Guilt

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Chang said, “Can’t tell you what’s in there, Lilly packed. Do you want to go upstairs to look at them?”

  “Thanks, but we’ll take them back to L.A.”

  “Forensic procedure and all that? Makes sense. Good luck, guys.”

  Milo gave him a card. “In case you or your wife remember something.”

  Chang tugged a mustache end. “I don’t want to demean the dead but my opinion is Adriana was a bit odder than you just heard from Lilly.”

  “How so, Dr. Chang?”

  “My wife sees the good in everyone, puts a gloss on everything. The way I perceived Adriana she was a total loner, no life at all other than caring for May and cleaning like a demon.”

  I said, “Except for that one time the red car picked her up.”

  “Yes, that would be the exception, but outliers don’t necessarily say much, do they?”

  Milo said, “When she got back from the date she looked okay.”

  “Nothing stood out but bear in mind that neither of us was psychoanalyzing Adriana, our priority was that May stay calm during the drive home.”

  Another mustache tug. “I certainly don’t want to put Adriana down just because she stuck to herself, lots of the people I worked with in computer sciences at Yale were like that. And I’m not complaining about her work, as Lilly said Adriana was a dream employee, great with May. But once in a while, I wondered about her.”

  “Wondered about what?”

  “Her being too good to be true. Because I’ve observed people like that—the ones who come across totally dedicated to the job, single-minded, no outside life. Sometimes they’re fine but other times they end up cracking. I’ve seen it on high-pressure wards, your saintly types can turn out to be horrid.”

  I’d learned the same lesson working my first job as a psychologist: the plastic bubble unit on the Western Peds cancer ward where I finally figured out the most important question to ask prospective hires: What do you do for fun?

  Milo said, “So you were waiting for the shoe to fall, huh?”

  “No, I’m not saying that, Lieutenant. Not even close, I liked Adriana, was pleased with the order she brought to our lives. I’m just a curious person.” He smiled. “Maybe overly analytic. I didn’t want to say any of this in front of Lilly. She was totally enamored of Adriana, hearing about the murder was pretty traumatic for her. I know she looked fine to you but two hours ago she was sobbing her heart out. It’s an especially soft heart, my wife likes to believe in happy endings.”

  I said, “You’re a bit more discriminating.”

  “Maybe I’m just a distrustful bastard by nature, but when Adriana flaked on us—what we thought was flaking—Lilly was surprised but I wasn’t.”

  Milo said, “You figured something stressed her out.”

  “I figured she was like everyone else: Something better comes up, you bail.” Chang smiled again, wider but no warmer. “That’s a California thing, right?”

  We placed the boxes in the back of the unmarked and headed back to L.A.

  Milo swerved into the carpool lane and kept up a steady eighty-five per, jutting his head forward, as if personally cutting through wind resistance.

  At Del Mar, he said, “Adriana goes on her one and only date with someone in a red car. So maybe the SUV little Heather saw isn’t relevant. Hell, what’s to say any of it’s relevant?”

  I said, “Something drew Adriana to that park.”

  “Something drew her to L.A., amigo. I’d say a better gig but bailing on the Changs for extra dough doesn’t sound in character.”

  “A friend in need might have lured her. Someone with a baby.”

  “It was Mama in a red car, not a date?”

  “Mama in a red car who called Adriana for help because something scared her. If those fears were justified, Adriana could have lost her life because she got too close to the situation.”

  “Bad Daddy.”

  “Major-league monster Daddy who murdered the mother of his child and the child, held on to the baby’s skeleton as a psychopathic trophy. That ended when he read about the bones in Holly Ruche’s backyard and decided to ditch his collection nearby. Mom had already been taken care of and Adriana, suspicious after her friend disappeared, followed him. Unfortunately, he spotted her.”

  He drove for a while. “Charming scenario. Too bad I’ve got nada to back any of it up.”

  “You’ve got Adriana’s personal effects.”

  “There was anything juicy in those boxes, the Changs—being trained observers—would’ve noticed and said something.”

