Survival of the Fittest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “I'll ask lots of questions. Could I ask you a few more?”

  “Yes,” said Carmeli, weakly. He reached for a third cigarette, picked up the matchbook but didn't light up immediately. “But if they're about our family life, I'll simply tell you what I told the others: We were happy. A happy family. We never appreciated how happy we were.”

  The black eyes closed, then opened. Flat no longer. Something burned within.

  “Back to the political issue for a second, sir,” said Milo. “No doubt the consulate gets threats. Do you save them?”

  “I'm sure we do but that's not my area.”

  “Do you have any objection to turning over copies?”

  “I can ask.”

  “If you tell me whose area it is, I'll be happy to ask, myself.”

  “No, I'll do it.” Carmeli's hand began to shake. “Your comment. About parents killing their own children. If you were implying—”

  “I wasn't. Of course not, please forgive me if I offended you. I was just explaining why some crimes don't get reported.”

  The black eyes were now moist. Carmeli removed his glasses and wiped them with the back of one hand. “My daughter was— a very special girl. Raising her was challenging and I believe we loved her more because of it. We never hurt her. Never lifted a finger against her. If anything we spoiled her. Thank God we spoiled her!”

  He put the glasses back on, slapped his hands back down on the couch. “What other questions do you have?” Hardened voice.

  “I'd like to know more about Irit, Mr. Carmeli.”

  “In what way?”

  “The kind of child she was, her personality. The things she liked and disliked.”

  “She liked everything. A very agreeable child. Kind, happy, always laughing, always wanting to help. I assume you've got Gorobich's files?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don't need to go over the details of her . . . medical condition. As a baby she had a fever that did damage.”

  Slipping his hand under his jacket he drew out a large calfskin billfold. Inside were slots for credit cards. A photo sat in the first one and he slipped it out and showed it to us without relinquishing it.

  Wallet-sized headshot of a beautiful, smiling child in a white dress with puff sleeves. Jewish star necklace. The same fair, curly hair and flawless skin, the same face . . . a mature face, no outward sign of retardation. In the death picture she'd looked younger. In this one, sparked by the joy of life, she could have been anywhere from twelve to seventeen.

  “This was Irit, Detective. Not the images in your files.”

  “How long ago was this taken?” said Milo.

  “This year. At school.”

  “Could I have a copy?”

  “If I can find one.” Carmeli pulled the snapshot back, protectively, and returned it to the billfold.

  “Did she have friends, sir?”

  “Of course. At school. Children her own age were too . . . quick for her.”

  “What about friends in the neighborhood?”

  “Not really.”

  “Any older kids who'd bothered or bullied her?”

  “Why? Because she was different?”

  “It happens.”

  “No,” said Carmeli. “Irit was sweet. She got along with everybody. And we sheltered her.”

  He blinked hard, lit up.

  Milo said, “How hard of hearing was she?”

  “She had no hearing in the right ear, about thirty-percent function in the left.”

  “With or without the hearing aid?”

  “With. Without the aid she could barely hear at all, but she seldom used it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn't like it, complained it was too loud, gave her headaches. We had it adjusted several times but she never liked it. Actually I—”

  He buried his face in his hands.

  Milo sat back. Now, he rubbed his face.

  A moment later, Carmeli sat up. Inhaling the third cigarette, he talked through the smoke.

  “She tried to deceive us about it. Wearing it when she left the house, then pulling it out the moment she got on the school bus. Or if not then, in class. Or losing it— we went through several replacements. We had her teachers make sure she wore it. So she began leaving it in her ear but switching it off. Sometimes she remembered to switch it back on when she came home but usually she didn't, so we knew— she was a sweet child, Mr. Sturgis. Innocent, not good at sneaking. But she did have a will. We tried reasoning with her, bribing her. Nothing worked. Finally, we came to the conclusion that she preferred not hearing. Being able to shut the world out, create her own world. Does that make sense to you, Doctor?”

  “Yes, I've seen that,” I said.

  “My wife has, too. She's a teacher. In London she worked at a school for special children, said many kids with problems enter their own private worlds. Still, we wanted Irit to know what was going on around her. We never stopped reminding her to use it.”

  “So that day,” said Milo, “even though she was wearing it, you don't know if it was switched on.”

  “My guess would be that it was off.”

  Milo thought, rubbed his face again. “Thirty percent in one ear at best. So even with the aid, it's likely she couldn't hear much of what was going on around her.”

  “No, not much.” Carmeli smoked and sat straighter.

  “Was Irit very trusting?” I said.

