Jonathan Kellerman - Gone

The jet card and the island off Belize said not long.

Did Nora- numbed, callous, perpetually stoned- have any idea her life had been saved?

What kind of life lay ahead for her? Initial severe depression, for sure, once the reality of prison life set in. If she was deep enough to suffer. If she coped and set up a prison theater, things could get rosier. Casting, directing. Experiencing. A few years down the line, she might even merit one of those rehab-miracle puff-pieces in the Times.

Or maybe I had too much faith in the system and Nora would never see the inside of a penitentiary cell.

Back on McCadden Place, walking her stuffed dog.

Stavros Menas was wasting no opportunity to shout that she was just another of Brad’s victims.

Milo and I had heard her joking about Meserve’s head but both of us could be made to look foolish on the stand and L.A. juries distrusted cops and shrinks. The disks showed her having consensual sex with Brad and Meserve but nothing more. No forensic evidence tied her directly to the killings and nowadays juries expected nifty science.

Menas would rack up billable hours trying to get everything ruled inadmissible. Maybe he’d put Nora on the stand and she’d finally get a starring role.

One way or the other, he’d earn his million.

The lawyers vying for stewardship of Billy Dowd’s diminished life would also do fine.

Still no callback from the judge who’d warehoused Billy and sentenced him to eating soft food with plastic utensils.

The time I’d visited, he’d called me his friend, put his his head on my shoulder, and wet my shirt with his tears.

What use is a child with no meaning?

Amelia Dowd had no idea what crop she’d cultivated.

I wondered what Captain William Dowd Junior had known as he’d ambled abroad on grand tours.

Both of them perishing in a car crash. Big Cadillac veering off the road and over a cliff on Route 1, on the way to the Pebble Beach auto show.

No suspicion it hadn’t been an accident.

But Brad had been in town the week they’d set out and Brad knew cars. Milo had raised that with the D.A. The prosecutors agreed it was interesting theoretically but the evidence was long gone, Brad was dead, time to concentrate on building a case against a living defendant.

Time for me to…?

Robin’s truck was parked in front of the house. I expected to find her in a back room, drawing or reading or napping. She was waiting for me in the living room, sitting on the big couch with her legs tucked under her. A sleeveless, sky-colored dress set off her hair. Her eyes were clear and her feet were bare.

“Learn anything?” she said.

“That maybe I should’ve taken up accounting.”

She got up, took me by the hand, led me toward the kitchen.

“Sorry, not hungry,” I said.

“I wouldn’t expect you to be.” We continued into the service porch.

A plastic pet crate sat in front of the washer-dryer. Not Spike’s crate, she’d junked that. Not in the spot Spike’s crate had occupied. Off slightly to the left.

Robin kneeled, unlatched the grate, drew out a wrinkly fawn-colored thing.

Flat face, rabbit ears, moist black nose. Huge brown eyes met Robin’s, then aimed at me.

“You can name her,” she said.

“Her?”

“I figure you deserved that. No more macho competition. She’s from a championship line with great disposition.”

She rubbed the puppy’s belly, handed her over.

Warm as toast, almost small enough to fit in one hand. I tickled a fuzzy, blunt chin. A pink tongue shot out and the puppy craned the way bulldogs do. One of the rabbit ears flopped over.

“It’ll take a couple of weeks before they stay up,” said Robin.

Spike had been a lead-boned package of muscle and grit. This one was buttery-soft.

“How old?” I said.

“Ten weeks.”

“Runt of the litter?”

“The breeder promises she’ll fill in.”

The puppy began licking my fingers. I brought her closer to my face and she tongue-bathed my chin. She smelled of dog shampoo and that innate perfume that helps puppies get nurtured.

I scratched her chin again. She jutted her mandible in response. Licked my fingers some more, made a throaty sound closer to feline than canine.

“Love at first sight,” said Robin. She petted the puppy but the puppy pressed closer to me.

Robin laughed. “I’m really in for it.”

“That so?” I asked the puppy. “Or is it just infatuation?”

The puppy stared at me, followed every syllable with those huge brown eyes.

Lowering her head, she nuzzled my cheek, purred some more, butted until her knobby little cranium was buried under my chin. Squirming, she finally found a position she liked.

Closed her eyes, fell asleep. Snored softly.

“Mellow,” I said.

“We could use a bit of that, don’t you think?”

“We could,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said, tousling my hair. “Now, who’s getting up tonight for housebreaking?”

Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world's most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a child psychologist to numerous bestselling tales of suspense (which have been translated into two dozen languages), including thirteen previous Alex Delaware novels; The Butcher's Theater, a story of serial killing in Jerusalem; and Billy Straight, featuring Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor. His new novel, Flesh and Blood, will be published in hardcover in fall 2001. He is also the author of numerous essays, short stories, and scientific articles, two children's books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children. He and his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, have four children.