  “That’s assuming they snooped.”

  “Everyone snoops, Alex.”

  “Not busy people.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll burn some incense to the Evidence Gods, pray a hot lead shows up in the boxes. I was a less pro-fessional detective, I’d pull into the next truck stop and do an impromptu forensic.”

  “Everything goes straight to the lab?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “Finders keepers, but I’m doing it by the book.”

  We got off the freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard at 1:36 a.m. For all its rep as a party town, most of L.A. closes down early and the streets were dark, hazy, and empty. That can stimulate the creepers and the crawlers but Milo’s police radio was calm and back at the station the big detective room was nearly deserted, every interview room empty.

  He used the same room where Helene Johanson had cried, dragged in an additional table and created a work space. Spraying the surfaces with disinfectant, he gloved up, used a box cutter to slit the wardrobe open, emptied the contents.

  Clothing. More clothing. A peer at the bottom evoked a disgusted head shake. He examined the garments anyway.

  A couple more bland dresses similar to the one Adriana Betts had died in, two pairs of no-nonsense jeans, seven nondescript blouses, cotton undergarments, T-shirts, a pair of sneakers, black flats, cheap plastic sunglasses.

  “No naughty secret-life duds, amigo.” He sniffed the garments. “No secret-life perfume, either. Adriana, you wild and crazy kid.” Shutting his eyes for several moments as if meditating, he opened them, repacked the clothes, sealed the box and filled out a lab tag.

  The smaller box yielded a hairbrush, a toothbrush, antacid, acetaminophen, a blue bandanna, and more garments: two pairs of walking shorts and a wad of white T-shirts. Milo was about to put everything back when he stopped and hefted the shirts.

  “Too heavy.” Running his hands over each tee, he extracted a shirt from the middle of the stack and unfolded. Inside was a brown leatherette album around six inches square, fastened by a brass key clasp.

  “Looky here, Dear Diary.” He pressed his palms together prayerfully. “Our Father Who Art in Heaven, grant me something evidentiary and I’ll attend Mass next Sunday for the first time in You know how long.”

  The clasp sprang free with a finger-tap. A pulse in his neck throbbed as he opened the book.

  No diary notations, no prose of any sort. Three cardboard pages held photographs moored by clear plastic bands.

  The first page was of a teenage Adriana Betts with a boy her age. Bubbly cursive read:

  Dwayne and Me. Happy Times.

  Dwayne Hightower had been a huge kid, easily six six, three hundred, with a side-of-beef upper body and thick, short, hairless limbs. His face was a pink pie under coppery curls, his smile wide and open as the prairie. He and Adriana had posed in front of hay bales, barns, a brick-faced building, and a green John Deere tractor with wheels as tall as Adriana. In each shot, Hightower’s heavy arm rested lightly on Adriana’s shoulder. Her head reached his elbow. She clung to his biceps.

  Their smiles were a match in terms of innocence and wattage.

  The following page began with more of the same but ended with shots from Dwayne Hightower’s funeral. Adriana in a black dress, her hair tied back severely. Wearing the cheap sunglasses from the wardrobe.

  The final page was all group shots: Adriana and several other young adults
in front of a red-brick church. The edifice that had backdropped her and Dwayne. Had they planned to wed there?

  Not a single tattoo, body pierce, or edgy hairdo in sight. These pictures could’ve dated from the fifties. Heartland America, unaffected by fad or fashion.

  In some of the shots, a portly white-haired man in his sixties wearing a suit and tie stood to the left of the group.

  In most of the pictures, Adriana, though not particularly tall, had positioned herself at the back. Not so in the last three, where she posed front-center, next to the same person.

  Young black woman with short, straightened hair and a heart-shaped face. Extremely pretty and graceful despite a drab smock that could’ve come out of Adriana’s closet.

  A single chocolate dot in a sea of vanilla.

  The bones in the park had yielded African American maternal DNA.

  I didn’t need to say anything. Milo muttered, “Maybe.” Then he pointed to the older man in the suit. “Got to be the pastor, whatever his name is.”

