Jonathan Kellerman - Compulsion

“Too polished.”

She laughed. “You could say that.”

“Gay?”

“A lot of us are. So where’d Dale end up?”

“That was going to be my next question.”

“I’m supposed to know?” she said.

“Did he ever talk about traveling?”

“He did say he liked the great cities.”

“Which ones?”

“Paris, Rome, London, New York. Maybe Madrid, I don’t recall. The only reason I remember the conversation is he and Brian kind of got into it. Brian saying if you really loved animals you couldn’t love cities, cities destroyed habitat, and Dale launched into this lecture about the cats of Rome and how they adapted and thrived. Then Brian said the whole urban thing was a cliché – April in Paris, et cetera – and Dale said some clichés persisted because they were valid, the great cities were called that because they were, and if Brian thought San Francisco was sophisticated, he was naive. It just kind of went on that way for a while, then they returned to work.”

“Did Dale mention any other places he liked?”

“Not that I remember.”

“No Grizzly Adams,” I said.

“His nails were always clean and manicured and he wore after-shave. Couldn’t tell you the brand, but it was something nice and citrus-ey.”

“Anything more?”

“That’s not enough? After all these years, I thought I was being pretty darn encyclopedic.”

“You are. That’s why I keep turning pages. So Dale was good with all the animals.”

“Better than good,” said Shantee Moloney. “Tender. Especially the little ones. Not just babies, anything small – he really had a thing for puppies and toy dogs. Nastiest little critter, he could calm it down. I got a sense he’d had experience with the teeny ones.”

Ansell Dennond Bright’s DMV photo came through at ten a.m. the following day.

Thirteen-year-old shot, when Bright was twenty-nine.

Six feet, two ten, blond and brown, needs corrective lenses.

Relaxed expression, nothing ominous in the eyes.

True to Shantee Moloney’s description, lank, pale strands obscured Bright’s brow, draping his ears and fanning his shoulders.

The beard was a broad, brown sheet, pelting his face from Adam’s apple to the bottoms of his eye sockets.

Nothing to see but hair.

Art of the misdirect.

Did that explain Bright’s lie about not eating animals? Manipulating Shantee Moloney, but to what end? Bright had never received a penny for his work at the shelter.

Love of the game or a need to feel virtuous?

Or both.

All that hair; nature’s costume.

I thought of High Plains drifter duds. Plaid cap, old man’s shuffle, conspicuous wheels. It all added up to clever theater.

In Kat Shonsky’s situation, the Bentley would’ve been enough to lower her guard but I wondered if the killer had gone further.

Angry man with a thing for A-lines and heels, still seething at Kat’s ridicule. What sweeter revenge than to stalk her in drag?

I pictured the big black car gliding by as she fretted in her Mustang. Passenger window sliding down, revealing a driver in a bouffant wig, designer dress, maybe a discreet string of pearls.

That extra touch.

A pretty, diaphanous scarf.

Kat’s driver’s license – the symbol of her identity – had been wedged in her private parts.

Some killers take souvenirs, other leave them. It’s always about a message.

The message Kat’s killer had delivered was You’re not the woman you think you are. Mock me at your own peril.

Kat. An animal name.

Too perfect to resist.

Milo phoned just before two p.m., yawned a greeting followed by a bout of coughing.

I said, “Rock-and-roll pneumonia or boogie-woogie flu?”

“Oh, man, it’s way too early for humor.”

“It’s the afternoon.”

“Feels like daybreak… Jesus, you’re right. Did a whole lot more nothing watching Tony, got home at six and crashed till an emergency call jolted me up at seven. Bradley Maisonette’s parole officer. ‘You sounded frantic, Lieutenant, so I thought I’d catch you early.’ I’m on two cylinders, bastard’s gloating. And what’s the big news: Bradley’s been persona non show-uppa for seven weeks. But not to worry, he’s got a history of dropping out for stretches, always comes back.”

“Addict’s excursions,” I said.

“Doesn’t sound like a guy who digs art museums and thee ay ter. P.O. considers him low priority because he’s got a long list of more violent guys who don’t show up. Says Maisonette doesn’t ‘act out’ unless he’s exhausted legal avenues of income.”

“He works?”

“Panhandles, sells his blood. P.O. diagnoses the basic problem as ‘low self-esteem.’”

“Everyone’s a therapist,” I said.

“I finally got the idiot to agree to pretend to search for him. Thanks for Cardenas’s e-mail. You get a chance to talk to the animal lady?”

I summarized the conversation with Shantee Moloney.

“Small dogs,” he said. “As in Leonora’s missing pooches?”

“If Dale was behind the Ojo Negro murders,” I said, “it would be nice to think he took them as pets.”

“Loves dogs, hates Sis.”

“Wears hemp shoes and eats meat on the sly.”

He sang the chorus of Lou Christie’s “Two Faces Have I.”

I said, “He’s also the right size for Ella’s killer, the cowboy, and Kat’s cross-dresser.”

“And size matters… loves the great cities, huh? Gets hold of major inheritance, travels the world, settles into L.A.?”

“Maybe it’s the weather.” I gave him my woman-with-a-scarf theory. “Society lady in two hundred grand worth of car – why not? Now all we need is Dale to come waltzing through the door confessing.”

“Short of that, how about this: One of the cities Bright mentioned to Moloney was New York. The chief’s old turf. Why not start there and see if any black-car murders show up? Or if Bright left some kind of paper trail from San Francisco.”

He didn’t answer.

“There’s a problem?”

“No,” he said. “On the contrary. A chance for His Beneficence to demonstrate his commitment.”

“You doubt him?”

“So far he’s been as righteous as a politician can be, but I’m like that bumper sticker, Question Authority. New Yawk New Yawk… I was thinking Rome but my French is rusty. Okay, scan Bright’s picture and send it over and I’ll put a call in to Himself.”

Three hours later, he was at my front door, freshly shaved, wearing a bright blue shirt under a coarse gray herringbone jacket, a green tie patterned with brown ukuleles, khakis, bubble-toe gray oxfords with red crepe soles.

Usually, he beelines for the kitchen. This time he stood in the door, eyes dancing, lips curled in a scary scimitar I knew to be a smile.

“His Excellency woke someone up and presto, we got records from the N.Y. Housing Department rolls. Mr. Dale Bright was never a property owner but his name does show up on a petition eight years ago. Converting an industrial building to condos.”

“Pro or con?”

“Pro.”

I said, “One year after he inherits, he’s in his favorite American city, trying to break into the real estate market?”

He loped to my office, logged on to my computer, typed in 518 w. 35th st NY 10001.

Six hits flashed, all culled from newspaper accounts, all variants on the same theme.

He called up the New York Post.

Vanished Couple Condo-Complexity?

The mysterious disappearance of a Manhattan couple involved in a long-term landlord-tenant dispute continues to baffle New York’s finest. Three weeks ago, rent-controlniks Paul and Dorothy Safran left their apartment on 518 W. 35th Street to attend an off-off-Broadway production in lower Manhattan and haven’t been seen or heard from since.