Jonathan Kellerman - Victims

He’d lived just over two months past his thirty-sixth birthday. She’d made it thirteen months longer.

A picture I.D. badge from North Hollywood Day Hospital tagged her as G. A. Usfel-Parnell, M.D. Nuclear Medicine. In the picture, she was grave, still pretty, wearing big, rimless glasses. Milo found them in a nightstand drawer.

I wondered about the extent of Dr. Glenda Parnell’s visual impairment. What had she actually seen when she’d opened her eyes?

Had she ever really focused?

Trembled at the horror but composed herself sufficiently to bargain?

Fear about her husband’s fate would have shaken her, but perhaps she’d been able to put that aside, sufficiently adrenalized to concentrate on her own survival.

Had the killer pretended to go along as he had her tie her own arm to the bedpost? Or had he relied, at the outset, on terror and intimidation?

Had she sensed it was futile the moment he’d breached the door? Complied out of self-preservation as well as love for Barron, hoping cooperation would spare both of them?

If so, she’d spoken a completely different language from the killer. To him, Barron was nothing more than an obstacle to overcome.

He’d pulled the prelim off perfectly, drawing the guy into his trap.

Now the fun part.

Once prints had been taken, Milo gloved up and gave the office desk a thorough search. Glenda Parnell’s malpractice insurance was paid up, as were her subscriptions to several medical journals. Mail addressed to Barron Parnell appended CFP to his name. A mailer from a brokerage house expanded that to Certified Financial Planner.

So did a letter from an attorney representing the Cameron Family Trust that specified malfeasance and “incautious” investing.

The date was nineteen months ago. Milo copied down the particulars.

Further excavation of the desk drawers indicated Parnell worked out of the home with no apparent clients other than himself and his wife. He’d done well, amassing just over a million dollars in a stock account, two hundred thousand more in a corporate bond account, just under ten thousand in a joint savings-checking account.

The two vehicles parked in the driveway were a three-year-old yellow Porsche Cayman registered to Barron and a gray Infiniti QX registered to Glenda. Both had been recently washed and appeared undisturbed.

Also unmolested was a pricey bank of computers in the office, some serious jewelry in a leather box barely concealed behind blankets in the linen closet, a case of sparkling Christofle silverware in the pantry, a home entertainment system in the living room that included a sixty-inch plasma TV.

We returned to the bedroom. In Barron’s sock drawer, Milo found a silver-framed glamour shot of Glenda. Fuzzy focus, the suggestion of nudity, cornucopia of cleavage, glistening teeth.

To Barry Boo from Sweet Gee. Love 4ever. Happy anniversary. XXXX

The inscribed date was forty-two days ago.

Maria Thomas stuck her head in the room. “Anything?”

Milo shook his head.

“Got a sec?”

“Yeah.” He might’ve been agreeing to do-it-yourself root canal.

The three of us powwowed in the Parnells’ spotless kitchen. Someone had put money into the decor: matte-black Euro cabinets trimmed in chrome, white marble counters that appeared unused, copper pots hanging from a cast-iron ceiling rack, everything else brushed steel.

Maria Thomas plinked a counter with a fingernail. “Marble’s good for rolling pastry dough, not cooking. No one did serious food, here.”

“Didn’t know you were into the culinary arts, Maria.”

“I’m not, my daughter is. That translates to she’s the one gets addicted to Top Chef, I’m the one pays tuition at some overpriced institute in New York. Now she wants to spend next summer in France, learning how to properly slice onions. This is a kid who survived the first four years of her life on hot dogs and chocolate milk.”

She fingered a crisp tweed lapel. Her hair was sprayed in place. Not helmet-stiff, a higher level of fixative that lent the illusion of softness. An expensive-looking phone dangled from her other hand. “Some mess, huh?”

Milo said, “It’s a step up.”

“From what?”

“Not from, for,” he said. “The offender. He took risks with the husband in order to get to the wife. Earned himself a two-fer, kicked up the thrill level. But you know that, already. Seeing as you’ve been here for a while.”

She stared at him. “Someone’s touchy.”

He turned his back on her. Interesting move; she outranked him significantly. He’d been there when she’d screwed up, had never exploited it. Maybe Maria figured that gave him a certain power. Maybe that would eventually work against him.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s clear the air right now so we can go about our respective businesses?”

“Thought we were in the same business.”

Thomas’s gray eyes turned to pond pebbles. “I’m here because the chief has been following this since the second one, Mister”-consulting her phone-“Quigg. The reason the chief was informed early is someone thought a serial pattern might be forming and that the details were sufficiently out of the ordinary for the chief to need to be apprised. Don’t ask who informed him, that’s irrelevant.”

“I couldn’t care less about any of that, Maria, all I want to do is clear four murders.”

“That’s what we all want. Think there’s a remote chance of your accomplishing it anytime in the near future?”

“You betcha, boss,” he said. “Everything will be gift-wrapped and presented for your approval by”-reading his Timex-“nine forty-three tonight. Give or take a nanosecond. Also on the schedule is the capture of Osama’s entire organization but in the meantime be sure to warn His Amazingness to treat any packages from Pakistan with caution.”

“Hey-”

“Is there a remote chance? What kind of question is that, Maria? You think this is writing traffic tickets?”

“Ah, the temper.” She winked. “The classic Irish temper and I can say that because half my family traces back to County Derry.”

“Whoopee for genealogy, Maria. Is there a point to this conversation?”

Thomas caressed marble, ran a finger under the counter rim. “Indulge yourself, Milo, keep venting. Get all the bad feeling out so we can both do our jobs like grown-ups.”

She turned to me, seeking confirmation of something.

I kept studying the double-wide refrigerator. No magnets, no memos or photos. Nothing like a blank panel of steel to keep one fascinated.

Maria Thomas turned back to Milo. “You bet it’s a reasonable question. When’s the last time you dealt with a serial remotely similar to this, Milo? A necktie of guts? Jesus, it’s beyond disgusting.”

He didn’t answer.

She said, “I can’t see any common thread among the victims other than they’re all white. Can you?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet,” she repeated. To me: “ You ever see anything like this? A sexual psychopath who throws such a wide net?”

Milo said, “It’s not necessarily sexual.”

“Then what?”

“Some kind of grudge. The first victim was engaged in a big-time lawsuit and I just found a financial complaint in Mr. Parnell’s desk.”

“I saw that,” she said. “You can’t seriously think a money thing led to that. And what about Mr. Quigg? He sue anyone or vice versa?”

“Nothing’s come up yet.”

“You should’ve checked his financials.”

“I have.”

“And you haven’t found anything. So the answer’s no, not ‘nothing’s come up.’ Meaning there’s no common thread. Meaning a money thing’s less than unlikely. You go along with his theory, Dr. Delaware? You don’t see this as a sexual psychopath?”