  He took a deep breath. “You need to understand, Doctor, that she grew up in Israel and in Europe, where things are much safer and children are much freer.”

  “Israel's safer?” said Milo.

  “Much safer, Mr. Sturgis. Your media play up the occasional incident, but outside of political terrorism, violence is very low. And in Copenhagen and London, where we lived later, she was also relatively free.”

  “Despite being the child of a diplomat?” I said.

  “Yes. We lived in good neighborhoods. Here in Los Angeles, a good neighborhood means nothing. Nothing prepared us for this city— certainly, Irit was trusting. She liked people. We taught her about strangers, the need to be cautious. She said she understood. But she was— in her own way she was very smart. But also young for her age— her brother is only seven but in some ways he was the older child. More . . . sophisticated. He's a very gifted boy. . . . Would Irit have gone with a stranger? I'd like to think no. Am I sure?” He shook his head.

  “I'd like to speak to your wife,” said Milo. “We'll be talking to your neighbors, as well. To find out if anyone noticed anything unusual on your street.”

  “No one did,” said Carmeli. “I asked them. But go ahead, ask them yourself. In terms of my wife, however, I insist on drawing some ground rules: You may not imply in any way that she could be responsible, the way you implied with me.”

  “Mr. Carmeli—”

  “Do I make myself clear, Detective?”

  His voice was loud, again, and his narrow torso had tensed, the shoulders up, as if he was prepared to strike out.

  “Sir,” said Milo, “I have no intention of adding to your wife's stress and I'm sorry if I offended you—”

  “Not a hint,” said Carmeli. “I won't permit you to speak to her, otherwise. She has experienced enough pain in her life. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I'll be present when you speak to her. And you may not talk to my son. He's too young, has no business with the police.”

  Milo didn't answer.

  “You don't like this,” said Carmeli. “You think I'm being . . . obstructionistic. But it's my family, not yours.”

  He sprang up, stood at attention, eyes fixed on the door. A dignitary at a boring but important function.

  We rose, too.

  “When can we meet Mrs. Carmeli?” said Milo.

  “I'll call you.” Carmeli strode to the door and held it open. “Be brutally honest, Mr. Sturgis. Do you have any hope of finding this monster?”

  “I'll do my best, M
r. Carmeli, but I deal in details, not hope.”

  “I see . . . I'm not a religious man, never attend synagogue except for official business. But if there is a life after death I'm fairly certain I'm going to heaven. Do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I've already been to hell.”

  8

  Descending in the elevator, Milo said, “That room. Wonder if Gorobich and Ramos merited his private office.”

  “Putting some distance between the murder and his work?”

  “Distance is a big issue for him, isn't it?”

  “Can you blame him?” I said. “Losing a child is bad enough without attributing it to your career choice. I'm sure he considered the political angle right from the beginning. The entire consulate probably did, and they decided it wasn't a factor. As you said, if they thought it was, they'd handle it themselves. And what Carmeli said about terrorism as attention-seeking backs that up. The same thing applies to counterterrorism: Send a message. Someone's out for your kids, come down hard and fast and with enough publicity to provide strong deterrence. And something else: Carmeli's demeanor wasn't that of a man who's achieved even the slightest closure. He's hurting, Milo. Starving for answers.”

  He frowned. “And we haven't given him any. Maybe that's another reason he doesn't like the department.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That crack about having worked with us before. Someone probably screwed up on his parade or something. Sticking with the baseball analogies, I'm starting out with two strikes against me.”

  The car was where we'd left it. He gave the parking attendant another tip, backed out, and drove down the exit ramp. Traffic was heavy on Wilshire and he waited to turn left.

  “That room,” he said, again. “Did you see the way the smoke got sucked up into the ceiling? Maybe he's not James Bond but my Mossad fantasies are taking over and I keep flashing images of secret tunnels up there, all this cloak-and-dagger crap.”

  “License to cater,” I said.

  “And cynical old me thinks: protesting too much . . . any other impressions of him?”

  “No, just what I said.”

  “No special antenna-twang?”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I can understand his wanting to keep distance between the murder and his job but don't you think he could have been a little more forthcoming? Like volunteering to turn over the consulate's crank mail . . . not that I blame him, I guess. From his perspective we're clowns who haven't done squat.”

  He made the turn.

  “Changing the subject,” I said. “The hearing aid. I keep thinking it was left there deliberately. Maybe the killer's telling us that's why he chose her.”

  “Telling us? A game-player?”

