Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

No one can make "sir" sound like an insult the way a cop can.

Stacy started to cry. Eric held her tight.

Richard said, "I'll be okay, kids, you just hold on-I'll see you for dinner. Promise."

"Daddy," said Stacy.

"It'll be fine."

"Sir," said Korn, taking hold of Richard's arm.

"Hold on," I said. "I'm going to call Milo."

Both detectives grinned, as if on cue. I was the perfect shill.

Demetri moved behind Richard as Korn kept his grip. The two of them shadowing the much smaller man.

"Milo," Demetri said, "knows."

THE BIG, PALE palm of a hand hung inches from my face, a fleshy cloud.

"Don't," said Milo, barely audible. "Don't say a thing."

It was 5:23. I was in the front reception area of the West L.A. station and he'd just come down the stairs.

I wanted to knock his hand away, waited as it lowered. His jacket was off but his tie was tight-too tight, reddening his neck and face. What did he have to be angry about?

I'd been waiting in the lobby for over an hour, most of it alone with the civilian clerk behind the desk, a pasty, overly enunciative man named Dwight Moore. I knew some of the clerks. Not Moore. The first time I'd approached, he'd looked wary, as if I had something to sell. When I asked him to reach Milo upstairs, he took a long time to put the call through.

For the next sixty-three minutes I used every anger-reduction trick I knew while warming a hard plastic chair as Moore answered the phone and moved paper around. Twenty minutes into the wait, I stepped up to the desk and Moore said, "Why don't you just go home, sir? If he really does know you, he's got your number."

My hands clenched below the counter. "No, I'll wait."

"Suit yourself." Moore got up, walked into a back room, returned with a large cup of coffee and a glazed bear claw. He ate with his back to me, taking very small bites and wiping his chin several times. Minutes dripped by. A few blues came and went, some of them greeting Moore, none with enthusiasm. I thought of Stacy and Eric watching their father taken away by LAPD's finest.

At five-fifteen, an elderly couple in matching green cardigans walked into the station and asked Moore what could be done about their lost dog. Moore adopted a skeptical look and gave them the number for Animal Control. When the woman asked another question, Moore said, "I'm not Animal Control," and turned his back.

"What you are," said the old man, "is a little prick."

"Herb," said his wife, easing him toward the door.

As they left, he told her, "And they wonder why no one likes them."

Five-twenty. Eric and Stacy were nowhere in sight. If they'd made it, I assumed they'd been allowed upstairs, but Moore wouldn't confirm it.

I'd sped over in the Seville, following Richard's black BMW as Eric gunned it down from the glen and wove through Westwood traffic. Easy to follow: the car was a blade of onyx cutting through dirty air. The car that I'd wondered about as the match to the vehicle Paul Ulrich had spotted on Mulholland. Richard, Eric…

The boy drove much too fast, took foolish chances. At Sepulveda and Wilshire, he ran a red light, nearly collided with a gardener's truck, swerved into the center lane, sped away from a chorus of honks. I was two cars back, got caught at the light, lost sight of him. By the time I reached the station, I couldn't find the BMW on the street. No parking space for me in the police lot this time. I circled several times, finally grabbed a spot two blocks away. Jogging the distance, I arrived huffing.

Remembering the fear in Stacy's eyes as Korn and Demetri placed their father in the back of a dung-brown unmarked. Tears striping her face. As Korn slammed the door of the police cat, she mouthed, "Daddy." Eric dragged her to the BMW, opened her door, nearly shoved her into the passenger seat. Flashing me one furious look, he ran to the driver's side, started the car up hard, shoved the RPMs to a defiant whine. Fishtailing and burning rubber, he took off.

"Where are the kids?" I asked Milo.

Something in my voice made him wince. "Let's talk upstairs, Alex."

The use of my name made Moore look up. "Hey there, Detective Sturgis," he said. "This gent's been waiting for you."

Milo grunted and led me to the stairs. We climbed quickly to the second floor, but instead of exiting, he stopped at the fire door and leaned against it. "Hear me out. This was not my decision-"

"You didn't send those two-"

"The command to pick up and question Doss came from downtown. Command, not request. Downtown claims they tried to reach me. I was out in Venice, and instead of trying harder they went around me and gave the order to Korn."

"Demetri said you knew."

"Demetri's an asshole." Neck bulging against the collar. Unhealthy flush. I was three steps below him and he probably didn't mean to glare down at me. But the effect was there-looming bulk, volcanic rage. The stairwell was hot, gray, soupy with the steel-and-sweat pungency of a high-school corridor.

"Would I have done the same thing?" he said. "Yes, it was a command. But not at your house. So please. I've got plenty to deal with."

"Fine," I said, not sounding fine at all. "But cut me some slack, too. I saw the looks on those kids' faces. What the hell's the emergency? What's Richard done?"

He exhaled. "Upsetting his kids is the least of his problems. He's in serious trouble, Alex."

My stomach lurched. "On Mate?"

"Oh yeah."

"What the hell changed in two hours?" I said.

"What changed is we've got evidence on Doss."

"What kind of evidence?"

He ran a finger under his collar. "If you breathe a word of it, you're essentially decapitating me."

"Heaven forbid," I said. "Without a head, you couldn't eat. Come on, what do you have?"

He stretched a leg, sat on the top step. "What I have is a pleasant fellow named Quentin Goad, locked up at County, waiting trial on an armed robbery beef."

He fished a mug shot out of his pocket. Heavyset white man with a shaved head and black goatee.

"Looks like an overweight Satan," I said.

"When Quentin's not holding up 7-Elevens, he works construction-roofing and sheet-metal work. He's done a lot of work for Mr. Doss-apparently Mr. Doss likes to hire cons, pays them under the table to avoid taxes, which tells you something about his character. The way Goad tells it, two months ago he was roofing a project out in San Bernardino-some big shopping center Doss bought cheap and was refurbishing-when Doss approached him and offered him five thousand bucks to kill Mate. Told him to make it nasty and bloody so everyone would think it was a serial killer. Gave Goad a thousand up front, promised four when the job was finished. Goad says he took the dough but never intended to follow through, saw it as a perfect way to con Doss and cut town with a grand. He'd been wanting to move to Nevada anyway, because he had two strikes against him in California and it made him nervous."

"Don't tell me," I said. "Before he left, he decided to give himself a going-away party."

"A month ago, hamburger joint in San Fernando, late at night, just before closing time. Mr. Goad, a.22, a paper bag. Eight-hundred-buck haul. Goad already had the counter boy facedown on the floor and the money in the bag when the security guard appeared out of nowhere and took him down. Gunshot to the leg. Flesh wound. Goad spent two weeks at County Gen getting free medical care, and then they moved him to the Twin Towers. The.22 wasn't even loaded."

"So now he's facing three strikes and he's trying to deal by selling out Richard. He's claiming Richard gave him money two months ago and didn't mind no follow-through. The Richard I know isn't high on patience."

"Richard bugged him, all right. About three weeks in, wanting a progress report. Goad told him he needed to plan it just right, was watching Mate, waiting for the perfect opportunity.