Jonathan Kellerman - Twisted

“What about the mother?”

“She was there, too. Borderline retarded, if you ask me. She did seem to care a little, but every time she started to cry Crisp nudged her in the ribs and she shut up. His big concern was who was going to pay for the burial.”

“I read your notes,” said Petra.

Max sighed. “What can I tell you. Sometimes you don’t win.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Enjoying retirement?”

“I dunno. I’ve been thinking of getting a security job. Just to get me out of the house.”

“Sure,” said Petra. “Makes sense.”

“Anyway, good luck on little Jewell.”

“One more thing, Max. I don’t see any transfer.”

“I wanted to transfer it to Shirley and she wanted to take it. Because she’d already started. Actually, it was she who came to me, wanting to partner. Because she’d caught another case, couple of years before, that probably wasn’t the same guy but there were some similarities.”

“Really?” said Petra.

“Yeah,” said Max. “Another head-bashing, but not a kid, some woman, up in the Hollywood Hills. That one, a dog got killed, too, what was the name… I’m having a senior moment.”

The name was Coral Langdon. Petra said, “Shirley thought the cases might be tied in?”

“At first she did, but in the end, she didn’t. Too many differences, what with Jewell being a poor runaway and the other one- what was her name- being a financially comfortable divorcée with a nice house. That one- Lambert, Lan-something… anyway, that one Shirley had worked the ex-husband as the main suspect because the divorce hadn’t been friendly. Plus, neighbors said he’d always hated the dog. He claimed an alibi, too, but it wasn’t much of one. Sitting at home watching the tube, no one else in the apartment. But Shirley never found anything to contradict him and one neighbor did say his car had been in his driveway around the time of the murder.”

“How come Shirley didn’t get Jewell Blank’s case?”

“I assumed she did,” said Max.

“If she did, there’s no record of it.”

“Hmm. Don’t know what to tell you, Petra.”

“In the end Shirley didn’t think Blank and the woman with the dog were similars.”

“The only thing similar was head-bashing- Langdon, that was it. Something Langdon. So Shirley didn’t work Jewell, huh?”

“Doesn’t appear so.”

“That’s kind of funny,” said Max. “You remember Shirley. Tenacious. Real tragedy what happened to her, I didn’t even know she skied.”

She thanked Max, apologized for interrupting his dinner, hung up, and turned to Coral Langdon’s file.

The murdered woman’s ex was an insurance salesman named Harvey Lee Langdon. Insurance tipped you off to the best of motives, but Harvey had sold property casualty, not term life. Shirley had taken a close look at Coral’s papers anyway, and contacted a bunch of insurance companies. No juicy policy, anywhere. No financial ties at all between Coral and Harvey since their divorce three years ago, except for five hundred a month alimony. Coral Langdon had worked as an executive secretary to an aerospace honcho, made a fine living on her own.

The dog, Brandy, had been a bone of contention in the Langdon marriage. Harvey had expressed dismay at his ex-wife’s demise but had smirked when hearing about the cockapoo. Shirley had transcribed his comments verbatim, quotation marks and all:

“Stupid little bitch. Know what her motto was? The world is my toilet.”

A shrink could have fun with that. Harvey had definitely been worth looking at, but Shirley had made no progress along those lines.

The modus and the crime scenes- two females bludgeoned in wooded areas of Hollywood- had caused the tenacious Detective Lenois to make a connection between Langdon and Jewell Blank. Had she been unimpressed by the June 28 angle?

Most likely she hadn’t noticed.

Would Shirley- astute, dogged, dedicated- have missed something like that?

Sure. The date of a homicide was something Petra never paid much attention to. As a detective, Shirley would have zeroed in on crime scene details.

The head-bashing. Like Isaac said, it was rare.

In the end, Shirley had decided the cases weren’t linked, but she hadn’t known about two previous head-bashings on the exact same date.

And now Shirley was dead and, once again, there was no evidence the case had been transferred.

Petra studied the photocopied driver’s license attached to the file. Coral Langdon had been an attractive woman with a tan, oval face under a short cap of blond hair. Five-seven, one-thirty. Slender. Probably strong, too. According to Shirley’s notes, Coral had worked out at a gym, studied kickboxing.

Meaning whoever had brained her was in good shape. And stealthy enough to get her from behind.

Petra visualized it. Langdon taking the cockapoo out for a night-time stroll, he steps out of the shadows…

Jewell Blank would’ve been a whole lot easier. A tiny little girl in the park.

No doubt, Shirley had wondered about that, decided it wasn’t a match.

But six cases on the same date, that was different.

Like Isaac said, statistically significant.

Like Isaac said.

Petra figured that phrase would be adhering to her brain for a while.

She went back and studied the first two murders in detail. Marta Doebbler, the twenty-nine-year-old housewife who’d gone to see a play at the Pantages, left for the ladies’ room and didn’t return, and Geraldo Solis, the Wilshire Division case. Elderly man found sitting at his breakfast room table, brains leaking onto a plate of sausage and eggs. Now there was a charming detail.

Nothing else about the Solis file sparked her interest, but a notation on Marta Doebbler gave her pause: Doebbler had been called out of the theater by a cell phone squawk, and the detectives had traced the call to a pay phone around the corner from the theater.

Had someone lured her out? The fact that she’d complied, coupled with her body being dumped in her own car- unlike the others- said it was someone she knew. The detectives had interviewed the husband, an engineer named Kurt Doebbler, and remarked that he seemed “overly calm.” Doebbler had an alibi: home with his and Marta’s nine-year-old daughter, Katya.

She reread the Solis file. No sign of breaking and entering. Someone the old man had known as well?

No apparent connection between the victims but could it have been the same person?

She jotted down the names of the D’s on both cases. Conrad Ballou and Enrique Martinez on Doebbler, another unfamiliar name on Solis, DII Jacob Hustaad, Wilshire Division.

Barney Fleischer was still at his desk, pen in his hand, but reading. Blue folder of his own. She’d always thought of Barney as end-of-career deadweight. Was he still working cases?

She approached him again, said, “Sorry, but I was wondering if you knew any of these guys.”

He closed the murder book- a file labeled “Chang”- and examined the list. “Got a cold-case assignment?”

“Self-imposed assignment,” said Petra. “The kid, Gomez, thought I should look at a few old files.”

“The genius,” said Barney. “Nice kid. I like him.”

“He talks to you?”

“From time to time. He likes to hear about the old days.” Barney smiled. “And who better than a geezer like me?” He put the Chang file on his desk. “That’s one I did five years ago. No one gives me anything, anymore. I should leave but I’m not sure it would be good for me.”

He peered at the list again. “Connie Ballou’s a real old-timer. He was here well before I arrived, probably has ten years on me. He left around five years ago.” Barney frowned.