Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 17 - A Cold Heart

by A Cold Heart(Lit)

  'Convenient,' said Petra.

  'That's my middle name. Threaten me all you want, but it's not gonna change facts.' Olive cursed under her breath and Petra made out fuckin' bitch. 'You should be ashamed, so-called officer of the so-called law, threatening me. I should report you. Maybe I will.' Olive folded her arms across her bosoms, but she stepped back, as if readying herself for a blow.

  Petra said, 'What threat are we talking about?'

  'Right,' said Olive. 'Overcrowding. Things change.'

  'I don't hear any threat, ma'am, but feel free to complain about me to anyone you choose.' Petra flashed her ID. 'Here's my badge number.'

  Olive eyed a pen but didn't move toward it.

  'What name did the nerd give?' said Petra.

  'I don't remember.'

  'Try.'

  'I don't remember - something Russian. But he wasn't. I figured him for a nut.'

  'Did he act nuts?'

  'Sure,' said Olive. 'He came in drooling and shaking and seeing Martians.'

  Petra waited.

  'He was a weirdo,' said Olive. 'Get it? What, I'm supposed to be some kind of psychiatrist? He was a nerd-fag, didn't talk much, kept his head down. Which was fine with me. Pay the fee, collect your filthy little secrets, get the hell outta here.'

  'How'd he pay?'

  'Cash. Like most of them.'

  'By the month?'

  'No way,' said Olive. 'I got a space problem. You want to take up space, you guarantee me three months. So that's at least what I got from him.'

  'At least?'

  'Some of them, I ask for more.'

  'Which ones?'

  'The ones I figure I can get it from.'

  'Was he one of them?'

  'Probably.'

  'How long did he have the box?'

  'A long time. Coupla years.'

  'How often did he come in?'

  'I hardly ever saw him. We've got twenty-four-hour access. He came in at night.'

  'You're not worried about theft?'

  'I clean out the cash drawer, lock everything up. They want to steal a few pens, who cares? Too much pilferage, I raise the fees on the box, and they know it. So they behave. That's capitalism.'

  Henry Gilwhite's transsexual encounter had taken place late at night. Petra pictured Olive back home at the double-wide in Palmdale. What had Henry's cover story been? Going to the neighborhood tavern for a couple of beers?

  Suddenly, she felt sorry for the woman.

  'I won't trouble you much longer-'

  'You've already troubled me plenty.'

  'Was the Russian name Yuri?'

  'Yeah, that was it,' said Olive. 'Yuri. Sounds like urine.

  What'd he do to piss you off?' She cackled, slapped the counter, exploded into phlegmy laughter that morphed into uncontrollable coughing.

  Nasty-sounding wheezes accompanied Petra as she left the maildrop.

  At 4 A.M., two days into his surveillance of Kevin Drummond's building, Eric Stahl left his van and sneaked around to the back of the apartment structure. The night was blue, whipped by transitory, biting gusts from the east. The neon glow to the north - the Hollywood glow - was misted and dim.

  Drummond's block had been quiet for a while. Nearly two hours remained until sunrise.

  Stahl had thought for a long time before deciding this was right. He'd been doing nothing but sitting and thinking for nearly fifty hours. He and Connor had spoken by cell phone three times. She'd learned nothing.

  During the fifty hours, Stahl had observed plenty of comings and goings, including a dog-beater he would've loved disciplining, a shifty-eyed heathen with an eye for a near-new Toyota parked halfway up the block - that one he would've called in but the guy thought better of jacking the car and left - and a couple of furtive tete-a-tetes between drug dealers and customers.

  The busiest dealer lived in the building north of Drummond's. Stahl noted his address for a later report

  to Narcotics. Anonymous tip; that would keep things simple.

  Most of Drummond's neighbors seemed to be law-abiding Hispanic folk.

  Quiet. The last vehicle to rumble by was a yellow cab, twelve minutes ago.

  Stahl zipped up his black windbreaker, stashed his kit in a button pocket of his black cargo pants, got out of the car, appraised the street, stretched, breathed, jogged the diagonal trajectory to the building on well-padded black running shoes. Old shoes, the squeak pounded out of them on the fifteen-mile runs that had become a thrice-weekly component of his routine.

  His new routine...

  The space between Drummond's building and its southern neighbor was a mess of weeds, nice and soft on the feet, and quiet. No lights on in any of the units.

  As the city slept...

  He continued to the back, scoped out the parking slots. He'd made several passes back there, but just in case. No sign of the white Honda, Drummond's space was empty.

  Stahl hustled over to the building's rear entrance.

  Locked, single dead bolt. An alarm sticker was pasted across the wood, but Stahl knew, from prior research, that it was false advertising. No wires, no open account at the alarm company. He removed his kit, pulled out his high-focus, narrow-beam penlight, inspected his collection of key specimens, eyeballed the slit in the bolt. Two blanks looked promising. The first one fit.

  The Army had taught him how to play with locks. And all sorts of other skills.

