Джонатан Келлерман - Serpentine

“Thanks, Du.”

Day Three, Petra called to let Milo know she’d assigned two police scouts to look into “every conceivable nook, cranny, drawer, and storage area. No missing files, period. Sorry.”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

—

We were returning to his office from a walk and some decent coffee when he said, “All those apologies and no one’s running for office. And the one whose job it is to check, hasn’t.”

He phoned the archive. A slurred voice said, “Records.”

“Officer Bardem, Lieutenant Sturgis.”

“Oh. Had a cold, just got back but still feeling it, forgot to let you know.”

“Let me know what?”

“Found you some missing females from that time.”

“Great, email ’em.”

“Sure.” Sniffle. Click.

The file arrived seconds later. And kept arriving.

Page after page filled his screen. Milo saved and printed, groaned as the bin filled and overflowed.

When the printer stopped whining, the bin held a stack as thick as a phone book. He leafed through, cursed, and gave it to me.

Single-spaced list of alphabetized names.

Over a fifteen-year period, spanning twenty-five to forty years ago, 56,154 females had gone missing in L.A. County. Of those, 44,723 had been accounted for, leaving 11,431 still gone.

All those families in limbo.

Milo had no bandwidth left for empathy. “This is bullshit. By the time I get through it I’ll be on a walker. Optimistically speaking.”

Yanking open a bottom drawer, he stuffed the list atop a ream of blank paper. The drawer wouldn’t close until he pounded the stack.

“Eleven thousand opens,” he said. “City of the Lost.”

I said, “You could put her face online and try missing persons databases, the department’s social media pages. Or create your own website.”

“All those sad stories, someone’s going to happen to find me?”

“Magnetism.”

He glared, dark brows knitting. Return of the jaw-cherries.

I said, “Son, we need to work on your confidence.”

Green eyes ignited. Then he roared with laughter.

—

He called for a technical officer and a five-foot-tall woman built like a fireplug showed up half an hour later. During the wait, we’d both worked on inspecting missing persons sites.

No room for three of us, so he spoke to Officer Shirlee Best out in the hallway.

She said, “That’s your office?”

“Rank has its privileges.”

Best remained impassive.

“Thanks for coming, Officer.”

“My job. What do you need?”

When he finished explaining, Best said, “A to B to C, you don’t need me for that.”

“Humor me.”

“It’ll slow you down, I can’t get back here until tomorrow.”

“I’m sure you’re worth the wait.”

“Yeah, right. Obviously, I can’t modify the department site or anyone else’s.”

“Don’t expect you to.” He ducked into the office and returned with the photo. “The woman on the right is the subject.”

She glanced at the image with no apparent interest. “Crap resolution, don’t expect much by way of enhancement. Do you want something pretty?”

“Meaning?”

“Cool graphics, attention-grabbing font, animation.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s not a big deal,” said Best. “I had one guy, Ruffalo in Auto Theft, out looking for a hot Mercedes, wanted me to splice in scenes from video games. I told him no dice unless he could show me the licensing fee had been paid. He found out what that cost and said forget it.”

“Beyond the call,” said Milo.

“Mercedes belonged to an actress, Ruffalo wouldn’t say who, just leered a lot. Guy looks like a pot of porridge but maybe he figured he could score if he produced the wheels. Not motivated enough to pay for the licensing, though. So how fancy do you want to get?”

“Does fancy make a difference?”

“No idea,” said Best. “In the meantime, do us both a favor and accomplish what you can by yourself.”

—

By the following morning at nine, he was at my kitchen table slurping coffee and demolishing an omelet he’d fixed from a staggeringly dubious mix of leftovers. Mushrooms plus salami plus candied walnuts plus jicama Robin and I had forgotten about unearthed from the recesses of the vegetable bin.

I ate toast and marveled.

Six mouthfuls in, he took a breather. “Right after Best left, she emailed and informed me one day has now stretched to two. So I did do some DIY: narrowed the national sites to the top five and sent them each Corn-Fed’s headshot. The department’s page has no sexy graphics and doesn’t seem to be attracting the public big-time. Who it did attract was someone in Martz’s office. She called me at home at ten p.m. demanding to know why when I was assigned to Swoboda I was veering off onto another case. I told her the victims were potentially linked, which got her all inquisitorial. But being a pencil-pusher, when I started explaining she spaced out and said, Whatever. Then she asked if Ellie had approved the ‘digression.’ That made all sorts of very bad thoughts swirl through my brain but you and Orwell will be proud to know I reacted with discretion and finessed her with doublespeak. Then I called Ellie, because I knew Martz would.”

“How’d she react?”

“Graciously, I’m the expert, whatever I choose to do is fine,” he said. Three more hurried swallows and a coffee wash-down. “That was after she gasped at the notion of another potential victim and asked what you’d expect.”

“Could it be a serial killer.”

“Cliché of our century. I finessed her, too. Don’t know how long I can keep doing it, though.”

He drained his cup, refilled. “It was Mel Boudreaux who answered her cell. He said she was sleeping, had been doing a lot of that. When she phoned a few minutes later, she sounded pretty low. Probably the aftermath of being dumped by Runner Boy.”

That and her own limbo. No sense reminding him.

I said, “Makes sense.”

“Anyway, mood issues are your thing, not mine. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to do but bide time on what I’ve inputted and hope Best comes by tomorrow and isn’t just putting me off. How’s your day shaping up?”

“Appointments from noon to four.”

“Busy man,” he said. “No digressions for you.”

—

Two days later, he texted me.

Best finally showed up, here’s the hoo-hah production.

Below that, a link. No cute graphics, bright colors, or animation. Just a young, smiling face, unintentionally soft-focus, bordered top and bottom by somber black print.

DO YOU KNOW THIS WOMAN?

She went missing in or near Los Angeles sometime during the eighties and has never been identified. Someone must care about her. If you do, please contact Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, LAPD, Westside Division, at 310…

Another day passed, as the week slid into a warm, blue-sky Friday. Busier week than I’d anticipated, with two additional custody referrals from the court. One came with a personal email from a judge I respected.

Big bucks, small minds. Hope you don’t end up putting my face on a dartboard.

I looked up the names on the order. Husband-and-wife tycoons, mutual accusations of neglect, cruelty, and child endangerment. One child, a toddler. Enough money to keep the battle going indefinitely.

I’d do my best and try to protect the poor kid’s psyche. Protect my soul from erosion.

No word from Milo since he’d posted the missing woman’s image. There had to be tips, there always are. The question was validity. I was writing clinical notes when he phoned at three.

“What’s up?”

“You’re probably in TGIF mode but if you want to see the war room, c’mon over.”