Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest

by Survival Of The Fittest(Lit)

  Daniel knew about fathers and daughters.

  Zev could be forgiven just about anything.

  Alone in the house, he finished his sandwich, though it might as well have been dust on plywood, then phoned an attorney in New York who received half of his income from the embassy, and asked him to quietly investigate Meta and fellow lawyer Farley Sanger, the one who'd written that retarded people weren't human.

  Two more hours at the computer earned him nothing but a sore hand.

  Carpal tunnel, the police doctor at French Hill had announced. If you don't watch out you'll have no hands. Ice it and don't use it so much.

  Expert advice; Daniel had suppressed laughter and left the examining room wondering what it would be like to have no hands.

  At 8:00 p.m., he drove to a kosher market on Pico and stocked up on groceries, putting on his yarmulke in order to blend in. The woman at the register said, 'Shalom', and he felt more at home than he had since arriving.

  At ten he called Laura in Jerusalem.

  She said, 'Darling, I couldn't wait to hear from you. The children want to speak to you, too.'

  His heart soared.

  Body's zipped, almost ready to go,' said the Central Homicide detective. 'Your basic frenzied cutting.'

  His name was Bob Pierce and he was in his fifties, thick in the middle with wavy gray hair, a big jaw, and a Chicago accent. On the way over Milo told me he'd once been a top solver, was two months from retirement now, thinking only about Idaho.

  This evening, he seemed resigned and stoic, but his fingers gathered and released the bottom hem of his suit jacket, pinching, letting go, pinching.

  He stood with us on Fourth Street, at the mouth of the alley between Main and Wall, as the crime-scene crew worked under portable floodlights. The lights were selective and the filthy strip lined with dumpsters sported strange, blotchy shadows. A rotten-produce smell poured out to the street.

  "Working alone today, Bob?' said Milo.

  'Bruce has the flu. So what's your interest in our alleged felony?'

  'Cold case of mine, a retarded kid, so I'm looking into any 187's with handicapped vics.'

  'Well, this one was handicapped. Coroner said his eyes were clearly nonfunctional. Atrophied sclera or something like that. Probably born blind. Yours black?'

  'No.'

  'This one is.'

  'Any ID?' said Milo.

  'Lots.' Pierce pulled out his notepad. 'Medi-Cal card, a few other things next to the body, along with his wallet, all the money gone.'

  He put on half-glasses, and flipped pages. 'Melvin Myers, black male, twenty-five, home address on Stocker Avenue.'

  He closed the pad and turned to watch the techs.

  'Stocker's the Crenshaw district,' said Milo.

  'Don't know what he was doing here but one of the uniforms said there's a school for the disabled not far from here - off L.A. Street, near the garment outlets. I'll find out tomorrow if Myers was a student.'

  'What happened to him?'

  'Walking through the alley, got stabbed from behind about ten times with a big knife, then ten more times in the front.'

  'Overkill,' said Milo.

  'I'll say.' Pierce's hands worked faster at his hem. 'Can you imagine, unable to see it, just feeling it - this is some so-called alleged civilization we're allegedly living in.'

  He directed the last words at me, staring, as he'd done off and on since being introduced. Was it my unshaven face or the fact that Milo had introduced me as a consultant?

  Milo said, 'Any estimates when it happened, Bob?'

  'Sometime late in the afternoon. M.E. said the body was pretty fresh.'

  'Who discovered him?'

  'One of our patrol cars - how's that for something new? They were rolling up the alley, saw a leg sticking out from behind one of the dumpsters. At first they figured him for a crackhead who fell asleep and got out to roust him.'

  'Late afternoon,' said Milo. 'Working hours. Pretty risky.'

  'Not if you're a no-brain sociopath. And he got away with it, didn't he?'

  Pierce gave a sour look. 'The thing is, even though it's working hours, this particular alley's been pretty quiet, lots of the buildings on Wall are vacant. And for the most part the people who work either on Main or Wall stay out of it because it used to be a crack market. The only citizens who do go in there are the janitors who take the garbage to the dumpsters.'

  Milo peered down the alley. 'The dumpsters give good cover.'

  'You bet. One after the other, like rows of shacks. Reminds me of those little green houses in Monopoly.'

  'So it's not a crack market anymore?'

  'Not this week. Policy order from headquarters: Mayor says get a handle on quality-of-life offenses, let's make our downtown a real downtown so we can pretend we're living in a real city. HQ says knock the dope rate down pronto but without any additional personnel or patrol cars. Which is about as likely as OJ. feeling remorse. The way it plays out is we up patrol for one alley, the crackheads move to another. Like Parcheesi - bumping and moving, everyone goes in circles.'

  'How often are the patrols?'

  'A few times a day.' Pierce pulled out a pack of mints.

  'Obviously not at the right time for poor Mr Myers. Helluva place for a blind guy to get lost in.'

  'Lost?' said Milo.

