Jonathan Kellerman - Guilt

But when she answered, her voice was fat with pleasure. “Thanks so much, Dr. Delaware. For what you’ve accomplished.”

Not sure what I’d done, I said, “Glad everything’s going well.”

“Everything’s going great, Dr. Delaware. Matt’s talking. Really talking, not just the hello how are you we used to do.”

“That’s great, Holly.”

“Turns out what he needed was for me to tell him I valued what he had to say. Because his parents discouraged talking, his father actually used to say ‘Children should be seen, not heard.’ Can you believe that? Anyway, I did. Tell him. It just opened him up. Me, too. About my issues. And he was surprised to know how I felt about my mom. Which makes sense, I never talked about her until you led me in the right path. Anyway, Matt listened, nonjudgmental. Interested . Then he told me more about his childhood. Then we … everything kind of kicked up to a new level. I’m feeling in control, like I really own this pregnancy. Own my entire life.”

“That’s terrific, Holly.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you, Dr. Delaware.”

My line of work, things like praise from patients aren’t supposed to affect you because it’s all about healing them, not your ego.

To hell with that, I take what I can get. “I really appreciate your telling me, Holly.”

“Sure,” she said. “Do you have another second?”

“What’s up?”

“In terms of … what happened … to the baby. I’m assuming they haven’t found anything out? Because I did read about that other poor little thing, it made my heart ache, I cried, Dr. Delaware.”

“Sorry, Holly, no progress, yet.”

“Something so long ago, I imagine it would be difficult to solve. And this probably won’t help but that box-the blue hospital box? For some reason it bothered me. Someone putting a baby in something like that.”

Her voice caught. “This is going to sound weird but I’ve been going online and searching for something like it and finally I found it. A box just like it at a collectibles site called OldStuff.net. From the same hospital-Swedish, the seller calls it a bank box, for depositing money, she has others for sale, from other hospitals. I called her up and she told me back in the day they used metal boxes for extra security when they brought cash to the bank. Before the armored cars were safe enough so you could use bags.”

“Interesting.”

“Could it be important?”

“At this point, any information’s valuable.”

“Great, Dr. Delaware. Then I feel good about all the time I spent online. Bye.”

I logged onto the site. Identical blue box. No additional wisdom.

Robin knocked on my office door. “Going to keep working for a while?”

“Nah, let’s have some fun.”

She looked at the screen. I explained.

She said, “Never thought of hospitals as cash businesses.”

“Place was an abortion mill back when abortion was a felony. Illegal means high profit margins.”

I logged off.

She said, “Fun sounds okay.” Utter lack of conviction.

I put my arm around her. “C’mon, life’s short, let’s own ours. How about music?”

“Sounds good.”

“Let me check the Catalina … here’s their calendar … Jane Monheit.”

“Like her,” she said. “If we can get tickets, let’s do it.”

Monheit was in fine voice backed by a band that never stopped swinging, the food at the club was decent, a couple of generous Chivas pours went down well.

We got home and beelined to bed and afterward I plunged into sleep, stayed out for an atypical seven hours, woke up with an aching head that filled quickly with words and pictures.

When I got to my office my cell phone was beeping and my landline message machine was blinking.

A pair of calls, less than a minute apart. I punched Play on the machine.

Milo’s voice said, “Found my boy Wedd. Call.”

“Sturgis.”

“Congrats.”

“Hear what I have to say first.”

Melvin Jaron Wedd had been found in the passenger seat of his pimped-up black Explorer. Single gunshot wound to his left temple. The entry hole said large-caliber. The stippling said up close and personal, though probably not a contact wound.

Brain matter clotted the back of his seat. A Baggie of weed sat between his splayed knees. A glass bong glinted on the floor near his left shoe. The impact had caused him to slide down, leaving his corpse in an awkward semi-reclining state that wouldn’t have been comfortable in life.

His mouth gaped, his eyes were shut, his bowels had emptied. Rot and insect activity said he’d been there days rather than hours.

Masked and gloved, a C.I. named Gloria was going through his pockets. She’d already procured his wallet, pulled out a driver’s license, credit cards, eighty bucks in cash. Milo didn’t need any of that to know who the victim was. A BOLO-find on Wedd’s Explorer had shown up in his office email shortly after six a.m. He’d been online an hour before, “eating futility for breakfast.”

Blood in the SUV said the Explorer was the murder scene. The vehicle had been left at the rear of a construction site east of Laurel Canyon, four hundred feet up a quiet street just north of the Valley. Nice neighborhood; a while back, Milo had caught a case not far from here, a prep school teacher left in a bathtub packed with dry ice.

A large, elaborate house had been framed up on the lot. Weathered wood marred by rust streaks below the nails said it had been a while since the project was active. Care had been taken to preserve the assortment of mature eucalyptus at the rear of the lot. The trees hadn’t been trimmed and some of their branches drooped to the ground and continued trailing along the dirt, shaggy and green, like oversized caterpillars. The foliage had served to partially shield the Explorer but if anyone had been working on the site, they’d have noticed the vehicle immediately.

I said, “Foreclosure?”

Milo said, “Yup, last year. Guy who found the body goes around checking out bank-owned properties. The former owners are a nice older couple from Denver, moved here to be with their grandkids, tried to build their dream house, got taxed out of their dry-cleaning business. I had Denver PD talk to them. They’ve never heard of Wedd and they come up antiseptic-clean. And there goes my case on Adriana because ol’ Melvin ain’t ever talking.”

Gloria called out his name. We approached her, tried to stand sufficiently back to avoid the wafting of death fumes.

“This was in his jacket, Milo. Upper inside pocket.”

She held out a matchbook, white cover, unmarked. The kind you get with cigarettes at the liquor store.

Milo said, “So he had a fuel source for his dope.”

Gloria opened the book. No matches left, just fuzzy stubs. Inside the book’s cover, someone had scrawled in blue ballpoint. Tiny, cramped cursive.

Milo put on reading glasses, gloved up, took the book.

I read over his shoulder.

This is guilt .

Gloria said, “Can I theorize a little?”

“Sure.”

“If we’d found a gun, I’d look at this as maybe a suicide note. Seeing as it’s clearly a homicide, either your victim had remorse for something and wrote this himself or someone else thought he should pay for something.”

“Have you checked his other pockets yet?”

“Twice. I even looked in his underwear.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m dedicated up to a point. Any idea what Mr. Wedd could be guilty of?”

“Before this I had a few ideas.” He shook his head. “Anything else?”

“The driver’s-seat adjustment seems to roughly fit Wedd’s height, so either he was driving and moved to the passenger side or your offender’s around the same size. I guess the weed and the bong are meant to imply a drug party. But with no matches in the book or anywhere else, same for ashes or residue?”