Jonathan Kellerman: Survival Of The Fittest

Then it drew back.

Dirty-blond beard-hairs raking my chin on the way up.

Smelly beard- fermented-food stink- over red skin, dandruff flakes.

A hair-framed mouth breathed on me, hot and sour. A pus pimple nested in the fold between nostril and cheek.

More distance and I saw Wilson Tenney, dressed again in a sweatshirt, this one green and reading ILLINOIS ARTS FESTIVAL.

“He's up.”

“Nice recovery,” said another voice.

“Must be in good shape. The rewards of a virtuous life,” said Tenney. Then his face shifted to the right and vanished, as if moving offstage, and another one, freshly shaved, ruddy, sun-burnished, took its place.

Wes Baker folded his arms across his chest and studied me with mild interest. His eyeglass lenses glinted. He wore a pink button-down shirt, beautifully laundered, sleeves folded up crisply on thick bronze forearms. I couldn't see past the third button.

His right arm held a small hypodermic syringe filled with something clear.

“Potassium chloride?” I said, for the mike, but it didn't come out right.

“Speech will return in a few minutes,” said Baker. “Give yourself a little more time for your central nervous system to bounce back.”

I heard Tenney's hoarse laugh from behind me.

“Potassium chloride,” I tried again. Clearer, I thought.

Baker said, “You just won't relax, will you? Obviously a striver. From what I've been able to gather, pretty bright, too. It's a shame we never got a chance to discuss issues of substance.”

How about right now? I thought.

I tried to say it. The result was a series of mouse squeaks. Where were Daniel and Milo?

Taping, wanting evidence? But… they'd never let me down…

Baker said, “See how peaceful he looks, Willy? We've created another masterpiece.”

Tenney joined him. He looked angry but Baker was smiling.

I said, “Zena was… artistic.” Almost perfectly clear. “Goya…”

“Someone who appreciates,” said Baker.

“Posed…” Like Irit and Latvinia and-

Tenney said, “Her life was one big pose.”

“No gentle… strangulation?”

Tenney frowned and glanced at Baker.

“Why kill her?” I said. Good, the words were out; my tongue had shrunk to normal size.

Baker rubbed his chin and bent closer. “Why not kill her?”

“She was… a believer-”

He held up a silencing finger. Professorial. I remembered what Milo had said about how he loved to lecture. Keep him talking, get it all on tape.

“She was,” he said, “a receptacle. A condom with limbs.”

Tenney laughed and I saw him pick something out of the corner of his eye and flick it away.

“Zena,” he said, “exited this mortal coil with a bang.” One hand touched his fly.

Baker's expression was that of a weary but tolerant parent. “That was terrible, Willy.” He smiled at me. “This may batter your self-esteem, but she was as sexually discriminating as a fruit fly. Our little barnyard gimcrack.”

He turned to Tenney. “Tell him Zena's motto.”

“Cock-a-doodle-do,” said the bearded man. “Any cock will do.”

“She was a lure,” I said. “For Ponsico, me- others?”

“A lure,” said Baker. “Have you ever gone fly-fishing?”

“No.”

“It's a marvelous pastime. Fresh air, clear water, tying the lures. Unfortunately even the best ones unravel after too many bites.”

“Malcolm Ponsico,” I said. “He lost enthu-”

“He lacked commitment,” said Tenney. “A weak trout, if you will. It soon became clear something smelled fishy.”

“Willy,” said Baker, reprovingly, “as Dr. Alex here can tell you, inveterate and inappropriate punning is a symptom of mood disorder. Isn't that so?”

“Yes.” The word sounded perfect. At least to my ears. My head was clearer- back to normal.

“Feeling better?” said Baker, somehow sensing it.

He flourished the hypodermic, then I heard a metallic clank as he put it down somewhere. The leather restraints were killing the blood flow to my limbs and my body seemed to be disappearing. Or maybe it was the remnants of the drug, pooling in low places.

“What axis?” Tenney asked me. “Depression or mania?”

“Mania,” I said. “And hypomania.”

“Hmm.” He stroked his beard. “I don't like to think of myself as hypo-anything.” Sudden smile. “Maybe hypo-dermic. Because I do have the capacity to get under people's skin.”

He laughed. Baker smiled.

“Perhaps that's why I've been feeling crabby. Or perhaps my moods just shift for the halibut.”

“What a wit,” I said. He reddened and I visualized Raymond Ortiz, snatched in the park bathroom, bloody shoes.

“I wouldn't irritate him,” Baker said, almost maternally. “He doesn't take well to irritation.”

“What did Raymond Ortiz do to irritate him?”

Tenney bared yellow teeth. Baker turned his back on me. “Want to tell him, Willy?”

“Why bother?” said Tenney. “I have no need to clear my sole- petrale, Dover, take your pick. To assuage my admittedly shrimpy conscience by confessing what I did to the stupid little squid. The scales of justice are in equilibrium. No pearls of wisdom. I prefer to clam up.”

Suddenly, his beard loomed above me and his hand was around my neck.

“All right,” he said, spraying spittle. “Since you insist. What the obese little degenerate did was destroy the quality of my life. How? By filthying the bathroom. Inevitably. Inexorably. Every single time he used it, he filthied it. Do you understand?”

He bore down, increasing the pressure on my neck, and I gagged, heard Baker say, “Willy.”

My field of vision grew black around the edges and now I knew something was wrong, Milo would never let it get this far- the fingers loosened. Tenney's eyes were moist, bloodshot.

“The stupid gobbet of scrambled DNA couldn't figure out how to use toilet paper,” he said. “He and all those other limpy, loopy defectoids, day after day.”

He turned to Baker. “It's a perfect metaphor for what's wrong with society, isn't it, Sarge? They shit on us, we clean up.”

“So you killed him in the bathroom,” I said.

“Where else?”

“And the bloody shoes-”

“Think!” said Tenney. “Think what he did to my shoes!”

I gave the closest thing to a shrug the bonds would allow. On my own- what to do-

“I got tired of stepping in it!” Tenney was shouting now, raining saliva. “They didn't pay me for that!”

His fingers touched my neck again, then he reversed himself suddenly and walked away and I heard footsteps, a door opening and closing.

Alone with Baker.

“My neck hurts,” I said, throwing out another cue, but my faith was dying. “Can these restraints be loosened?”

Baker shook his head. The needle was back in his hand.

“Potassium chloride,” I repeated. “Same as Ponsico.”

Baker didn't answer.

“Raymond's shoes,” I said. “Nothing random, everything had a reason. Irit Carmeli's murder simulated a sex crime. Her mother read you as a sexual aggressor, so the payback had to have sexual overtones. But you needed to differentiate yourself from just another pervert. You and Nolan. He got off on dominating little girls.”

Baker showed me his back again.

“Was Irit mostly Nolan, or both of you? Because I think you shared Nolan's tastes. Young girls- dark girls. Girls like Latvinia. Did you do her yourself or with Tenney's help? Or someone else I haven't had the pleasure of meeting?”

He didn't budge.

“Like Ponsico,” I said, “Nolan lacked the will eventually. More important, he had some sort of conscience, what he did eventually got to him. You sent him to Lehmann but it didn't help. How'd you prevent him from bringing you down?”