  “There's a gamelike quality to it, Milo. Malignant play. And what Carmeli told us about Irit's turning off the hearing aid, retreating to her own private world, would have made her a perfect target. For children, private worlds often mean overt self-stimulation: fantasizing, talking to themselves, strange-looking body movements. The killer could have watched and seen all that: first the hearing aid, then Irit wandering away from the others, acting preoccupied, lost in fantasy. He pulled her out of her script and into his.”

  “Wandered off,” he said. “So maybe we're just talking real bad luck.”

  “A mixture of bad luck and victim characteristics.”

  A moment later something else hit me.

  “There's a whole other possibility,” I said. “It was someone who knew her. Knew that even when she wore the aid, she turned it off and was easy to sneak up on.”

  He drove slowly, jaws knotted, squinting at more than sun-glare. We traveled for three blocks before he spoke.

  “So back to the old acquaintance list. Teachers, the bus driver. And neighbors, no matter what Carmeli says. I've seen too many girls brutalized by supposed friends and acquaintances. The wholesome kid down the block who up til then only cut up cats and dogs when no one was looking.”

  “That why you asked about bullies in the neighborhood?”

  “I asked because at this point I don't know what else to ask. But yeah, the thought did occur to me that someone could have had it in for her. She was retarded, deaf, Jewish, Israeli. Choose your criterion.”

  “Someone had it in for her but took care not to violate the body?”

  “He's twisted. You're the shrink.” His voice was husky with irritation.

  I said, “The M.O. files you gave me didn't classify by victim characteristic other than age and sex. If you can get hold of the information, I'd look into murders of deaf people. Handicapped people, in general.”

  “Handicapped defined how, Alex? Lots of our bad guys and their victims wouldn't win any IQ contests. Is a dope fiend who OD's and blasts himself into a coma handicapped?”

  “How about deaf, blind, crippled. Documented retardation, if that doesn't get too unwieldly. Victims under eighteen and strangled.”

  He put on speed. “That kind of information is obtainable. Theoretically. Given enough time and shoe leather and cops from other jurisdictions who cooperate and have decent memories and keep decent records. That's for L.A. County. If the killer's new to the region, did the same thing two thousand miles away, the chances dwindle. And we already know from Gorman's letter that nothing about the crime tipped off the FBI computers, meaning there's no VICAP match. Even if we do find another case, it'll be unsolved. And if the bastard swept up just as thoroughly, we're not any further along, forensically.”

  “Pessimism,” I said, “is not good for the soul.”

  “Sold my soul years ago.”

  “To whom?”

  “The bitch goddess Success. Then she cut town before paying off.” He shook his head and laughed.

  “What?”

  “Guy gets his statistics straight from the mayor's office. You see any career boost coming out of this one?”

  “Let's put it this way,” I said. “No.”

  He laughed harder.

  “Your honesty is laudatory, Doctor.”

  At Robertson he stopped at a red light and touched his ear.

  “Her own little world,” he said. “Poor kid.”

  A few moments later: “Hear no evil.”

  That night I didn't sleep much. Robin heard me tossing and asked what was wrong.

  “Too much caffeine.”

  9

  The Observer

  The neighborhood was worse than he remembered.

  Nice houses on his friend's street. Big, by his standards, most of them still decently maintained, at least from what he could see in the darkness. But to get there he'd passed through boulevards lined with pawnshops, liquor stores, and bars. Other businesses, to be sure, but at this hour they were all shuttered and the street was given over to girls in minimal clothing and guys drinking out of paper bags.

  Night sounds: music, car engines, laughter now and then, rarely happy. People hanging out on corners or half-concealed in the shadows. Dark-skinned people, with nothing to do.

  He was glad the Toyota was small and inconspicuous. Even so, occasionally someone stared as he passed.

  Watching him, hands in pockets, slouching.

  The half-naked girls paraded up and down or just stood at the curb, their pimps out of eyeshot but no doubt waiting.

  He knew all about that kind of thing. Knew all the games.

  His friend had told him not to be shocked and he'd come equipped, the nine-millimeter out of its box beneath the seat and tucked on the left side of his waistband where he could draw it out quickly with his gun hand.

  His gun hand . . . nice way to put it.

  So here he was, reasonably ready for surprises, but, of course, the key was not to be surprised.

  Suddenly his thoughts were drowned out by music from a passing car. Big sedan, chassis so low it nearly scraped the asphalt. Kids with shaved heads bobbing up and down. Throbbing bass beat. Not music. Words. Chanting— shouting to electric
drums.

  Ugly, angry rant that passed for poetry.

  Someone shouted and he looked around and checked his rearview mirror.

  A siren shrieked in the distance. Got louder.