Jonathan Kellerman - [Alex Delaware 01]

by When the Bough Breaks (Shrunken Heads) (v5. 0) (epub)

  I kept a watch on him through the side mirror. He rolled toward me, three feet away, now two, approaching on the driver’s side. One hand went inside the leather jacket. A young mother wheeled a small child in a stroller, passing directly in front of my bumper. The child wailed, the mother chewed gum, heavy-legged, moving oh so slowly. Something metallic came into the hand in the mirror. The motorcycle was just behind me, almost flush with the driver’s window. I saw the gun now, an ugly little snub-nosed affair, easy to conceal in a large palm. I raced my engine. The gum-chewing young matron wasn’t impressed. She seemed to move in slow motion, indolently working her jaws, the child now screaming at the top of his lungs. The light remained red but its catercornered cousin had turned amber. The longest light in the history of traffic engineering … how long could an amber light last?

  The snout of the revolver pressed against the glass, directly in line with my left temple. A black hole miles long wrapped in a concentric halo of silver. The mother still dragged her heavy body lazily across the intersection, her heel in line with my right front tire, unaware that the man in the green Cadillac was going to be blown away any second. The finger on the trigger blanched. The mother stepped clear by an inch. I twisted the steering wheel to the left, pressed down hard on the accelerator and shot diagonally across the intersection into the path of the ongoing traffic. I gunned the engine, laid a long patch of rubber, heard a Delphic chorus of curses, shouts, honking horns and squealing brakes, and shot up the first side street, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a Water and Power van coming from the opposite direction.

  The street was narrow and winding, and pocked with potholes. The Seville was no sports car and I had to fight its slack steering system to maintain speed and control around the turns. I climbed, bounced down hard, and swooped steeply down a hill. A boulevard stop at the bottom was clear. I sped through. Three blocks of level turf at seventy miles an hour and the buzz was back, growing louder. The motorcycle, so much easier to maneuver, was catching up fast.

  The road came to an end at a cracked masonry wall. Left or right? Decisions, decisions, with the adrenaline shooting through every corpuscle, the buzz now a roar, my hands sweaty, slipping off the wheel. I looked in the mirror, saw one hand come off the bars and aim the gun at my tires. I chose left and floored the Seville, putting my body into it. The road rose, scaling empty streets, higher, spiraling into the smog, a roller coaster of a street planned by a berserk engineer. The motorcyclist kept riding up on my rear, raking his gun hand off the bars whenever he could, striving for steady aim …

  I swerved continuously, dancing out of his sights, but the narrowness of the street gave me little leeway. I knew I had to avoid slipping unconsciously into a regular rhythm—back and forth, back and forth, a gasoline-fueled metronome—for to do so would be to offer an easy target. I drove erratically, crazily, jerking the wheel, slowing down, speeding up, careening against the curb, losing a hubcap that spun off like a chromium Frisbee. It was a direct assault on my axle and I didn’t know how long it could last.

  We continued to climb. A view of Sunset below appeared around a corner. We were back in Echo Park, on the south side of the boulevard. The road hit its peak. A shot whizzed by so close that the Seville’s windows vibrated. I swerved and a second shot went far afield.

  The terrain changed as the altitude rose, thinning from residential blocks of frame houses to progressively emptier stretches of dusty lots, with here and there a decrepit shack. No more telephone poles, no cars, no signs of human habitation … perfect for an afternoon killing.

  We began to race downhill and I saw with horror that I was heading full-speed into a dead end, mere yards from slamming into a pile of dirt at the mouth of an empty construction site. There was no escape—the road terminated at the site and was additionally blocked by piles of cinder block, stacks of drywall, lumber and more mounds of excavated dirt. A goddam box canyon. If the impact of smashing nose-first into the dirt didn’t kill me, I’d be imbedded, tires spinning hopelessly, as immobile as parsley in aspic, a perfect, passive target …

  The man on the motorcycle must have harbored similar thoughts in that same instant, for he engaged in a quick series of confident actions. He removed his gun hand from the bars, slowed, and came around to the left, ready to be at my side when my escape came to an end.

