They stayed inside for twenty minutes, then went out to the garage. The psychologist didn't seem to be relating to her in a romantic way, but maybe they were having a rough time.
No, there was no hostility. She was talking and he was listening as if he cared.
Attentive, but maintaining distance.
Professional distance?
So she probably was a patient.
Or a sister. It definitely didn't look romantic.
He copied down the license plate number on the blond woman's Mustang, waited til the two of them had driven off, then sauntered to the rear of the duplex in his electrician's uniform and let himself through the rear door by popping an absurd lock.
Pretty clear why the woman had looked so miserable.
Burglarized.
He poked around in the debris, found utility bills with the name Nolan Dahl on them that matched the address. Later that night, after a cold-sandwich-and-bottled-water dinner and some praying with insufficient conviction, he turned on his computer, hacked into the Department of Motor Vehicles file, and ran the woman's license plates.
Helena Allison Dahl, thirty years old, blond hair, blue eyes, an address in Woodland Hills.
Ex-wife of the burglarized Nolan?
So where was Nolan?
Or maybe the guy was an irate husband who'd ruined his own place to get back at the wife.
She'd call her therapist for something like that.
One thing seemed likely: nothing to do with murder.
Which made sense. Sturgis would be concentrating full-time on Irit, but the psychologist would have a whole other life. To him, Irit would be just another consultation.
Tentative conclusion: Outing number 1 didn't relate to any of his concerns.
Neither, as far as he could tell, did the second one.
Downtown, terrible traffic all the way, and following the psychologist's green Cadillac at a discreet distance had been difficult. Another challenge was finding parking for the van near the lot the psychologist chose without losing sight of that curly head for too long.
Getting into the limestone building, though, was easy.
No guard, and the electrician's uniform gave him that air of belonging.
The van, too.
Uniforms and vans. He'd spent so much of his life in them.
His main prop for the building was a nice little toolbox
whose contents could serve as more than props. He carried it in his good hand and kept the bad one in his pocket because why attract unnecessary attention.
He made it to the lobby just as the psychologist entered the elevator, watched the lift rise to the top floor.
Moments later, up there himself, he examined the door-plates, trying to figure out where the guy had gone.
Law firms, accountants, investment bankers, and one Ph.D.
Another psychologist? The sign said only consultant. Roone M. Lehmann, Ph.D.
One consultant visiting another.
Unless the psychologist was a major investor and had come to check out his holdings.
Unlikely. The guy lived nicely but not extravagantly. Lehmann the consultant was the best bet.
He copied the name down for a DMV run, ducked around a corner that gave him a view of Lehmann's door, pulled out his electric meter, and unscrewed an overhead light fixture. If any of the wood-paneled doors had opened, he was ready to probe and tinker and look official.
Nothing happened until nearly a half hour later when the psychologist stepped into the hall.
Out of Lehmann's office. Lehmann, a big, flabby-looking white-haired guy with bushy eyebrows, watched Delaware depart with no friendliness in his eyes. Stood there looking unhappy til Delaware was on the elevator.
Delaware seemed to surround himself with unhappy people.
Occupational hazard?
Finally, Lehmann went back inside.
The meeting had lasted twenty-eight minutes.
Brief consultation? About something relevant to him?
He screwed the fixture back in and put the meter in the box. Under the top tray of tools was a nine-millimeter automatic, not the one from the car, but the identical model, fully loaded, wrapped in black felt. With all the gear he was lugging he was a metal detector's dream.
So few buildings had metal detectors.
Even government buildings.
Last week an employee of the city electronic-repair plant had come to work with a machine pistol and mowed down six co-workers.
So much madness and violence but people continued to pretend otherwise.
Crime and denial.
He understood that.
Back home, in the silence, he played.
The DMV listed Roone M. Lehmann, Ph.D., fifty-six, six one, 230, as living in Santa Monica.
The Thomas Guide map placed the address in one of the canyons that led down to Pacific Coast Highway.
Not all that far from Irit.
Another of life's little coincidences.
It was 8:00 p.m. and time to switch gears.
He phoned the West L.A. station and asked for Sturgis. A few moments later the big policeman came on the line. He hung up.
So the guy was still staying put.
Dedicated civil servant.
Back to the psychologist? Probably useless, but since the girl on the playground, nothing interesting had happened and he had to keep busy.
Keeping busy was his nature. And it helped fight off the loneliness.
He drove to Beverly Glen and parked a ways down the road from the narrow pathway that curled up to the psychologist's and the sculptress's modern white house.
