Serpentine
- Автор: Келлерман Джонатан
- Серия: Alex Delaware #36
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine Books
- ISBN: 978-0-525-61855-3
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Serpentine». Краткое содержание книги:
This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases — the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.
The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.
This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.
“Never.”
He looked at me.
I said, “Not once.”
Chapter 18
I spent the next two days with children under stress. The custody cases weren’t the worst I’d seen but neither were they ideal. Nice, well-balanced kids; I’d work hard to keep it that way.
The eighteen-month-old trauma victim was a chubby, black-eyed girl named Amelia with a surprisingly quick smile. Good temperament; a plus. When her mother, a five-eight, hundred-pound graphic designer named Lara, warily introduced me as a doctor, she said, “Da-ka.”
The collision had sprained Lara’s shoulder and ankle. The latter was swaddled by an elastic bandage, and every step was clearly painful. As was the session we’d had last week when I’d taken a history.
This morning, she said, “She keeps waking up. This has been hell.”
I said, “Sorry for what you’ve been through.”
“Not sorrier than me.” She began playing with her phone, leaving Amelia to toddle around the office.
I keep toys to a minimum, using the few that play a role in therapy. For a child this age, the playhouse would do. I’d positioned it in the center of the floor, and it didn’t take long for Amelia to get to it.
Cheerful and relaxed as she sat down and began exploring. Good sign.
Then she spotted the miniature cars in the garage, shrank back and hugged herself. A run to her mother ended with a swing up to the maternal lap.
“See what I mean? She freaks out. Just getting here in the loaner was an ordeal.”
I picked up the cars. “It’s understandable.”
“You really think you can help her?”
“I do.”
“Hard to believe,” she said. “But my lawyer said try. He also said you’ll document everything for the case.”
Amelia looked at her.
I said, “Bad cars,” and tossed them onto the floor.
Amelia’s gaze switched back to me.
“Bad,” I said, louder. Extending a foot and kicking the vehicles.
“Bah,” she said. Looking to her mother for guidance.
Lara folded her arms across her chest. “What would you like her to do, now?”
I picked up the cars and tossed them again. Amelia scampered off the sofa and did the same.
Her mother said, “Really? Again?”
I said, “Bad bad cars. You can throw them again.”
I pantomimed a toss.
Another glance at her mother.
Lara rolled her eyes. “If he says so.”
Amelia turned to me, turned doubtful by her mother’s tone. I retrieved the toys and threw them nearly to the far wall. “Bad cars!”
Inhaling and squeezing her hands into tiny fists, Amelia ran over and aped my motions. Picked the cars up. “Bah bah bah.”
She began breathing hard.
“That’s okay? The way she’s panting.”
I nodded.
“If you say so.”
We watched as Amelia went through car-assault eight more times. I use hard-plastic miniatures able to take the abuse. Sometimes I spackle and repaint the wall.
By the time Amelia left the office, insistent upon walking unaided, one of the cars was clutched in her tiny hand.
Her mother said, “That’s the doctor’s.”
I said, “That’s okay, now it’s Amelia’s.”
Swinging the vehicle overhead, the child trotted away, laughing. Her mother muttered, “Go know.”
I walked them out of the house and down to a Mercedes of Beverly Hills loaner SUV.
Amelia’s mother opened a rear passenger door and said, “Okay.”
Amelia hesitated for a second, then climbed in and allowed herself to be buckled in. All the while passing the toy from hand to hand.
“Ooom, bah bah bah.”
I said, “Oom va-roooom.”
She tittered then broke into a giggle fit.
Lara smiled despite herself. Before she got behind the wheel, she faced me, biting her lip.
I said, “A question?”
“So that’s it?”
“No, we’ll need more sessions. In the meantime, don’t do anything different. But if she does want to get mad at the cars, don’t stop her.”
Amelia began humming.
“Okay... maybe this will actually be useful. I guess.”
Amelia said, “Vuhooom!”
Lara said, “Um, do you do eating disorders?”
Chapter 19
At eight p.m., Milo called my private line and asked if I was still “healing miniature psyches.”
“Free now but tied up until noon tomorrow. Progress?”
“Nah, I’ve just got something I want you to hear.”
“I’m listening.”
“Hear as in verbal exchange, then we discuss. Not over the phone.”
I was tired, had planned to finish my paperwork then unwind with Chivas and my guitar gently weeping. But he sounded needy and Robin had returned to her shop and would be working late tweezing minuscule inlay onto the mandolin’s sound-hole rosette.
Her guess: back by nine. Eleven was more likely.
I said, “I’ll leave the door open.”
I was at my keyboard when he tapped on the doorframe. The playhouse was still in the center of the room.
“That for me?”
“If you can handle deep psychic exploration.”
“Sounds like my nightly sleep pattern.”
He plopped onto the battered leather couch, leaned forward, and began examining the house. “Kinda Beaver Cleaverville. Do I get to pick a favorite room? And don’t say the kitchen.”
“What, then?”
“Bypass the process and head straight for the outcome. The dining room.”
He removed a steak the size of a toenail. “For plastic, this stuff looks pretty good, but the portions? Tsk... is this broccoli or cauliflower... or a lawn cutting from Dad’s mower?”
I saved the file I was working on, double-checked, and logged off just as he was plucking a Mom-doll out of the house. “Apron and bouffant hair?”
I said, “I bought it when I started in practice.”
“Maybe you should update. Mama with skinny jeans and a coupla tattoos?” He rotated the doll. “Is her name Susan or Mary Jane? Is she still true to her sorority?”
“Sorry,” I said, “patient confidentiality. How’s Twohy?”
“Still in the hospital, nothing new to say. In terms of the crime scene, Petra doesn’t know for sure where the shooter hid but she’s got a good guess. Indentation in some brush twenty feet from where Twohy fell. Unfortunately, no footprints. Or casing, maybe it was a revolver.”
He held up the doll. “Back to Formica and TV dinners for you, Suzy.”
I said, “Did you have time to watch the mansion?”
“Briefly, still can’t figure a good way to do it, road’s too open, traffic’s too thin. I used the Porsche to blend in, did some drive-bys seven to ten a.m. and four to seven p.m., figuring those were the likely times Sabino or some other employee would be coming or going. No one came or went except for FedEx delivering what looked like boxes of books. Top of that, Martz called me yesterday emphasizing I was to report to her and no one else. Meaning I can’t request backup from Moe or Sean or Alicia. Now the topic for discussion.”
He triggered his phone. Two beeps were followed by a deep male voice.
“This is Dr. Des Barres.”
“Doctor, Lieutenant Sturgis.”
“You, again? I got your messages and ignored them because I’m busy and have nothing to say to you.”
“If you could just—”
“You misled my service, saying it was an urgent call.”
“It kind of is, Doctor.”
“It kind of isn’t,” said Anthony Des Barres. “False premises. Not right, Lieutenant. Goodbye.”
“Sorry, sir, no harm intended but if you could give me just a second? Your brother and sister did.”