  I made the only move left for me: I jammed on the brakes. The Seville convulsed, skidded violently, spun and rocked on its bearings, threatening to capsize. I needed the skid to continue, so I steered away from it. The car spun like a rotor blade.

  Then a sudden impact threw me across the seat.

  My front end had gone out of control and collided with the cycle as it came out of a spin with full torque behind it. The lighter vehicle bounced off the car, caromed and sailed through the air in a wide arc over the hill of earth. I watched as man and machine parted ways, the cycle climbing, stuntlike, falling, its rider thrown loose, flying higher, a scarecrow cut free from its stake, then falling too, landing unseen.

  The Seville stopped spinning and its engine died. I pulled myself up. My sore arm had been knocked against the passenger door panel and it hummed with pain. No sign of movement came from the site. I got out quietly, crouched behind the car and waited there as my head cleared and my breathing slowed. Still nothing. I spied a two-by-four several feet away, snatched it, hefted it like a stave and circled the mound of dirt, staying low to the ground. Creeping onto the site I saw that a partial foundation had been laid—a right angle of concrete from which corrugated steel rods protruded like flowerless stalks. The remains of the motorcycle were visible immediately, a rubbish heap of seared metal and shattered windshield.

  It took several more minutes of poking amid the rubble to find the body. It had landed in a ditch at the junction of the two cement arms, a spot where the earth was etched with caterpillar tread marks, next to a broken fiberglass shower stall and half-concealed by molding sheets of insulation.

  The opaque helmet was still in place but it had offered no protection from the steel rod that stuck out through a large, jagged hole in the rider’s throat. The shaft extended just below the Adam’s apple; it had created a good-sized exit wound coming through. Blood seeped from the hole, turning muddy in the dirt. The trachea was visible, still pink, but deflated, leaking fluid. A fleck of gore tipped the rod.

  I knelt and undid the helmet strap, and tried to pull off the headpiece. The neck had bent unnaturally upon being pierced and it proved a difficult task. As I struggled I felt steel scrape against vertebrae, cartilage and gristle. My belly quaked with nausea. I heaved and turned away to vomit in the dirt.

  With a bitter taste in my mouth and eyes brimming with tears, breathing hard and loud, I returned to the grisly chore. The helmet finally came loose and the bare skull flopped to the ground. I stared down into the lifeless, bearded face of Jim Halstead, the coach at La Casa de Los Niños. His lips were drawn back in death, cast in a permanent sneer. The force of landing after his final free fall had snapped his jaws down upon his tongue, and the severed tip rested on the hairy chin like some fleshy, parasitic grub. His eyes were open and rolled backward, the whites flooded with blood. He cried crimson tears.

  I looked away from him and saw the sun hit something shiny several feet to the right. I walked to it, found the gun and examined it—a chrome-plated .38. I took it and tucked it in the waistband of my trousers.

  The ground at my feet radiated heat and the stench of something burning. Congealed tar. Toxic waste. Bio-un-degradable garbage. Polyvinyl vegetation. A bluejay had landed on Halstead’s face. It pecked at his eyes.

  I found a dusty drop cloth peppered with specks of dried cement. The bird fled at my approach. I covered the body with the cloth, weighted down the corners with large stones and left him that way.

  27

  THE ADDRESS the receptionist had given me for Tim Kruger matched the oversized steel numbers on the face of a bone-white highrise on Ocean, just a mile or so fr
om where the Handler-Gutierrez murders had taken place.

  The entry hall was a crypt of marble floors and mirrors, furnished with a single white cotton sofa and two rubber plants in wicker canisters. The upper half of one wall was given over to rows of alphabetically arranged brass mailboxes. It didn’t take long to locate Kruger’s apartment on the twelfth floor. I took a short silent ride on an elevator padded with gray batting and exited into a corridor floored in royal-blue plush and paper with grasscloth.

  Kruger’s place was located in the northwest corner of the building. I knocked on the royal-blue door.