  “Reverend Goleman,” I said. “Life Tabernacle Church of the Fields.”

  He turned to me. “You memorize everything?”

  “Just what I think might be important.”

  “You figured the church might be important? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “There’s might and there’s is,” I said. “No lead before its time.”

  “You and that party wine from when we were kids—the Orson Welles thing.”

  “Paul Masson.”

  “Now you’re showing off.”

  I reexamined the photos that included the black woman. “Adriana stands nearer to her than she does to anyone else. So let’s assume a close relationship.”

  “The pal in the red car?”

  “What we’ve heard about Adriana says she had a moral compass, would never have bailed on the Changs without a good reason. Helping a good friend might qualify.”

  “If she was murdered because she knew too much, why dump the bones near her and risk the association?”

  “He’s a confident guy.”

  “Talk about a poor choice for your baby’s daddy. And that leads me back to the problem I had before. Child abuse, even murder, something rage-related, happens all the time. But I’m still having trouble seeing anyone, even a psychopath, taking the time to clean and wax his own offspring’s bones then tossing them like trash.”

  I have no trouble seeing anything and that turns some nights hellish. I said, “You’re probably right. The first step is I.D.’ing this woman.”

  He looked at his watch. Close to three a.m. “Too early to rouse Reverend Goleman in Idaho.” Separating the photo album from the cartons, he dropped it into an evidence bag. We carried both boxes to the big D-room, where he secured them in a locker. Returning to his office, he wrote an email to the crime lab. Leaning back in his chair, he yawned. “Go home, sleep late, kiss Robin and pet the pooch. Have a nice breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re not going home.”

  “There’s a sleeping room near the holding cells. I may just bunk out so I can be ready to phone Boise in four hours. Hopefully a devout fellow like the Rev will be cooperative.”

  “Speaking of devout,” I said, “where will you be attending Sunday Mass?”

  “What? Oh, that. I said evidentiary, not suggestive.”

  “Driving a tough bargain with the Almighty?”

  “He wouldn’t respect me otherwise.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  I slipped into bed just after three thirty a.m., careful not to rouse Robin.

  She rolled toward me, wrapped her arms around my neck, murmured, “Morning.”

  “Not enough morning. Go back to sleep.”

  One of her eyes opened. “Anything new?”

  “I’ll tell you about it when we wake up.”

  “We’re awake now.” She propped herself up.

  I gave her a rundown.

  She said, “Mothers and babies,” sighed and slid away from me, was breathing evenly within seconds. Sometimes she talks in her sleep when she’s upset. This time she remained silent until daybreak. I knew because I watched her for a long time.

  An internal prompt woke me at seven a.m. I should’ve been wiped out; instead I was hyped, eager to know what Milo had learned from the Right Reverend Goleman. I waited for him to call and when he hadn’t by seven thirty, I took a robotic run, showered, shaved, brought coffee out to Robin in her studio.

  No saw buzz or hammer percussion as I approached. Maybe she’d dozed less soundly than I’d thought, didn’t trust herself with sharp things.

  She was sitting on her couch, Blanche a little blond pillow under her arm, studying a beautiful book showcasing a collection of vintage guitars. One man’s monomania. I’d bought it for her last Christmas.

  I said, “Inspiration?”

  “Aesthetics. You get any decent sleep?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Hear from Big Guy?”

  “Not yet.”

  I held out the mug. She said, “Let’s go outside,” and we sat near the pond, tossing pellets to the koi and drinking coffee and not saying a thing.

  Eleven minutes of uneasy serenity before I heard from Big Guy.

  For someone who hadn’t slept at all, Milo sounded chipper.

  “The bad news: Reverend Goleman is away from the office. The good news: He’s right here in SoCal, attending a convention in Fullerton. We’re meeting at my office at noon.”

  “He give you the name of Adriana’s friend?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but it’s complicated. See you when the sun’s high?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  I arrived a few minutes early, encountered Milo as he was locking up his office. “According to Goleman, the friend is Qeesha D’Embo. Unfortunately, that doesn’t match anything in the databases.”

