Jonathan Kellerman - Rage

“It’s L.A.,” I said. “Improvise.”

The address was in Beverly Hills, Rexford Drive, south side of the city, between Wilshire and Olympic, where apartment buildings predominated.

“That’s her,” said Milo, pointing to a trim, dark-haired woman walking a champagne-colored toy poodle up the west side of the block.

He pulled up to the curb and Sue Kramer smiled and waved and gathered the dog in her arms.

“You’re not allergic are you, Milo?”

“Just to paperwork.”

Kramer got in the back of the unmarked. As Milo drove away, she sniffed the air. “That good old dirty-cuffs smell. Been awhile.”

“What’re you driving now, Ms. Private Enterprise? A Jag?”

“A Lexus. And a Range Rover.” Kramer was in her fifties, with a tight, leggy figure emphasized by black chalk-stripe pipe-stem pants and a tailored gray jacket over a white silk shell. Her hair was ink-black, cut short and spiked. No jewelry. Black Kate Spade purse.

“Hooh hah,” said Milo.

Kramer said, “The Lexus I earned myself. My new husband’s a financial guy. He bought me the Rover for a surprise.”

“Nice new husband.”

“Maybe the third time’s the charm.” The dog panted. “Chill, Fritzi, these are good guys- I think she’s smelling scumbag back here.”

Milo said, “My last passenger was Deputy Chief Morales. Got stuck driving him to a meeting at Parker.”

“There you go.”

Milo crossed Rexford at Olympic, turned left on Whitworth. “How’re things, Sue?”

“Things are great- pipe down, Fritz.”

“ San Bernardino treating you well?”

“I could do without the smog, but Dwayne and I have a great weekend place in Arrowhead. How about you?”

“Peachy. What brings you to B.H.?”

“In the words of Willie Sutton, that’s where the money is,” said Kramer. “Seriously, it’s a sad one. Divorce case, Korean couple, the usual hassles over money and custody. The husband decided to kill himself, made sure the wife found him.”

“Gun?”

“Knife. He ran a bath, got in, cut his wrists. That was after calling the ex and telling her she could have the car and the kids and all the spousal payment she’d demanded. All he wanted was for her to come by so they could talk like mature adults. She walked in, saw bloody water running all over the apartment. Coroner says suicide but his divorce lawyer hired us to make sure.”

“Iffy?” said Milo.

“Not at all, but you know attorneys. This one wants to rack up a few more billable hours before he closes the file. Which is fine with Bob- my boss. We don’t make moral judgments, we just do the job. The apartment where it happened is back there, I’m supposed to watch it for a few days, see if anyone interesting goes in or out. So far, nothing, I’m going out of my mind. You did me a favor by calling.”

She leaned forward to get a better look at me. “Hi, I’m Sue.”

“Alex Delaware.”

I reached back and we shook hands. Milo told her who I was.

“I know that name,” said Kramer. “You evaluated Turner and Duchay, right?”

“Right.”

“Talk about sad.”

Milo said, “Duchay’s dead, Sue. That’s why we’re here.”

Kramer stroked the poodle. “Really? Tell me about it.”

When he finished, she said, “So you’re thinking: If Malley’s a vengeance-crazed killer, maybe he did the same to Lara.”

“I’m sure you were right on, but you know how it is when stuff comes up- ”

“No need to stroke me, Milo. If the situation was reversed, I’d do the same thing.” She sat back. The dog’s breathing had slowed. Kramer whispered something in its ear. “Fernie and I did a good job on Lara. Coroner confirmed it was suicide, there was no reason to think it wasn’t. Lara was what you psychologists call profoundly depressed, Doctor. Since Kristal’s death, she’d lost weight, was taking medication, slept all day, refused to socialize.”

“You got this from Barnett?”

“That’s right.”

“I found him a rather taciturn fellow.”

“Yeah, he did have the old Clint Eastwood thing going on,” said Kramer. “But Fernie and I had bonded with him because we caught the two little monsters.”

“What was his reaction to Lara’s death?”

“Sad, wiped out, guilty. He said he should’ve taken her depression more seriously, but they’d been having their problems and he’d been focusing on his work.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Marital stuff,” said Kramer. “I didn’t push. This was a guy who’d lost everything.”

“So he was feeling guilty for not paying attention to her.”

“Suicide does that. Right, Doctor? Leaves all that guilt residue. Like the case I’m working on right now. The wife hated the husband’s guts, did everything in her power to squeeze him dry during the divorce. But seeing him bleeding out in that bathtub freaked her out and now she’s remembering all sorts of wonderful things about him and blaming herself.”

Milo said, “Did Barnett express any guilt about Lara using his gun?”

“No,” said Kramer. “Nothing like that. I also talked to Lara’s mother and she said basically the same.”

“She and Barnett get along?” I said.

“I got the feeling they didn’t, but she never came out and said anything bad about him,” said Kramer. “What I got from her was that Lara had really struggled after Kristal’s death and she felt powerless to do anything about it, poor woman. Her name was Nina. Nina Balquin. She was devastated. How could she not be?”

“Lara was on medication,” I said. “She get that from a family doctor?”

“Lara refused to see a therapist, so Nina gave her some of her pills.”

“Mom was depressed, too.”

“Over Kristal,” said Kramer. “Maybe there was more. I got the sense this was a family that had dealt with a lot over the years.”

“Like what?” said Milo.

“It was just a feeling- I’m sure you’ve seen that, Doctor. Some families seem to live under a cloud. But maybe my opinion was colored because I was seeing them at their worst.”

“Twice,” I said.

“Talk about the pits. I’m getting profoundly depressed just thinking about it,” said Kramer. She laughed softly and stroked the poodle. “Fritzi’s my therapist. She loves stakeouts.”

“Walks in a straight line and doesn’t talk,” said Milo. “The perfect partner.”

“And doesn’t need privacy to pee.”

Milo chuckled. “Anything else that would be helpful, Sue?”

“That’s it, guys. Those cases made me so damn sad, I couldn’t wait to close both of them. So maybe I overlooked something on Lara, I don’t know. But there really was nothing to indicate Barnett had anything to do with it.” She sighed.

Milo said, “I wouldn’ta done different, Sue.”

“You really think he could’ve killed her?”

“You know him better than I do.”

“I knew him as a grieving father.”

“An angry, grieving father.”

“Isn’t anger how men deal with everything?”

Neither of us answered.

Sue Kramer said, “If Barnett blamed Lara for being negligent, he never said so to me. Can I see him waiting for Duchay to get out and pulling a revenge thing? I guess. I know he was happy when the Turner kid got shanked in jail.”

“He said that?” said Milo.

“Yup. I called to tell him about it. Figured it might hit the papers and he shouldn’t find out that way. He listened and said nothing, there was this long silence. I said, ‘Barnett?’ And he said ‘I heard you.’ I said, ‘You all right?’ And he said, ‘Thanks for calling. Good riddance to bad garbage.’ Then he hung up. I have to say it creeped me out a little, because Turner was thirteen years old and the way he died was gross. Still, it wasn’t my kid he murdered. The more I thought about Barnett’s pain, the more I figured he was entitled.”