Victims

by Jonathan Kellerman

“Working out back.”

  “Must be nice to be productive. I located Vita’s sister using phone records. Had to go back nearly a month to find an Illinois number, so we’re not talking regular contact. The sister—Patricia’s her name—lives in Evanston and the call was her phoning Vita on her birthday. Which, she made sure to tell me, Vita would never do for her.”

  “Was that after she found out Vita was dead or before?”

  “After.”

  “Not exactly sentimental,” I said. “How’d she react to the news?”

  “She was shocked but it wore off and she got pretty dispassionate. Analytic, like ‘Hmm, who would do something so terrible?’ And she had a quick answer: ‘If I was a betting woman, I’d say Jay, he despised Vita.’ ”

  “The ex-husband?”

  “Bingo, that’s why everyone calls you Doctor and bows and scrapes when you enter a room. Jay is one Jackson J. Sloat. He and Vita divorced fifteen years ago but Patricia said the financial battle went on long after. Turns out he’s got a record with some violence in it, lives here in L.A. Los Feliz, which is at most a forty-minute drive to Vita’s place.”

  I said, “They hated each other, got divorced, but moved to the same city?”

  “Funny about that, huh? So maybe it’s one of those obsessive, love-hate things. A drop-in on ol’ Jay is clearly the next step but if he is our bad guy he could be smart and manipulative and as the ex he could be expecting us. So I figured I’d tap your ample brain for strategy.”

  “When were you planning on talking to him?”

  “Soon as you finish opining. He works in Brentwood, hopefully he’s there or home.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “Salesman at a high-end clothing store.” He retrieved his notepad from the attaché. “Domenico Valli.”

  I said, “That’s why you got spiffed up.”

  “Just the opposite.” He rubbed a lapel, ended up with brittle threads on his fingertips. “I come in like this, he’ll feel superior, maybe let his guard down.”

  I laughed. “What kind of record does Sloat have?”

  “Some lightweight vehicular stuff—operating without a license, the requisite DUIs every self-respecting marginal character needs for self-validation. The serious stuff is two ag assaults, one with a crowbar.”

  “Who was the victim?”

  “Guy at a drinking establishment, he and Sloat had words, Sloat followed him outside. Sloat brained him but also received some fairly serious injuries. That enabled him to claim self-defense and maybe there was something to it because charges were dropped. The other case was similar but it happened inside a bar. That time Sloat used his fists. He got pled down, received ninety days at County, served twenty-six.”

  “Enough violence to be worrisome,” I said. “Two incidents in bars could mean he’s got a drinking problem—maybe what he and Vita had in common. More important, he’d be familiar with Vita’s drinking habits, know she was a nighttime boozer, would be vulnerable. And if there was a love-hate relationship, he could’ve wheedled his way into the apartment.”

  “Arrives with what looks like a pizza,” he said. “ ‘Hi, honey, I miss you. Remember how we used to share an extra-large pepperoni with sausage?’ ”

  He rolled the beer bottle between his hands. “Everything we know about Vita said she was distrustful, maybe borderline-paranoid. You think she’d fall for that?”

  “With the help of Jack Daniel’s and old-times’-sake?” I said. “Maybe.”

  “Real old times. My phone subpoena covered eighteen months of her records and his number’s not on it.”

  “What about a different type of contact?” I said. “Vita used the court system at least once and got rewarded.”

  “She’s still dragging him to court? Yeah, that might kick up the anger level.”

  He called Deputy D.A. John Nguyen, asked for a quick scan of any legal proceedings between Vita Gertrude Berlin and Jackson Junius Sloat.

  Nguyen said, “A quick one I can do for the last five years.”

  “That’ll work, John.”

  “Hold on ... nope, nothing here. Berlin’s your nasty one, right? How’s that going?”

  “Nothing profound.”

  “There’s been talk in the office, all that weirdness could be the first installment of a whacko serial.”

  “Thought you were my friend, John.”

  “I’m not wishing it on you, just repeating what I heard. And the leak didn’t start with us. Are there any looser-lipped dudes than cops?”