  'What else? Unless he was a crackhead himself, looking for something recreational, didn't know the action's three alleys over. But I'm choosing innocent til proven guilty unless I learn different. At this point, he got lost.'

  'I thought blind guys had a good sense of direction,' said Milo. 'And if he went to school around here, you'd think he'd know about the neighborhood, be extra careful'

  'What can I tell you?' said Pierce. Another glance back. 'Well, there it goes.'

  Coroner's attendants lifted a black body bag onto a gurney. As the wheels moved over the ravaged asphalt, the cart rattled.

  Milo said, 'One second, Bob,' strode over, said something to the attendants, and waited as they unzipped the bag.

  'So you're consulting,' Pierce said to me. 'I've got a daughter at Cal State, wants to be a psychologist, maybe work with kids-'

  Milo's voice made us both turn.

  He'd walked past the coroner's station wagon, was standing near the east wall of the alley, half-concealed by a dumpster, the visible slice of his bulk whitened by a flood-light.

  Pierce said, 'What, now?' He and I went over.

  The chalk outline of Melvin Myers's body had been drawn unevenly on the pitted tar. Right-angled. Folded. I could see where his foot had stuck out.

  The oily rust of bloodstains all around.

  A pothole in the center of the outline created a symbolic wound.

  Milo pointed at the wall. His eyes were bright, cold, satisfied but enraged.

  The red brick was blackened by decades of smog and grease and garbage distillate, a mad jumble of obscene graffiti.

  I saw nothing but defacement. Same with Pierce. He said, 'What?'

  Milo walked to the wall, stooped, put his finger near something just inches from where the brick met the floor of the alley.

  Behind the spot where Melvin Myers's head would have rested in death.

  Pierce and I got closer. The garbage stench was overpowering.

  Milo's fingertip pointed at four white letters, maybe half a hand breadth tall.

  White chalk, just like the body outline, but fainter.

  Block letters, printed neatly.

  DVLL.

  'That mean something?' said Pierce.

  'It means I've complicated your life, Bob.'

  Pierce put on his reading glasses and pushed his big jaw up to the letters.

  'Not exactly permanent. Usually the idiots use spray paint.'

  'It didn't need to be permanent,' I said. 'The main thing was to deliver the message.'

  Milo gave Pierce more details as we returned to Fourth Street.

  'Different M.O.'s, different divisions
for each one,' said the Central detective. 'Some piece of crap playing games?'

  'That's what it looks like.'

  'Who're the other D's?'

  'Hooks and McLaren in Southwest, Manny Alvarado in Newton, and we just picked one up that doesn't fit except for a DVLL link that's Hollywood's. D-I named Petra Connor, works with Stu Bishop.'

  'Don't know her,' said Pierce. 'One day Bishop's gonna be chief. Why isn't he in on it?'

  'On vacation.'

  'So what're we talking about, some coordinated effort?'

  'Nothing to coordinate so far,' said Milo. 'We've just been trading info and not much of it. Gorobich and Ramos did the whole crime-scene thing with the FBI and didn't get much either.'

  Leaving out one particular detective.

  Pierce clicked his upper teeth against his lowers. Perfect teeth. Dentures. 'What do you want me to do, here?'

  'Hey, Bob, far be it from me to tell you what to do.'

  'Why not? My wife does. And her mother. And my daughters. And everyone else with a mouth... Okay, what I'm gonna do tonight is write this up as a 187 committed during a robbery. Then I'll try to see if Mr Myers has a family. And a drug record. If there's a family, I make that call. If not, I visit the trade school tomorrow, see if he was a student, take it from there.'

  Pierce smiled. 'If I'm feeling really nasty, I call Bruce at midnight and tell him hey, guess what you'll probably still be working on when I'm fishing at Hayden Lake, trying to figure out which of my neighbors is an Aryan Nations nutcase and which one just hates people on general principle.'

  'Would it traumatize you,' said Milo, 'if I try to find out about Myers tonight? Run him through the files, maybe check out the school'

  'The school's closed.'

  'Maybe they've got an off-hours number, someone who can confirm he was a student, tell us something about him.'

  Pierce's eyes seemed to twinkle but the rest of his face expressed nothing. 'Insomniac?'

  'I've been living with this one for a while, Bob.'

  'Yeah, go ahead, why not? You can call the family, too. And while you're at it, take my dog to the vet to get his anal glands squeezed.'

  'Forget it. Don't mean to muscle in.'

  'Hey, I'm kidding - go ahead, do what you want. I've got forty-eight days left before I trade smog for Nazis and no way am I gonna finish this one by then. Just keep me cued in from time to time, I need straight paper.'

  He faced me. 'This is police work in action. Enjoying the consulting, so far?'

  Driving away, I said, 'There's no way anyone else would have noticed those letters. A message but a private one.'

  He twisted the wheel, drove to Sixth Street, hung a sharp left, and headed west, racing through the dark downtown streets. The only people visible were living out of shopping carts.

