Jonathan Kellerman_Petra Connor 02

by Twisted

  “Would you have heard?” said Petra. “With his being distant and all that?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Pastern. “Our kids still go to the same school. West Valley Prep. It’s still suburbia, Petra.”

  Petra watched as she wiped her lips daintily. Drama queen or not, Pastern had given her something to work with. She asked her if there was anything else she wanted to say and when Pastern shook her head, thanked her, fished a ten out of her purse and stood.

  Sophia grumbled.

  Pastern patted her calm and reached for her own purse. “No, it’s on me.”

  “Against regulations,” said Petra, smiling. Little Miss By-the-Book. Ha.

  “You’re sure? Okay, then, nice to meet you, hope you get him.”

  As Petra started to leave, Pastern said, “Why’d you ask me if Kurt and Marta had a dog?”

  “Just curious,” said Petra. “Trying to get a feel for them as people.”

  “He’s a cold person,” said Pastern. “She was a nice person. I’ll tell you who did love dogs: Katya. She was always over playing with Daisy. Her needs were so obvious. But Kurt wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Too messy.”

  “He’s compulsive.” Pastern frowned. “Real life isn’t like that.”

  “Sure isn’t,” said Petra. “What color is Daisy?”

  “A deep beautiful mahogany red. She’s show-quality.”

  No match to the hairs on Coral Langdon. So much for the complex transfer scenario Petra had formulated. From daughter to dad to . . .

  She said, “I’ll bet she is. Any idea how Katya’s doing?”

  “My daughter, who’s in the same grade but not the same class, says she’s very quiet, keeps to herself. What else would you expect? Growing up with someone like that. Besides that, a girl needs a mother. It’s basic psychology, right?”

  Petra flashed a plastic smile, muttered something. Escaped.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Petra drove east on Ventura Boulevard to Laurel Canyon, took that winding, leafy route back to the city. She loved Laurel, with its mix of ramshackle, radical, and royal. Great place to live in the unlikely event she ever had money.

  She zipped past what was left of the old Houdini estate. Some magic would be nice right around now. Something to help her figure out if Emily Pastern’s suspicions were righteous.

  Marta’s infidelity, Kurt a revenge murderer.

  If so, he’d planned meticulously, lured his wife out of the theater, maybe using Katya as the bait. Then he’d exploited his daughter again for an alibi.

  From everything she’d seen, now buttressed by Pastern’s comments, Kurt was a cold fish. One of those technically minded guys who saw everything as an equation.

  You humiliate me, I kill you?

  No reason it couldn’t have happened that way. She ran the scenario through her head: Kurt calls Marta from the phone booth, then heads over to the theater parking lot to wait. Marta shows up, they drive off—he drives. Then he pulls over around the block. Tells her the real reason he’s there. He knows about all those trips to the city.

  Maybe there’s a confrontation, right there. Or perhaps Marta, caught off-guard, tries to smooth things out. Kurt’s beyond appeasement; he’s brought a weapon.

  Or perhaps he’d planted it in the trunk of Marta’s car. Or had used something already there—a jack, a tire iron.

  No, the coroner’s report said something wider, smoother.

  Marta tries to escape, runs from the car. He grabs her.

  Spins her, gets behind her. A tall guy like Kurt would have had plenty of leverage for a crushing occipital blow.

  She goes down, he continues bashing her brains out. Doing it on the street. You act like a slut, you die like a slut.

  Had he intended on leaving her there, remembered that the bleeding thing on the sidewalk had once been his wife and relented? Propped her back in the car? Or had that just been an attempt to conceal the body in order to give him more time to get home, crawl into bed, and enjoy murderer’s dreams?

  Marta hadn’t been found until morning. Kurt, getting Katya ready for school, would’ve had plenty of time to be “surprised.”

  As she passed the Canyon Market, Petra thought of a third possibility. Positioning Marta behind the wheel had been a different kind of message: You drove into the city to meet your lover. Now sit in the driver’s seat in that same damn car with your brains leaking out.

