Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest

by Survival Of The Fittest(Lit)

  'Health insurance,' I said. 'What's the deductible?'

  He smiled. 'Ample.'

  'In case I get hurt?'

  'I'll do my best to take care of you.'

  'What about a driver's license?'

  'We'll need a photo for that and I want to wait til Thursday or Friday when your beard's thicker. I'll have some educational credentials for you at that time, also. We've come up with an L.A.-based, unaccredited psychology program that closed down ten years ago. Even if by some strange coincidence you happened to meet another alumnus, it was home-study, no contact between the students.'

  'Sounds perfect.'

  He squared the stack of papers. 'Few civilians would disrupt their life to this extent, Alex.'

  'I'm a masochist. And frankly, I think we're overdoing the espionage bit.'

  'Better that than the opposite. Should you need a home away from home, you've got one. I was able to get a place in the city. Genessee Avenue. The Fairfax district.'

  He waved his good hand around the room. 'I'm afraid it's nothing like this, but the neighbors don't pry.'

  From his pocket came a ring bearing several keys. He spread them on the table, touched each in turn.

  'Front and back doors, garage, your car. It's a Karmann Ghia, ten years old, but customized with a new engine, and runs better than it looks. It's in the garage.'

  He slid the keys across the table.

  'Sounds like you've thought of everything,' I said.

  'If only that were possible.'

  Milo rang the bell just after ten-thirty and Petra Connor was with him. She was dressed in a pantsuit, again, this one chocolate brown, wore less makeup, and looked younger.

  Milo said, 'Superintendent Sharavi, Detective Petra Connor, Hollywood Division.'

  They shook hands. Connor's dark eyes shifted to me, then to the false ID.

  'Something to drink?' I said.

  'No, thanks,' she said.

  Milo said, 'If you've got coffee left, I'll have some. Where's Robin?'

  'Out in back.'

  I filled a mug and Milo studied my social-security card. 'Just finished interdivisional show-and-tell. Pierce couldn't make it, McLaren and Hooks were out on other cases so it was Alvarado, Detective Connor, and me.

  Connor twisted a cameo ring. 'Thanks for letting me in on this. I recontacted Malcolm Ponsico's parents in New Jersey but once again, they were no help. And I couldn't tell them it might not be suicide, my line was I was just touching base. I also looked into Zena Lambert's background and it's spodess. She left PlasmoDerm voluntarily, wasn't fired, nothing iffy in her personnel file, and she's the registered

  owner of the bookstore, so it looks like an attempt at self-employment.'

  She looked at Milo.

  He said, 'The only morsel that came up at the meeting was that Alvarado dug through Recreation Department files and found a guy named Wilson Tenney who'd worked at the park where Raymond Ortiz was abducted and was fired a few weeks later because of personality problems. Wouldn't take orders, showed up when he wanted to, sat on a bench and read instead of raking. They warned him several times, finally gave him the boot. Tenney contested the firing, made noises about a lawsuit, reverse discrimination because he was a white male, but then he just went away.'

  He handed me a sheet printed with a photocopied driver's license. Tenney was thirty-five, five ten, one fifty. Green eyes, shoulder-length hair, light brown, unless the black and white copy was inaccurate. Hard eyes, tight mouth. If you were looking for something. Nothing else remarkable about the face.

  'Angry man,' I said. 'Resentment of minorities. Reading on the job because he's a self-styled intellectual? Interesting.'

  'We ran him though, and he's as clean as Lambert and didn't go crosstown for a job at the conservancy. He did split from his last known address - apartment in Mar Vista. And guess what he drives?'

  'A van.'

  'Seventy-nine Chevy, lapsed registration, so that raises the hunch quotient a bit. If he's living on the street, he's not on the dole, no welfare applications.'

  'He might have a history of psychiatric treatment,' I said. 'Could be hospitalized.'

  'Alvarado's already starting to check public hospitals; at this point private places would be impossible to crack. I also dropped by that Mensa president's place - Bukovsky. It's his business, an auto-parts yard, and he wasn't in. I decided not to leave a card. Suggestions, so far?'

  'No,' said Sharavi, 'just information.' He repeated what he'd told me about Sanger and the Loomis foundation.

  'Fifth Avenue,' said Milo. 'And maybe they're silent partners with the creep who wrote that book... maybe partners with Zena Lambert, bankrolling Spasm. One way for a clerk to go self-employed overnight.'

  'Venture capital for a new Utopia,' I said.

  'And if the store brings in money,' said Sharavi, 'maybe it goes back to the Loomis Foundation. Interesting way to launder.'

  'So you'll keep checking Sanger's travel records?' said Milo.

  Sharavi nodded.

  'What about the editor, Cranepool?'

  'She lives alone in an apartment on East Seventy-eighth Street, works long hours at the brokerage house, comes home and rarely goes out except to shop and run errands.'