  'Mug a blind guy, fake a robbery,' he said. 'Telling us: Look how goddamn clever I am - press here for my score.'

  He rolled up onto the freeway.

  'Learn anything from the body?' I said.

  'Not really. The poor guy was hashed.'

  'So much for neat and clean,' I said. 'So much for mercy killing. He's picked up the pace and increased the violence level. And the risk level: broad daylight. He may think he's got a serious philosophy but he's just another psychopath.'

  'What's really picked up is his confidence level, Alex. He has no idea we even know what's going on, and with Carmeli's gag order we can't flush him out. Though what kind of warning could we issue? Anyone with a dark skin and a disability is a potential victim? Just what this city needs.'

  'Anyone with a dark skin and disability plus Malcolm Ponsico. Who joined a group that just might believe handicapped people aren't human. Myers's death says we need to get closer to Meta, Milo. And why not use the fact that the killer doesn't know we're on to him as an advantage? I'll go to the bookstore, see if they've got a bulletin board, check out Zena Lambert. Maybe I can get invited to the next Meta party.'

  We were going eighty-five on the 10, now. He passed under the bridge at the Crenshaw exit. 'If Lambert turns out to be a literal femme fatale, chatting her up could be more than just a social thing.'

  'Femme fatale,' I said. 'So now you like the idea of a boy-girl killer team?'

  'At this point, I'm not dismissing anything.'

  'A collaboration could explain some of the diversity in M.O. Two self-rated geniuses getting together to play human chess. She serves as a lure, he steps in and does the heavy lifting. So when do I go to Spasm?'

  'Thought you hated parties.'

  'Sometimes I'm more social than others.'

  We stopped for coffee at a fast-food stand on La Cienega, where I called Robin and told her there'd been another murder and I'd be late.

  'My God - another retarded child?'

  'A blind man.'

  'Oh, Alex...'

  'I'm sorry. It might be a while.'

  'Yes... of course. How did it happen?'

  'Fake mugging,' I said. 'Downtown.'

  I heard her inhale sharply. 'Do what you have to do. But wake me when you get in. If I'm asleep.'

  It was after eleven by the time we returned to Sharavi's house. He took a while to answer the door, had clearly been sleeping but he did his best to hide it.

  The gold eyes were red-rimmed. He wore a plain white T-shirt and green cotton athletic shorts. As he ushered us in, he revealed his good hand and the black-matte pistol dangling from it.

  'Plastic,' said Milo. 'Glock.'

  'No, a smaller manufacturer.' Sharavi slipped the weapon

  into a pocket of the shorts. 'So the blind man was part of it.'

  Milo told him what we'd learned and we returned to the computer room. Moments later we learned that Melvin A. Myers had no criminal record and had received various forms of public assistance for most of his life. No family.

  'Let's try the school,' said Milo. 'Central City Skills Center.'

  Unsurprisingly, no one answered and Sharavi played with data banks for a while, finally locating a two-year-old article on the school in the Los Angeles Times. The director at that time had been a woman named Darlene Grosperrin.

  'At least it's not Smith,' said Milo. 'Look her up.'

  He was sitting on the edge of his folding chair, moving in rhythm with Sharavi's one-handed stabs at the keyboard. Unaware of the harmony.

  Sharavi complied. 'Yes, here it is, DMV: Darlene Grosperrin, Amherst Street, Brentwood.'

  Milo's long arm shot forward as he grabbed the phone and dialed 411. He barked, listened, wrote down the number. 'Grosperrin, D., no first name, no address, but how many of those can there be.... Here's what you get for your trusting nature, Ms G. A midnight call.'

  He punched numbers again.

  'Darlene Grosperrin? This is Detective Milo Sturgis of the Los Angeles Police Department, sorry to call this late - pardon, ma'am? No, no, not your daughter, sorry to scare you, ma'am... it's about one of the students at the skills center, a gentleman named Melvin A. Myers - no, ma'am, unfortunately, he's not okay...'

  He put the phone down ten minutes later.

  'Top student, she says. And not retarded, smart, one of their best trainees, could type over one-hundred-and-fifty

  words a minute on the computer. He was due to graduate in a few months, she was sure he'd get a job.'

  He rubbed his face.

  'She was pretty broken up, couldn't tell me what he'd been doing in the alley. Sometimes he ate dinner downtown before heading back to Crenshaw but there'd be no reason for him to wander in there. And he was pretty good with that cane, knew the street layout.'

  'So he was lured,' I said. 'What about family?'

  'None - lucky for Bob Pierce. Myers has been living alone for the last five years, since his mother died. Apparently she sheltered him and after she was gone he decided to pull himself together. First he took some training at the Braille center, then he enrolled at the school. They've got an eighteen-month computer program and he was acing it. The address on Stock
er is a state-financed group home.'

  Sharavi removed the black-matte pistol and placed it next to the computer. 'A blind man... my contact back east called me while you were gone. He's found nothing on Meta in New York, but the lawyer who wrote that article in The Pathfinder