Джонатан Келлерман - Night Moves

She put down her toast. “Bitt lives in the Palisades, now? Who’da thunk.”

“In a two-story Tudor.”

“Next you’re going to tell me he drives a minivan.”

“Pickup truck.” I described the house and the landscaping.

She said, “That does sound pretty hostile.”

“Did his cartoons get violent as well as sexual?”

“They were always about violence. Mr. Backwards liked to explode things, bumping into detonators, nuclear switches, switches for power saws. Bitt constructed these meticulously detailed Rube Goldberg — type scenes. Oversized rats escaping from feral cats knocking over lamps that fell into vats of oil and set off huge fires. Exploding bodies, mushroom clouds — lots of mushroom clouds. The stories usually ended up with massive pools of blood, heaps of organs, detached limbs—”

She put down the toast. “Oh, my. Wouldn’t that be something. All the time we thought Bitt was satirizing and he was sick?”

I’d just showered a second time and stepped into my office when Milo called.

“Get any sleep?”

“Plenty. How’d the canvass go?”

He said, “It didn’t. No one knows anything about anything. Like Felice said, this is not a neighborhood where they throw block parties. Only four houses have CC systems and one’s bogus, dummy cameras mounted as ‘deterrents.’ The other three are operative and the citizens were happy to let us view the feeds but two had cameras trained tight on front doors and no view of the street. Which is kind of counterproductive but I got a clear sense no one expected bad stuff to happen on Evada.”

“How’d they take to the news?”

“Appropriately worried. Not that it led to any decent information, everyone just wants promises we’ll up patrol. The one camera with a long view was an antique and poorly maintained, the images are black and white and grainy, all you can make out is a blur when something passes by. During the time the Corvins were gone, nothing that looks like a person appears but three vehicles do show up. The first travels away from the Corvins’ house at six sixteen, so that’s the family leaving. Another circles the cul-de-sac and leaves without stopping, got to be someone who was lost and entered the dead end. The interesting one arrives fifteen minutes after the Corvins depart and you don’t see anything else until a blur in the opposite direction appears sixty-eight minutes later. So the timing’s right but I’ve got no clue about make or model, can’t even prove it’s the same wheels coming and going, for all I know one person parked out of view and another left later. I was hoping for enhancement but our video techie says no dice, all he can do is estimate size. Larger than a compact, smaller than a big SUV. So much for technology.”

“Did you get to Bitt?”

“Not yet. His truck’s still there but he didn’t answer my ring. I didn’t question his neighbors about him specifically because I’ve got nothing on him and the last thing I need is the peasants converging with torches and pitchforks. I did inquire about neighbor disputes in general and got the usual petty stuff: dog poop in flower beds, garbage cans left out too long. But no festering feuds. I extended the canvass to adjacent streets, Sean’s still working but so far nada.”

I said, “I learned a few things about Bitt.” I summed up Robin’s description of the books.

“Blood and guts and incest,” he said. “Okay, I definitely wanna meet this prince. Wouldn’t mind having you here when I give him a second try.”

“I should be free by one.”

“Then one it’ll be.”

My phone conference ended early; a couple of lawyers working a contentious custody case finally serious about “emotional resolution for the sake of the children.”

I called the judge and told her.

She said, “They can say that but the real reason’s both clients are running out of money.”

“Whatever works.”

“What works for me is getting idiots off my docket.”

I hung up and called Milo. “I can come now.”

He said, “A sliver of hope on a highly flawed day.”

Daylight was kind to Evada Lane, flowers and grass jewel-toned, tree shadows prettily dappled. Despite the yellow tape, the Corvin house looked jarringly benign. No more cops guarding the property, just Milo, sitting in his unmarked.

He got out and we walked to Trevor Bitt’s house. This garden gate was seven feet of black-painted metal.

Milo said, “Exactly.”

We climbed three steps to an oak door that looked hand-hewn. Instead of a peephole, a small sliding door caged by a grid of wrought iron.

Milo rang the bell. Knocked. Rang a dozen more times. Knocked harder.

Just as we’d turned to leave, the little door slid open and a brown eye surrounded by pale skin filled the rectangle of space.

“Mr. Bitt?”

No answer.

Milo flashed his badge.

The eye stared, unblinking.

“Could you please open the door, sir. We’d like a few words.”

Nothing.

“Sir—”

A deep voice said, “Words about what?”

“There’s been a situation — a crime was committed at one of your neighbors’.”

No response.

Milo said, “A serious crime, Mr. Bitt. We’re talking to everyone on the block.”

Silence.

“Mr. Bitt—”

“Not interested.”

“It would be easier, sir, if you opened the door.”

“For you.”

“Sir, there’s no reason for you to obstruct us.”

“This isn’t obstruction. It’s privacy.” The tiny door slid shut.

Milo rang the bell another dozen times. His face was flushed. “No curiosity about what kind of crime, which neighbor. Maybe because he already knows.”

We returned to the sidewalk. He pulled out his phone. “This is gonna be a total waste of time, but.”

He got Deputy D.A. John Nguyen on the other end, described the situation, asked if there could be grounds for a warrant. I couldn’t hear Nguyen’s brief reply but Milo’s expression said it all.

He turned and stared at Bitt’s Tudor. Daylight wasn’t kind to the spiky plants. More menacing in full color.

Milo said, “Guy’s an idiot, all this is gonna do is make me dig deeper on him.” He strode back to his car and got behind the wheel. Upgraded sedan, equipped with a nifty new touchscreen that he began working.

But just as with the CCTV, technology can only carry you so far. Nothing on Trevor Bitt in the LAPD database, NCIC, the state sex offender file, or a national database operated privately.

Sitting in the passenger seat, I’d pulled up an image gallery of Bitt’s cartoons.

Dope, nudity, gore, taboos abandoned with a ferocity that sometimes seemed forced.

Mr. Backwards was a hirsute grotesque pinhead, favoring floral shirts, beads, sandals, and baggy bell-bottoms whose roominess failed to conceal frequent erections of unlikely dimensions.

When he collided with people, one eye winked and popped and drool dribbled from his slack mouth, a secretion often followed by copious productions of other body fluids.

All in all, a creepy mixture of slapstick and threat. Like the uncle you hope doesn’t show up at reunions.

Photos of Trevor Bitt showed him as anything but unconventional.

Tall, thin, and narrow-shouldered, the cartoonist wore his hair neatly trimmed and left-parted. The most recent shot was a decade old, Bitt looking like a white-haired executive as he signed books at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Sitting primly, reading glasses perched on his nose, surrounded by fans, some of whom wore hand-sewn Mr. Backwards costumes complete with crude, leering masks. A huge blowup of the character’s slavering countenance hung on the wall.