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.
“Will do, Doctor.”
Milo said, “Good morning to all concerned,” and people hustled to their seats. “Alex, let’s start with your thoughts about approach.”
I said, “Is your warrant no-knock?”
“Yup.”
“Then I think you should take advantage. Go in with force and clear the place as quickly as possible.”
Milo eyed Bain and the SWAT leader got up and pointed to an aerial of the house. “We lucked out on layout, not much square footage and only two doors, front and back. A fenced-in yard and a driveway gate means limited space for escape. I’m figuring an officer stationed outside on each door and four of us doing the entry in pairs.”
Milo said, “You planning on getting all military?”
Bain smiled. “We’ll bring the toys — gas, concussion grenades — but I really don’t see using them unless you think she’ll be waiting for us with a firearm.”
Milo looked at me.
I said, “Suicide by cop? Nothing in her background suggests it but there are always surprises. She could be extremely edgy because Galoway left on Monday night and still hasn’t returned. On top of that, there was a brief mention in yesterday’s paper about an armed suspect going down and if she put it together, my guess would be she’d plan her escape rather than seek confrontation. But no guarantees.”
Bain frowned. “Thought there was a media blackout.”
Milo said, “So did I, amigo. I called Public Affairs and got a runaround. At least there were no details but sure, she could’ve figured it out.”
Bain said, “What else can you say about her psychological makeup, Doctor?”
I said, “Criminally antisocial from a young age. At fifteen she hooked up with a felon in his thirties and they embarked on a multistate crime spree. Burglary, robbery, kidnapping, several murders. He was executed, she got reform school, was released no later than at twenty-one. She changed her identity and nothing surfaces over the next few years other than a job in Texas. Which she left to come to L.A., traveling with and dominating a younger woman named Benicia Cairn. The working assumption is she stole money from the man they lived with and shot Cairn in order to fake her own death. At some point after that, she hooked up with Galoway and they’ve been together since.”
“Long-term relationship,” said Bain. “She finds out he’s dead at our hands, that’s a big deal.”
“It could be but she’s emotionally shallow and self-serving to the point of abandoning a daughter she claimed as her own and as of Monday night, trying to have her murdered or at least terrorized. Also, other than murdering Cairn, she’s been more director than actor. And the crimes we know about are well planned not impulsive. If I had to bet, I’d say trying to escape was more likely than confrontation. But if cornered, she could be volatile.”
“The spree when she was a kid sounds pretty impulsive,” said Bain.
“Fifteen isn’t sixty. Her partner claimed it was all him, she was just along for the ride. But it was a long ride, so who knows?”
Milo said, “The fact that she hasn’t been spotted over the last few days makes me wonder if she’s already escaped.”
“Even with you guys watching?”
Moe Reed said, “The layout made it too risky to do a sit-around, all we managed were intermittent drive-bys. Then, after the shooting, I had to go solo so she had plenty of opportunity to split.”
Bain said, “Bottom line: mean but not stupid and crazy.”
Milo said, “Mean as they come.”
I said, “In any event, the psychology doesn’t matter.”
All eyes on me.
“Play it safe,” I said. “Go in fast and with force.”
Chapter 42
Friday, four forty-five a.m. Inky morning, the chill blunted by the electrochemical heat of hearts racing in anticipation.
A black tactical van blocked the street, its arrival a near-silent coast. Moments later Bain and his crew had been egested, all six officers vanishing into the darkness.
Milo, Reed, Binchy, and I waited five houses south. Reed had brought Milo in his work-ride, a gray Dodge Charger; Binchy showed up seconds later in his, a maroon Chevy Caprice.
My orders were per usuaclass="underline" Don’t get in the way. The Seville was parked well behind the police wheels.
Dark windows checkered Galoway’s place and every other house on the block. If any of the neighbors had noticed the van, they weren’t complaining.
Another ten minutes of nothing to make sure. Just as Bain was about to go in, headlights flashed a block north and swelled as they neared.
Bain and two of his officers ran toward the intrusion waving small-beam flashlights. The car stopped. Bain jogged to the driver’s window and said something. The headlights died. Another officer got in the van and angled it so the car could pass.
Black Audi sedan, frightened-looking woman at the wheel. She drove for a block before switching her lights on.
Bain came over. “Poor thing, heading to LAX for a flight to Denver to see her daughter. Okay, no sense waiting for another disruption, we’re a go.”
Silent approach, dual entry punctuated by a single thump in front, followed by a second at the rear door, muted by distance.
Several more minutes of silence, then the front door opened and Mac Bain ambled out.
“All clear.”
Milo said, “Shit, she’s not there.”
“I didn’t say that.”
The door opened to a small, neatly kept living room. The smell began at the mouth of a narrow hallway that paralleled the kitchen.
Bedroom to the left, another on the right, bathroom in between.
The smell became a stench that directed us to the left-hand bedroom. Another well-kept space if you didn’t count what was on the bed.
What remained of a woman lay under heavy, deep-green covers. Odd color for a duvet; I’d seen it before on a string of beads. Maggots wriggled at the upper hem where cloth ended and flesh began.
Gray-brown flesh, matte finish. Sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, a tumble of red hair on the pillow. White at the roots where dye had dissipated.
Reed gagged and ran out. Binchy uttered a silent prayer and stayed.
Milo covered his nose and mouth with a fresh handkerchief. I used my sleeve. It didn’t help much.
Everyone knew the rules: The scene belonged to the cops, the body to the coroner. No one would lift the covers and look for wounds — crimson parabolas and slits resulting from stabbing; the crushing and corrosion effected by blunt trauma; the obscenely precise mini-craters caused when bullets raped soft tissue.
What police euphemize as “defects.”
Mackleroy Bain had already made the call to the crypt. A coroner’s investigator would be here within half an hour to inspect and pronounce and identify.
No need for an official I.D. We knew who this was.
Pill bottles on her nightstand. Fighting back nausea, I got close enough to read.
Most recently, she’d called herself Martha Dee Ensler.
The prescribing physician was someone I knew. Edwin Rothsberger, a first-rate neurologist, practice in Encino. Years ago, Ed had rotated through Western Peds, one of the best interns from the med school where I taught. He’d been great with the kids and like a lot of sensitive trainees had decided to spend his career treating adults.
I examined the labels. Hyoscine hydrobromide for excess salivation, diazepam for anxiety, quinine bisulfate for cramps, dantrolene for muscle stiffness.
Symptomatic treatment, nothing curative. The palliative stage of a neuromuscular disease.
I took in the rest of the room. Stack of adult diapers in the corner, a hoist partially disassembled. Cartons of bottled water, bottles of liquid diet.
Whatever Du Galoway’s sins, he’d taken good care of the woman he loved, had been tripped up by overstepping as he strove to cover up her sins.