  He'd used these particular skills only once. In Riyadh, the heat and the sand nearly unbearable, the relentless sun bleaching his retinas. Despite all the high-rises and conspicuous consumption, the availability of American food on the base, the city had never been anything to Stahl but a desert hellhole.

  The lockpick assignment in Riyadh had been part of a bigger plan: breaking into the penthouse of a Saudi prince who'd seduced the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the military attaches at the U.S. embassy.

  Skinny, plain-looking blonde girl, borderline I.Q., subterranean self-esteem. The prince, handsome, rich, soft-spoken, had sweet-talked her into sex-on-demand at his place and fed her dope. Now feathers were being ruffled. Royal family feathers: consorting with a girl of such obvious inferiority could prove harmful to the prince's image, but no way would the Saudis move on their golden boy. Dirty work was always left to foreigners.

  'Think of it this way,' Stahl's CO. told him. 'She's getting off easy, being American. She was Saudi, they'd stone her to death.'

  Officially, the prince lived with his family in a palace. His fuck pad was a white marble paradise atop one of the highest-rises, the delivery door of which just happened to have been left open and unguarded on a certain night.

  Same night the prince was due to dine with a couple of the State Department flunkies everyone despised. Accompanied by one of his three wives, but that afternoon he'd stashed the American girl in the f pad, plied her with pills, left her there, supervised by one female Filipina servant, to be available when he dropped in for a sexual nightcap.

  Stahl staked out the high-rise and saw the prince stash his slut: a yellow Bentley Azure pulled around to the building's delivery entrance. The prince, dressed in a white silk shirt and cream slacks, got out of the car, leaving the driver's door open. An attendant rushed to close it, but the car didn't move. Five minutes later, the left passenger door opened and two men in suits emerged with a bundled figure that they hustled into the building. The same attendant was ready for them, too, holding the door.

  An hour later, the prince, decked out in long, white Arab robes and a gold-banded kaffiyeh, got behind the wheel of the Azure and sped off.

  Twenty minutes later, the two men in suits left on foot, got into a black Mercedes parked nearby, and drove away.

  Soon after dark, Stahl was inside the building, lifting the skirts of his own robe and climbing twenty-eight flights to the prince's digs.

  A sleepy guard was stationed on.the other side of the stairwell door. Stahl walked toward him, muttered a few memorized Arabic phrases, f
lipped the guy around, put on the chokehold, dragged him into the stairwell and bound his arms and legs with plastic ties. Then he pulled out his pick kit and flipped the lock. Expensive digs, but cheap lock. No reason for Talal to feel insecure.

  The girl was in plain sight, lolling on a purple brocade sofa, naked, stoned, eyes fixed on satellite-delivery MTV.

  'Hi, Cathy.'

  The girl stroked her breasts and licked her lips.

  The Filipina maid appeared. Stahl gave her a puff of whatever was stored in the little blue inhalator the med

  officer had slipped him and she nodded out and he placed her in a chair. Peeling off the Arab robes, he continued working in his black T-shirt and jeans. Wrapping Cathy in the same blanket the prince's guys had used, slinging her over his shoulder and getting the hell out of there.

  He carried the girl down twenty-eight flights. A car was waiting behind the building. No Bentley, not even a Mercedes, just a plain old unmarked Ford. Had she been awake, Cathy would have seen it as a comedown. Talal liked to do her in the Bentley, and she'd told her sister she loved it.

  Riyadh had been nothing but deceit... stay on task, no time to get distracted.

  The lock kit was one of the few things Stahl had taken with him when he'd entered civilian life.

  Such as it was.

  He entered the apartment's ground floor. Drummond's flat was on the second floor toward the back, but a staircase ran from the front. He made his way up the thinly carpeted hallway.

  The building smelled of bug spray and hot sauce. Under the carpet was old wood flooring that sagged and creaked; he trod carefully. Two light fixtures in the ceiling; only the one in front was operative. The steps were tile over cement and silent under his rubber soles.

  Within seconds, he was at Drummond's unit, unnoticed. Kit out, penlight on the keyhole. Same make as the back door, the same master popped it.

  He shut the door, locked it, removed his Glock from the black nylon holster that rode his hip, stood in the

  darkness, waiting for a life vibration - some nuance of occupancy - to disturb the silence.

  Nothing.

  He took a step forward. Whispered, 'Kevin?'

  Dead air.

  He scanned the room. One room, not large. Two small windows, both shaded, looked out to the building next door. Turning on the room light would yellow the shades, so Stahl relied on his other flashlight, the black Mag with the wider beam.

  He swept it over the room, careful to avoid the windows.

  Kevin Drummond's living space was occupied by an unmade single bed, a crappy-looking nightstand, and a folding chair positioned in the center of a low, wide desk. Closer inspection revealed the desk to be an unpainted door laid over two sawhorses. Lots of work-space. The right side, bordering the bed, was taken up by a hot plate and provisions. Three cans of generic chili, a bag of potato chips, a jar of mild salsa, two six-packs of Pepsi. A toothbrush in a glass.

