Guilt

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Interesting.”

  “Could it be important?”

  “At this point, any information’s valuable.”

  “Great, Dr. Delaware. Then I feel good about all the time I spent online. Bye.”

  I logged onto the site. Identical blue box. No additional wisdom.

  Robin knocked on my office door. “Going to keep working for a while?”

  “Nah, let’s have some fun.”

  She looked at the screen. I explained.

  She said, “Never thought of hospitals as cash businesses.”

  “Place was an abortion mill back when abortion was a felony. Illegal means high profit margins.”

  I logged off.

  She said, “Fun sounds okay.” Utter lack of conviction.

  I put my arm around her. “C’mon, life’s short, let’s own ours. How about music?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Let me check the Catalina … here’s their calendar … Jane Monheit.”

  “Like her,” she said. “If we can get tickets, let’s do it.”

  Monheit was in fine voice backed by a band that never stopped swinging, the food at the club was decent, a couple of generous Chivas pours went down well.

  We got home and beelined to bed and afterward I plunged into sleep, stayed out for an atypical seven hours, woke up with an aching head that filled quickly with words and pictures.

  When I got to my office my cell phone was beeping and my landline message machine was blinking.

  A pair of calls, less than a minute apart. I punched Play on the machine.

  Milo’s voice said, “Found my boy Wedd. Call.”

  “Sturgis.”

  “Congrats.”

  “Hear what I have to say first.”

  CHAPTER

  40

  Melvin Jaron Wedd had been found in the passenger seat of his pimped-up black Explorer. Single gunshot wound to his left temple. The entry hole said large-caliber. The stippling said up close and personal, though probably not a contact wound.

  Brain matter clotted the back of his seat. A Baggie of weed sat between his splayed knees. A glass bong glinted on the floor near his left shoe. The impact had caused him to slide down, leaving his corpse in an awkward semi-reclining state that wouldn’t have been comfortable in life.

  His mouth gaped, his eyes were shut, his bowels had emptied. Rot and insect activity said he’d been there days rather than hours.

  Masked and gloved, a C.I. named Gloria was going through his pockets. She’d already procured his wallet, pulled out a driver’s license, credit cards, eighty bucks in cash. Milo didn’t need any of that to know who the victim was. A BOLO-find on Wedd’s Explorer had shown up in his office email shortly after six a.m. He’d been online an hour before, “eating futility for breakfast.”

  Blood in the SUV said the Explorer was the murder scene. The vehicle had been left at the rear of a construction site east of Laurel Canyon, four hundred feet up a quiet street just north of the Valley. Nice neighborhood; a while back, Milo had caught a case not far from here, a prep school teacher left in a bathtub packed with dry ice.

  A large, elaborate house had been framed up on the lot. Weathered wood marred by rust streaks below the nails said it had been a while since the project was active. Care had been taken to preserve the assortment of mature eucalyptus at the rear of the lot. The trees hadn’t been trimmed and some of their branches drooped to the ground and continued trailing along the dirt, shaggy and green, like oversized caterpillars. The foliage had served to partially shield the Explorer but if anyone had been working on the site, they’d have noticed the vehicle immediately.

  I said, “Foreclosure?”

  Milo said, “Yup, last year. Guy who found the body goes around checking out bank-owned properties. The former owners are a nice older couple from Denver, moved here to be with their grandkids, tried to build their dream house, got taxed out of their dry-cleaning business. I had Denver PD talk to them. They’ve never heard of Wedd and they come up antiseptic-clean. And there goes my case on Adriana because ol’ Melvin ain’t ever talking.”

  Gloria called out his name. We approached her, tried to stand sufficiently back to avoid the wafting of death fumes.

  “This was in his jacket, Milo. Upper inside pocket.”

  She held out a matchbook, white cover, unmarked. The kind you get with cigarettes at the liquor store.

  Milo said, “So he had a fuel source for his dope.”