  He opened it, dressed in jogging shorts and a Casa de los Niños T-shirt, shiny with perspiration and smelling as if he’d been exercising. He saw me, stifled his surprise and said, “Hello, Doctor” in a stagey voice. Then he noticed the gun in my hand and the stolid face turned ugly.

  “What the—”

  “Just get in,” I said.

  He backed into the apartment and I followed. It was a small place, low ceilings sprayed with plaster cottage cheese and starred with glitter. The walls and carpet were beige. There was little furniture and what was there looked rented. A wall of glass offering a panoramic view of Santa Monica Bay saved it from being a cell. There was no artwork on the walls, except for a single, framed wrestling poster from Hungary. A tiny convenience kitchen was off on one side, a foyer to the other.

  Athletic equipment filled a good portion of the living room—snow skis and boots, a pair of waxed wooden oars, several sets of tennis rackets, running shoes, a mountaineer’s backpack, a football, a basketball, a bow and quiver of arrows. A beige-painted brick mantel was topped by a dozen trophies.

  “You’re an active boy, Tim.”

  “What the hell do you want?” The yellow-brown eyes moved around like pachinko balls.

  “Where’s the little girl—Melody Quinn?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Put that thing away.”

  “You know damn well where she is. You and your fellow murderers abducted her three days ago because she’s a witness to your dirty work. Have you killed her too?”

  “I’m no killer. I don’t know any kid named Quinn. You’re crazy.”

  “No killer? Jeffrey Saxon might not agree.”

  His mouth dropped open, then shut abruptly.

  “You left a trail, Tim. Pretty arrogant to think no one would find it.”

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “I’m who I said I was. A better question is who are you? A rich boy who can’t seem to stay out of trouble? A guy who enjoys snapping twigs at hunchbacks and waiting for the tears? Or just an amateur actor whose best bit is an impression of Jack the Ripper?”

  “Don’t try to pin that on me!” He rolled his hands into fists.

  “Hands up.” I waved the gun.

  He obeyed very slowly, straightening his thick, brown arms and lifting them above his head. It drew my attention upward, and away from his feet. That enabled him to make his move.

  The kick came at me like a boomerang, catching the underside of my wrist and numbing the fingers. The gun flew from my grasp and landed on the carpet with a thud. We both leaped for it and ended in a tangle on the floor, punching, kicking, gouging. I was oblivious to pain and seething with fury. I wanted to destroy him.

  He was an iron man. It was like fighting an outboard motor. I clawed at his abdomen, but couldn’t find an inch of extra flesh. I elbowed him in the ribs. It knocked him backward, but he rebounded as if on springs and landed a punch to the jaw that threw me off-balance long enough for him to get me in a headlock, then hold me skillfully at bay so that my arms were ineffective.

  He grunted and increased the pressure. My head felt ready to burst. My vision blurred. I struck at him helplessly. With a strange kind of delicacy he danced out of reach, squeezing me tighter. Then he started pulling my head back. A little more and I knew my neck would snap. I experienced a sudden kinship with Jeffrey Saxon, drew upon a reserve of strength and brought my heel down hard on his instep. He cried out and reflexively let go, then tried to renew the lock, but it was too late. I landed a kick that snapped his head to the side and followed it with a series of rapid straightarm punches to the lower belly. When he doubled over I chopped down on the place where his head joined his neck. He sank to his knees, but I didn’t take any chances—he was strong and skilled. Another kick to the face. Now he was down. I placed one foot under the bridge of his nose. One quick forward motion and splinters of bone would lobotomize him. It turned out to be an unnecessary precaution. He was out.

  I found a coil of thick nylon rope in the mountaineer’s pack and trussed him as he lay on his abdomen, feet drawn up behind him, bound and secured to another piece of rope that similarly raised his arms. I checked the knots, drew them tight and dragged him clear of any weapon. I retrieved the .38, kept it in one hand, went into his kitchen and soaked a towel in cold water.

  When several minutes of slapping him with the towel elicited no more than a half-conscious groan, I made another trip to the kitchen, pulled a Dutch oven out of a dish drainer, filled it with water and dumped the contents on his head. That brought him around.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned. He tried those first struggles that all prisoners attempt, gnashed his teeth, finally realized his predicament and sank back down, gasping.

