Guilt

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Same question.”

  “Huh?”

  “Learn anything?”

  Burns tapped a metal case. “Nah. But I took her hard drive, will dig deeper. Also drives from other machines they use—get this—to buy groceries. Or-gah-nic arugula. No need to encrypt that.”

  “What about the kids’ computers?”

  “Two desktops for four of them.” Burns cackled. “Maybe they’re learning how to share. She’s got them on every parental lock known to mankind, they’re lucky to get the weather. Maybe that’s why they hardly ever go online.”

  I said, “Could be they like to read.”

  Burns stared at me as if I’d talked in tongues. To Milo: “We through here?”

  “Not even close.”

  O’Shea and Burns took a lunch break near the pool. Take-out Mexican Milo had brought along.

  We found Prema in her cavernous kitchen, sitting at a granite-topped counter drinking tea. No maid in sight. The CCTV screens remained inert.

  Milo said, “Do you have those real estate documents?”

  “You need to actually see them?”

  “We do.”

  She left, returned a few minutes later. “Here’s the trust deed on the entire property.”

  Milo read carefully, per Deputy D.A. John Nguyen’s instructions.

  “As you can see, I’m the sole owner,” she said. “I bought it before I knew him.”

  A divorce lawyer would laugh at that but for Milo’s purposes, the deed was sufficient.

  He produced a form of his own: Prema’s consent to search the entire property. She scrawled her name without reading.

  “Okay?” she said, drumming granite.

  “You’re sure he’s over there.”

  “He drove in late, like one thirty in the morning, hasn’t left since. I saw it right there.” Pointing to the bank of screens.

  “It records twenty-four-seven?”

  “It sure does. Everything feeds into a computer and before you got here, I scrolled through. He has not left.”

  “Does Detective Burns have the hard drive for that computer?”

  Prema’s perfect mouth formed an O. “Sorry, forgot to tell him about it. But all it does is record feed from the security system and most of that’s blank.”

  “Where’s the computer?”

  She slid open a drawer beneath the screens, pulled out a small laptop.

  “How far back do you keep recordings?”

  “Hmm. I really don’t know.”

  Burns’s grumpiness turned to outright hostility. “I told you to give me everything. You didn’t think to mention this?”

  Prema said, “I—it slipped my mind.”

  He began pushing buttons, muttered, “ ’Nother piece of crap.”

  Prema looked to me for support. I gave her a who-knows? smile. She returned to her tea as Burns fiddled with the laptop.

  “What date do you want, Lieutenant?”

  Milo told him.

  “Hmmph. Here you go.”

  Nothing the night of the murders until one thirty-three a.m., when a vehicle passed through Donny Rader’s gate.

  Big, dark SUV.

  “No front plate,” said Burns. “Tough luck for you, Lieutenant, the camera angle could pick it up.”

  From across the kitchen, Prema said, “That’s got to be his. He’s piled up a bunch of tickets for not putting on a front plate.”

  Burns mumbled, “Ooh, major scofflaw.”

  Blocking Prema’s view with his own bulk, Milo placed his hand on Burns’s shoulder. Burns looked up at Milo. Milo’s wolf-grin lowered his head. A naughty child finally disciplined.

  Milo pulled out the pages he’d received from DMV: regs on Donny Rader’s sixteen vehicles. Four Ferraris, three Porsches, a Lamborghini, a Maserati, a Stryker, a pair of Mercedeses, an Aston Martin Rapide, a vintage Jaguar E-type.

  Two SUVs, both black: a Range Rover and Ford Explorer. “Go back, let’s see if we can figure out which it is.”

  Three rewinds later, the bet was on the Explorer.

  Milo said, “Now go forward.”

  “Sure, Lieutenant.”

  We didn’t need to wait long.

  Forty-nine seconds after the first SUV had exited, an identical set of wheels rolled through Rader’s gate.

  Front plates on this one. Milo said, “Freeze that,” and checked the tags against his notes. “Yup, Wedd’s.”

  Prema said, “Mel was there?”

  “Any reason he would be?”

  She shook her head. Rested her chin in her hand and stared at nothing.