  Gloria opened the book. No matches left, just fuzzy stubs. Inside the book’s cover, someone had scrawled in blue ballpoint. Tiny, cramped cursive.

  Milo put on reading glasses, gloved up, took the book.

  I read over his shoulder.

  This is guilt.

  Gloria said, “Can I theorize a little?”

  “Sure.”

  “If we’d found a gun, I’d look at this as maybe a suicide note. Seeing as it’s clearly a homicide, either your victim had remorse for something and wrote this himself or someone else thought he should pay for something.”

  “Have you checked his other pockets yet?”

  “Twice. I even looked in his underwear.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m dedicated up to a point. Any idea what Mr. Wedd could be guilty of?”

  “Before this I had a few ideas.” He shook his head. “Anything else?”

  “The driver’s-seat adjustment seems to roughly fit Wedd’s height, so either he was driving and moved to the passenger side or your offender’s around the same size. I guess the weed and the bong are meant to imply a drug party. But with no matches in the book or anywhere else, same for ashes or residue?”

  “It looks staged to you?”

  “That or there was an interruption before the party got going,” she said. “Was Wedd involved in that world?”

  “Not that I know,” said Milo. “But I don’t know much, period.”

  He stepped away from the stench. Gloria and I followed. She said, “I’ll do my best to rush DNA on the bag and the pipe, see if any chemistry other than his comes back. You saw those prints the techies pulled from the car. They’ve already gone to the lab, maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  He said, “That’s my middle name.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Maybe.”

  A tow truck arrived to hook up the SUV. Neighbors had begun to emerge and uniforms were doing their usual blank-faced centurion thing, easing concerned citizens away from the scene with no thought to reassurance.

  Milo looked at the white-bagged body being gurneyed away. “Melvin, Melvin, Melvin, so now you’re another victim.” To me: “All those women he had coming in and out, there could be a horde of angry husbands, boyfriends.” Back at the corpse: “Thanks a bundle for your dissolute lifestyle, pal.”

  I said, “You see Wedd getting into a car with an angry husband? Letting him drive?”

  “Someone with a gun? Sure. Or the offender’s a jilted female, hell hath no fury and all that.”

  “Tall girl.”

  “Plenty of those in SoCal—what, you don’t like the jealousy angle?”

  “It’s a common motive.”

  “But you have a better idea.”

  I told him my growing suspicions about Premadonny, leaving out the possibility of a violent child.

  He said, “Creepy-World flourishes in Coldwater Canyon? What’s the motive for doing two, maybe three employees, Alex? They’re abusing their kids and bumping off the staff to keep them quiet?”

  “Put that way, it sounds pretty weak.”

  “No, no, I take every product of your fertile mind seriously, it just came out of left field. Okay, let me focus for a sec: They bug you because they isolate their kids. Maybe they got tired of the hustle, had enough dough, said screw it.”

  I said, “That could be it.”

  “But,” he said.

  “No buts.”

  Gathering the flesh above his nose with two fingers, he deepened the fissure that time and age had provided. “Dea
ling with suspects like that. God, I hope you’re wrong.”

  “Forget I brought it up.”

  His cell squawked Tchaikovsky. He said, “Okay, thanks,” dropped the phone back in his pocket. “Prints from two individuals in the car: Wedd’s and an unknown contributor with no match to AFIS. Unknown’s was on the driver’s side of the center console, Wedd’s showed up on the trunk latch and the interior of the trunk. To me that says our movie stars aren’t involved.”

  “How so?”

  “Someone at that level chauffeuring the help? More likely some disreputable who Wedd pissed off did this. Not that it makes a difference in terms of Adriana and the baby getting icier by the second.”

  He left me standing there, headed toward the SUV, stopped, returned. “That canceled appointment, any hint about what kind of problem their kid was having?”

  “The guy I spoke to wouldn’t even tell me which kid it was.”

