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.
Just as with the Des Barres kids, Dorothy Swoboda was making no effort.
I examined the entire photo again. Red and Yellow wore gems too huge to be real at their ears and suspended from gold chains. Dorothy wore a single necklace.
Question marks filled my head. I felt my face tighten up.
Maxine said, “What?”
I pointed. “This is our victim.”
“You’re kidding. Amazing. Let me look at her.”
She fiddled in her bag for a pair of reading glasses, studied as if examining a relic. “Kind of a sourpuss. She must’ve been a sexual genius.”
“I was wondering what her secret was.”
“That’s what comes to my mind, Alex. Of course, vaginal virtuosity only goes so far, because men live for constant novelty. And with his setup, Des Barres would have plenty of that. Maybe he got tired of her and she didn’t take well to rejection — somehow threatened him — so he got rid of her.”
She shifted to Des Barres’s face. “He doesn’t look like a guy burdened by inhibition... notice the exact same hairdo on all of three of them. Obviously, wigs. Obviously, at his behest. It’s like they’re blow-up dolls. He’s into control.”
She chuckled. “Pardon my veering into your territory.”
“Veer away, Maxine. You’re making sense.”
“Oh, good. Historians are known for being self-appointed experts on everything... so he decides to dump her permanently. Shoot her, burn the car, push it off a cliff. Not a pretty ending. Guy like him probably collected insurance.”
She returned the photo and I studied Dorothy’s face some more, came up with nothing, and turned to the smiling blondes. Dorothy looked early to midtwenties. The others were younger, maybe even late adolescents.
Assuming the woman on the horse meant anything, could either of them have served as a calculating assassin?
Immature, impressionable, bowled over by wealth and possibility? Absolutely.
But no sign of hostility in this shot. No sideward, hostile glance at Dorothy, just glossy, intoxicated glee. The same went for Anton Des Barres, dull-eyed and slack-lipped.
Dorothy’s cool sobriety stood out. A party she’d opted out of.
I placed the photo in the leather briefcase I take to court, thought about what I hadn’t told Maxine, fought the urge to make up an excuse and leave. Instead, I listened as she griped enthusiastically about the pathetic emotional stamina of the undergrads foisted upon her.
She’d said the same thing last year.
I said, “It’s gotten worse?”
“It’s nonstop devolution, Alex. The batch I got this semester is allergic to facts and feels entitled to unearned adoration. We’re talking the emotional musculature of blind cave worms.”
I laughed. “Are the grad students any better?”
“Worse. They think they’re Nobel winners who accidentally missed the flight to Sweden. And in answer to your next question, don’t get me started on my colleagues. When utterly compelled to, I go to faculty meetings and listen to incessant bitching about times never being more dire. Apparently we’re nudging Armageddon. Which is absurd for people supposedly knowledgeable about the past. The Dark Ages, anyone? Plagues and despots and life expectancies in the thirties? The problem is academics are students afraid to graduate, so their grasp on reality is for shit. On top of that, my so-called peers haven’t a clue what it’s like to live under Orwellian nightmare communism like my dad did before he deserted his post and sneaked across the DMZ to the South.”
“Didn’t know that about him. Heroic.”
“More like desperation,” she said. “Unfortunately, it only reinforced his lifelong sense of caution. And now I’ve run up a serious therapy bill with you.”
“Professional courtesy.”
“Thanks. But there’s still tit for tat, info-wise.”
“You bet.”
I watched her nibble. Just when I figured I could leave gracefully, she said, “One promising phenomenon is that comedians are getting roundly ticked off about being told what to think and say. Spread enough ridicule out there, I suppose norms could eventually change. Meanwhile, I soldier on. How about you? Any effect on your work? Not the Milo cases, the clinical stuff.”
“Kids under stress aren’t concerned with pseudo-suffering.”
“Pseudo-suffering. I like that. Maybe I’ll find a way to work it into something. Want credit?”
“Take it all.”
“Believe me, I will, Alex. And you will let me know once the case resolves?”
“Love your optimism, Maxine.”
Something Milo had said to me countless times.
Maxine said, “What else is there?”
The moment I was back in the Seville, I phoned Milo’s cell. “Where are you?”
“The office. What’s up?”
“I’m looking at a photo of Des Barres with Dorothy at The Azalea. She’s wearing the serpentine necklace. Barker told Ellie she left it behind when she left. This shows she had it in L.A. so either Barker lied and he took it from her, maybe when he killed her. Or she traveled between Danville and here at least once.”
“When was the photo taken?”
“It’s undated.”
“How’d you come up with it?”
“Maxine did.” I filled him in.
He said, “God bless Maxine. Two other women, huh? Either of them shooting daggers at Dorothy?”
“The equestrian assassin? No, it’s a friendly, boozy scene. Except for Dorothy. She looks fetching but serious and sober.”
“Nonconformist,” he said. “That can get you in trouble.”
“Maxine suggested her sexual skills outweighed a failure to worship Des Barres. If that’s true, it could’ve worn thin.”
“What’d Maxine think about the necklace?”
“I didn’t tell her.”
“Why not?”
“Trying to keep the information flow minimal.”
A beat. “Good idea. I want to see the photo. Where are you?”
“Ten minutes from you if you arrange parking.”
“You will be cheerfully and promptly VIP’d.”
Chapter 24
Pooh-bah parking translated to Milo waiting by the gate to the staff lot and inserting his card as I drove up.
He bowed and scraped. “Second aisle, midway down. Sir. Better yet, I’ll accompany you, how’s that for service?”
He opened the passenger door and got in.
I said, “Babysitting for a few yards?”
“Got the photo in your briefcase? You can have cookies and milk.”
We walked through the lot, crossed Butler Avenue, and entered the station.
I gave him the photo as we climbed the stairs.
“Yeah, Dottie does look serious. Sexual acrobatics, huh?”
“That was Maxine’s theory,” I said. “Or maybe the others tried too hard and she stood out by playing hard to get.”
“Trying to make herself the goal,” he said. “Instead, she became prime prey.”
“On the way over, I thought of something. Stan Barker, then Des Barres, both older men, one prosperous, one rich. If she made repeated trips down here, there could be others.”
“What we wondered about in the beginning — some L.A. boyfriend. Popular in life, nightmare victim in death.”
His office door was wide open. Slouching the one step it took to get to his desk, he collapsed onto a groaning swivel chair. Piles of paper crowded the computer, neatly stacked but higher than usual.
Using the solo assignment to ignore bureaucratic torture.
He swept the highest pile into the trash with clear pleasure. Took the photo, was gone for a few minutes, came back with the original and a copy, both of which went into a blue folder. Unlabeled but the same covers as a standard murder book. Old habits.