Jonathan Kellerman - Rage

He snatched his phone from the table, punched in a number, and asked for Sue Kramer.

Two seconds later: “Nancy Drew? It’s Joe Hardy. Listen, I don’t know what your schedule’s like but… did it? Excellent… listen, Sue, all those things you private hotshots can do that I can’t… the high-tech stuff… yeah, exactly, I need a couple guys looked into… him and also the spiritual adviser- Daney… let’s just say he’s become interesting… the usual and anything else you can think of… sooner’s better than later, I’ll pay you personally… no, no, send me a full bill… I mean it, Sue… okay, fine, but send something… thanks, have a nice day, hope the winds are good.”

Clicking off, he said, “Her B.H. surveillance just ended. She spotted the Korean widow going into the apartment, found the lady praying at some kind of shrine, crying how much she loved hubby, why’d he have to go kill himself. So the suicide stands and Sue’ll start digging tomorrow when she gets back from a little R and R.”

“The winds,” I said. “Sailing?” Thinking about his brief fling as a P.I., during a suspension from LAPD. The rise in income. The plague of tedium. When the department took him back, he had raced home like a trained pigeon.

“Sailing on her new boat,” he said. “Over the bounding main.”

“Ever miss private enterprise?”

“The lack of red tape and paramilitary rigidity? The chance to make serious money? Why the hell would I miss that?” He stared at his phone, clicked it shut. “That comment Daney made about my sounding pretty confident. What was that, a taunt?”

“Or fishing for information. Or both,” I said. “He was clearly fishing when he steered the conversation to the topic of pay booths. Your line about being able to trace pay calls made his eyes jump.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Rand called me from a pay booth but Daney would have no way of knowing that unless he was there.”

His eyes compressed to surgical incisions. “Daney was with Rand the day he died.”

“Or nearby, watching Rand make the call,” I said. “Which got me thinking: What if he made up the story about the black truck to divert attention from the fact that it was him, not Barnett who followed Rand? Cherish told us he wasn’t home that afternoon.”

“Off at one of his nonprofit gigs.” He passed his phone from hand to hand. Tapped the table. Rubbed his face.

Finally, he said, “Daney did Rand, not Malley.”

“The only reason we focused on Malley is because Daney pointed us in that direction.”

“That and Malley’s mother-in-law said he was a scumbag dope dealer who was rough on Lara.”

“A scumbag dope dealer with no arrest record or known aliases who uses his own social security number,” I said. “Who registers his guns legally. In a sense, Nina Balquin was a character reference for Malley. She hates his guts but she’s never suspected him of murdering Lara.”

He slipped the phone in his pocket. Ungloved and grabbed a bear claw and chewed, spewing crumbs. “There’s still the eye color issue. Malley had to know he wasn’t Kristal’s daddy.”

“Maybe Daney’s right about him being too unsophisticated to figure it out. But even if he did know, unless we find something psychopathic in his background, it’s a long stretch to killing a toddler.”

“Unlike Daney, who we know to be an extremely bad boy.”

I nodded. “It’s also possible Malley knew about Kristal’s paternity and didn’t care.”

He put down the bear claw. “Guy has no problem raising someone else’s kid? That’s a stretch of another kind.”

“The Malleys had fertility problems for years. Lara eventually got pregnant but what if the fertility problem was Barnett’s and he came to accept the idea of a surrogate?”

“He let some other guy go to stud with Lara?”

“Or Lara slept with someone and got pregnant and Barnett accepted it. If Balquin’s dope suspicions are on-target, Lara and Barnett could’ve gotten into some alternative behaviors. Promiscuity, swinger parties. Or just plain old infidelity.”

“She gets knocked up at an orgy and Barnett says keep it? That’s pretty damn tolerant, Alex.”

“You’re probably right. But in any event, now that we know the truth about Daney’s character, we can’t ignore him for Rand. He hasn’t been directing us to Malley out of civic obligation.”

He gave the bear claw another try. Grimaced and put it aside.

I drank coffee. It sloshed in my stomach. Burned like drain cleaner when my thoughts uncoiled. “Daney fed us another tidbit he shouldn’t know about. Malley riding the rodeo. He claims Sydney Weider told him and maybe she did. But I read all the court documents and it never came up. In fact, my sense was Weider wasn’t paying any sort of attention to the Malleys. Daney’s playing us, Milo. And screwing up, in typical psychopath fashion, because he’s too clever for his own good.”

“Daney did Rand,” he said, looking off into the distance. “No reason why it doesn’t fit.”

“Something else: Whether or not the boys knew Lara or Barnett is an open question. But one of them sure knew Daney. Troy was a budding psychopath. Daney’s the fully-developed version. Put them together and there’s no question who’d pull the strings.”

“Daney got Troy to do Kristal?”

“And now he’ll help you ‘solve’ the case.”

“Man,” he said, “you are full of evil thoughts.”

“So I’ve been told.”

He said, “Guess it’s like those firebugs who return to the scene and rescue people. Or one of those Munchausen mommies racing to resuscitate their kids.”

“It fits Daney’s act,” I said. “Image is important to him. Outwardly, he’s a man of faith, a tireless youth worker, caretaker of downtrodden teens. While you were ordering, he spun off a bunch of psychobabble, told me he and Cherish chose adolescents to foster because no one else wanted them. If I didn’t know better, I’d have bought it. Meanwhile, he’s cheating the government, seducing minors, and impregnating them intentionally. Getting off on having the pregnancies terminated and trying to snag a share of the fees.”

“What a prince… at least when the DNA match comes through, we’ve got him for kiddie rape on Valerie Quezada.” He shook his head. “One reinterview and he’s our new Hitler. What does that say for Cherish’s guilt or innocence?”

“Don’t know. Their relationship’s a big question mark.”

“I can buy Daney as a scumbag,” he said. “But speaking of questions marks, what was his motive to have Kristal murdered?”

“Kristal survived,” I said.

“Survived what?”

“Survived period. Daney has a thing about his progeny living and breathing.”

“Daney was Kristal’s daddy? Where’d that come from?”

“More of the ugly in here.” I tapped my forehead. “Think about it: Daney’s kick is playing God. Generating life and terminating it. We know his sexual exploits went beyond teenage wards- Sydney Weider. Why not other married women? And why not play the pregnancy game with them, too? Your remark about a prenatal serial killer was on-target. And serials need increasing amounts of stimulation.”

“From fetus to full-term victim,” he said.

“There are mothers like that,” I said. “Get pregnant repeatedly but can’t tolerate parenthood. Fathers, too. How many cases have we heard where the boyfriend or daddy shook the baby too hard. We always assume it’s an impulsive thing, poor anger control. But maybe not. It sure happens with primates. Chimp moms defend their babies from aggressive daddies all the time.”

“I create, I destroy… except that seducing vulnerable teens is one thing, Alex. Getting a married woman pregnant means a whole lot of carelessness on all accounts.”