  “Alias? She was hiding something?”

  “Maybe—this looks like our clergy-type.”

  A tall rotund man accompanied by a smallish female officer headed our way.

  Milo said, “I’ll take it from here, Officer,” and shook Goleman’s hand. Goleman’s suit was plaid, deep blue with a pale pink crosshatch. His white hair was shorter than in the church photos, cropped nearly to the skin at the sides, bristly and uncooperative on top. Heavy build but hard-fat, no jiggle when he moved. One of those thick sturdy men built for hours behind the plow.

  “Thanks for meeting with me, Reverend.”

  “Of course,” said Goleman. His voice was deep and mellow, easy-listening at sermon time. He reached out to grip my hand. His paw was padded and callused, just firm enough to be sociable.

  Milo led him to the same interview room, minus the extra table.

  When Goleman sat, he overwhelmed the chair. He tugged up his trousers, revealed high-laced work boots.

  “Something to drink, Reverend?”

  Goleman patted his belly. “No thanks, Lieutenant, I had breakfast at the hotel including way too much coffee. Big buffet and I overdid it with the huevos rancheros. As usual.”

  Milo said, “Know what you mean.”

  Goleman smiled faintly. “It’s tough for us big guys with healthy appetites. I don’t even make resolutions anymore because I’m weary—and wary—of failing my Savior.” He began crossing a leg, changed his mind, planted his foot back on the linoleum. “I’m in despair over Adriana. She was a wonderful girl, not a mean bone in her body. I say that as more than her pastor. I knew her personally. She dated my nephew.”

  “Dwayne.”

  Goleman’s lips folded inward. “You know about Dwayne.”

  “He came up in the course of trying to learn about Adriana.”

  “Terrible, terrible thing,” said Goleman. “Farmwork’s always dangerous but when it actually happens … I have no doubt Dwayne and Adriana would’ve married and raised wonderful, warmhearted children.” His voice caught. “Now it’s Adriana we’re mourning. Do you have any idea who did this?”r />
  “No, Reverend.”

  “This is the kind of ordeal that tests one’s faith and I’m not going to tell you I passed with flying colors. Because when I heard about Adriana from her sister—wanting me to conduct the service—I couldn’t dredge up an ounce of faith.”

  Milo said, “Bad stuff can do that, Reverend.”

  “Oh, it can, Lieutenant. But that’s the point of faith, isn’t it? Believing when everything’s rolling along hunky-dory is no challenge.” Goleman massaged double chins. “And now you’ve implied Qeesha might be in trouble.”

  “I didn’t find any record of any Qeesha D’Embo.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Goleman.

  “You figured it for an alias?”

  “Qeesha was always quite secretive, Lieutenant, and given her circumstances I can’t say I blamed her. She came to us two years ago as part of a group of fire survivors, a conflagration in New Orleans. Poor, desperate people who’d survived Katrina only to see their homes go up in flames. Several churches in our city collaborated to take some of them in and we got Qeesha. She was a lovely girl. Hardworking when it came to church activities. And the fire’s not all I was referring to as her circumstances. Not only had she lost her mother and her house, she was forced to run from someone who’d terrorized her.”

  “Terrorized her how?”

  “Domestic violence,” said Goleman. “One of those stalking situations. This fellow—she only referred to him by his first name, Clyde—had become obsessed with her, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mind you, I never heard this from Qeesha. Adriana told me after I voiced my concerns about Qeesha’s reluctance to talk about her ordeal, suggested bottling everything up might not be the best idea, perhaps counseling would help. Adriana explained to me that Qeesha was dealing with more than the fire, was too overwhelmed to handle counseling.”

  I said, “Instead, she confided in Adriana.”

  “Adriana opened her home to Qeesha, they grew close very quickly. Inseparable, really, it was rare to see one without the other, Adriana was our best preschool teacher and Qeesha served as her aide. They were terrific with the little ones. Then one day Qeesha didn’t arrive with Adriana and Adriana told me she’d moved to California.”