As luck would have it, eighteen minutes later the green Cadillac nosed out onto the glen and sped by him.
He caught a blur of two good-looking, smiling faces.
Ten minutes later he was at the front door, ringing the bell with a gloved good hand.
From inside, a dog barked. From the sound of it a small dog. Dogs could be dangerous, but he liked them.
He'd once had a dog that he loved, a friendly little spaniel with a black spot over, one eye. A man had brutalized the animal and he'd killed the man in front of the dog. The dog recovered, though he was never quite as trusting. Three years later a bladder tumor finished him off.
Yet another loss.... He examined the door lock. Dead bolt. A good brand, but a common one and he had masters for it.
The eighth key he tried worked and he was inside.
Nice place inside, too. High, airy ceilings, white walls, some art, good furniture, a couple of Persian rugs that looked to be quality.
A high-pitched alarm warning buzzer sounded as the dog raced forward.
Small and cute. Dark brindle, with ridiculous ears and a flat face that couldn't be taken seriously. Some kind of bulldog. A miniature. It charged his pants, snarling and howling and scattering spittle. Deftly, he picked it up - heavier than it looked, he needed two hands to keep it at arm's length as it struggled. Carrying it to a bathroom, he locked it in and it butted the door, over and over.
The alarm buzzer still going.
The keypad by the door flashing red.
Probably less than a minute before the alarm bells kicked in, but no worry there. Police response in Los Angeles was slow, sometimes nonexistent, and in a remote area like this, with no close neighbors to complain, there was nothing to worry about.
Things had gotten to the point where only blood brought the police out and even then, not with much enthusiasm.
He walked around the house, quickly but calmly, able to block out the noise, smelling lemon wax, looking for a target.
The more he thought about it, the greater was his conviction that choosing the psychologist was the way to go. Whether or not the guy could do any direct good, he had access to Sturgis and was, thus, a conduit.
Two birds with one shot.
Now the bells were clanging. Very loud but it didn't bother him.
The alarm company would be phoning soon. If no one
answered, they'd call the police.
In this case, the West L.A. station, but Sturgis, up in the detective office, would be unaware. Some uniformed officer would take the call, jot down the details. Eventually, maybe, someone would drive by.
Crime and denial.... What he had to do wouldn't take long, anyway.
He wasn't without some guilt - breaking and entering wasn't part of his self-image. But priorities were priorities.
When he was finished, he let the dog out of the bathroom.
We never got to dance. The call came just as we were thinking about dessert
and I took it behind the bar of the restaurant.
'This is Nancy from your service, Dr Delaware. Sorry to bother you, but your alarm company has been trying to reach you for a while and they finally figured to call us.'
'The alarm went off?' I sounded calm but was feeling a needle-stab of panic: not-distant-enough memories of intrusion, the old house reduced to cinders.
'Around an hour ago. The company records it as a circuit break at the front door. They've called the police but it might be a while before anyone gets there.'
'An hour and the police haven't gotten there yet?' 'I'm not sure. Would you like me to phone them?' 'No, that's okay, Nancy. Thanks for letting me know.' 'I'm sure it's nothing, Doctor. We get this kind of thing
all the time. Mostly they're false alarms.'
Before I returned to the table, I reached Milo, back at West L.A.
'Going to take advantage of our friendship,' I said. 'How about getting a patrol car to go by my house?'
'Why?' he said sharply.
I told him.
'I'll go myself. Where are you?'
'Melrose near Fairfax. We'll leave in a minute, meet you there.'
'Get any dinner down?'
'All of it. We were just about ready to order dessert.'
'Order it. I'm sure it's a false call.'
'Probably,' I said. 'But no, even if I could eat, Robin couldn't. Spike's there.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'But who'd steal him}'
Robin didn't relax fully until we pulled up to the front and she saw Milo standing outside on the landing giving the okay sign. Spike was next to him and Milo looked like a dog-walker. An absurd notion. It made me smile.
The front door was open, the interior lights burning.
We rushed up the steps. Spike tugged, Milo let go of the leash, and the dog met us halfway.
'You're okay,' said Robin, sweeping him up and kissing him. He returned the affection and let me know with a look who was top dog.
We entered the house.
'When I got here the front door was locked,' said Milo. 'Bolted, had to use my key. No windows jammed. Nothing messed and that safe you keep in the bedroom closet hasn't been touched. So it looks like a false. Contact the company tomorrow and have them come out and check the system. Only thing out of sorts is this guy.'
I rubbed Spike behind the ears. He harumphed, turned away, and resumed licking Robin's neck.
