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.
He called for a technical officer and a five-foot-tall woman built like a fireplug showed up half an hour later. During the wait, we’d both worked on inspecting missing persons sites.
No room for three of us, so he spoke to Officer Shirlee Best out in the hallway.
She said, “That’s your office?”
“Rank has its privileges.”
Best remained impassive.
“Thanks for coming, Officer.”
“My job. What do you need?”
When he finished explaining, Best said, “A to B to C, you don’t need me for that.”
“Humor me.”
“It’ll slow you down, I can’t get back here until tomorrow.”
“I’m sure you’re worth the wait.”
“Yeah, right. Obviously, I can’t modify the department site or anyone else’s.”
“Don’t expect you to.” He ducked into the office and returned with the photo. “The woman on the right is the subject.”
She glanced at the image with no apparent interest. “Crap resolution, don’t expect much by way of enhancement. Do you want something pretty?”
“Meaning?”
“Cool graphics, attention-grabbing font, animation.”
“You can do that?”
“It’s not a big deal,” said Best. “I had one guy, Ruffalo in Auto Theft, out looking for a hot Mercedes, wanted me to splice in scenes from video games. I told him no dice unless he could show me the licensing fee had been paid. He found out what that cost and said forget it.”
“Beyond the call,” said Milo.
“Mercedes belonged to an actress, Ruffalo wouldn’t say who, just leered a lot. Guy looks like a pot of porridge but maybe he figured he could score if he produced the wheels. Not motivated enough to pay for the licensing, though. So how fancy do you want to get?”
“Does fancy make a difference?”
“No idea,” said Best. “In the meantime, do us both a favor and accomplish what you can by yourself.”
By the following morning at nine, he was at my kitchen table slurping coffee and demolishing an omelet he’d fixed from a staggeringly dubious mix of leftovers. Mushrooms plus salami plus candied walnuts plus jicama Robin and I had forgotten about unearthed from the recesses of the vegetable bin.
I ate toast and marveled.
Six mouthfuls in, he took a breather. “Right after Best left, she emailed and informed me one day has now stretched to two. So I did do some DIY: narrowed the national sites to the top five and sent them each Corn-Fed’s headshot. The department’s page has no sexy graphics and doesn’t seem to be attracting the public big-time. Who it did attract was someone in Martz’s office. She called me at home at ten p.m. demanding to know why when I was assigned to Swoboda I was veering off onto another case. I told her the victims were potentially linked, which got her all inquisitorial. But being a pencil-pusher, when I started explaining she spaced out and said, Whatever. Then she asked if Ellie had approved the ‘digression.’ That made all sorts of very bad thoughts swirl through my brain but you and Orwell will be proud to know I reacted with discretion and finessed her with doublespeak. Then I called Ellie, because I knew Martz would.”
“How’d she react?”
“Graciously, I’m the expert, whatever I choose to do is fine,” he said. Three more hurried swallows and a coffee wash-down. “That was after she gasped at the notion of another potential victim and asked what you’d expect.”
“Could it be a serial killer.”
“Cliché of our century. I finessed her, too. Don’t know how long I can keep doing it, though.”
He drained his cup, refilled. “It was Mel Boudreaux who answered her cell. He said she was sleeping, had been doing a lot of that. When she phoned a few minutes later, she sounded pretty low. Probably the aftermath of being dumped by Runner Boy.”
That and her own limbo. No sense reminding him.
I said, “Makes sense.”
“Anyway, mood issues are your thing, not mine. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to do but bide time on what I’ve inputted and hope Best comes by tomorrow and isn’t just putting me off. How’s your day shaping up?”
“Appointments from noon to four.”
“Busy man,” he said. “No digressions for you.”
Two days later, he texted me.
Best finally showed up, here’s the hoo-hah production.
Below that, a link. No cute graphics, bright colors, or animation. Just a young, smiling face, unintentionally soft-focus, bordered top and bottom by somber black print.
She went missing in or near Los Angeles sometime during the eighties and has never been identified. Someone must care about her. If you do, please contact Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, LAPD, Westside Division, at 310...
Another day passed, as the week slid into a warm, blue-sky Friday. Busier week than I’d anticipated, with two additional custody referrals from the court. One came with a personal email from a judge I respected.
Big bucks, small minds. Hope you don’t end up putting my face on a dartboard.
I looked up the names on the order. Husband-and-wife tycoons, mutual accusations of neglect, cruelty, and child endangerment. One child, a toddler. Enough money to keep the battle going indefinitely.
I’d do my best and try to protect the poor kid’s psyche. Protect my soul from erosion.
No word from Milo since he’d posted the missing woman’s image. There had to be tips, there always are. The question was validity. I was writing clinical notes when he phoned at three.
“What’s up?”
“You’re probably in TGIF mode but if you want to see the war room, c’mon over.”
“You managed to get some troops?”
“Begging has its virtues. Also, I had Ellie call Martz.”
I went out to Robin’s studio. She was seated at her bench, gloved up and French-polishing a rosewood guitar back, using deft circular motions to massage her hand-blended shellac into the wood with a soft cotton pad.
A near-silent, old-school task that she said could be hypnotically calming. A serene face said today it was.
I hung back and Blanche trotted toward me. I embarked on my own massage, rubbing her knobby head, then behind her ears, eliciting cat-like mews.
Robin looked up. Her hand stilled. Delayed-reaction smile.
Off in her own world but willing to let me in.
I went over and looked down at the wood. Purplish chocolate with veins of cream, quarter-sawn, straight-grained, glistening with polish — an elixir secreted by a sap-intoxicated beetle from Southeast Asia. When Robin had gotten the slab, she’d showed it to me, tapping and producing a ringing tone.
What had once been a tree in Brazil, felled by a storm, hummed melodically, ready for its new life.
I said, “Really pretty.”
“Going to be a winner.” She leaned over for a kiss. “What’s up?”
“Just got a call from Big Guy, asking me to look at his war room.”
“Blue screens and encryption?”
“More likely piles of paper and bad language. What’s your schedule?”
“Don’t have one, darling. I was thinking dinner at sevenish but no big deal if it’s later. I’m enjoying this and I’ve got enough juice to do the maple mandolin and the Macassar OM.”
“Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”
She pursed her lips and pushed words past them. “Then you can come up and see me. Again.”
“Mae would be proud.”
She laughed. “Who needs external validation?”
Chapter 28
The war room was an interview space on the second floor, down the hall from Milo’s office. He’d set up two rolling whiteboards and a long folding table with five plug-in landlines. Four chairs along the length, one at the head. A smaller round table in the corner held a coffee urn, cups, and pink boxes from a bakery he passes driving from his house in West Hollywood to the station.