  Milo said, “Why don’t you relax somewhere, Ms. Moon.”

  “It’s okay, I’ve got nowhere to go.”

  Low, morose tone. Burns looked at her as if for the first time. Bland curiosity, no sympathy.

  Milo prodded Burns’s shoulder with a fingertip. “Keep going.”

  Twenty-nine seconds after Wedd’s exit, a third vehicle, smaller, shaped like a car, zipped through Prema’s gate.

  Pinpointing the make and registration was easy: brand-new Hyundai Accent, Banner Rental. It took several calls but Milo finally reached a supervisor at the company’s corporate headquarters in Lodi and obtained the details.

  Adriana Betts had rented the car three days prior from the Banner office on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A. Taking advantage of special weeklong rates.

  Poor deluded woman playing amateur detective.

  Milo took the laptop from Burns, fast-forwarded through another ten minutes. Twenty. Nothing. He handed the machine back to Burns, said, “Let’s go.”

  Prema said, “It’s happening?”

  “In a bit, Ms. Moon.”

  “Why the delay?”

  “We’re organizing, ma’am. Now I suggest you go and find a place where you can—”

  “Just as long as you do it before the tribe returns. I can’t have them exposed to bad things.”

  I thought: If it were only that simple.

  CHAPTER

  54

  We headed for Prema’s acre of parking lot. Burns said, “Fresh air. Finally.”

  I said, “You don’t like actors.”

  “Don’t try to shrink me, Doc.”

  Milo said, “It’s a reasonable question, Morry. Whatever your bullshit is, it came close to obstructing.”

  Burns turned pale. “I—”

  “It’s still a good question, Morry.”

  “Whatever,” said Burns. He began to walk ahead of us, thought better of it, stopped, threw his hands up. “My sister was an actor. Did some crap off-Broadway, nothing serious. She killed herself five years ago. Completely ruined my parents’ lives.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “The business was too much for her?”

  “How would I know about the business?” said Burns. “She ruined their lives by killing herself because she was a narcissistic drama queen, always had been.”

  Milo said, “Morry, stay in the van, see if you can do anything else with the machines.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll get nothing but I’ll try.”

  As Burns loaded his equipment, Tyler O’Shea emerged with Sally. He rubbed Sally’s scruff. The dog looked rejuvenated.

  Milo said, “We’re a go, Ty, let’s do it on foot. I’m gonna start with the soft approach, nothing SWAT-ty, because this joker’s no genius, he has drug issues and a closetful of guns, I’m hoping the element of surprise will be enough.”

  “Plus he’s famous,” said O’Shea.

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “More of a surprise, El Tee. Probably no one ever bugs him.”

  “Famous,” said Milo. “If everything works out, that’ll change to infamous.”

  The walk from Prema’s property to Rader’s took six minutes. Sally would’ve preferred to run it in two. Milo had the gate code, courtesy Prema Moon: 10001.

  “Had to keep it simple, Lieutenant, because he can’t remember anything.”

  He pushed the buttons, the
gate cooperated, we continued along asphalt in need of resurfacing. Longer, steeper access than to Prema’s estate, an easy quarter mile with nothing visible other than greenery. At some points the trees grew so thick that the sky disappeared and day turned to imposed dusk.

  O’Shea said, “Man likes his privacy.”

  Milo lengthened his stride. O’Shea took that as the shut up it was meant to be.

  As we kept climbing, Sally’s fur rippled in the breeze. Soft but acute eyes analyzed the world at hand. Her posture was erect, her trot rich with pride. Work-dog heaven.

  Then she stopped.

  O’Shea said, “Would you look at that.”

  The road ended abruptly at a mesa filled with cars. Enough parking space for a dozen vehicles positioned properly but I counted seventeen sets of wheels stacked within inches of one another, some extending to the surrounding brown grass.

  Donny Rader’s black Explorer was positioned nearest to the road, slightly apart from the automotive clog. Easy exit for the daily driver. Milo photographed the SUV from several angles, scribbled in his pad.

  The other cars, exemplars of high-ticket Italian, German, and British coachwork, were caked with dust, splotched by bird-dirt, fuzzed by leaves. A few tilted on deflated tires.

