Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest

by Survival Of The Fittest(Lit)

  'So you were never here?'

  'No,' she said, as if it were a confession. 'He used to have a place out in the Valley and I was there a few times. But after he joined the department, he moved to the other side of the hill...'

  She shrugged and touched the bedspread.

  'It's possible,' I said, 'that he gave his books away.'

  'Why would he do that?'

  'Sometimes people contemplating suicide give away things that are important to them. It's a way of formalizing the final step.'

  'Oh.' Her eyes misted and she turned away and I knew she was thinking, He didn't give them to me.

  'There could be another reason, Helena. You said Nolan changed points of view pretty suddenly. If the books were on politics, something he no longer believed in, he could have decided to get rid of them.'

  'Whatever. Let's get out of here, see if the car's still here.'

  More care had been taken in the rear garden than in front

  - well-pruned apricot and peach trees and several flowering citrus that perfumed the air. The garage was a double. Helena pushed up the left-hand door. A pullcord to the right illuminated the narrow, lathe-walled space.

  The Fiero was bright red covered with a fine coat of dust, sitting on half-deflated tires. A while since it had been driven. I went over and looked at the driver's door. Deep gouges near the lock, and the window was cracked but not broken. 'They tried, Helena. Panicked or ran out of time.' She came over and sighed. 'I'll have it towed.' The rest of the garage was taken up by a wooden workbench, bracket shelves of paint cans and dry brushes, a bicycle with one wheel, an airless basketball, several cardboard boxes under a crumpled wet suit. The Peg-Board above the bench was empty.

  'His tools are gone,' she said. 'He had them since high school. He went through an artistic phase - wood carving

  - convinced Mom and Dad to get him a complete set. Expensive stuff. Soon after, he lost interest... Maybe there are books in those boxes over there.'

  She went over to check, tossing the black neoprene aside. Five cartons, the top one unsealed.

  'Empty,' she said. 'This is a waste - oh, hold on, look at this.'

  She lifted a second box. Heavy, from the way her arms tensed.

  'Still taped.' Using the house key, she tried to slit the binding without success. I took out my pocketknife and cut deeply.

  She gasped.

  Inside were several large leatherette albums in a variety of colors. The top one was black and said photographs in gold script. Helena flipped it open to faded color snapshots under plastic sheets.

  She turned pages quickly, almost frantically.

  The same image in varying forms: heavyset mother, ecto-morph father, two pretty blond children. Trees in the background, or ocean, a Ferris wheel, or just blue sky. Helena no older than twelve in any of them. Had family life stopped, then?

  'Our family albums,' she said. 'I've been looking for these since Mom died, never knew he had them.'

  She turned another page. 'Dad and Mom... they looked so young. This is so...' She shut the book. 'I'll look at them later.'

  She lifted the box and carried it out to her Mustang. Placing it on the front passenger seat, she slammed the door.

  'Well, at least I got something - thank you, Dr Delaware.'

  'Sure.'

  'I'll have the car towed tomorrow.' She placed a hand on her chest. The fingers shook.

  'Nolan took the albums from Mom's house without saying a thing. Why didn't he tell me? Why didn't he tell me anything?

  The next morning, at ten, Dr Roone Lehmann called. 'I've been going through Nolan's file. How's the sister doing?'

  'Hanging in,' I said. 'It's rough.'

  'Yes. Well... he was a complex young man.'

  'Complex and bright.'

  'Oh?'

  'Helena told me he tested gifted.'

  'I see... interesting. Is she gifted, as well?'

  'She's an intelligent woman.'

  'No doubt - well, if you'd like to come by the office, say around noonish, I can give you twenty minutes. But I can't promise it will be earth-shattering.'

  'Thanks for your time.'

  'It's part of the job, isn't it?'

  Minutes later, Milo phoned. 'Coroner says no sexual assault

  on Latvinia. Hooks says Montez the janitor is alibied for the time of her murder.'

  'Good-alibi?'

  'Not perfect but sometimes it's only criminals who come up with perfect alibis. Working at the liquor store from seven til eleven-thirty. The owner verifies, says Montez has an impeccable work record. Then home to the wife and kids - two older daughters, both of whom were up. All three of them swear he went to bed shortly after midnight, the wife is certain he never left the house. She got up at 3:00 a.m. to go to the bathroom, saw him there. His snoring woke her up again at five.'

  'The wife,' I said.

  'Yeah, but Montez is solid as they come: married thirty-five years, Vietnam service record, no criminal activity, not even traffic tickets. The school principal says he gets along great with everyone, always willing to go the extra mile, really does care about the school and the students. Told Hooks cutting the body down was exactly the kind of thing Montez would do. A couple of years ago a kid choked on something and Montez did the Heimlich maneuver and saved him.'

  'A genuine hero.'

