Jonathan Kellerman - Survival Of The Fittest

“Bloodshot eyes,” said Milo. “Maybe he was up late.”

“Yeah,” said Hooks. “But no booze on his breath and he said he works two jobs. This during the day, part-time at a liquor store on Vermont at night. Says he was at the store last night, that should be checkable. Did he look hinky to you? If he's dirty, he's ready for the Oscar.”

He gazed through the fence at Twenty-eighth Street, then took in the traffic on Western. “Somebody driving or walking by could very well have seen her swinging, but you heard what he said about all the crap goes down on the schoolyard. Unlike Mr. Montez, people around here don't volunteer much.”

“If it was some dirt next door,” said Milo, “wonder why he'd take the trouble to hang her here.”

“Who knows?” said Hooks. “Maybe they ran into each other around the corner, made a date, headed over here to consummate. Montez said he finds condoms all the time.”

“Techs have any idea when the chain was cut?”

“Just that it wasn't fresh, which is also consistent with Montez.”

“The school keeps using a broken chain 'cause the minute they put a new one on, someone slices it.”

“Yeah,” said Hooks. “Nothing like security for our youngsters.” He looked at the body again. “Maybe it does mean something, bringing her here, the bad guy making some kind of statement.”

“Such as?”

“I hate school.” Hooks smiled. “That narrows it down, huh? Pull in all the bad students.”

Milo gave a short, hard detective laugh and Hooks laughed, too, fleshy jowls undulating. The four wrinkles smoothed.

“Put your hands up, punk,” he said, making a finger-gun. “Lemme see your grade-point average. Two D's and an F? Off to the lineup.”

He chuckled some more, exhaled. “Anyway, except for strangulation and both being retarded, I still don't see any parallels with your case.”

“Strangulation, retarded, and no rape,” said Milo.

“We don't know for sure if there was no rape,” said Hooks.

“But if there wasn't any- no assault at all- that's interesting, right, Willis? How many sex fiends don't do anything to the body?”

“Maybe. But who knows what goes on in assholes' heads? Maybe hanging her got him off, he watched her dangle, came in his pants, went home, had sweet dreams. I remember one, few years back, guy got off on playing with their feet. Killed 'em first, set 'em up on their beds, played with their feet. That was enough to get him off- what do you think of that, Doctor?”

“Something for everyone,” I said.

“This guy, the foot guy, he didn't even have to yank the monkey. Just playing with the toes did it for him.”

“I had a foot guy, too,” said Milo. “But he didn't kill, just tied 'em up and played.”

“Probably woulda killed if he'd kept on.”

“Probably.”

“You could probably sit down and dig up lots of stories about perverted stuff.” Hooks stiffened and shot Milo a quick, embarrassed look. Milo's face remained still. “Anyway, if Mac and I come up with something, we'll let you know.”

“Ditto, Willis.”

“Yeah.”

A young white cop jogged over.

“Excuse me, Detective,” he said to Hooks. “Coroner's driver wants to know if we can transport the vic.”

“You got anything more you want to do, Milo?”

“Nope.”

“Go ahead,” Hooks said. The officer hustled back, delivered the word, and two morgue attendants came forward with a gurney and a black body bag.

I noticed movement from the north end of the playground. A few teachers had come closer to the tape and were watching while drinking coffee.

“School days,” said Hooks. “I was born on Thirty-second. We moved to Long Beach when I was three, otherwise I woulda gone here.”

The attendants got the body into the bag and lifted it on the gurney. As they wheeled her away, the white cop turned his attention to the ground and called over another uniform, a tall black man, even darker than McLaren. Then he jogged back to us.

“It's probably nothing, sir, but you might want to take a look.”

“At what?” said Hooks, already moving.

“Something under the body.”

We followed him over. The black uniform had his arms folded and his eyes were aimed at a small scrap of white paper, maybe two inches square.

“It's probably nothing,” the first cop repeated, “but it was under her and there's something typed on it.”

I saw the letters.

Hooks squatted. “D-V-L-L. That mean anything to anybody?”

The cops looked at one another.

“No, sir,” said the first.

“Maybe the devil,” said the second.

“Any gang using that moniker?”

Shrugs all around.

“And since when do gang bangers type,” muttered Hooks. “Okay, you're the eagle eye, Officer… Bradbury. Do me a favor and check that graffiti on the school buildings over there, see if the same thing comes up anywhere.”

“Yes, sir.” As Bradbury approached the yellow-tape border, the teachers backed away. But they watched as he scanned the graffiti.

“DVLL,” said Hooks. “Mean anything to you, Milo?”

“Nope.”

“Me, neither. And seeing as she was laid down by the janitor, it was probably just something lying there on the cement before she got here. Maybe a piece of school memo or something.”

The paper remained motionless in the static, metallic air.

“Should I not bother to tell the techs?” said the black cop.

“No, tell them to bag it, take a picture,” said Hooks. “We wouldn't want to be accused of shoddy police work by some scumbag lawyer, would we?”

Milo drove out to the street and parked behind my Seville.

“Ah,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror. “Finally, the games begin.”

Behind us, a TV van from a local station had just pulled up, disgorging a gear-toting crew that sprinted for the gate. As the uniform checked with Hooks, a small gray car pulled away from the curb and passed us. The driver, Hispanic and wearing the same institutional-gray Montez had on, glanced at us for an instant and continued to Western.

“A diplomat's kid on the West Side and a crack-kid down here,” said Milo. “What do you think?”

“Some physical resemblance between Irit and Latvinia, both of them retarded, death by strangulation, no sexual assault on Irit, no evidence so far of an assault on Latvinia. And the position of the body. But Latvinia wasn't strangled with broad force and the janitor moved her.”

“The janitor.”

“You like him?”

“Sure. Because he was there. And because he moved her.”

“Sparing the grandchildren,” I said. “Janitors clean up. Janitors use brooms.”

“Something else, Alex: He cuts her down, arranges her respectfully but doesn't tuck the tongue back in her mouth? Hooks asked him about that and he said when he realized she was really dead he didn't want to mess things up. Make sense to you?”

“The average person seeing a hanging body would probably run for the phone. But if Montez is action-oriented, a family man, with strong attachments to the school, it could fit. But so does another scenario: Montez has a date with Latvinia- he admitted knowing her. They meet on the schoolyard because it's his turf. He kills her, hangs her, then realizes students are going to show up soon, maybe there isn't enough time to get rid of the body. So instead he plays hero.”

“Or it was colder: There was enough time to get rid of the body but he left her there because he got off on thumbing his nose at us. On being a hero- thinks he's smart, a pretender, just like you said. Like those firefighters who torch stuff and show up to hold the hose.”