Jonathan Kellerman - Victims

He turned scarlet. “Back up, Sean, give me the details.”

He listened for a long time, scrawled notes so angrily the paper tore twice. When he clicked off he was breathing fast.

I said, “What?”

He shook his head. Attacked the phone with both thumbs.

The image appeared moments later, a grainy gray peep show on the phone’s tiny screen.

Tagged at the top with rolling digital time and the I.D. number of a Malibu Sheriff cruiser’s dash-cam.

Six thirteen a.m. Malibu. Pacific Coast Highway. Mountains to the east, so north of the Colony where the beach city turns rural.

The deputy, Aaron Sanchez, justifying the stop on the fifteen-year-old Acura.

Not because of the BOLO; the tags matched a recent theft from the Cross Creek shopping center.

Felony stop. Extreme caution.

Six fourteen a.m.: Deputy Sanchez calls for backup. Then (on loudspeaker): “Exit the vehicle, now, sir, and place your hands on your head.”

No response.

Deputy Sanchez: “Exit the vehicle immediately, sir, and place-”

Driver’s door opens.

A man, small, thin, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, emerges, places his hands on his head.

Flash of bald spot. Bad comb-over.

Deputy Sanchez exits his own vehicle, gun out, aimed at the driver.

“Walk toward me slowly.”

The man complies.

“Stop.”

The man complies.

“Lie down on the ground.”

The man appears to comply then whips around, pulling something out of his waistband. Crouching, he points.

Deputy Sanchez fires five times.

The man’s small frame absorbs each impact, billowing like a sail.

He falls.

Sirens in the distance gain volume.

Backup, no longer needed.

The whole thing has taken less than a minute.

Milo said, “Bastard. They ran the car, found the BOLO, contacted Binchy because his name was on the request.”

“Was the thing in his hand for real?”

“Nine-millimeter,” he said. “Unloaded.”

I said, “Suicide by cop.”

“Whack-job suicide by cop was the Sheriff’s initial assumption because Harrie getting that hard-core to avoid a license plate theft rap made no sense. And initially, they saw nothing in Harrie’s car to make him squirrelly, just fruits and vegetables and beef jerky and bottled water, probably from one of those stands on the highway. Then they popped the trunk and found a bunch more firearms, ammo, duct tape, rope, handcuffs, knives.”

I said, “Rape-murder kit.”

“And stains on the carpet presumptive for blood. What they didn’t find was any sign Harrie was running with an accomplice.”

I said, “Because Huggler’s waiting back home for Harrie to return from his grocery run. Somewhere north of where Harrie was pulled over.”

“That’s a lot of territory. What does a kit say to you?”

“None of our victims showed evidence of restraint and none of the females was assaulted or posed sexually. I’d bet on a separate victim pool.”

“Games Harrie played solo.”

“More likely with backup by Huggler.”

“Jesus.”

“It fills in a missing piece,” I said. “Harrie taking Huggler under his wing because of altruism never made sense. He was attracted to a disturbed child because of a shared fascination with dominance and violence. Think of their relationship as Huggler’s alternative therapy: The entire time the staffs at V-State and Atascadero were struggling to devise a treatment plan for him, Harrie was sabotaging them by nurturing Huggler’s drives. And coaching Huggler in concealing his bad behavior. When Huggler got transferred, Harrie moved with him. When Huggler finally gained his freedom, he and Harrie embarked on a new life together.”

“Foundation for a wholesome relationship,” he said. “Too bad Harrie bit it before the two of them could be booked on the talk-show circuit.”

Sean Binchy’s second call pinpointed the coordinates of the shooting.

James Pittson Harrie had died 3.28 miles above the Colony, leaving 15 or so miles of the beach city and anywhere beyond for a hide-spot.

Milo said, “Don’t see them scoring a pad on the sand or an ocean-view ranch in the hills. But if they’re still doing the mountain man bit, they could be squatting in some remote place up in the hills.”

I said, “I’m certain they’re cashing government checks, at some point one or both of them ventures out to get cash. So someone’s seen them. My mind keeps fixing on the beach cities above Malibu. Harrie’s used two phony addresses we know about, the parking lot on Main Street in Ventura when he told the Hollywood cops he was Loyal Steward and the dead mail-drop in Oxnard for his driver’s license. Something in the region attracts him.”

“What attracts me is nailing Huggler before he does more damage. Once the media latch onto Harrie’s death-and they will, a cop shooting’s always a story-he’s bound to rabbit.”

“That assumes Huggler’s wired into the media.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Harrie could’ve made himself Huggler’s sole link to the outside world.”

“No MTV for ol’ Grant, huh?” he said. “Keeps his nose buried in puzzle books until Harrie tells him it’s time to balance the scales with an anatomy lesson? Even so, Alex, when Harrie doesn’t return, Huggler’s gonna get antsy. If fear overtakes him, he might reveal himself and get taken down easy. But if he goes the rage-route, more people are gonna die. And those guns in Harrie’s trunk might not be the total stash. All I need is a lunatic loaded with heavy-duty firepower.”

Balance the scales.

Unbalanced.

My mind raced. Braked hard.

A warm wave of clarity washed over me. The tickle at the back of my brain, finally gone.

He said, “You just floated off somewhere.”

“What you just said about balancing the scales reminded me of something Harrie mentioned when I met with him. He asked me about my work with the police then claimed to have no interest in the darker aspects of life. Called them ‘terrible dyssynchronies.’ Obviously, he was lying and I think he was playing with me by alluding precisely to what’s framed the murders from the onset: achieving equilibrium by symbolically undoing the past. And that might help focus the search for Huggler: Start where it all began.”

“V-State,” he said. “They’d go back there?”

“They would if it was part of Harrie’s treatment plan for Huggler.”

“You just said his treatment was encouraging Huggler’s gutgames.”

“I did but I was missing something. Harrie really came to see himself as a therapist. Like most psychopaths, he had an inflated belief in his own abilities. No need to actually earn a degree, he was already smarter than the shrinks. So all he had to do was learn enough jargon to impersonate convincingly. And when he went into practice, he started right at the top: high-rent Couch Row. He zeroed in on insurance evaluations because they were lucrative, thin on oversight, and, most important, short term with no clinical demands: Patients wouldn’t spend enough time with him to get suspicious and he wouldn’t be required to actually help anyone.”

“Vita got suspicious.”

“Maybe she sensed something,” I said. “Or she was just being Vita. Overall, Harrie got away with it and that had to be a massive ego trip. And that led him to see himself as a master therapist. With a single long-term patient. Yes, the past five years have been about bloodlust and revenge, but they’ve also been part of a regimen Harrie devised for Huggler: achieving synchrony by working through old traumas. And what better way to achieve that than by returning triumphant to the place where control was ripped away?”