Jonathan Kellerman: Survival Of The Fittest

“Sexual positioning?”

“No, show you in a second. The coroner found bruising on the hyoid and the sternohyoid and the pharyngeal muscles. No sexual assault.”

“Strangulation,” I said. “Why no external marks?”

“Coroner said you can get that when the choke-force is spread out over a broad area- using a soft ligature like a rolled-up towel or a clothed forearm. Gentle strangulation, they call it.”

Grimacing, he removed the top file and flipped it open to two pages of snapshots in plastic strip-fasteners.

Some were of the surrounding forest. The rest were of the girl. Thin and fair-haired, she wore a white T-shirt with lace trim around the neck and sleeves, blue jeans, white socks, pink plastic shoes. Very thin. Pipe-cleaner limbs, the elbows prominent, as if recently enlarged by a growth spurt. I would have guessed her age at twelve, not fifteen. Lying on her back, brown earth beneath her, arms at her sides, feet pressed together. Too symmetrical to have fallen. Arranged.

I studied a facial close-up. Eyes closed, mouth slightly parted. The dirty-blond hair, long and very curly and spread on the ground.

More arrangement.

Someone taking the time… playing.

Back to the full-body shot. Her hands were next to her thighs, palms up, curled open, as if asking Why?

Insipid olive-gray shadows washed across the pale face like brushstrokes.

Light filtering through the trees above.

My chest felt clogged and I started to close the file. Then I noticed something small and pink near the girl's right ear. “What's that?”

“Hearing aid. She was also deaf. Partially in one ear, totally in the other.”

“Jesus.” I put the file down. “Irit Carmeli. Is that Italian?”

“Israeli. Her father's a honcho at the Israeli Consulate. Which is why the department's inability to develop a single lead in three months is problematic.”

“Three months,” I said. “I never read about it in the papers.”

“It wasn't in the papers. Diplomatic pull.”

“Sounds like a very cold case.”

“Any colder and I'd be wearing fur. Any gut impressions?”

“He took his time with her,” I said. “Meaning he probably abducted her fairly soon after she arrived. When's the last time anyone saw her?”

“No one's sure. From the moment they let them off the bus it was chaos, kids running all over the place. That was the point of the conservancy. The school had gone there before, thought it was a safe place for the kids to run loose and explore.”

“How'd the murderer get in without being noticed?”

“Probably a backroad, the place is full of them on three sides, access from the Valley side, Santa Monica, and from Sunset. There's a thick belt of trees between the hiking area and the nearest road so you'd need to know your way around, meaning the piece of shit was familiar with the area, either hiked or drove. If he drove he parked at a distance because the roads closest to the murder scene were clean, no tracks.”

“He parks, walks through the trees, finds a spot where he can see the kids, watches,” I said. “Any tracks on more distant roads?”

“Nothing that could be identified because you get heavy enough traffic to blur everything. And I can't tell you they checked every square inch of the park early because in the beginning, it wasn't a crime scene, it was a missing kid. In addition to the K-9s and the teachers and the park rangers, her father came over with a whole posse of consulate people and everything got pretty much trampled.”

“What about at the scene itself?”

“Not a trace of anything physical, except for a few pieces of straw that the lab says came from a broom. Looks like the scumbag swept up the area around her.”

“A neat one,” I said. “Compulsive. That fits the way he arranged the body.”

I forced myself to look at the photographs again, picturing a fiendish face bent over the girl. But that's not the way it was. It always came down to people, not monsters.

Arranging. Manipulating.

Sweeping up.

“Strangulation and positioning are usually sexual,” I said. “No assault at all?”

“Nothing. She was a virgin. And you know how sex fiends usually position: spreading the legs, displaying the genitals. This was just the opposite, Alex. First time I saw the pictures she looked unreal. Like a doll.”

“Playing with dolls.” My voice was low and hoarse.

“Sorry for dropping this one on you,” he said.

“How retarded was she?”

“The file says “slightly.' ”

“Abducted without a sound and carried a mile from the group. How much did she weigh?”

“Eighty pounds.”

“So we're talking someone strong,” I said. “Is the theory that she wandered off the path, just happened to be unlucky?”

“That's one of them. The other is that he picked her for some reason. As far as no sound, he could have clamped his hand over her mouth and carried her away. Though if he did clamp, it wasn't hard. No finger marks. Not a bruise anywhere.”

“So no evidence of any resistance on her part?”

He shook his head.

“Was she mute as well as deaf?”

“She spoke but not clearly and her main language was Hebrew.”

“But she had the capacity to scream?”

“I assume.” He finished the milk and crushed the carton.

“Watching til he found a victim,” I said. “Stalking the herd and picking off a weak one. How many other kids were in the group?”

“Forty-two. Plus four teachers and two aides. Some of the kids were in wheelchairs and needed close supervision. Another reason the kids who could run around had lots of freedom.”

“Still,” I said. “All those people and no one saw anything?”

He shook his head, again, and pointed to the files. “Everyone's been talked to twice, three times. Teachers, the bus driver, kids to the extent they could talk.”

“How often do they come to the conservancy?”

“Once a year for the past five.”

“Was the trip prearranged with the park?”

He nodded. “Lots of schools come up there.”

“So someone familiar with the park would know disabled kids were due to visit. Easy victims.”

“The first guys on the case- Gorobich and Ramos- interviewed every park and school employee as well as former employees. The only criminal records they found was some old DUI stuff on a couple of the gardeners and their alibis all checked out.”

“Sounds like they were thorough.”

“Both were competent and a kid victim plus a diplomat father made the case high-priority. But they came up with nada and last week they got pulled and transferred to auto theft. Calls from above.”

“So now they're trading two detectives for one?” I said. “I know you're good but-”

“Yeah, yeah, I asked the same thing. Lieutenant just shrugged and said, “What, Sturgis, you mean you're not a genius?' Only thing I can think of is the Israelis figure all the teamwork scut's been done, they want to keep it low-key so some Arab terrorist won't get ideas and declare open season on other consulate kids. As to why me?” He shrugged. “Maybe they heard about the Devane solve.”

“So you're supposed to clear it quickly but quietly,” I said. “Quite a mandate.”

“It has that smell of futility, Alex. For all I know someone's setting me up for a fall. Lieutenant was sure smiling a lot.” He drummed his fingers on the box.

I picked out the second file. Page after page of transcripted interviews with family members, teachers. Lots of stiff, wordy cop prose. Lots of pain seeping through but no revelations. I put it down.

“So,” he said. “Anything else?”

“A planner, a sneak. Maybe an outdoors type. Physically strong, possibly a history of child molestation, voyeurism, exposure. Smart enough to wait and watch and to sweep up. Maybe meticulous in his personal habits. He didn't assault her, so the thrill of the chase probably did it for him. Stalking and capture.”