  Three photos came out of his pocket. The first landed upside down and he left it that way. The second was a snapshot of a tall, beefy man around forty with sloping shoulders that good tailoring couldn't conceal. His hair was dark and combed straight back and his features were thick, slightly flattened. Dark eyes, droopy lids. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, navy tie, and carried a soft leather attach‚. The camera had caught him walking down a crowded street looking preoccupied.

  The third featured a tight-lipped, harried-looking woman ten years older, wearing a bulky beige sweater and dark green plaid slacks. Light brown hair was pulled back from a broad face. Large gold earrings, gold-rimmed glasses.

  More flattened features and I asked if she and Sanger could be related.

  'Good question,' said Sharavi. 'I'll try to find out.'

  I examined the shot of Helga Cranepool some more. She was in motion but a fast lens had captured her without blur - stepping out of a door holding two white shopping bags. The window behind her displayed apples and oranges. The lettering on one of the bags said d'Agostino.

  'He was on his way to a business lunch,' said Sharavi. 'We found her grocery shopping on Lexington Avenue on Saturday.'

  'Both of them are pretty grim-looking,' said Petra Connor.

  'Maybe being brilliant's not what it's cracked up to be,' said Milo.

  Sharavi flipped the first photo over. Farley Sanger in a red polo shirt and canvas hat, a pretty blond woman, and two blond children sitting in a motorboat still moored to a dock. Flat, green water, hints of marsh grass at the periphery.

  Sanger still looked unhappy and the woman seemed cowed. The children had turned away from the camera, showing thin necks and yellow hair.

  'Not exactly Norman Rockwell,' said Connor.

  Milo asked if he could have the pictures and Sharavi said sure, they were copies for him.

  I thought about the fact that he'd waited til Milo arrived to display them. Waited to let loose with details.

  Cop-to-cop. I was a very small part of this.

  'Onward,' said Milo. 'The Melvin Myers stabbing. I met with Mrs Grosperrin, the director at Myers's trade school. At first she kept describing Myers as the perfect student. Too perfect, so I pressed her and she finally admitted he could also be a giant pain: quick temper, chip on his shoulder, always looking for signs of discrimination against

  the handicapped, complaining the school patronized the students instead of treating them like adults, the facilities sucked, the course offerings sucked. Grosperrin figured it was because Melvin's mother had cooped him up for so long, now he was feeling his oats. She said Myers saw himself as a crusader, tried to turn the student council into some big deal - greater voice for the students, more respect from the administr
ation.'

  'A leader but abrasive,' I said. 'Someone who could have made enemies.'

  'Grosperrin denied he'd had any conflict with anyone, claimed the faculty understood where he was coming from and admired him. For his spunk, quote unquote.'

  'What about the people at Myers's group home?'

  'Four residents, I talked to three and the landlady, over the phone. They said basically the same thing. Melvin was bright, but he could piss you off with his smart mouth.'

  'Still,' said Connor, 'none of the other victims was abrasive. It sounds like who they were made them victims, not what they did.'

  'Did Mrs Grosperrin have any idea what could have lured Myers into that alley?' said Sharavi.

  'None,' said Milo. 'But one thing's for sure: He didn't get lost. She said he knew the area like the palm of his hand, had trained himself to memorize the entire downtown grid. So someone offered him motivation to walk through that alley. And that's where we stand. You schedule a time for visiting the bookstore yet, Alex?'

  'Daniel suggested Thursday or Friday. To give the beard some time.'

  'Good idea,' he said, 'Andrew.'

  The three of them left, talking procedure, cop-to-cop, as I thought about Nolan Dahl.

  The parallels to Ponsico; another bright boy destroying himself.

  Not very profound. IQ was no defense against pain. Sometimes it hurt to perceive too clearly.

  But the next morning it stayed with me.

  Dr Lehmann's bleak situation. The things Helena was better off not knowing.

  Things that left Nolan drowning in guilt?

  I'd assumed a sexual secret, but maybe not. Helena had talked about Nolan's embracing extremes.

  How far had he taken it?

  Had he transferred out of West L.A. because of something he'd done in West L.A.?

  Irit had been murdered in West L.A. When I'd visited the killing site after Latvinia's murder, I'd thought about a monster in a uniform.

  A cop?

  A big, strong, smiling, handsome young cop?

  Disgusting... but a West L.A. cop would know the park's backroads, be able to lose himself.

  A cop could always offer a reason for being somewhere.

  West L.A. didn't patrol the park, the rangers did... a cop on lunch break?

  Code 7 for doughnuts and homicide?

  But no, that made no sense. Nolan had been dead several weeks by the time of Latvinia's and Melvin Myers's murders. And there wasn't a shred of evidence that Nolan had ever hurt anyone but himself.

  Malignant imagination, Delaware. The time line, all wrong.

  Unless there was more than one killer.