  'Wait, there's more: Hooks located an old Army buddy of Montez's, a neighbor on the same block. Apparently Montez fended off a horde of Cong, rescued six other soldiers. Lots of medals. Now one thing I remember clearly is Cong stringing up bodies - we cut them down all the time. So that could be another reason. In terms of Latvinia, Hooks and McLaren talked to the grandmother and she said the girl was incorrigible, going out at all hours, wouldn't listen to reason. No steady boyfriends, no gang she hung out with. Just not too bright, easy-going and gullible and sometimes she'd just start acting weird - dancing and singing, pulling

  up her blouse. Neighbors said Latvinia's rep was a girl you could talk into anything.'

  'Any drugs in her system?'

  'Tox results aren't back yet and the coroner said there were no needle marks on the body. But her nasal passages were significantly eroded and there was some scarring on her heart, so coke for sure. I'm still looking for deaf-girl murders in other divisions and I've also been checking on that DVLL note. Nothing so far. It probably was a random scrap.'

  'Nothing in Irit's evidence bag?'

  'No personal effects in Irit's evidence bag. Everything was returned to the parents and the evidence-room log lists no pocket contents of any kind.'

  'Is returning clothes on an unsolved standard procedure?'

  'No, but with no semen or body fluids or any other evidence, and Carmeli being a big shot, I can understand why it happened.' Pause. 'Yeah, it's a screwup. But at this point I'd settle for a bad guy's lawyer jumping up and down on it.'

  'Going to ask the Carmelis to look at the clothes?'

  'Think it's worth it?'

  'Probably not, but why risk another omission?'

  'Yeah. I'll bring it up when I speak to the mother. Left a message with Carmeli respectfully requesting blah blah blah, but haven't heard back. For all I know the clothes have already been buried. Do Jews bury the clothing?'

  'Don't know.'

  'Whatever. Okay, I'll call you if anything interesting comes up. Thanks for listening, send me a bill.'

  I set out for downtown, avoiding the freeway and taking Sunset. Wanting to feel the city from Bel Air to Skid

  Row. Entering Hospital Row made me think of my days at Western Pediatrics Hospital, my induction into a world of suffering and occasional redemption. Heroics, too. I thought of Guillermo Montez, saving all those lives in Asia, winning all those medals, now a janitor working a second job.

  At Echo Park, L.A. became Latin America. Then the downtown skyline came into view behind a cloverleaf of highway, blue steel and white cement and the pure gold of reflective glass towers incising a curdled-milk sk
y.

  Lehmann's Seventh Street office was in a lovely six-story limestone building, one of the older ones, in a circumscribed part of the district where pinstripe and Filofax predominated and the homeless and diseased were invisible.

  I parked at a nearby pay-lot and walked over. The entire ground floor of the building was taken up by an insurance company with its own entrance. To the right was a separate foyer for the rest of the structure, generous and chilly, charcoal granite with gold deco trim, two gold-cage elevators, a tobacco-and-aftershave smell, a carved walnut reception desk with no one behind it.

  The directory said floors 2 and 3 were occupied by a private bank called American Trust and the fourth by something called the City Club, accessed by private elevator key only. The rest of the tenants were investment firms, lawyers, accountants, and, on the top story, Roone Lehmann, Ph.D. listed as a 'consultant'.

  Unusual setting for therapy and Lehmann wasn't advertising that he was a psychologist.

  For the sake of treatment-shy police officers and other reluctant patients?

  One of the cages arrived and I rode up six flights. The

  corridor ceilings were high, white, ringed with garland molding; the hallways oak-paneled and carpeted in maroon wool printed with tiny white stars. The office doors were oak too, and identified by small silver plaques that had been buffed recently. Soft, characterless music flowed from invisible speakers. Hunting prints hung on the walls and fresh flowers in glass vases sat on oiled Pembroke tables every twenty feet. Far cry from the plain-wrap ambience of the Israeli consulate.

  Lehmann's office was in a corner, neighbored by multiple-partner law firms. His name and degree on silver, again no occupation.

  I tried the door. Locked. An illuminated button off to the right glowed ember-orange against the wood.

  I pressed it and was buzzed immediately into a very small brown-walled anteroom furnished with two blue wingback chairs and a stiffly upholstered deep green Queen Anne sofa. A glass-topped chinoiserie coffee table bore the Wall Street Journal, The Times, and USA Today. Artless walls. Reluctant light from two overhead recessed spots. Another button on the inner door over a please ring in sign.

  Before I reached it, the door opened.

  'Dr Delaware? Dr Lehmann.' The dry-mellow voice, more muted than it had been over the phone, almost sad.

  I shook a soft hand and we studied each other. He was in his fifties, tall and round-shouldered and soft-looking, with shaggy white hair and thick, flattened features. Bushy eyebrows bore down on fatigued lids. Brown eyes worked their way through a squint.

  He wore a double-breasted navy blazer with gold buttons, gray flannel slacks, white shirt, loosely knotted pink tie, white pocket square carelessly stuffed, black wing tips.

  Rumpled-looking, though the clothes were perfectly pressed.

  And expensive. Cashmere blazer. Working buttonholes on the cuffs said hand-tailored. Single-needle stitching on the , shirt collar". The tie was silk mesh.