  I prodded the back of one leg with the muzzle of the .38.

  “You like sports, Tim. That’s fortunate because they’ll let you exercise in prison. Without exercise the time can go very slowly. But I’m going to ask you questions and if you don’t give me satisfactory answers I’m going to maim you, bit by bit. First I’ll shoot you right here.” I pressed cold steel into warm flesh. “After that your leg might be good for getting you on the John. Then I’ll do the same to the other leg. From there to fingers, wrists, elbows. You’ll do your time as a vegetable, Tim.”

  I listened to myself talk, hearing a stranger. To this day I don’t know if I would have followed through on the threat. I never had to find out.

  “What do you want?” His speech came out in spurts, constricted with fear and hampered by the uncomfortable position.

  “Where’s Melody Quinn?”

  “At La Casa.”

  “Where at La Casa?”

  “The storage rooms. Near the forest.”

  “Those cinder block buildings—the ones you avoided discussing when you gave me the tour?”

  “Uh-huh. Yes.”

  “Which one? There were four.”

  “The last one—furthest from the front.”

  A spreading stain darkened the carpet at my feet. He’d wet himself.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Let’s keep going, Tim. You’re doing fine.”

  He nodded, seemingly eager for praise.

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Yes. As far as I know. Cousin Will—Doctor Towle wanted to keep her alive. Gus and the judge agreed. I don’t know for how long.”

  “What about her mother?”

  He closed his eyes and said nothing.

  “Talk, Tim, or your leg goes.”

  “She’s dead. The guy they sent to get the kid and her did it. They buried her in the Meadow.”

  I remembered the stretch of field at the north side of La Casa. We’re planning to plant a vegetable garden this summer he’d told me …

  “Who is he?”

  “Some crazy guy. A gimp—kind of paralyzed on one side. Gus called him Earl.”

  It wasn’t the name I expected but the description was right.

  “Why’d he do it?”

  “Leave as few loose ends as possible.”

  “On McCaffrey’s orders?”

  He was silent. I exerted pressure on the gun. His thigh quivered.

  “Yeah. On his orders. Earl doesn’t operate on his own.”

  “Where is this Earl character now?”

  More hesitation. Without thinking I flicked the tip of the .38 over his kneecap. His
eyes widened with surprise and hurt. Tears ran out of them.

  “Oh, God!”

  “Don’t get religious. Just talk.”

  “He’s gone—dead. Gus had Halstead rip him off. After they buried the woman. He was filling the grave and Halstead hit him with the shovel, pushed him in with her and covered them both with dirt. He and Gus were laughing about it later. Halstead said when he hit Earl on the head it gave off a hollow sound. They used to talk like that, behind the guy’s back—call him the gimp, damaged goods …”

  “Mean guy, that Halstead.”

  “Yeah. He is.” Kruger’s visage brightened, eager to please. “He’s after you too. You were snooping around. Gus didn’t know how much the kid told you. I’m tipping you off, man, watch your—”

  “Thanks, pal, but Halstead’s no threat anymore. To anyone.”

  He looked up at me. I answered the unspoken question with a quick nod.

  “Jesus,” he said, broken.

  I didn’t give him time to reflect.

  “Why’d you kill Handler and Gutierrez?”

  “I told you, I didn’t. That was Halstead and Earl. Gus told ’em to make it look like a sex thing. Halstead told me later Earl was a natural for the job—carved ’em up like he enjoyed it. Really went to town on the teacher. Halstead held her and Earl used the knife.”

  Two men, maybe three, Melody had said.

  “You were there, too, Tim.”

  “No. Yeah. I—I drove them there. With the headlights out. It was a dark night, no moon, no stars. I circled the parking lot, then figured I might get noticed, so I drove around in the Palisades and came back. They still weren’t through—I remember wondering what was taking them so long. I left again, drove around some more, came back and they were just coming out. They wore black, like demons. I could see the blood, even against the black. They smelled of blood. It was all over them, dark, like the clothing, but a different texture—you know, shiny. Wet.”

  Dark men. Two, maybe three.