  Destroying her humanity, her soul. Would a tech type like Kurt Doebbler believe in the soul? Or would he view people as nothing more than the sum of their cells?

  I pulverize your gray matter, I reduce you to nothing.

  Pastern had called Kurt compulsive. Maybe that cold, flat demeanor masked volcanic rage.

  He does Marta, gets away with it. Decides he likes it.

  Decides to commemorate the date.

  What were anniversaries but time souvenirs? And psycho killers loved to keep mementos.

  Nice little profile she was developing. The only problem was, lots of stuff didn’t fit. Like the dog hairs on Coral Langdon when Kurt hated animals. And Kurt, as charmless a man as Petra had ever encountered, seemed the last guy Coral would have stopped to have a pooch chat with.

  Did he have acting skills no one knew about?

  She decided she’d made too much out of the hairs. Langdon was a dog person, ran into other dog people, picked up foreign hairs.

  But what of the phony cable visit to Geraldo Solis’s house? How did Doebbler synch with that?

  Maybe Kurt had worked in the cable business before becoming a missile designer—some sort of student job? Even so, if he’d wanted to commemorate his wife’s murder, why not choose a victim similar to Marta? At the very least a woman, not a grumpy old ex-Marine like Solis.

  Unless Solis had somehow been involved with the Doebblers . . . could he have been Marta’s lover in the city? Then why wait a year to get him?

  Solis was a cantankerous old loner, thirty years Marta’s senior. People made strange choices but it just didn’t fit.

  She ran through the rest of the victim list. Langdon, Hochenbrenner, the young black sailor. Jewell Blank and Curtis Hoffey, two street kids.

  What was the damned pattern?

  By the time she made it to Sunset, her head throbbed and she decided she’d been fixing air sandwiches.

  As she reached Fairfax and Sixth, her phone beeped. Mac Dilbeck’s mobile.

  “Just heard, Petra. Sorry.”

  “I really couldn’t expect different, Mac.”

  “Only because they’ve got their heads tucked so tightly up their posteriors they can’t see the light of wisdom.”

  “Thanks, Mac.”

  “I should be thanking you,” he said. “For clearing the case. Saving us the paperwork and the city a trial. Some types deserve killing and he fit the bill, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What’s Eric’s situation?”

  “Meetings at Parker.”

  “When the dust clears, he’ll be okay. It was righteous.”

  “It sure was.”

  “I’m also calling to fill you in on Sandra Leon. The gods from Olympus allowed me to sit in on her interview. She wouldn’t talk to them no matter what they did so finally they left to confer.” He snorted. “So while they’re gone, I do the old grandfatherly bit and guess what? She starts to open up.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Petra, smiling.

  “Oh, yeah, indeed,” said Mac. “I made sure the tape was running. By the time they got back with a plan, with a big old task force plan, she’s talking and at least they’re smart enough to keep their mouths shut and back off. Sandra’s story is she and cousin Marcella didn’t get along too well. Big-time jealousy, going way back. That scumbag Lyle Leon was messing with both of them for years and they ended up competing for his attention. When Marcella got involved with Omar Selden, Sandra figured that was wrong, she was the pretty one. So she moved in on Marcella’s territory. Also—get this�
�there was bad feeling because once, when Sandra was waiting to see a doctor for her hepatitis, Marcella left her alone, found an arcade on the boulevard, and played games for two hours. That really frosted Sandra.”

  “Sounds like a motive for murder to me.”

  “You should’ve heard the kid, Petra. Cold. She was the one told Omar that Marcella had aborted his baby. Told him Marcella had joked about it, called the baby garbage.”

  “Lord,” said Petra. “She set Marcella up.”

  “She did more than that. She told Omar the two of them would be at the Paradiso, pinpointed where and when Marcella would be coming out.”

  “Omar photographed the parking lot a full week before the concert. The whole thing was well planned.”

  “Oh, boy,” he said.

  “That’s why Sandra was so cool after the shooting. She stuck around to gloat, got a little nervous when I tried to interview her. But no grief, she was digging the scene. That is one sick kid. What’s she being charged with?”

