychological thrillers, turned from a distinguished career in child psychology to writing full-time. His works include fourteen Alex Delaware books—When the Bough Breaks, Blood Test, Over the Edge, Silent Partner, Time Bomb, Private Eyes, Devil’s Waltz, Bad Love, Self-Defense, The Web, Survival of the Fittest, Monster, The Clinic, and Dr. Death—as well as the thrillers The Butcher’s Theater and Billy Straight, three volumes of psychology, and two children’s books. He and his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, have four children.
Read on for an excerpt from Jonathan Kellerman’s
Victims
CHAPTER
1
This one was different.
The first hint was Milo’s tight-voiced eight a.m. message, stripped of details.
Something I need you to see, Alex. Here’s the address.
An hour later, I was showing I.D. to the uniform guarding the tape. He winced. “Up there, Doctor.” Pointing to the second story of a sky-blue duplex trimmed in chocolate-brown, he dropped a hand to his Sam Browne belt, as if ready for self-defense.
Nice older building, the classic Cal-Spanish architecture, but the color was wrong. So was the silence of the street, sawhorsed at both ends. Three squad cars and a liver-colored LTD were parked haphazardly across the asphalt. No crime lab vans or coroner’s vehicles had arrived, yet.
I said, “Bad?”
The uniform said, “There’s probably a better word for it but that works.”
Milo stood on the landing outside the door doing nothing.
No cigar-smoking or jotting in his pad or grumbling orders. Feet planted, arms at his sides, he stared at some faraway galaxy.
His blue nylon windbreaker bounced sunlight at strange angles. His black hair was limp, his pitted face the color and texture of cottage cheese past its prime. A white shirt had wrinkled to crepe. Wheat-colored cords had slipped beneath his paunch. His tie was a sad shred of poly.
He looked as if he’d dressed wearing a blindfold.
As I climbed the stairs, he didn’t acknowledge me.
When I was six steps away, he said, “You made good time.”
“Easy traffic.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“Including you.” He handed me gloves and paper booties.
I held the door for him. He stayed outside.
The woman was at the rear of the apartment’s front room, flat on her back. The kitchen behind her was empty, counters bare, an old avocado-colored fridge free of photos or magnets or mementos.
Two doors to the left were shut and yellow-taped. I took that as a Keep Out. Drapes were drawn over every window. Fluorescent lighting in the kitchen supplied a nasty pseudo-dawn.
The woman’s head was twisted sharply to the right. A swollen tongue hung between slack, bloated lips.
Limp neck. A grotesque position some coroner might label “incompatible with life.”
Big woman, broad at the shoulders and the hips. Late fifties to early sixties, with an aggressive chin and short, coarse gray hair. Brown sweatpants covered her below the waist. Her feet were bare. Unpolished toenails were clipped short. Grubby soles said bare feet at home was the default.
Above the waistband of the sweats was what remained of a bare torso. Her abdomen had been sliced horizontally below the navel in a crude approximation of a C-section. A vertical slit crossed the lateral incision at the center, creating a star-shaped wound.
The damage brought to mind one of those hard-rubber change purses that relies on surface tension to protect the goodies. Squeeze to create a stellate opening, then reach in and scoop.
The yield from this receptacle was a necklace of intestines placed below the woman’s neckline and arranged like a fashionista’s puffy scarf. One end terminated at her right clavicle. Bilious streaks ran down her right breast and onto her rib cage. The rest of her viscera had been pulled down into a heap and left near her left hip.
The pile rested atop a once-white towel folded double. Below that was a larger maroon towel spread neatly. Four other expanses of terry cloth formed a makeshift tarp that shielded beige wall-to-wall carpeting from biochemical insult. The towels had been arranged precisely, edges overlapping evenly for about an inch. Near the woman’s right hip was a pale blue T-shirt, also folded. Spotless.
Doubling the white towel had succeeded in soaking up a good deal of body fluid, but some had leaked into the maroon under-layer. The smell would’ve been bad enough without the initial stages of decomp.
One of the towels beneath the body bore lettering. Silver bath sheet embroidered Vita in white.
Latin or Italian for “life.” Some monster’s notion of irony?
The intestines were green-brown splotched pink in spots, black in others. Matte finish to the casing, some puckering that said they’d been drying for a while. The apartment was cool, a good ten degrees below the pleasant spring weather outside. The rattle of a wheezy A.C. unit in one of the living room windows was inescapable once I noticed it. Noisy apparatus, rusty at the bolts, but efficient enough to leach moisture from the air and slow down the rot.
But rot is inevitable and the woman’s color wasn’t anything you’d see outside a morgue.
Incompatible with life.
I bent to inspect the wounds. Both slashes were co
nfident swoops unmarred by obvious hesitation marks, shearing smoothly through layers of skin, subcutaneous fat, diaphragmatic muscle.
No abrasions around the genital area and surprisingly little blood for so much brutality. No spatter or spurt or castoff or evidence of a struggle. All those towels; horribly compulsive.
Guesses filled my head with bad pictures.
Extremely sharp blade, probably not serrated. The neck-twist had killed her quickly and she’d been dead during the surgery, the ultimate anesthesia. The killer had stalked her with enough thoroughness to know he’d have her to himself for a while. Once attaining total control, he’d gone about choreographing: laying out the towels, tucking and aligning, achieving a pleasing symmetry. Then he’d laid her down, removed her T-shirt, careful to keep it clean.
Standing back, he’d inspected his prep work. Time for the blade.
Then the real fun: anatomical exploration.
Despite the butchery and the hideous set of her neck, she looked peaceful. For some reason, that made what had been done to her worse.
I scanned the rest of the room. No damage to the front door or any other sign of forced entry. Bare beige walls backed cheap upholstered furniture covered in a puckered ocher fabric that aped brocade but fell short. White ceramic beehive lamps looked as if they’d shatter under a finger-snap.
The dining area was set up with a card table and two folding chairs. A brown cardboard take-out pizza box sat on the table. Someone—probably Milo—had placed a yellow plastic evidence marker nearby. That made me take a closer look.
No brand name on the box, just PIZZA! in exuberant red cursive above the caricature of a portly mustachioed chef. Curls of smaller lettering swarmed around the chef’s fleshy grin.
Fresh pizza!
Lotta taste!
Ooh la la!
Yum yum!
Bon appétit!
The box was pristine, not a speck of grease or finger-smudge. I bent down to sniff, picked up no pizza aroma. But the decomp had filled my nose; it would be a while before I’d be smelling anything but death.
If this was another type of crime scene, some detective might be making ghoulish jokes about free lunch.
Four Classic Alex Delaware Thrillers 4-Book Bundle Page 172
