Jonathan Kellerman - A Cold Heart

Meanwhile, Drummond was probably moldering somewhere.

Even if Drummond hadn’t been in on the bad stuff, he was a likely corpse. Because his disappearance provided distraction- terrific cover for Shull.

And because Shull liked killing people.

Modern art.

Bambu’s fake-grass door swung open and Shull exited with a knockout blonde in tow. Late twenties, big golden hair, a real Barbie. She wore a red glittery crop top under a short, black jacket, shredded second-skin jeans, high-heeled boots. Breasts way too high and too large to be real, too much makeup; Stahl upped his age estimate: the wrong side of thirty.

Your basic Sunset Boulevard party girl past her prime. But not a pro, she looked too happy positioned on Shull’s leather arm for this to be work.

Giggling. Staggering. Giddy.

Shull smiled back at her but he was composed.

Life is going so well for me.

Stahl sat in his car and watched the two of them flirt. Fixing on Shull’s macho posturing, just about feeling the heft of the sniper rifle on his shoulder.

The Expedition arrived and Shull was careful to hold the passenger door open for Barbie. Taking her hand as he did it. She kissed him in appreciation.

Once the blonde was inside, Shull and the parking valet exchanged conspiratorial glances.

Someone’s getting lucky tonight, bro.

Not the girl.

Shull stayed on Sunset and continued west, through the Strip and into Beverly Hills, speeding into even ritzier Bel Air. At Hilgard, he turned south, drove through Westwood Village, got on Wilshire and resumed a westerly route.

Making Stahl’s job easy, because even at this hour-2 A.M.- the brightly lit boulevard had its share of traffic. He hung three car lengths behind the Expedition, accompanied Shull and the blonde all the way through Brentwood and Santa Monica.

Down to Pacific Coast Highway. The beach. Here, the traffic was sparse, and the job became trickier. Stahl hung back, fixed his eyes on the SUV’s taillights. Shull picked up speed, traveling nearly seventy- twenty miles over the limit- as he crossed the coastal boundaries of Pacific Palisades and continued into the city of Malibu.

Going seventy-five per, eighty, eighty-five. Big hurry. No concern about being stopped on a traffic violation because he thought of himself as the kind of guy bad things didn’t happen to.

Or because a speeding ticket was just money, and he had plenty of that.

Did it also mean anything of forensic value been expunged from the SUV? A perfect cleaning was hard to pull off; one errant hair, a speck of body fluid could tell a tale. Shull didn’t transport his victims, he left them in place but, still, his own garments, the seat of the car- anything could’ve picked up some transfer.

Yet, here he was playing Daytona 500. Was the guy that arrogant?

Stahl’s mental meanderings were cut short when the Expedition made an abrupt right turn off the highway, into the parking lot of a white-board, blue-shuttered motel. The Sea Arms.

Caught off guard, Stahl continued another quarter mile, pulled over to the shoulder, turned around, and drove back.

Parking on the beach side of PCH, he studied the Sea Arms.

Two-storied, Cape Coddish building, behind an open parking lot. No rear property, the motel was nestled against the mountains. The usual AAA endorsement, a pink neon VACANCY sign on a tall pole.

Six units on each floor, the manager’s office down below to the right.

Thirteen cars in the lot, including the Expedition. Twelve occupants, plus the manager.

A. Gordon Shull, lucky boy that he was, had snagged the last empty room.

Stahl lost it.

Falling asleep in his car. Rudely awakened by a rap on the window. Blinding light in his eyes.

He opened the window and a voice barked, “Let’s see some ID.”

Stahl’s hand had moved instinctively toward the holstered 9 mm. concealed under his car coat, but fortunately his brain kicked in once he saw the robocop countenance of a highway patrolman.

Eventually everything was cleared up, and the CHP guy sped away in his cruiser.

Stahl sat there, humiliated. How long had he been out? Three-forty A.M. meant nearly half an hour.

The ocean roared in his head. The beach sky was full of stars; the sea was ash gray speckled with pinpoints of gold.

Eleven vehicles in the lot. Shull’s Expedition, one of them.

Stahl got out, took in a headful of salt air, stretched, cursed his stupidity, got back in the car, resumed watching.

At 4:20 A.M., A. Gordon Shull stepped out of a downstairs unit. Alone, no blonde. Carrying his black leather jacket over his shoulder, rubbing his eyes. He got in the Expedition, swung out of the lot, and made a quick, illegal left turn across the highway, crossing a set of double-yellows. Speeding off back to the city. Where was CHP when you needed them?

Quick decision time: follow the bastard or check on the blonde?

Did the blonde fit Shull’s pattern? Some kind of artistic type? A would-be actress? Did that qualify? Or maybe she was a dancer. Those legs.

Shull had already done a dancer. Would he repeat himself?

The one in Boston had been a ballerina. This one looked more like the lap-dance type. Enough kill variety?

He goes in with her, comes out without her. Meaning the room could be a pretty sight.

Stahl drove across the highway, straight into the Sea Arms lot. Parked at the far end, wanting to examine the spot where the Expedition had stood.

Nothing but a grease stain. Stahl walked up to Unit Five, knocked on the sea blue door, got no answer, tried the knob. Locked.

A louder knock- thunderous in the early-morning calm- brought no response, and Stahl glanced at the manager’s office. Lights out. Should he wake the manager up and get a key, or pull off a do-it-yourself? The lock was a mediocre dead bolt, and his kit was back in the car. He could always say he’d found the door open.

He assessed his options, talking to himself in the stilted self-justification of courtroom cop-speak.

A serial murder suspect entered with a female companion and remained at the site for… an hour and fifty-two minutes before departing alone. I initially attempted to gain entry by knocking, and when I received no answer after a significant lapse in time, I felt the situation demanded…

The sea blue door opened.

The blonde stood there in her red crop top and ragged, tight jeans. Zipper half-up, the faintest swell of belly above pink lace panties. Low-slung thong panties; several platinum pubic hairs strayed above the elastic.

She blinked, staggered, looked at the spot where the Expedition had stood, then at Stahl.

Several beats of the rolling tide caressed the morning. The air was cold and wet and smelled of driftwood.

Stahl said, “Miss-”

The blonde wore no makeup, was bleary-eyed, her hair stiff as a bird’s nest, the way sprayed hair got when you slept on it.

Tear streaks striped her perfect cheekbones.

Not as hard a face as Stahl had thought- cleansed of greasepaint, she looked younger. Vulnerable.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded in a voice that could’ve dissolved rust from a rain gutter.

So much for vulnerability.

Stahl showed her his badge and pushed his way in.

Despite the beach location, the Sea Arms was just another tacky motel and the room was just another moldy, by-the-day cell. Cottage-cheese ceiling, rumpled double bed with a U-pay vibrator hookup, woodite end tables, plastic lamps bolted down. A small-screen TV bolted to the wall was topped by a chart of movies by the hour, at least half of them X-rated. A mud brown carpet was marred by indelible stains.