Джонатан Келлерман: Serpentine

I said, “Maybe you should’ve kept the watch.”

He stared at me. Cracked up. Brought the cup back to arm’s reach and drank.

As he ingested caffeine, his shoulders lowered a bit. Running his hand over his face, he shot up, went to the fridge and pulled out an apple, sat back down and chomped. “Don’t say a thing. This is for the pepsin. Good for digestion.”

One bite later: “Thirty-six years.”

I said, “Look at it this way: You’re the A-student who got rewarded with extra homework.”

“The bright side, huh?”

“You said you wanted therapy. Who’s the victim?”

“Woman named Dorothy Swoboda, all Martz could tell me is she was found shot to death on Mulholland east of Coldwater. Which isn’t even my shop, it’s Hollywood Division. Which I noted to Martz. Only to be ignored. Google gives up nothing on it, only thing I’ve found is in the Times archives. Twenty-four years old, found in her car over the side of a cliff, everything burned up. Nothing in the article about murder, the implication was a one-vehicle accident.”

I said, “Maybe a bullet was found at autopsy and the paper didn’t follow up.”

“That would be par for the course,” he said. “Even back then, you’re not Natalie Wood or O.J. or Baretta, who cares?”

“Who’s the relative?”

“Swoboda’s daughter, woman named Ellie Barker. Her, Google likes. She made a fortune from exercise wear, sold out a couple years ago for gazillions.”

“How old is she?”

His eyebrows arched. “Thirty-nine.”

“Three at the time,” I said. “She probably has no memories of Mommy.”

“Exactly, Alex. This isn’t a police thing, it’s a psych thing, that’s one reason I’d like you along when I talk to her. Maybe you can slide some insight her way and she’ll realize she needs you more than me.” His smile was an off-center crescent. “Think of it as a potential high-end referral, we both come out ahead.”

“What are the other reasons you want me there?”

“Just one,” he said. “Turn on the laser, give me your impression of her, so I know who I’m dealing with. Ultra-rich folk expect the world to spin around them. If she’s unbalanced on top of that, it could get nasty when I fail.”

“When not if.”

“I’m being realistic. You know what usually solves the oldies: DNA, bad guy’s in CODIS. Thirty-six-year-old homicide, the body burned to a crisp? What’s the chance any bio-material was there in the first place, let alone collected. This is a woman who can activate politicians with a phone call. I don’t give her what she wants, she’s not gonna be charitable.”

“A woman who lost her mother at three might be more humbled than you think.”

He finished the apple. “You’ve made a new friend without meeting her?”

“Just pointing out possibilities.”

He got up, tossed the core in the trash. “Fine. I’ll give her a chance. But the case may not give me one.”

“When are you due to meet her?”

“Forty-five minutes, Los Feliz.”

“If we leave now, barely enough time to get there.”

“So she’ll wait,” he said. “Good moral training.”

CHAPTER 2

We took Milo’s latest unmarked, an Impala the color of brussels sprouts reeking of pine disinfectant and refried beans. He generally drives with a heavy foot. This time he was ballet-light and a stickler for amber lights. That and traffic clogs from Bel Air into Beverly Hills, the Strip, and Hollywood ate up fifty-five minutes. He savored the red light at Western and Sunset before turning left and climbing the loop that begins Los Feliz Boulevard.

Los Feliz is an interesting district. Unlike the high-end homogeneity of the Westside, it’s a kernel of affluence set between the urban grit and enthusiastic crime rate of East Hollywood to the south and the Eden that’s Griffith Park to the north. One section, Laughlin Park, is gated, filled with mammoth estates, and boasts a roster of film-biz residents dating back to Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, and Rudolph Valentino.

Ellie Barker’s address was on Curley Court, a street neither of us knew.

Milo said, “Probably Laughlin, I’ll have to get past some rent-a-guard.” But GPS proved him wrong and we reached our goal after making an untrammeled right and cruising through a roundabout followed by four brief, open streets.

The Curley Court street sign was nearly obscured by the shaggy branches of a monumental deodar cedar, one of a score that lined the block.

Like its neighbors, the house we were looking for was generous but no mansion: two-story cream-colored Spanish from the twenties with a flat lawn leading to a low-walled courtyard.

The grass had been tended but not coddled; dandelions sprouted like stubble on a carelessly shaved face. Hugging the wall, two forty-foot coconut palms shared space with a pair of equally towering Italian cypresses. Close to an unlocked iron-scroll gate, doddering birds-of-paradise coexisted with spatulate clumps of blue agapanthus.

Old-school landscaping. It would be easy to assume a resident with a traditionalist view, maybe one preoccupied with the past. But my training’s led me to run from easy answers. For all I knew, Ellie Barker rented the place.

The courtyard was gravel-floored and empty. The front door had a Gothic peak and was equipped with a rectangular peep-window and a tarnished brass loop for a knocker.

He stood back. “Go for it.”

“What do I say, psychologist on duty?”

“Hmph, no sense of adventure.” Stepping past me, he lifted the loop and let it fall hard.

From inside the house, a woman’s voice trilled, “One second!”

“Cheerful,” he said. “Why the hell not when the universe is your toy.”

Rapid footsteps followed by a flash of pale eyes in the window, then the door swung wide.

A smiling strawberry blonde held out a hand. “Lieutenant? I’m Ellie.”

Milo pretended to not see her fingers. Ellie Barker’s smile shrank to something tentative and anxious as she dropped her hand.

Pleasant-looking woman, medium height, medium build, the hair wavy, worn to her shoulders and parted in the middle. Her clothing revealed nothing about socioeconomic status: short-sleeved white jersey top, straight-leg blue jeans, white canvas slip-ons. No jewelry other than an Apple Watch around her left wrist.

Eyes, now doubtful, were gray-green, the skin surrounding them lightly tanned and sporadically freckled. Thirty-nine and showing the advent of laugh lines and forehead furrows.

She looked at me.

Milo said, “This is Dr. Delaware, our consulting psychologist.”

I shook her hand and her smile managed to stretch but lose wattage. “Someone thinks I need help? I do but I wasn’t thinking psychotherapy.”

“Dr. Delaware helps us with unusual cases.”

“I see,” she said without conviction. “Sorry, please come in.”

She led us through a domed Mexican-tiled entry hall and into a step-down living room with a high, wood-beam ceiling. Across the hall, a smaller dining room was brightened by lead-mullioned windows. Cutting through both spaces, a Mexican-tiled staircase climbed to the second floor.

The furniture in the living room was beige and brown and sparse. Bare white walls, unused fireplace lacking tools or a screen. The rental hypothesis gained traction.

“Please, guys.” Indicating a three-seat sofa facing a bare oak coffee table. “Can I get you something to drink—Coke, tea, water? I can make some coffee?”

“Water’s fine,” said Milo, sitting near the left arm of the sofa. I took the opposite end.

“Flat or fizzy?”

“Flat.”

Ellie Barker looked at him, hoping for thaw. He studied the ceiling.