  He motioned me in. The rest of the suite consisted of a small walnut-paneled bathroom and a huge butter-yellow office with a high, molded ceiling and distressed herringbone oak flooring that had lifted in places. A frayed blue Persian rug that looked very old spread diagonally over the wood. Two more blue wingbacks and a filigreed silver table formed a conversational area at the rear of the room. Between them and the desk was an empty expanse of rug, then a pair of black tweed armchairs closer to a massive cherrywood desk.

  Two Victorian mahogany bookshelves were crowded with volumes but the glass doors to the cases spat back glare from a pair of windows, obscuring the tides. The windows were narrow and high, cut at the outer corners by ruby velvet pull-back drapes, offering rectangles of city view.

  Great view. A newer building would have offered a full wall of transparency. When this one was built, the vista had probably been smokestacks and beanfields.

  The yellow walls were silk. No credentials, no diplomas. Nothing that identified the purpose of the office.

  Lehmann motioned me to take one of the black armchairs and sank behind the cherry desk. The top was green leather with gold-tooled edges and on it were a brown calfskin folding blotter, silver inkwell, letter knife, and pen cup, and a curious-looking silver contraption with a flamboyantly engraved crenellated top. Envelopes extended from compartments. Probably some kind of message rack.

  Lehmann ran his finger along the edge.

  'Interesting piece,' I said.

  'Document holder,' he said. 'Georgian. It sat in British Parliament two hundred years ago. Repository for history.

  There's a hole at the bottom where it was screwed into the clerk's desk so no one could make off with it.'

  He used both hands to lift it and show me.

  I said, 'Found its way across the ocean, anyway.'

  'Family piece,' he said, as if that explained it. Spreading his hands flat on the blotter, he looked at a thin gold watch. 'Officer Dahl. It would help me to understand what you already know about him.'

  'I've been told he was bright and mercurial,' I said. 'Not your typical cop.'

  'Cops can't be bright?'

  'They can be and are. Helena - his sister - described him as someone who'd read Sartre and Camus. I may be stereotyping but that isn't what you generally think of as typical LAPD material. Though if you work extensively with the police, you'd know better.'

  His hands flew upward and the palms drifted toward each other and touched silently.

  'Each year, my practice brings fewer surprises, Dr Delaware. Don't you find it harder to resist seeing patterns?'

  'Sometimes,' I said. 'Did the department refer Nolan to you?'

  Another pause. Nod.

  'May I ask why?'

  'The usual,' he said. 'Adjustment problems. The work is extremely stressful.'

  'What kinds of work problems was Nolan having?'

  He licked his lips and white hair tumbled across his forehead. Pushing it away, he began playing with his pink tie, flicking the tip with a thumbnail, over and over.

  Finally he said, 'Nolan was having both personal problems and difficulties related to work. A troubled young man. I'm sorry, I really can't be more specific'

  Why had I driven across town for this?

  He looked around the big, ornate room. 'Mercurial. Is the term Helena's or yours?'

  I smiled. 'I've got a live patient, Dr Lehmann. My own confidentiality issues.'

  He smiled back. 'Of course you do, I was simply trying to - let's put it this way, Dr Delaware: If you're using mercurial as a euphemism for affective disorder, I'd understand that very well. Very well.'

  Letting me know without saying so that Nolan had suffered from mood swings. Depression, only? Or manic-depression?

  'I guess it's too much to ask if we're talking unipolar or bipolar.'

  'Does it really matter? I'm sure she's not seeking a DSM IV diagnosis.'

  'True,' I said. 'Do any other euphemisms come to mind?'

  He tucked the tie in and sat up straighter. 'Dr Delaware, I sympathize with your situation. With the sister's. It's only natural that she'd seek answers but you and I both know she'll never get what she's really after.'

  'Which is?'

  'What survivors always crave. Absolution. As I said, understandable, but if you've dealt with lots of similar cases, you know that leads them off the track. They haven't sinned, the suicide has. In a manner of speaking. I'm sure Helena is a lovely woman who adored her brother and now she's torturing herself with should-haves and could-haves. Pardon my audacity, but I'd say your time with her would be better spent guiding her toward feeling good about herself rather than fathoming the workings of a very troubled mind.'

  'Was Nolan too troubled to do police work?'

  'Obviously, but that never became clear. Never.' His voice had climbed and a flush had spread under his jaw, snaking downward and disappearing under his collar.

  Had he missed a danger sign? Covering his own rear?

  'It's a tragedy a
ll around. That's really all I have to say.' He stood.

  'Dr Lehmann, I wasn't implying-'

  'But someone else might and I won't have it. Any therapist worth his salt knows there's absolutely nothing that can be done if an individual's serious about destroying himself. Look at all the suicides that take place on psychiatric wards with full supervision.'

  He leaned toward me, one hand tugging down at a cashmere lapel. 'Tell your patient that her brother loved her but his problems got the best of him. Problems she's better off not knowing. Believe me - much better off.'