  “Wish I could argue with that,” said Milo. “Anything else I should know about?”

  “Some of our guys are hoping it will go serial so they can jockey to take it and career-build.”

  “But if you want it, you’ll get it.”

  Nguyen laughed. “With Bob Ivey retiring I really am the Senior Junior Dude, meaning even if the boss takes it officially I’m doing the real work. So keep me posted.”

  “Long as you pray for me, John. Little offering to Buddha’s fine.”

  “I’m an atheist.”

  “I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  While he ate and washed the dishes, I gave him my best guesses about how to approach Jay Sloat: Keep it non-threatening, preface the news of Vita’s murder by emphasizing that Sloat was not a suspect, just someone Milo was turning to for valuable information.

  However Sloat reacted verbally, his body language would be the thing to watch. Criminal psychopaths operate with lower anxiety levels than the rest of us but it’s a myth that they lack emotion. The smartest, coldest antisocials avoid violence completely because violence is a stupid strategy. Look for their smiling faces on election posters. But those a notch lower on the IQ scale often need to prep before indulging their urges with alcohol or dope or by chanting internal rage mantras that provide self-justification.

  So if Jay Sloat was anything but the coldest of killers and had carved up his ex, simply bringing up the topic could result in some sort of physical tell: sudden rise in neck pulse, constricted pupils, muscular tension, the merest hint of moisture around the hairline, an increase in blink rate.

  Milo said, “I’m the polygraph.”

  I said, “Isn’t that what you do anyway?”

  “What if Sloat doesn’t respond?”

  “Then that tells us something about him.”

  Nothing he didn’t already know but he seemed more relaxed as he drove to Brentwood. Maybe it was the sandwiches.

  Domenico Valli Men’s Couture was located on 26th Street, just south of San Vicente, directly across from the Brentwood Country Mart, bordered by a restaurant run by the latest celebrity chef and another clothing store that hawked four-figure outfits for trust-fund toddlers.

  The haberdashery was paneled in violin-grain maple and floored in skinny-plank black oak. Subdued techno pulsed from the sound system. Light was courtesy of stainless-steel gallery tracks. The goods were sparingly displayed, like works of art. A few suits, a smattering of sport coats, small steel tables that would’ve felt comfortable in the morgue stocked like altars with offerings of cashmere and brocade. A wall rack featured gleaming handmade shoes and boots, black velvet slippers with gold crests on the toes.

  No shoppers were availing themselves of all that chic. A man sat behind a steel desk, doing paperwork. Big, fiftyish, with broad shoulders, he had a long sunlamped face defined by a wide, meaty nose. A steel-gray Caesar-do tried but failed to cover a receding hairline. A bushy white soul patch sprouted under hyphen lips, bristly and stiff as icicles.

  He looked up. “Help you guys?”

  “We’re looking for Jay Sloat.”

  His eyes narrowed and he stood and stepped around the desk. Just a touch under Milo’s six three and nearly as bulky, he wore a faded, untucked blue chambray shirt with pearl buttons, stovepipe black jeans, gray suede needle-toe boots, a diamond in his left earlobe. Lots of muscle but also some middle-aged padding.
>
  “Don’t bother telling me, you’re obviously cops. I haven’t done anything, so what gives?”

  Broad, faintly Slavic midwestern intonation.

  “Lieutenant Sturgis, Mr. Sloat.” Milo extended his hand. Sloat studied it for a second, endured a brief clasp before retrieving his big paw. “Okay, now we’re all BFFs. Could you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “Sorry if this is upsetting you, Mr. Sloat. It’s certainly not our intention.”

  “It’s not upsetting me,” said Sloat. “I mean I’m not worried personally because I know I haven’t done anything. I just don’t get why the cops are here when I’m trying to work.” He frowned. “Oh, man, don’t tell me it’s something to do with George. If it is, I can’t help you, I just work for the guy.”

  Milo didn’t answer.

  Jay Sloat pressed his palms together prayerfully. “Tell me it ain’t so, guys, okay? I need this job.”

  “It ain’t so. George is the owner?”

  Sloat relaxed, exhaled. “So it’s not about that. Excellent. Okay, then what’s up?”

