Джонатан Келлерман: Serpentine

I said, “Your family was living in Danville but your mother died in L.A.”

“I thought it was weird. Dad certainly never mentioned it. Maybe she was down here on some sort of trip. Or visiting someone?” A beat. “Or they’d separated. I really have no idea. That’s part of what I’d like to know.”

“Did your dad give any indication of marital problems?”

“Never. But he wouldn’t have. He was private. He never talked about her, period.”

That sounded more hostile than private. I said nothing.

Milo said, “Did he leave you any photographs of her?”

She held up an index finger, stood and hurried up the stairs. Returned with a folio-sized brown leather album that she thrust at Milo.

Twenty or so oversized pages, each blank but for the first, where a trio of mementos was lodged under horizontal plastic strips.

At the top, a copy of the Times piece. Bottom of the page, two brief paragraphs.

Below that was a faded color snapshot with crenellated edges and lowermost, dead center, a negative photostat—white lettering on a black background—of a thirty-six-year-old L.A. County Coroner’s death certificate for Dorothy Swoboda, white female, twenties, precise age unknown.

Cause: bullet wound.

Manner: homicide.

Milo tapped the album. “Can I take this?”

Ellie Barker hesitated.

“If it’s a problem, you can make copies and send them to me.”

“No, it’s fine…but if you could return it when you’re through—”

“I’ll make copies and get it back to you.” He looked at the photo. “These are your parents?”

She nodded. “There’s a date stamp on the back. It was taken when I was two, I have no idea where.”

Milo and I studied the shot. Man and woman standing next to each other, a foot of space between them. The setting somewhere outdoors; diamonds of milk-colored sky speckling the gaps in a green-black curtain of trees. Stout trunks, the ground littered with needles.

Some sort of conifer forest. Maybe the place where Stanley Barker had scattered Dorothy’s ashes.

He stood on the right. Midforties, average height, pear-shaped, with sparse dark hair and an owlish face made more so by black-framed eyeglasses. Despite the outdoor setting, he wore a light-blue suit with broad lapels, a white shirt buttoned to the neck, and black, bubble-toed shoes.

Hands pressed to his sides, forcing a half smile. Not a natural poser.

The woman was young enough to be his daughter—early to midtwenties. Long-stemmed and taller than Barker courtesy white spike-heeled sandals and bright-red hair assembled in a sprayed, wavy updo that showed off a pale swan neck.

The face perched on the neck was lean, oval, symmetrical. The right structure for beauty but blocked from beauty by hard eyes and a brittle smile.

Still, a markedly attractive woman, wasp-waisted and full-busted, with curvy contours emphasized by a maroon dress cinched corset-tight by a broad silver belt.

This one liked to pose. She’d placed her hands on her hips, cocked her left haunch slightly higher, and positioned her feet at a forty-five-degree angle from each other.

No jewelry but for a green band worn low around her neck and resting in the hollow above her sternum.

Neither of them dressed for a forest. Neither of them happy.

I said, “Looks like the same necklace you’re wearing.”

Ellie Barker’s fingers climbed to the beads and rested atop them protectively.

“It’s the only thing I have of hers. Dad gave it to me after we got back.”

“Back from?”

“Ice cream. He’d had it in his pocket and when we were back home, he put it on me. He said everything else of hers had been clothing that he’d given to Goodwill. He said he’d bought the necklace for her at an art fair. She didn’t really like it but would wear it when he asked.”

“Malachite?”

“Serpentine. Nothing precious, just a rock with minerals—hydrogen magnesium iron phyllosilicate.” She smiled. “I memorized that.”

Milo took the album, closed it, placed it in his lap.

Ellie Barker said, “I tried to get the details from the coroner but they said something that far back they don’t keep full files, I was lucky they had that. I said I’d like to know who killed her and they said that’s a police matter. So I went back to the article and it said Mulholland Drive off Coldwater Canyon. I google-mapped and found out one side of Mulholland was Beverly Hills, the other the Hollywood Hills. I tried both police departments, did a lot of waiting while I was on hold. The people I finally spoke to said they’d get back to me but never did. So, again, I gave up. I tend to do that…then I went to that fundraiser.”

I said, “What was the cause?”

“Children,” said Ellie Barker. “Kids whose parents had died.”

CHAPTER 4

Milo said, “Any questions before we get going?”

Ellie Barker continued to play with the green beads. “Do you think there’s a chance?”

“These old cases are tough unless biological evidence has been preserved. Even then, sometimes all we get is victim DNA. Or there’s offender DNA but it can’t be matched to any database. But let’s see.”

“What about familial DNA? All those public-access genealogy files you hear about? Like what they use now to catch killers.”

“If we have something to match, we’ll use every possible method,” said Milo.

“Thanks. I have to say this is the first time I feel I’m being taken seriously. You have my contacts—phone, email.”

“Got them from Deputy Chief Martz.”

“No idea who that is but thank him for me.”

“Her. Sure.”

“I’m down here for as long as you need me.”

“Where’s your home base?”

“I own a house in Napa that I’m renting out. I have a one-year lease on this place.”

I said, “Why Los Feliz? Any personal connection?”

“I wanted somewhere reasonably close to where…it happened. There were no vacancies up on Mulholland, and this place cropped up for a reasonable rent. I’m not even sure where exactly it happened. If you find out, could you tell me?”

Milo said, “Okay. I should tell you this is a safe neighborhood but a few blocks south it can get rough.”

“Oh. Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.”

We stood. Ellie Barker pressed forward to shake Milo’s hand. Making sure she got hold of it.

“Whatever happens, Lieutenant, thank you so much. At least I’ll know I had a professional working for me—no, that came out wrong. You’re not my employee.”

Milo smiled.

“At least I hope you don’t feel that way,” she said. “I want you to do your job unobstructed by me or anyone else. You’ll be working to discover the truth and I’m sure that’s important to you, why else would you choose your career?”

A glance at me. “You, too, of course.”

Before we got to the door, a latch turned and it swung open. A man in blue shorts and a white sweat-soaked T-shirt surged in wiping his face with a purple cooling cloth. Fitness watch around his wrist, water bottle clipped to his waistband, earbuds running to a phone that sagged a pocket.

Breathing audibly. He saw us, stopped short, clamped his lips and flared his nostrils.

Out came the earbuds.

Ellie Barker said, “Hon, this is Lieutenant Sturgis and he brought a consulting psychologist. Guys, Brannon Twohy, my still-significant other.”

The man said, “Still?”

She pecked Twohy’s cheek. He bore it without response. She massaged his biceps. “I’m giving you props for endurance, hon. My doing the quest and all that.”

Twohy shrugged. “Is what it is.” He draped an arm over her shoulders but left his hand floating in the air, an odd detachment.