  “Okay, they’re weirdly secretive. Maybe shitty parents—no shock, given all the money, no one getting told no. But that’s a long way from linking them to my murders and I’ve still got Qeesha, a confirmed criminal and likely a killer herself. And Wedd, a guy who defrauded insurance, and Adriana, who might’ve had a secret life. Toss in ingredients like that and no telling what’ll cook up.”

  I said, “Felony gumbo.”

  “You figure I’m in denial. Hell, yeah, sure I am. But aren’t you the one says denial can be useful?”

  “I love being quoted.”

  “Hey,” he said, “it’s either you or the Bible and right now I’m not feeling sufficiently pious to invoke Scripture. C’mon, I’ll walk you to your car.”

  CHAPTER

  41

  Obsessiveness and anxiety are traits that can clog up your life.

  But the way I figure, they’ve got plenty of evolutionary value.

  Think of cave-people surrounded by predators. Jumpy, annoyingly picky Oog sleeps fitfully because he’s mindful of creatures that roar in the night. More often than not, he wakes up with a dry mouth and a pounding heart.

  Easygoing Moog, in contrast, sinks easily into beautiful dreams. One morning he fails to wake up at all because his heart’s been chewed to hamburger and the rest of his innards have been served up as steaming mounds of carnivore candy.

  The blessing-curse of an overly developed attention span helped me escape a family situation that would’ve continued to damage me and might’ve ended up killing me. Since then, over-the-shoulder vigilance has saved my life more than once.

  So I’ll sacrifice a bit of serenity.

  Milo was right; denial could be the right way to go but this morning it felt wrong and I got home itching to focus.

  An hour on the computer gave way to double that time on the phone. My pitch grew better with repeated use but it proved useless. Then I switched gears and everything fell into place.

  By four p.m. I was dressed in a steel-gray Italian suit, open-necked white shirt, brown loafers, and hanging near the southwest corner of Linden Drive and Wilshire.

  Busy stretch of impeccable Beverly Hills sidewalk, easy to blend in with a light pedestrian parade as I repeated a two-block circuit while pretending to window-shop.

  The Seville was parked in a B.H. city lot. Two hours gratis, so shoppers could concentrate on consumer goods and cuisine.

  I wasn’t planning to buy anything; I had something to sell. Or trade, depending on how things worked out.

  Apex Management was headquartered in a forties-era three-story brick building that looked as if it had once housed doctors and dentists. A few months ago, I’d read about the Beverly Hills city council wanting to clamp down on medical offices because health care attracted hordes of—surprise!—sick people who took up too many parking spaces and failed to spend like tourists.

  Entertainment ancillaries like Apex, on the other hand, churned expense accounts at the city’s truffled-up eateries and attracted publicity magnets and the paparazzi and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

  I was facing a collection of psychotically priced cashmere sweaters and wondering if the goats who’d donated their hair were having a rough winter when the first human outflow emerged from behind Apex’s carved oak doors.

  Three men in their twenties and thirties, then four more, all wearing Italian suits, open-necked dress shirts, and loafers. Industry-ancillary uniform. Which was the point.

  Next came a man and two women in tailored pantsuits, followed by a pair of younger women similarly but less expensively attired. Those two let the door close on the next person out: a tired-looking older man in a green janitor’s uniform.

  Three minutes later the prey came into view.

  Tall, late twenties, crowned by a thick mop of blond-streaked, light brown hair, he wore black-framed geek eyeglasses that stretched wider than his pasty, bony face. In the firm’s Christmas party photos he’d worn wire rims.

  He’d also tended to pose standing slightly apart from his co-workers, which had led me to hope he was a loner.

  Wish fulfilled: all by himself and looking worn out and distracted.

  The perfect quarry.

  I watched him stop and fidget. His suit was black with a pink pinstripe, narrow-lapelled, snugly fitted. Cheaply cut when you got close, as much hot glue as stitching in play. A Level Two Service Assistant’s salary wouldn’t cover high-end threads.

