Jonathan Kellerman_Petra Connor 01

by Billy Straight

  Why couldn’t Mom learn to be alone?

  Dr. Delaware said it was probably an accident, he pushed her and she fell, but that doesn’t make her any more alive.

  I keep thinking: If I’d been there, I could’ve saved her.

  Dr. Delaware talked to me about guilt, how it was normal but it would pass. How it was the parents’ job to take care of children, not the other way around. He said Mom did love me, she meant well, but she’d hit some bad luck. He also said that what happened to her was terrible—no way would he try to tell me everything was okay, because it wasn’t.

  He was certain, though, that Mom would be proud of how well I’d done on my own.

  Maybe.

  He considers me very “impressive.”

  At first I thought he was full of it, the way he’d just sit, not saying much. At first I thought he didn’t care. Now I think he probably does. He shows up every day at 6:00 P.M., stays with me for two hours, sometimes more, doesn’t mind if we don’t do anything.

  Before he left, he noticed the chessboard that Sam left and asked if I wanted to play. He’s about as good as Sam, and I beat him two out of three. He said, “Okay, next time,” and I said, “Prepare to lose.” He laughed and I asked him who’s paying him to play games and he said the police, don’t worry, he’d collect, he always does.

  Sometimes he tells jokes. Some of them are funny. The nurses seem to like him. I heard one nurse ask another if he was married and the other one said she wasn’t sure, she didn’t think so.

  He and Petra would make a good couple.

  I can imagine the two of them in a nice house, a good car, some kids, a dog. Or even one kid, so he could get all their attention.

  Nice happy family, taking trips, going to restaurants.

  Maybe it happens. I don’t know. I’ll never stop thinking about Mom—the door’s opening and for a moment I think it’s her.

  It’s Petra and she’s wearing a red suit.

  That’s different, she always wears black. She’s carrying a bag, and she gives it to me.

  Inside is a book.

  The presidents book. Not the one from the library. A brand-new one—clean cover, crisp white pages. It has that new-book smell. The colors in the illustrations are very bright. This is very cool.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks a lot.”

  She shrugs. “Enjoy. Who knows, Billy, someday you might be in there.”

  “Yeah, right.” It’s a crazy idea. But an interesting one.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JONATHAN KELLERMAN, America’s foremost author of psychological thrillers, turned from a distinguished career in child psychology to writing full-time. He has written twelve Alex Delaware novels—including When the Bough Breaks, Devil’s Waltz, The Clinic, and Survival of the Fittest—as well as the thriller The Butcher’s Theater, two volumes of psychology, and two children’s books. He and his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, have four children.

  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)

  Turn the page for an excerpt from

  Jonathan Kellerman’s

  new Alex Delaware novel

  A COLD HEART

  Available in hardcover

  from Ballantine Books

  CHAPTER 1

  The witness remembers it like this:

  Shortly after two A.M., Baby Boy Lee exits The Snake Pit through the rear alley fire door. The light fixture above the door is set up for two bulbs, but one is missing, and the illumination that trickles down onto the garbage-flecked asphalt is feeble and oblique, casting a grimy mustard-colored disc, perhaps three feet in diameter. Whether or not the missing bulb is intentional will remain conjecture.

  It is Baby Boy’s second and final break of the evening. His contract with the club calls for a pair of one-hour sets. Lee and the band have run over their first set by twenty-two minutes because of Baby Boy’s extended guitar and harmonica solos. The audience, a nearly full house of 124, is thrilled. The Pit is a far cry from the venues Baby Boy played in his heyday, but he appears to be happy, too.

  It has been a while since Baby Boy has taken the stage anywhere and played coherent blues. Audience members questioned later are unanimous: Never has the big man sounded better.

  Baby Boy is said to have finally broken free of a host of addictions, but one habit remains: nicotine. He smokes three packs of Kools a day, taking deep-in-the-lung drags while on stage, and his guitars are notable for the black, lozenge-shaped burn marks that scar their lacquered wood finishes.

  Tonight, though, Baby Boy has been uncommonly focused, rarely removing lit cigarettes from where he customarily jams them: just above the nut of his ’62 Telecaster, wedged under the three highest strings.

  So it is probably a tobacco itch that causes the singer to leap offstage the moment he plays his final note, flinging his bulk out the back door without a word to his band or anyone else. The bolt clicks behind him, but it is doubtful he notices.

  The fiftieth Kool of the day is lit before Baby Boy reaches the alley. He is sucking in mentholated smoke as he steps in and out of the disc of dirty light.

  The witness, such that he is, is certain that he caught a glimpse of Baby Boy’s face in the light and that the big man was sweating. If that’s true, perhaps the perspiration had nothing to do with anxiety but resulted from Baby Boy’s obesity and the calories expended on his music: For eighty-three minutes he has been jumping and howling and swooning, caressing his guitar, bringing the crowd to a frenzy at set’s end with a fiery, throat-ripping rendition of his signature song, a basic blues setup in the key of B-flat that witnesses the progression of Baby Boy’s voice from an inaudible mumble to an anguished wail.