  To the left were three computers with nineteen-inch flat screens, a pair of color printers, a scanner, a digital camera, a stack of toner-cartridge replacements for the printers, twelve reams of white paper.

  Past the equipment a door led to the bathroom. To get there, Stahl had to manipulate his way around piles of magazines. Nearly every free inch of floor space was taken up by boxes.

  He checked the lav first. Shower, sink, toilet, no signs of recent usage, but the room smelled stale. Mold in the shower, rings of grime around the sink drain, and Stahl

  wouldn't have used the blackened toilet on a bet. No medicine cabinet, just a single glass shelf above the sink. Carelesly squeezed toothpaste tube, OTC sinus remedy, ladies' hand cream - probably a masturbatory aid -aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, prescription acne pills dispensed three years ago at an Encino pharmacy. Three pills left. Kevin had stopped paying attention to his skin.

  No soap in the shower, no shampoo, and Stahl wondered how long it had been since Kevin had been here.

  Did he have another crib?

  He returned to the front room, stepped among the boxes. Anything he came up with tonight would be useless - worse than useless, if the break-in came to light, he'd have screwed the investigation.

  He began checking the boxes' contents.

  Expecting Drummond's cache of GrooveRat back issues.

  Wrong; not a single copy of the zine anywhere in the apartment. The guy was a pack rat, but he collected other people's creations.

  From what Stahl could tell, the junk was divided into two categories: toys and magazines. The toys were Hot-wheels cars, some still in their boxes, Star Wars and other action figures, stuff that wasn't familiar. The pages were Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, InStyle, People, Talk, Interview. And gay pornography. Lots of it, including some bondage and S & M stuff.

  The mail-drop lady had told Petra that Drummond was gay. Stahl wondered if she'd told Sturgis. How Sturgis would take to learning about Kevin's proclivities.

  She'd told him about Sturgis's proclivities. Probably

  wanting to make sure he didn't let loose some homophobic remark.

  Which was ridiculous because he never remarked about anything, even this early in their partnership she should've seen that.

  He made her nervous; when they rode together, she was jumpier than a sand flea.

  This case was working out well. Both of them, happy to be going their separate ways.

  Connor wasn't a bad sort. Career woman. No family ties.

  Superficially tough, but new situations made her antsy.

  He made her antsy.

  He knew he did that to people.

  He couldn't have cared less.

  He completed the search of Kevin Drummond's apartment, finding no personal papers or trophies, nothing criminal or suggestive of criminality. Hoarding all that paper was consistent with the guess the shrink had worked up: Drummond was highly obsessive. Drummond's choice of magazines said the obsession was personality, celebrity.

  The break-in had accomplished two things: Stahl knew, now, that the lack of a warrant wasn't hurting them. All this search would've added to the mix was verification of Drummond's homosexuality, and he couldn't see where that fit in... maybe the S & M stuff? Drummond being into his own S, other people's M?

  The other thing: spending time in Drummond's digs, feeling the cold solitude, he was willing to bet Drummond had rabbited a while back, had no intention of

  returning. Even with all that computer equipment left behind.

  Daddy's dough, easy come, easy go.

  No copies of GrooveRat left behind said Kevin had another storage space. Or he didn't care about publishing anymore.

  Moving on to a new hobby?

  Flicking off the Maglite, he stood in Drummond's pathetic little room, making sure no one had been alerted by his presence. Just in case, he pulled out the mask and slipped it over his face. Army-issue, black Lycra, two eyeholes. This way, if anyone accosted him during his departure, all they'd remember would be a central-casting, night-stalking burglar.

  The mask would scare any rational person off and lessen the chance of confrontation.

  Stahl would do anything to protect himself. But he preferred not to have to hurt anyone.

  The call came in as Milo and I were having breakfast on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. A sky the color of lint promised rain, and few pedestrians passed our outdoor table. The weather didn't dissuade a scrawny man playing bad guitar for spare change. Milo slipped him a ten, told him to find another spot. The man moved twenty feet down and resumed howling. Milo returned to his Denver omelet.

  It was two days after my visit to Charter College, Kevin Drummond still hadn't shown up at his apartment, and Eric Stahl's feeling was that he wouldn't be returning soon.

  'Why not?' I said.

  'Stahl's gut feeling, according to Petra,' he said.

  'Is that worth much?'

  'Who knows? Meanwhile, the only new thing we've learned about Drummond is that he's gay. Petra found out that he used his POB prima
rily to get gay porn.' He put his fork down. 'Think that's relevant?'

  'We were talking about someone sexually confused-'

  'So maybe he resolved his confusion. What about Szabo and Loh? Rich gay men living the good life.

  There's a focus for jealousy.'

  'Szabo and Loh weren't targeted, and their house was the scene of only one murder. Whoever killed Levitch was after what Levitch had.'