  Milo repeated the question.

  Sloat said, “Yeah, he’s the owner. George Hassan. He’s really an okay guy.”

  “Why would we be looking for him?”

  “No reason.”

  “No reason, but he’s the first one you thought of.”

  Sloat’s brown eyes turned piggishly small as they studied Milo, then me, then Milo again. “George is going through a complicated divorce and she keeps claiming he’s holding back on her. She’s threatening to close down the business if he doesn’t open the books. Last week, she sent around a private investigator pretending to be a customer, dude’s dressed like a dork, starts asking me if I have more of these nice worsted suits in the back. Worsted. What a doofus. I said, ‘Hey, Dan Tana, if you actually want to try something on, let’s do it, if this is a game, go play it elsewhere.’ Guy turned white and got the fuck out.”

  Sloat grinned and winked. His bronzed face was smoother than when we’d entered; recounting his dominance put him back in his comfort zone.

  Milo said, “I hear you. Well, this has nothing to do with George.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s about your ex-wife.”

  Sloat’s jaw muscles swelled. His pupils expanded. “Vita? What about her?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Dead,” said Sloat. “As in police dead? Oh, man. What happened?”

  “Someone murdered her.”

  “Yeah, I got that. I mean who, how, when?”

  Milo ticked his fingers. “Don’t know, nasty, five nights ago.”

  Sloat stroked his soul patch. “Wo-ho,” he said, in a soft, almost boyish voice. “Someone finally did the bitch.”

  We didn’t respond.

  He said, “I need a cigarette, let’s go outside.”

  Milo said, “Let’s.”

  Grabbing a pack of wheat-colored Nat Shermans from the steel desk, Jay Sloat led us out of the store to the curb, where he positioned himself in front of the display window and lit up with a gold-plated lighter. “Can’t smoke inside, George doesn’t want odor on the merchandise.”

  Milo waited until he’d puffed a third of the cigarette before speaking. “Someone did the bitch. So for you it’s not bad news.”

  “Me and Vita broke up a long time ago.”

  “Fifteen years ago.” Milo cited the date of the final decree.

  The detail caused Sloat to recoil. “What, you guys are looking into my past?”

  “We’ve researched Vita, Mr. Sloat. Your name came up.”

  “So you know about my arrests.”

  “We do.”

  “Then you also know they were bullshit. Dorks asking for trouble and getting it.”

  Neither of us argued.

  Sloat said, “I watch those shows, I get it, I’m the ex, you think I did it.”

  “What shows?”

  “Crime—true crap, puts me to sleep at night.” Sloat grinned. “When I don’t have help getting some nighty-night.”

  “You get help often?”

  “Get pussy as often as I can, good for the complexion.” He laughed. “Got it every night last week, including five nights ago.”

  “From who?”

  “A chick who rode me like a rodeo horse and righteously blew my mind.”

  “How about a name?”

  “How about she’s married.”

  “We’re discreet, Jay.”

  “Yeah, I bet. On those shows, cops make promises and break them. And anyway, why do I need an alibi? Like you said, it was fifteen years ago. Whatever Vita did since then was out of my life.”

  “Fifteen years ago was the divorce,” said Milo. “Our research says the war kept going.”

  “Okay,” said Sloat, “so she kept jerking me around for another few. But then it ended. I haven’t seen Vita in a long time.”

  “How long is ‘another few,’ Jay?”

  “Let’s see ... last time the bitch took me to court was ... I’d have to say six, maybe seven years ago.”

  That matched Nguyen’s failing to come up with anything for five.

  “What’d she want?”

  “What do you think? More money.”

  “She get it?”

  “She got some,” said Sloat. “It’s not like I had that much to give.”

  “When’s the last time you actually saw her?”

  “Right after. Maybe a month. She jerks me around in court, then has the nerve to drop in, middle of the night.”

  “What for?”

  “What do you think? You go to Jay, you want to play.”

  Milo said, “She sues you then does a booty-call.”

  “She was crazy,” said Sloat. “Also, old habits die hard.” He puffed out his chest. “I’m a tough habit to break.”