  Sixteen matches to the DMV list. The addition was a red convertible sandwiched in the center of the stack.

  Milo squeezed his way over to the BMW, took more pictures, made more notes.

  O’Shea said, “Can I ask why that one, El Tee?”

  “Victim’s wheels.”

  “He kept it? What an idiot.”

  “Let’s hope he stays that way. Onward.”

  The house was a low, long box that had been stylish in the fifties. My guess was an expat architect from Europe—Schindler or Neutra or someone trying to be Schindler or Neutra. The kind of site-conscious, minimalist design that ages well if it’s kept up.

  This one hadn’t been. A roof meant to be flat sagged and dipped. Stress cracks wrinkled white stucco grimed to gray. Windows were pocked with birdshit. Rain streaks and pits blemished the flat façade. Like Prema’s property, Rader’s acreage was backed by forest. But everything else was hard-pack.

  We approached the house. Internal shutters blocked off the view the architect had intended. The door was a slab of ash in need of varnish. Solid, though. Milo’s knock barely sounded.

  He pushed the doorbell. No chime or buzzer that I could hear.

  Louder knock.

  The door opened on a girl-woman in a thong bikini. Her hair was a riot of white and black and flamingo-pink. Late teens or early twenties.

  She stared at us with bleary, heavy-lidded eyes. White powder smudged the space between her perfect nose and her perfect lips. The bikini was white, barely qualified as a garment with the bra not much more than pasties on a string and the bottom a nylon triangle not up to the job of pelvic protection. Breasts the size of grapefruits heaved a split second after the rest of her chest moved, the mammary equivalent of digital delay. Her feet were bare and grubby, her nails blood-red talons.

  She rubbed her eyes. “Huh?”

  “Police, ma’am. Is Mr. Rader here?”

  She swiped at the white granules above her mouth.

  Milo said, “Don’t worry about your breakfast, we just want to talk to Donny Rader.”

  The girl’s mouth opened. A frog-croak emerged. Then a squeak. Then: “Don-nee!”

  No need to shout, Rader was already behind her, materializing from the left, wearing a red silk robe. The robe was loosely belted, exposing a hard, tan body. The pockets bulged. A bottle of something with a booze-tax seal around the neck poked from one. The contents of the other were out of view. Maybe a bag of white powder. Or just a glass. If he bothered with a glass.

  He pushed the girl out of the way, did the same eye rub. “Whus happening?”

  Big man, larger and more muscular than he came across on the screen. Coarser, with a near-Neanderthal brow shelf, grainy skin, thickened nostrils that flared like a bull’s.

  Long, shaggy, ink-black hair flew everywhere. His eyes fought to remain open. Described in the fan mags as black, they were actually deep brown. Just enough contrast to see the pupils. Widely dilated despite the bright afternoon light.

  White powder on his face, too, a thick smear on his lips and chin. Snowy dust littered the red robe’s shawl collar. The top seam of the other robe pocket.

  Milo said, “Police, Mr. Rader.”

  “Whu the fuh!” Throaty growl. The iconic slur.

  “Police—”

  “Fuh!” Donny Rader backed away.

  Milo said, “Hold on, we’d just like to talk—”

  “About whu?”

  “We’d like to come in, Mr. Rader.”

  “Whu the fu—hey! You ain’t cops, you’re some shit from her, trying to mess with my mind—”

  “Sir, I can assure—”

  “Assure my asshole, get the fuh outta here!”

  “Mr. Rader, we really are the police and we—”

  Donny Rader shook himself off hard, hair billowing, a hyena clearing its maws of blood. The girl in the bikini had remained behind him, clutching her face and hyperventilating.

  Milo stepped forward, aiming to get his toe in the door.

  Howling, Rader jammed his hand into the robe pocket that didn’t hold the bottle, yanked out something metallic and shiny.

  He faded back, began to straighten his arm.

  The last time Milo had faced madness, he’d been caught off-guard and I’d saved his life. That didn’t fit the script of seasoned cop and shrink and despite his acknowledgment, it would scar him.

  Maybe that’s why this time he was ready.

