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.
Her knuckles blanched around the wheel. “I was a quiet, obedient kid but when I got older — twelve, thirteen — I found myself drawing secret caricatures of him and the blondes. Writing mean-spirited captions. Then I’d immediately shred them and toss them in the trash. That lasted until I was fourteen, fifteen. That’s when his health began giving way. First there were heart issues, then arthritis, he got bowed over and moved more slowly. Basically the aging process, maybe accelerated by fast living. Then, when I was twenty-one — right after my twenty-first birthday, he got cancer. First prostate, which they said was curable, he had surgery and was supposedly cured. But he was never the same — listless, he gained weight. No more blondes, I’m assuming it affected his masculinity. Then, when I was twenty-three, came the stomach cancer, which wasn’t curable. That’s when things got horrific. The pain, wasting away.”
I said, “You’re a young woman and you’re dealing with it.”
“I’d just graduated college and was living at home.” She fussed with her hair some more, twisting, tugging. “I never left, just turned inward, found my own space — internal space. That’s when my stories and my art took off — not that I wouldn’t have traded all of that for Father to get well. But he didn’t. And it drove me creatively — I had to have some kind of escape.”
“Of course.”
“I really did,” she said. “By the time I turned twenty-four, he was terminal— Would you mind if we go back outside? I’m feeling a little closed-in.”
We left the Mazda and walked to the rear of the unmarked. Valerie Des Barres, paler by several shades, pretended to study the bifurcated sky. Milo and I studied her. He was back to drumming his thigh.
Her nostrils flared as she inhaled and blew air out audibly. The sound merged with the gentle prod of trees by a brief gust of warm breeze.
She said, “He was on his deathbed, doctors and nurses were coming in and giving him morphine. My brothers had flown in the previous week thinking this was the end. When it wasn’t, they returned to Chicago. I remember thinking, Father disappointed them again.”
I said, “Your brothers thought he’d let them down?”
“Oh, yes. The whole blonde thing offended them profoundly. Whatever respect they’d had for him was gone. Ironically, though, Bill began imitating Father. Or at least that’s how it seems to me.”
Milo said, “He had a harem of his own?”
“No, no.” She laughed. “He just really got into chasing women. He’s been married and divorced four times, I can’t tell you how many girlfriends he’s had. But that’s neither here nor there. Yes, they resented Father but I didn’t — I firmly believe I’m being honest when I say that.”
Her hands folded across her chest. As if realizing the defensiveness that implied, she dropped them quickly, squared her shoulders and stood taller.
Martyr accepting sacrifice.
“So,” she said. “Deathbed scene. It’s a Sunday, the nannies are in church. No doctors around, just one of the nurses the hospice sends by but she’s not there in his room, it’s a huge house, who knows where she is? I’d been sleeping in the anteroom next to his bedroom, wanting to be close in case he needed me. I’d set up my drawing table, so it really wasn’t an imposition. There was no point remaining at his bedside, for the most part he was in and out of consciousness. And when he came to consciousness he just moaned in pain. He was down to skin and bones... so... I just couldn’t look at that all day. So there I am in the next room, sketching away, and I hear him croak my name and I rush in. He wasn’t moaning but I could tell from his face that he was in great pain. I said, ‘Let’s get you some medicine.’ He shook his head. Violently. I wasn’t sure what that meant — some sort of higher-level agony throe or he didn’t want any morphine? I was about to get the nurse when he let out this different — this hoarse noise, almost animalistic, and began waving a hand I thought had been too weak to even move. Beckoning me over. I sat on the edge of his bed and held his other hand. It was so frail and cold... he was breathing shallowly, I’m thinking this is it, I’m going to actually see it. Terrifying. Then all of a sudden he raises himself up and puts his lips close to my ear and frees his hand and clamps it around my arm.”
She touched her right biceps. “I mean clamped. I was amazed at how strong his grip was, his nails were actually biting into my arm but of course I didn’t say anything. He breathed a few times then, clear as day, he uttered the first words he’d spoken in a week.”
She walked away from us, stopped perilously close to the edge, froze for a moment and returned.
“Here’s what he said: ‘Bring the devil into your home, you’re the devil’s disciple.’ ”
Milo scrawled in his pad.
Val Des Barres shook her head. “What do you say to that? I figured he was delirious but his eyes were suddenly clear and they seemed full of intent. Struggling to communicate. I said something meaningless and mumbly and that really upset him. He actually moved what was left of his body into a full, upright sit, kept squeezing my arm, and waved his other hand in the air. Then he repeated it. Louder. Almost like an evangelical preacher.”
Milo read. “ ‘Bring the devil into your home, you’re the devil’s disciple.’ ”
“Word for word, Lieutenant. It’s not something you forget. I convinced myself it was delirium, shoved the whole incident to the back of my head, why wouldn’t I? But now that you’ve told me about Ellie’s mother, I can’t help wondering. Was he talking about something that actually happened?”
Again, she turned her back on us. “Did he do something evil himself?”
Milo and I said nothing.
Val Des Barres said, “And then, at eleven thirty-four p.m., he died.”
We let the quiet linger, broken by the breeze and a faint, miles-away traffic hum from the grid below.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s all of it.”
Milo said, “We really appreciate your telling us something so difficult.”
“Does it mean anything? Based upon what you know?”
“No, ma’am. And a man on his deathbed...”
“Who knows what the brain cells are doing, I get that. That’s what I keep telling myself. I hope it’s true.”
She stepped up to Milo. “I needed to get it off my chest. You’re so kind, Lieutenant.” She took his hand, squeezed it briefly, let go with reluctance.
I wagered on his first comment when we were alone: My week for Mr. Popular. If they only knew.
He said, “We’ve got no evidence your dad did anything criminal but can you handle a tough question?”
“Sure.”
“Did you ever witness your dad injure any of the blondes?”
“Never.”
I said, “When the car went over the side of the road, you weren’t aware of it.”
“I wasn’t.”
Milo said, “No investigators ever showed up at your house.”
“Not that I ever saw. And I’m sure if it did happen, the nannies would’ve shielded me from it.”
She smiled. “That was my life, the helpless nerdy kid buffered from reality. I suppose that’s why I’ve never left.”
I said, “For the most part the blondes were nice to you.”