Jonathan Kellerman - Twisted

Nice, thick filet mignon. He’d claimed to crave a burger but Petra had insisted and Strawberry had backed her up on that.

“Good for strong bones.” Smile, flip, arch, bosom-brush.

Almost as an afterthought, Petra ordered two glasses of Burgundy. Corrupting the youth of today. When the wine arrived, she decided to forgo the whole sniffing, swirling thing, not wanting to overwhelm the kid.

She was ravenous and attacked her surf-and-turf as if it was Schoelkopf’s face.

After a bit of silent snarling, she asked Isaac how his food was.

“Delicious. Thank you so much.” He’d finished his meat, was looking at a baked potato the size of a dog’s head.

“Big,” said Petra.

“Huge.”

“Probably radioactive. Some nefarious DNA-scramble scheme in Idaho.”

He laughed. Cut into the potato.

“So what do you think of Mr. Doebbler?”

“Hostile and asocial. I can see why Detective Ballou called him strange.”

“Anything else about him set you off?”

He thought. “He certainly wasn’t cooperative.”

“No, he wasn’t,” she said. “But that could’ve been our popping in unannounced. After all those years of no progress, I wouldn’t expect him to be a big police groupie.”

A drunk and a no-show. LAPD at its finest. She wondered what Isaac thought about that.

Would any of this show up in his dissertation?

How was she coming across?

She said, “Unfortunately, there are guys like Ballou and Martinez. Fortunately, they’re in the minority.” Little Miss Defensive. “What intrigues me about all that is Mr. Kurt Doebbler never complaining to their superiors. All that resentment but he kept it to himself.”

Isaac put down his knife and fork. “He wouldn’t, if he wanted the case to stay unsolved.”

Petra nodded.

“Amazing,” he said. “I’d never have thought of that.”

They ate some more. He said, “That comment he made, about not remembering what his wife looked like? Sometimes borderline personalities have a problem maintaining mental images of those close to them. Flat affect, also. Except when they feel they’ve been betrayed. When that happens, they can get pretty emotional.”

“Betrayed as in the wife having an affair,” she said. “That was just Ballou’s offhand comment and I’m not sure he’s worth paying attention to.”

He nodded.

“What are borderline personalities?” she asked him.

“It’s a psychiatric disorder involving problems of identity and intimacy- difficulty connecting with other people. Borderlines have higher-than-average rates of clinical depression and they’re more likely to get involved in substance abuse. Females tend to punish themselves but male borderlines can get aggressive.”

“Do they kill their spouses?”

“I’ve never heard that specifically. It’s just something that came to mind.”

Petra heard herself saying, “Doebbler’s an odd one, all right, but when you lose someone close to you, time does have a way of easing things. You forget. It’s protective. I’ve heard other relatives of victims say the same thing.”

Talking calmly while keeping a lid on what was blowing through her consciousness; all those hours poring over snapshots. Mom and Dad dating as college students. Mom tending to her brothers as infants, toddlers, little boys. Mom in a one-piece bathing suit looking gorgeous at Lake Mead. Despite the photos, it was all she could do to conjure up the merest hint of the woman who had died birthing her.

Her face must’ve betrayed something because Isaac looked confused.

She said, “Anyway, before we get too psychological about Kurt, let’s remember that his blood type didn’t match the sample they scraped off the seat, there’s absolutely no evidence linking him to the crime, and he does have an alibi, of sorts.”

She returned to her steak, decided she was no longer hungry.

Isaac said, “So what’s next?”

“Haven’t figured that out. Assuming I want to work the case. Any of them.” She shot him a fierce smile. “Look what you got me into.”

Another classic Isaac blush. The kid’s emotional barometer was fine-tuned, everything rose to the surface.

Polar opposite of Kurt Doebbler. The guy was weirdly flat.

Isaac was saying, “… sorry if I’ve complicated- ”

“You have,” said Petra. “But that’s okay. You did the right thing.”

He kept quiet. She cuffed his arm lightly. “Hey, I was just having a little fun at your expense.”

He managed a mini-smile.

“The truth is,” she went on, “diving into a half dozen cold cases that are probably unsolvable wasn’t what I had in mind when I programmed my day planner. But you’re right, there are too many similarities to dismiss.”

When had she decided that?

The wound pattern.

Or maybe sooner. Maybe she’d known right away and had just been denying it.

She said, “Letting it drop would put me in the same box as guys like Ballou and Martinez. So I’m fine with it. Okay?”

He murmured something.

“Pardon?”

“I hope it works out for you.”

“It will,” she said. “One way or the other.”

Listen to her, Little Miss Karma.

“You up for dessert?” Before he could answer, she was waving at Little Miss Strawberry.

Isaac knew he’d made a mistake.

He’d had Petra drop him off at Pico and Union. Near the bus stop where he usually got off, four blocks from his building. Not wanting her to see the liquor stores and abandoned buildings that lined the route. The crumbling wooden houses converted to by-the-day rooming houses. Four-story stucco slabs, like the one his family lived in, marred by the acne of graffiti.

His mother kept an immaculate flat and his building was no worse than any others in the neighborhood. But bad enough. Sometimes homeless guys wandered in and used the entry hall for a toilet. When Isaac walked the squeaky stairs up to his family’s third-floor space, he avoided touching the brown-painted handrail. Painted so often, it felt gelatinous. Sometimes it was gelatinous. Wads of gum stuck to the wood. And worse.

For a brief time, as an undergrad, his head filled with biology and organic chemistry, he’d taken to wearing plastic gloves when entering the building. Careful to shed and hide them before entering Mama’s domain.

The noise, the smells. Generally, he could shut it all out.

This morning, leaving for campus, he’d noticed that the front facade was looking especially shabby.

Most nights, he could forget all that, let his mind drift to the stately trees and brick loveliness of USC, the old-paper fragrance of Doheny Library.

His other life.

The life he’d have one day. Maybe.

Who was he kidding? Petra was smart, she had to know the Gomez family didn’t live in a mansion.

Still, there was something about her actually seeing his home base that repelled him.

So he walked.

A quick right turn at the late-night liquor store favored by old winos, then down dark side streets, past alleys, the usual sprinkle of lolling street people and addicts.

Passive in their misery. A few of them, he talked to. Sometimes he gave them lunch leftovers. Mom always packed too much anyway.

Mostly he ignored them and they returned the favor.

He’d been doing it for years, never had a problem.

Tonight he had a problem.

He was unaware of them till they started laughing.

A hoarse, high-pitched hooting, behind him. Close behind. When had they started following him? Had he been that spaced-out?

Lost in thought: Marta Doebbler. Kurt Doebbler.

June 28 getting closer.

Petra. Those dark eyes. The way she’d taken on that enormous steak. Attacking it… slender hands, but strong. Aggressive in such a feminine way.