  “D.A.’s not sure yet. I’m pushing for a full one eighty-seven, but the only evidence is what Sandra said on tape, so maybe they’ll plea it down to something juvie. She’s pretty smug, seems to think she’ll get away scot-free because she’s seventeen. For all I know, she will. Some slick private attorney showed up this afternoon. He wouldn’t tell me who hired him, but I’m sure he’s being paid by The Players. He’s already making noises about dismissing the confession because I didn’t give Sandra her rights right before she talked. The Downtown guys Mirandized her at the beginning and I was in the room, so the ADA’s claiming I was part of the ‘interrogatory team,’ the first warning was enough.”

  “Here goes the system,” said Petra.

  “So what else is new?”

  “What about Lyle? He’s open to a big fat pedophilia charge.”

  “Lyle rabbited right after we let him out of the holding cell. Which would’ve posed some problems if Omar had gone to trial. So it’s pretty nice that he won’t be needed. For that I thank you again.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Petra.

  “You all right?”

  “Taking some downtime. How about you?”

  “I’m off to play putt-putt golf with my grandson. Don’t let them grind you down, kid. You’re a solid girl.”

  Shrinks kept forty-five-minute hours, so at four forty-five Petra tried the clinic where Dr. Sarah Casagrande worked, was transferred to voice mail, left a forceful message. No return. She repeated the process at five forty-five and this time a woman’s voice broke in.

  “This is Sarah.” Soft, breathy, hesitant. “I was just about to call you.”

  “Thanks,” said Petra. “As I said in my message, Doctor, this is about Marta Doebbler.”

  “All these years,” said Casagrande. “Has something changed?”

  “In terms of . . .”

  “The detective I spoke to led me to believe the case was unlikely to be solved.”

  “Did he?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Casagrande. “I suppose he was being honest, but at the time it was hard to hear.”

  “Do you remember what reason he gave?”

  “He said there was no evidence. He had suspicions, but nothing more.”

  “Suspicions of who?”

  “Kurt. I felt the same way. All three of us did.”

  “You told him that?”

  “Of course.”

  Something Ballou had neglected to tell her. Or write down.

  “Why did you suspect Kurt?”

  “He made me uneasy. Sometimes he made me feel uncomfortable.”

  “Lecherous?” said Petra.

  “No, I couldn’t say that. Couldn’t say he was actually projecting any interest in me. It was just the opposite, a lack of emotion. I’d see him looking at me, during a barbecue or some other social thing, and then I’d realize he wasn’t, he was looking through me. I told my husband and he said he’d noticed that, too, all the guys thought Kurt was strange, no one invited him to play poker.”

  “You’re a psychologist. Care to diagnose?”

  “I’m a psychological assistant,” said Casagrande. “A year away from taking the licensing exam.”

  “Still,” said Petra. “You know more than the average person. How would you classify Kurt Doebbler?”

  “I hate to do that. Long-distance analysis isn’t worth much.”

  “Off the record, Doctor.”

  “Off the record, if I had to bet, I’d say Kurt displays schizoid tendencies. That doesn’t mean he’s crazy. It refers to an asocial personality. Flat emotion, a lack of connection to other people.”

  “Can that lead to murder?”

  “Now,” said Casagrande, “you’re really asking me to step outside the bounds of my—”

  “Off the record, Doctor.”

  “Most asocial types aren’t violent, but when they do act out—when schizoid tendencies are combined with aggressive impulses—it can be pretty horrendous.”

  Meticulous planning followed by stunning violence . . .

  “The Unabomber comes to mind,” said Sarah Casagrande. “A lifelong loner who hated people. He constructed an ecological excuse for murder, but all he wanted to do was destroy.”

  The bomber had been a tech type, too. Math Ph.D., meticulous, scheming. And how many years had it taken to bring him down . . .

  “I’m not saying Kurt’s like the Unabomber,” said Casagrande. “That was serial murder. We’re talking about someone killing his wife.”

