Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

Milo copied down directions to the cabin, promised to let her know if her sister was there.

"Great," she said. Then she frowned. "That means she'll know I was here, checking up on her. 'Cause I'm the only one who knows about Malibu."

"Do the people at her job know your number?" he said. "Maybe she listed you as her emergency contact."

Kris Lamplear brightened. "That's true, she did."

"Great. We'll just tell her that's how we reached you."

"Okay, thanks-there's nothing wrong, is there? With Tanya and Paul?"

"What would be wrong, ma'am?"

"I don't know. You just seem awfully eager to talk to them."

"Just what I said, ma'am. Follow-up. It's a high-profile case, we've got to do everything we can to avoid looking stupid."

"That I understand." She smiled. "No one likes looking stupid."

HE SPED ONTO the 405. The intersection with the 101 West was nearly immediate, the heavy traffic was flowing east, and soon we were sailing.

"Malibu," he said. "Sounds familiar."

"Oh yeah."

A few years ago, Robin and I had rented a beach house just over the county line. The mouth of the canyon road Kris Lamplear had described was less than a half mile away. I'd gone hiking up there myself, passing campgrounds, the occasional private property, mostly state land walled by mountainside. I remembered long stretches of solitude, silence broken by birdcalls, coyote howls, the occasional roar of a too-fast truck. Brain-feeding silence, but sometimes it had seemed too quiet up there.

" 'Paul likes to drive,'" he went on. "Your basic prerequisite for Serial Killer School. A neat freak and the bastard likes to drive. Now, why didn't I think of that? Could've arrested him the first time I met him, saved the city a lot of overtime."

"Tsk, tsk. And don't forget his generosity," I said. "Gives his girlfriend jewelry. I wonder how much of it was previously owned."

He gave a dispirited laugh. "Trophies… Lord knows what else he hangs on to."

He exited at Kanan, took it down to PCH and raced north along the beach. The Coast Highway was virtually empty past Trancas Canyon. The ocean was serene, low tide breaking lazily, too blue to be real. We crossed the county line at Mulholland Highway, just past Leo Car-rillo Beach, where a handful of beachcombers walked the tide pools.

Back to Mulholland. End of the trail.

No way to travel Mulholland from start to finish. The road was thirty-plus miles of blacktop, girding L.A. from East Hollywood to the Pacific, choked off in several places by wilderness. Nothing important comes easy… Had Michael Burke/Paul Ulrich thought of that when selecting his kill-spot?

A mile into Ventura, Milo hooked right, veering toward the land side. I caught a peek of my rented house on the private beach just ahead, a wedge of weathered wood visible beyond a sharp curve of the highway. Robin and I had liked it out there, watching the pelicans and dolphins, not minding the rust that seemed to settle in daily. We'd stayed there nearly a year while our house in the Glen was being rebuilt. The moment the lease was up, the landlord had handed the place over to his brilliant aspiring-screenwriter son in hopes of spurring Junior to creativity. The only time I'd met Junior he'd been drunk. I'd never seen anything with his name on it at the multiplex. Kids today.

The car climbed into the mountains. Neither of us talked as we searched for the unmarked road that led to the property. Address on the mailbox, Kris Lamplear had said.

The first time, Milo overshot and had to circle back. Finally, we found it, nearly five miles from the ocean, well past its nearest neighbor, preceded by a good mile of state land.

The mailbox was ten feet up the entrance, concealed by a cloud of plumbago vine. Rusty box on a weathered post, its door missing. Most of the gold-foil address numerals gone, too. The three digits that remained were withered and curling.

Nothing in the box. The air was cool, sweet, and the unmarked's idling engine seemed deafening. Milo backed out, parked on the road, turned off the motor, and we returned to the mailbox on foot. Ahead of us, the dirt road-more of a path-swept to the left and flattened in an S that snaked through the greenery. Nothing in the immediate distance but more vines, shrubbery, trees. Lots of trees.

Milo said, "No sense announcing ourselves, giving him a chance to orchestrate. Let's see if we can get a view of the cabin, watch it for a while."

We walked a thousand feet before it came into view, graying clapboard barely discernible through a thickening colonnade of pine and gum trees and sycamores. Old, twisted sycamores, just like the one where Alice Zoghbie and Roy Haiselden had been propped. Had Ulrich/Burke noticed that? I thought he had. He would have liked that, the symmetry, neatness. The irony. Frosting on the old murder cake.

If Milo was thinking that, he wasn't putting it into words. He trudged steadily but very slowly, mouth set, eyes swiveling from side to side, one arm loose, the other at his belt, inches from his service revolver. More tension than readiness for battle. He'd stashed his shotgun in the trunk of the unmarked.

The path finally ended at an egg-shaped parking area partially edged by large, circular rocks. The border looked like someone's primitive attempt at hardscape, long disrupted by the elements. Two cars: Ulrich's navy BMW and Tanya Stratton's copper-colored Saturn.

Ulrich had told us a tale of another dark BMW stationed on Mulholland.

BMW like ours.

I'd agonized over whether the car had been Richard's. Richard or Eric at the wheel. But it had existed only in Ulrich's lie.

Orchestrating.

The building was just beyond the cars, at the rear of the property, and we approached, trying to shield ourselves behind trees, straining for a better look. Finally, we had a view of the front door. Open, but blocked by a dirty-looking screen.

Ugly little thing, not much more than a shed, shoved up against a mountain wall and surrounded by brush. Tar-paper roof the brown-green of a stagnant pond, the clapboard, once white, now murky as laundry water. Nearly hidden by low branches-one bough swooped within a foot of the door-as if yielding itself to green strangulation.

Up above, barely visible through the sycamores, was a mountain ridge crowned by a thick black coiffure of pines. More state land. No prying neighbors. We advanced to within twenty yards of the cabin before Milo stopped, ducked off the path and into the brush, motioning me quickly to do the same. A second later, the screen door opened and Tanya Stratton stepped out, letting it slam shut with a snare-drum rattle. She wore a long-sleeved tan shirt, blue jeans, white sneakers, had her hair tucked into a red bandanna. No dark glasses this time, but she was too far away for us to see her eyes. She stretched, yawned, went to her car and popped the trunk.

The cabin door opened again, exposing a stretch of arm. Tan arm, male arm. But Ulrich didn't appear. Holding the screen ajar. A good-looking golden retriever bounded out and raced to Tanya Stratton's side.

Duchess. Great nose, thinks she's a drug dog.

"Great," Milo whispered. "So much for surveillance."

Speaking so softly I had to read his lips. But the dog's ears perked and she pivoted toward us, began nosing the ground. Walking. Picking up speed. Tanya Stratton said, "Duchess! Treat!" and the dog froze in her tracks, shook herself off. Turned and ran toward her mistress.

Stratton had pulled a bag out of the trunk. Now she opened it, reached inside, dangled something in front of Duchess's nose.

"Sit. Wait."

The dog settled on her haunches, watched the Milk-Bone that Tanya waved near her nose.

Tanya said, "Good girl," gave her the bone, ruffled the fur around the retriever's neck. Duchess stayed by Tanya's side, waited till Tanya let her back into the cabin.