Motive
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“Unbelievable,” said Milo. “We’re talking carbon copy of Frankie’s place. No taxidermy, this place yielded better treasure. Three handguns, including the .25 used to kill Ursula, the 9mm used to shoot Frankie, and another 9mm with both Williams’s and Richard Corey’s prints that had never been fired.”
“The gun Corey waved at his daughters.”
“Brand-new, not loaded. Idiot was a paper tiger to the end. We also found the cash Williams took from Corey. Hundred and eighteen K, Williams didn’t bother to hide it, just kept it in bank bags under the bed.”
“He was living there with Kashmeer?”
“Since leaving Oxnard. I informed her PD, he calls back an hour later, his client is now ready to ‘discuss.’ I told him my priority is finding out what happened to Merry Santos, she doesn’t give that up, she bores me. Nothing from him since. We’ll see.”
I said, “Williams leave behind any souvenirs?”
“Best I can say to that is maybe. There was a jewelry box on Brzica’s nightstand with some interesting contents. Starting with a Lady Patek with a dead battery, way too classy for Brzica.”
“Ursula was taking two watches to be fixed?”
“I called her jeweler, and he never sold her a Patek, but she could’ve picked it up somewhere else. The other stuff is trinkets, no reason for Williams to have them unless they meant something to him. I’ve sent photos to Kathy Hennepin’s family, they think one pair of costume earrings might’ve been hers. What was more probative was—get this—a stuffed baby owl that had to come from Frankie.”
“Trinkets,” I said. “That poor woman in Connecticut couldn’t have afforded Tiffany. Maybe something will come up.”
“I’ll try, but good luck after all these years. Sean did find one strong possible in New York, two and a half years ago, when Williams was living there. A Japanese woman named Yuki Yamada here on a work visa so she could be a sous-chef at a fancy fish place in Midtown Manhattan. She was found strangled and stabbed in her Lower East Side apartment. Dinner for two on the table—sashimi, et cetera—but no one made anything of it because she was a pro, the assumption was she’d set up a meal. No sexual assault, no DNA. NYPD didn’t sound fired up. The new mayor’s prioritizing traffic fatalities.”
He rotated his mouth. “There have to be others but I’m gonna concentrate on sweeping out my own stables.”
Horse analogy.
I said, “Makes sense.”
Ten days after the death of John Jensen Williams, Al Bayless called. The cameras we’d installed in the building had nabbed one would-be car thief and “a pervy-looking dude hiding behind an SUV. Any way we could hang on to the gear?”
“Sure,” said Milo. “Consider it a gift.”
Bayless said, “Two offenders. And that’s just a couple of weeks, no telling.”
“Bosses happy, Al?”
“Wish I could say they cared, Milo, but I’m happy—that steak’ll be on me.”
“Sounds good.”
“I mean it, man.”
“I know you do.”
Fifteen days after the death of John Jensen Williams, Milo and I were at Café Moghul celebrating the return of his appetite.
Agnes Brzica continued to profess ignorance about the fate and whereabouts of Meredith Santos.
“Idiot’s holding out, for what I don’t know, but her lawyer’s even a bigger cretin, it’s like talking to a stain.”
He forked, chewed, and swallowed a massive chunk of tandoori lamb.
“Yum—think of this as therapy, Alex.”
“Eating?”
“It’s not merely ingesting, my friend, it’s therapeutically recontextualizing the whole food thing.”
“Self-help,” I said.
“Is there any other kind?”
The previous night, he’d treated Robin and me to dinner at a Beverly Hills steak house. Two nights before that, he’d dragged Rick out for Mexican, and twenty-four hours before that Al Bayless had treated him to “a T-bone the size of Argentina.”
I watched him make his way through the lamb and the lobster and the snow crab. Big bowl of rice pudding waiting in the wings, he had only to blink at the woman in the sari to summon more.
He was chewing hard—tough piece of lamb—when his phone rang.
He swallowed. “Sturgis.”
What he heard made him smile. He said, “Yessir!”
I reached over and triggered the hands-off.
Captain Henry Santos’s voice, sharp and clipped as ever, said, “Okay, here she is.”
A woman said, “Lieutenant Sturgis? This is Meredith Santos. I hear you’ve been looking for me. So sorry if it’s been a hassle.”
“No hassle at all. Glad you’re okay.”
“I’m better than okay, I’m great!”
“May I ask—”
“Where was I? Hold on … I’m in a different room, Dad’s kind of a … he’s kind of conservative.”
“Parents can be that way.”
“Especially parents who’ve careered in the military. Where’ve I been? Traveling with a friend. A doctor. Also a dentist. He’s both, an oral surgeon. We met at a party and just hit it off and decided what the heck, both of us had been working way too hard for way too long, why not? So we flew to Maui and—hold on, I think I hear Dad … no, it’s fine … where was I?”
“Maui.”
“Oh, yeah, we went to Maui and had fun.”
“Fun is good,” said Milo.
Merry Santos said, “Honestly, sir, it’s been a real long time since I had any. Same for Darren—that’s his name. He was in Iraq and so was I. He spent two years doing field surgery, came back and now does reconstruction at the Westwood V.A., plus he moonlights to work off his school debt. I’ve been grinding, too, sir. Lawyers can be real jerks, they think keeping you late and taking you out to dinner makes up for treating you like a peon. But no complaints, you do what you have to do.”
Milo said, “See what you mean about fun, Meredith.”
“Bet you do, sir. Being a homicide lieutenant and all that. Anyway, I wanted you to know that I appreciate the time you put into trying to find me.”
“Happy endings make it worthwhile, Meredith.”
“Well, then, this was super-worthwhile, Lieutenant. Anyway, Darren and I just went!”
Soft laugh. “We played, Lieutenant. We did nothing but play.”
To Faye—of course
Books by Jonathan Kellerman
FICTION
ALEX DELAWARE NOVELS
Motive (2015)
Flesh and Blood (2001)
Killer (2014)
Dr. Death (2000)
Guilt (2013)
Monster (1999)
Victims (2012)
Survival of the Fittest (1997)
Mystery (2011)
The Clinic (1997)
Deception (2010)
The Web (1996)
Evidence (2009)
Self-Defense (1995)
Bones (2008)
Bad Love (1994)
Compulsion (2008)
Devil’s Waltz (1993)
Obsession (2007)
Private Eyes (1992)
Gone (2006)
Time Bomb (1990)
Rage (2005)
Silent Partner (1989)
Therapy (2004)
Over the Edge (1987)
A Cold Heart (2003)
Blood Test (1986)
The Murder Book (2002)
When the Bough Breaks (1985)
OTHER NOVELS
The Golem of Hollywood (with Jesse Kellerman, 2014)
Double Homicide (with Faye Kellerman, 2004)
True Detectives (2009)
The Conspiracy Club (2003)
Capital Crimes (with Faye Kellerman, 2006)
Billy Straight (1998)
Twisted (2004)
The Butcher’s Theater (1988)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Silent Partner (2012)
The Web (2014)
/> NONFICTION
With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars (2008)
Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (1999)
Helping the Fearful Child (1981)
Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980)
FOR CHILDREN, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED
Jonathan Kellerman’s ABC of Weird Creatures (1995)
Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JONATHAN KELLERMAN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, and True Detectives. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored the first book of a new series, The Golem of Hollywood. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York.
jonathankellerman.com
Facebook.com/JonathanKellerman