  Not just a boy-girl thing, a killing club. That would explain the varying M.O.'s.

  A group game: dividing the city up, one police district per player. Nolan telling them how to do it because he was an expert on procedure...

  Enough. I was defaming a dead man because he'd been smart. No doubt Nolan had revealed secrets Lehmann thought best left buried.

  Still, Helena had run away.

  Why?

  Her home phone was disconnected now. Long-term move.

  With both parents gone, no close family, who would she turn to in times of stress?

  Distant relatives? Friends? I didn't know any of them.

  Didn't know much about her at all.

  She had mentioned one former relative: the ex-husband.

  Gary's a pulmonologist, basically a nice guy. But he decided he wanted to be a farmer so he moved to North Carolina.

  I called Rick at Cedars and he came on the line sounding impatient but softening when he learned it was me.

  'Sure,' he said. 'Gary Blank. He used to work here, too. Good lung man, Southerner. Kind of a country boy at heart. Why?'

  'I'm wondering if Helena would have turned to him for support.'

  'Hmm... the divorce was friendly. As divorces go. And Gary's an easygoing type. If she asked him to put her up, my guess is sure, he'd hold the door wide open.'

  'Thanks.'

  'So... you're still trying to reach her.'

  'You know me, Rick. Never developed a taste for unfinished business.'

  'Yup,' he said. 'Used to be that way, myself.'

  'Used to be?'

  He laughed. 'Yesterday.'

  North Carolina had three area codes - 704, 910, 919 - and I tried Information for all of them before cashing in with 919.

  Gary S. Blank, no degree. A rural route near Durham.

  Dinnertime in North Carolina.

  Helena answered after two rings.

  She recognized my voice right away and hers got strained. 'How'd you find me?'

  'Lucky guess. I don't mean to be intrusive, but I just wanted to see how you're doing. If this makes things worse for you, just say so.'

  She didn't answer. I could hear music in the background. Something baroque.

  'Helena-'

  'It's okay. You just caught me off-guard.'

  'I'm sorry-'

  'No, it's okay. I'm - I guess I'm touched that you cared. I'm sorry for skipping out without an explanation but... this is very hard, Dr Delaware. I - it's just hard. You really caught me off-guard.'

  'No need to-'

  'No, it's okay. It's just - I got stressed out, decided to make a clean sweep.'

  'Was it something you learned about Nolan?'

  Her voice got higher. 'What do you mean?'

  'You never made another appointment after finding that family photo album in Nolan's garage. I was just wondering if there was something in there that upset you.'

  Another long silence.

  'Jesus,' she finally said. 'Shit.'

  'Helena-'

  'Jesus Christ - I really don't want to talk about this.'

  'No problem.'

  'But I - Dr Delaware, what I'm saying is, it's water under the bridge. Nothing I can change. None of my business, really. I've got to concentrate on what / can do. Get past this, move on.'

  I said nothing.

  'You're good,' she said. 'Brilliant - uncanny - I'm sorry, I'm not making sense, am I?'

  'Yes, you are. You learned something upsetting and don't want to rake it up.'

  'Exactly. Exactly.'

  I let a few more moments pass. 'One thing though, Helena. If Nolan was involved in something that's still continuing and you have the ability to-'

  'Of course it's continuing! The world stinks, it's full of... that kind of thing. But I can't bear the responsibility for every bit of - what? Hold on.'

  Muffled voices. Her hand over the phone.

  She came back on. 'My ex heard me shouting and came in to check.' Deep breath. 'listen, I'm sorry. Nolan's death was bad enough, but then to learn he was... I'm sorry, I just can't deal with this. Thanks for calling, but no. I'm fine. I'll cope... it's really beautiful here, maybe I'll give country life a try.... Sorry for being so edgy, Dr Delaware, but... please understand.'

  Three apologies in not many more seconds.

  I said, 'Of course. You have nothing to be sorry for. Even if Nolan was part of something extreme-'

  'I wouldn't call it extreme,' she said, suddenly angry. 'Sick, but not extreme. Guys do it all the time, right?'

  'Do they?'

  'I'd say so. It's the oldest profession, right?'

  'Prostitution?'

  Silence. 'What?' she said. 'What did you mean?'

  'I was just wondering if Nolan got into some sort of extreme political activity.'

  'I wish. That I was used to.' She laughed. 'So you're not a mind reader... politics. If only. No, Dr Delaware, I'm just talking about good old whoring around. My noble police-officer brother's apparent obsession.'

  I said nothing.

  She laughed again. Kept laughing, louder, faster, until her voice took on a glassy edge of hysteria. 'I couldn't care less about Nolan's politics. He was always jumping from one crazy thing to another, big deal. The truth is, at this point, I couldn't care less about anything he did.' Her voice cracked. 'Oh,
Dr Delaware, I'm so angry at him! So goddamn, goddamn angry at him!'