Jonathan Kellerman - Self-Defence

Milo showed soon after.

He looked at us and shook his head. "Doctor and patient, perfect match. And I set it up."

He bent and kissed Lucy's cheek. She held his head and kissed him back. When she let go, he shook my hand and squeezed it.

"Del filled me in over the computer. Sorry I missed the cutting of the cake, but I was obstructing a helicopter."

"Whose?"

"App's."

"Leaving town? How'd you know?"

"I didn't. I was watching his office all day, followed him to lunch at Mortons, then over to Bijan to buy a nine-thousand-dollar leather jacket. Then back to his office, but instead of getting off at his floor he continued up to the heliport. Blades whirring, the whole bit. He tried the indignant citizen bit, claimed it was just a back-and-forth to Santa Barbara, tennis with some other shitbag producer. But his stretch limo was packed up with Vuitton luggage, and his chauffeur was carrying paperwork for a private charter to Lisbon out of the Imperial terminal."

He smiled. "Big guy, the chauffeur, but very low pain threshold. Anyway, App's not going anywhere for the time being. Got a suite at County jail."

"What charge?" I said.

He gave a wide, malicious grin. "Traffic tickets. Idiot ran up four thousand bucks' worth last year alone, mostly outside clubs and restaurants and violations of neighborhood permits."

"Traffic warrants won't keep him in very long."

"Hold on, hold on. When I frisked him, I found a nice little chunk of a white powdery substance. Another chunk on the chauffeur. Then I called in a K-9 unit and the dogs went crazy. We're talking half of one of the Vuittons crammed with coke."

"Negotiable currency for an extended vacation," I said. "So even if Graydon-Jones ran into trouble here, he'd be long gone."

"Best laid plans. Only vacation he's gonna get for a while is at good old Club Dread." To Lucy: "I hear you're quite a kick boxer."

She shrugged under the blanket and forced a smile. "The things you learn in therapy."

Christopher Graydon-Jones, his head bandaged, whispered earnestly to his lawyer.

I sat on the other side of the one-way mirror with Milo, Lucy, and an assistant deputy district attorney named Leah Schwartz. She was a very good-looking woman, tiny, around thirty, with a cloud of blond, kinky hair, gigantic blue eyes, and the sometimes graceless manner of a very bright high school student. She'd been interviewing Lucy and me for most of two days, writing down detailed notes and using a tape recorder. She was writing now, sitting apart from the three of us. The little receiver she'd worn in her ear glimmered in the lap of her black skirt. Milo still wore his.

I said, "Any luck yet with App?"

Headshake.

The cocaine in the producer's luggage had proved to be only a small part of his stash. Twenty times as much had turned up in a vault in his Broad Beach home, sparking the interest of men in suits.

"Another task force." Milo had groaned.

Leah said, "The circus is in town."

She found out, soon after, that the federal government had been looking into App's dealings for a while, believing the Advent Group and its subsidiary businesses- including Enterprise Insurance- to be major conduits for money laundering. Milo'd filled in the details, yesterday, over coffee and crullers, as we waited outside Leah Schwartz's office while she finished a phone conversation with her boss.

"How long have they suspected him?" I said.

"Long time."

"So why didn't they move on him?"

"Hey," he said, "it's the government. They could give a shit about crime control. What they're into is getting precise appraisal of his holdings so they can confiscate everything under the RICO statutes. Better racket than parking meters."

"So what happens now? He weasels out on Karen so they can line their coffers?"

"That assumes there's something to weasel out on, Alex. Thank God for the dope, because Karen's death is still not a homicide."

"What about the bones?"

"No evidence of foul play; all the neck bones we found were intact. And what Graydon-Jones described to you at the pit was an accidental OD."

"He's credible ?"

"When he told you, he was holding all the cards, no reason to lie. Fact is, attempted murder on you and Lucy's a lot more trouble for him than Karen. But we can't tie that in with App."

"It doesn't make sense," I said. "If Karen had died accidentally, they could have left her on the grounds for someone else to discover. Some bad publicity, but by then OD's were no big deal, every week another rock star was collapsing. There would have been nothing to connect the body to them, no need to pay anyone off. I don't buy it, Milo. We're talking nasty guys partying with a naive young woman. Graydon-Jones said she was a virgin Friday night but not Saturday. He and App gave her drugs and it got out of hand."

"Maybe. But with the bone fragments we've managed to pull up, you'll never prove it- it is definitely her, by the way. We found enough teeth to match, got confirmation from the odontologist this morning."

"Have you told Sherrell yet?"

"Yeah, I went over in person, early this morning, to his food bank."

"How'd he take it?"

"Like it had just been a matter of time. Then he thanked me and went back to unpacking Rice-A-Roni."

"Poor guy. I called his son this morning. He started sobbing, then hung up."

He ran his hand over his face.

"If it ever goes to trial," I said, "App and Graydon-Jones will make her sound like a whore."

"It probably won't, Alex. With everything else going on, an accidental OD won't prioritize."

"What about two bona fide homicides, Mellors and Felix Barnard?"

He took a bite of cruller and wiped his lips. I could hear Leah Schwartz's voice through her office door, rising in pitch.

"Same problem," said Milo. "Without some sort of evidentiary chain linking Mellors and Barnard to Karen, all we've got are two unrelated shootings. Only link to App is he owned the motel and half of the insurance company that Graydon-Jones runs. So far neither of them are talking."

"Why not make them think you've got more than you do, then try to wedge them apart?" I said. "After a year dealing with Shwandt and his girls, they should be nondairy creamer for you."

Leah Schwartz came out of her office, flushed and hot-eyed. The three of us walked out into the hall.

"Politicians," she said. "They should all be drawn and quartered. We've got a couple of days to turn something up, or the Best girl's case goes to the bottom of the list. Meaning no indictments, and the DEA gets to play Supermarket Sweep."

Milo said, "Couple of days? We talking to the hour?"

"I can probably wangle fifty hours if we get on some kind of track."

"Well." He got up and stretched. "Rome was built in two days, right?"

She laughed. Up to then, I'd never seen her smile.

We were fifteen hours into that edict now.

Graydon-Jones still had his hand cupped over his lawyer's ear. He was in jail blues that nearly matched the hue of the attorney's suit. The lawyer was a lanky, prematurely white-haired handball player named Jeff Stratton. Everyone knew about the handball because each time he showed up at 8 A.M.,he announced he'd just gotten off the courts and pulled some kind of injury.

He pushed his chair away from Graydon-Jones and waved a finger. "Ready."

A microphone on our side of the mirror amplified his voice.

Leah Schwartz put the bug back in her ear. She and Milo went in and sat around the table, facing Stratton and Graydon-Jones. I turned on my hand mike.

Leah Schwartz said, "So, Jeff."

"We'll hear what you have to say," said Stratton, "but we won't respond."