'Muscling in on your lady?' said Milo. 'You going to stand for that?' We drifted into the kitchen.
Robin's eyes were all over the place. 'Seems fine to me,' she said. 'Let me just check the jewelry I keep loose in my drawer.'
She was back in a moment. 'Still there. Had to be a false alarm.'
'Good thing,' I said. 'We didn't exactly get quick protection from the department.'
'Hey,' said Milo, 'count yourself lucky you didn't get a false-alarm citation.'
'Protect and cite?'
'Anything that brings in revenue.'
Robin said, 'Let's have dessert here. You up for ice cream, Milo?'
He patted his middle. 'Aw shucks, I shouldn't - no more than three scoops and only a quart of chocolate sauce.'
She laughed and left, Spike trotting along.
Milo scuffed one shoe with the other. Something in his eyes made me ask if he'd learned anything in East L.A.
The victim was a kid named Raymond Ortiz. IQ of seventy-five, overweight, some coordination problems, very bad eyesight, Coke-bottle glasses. He was on a school outing in a park at the east end of Newton Division. Tough place, known as a gang hangout, drugs, the usual. The theory is that he wandered away from the group and got grabbed. Never been found but two months later his blood-filled sneakers were left near the front door of the Newton station, resting on top of an old newspaper clipping about the disappearance. Raymond's blood was on record at County Hospital because
he'd participated in a retardation study and they got a perfect match.
'Jesus,' I said. 'Poor, poor kid... in some ways it's so much like Irit, but in others-'
'It's nothing like Irit, I know. With Irit - and with Latvinia - we had the body but no blood, with this one, blood and no body. And the blood implies something other than strangulation. At least not gentle strangulation.'
'I hate that term, Milo.'
'Me, too. Pathologists are such dispassionate bastards, aren't they?'
I thought about what he'd told me. 'Even with the differences, we've got two retarded kids, snatched out of a school group in a park.'
'What better place to snatch a kid, Alex? Parks and malls are favorite stalking zones. And this park was nothing like the nature conservancy. No trails, no surrounding wilderness. Your basic inner-city place, poorly kept up, bums and junkies on the grass.'
'And they took kids there for a field trip?'
'An outing, not a field trip. The school was being painted and they wanted to get the kids away from the fumes. The park's a few blocks away. They were taking them there everyday.'
"The entire school went?'
'They brought them a few grades at a time. Raymond was with the special-ed kids and they were grouped with the first and second graders.'
'So there were lots of smaller children and the killer chose Raymond. Without wilderness, what did he use for cover?'
"There are some big trees behind the public rest rooms. The most logical scenario is Raymond went to the John and got dragged into a stall. Either killed right there or incapacitated. They never found any of his blood in the John, but he could have been killed cleanly, the blood for the shoes taken later. Whatever happened, no one saw it.'
'None of his blood? Does that mean someone else's?'
'Like I said, it's a drug place, junkies use the stalls to fix. There were blood-specks all over the place. At first they thought it would be a lead, but no match to Raymond. The samples are on file if they ever get a perp, but why should the perp have bled? They also dusted for prints, found matches to a few local bums with sheets, but all of them had solid alibis and none of them had a history of pedophilia or sex crimes.'
Thinking of the boy trapped in a fetid stall, I felt my stomach knot up. 'What's the theory about how the killer got him out of the park?'
The parking lot's about thirty feet behind the bathroom with the trees in between, a nice green barrier. If the asshole's car was nearby, he could have carried Raymond, tossed him in, driven off.'
'What time of day did this take place?'
'Late morning. Between eleven and noon.'
'Broad daylight,' I said. 'Same as Irit - so damned brazen. You said Raymond was chubby. How much did he weigh?'
'Hundred and ten or so. But short. Four seven.'
'Heavier than Irit,' I said. 'Once again, a strong killer. How's the case classified?'
'Open but very cold, not a single lead the entire year. The main Newton D on the case is an older guy named Alvarado, very good, very methodical. He began the same way we did on Irit: hauled in and interviewed sex offenders. He also grilled all the gang bangers known to hang out at the park. They said they'd never hurt a poor little kid - which is bullshit, they kill poor little kids in drive-bys all the time. But Raymond
was actually a popular kid because his older brothers were bangers in Vatos Locos and Dad had been, too. VL rules that area and the family was well-respected.'
'But couldn't that be a possible motive?' I s
aid. 'Some internecine gang thing and Raymond was used to get a message across to the Vatos? Had the brothers or the father gotten on anyone's bad side? Were they involved in the drug trade?'
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest Page 12