  I walked toward him, noticed a loose thread curling from one shirt collar. Tsk tsk.

  We were face-to-face. He was concentrating on the sidewalk, didn’t notice. When my shadow intruded on his, his head rose and he gave a start and tried to move past me.

  I blocked him. “Kevin?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No, but you do know JayMar Laboratory Supplies.”

  “Huh?”

  I held my LAPD consultant I.D. badge close to my thigh, raised it just enough so he had to strain to read the part I wasn’t covering with my thumb.

  Showcasing the always-impressive department seal while concealing my name and ambiguous title.

  “Police?”

  I said, “Could I have a moment of your time, Kevin?”

  His mouth opened wide. So did the carved oak door, ejecting more suits, male and female, a large group buoyant with liberation, headed our way, laughing raucously.

  Someone said, “Hey, Kev.”

  The quarry waved.

  I said, “I can show them the badge, too.”

  His jaws clenched. “Don’t.”

  “Your call, Kev.” Walking back to Wilshire, I returned to the sweater display, kept my eye on him while pretending to study my cell phone.

  Co-workers coalesced around him. A woman said something and pointed across Wilshire. Smiling painfully, he shook his head. The group continued on, merry as carolers. Crossing the boulevard, they continued toward a restaurant on the ground floor of a black-glass office building.

  El Bandito Grill.

  A banner proclaimed Happy Hour!!!

  Not for Kevin Dubinsky.

  As I waited for him, he kicked one heel with the other. Contemplating an alternative. Failing to come up with one, he removed his glasses and swung them at his side as pipe-stem legs propelled him toward me.

  When he got close, he mumbled, “What’s going on?”

  I said, “How ’bout we walk while we chat?”

  “Chat about what?”

  “Or we could talk right here, Kevin.” I pulled out the photocopied order form.

  JayMar Laboratory Supplies, Chula Vista, California

  Five hundred dermestid beetles and a set of surgical tools, including a bone saw, purchased four months ago.

  It had taken me a while to get the info. Call after futile call using the address of the compound off Coldwater Canyon.

  The pitch: “I’m calling to renew an order for dermestid beetles …”

  No one knew what I was talking about. Then I realized I’d goofed big-time. People like that didn’t do things for themselves. After su
bstituting Apex Management’s shipping address—a warehouse in Culver City—I had confirmation by the seventh call, a nice clean fax of the form.

  Kevin Dubinsky’s name at the bottom as “purchaser.”

  Facebook and LinkedIn supplied all I needed to know about him. Let’s hear it for cyber-truth.

  He turned away from the order form. “So? It’s my job.”

  “Exactly, Kev. Your job’s what we need to discuss.”

  “Why?”

  “You buy flesh-eating insects and scalpels regularly?”

  “I figured it was …” He shut his mouth.

  “It was what?”

  “Nothing.” Flash of bitter smile. “I’m not paid to think.”

  “Are you paid not to think?”

  No answer.

  “What you take home, Kev, you might want to reconsider your priorities.”

  “There’s a problem?”

  “Only if you don’t cooperate.”

  “With what?”

  “Better I ask the questions.”

  “Something bad happened?”

  “I don’t visit people to talk about jaywalking, Kev.”

  “Oh, shit—what’s going on?”

  “Like I said, Kev, the less you know the better.”

  “Shit.” He licked his lips, began walking east on Wilshire. I kept up with his long stride. All those years with Milo, great practice.

  I said, “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t remember specifics.”

  “You buy what you’re told, all part of the job.”

  “That is the job. Period.”

  “Service assistant.”

  “Yeah, it’s stupid, I know. I need to eat, okay?”

  “You get a call to—”

  “Never a call, always email.”

  “Buy me bugs.”

  “I order all kinds of things. That’s what I’m paid to do.”

  “You do all the purchasing for the Premadonny compound?”

  “No, just …” Head shake.

  “Just things they don’t want their name on?”