  If you only knew. “If Kurt did murder Marta, what do you think his motive was?”

  Casagrande laughed nervously. “All this speculation.”

  “Detective Ballou thought the case was hopeless and maybe he was right, Doctor. But I’m trying to prove otherwise and I need all the help I can get.”

  “I hear what you’re saying . . . a motive. I’d have to say jealousy.”

  “Of who?”

  “It’s possible—and this is real speculation—that Marta was seeing someone.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “You have?”

  “By Emily Pastern.”

  “Emily,” said Casagrande. “Yes, it was Emily who raised the possibility in the first place, but I’d been thinking the same thing. We all had, because of changes in Marta’s behavior. She seemed happier. There was more . . . physicality to her. The way she carried herself, the way she dressed.”

  “Sexier wardrobe?” said Petra.

  “No, Marta was a very restrained person, even after the changes she was a long way from sexy. But she did start wearing more feminine clothing—dresses, stockings, perfume. She had a lovely figure but always used to cover it up under baggy sweats. She had great bone structure. Fixed up, with just the smallest touches, she was a very attractive woman.”

  “How long before she was murdered did she start to change?”

  “I’d say . . . months. Four, five months. I suppose there could’ve been other reasons for it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Trying to breathe new passion into her marriage. But I never saw any change in the way Marta and Kurt related.”

  “Which was?”

  “Platonic.”

  The exact same word Emily Pastern had used. Which could be nothing more than consensus born of girl-chat. On the other hand, these were smart, perceptive women who’d known Marta Doebbler a lot better than Petra could ever hope to.

  She pressed Casagrande more on the affair, got nothing but a polite denial of details. Running Casagrande through the events at the theater produced an account consistent with Pastern’s.

  “Thanks, Doctor.”

  “I hope you succeed in getting him,” said Casagrande. “If it is him . . . have you considered his job, what he does for a living?”

  “Missile designer,” said Petra. “Guidance systems.”

  “Think about that,” said Casagrande. “He figures out ways to destroy things.”

  CHAPTER

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sp; 42

  TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 3:47 P.M., L.A. PUBLIC LIBRARY, CENTRAL BRANCH, 630 W. FIFTH STREET, HISTORY AND GENEOLOGY DEPARTMENT, LOWER LEVEL 4, TOM BRADLEY WING

  Isaac’s eyes had blurred twenty minutes ago, but he waited to take a break until he’d finished the Herald Examiner files.

  His self-assigned task of today: going back to the birth of as many L.A. newspapers as he could find and reading every June 28 issue. In the case of the Herald, cross-referencing to the photomorgue when something interesting came up.

  Lots of duplication among the papers, but all that history added up to hundreds of felonies, mostly robberies, thefts, burglaries, assaults, and, as the automobile took control of the city, drunk-driving arrests.

  He whittled down the homicides to those that weren’t bar killings or family disputes or related to robberies. Some of what remained was distinctively psychopathic: a series of Chinatown prostitutes slashed at the turn of the century, unsolved drownings and shootings, even some bludgeonings. But nothing matched the modus or the flavor of the six cases.

  No huge surprise; when he’d first come across the pattern—before he’d gone to Petra, before running his statistical tests of significance—he’d covered some of the same ground in the L.A. Times files. Still, it paid to be careful, maybe he’d missed something.

  Three days to go until June 28, and after nearly seven hours of tedious, back-cramping, eyestraining work, he’d come up with nothing. Yesterday had been just as futile, spent on the third floor of the Goodhue Building, in the Rare Books Department, where he’d showed up full of purpose only to be informed that he needed an appointment. Which was logical, these were collector’s items, what had he been thinking?

  He’d flashed his grad student I.D., made up some story about thinking the BioStat Department had already made an appointment, and the librarian, a thin older man with a bristly white mustache, had taken pity.

  “What is it you’re looking for?”

  When Isaac explained—keeping it ambiguous but you couldn’t get away from the word murder—the librarian looked at him differently. But he’d been helpful, anyway, handing Isaac a written application form, then guiding him through the holdings.