Jonathan Kellerman - Evidence

She unclasped the bag, pulled out lip balm, twisted her mouth into a disapproving little bud and lubricated. Basic delay tactic. I’d learned a whole bunch of them, working as a psychologist.

Milo said, “Lost my script, what’s my next line?”

“The overview I’m about to give you, Lieutenant, is based on summaries of files transferred to me by predecessors who’ve been transferred.”

“They get transferred to Ahmed. But you’re dealing with homegrown naughties no one cares about.”

Gayle Lindstrom’s half smile would have intrigued da Vinci.

Milo said, “You don’t play well with others, so you’re on timeout.”

She laughed. “Let’s just say I’ve been assigned to look into years of eco-crimes and write reports unlikely to be read. My instructions are to concentrate on the Pacific Northwest, because that’s where fuzzies and trees tend to inspire the most passion. That led me to your homicide victims. Desmond Backer and Doreen Fredd met in Seattle. He grew up there, and she’d been sent to a group home for problem girls. She utilized legitimate passes from the home as well as illicit exits to associate with Backer and his friends.”

“Climbing out the window,” said Milo.

“Or just sneaking out the back door, the place wasn’t exactly super-max lockdown. Like many teenagers, Fredd and Backer and their friends appear to have filled some of their free time with various vegetative hallucinogens, alternative music, video games. They also spent time engaged in apparently wholesome activities such as hiking, camping, environmental cleanups, volunteer wildlife rescue. Unfortunately, some of that may have been a cover for arson and other acts of vandalism.”

“Were they ever arrested?”

“Insufficient evidence,” said Lindstrom. “But their proximity to several trashed homesites is revealing.”

“What exactly do you have on them?”

“What the local police had on them was word-of-mouth. Then, a dead boy.”

“They killed someone?”

“Not directly, but they have moral culpability.” Out came his pad. “Name of the victim?”

“Vincent Edward Burghout, known as Van. Seventeen when he burned to death inside an unfinished mansion in Bellevue, Washington. By now, you’ve probably heard of Bellevue because it’s where high-tech zillionaires are building castles. Back then, that had just started and it was basically a nice, low-crime suburb of Seattle. One of the first techie-monarchs to see the potential of lakeside living bought ten acres and started building a twenty-thousand-square-foot monstrosity. It had gotten as far as the framing the night Van Burghout sneaked in and set several fires. He destroyed a good part of it but also immolated himself. We-my predecessors-found his technique especially interesting. Have you ever heard of vegan Jell-O?”

“Sounds disgustingly healthy.”

“Not if you’re made of wood,” said Lindstrom. “Or flesh and bones. It’s basically homemade napalm-soap and petroleum triggered by a delayed ignition device. Any idiot can get the recipe off the Internet or in one of those treasonous loony-tracts put out by the paranoid press. Fortunately, few idiots actually go as far as to whip the stuff up, but over the years we have had incidents and the mortality rate is high, often to the perpetrators. You’re talking a highly incendiary concoction and if your timer’s off, you’re toast. Or in Van Burgh-out’s case, crumbs. There was nothing left of the kid, they I.D.’d him because he’d gotten teeth knocked out playing basketball and part of an upper bridge survived the blast.”

She fooled with the tube of lip balm. “Mr. High-Tech collected insurance, donated the land to the city for a park, moved to Oregon, and built an even bigger monstrosity on a thousand acres.”

“Everyone walks away happy,” said Milo. “Except Van’s parents.”

“Who pointed fingers at Van’s friends. Maybe because they couldn’t accept their son being a solo pyromaniac. But that doesn’t make them wrong.”

I said, “Van was the victim of bad influences?”

“Exactly, but like I said, there was logic to that. Van’s grades were barely passing and the local law got a clear picture of him as impressionable. But they got nowhere and called the Bureau in. That’s how the Bureau came to acquaint itself with Desmond Backer and Doreen Fredd and their pals.”

“How many pals?”

“The Burghouts gave the locals four names in addition to Van: Backer, Fredd, a boy named Dwayne Parris, a girl named Kathy Vanderveldt. We tried to talk to them, as well as to their teachers and friends.”

“Tried?”

“These were middle-class kids with oodles of parental and community support, so we got no direct access, everything was filtered through lawyers. We’re talking upstanding folk, well respected in their community, claiming their kids were angels.”

I said, “Doreen’s parents stepped forward?”

“No, she was the exception. Her parents were drunks, living out of state, seemed barely in touch with what Doreen had been doing. Also, Doreen was gone by the time we began investigating.”

“Yet another rabbit,” said Milo.

Lindstrom said, “Sure, we got suspicious about the timing, but splitting was her habitual pattern and everyone we talked to said they couldn’t imagine Doreen involved in anything violent. Just the opposite, she was passive, gentle, into poetry, blue skies, green trees, little cutie-pie mammals. The folks at Hope Lodge-the home-had nothing bad to say about her, either. Poor Doreen was a victim of family dysfunction, not a wild girl.”

I said, “Did they change their minds when they found out she’d been sneaking out to meet up with the others?”

“Not according to what I’ve read, Doctor. My predecessor described the people running the place as ‘idealists.’ Which is Bureau code for stupid, naïve do-gooder. We were able to get a warrant for Doreen’s room because a lot of Hope Lodge’s funding came through government grants. Unfortunately, nothing funny showed up there. And we brought in dogs, the works.”

Milo said, “No warrants for the others?”

“Not even close. We went judge-shopping but the one we thought might work with us said he wouldn’t authorize a ‘witch hunt.’ We put out a nationwide alert for Doreen, placed the other kids under surveillance for a couple of months. It came to nothing, there were no more fires in Bellevue, or anywhere else in the Greater Seattle area. We moved on.”

“But at some point you found Doreen and managed to turn her.”

Lindstrom pinched her upper lip. Balanced the lip balm tube between two index fingers. “Is this the point where I say, ‘Oh, Sherlock!’ and go all wide-eyed?”

Milo said, “Why else would you be here, Gayle?”

Lindstrom removed her gray suit jacket. Underneath was a red tank top. Square shoulders, thick but firm arms. “It’s kind of dry in here, don’t you think? Must be your A.C. Could I trouble you for some coffee?”

Detective-room brew has the refreshing tang of roofing tar and a meth-like ability to scrape the nerves raw.

Special Agent Gayle Lindstrom downed half a cup without complaint, rubbed her eyes, stretched and yawned and stretched again. Milo goes through a similar act when he’s faking casual. Lindstrom needed more practice.

Taking another sip, she finally gave the expected grimace, set the cup aside.

“Yes, Doreen finally surfaced. I had nothing to do with it but it still makes me cringe.” Reaching for the cup, she deliberated another swallow, decided against it. “Nothing the Bureau did pulled her in. Her own stupidity did.”

“She did a bad thing and got caught,” said Milo.