  One of his hands clamped like a bear-trap on the wrist of Donny Rader’s gun-arm, pushing down and twisting sharply as his foot shot between Rader’s bare legs and kicked laterally to the left. As Rader lost balance, Milo’s other arm spun him around and by the time Tyler O’Shea was ready with cuffs and a now snarling Sally, Rader was down on the ground and the .22 lay safely out of reach.

  Rader foamed at the mouth, turned dirt to chocolate soda.

  The girl in the bikini whimpered.

  Milo said, “Ty, take care of her.”

  O’Shea checked out the tight, tan body. “You’re a pal, El Tee.”

  He cuffed the girl displaying no particular reverence. Something to the left caught his eye. “El Tee, you better look at this.” Something new in his voice. Fear.

  Milo hauled a struggling, howling Donny Rader to his feet. “Hold still and shut it.”

  “Fuh you.”

  O’Shea walked the girl out of the house. He looked stunned. “You got to see this.”

  Milo said, “Check it out, Alex.”

  The house was a sty. Piles of trash blanketed the floor and the furniture. The air was putrid with rotted food, body odor, weed, a medicinal smell that might’ve been poorly cut cocaine.

  A cat-urine stench that might’ve been cats or crystal meth.

  O’Shea had seen and smelled worse, so that wasn’t it.

  Not wanting to disturb potential evidence, I stepped carefully over the garbage. Then I saw it. Hanging from a low rafter, the feet dangling a few inches from the floor.

  A human skeleton, wired and braced by a steel rod running parallel to the spine.

  Stripped and clean but for hair left on the head. Long hair. Dark, curly.

  Full-sized skeleton. I guessed it shorter than me by at least six inches.

  The pelvic arch left no doubt: female.

  The jaws had been positioned to create a gaping cartoonish grin. Exaggerated glee that was the essence of horror.

  I made my way through the slop-heap, got right up to the skeleton. Sniffed.

  New smell.

  Pleasant, sweet. Herbaceous.

  Honeybees buzzing in the hive.

  CHAPTER

  55

  Milo plastic-tied Rader’s ankles and belted him into the brown van’s seco
nd row. Tyler O’Shea positioned Sally up front as a sentry. She enjoyed snapping and growling at the now cringing, weeping actor.

  Allowing himself the luxury of an unlit cigar clenched between tight jaws, Milo played the phone, calling in jail transport, crime scene techs, the coroners.

  The chief’s office, almost as an afterthought. The boss was out; Milo declined to leave a message.

  Tyler O’Shea continued to guard the girl in the bikini.

  Barbara “Brandi” Podesky, self-described as a “performer and dancer,” had no wants but a warrant did pop out of the database: failure to show up for community service on a first-offense marijuana bust. She’d be heading to West L.A. lockup. The news stunned her and she began whining that she was cold.

  O’Shea checked out her body, said, “We’ll get you something soon.” Not a trace of sincerity.

  Milo went to look at the skeleton, emerged seconds later and positioned himself in the doorway. Chewing his lip and wiping his face, he got back on the phone. As he waited for a connection, his facial muscles relaxed and something aspiring to be a smile stretched his lips.

  “Ms. LeMasters? Milo Sturgis … yeah, I know it has been, but not to fret, how’re your ace-reporter chops this beautiful day? And are you still in love with your husband? … Why? Because trust me, Kelly, you’re gonna dig me more than him, do I have a scoop for you.”

  Just as he clicked off, the chief beeped in. Milo began to supply details I already knew so I left him there, figuring to walk off some excess energy.

  I circled right of the car-crush. Came face-to-face with Prema Moon.

  Milo had instructed her to stay behind. Some leading women didn’t take well to direction.

  “Where is he?” she said.

  “In the van, but you need to stay away.”

  “Why wouldn’t I stay away? So. It’s over.”

  For the justice system, it was just beginning.

  I said, “Yes.”

  No response for a second. Then she winked at me. Turned her back and tossed her hair and offered a frisky shake of her perfect rear.

  Laughing—a giddy, knowing, brittle sound—she walked off the set.

  CHAPTER

  56

  On TV, it would have been a cinch.