  There’s women that’ll mess you

  There’s those that treat you nice

  But I got me a woman with

  A heart as cold as ice.

  A cold heart,

  A cold, cold heart

  My baby’s hot but she is cold

  A cold heart,

  A cold, cold heart

  My baby’s murdering my soul . . .

  At this point, the details are unreliable. The witness is a hepatitis-stricken, homeless man by the name of Linus Leopold Brophy, aged thirty-nine but looking sixty, who has no interest in the blues or any other type of music and who happens to be in the alley because he has been drinking Red Phoenix fortified wine all night and the Dumpster five yards east of the Snake Pit’s back door provides shelter for him to sleep off his delerium tremens. Later, Brophy will consent to a blood alcohol test and will come up .24, three times the legal limit for driving, but according to Brophy “barely buzzed.”

  Brophy claims to have been drowsy but awake when the sound of the back door opening rouses him, and he sees a big man step out into the light and then fade to darkness. Brophy claims to recall the lit end of the man’s cigarette glowing “like Halloween, you know—orange, shiny, real bright, know what I mean?” and admits that he seizes upon the idea of panhandling money from the smoker. (“Because the guy is fat, so I figure he had enough to eat, that’s for sure, maybe he’ll come across, know what I mean?”)

  Linus Brophy struggles to his feet an
d approaches the big man.

  Seconds later, someone else approaches the big man, arriving from the opposite direction—the mouth of the alley, at Lodi Place. Linus Brophy stops in his tracks, retreats into darkness, sits down next to the Dumpster.

  The new arrival, a man, also good-sized, according to Brophy, though not as tall as Baby Boy Lee and maybe half of Baby Boy’s width, walks right up to the singer and says something that sounds “friendly.” Questioned about this characterization extensively, Brophy denies hearing any conversation but refuses to budge from his judgement of amiability. (“Like they were friends, you know? Standing there, friendly.”)

  The orange glow of Baby Boy’s cigarette lowers from mouth to waist level as he listens to the new arrival.

  The new arrival says something else to Baby Boy and Baby Boy says something back.

  The new arrival moves closer to Baby Boy. Now, the two men appear to be hugging.

  The new arrival steps back, looks around, turns heel and leaves the alley the way he came.

  Baby Boy Lee stands there alone.

  His hand drops. The orange glow of the cigarette hits the ground, setting off sparks.

  Baby Boy sways. Falls.

  Linus Brophy stares, finally builds up the courage to approach the big man. Kneeling, he says, “Hey, man,” receives no answer, reaches out and touches the convexity of Baby Boy’s abdomen. He feels moisture on his hand and is repelled.

  As a younger man, Brophy had a temper. He has spent half of his life in various county jails and state penitentiaries, saw things, did things. He knows the feel and the smell of fresh blood.

  Stumbling to his feet, he lurches to the back door of the Snake Pit and tries to pull it open, but the door is locked. He knocks, no one answers.

  The shortest way out of the alley means retracing the steps of the newcomer: walk out to Lodi Place, hook north to Fountain and find someone who’ll listen.

  Brophy has already wet his pants twice tonight—first while sleeping drunk and now, upon touching Baby Boy Lee’s blood. Fear grips him and he heads the other way, tripping through the long block that takes him to the other end of the alley. Finding no one on the street at this hour, he makes his way to an all-night liquor store on the corner of Fountain and El Centro.

  Once inside the store, Brophy shouts at the Lebanese clerk who sits reading behind a Plexiglass window, the same man who one hour ago sold him three bottles of Red Phoenix. Brophy waves his arms, tries to get across what he has just seen. The clerk regards Brophy as exactly what he is—a babbling wino—and orders him to leave.

  When Brophy begins pounding on the Plexiglass, the clerk considers reaching for the nail-studded baseball bat he keeps beneath the counter. Sleepy and weary of confrontation, he dials 911.

  Brophy leaves the liquor store and walks agitatedly up and down Fountain Avenue. When a squad car from Hollywood Division arrives, Officers Keith Montez and Cathy Ruggles assume Brophy is their problem and handcuff him immediately.

  Somehow he manages to communicate with the Hollywood Blues and they drive their black and white to the mouth of the alley. High-intensity LAPD-issue flashlights bathe Baby Boy Lee’s corpse in a heartless, white glare.

  The big man’s mouth gapes and his eyes are rolled back. His banana-yellow Stevie Ray Vaughan t-shirt is dyed crimson and a red pool has seeped beneath his corpse. Later, it will be ascertained that the killer gutted the big man with a classic street-fighter’s move: long-bladed knife thrust under the sternum followed by a single upward motion that slices through intestine and diaphragm and nicks the right ventricle of Baby Boy’s already seriously enlarged heart.

  Baby Boy is long past help and the cops don’t even attempt it.

  Don’t miss these thrilling suspense novels from Jonathan Kellerman!

  The Murder Book

  L.A. psychologist-detective Alex Delaware has received a strange, anonymous package in the mail. Inside is an album filled with gruesome crime-scene photos. When his old friend and colleague, homicide detective Milo Sturgis, views the compendium of death, he is immediately shaken by one of the images: a young woman tortured, strangled, and dumped near a freeway ramp. The murder was one of Milo’s first cases as a rookie homicide cop: a vicious killing that he failed to solve-and has haunted him ever since. Now, two decades later, someone has chosen to stir up the past. As Alex and Milo set out to uncover what really happened twenty years ago, their relentless investigation reaches deep into L.A.’s nerve centers of power and wealth-past and present. While peeling back layer after layer of ugly secrets, they discover that the murder of one forgotten girl has chilling ramifications that extend far beyond the tragic loss of a single life.

  Flesh and Blood

  Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Dr. Alex Delaware’s office. Lauren angrily resists Alex’s help—and the psychologist is forced to chalk Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of his profession. Years later, when Alex and Lauren come face-to-face in a shocking encounter, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame. But the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren’s brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with his longtime lover, Robin Castagna, in order to pursue Lauren’s killer. As he investigates his young patient’s troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry—and then into mortal danger, when lust and big money collide in an unforgiving Los Angeles.

  Dr. Death

  A brutalized corpse discovered in a remote region of the Hollywood Hills plunges psychologist-detective Alex Delaware into a landscape of rage and madness as he struggles to solve this most baffling of homicides.

  To some, Eldon Mate was evil personified. Others saw the former physician as a saint. But one thing was clear: Dr. Death had snuffed out the lives of dozens of human beings and now someone had turned him into a victim. When Mate is found mutilated in a rented van, harnessed to his own killing machine, Delaware is asked to aid his old friend, homicide cop Milo Sturgis, in the hunt for the death doctor’s executioner. But Alex harbors secrets of his own that threaten to derail the partners’ friendship as well as the increasingly complex investigation. With page-turning suspense and vivid portraits of L.A.’s darkest side, perennial bestseller Jonathan Kellerman’s latest tale of psychopathology taken to the extreme delivers an unforgettable journey into the most sinister corners of the human mind.

  Monster

  A second-rate actor is found mutilated in a car trunk. Then a psychologist at a Los Angeles hospital for the criminally insane is murdered in a similar grisly fashion. Suddenly the incoherent ramblings of an inmate at the presumably secure institution begin to make chilling sense—they are, in fact, horrifying predictions. Yet how can a barely functional psychotic locked behind asylum walls possibly know such vivid details of crimes committed in the outside world? Drawn into a labyrinth of secrets, revenge, sex, and manipulation, Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis set out to unlock this enigma and put an end to the brutal killings—before the madman predicts their own demise. . . .

  Billy Straight

  A resourceful runaway alone in the wilds of Los Angeles, twelve-year-old Billy Straight suddenly witnesses a brutal stabbing in Griffith Park. Fleeing into the night, Billy cannot shake the horrific memory of the savage violence, nor the pursuit of a cold-blooded killer. For wherever Billy turns—from Hollywood Boulevard to the boardwalks of Venice—he is haunted by the chuck chuck sound of a knife sinking into flesh. As LAPD homicide detective Petra Connor desperately searches for the murderer, as the media swarms mercilessly around the story, the vicious madman stalks closer to his prey. Only Petra can save Billy. But it will take all her cunning to uncover a child lost in a fierce urban labyrinth—where a killer seems right at home. . . .

  Survival of the Fittest

  The daughter of a dipl
omat disappears on a school field trip—lured into the Santa Monica mountains and killed in cold blood. Her father denies the possibility of a political motive. There are no signs of struggle, no evidence of sexual assault, leaving psychologist Alex Delaware and his friend LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to pose the disturbing question: Why?

  Working together with Daniel Sharavi, a brilliant Israeli police inspector, Delaware and Sturgis soon find themselves ensnared in one of the darkest, most menacing cases of their careers. And when death strikes again, it is Alex who must go undercover, alone, to expose an unthinkable conspiracy of self-righteous brutality and total contempt for human life.

  The Clinic

  Professor Hope Devane’s male-bashing pop-psych bestseller created a storm of controversy on the talk-show circuit. Now she is dead, brutally slashed on a quiet street in one of L.A.’s safest neighborhoods. The LAPD’s investigation has gone cold, and homicide detective Milo Sturgis turns to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware for a psychological profile of the victim—and a portrait of a killer.

  Hope Devane had very different public and private faces. The killer could be any one of the millions who read her book, or someone from the personal life she kept so carefully separate. As Alex and Milo dig deeper into her shadowy past, they will set an elaborate trap for her killer . . . and reveal the unspeakable act that triggered a dark chain of violence.

  The Web

  Psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware finds terror in the heart of paradise in this relentlessly sinister novel by America’s premier writer of psychological suspense. Three months in paradise, all expenses paid. It’s an invitation Alex Delaware can’t refuse. Dr. Woodrow Wilson Moreland, a revered scientist and philanthropist on the tiny Pacific island of Aruk, has invited Alex to his home to help him organize his papers for publication—a light workload leaving Alex plenty of time to enjoy a romantic interlude with Robin Castagna.