  He laughed, smoked greedily. Dry hairline, steady hands, steady lips.

  I said, “You’re a tough habit to break but for six, seven years Vita managed.”

  Sloat’s face darkened. “She didn’t end it, I did. That time she dropped over, I wouldn’t let her in, told her she ever did that again I’d get a restraining order and sue her ass so fast she wouldn’t know what was reaming her. She knew I meant it, I’m not a guy takes bullshit.”

  “Like those guys in the bar.”

  “You got it,” said Sloat, “and I ain’t embarrassed about it. Back in Chicago I used to work dispatch for a trucking company. They fucked me over, giving the good shifts to some loser who bribed the supervisor, wanting me to work night shift even though I’d been there ten years. I sued and won. Another time one of our dark-skinned brothers dented my car, I had this little Benz convertible, gray on gray, sweet drive, this dusky fellow isn’t looking where he’s going, pow. Everyone said don’t hassle, those types never have insurance, it’s a lost cause. I said screw that, sued his ass, my lawyer found out his mother owned a house, had given the dude a share. We attached Mommy’s house, moved to evict her, he paid up.”

  “You like the court system.”

  “What I like is protecting my rights. Which I know I got, right now. In terms of talking to you guys, I don’t have to say squat. But it’s cool, you don’t bother me. I had nothing to do with Vita getting killed. Trust me, the way Vita was, she’d have no trouble arranging it all by herself.”

  “You think she organized her own murder?”

  “No, no, what I’m saying is Vita was the biggest bitch this side of ... I don’t know, Cruella Whatshername? From the cartoon? There’d be tons of people she pissed off. All Vita had to do was go on being Vita. Eventually someone was gonna get pissed off.”

  “Any suggestions as to who?”

  “Nah, Vita was out of my life, I don’t have a clue who she was hanging with.”

  “Think back,” I said. “When you were still seeing her. Did she have any enemies?”

  “Enemies?” said Sloat. “Walk down the street and pick people at random. To know her was to
hate the bitch.”

  “You married her.”

  “When I married her, I dug her. Then I hated her.”

  “She was different back then.”

  “Nope,” said Sloat. “Only I thought she was. She conned me, you know?”

  “Being nice,” I said.

  “Nah, Vita was never nice. But she hid what a bitch she was by being quiet about it, you know?”

  “How?”

  “By being cold. Super-frosty, she’d give you this look, this I’m-a-bitch-but-I’ll-still-suck-your-cock look. And she did. There was a time she had talent, still looked pretty good. Tall and cold with sharp edges, I used to call her Miss Everest. Then she stopped faking it. Why bother when you can be a total bitch?”

  “The attraction wore off.”

  “I was attracted to her tits,” said Sloat. “She had a nice face, too. She took care of herself, plucking the eyebrows, wearing the makeup, doing the platinum-blond hair. Like that actress. Novak, Kim Novak. People old enough to remember said she looked like Kim Novak. I went to see Vertigo. Novak was a helluva lot hotter, give me ten Vitas for one Kim Novak, you’ll still owe me change. But Vita was cute, I’ll grant her that. Good where it counted, also. That part she kept up, even after we broke up. I’ll grant her that.”

  “Sexy,” I said.

  “Sexy is a chick hungry to do you. Vita was in the mood, she’d pop you quick. Problem is she got old and fat, stopped dyeing the hair, stopped taking care of herself, the drinking got worse.” Sticking out his tongue. “Her breath stunk, she was a mess. So even if she wanted to jump your bones, you didn’t want those bones jumped. Finally, I said no more. Life’s too short, you know?”

  Milo said, “We sure do.”

  “Bet you do,” said Sloat. “Listen, I’m not going to stand here and lie and tell you I give a shit when I don’t. Vita tried to take everything I owned. Including the Benz I went to all that trouble to get fixed. Including half any money I made until I went totally broke and stopped working long enough to convince her I wasn’t worth going after. I haven’t seen her in, like I said, seven years. But at the back of my head is always this thought, she’s going to come back. Like those guys in the horror movies—the dude in the leather mask. So it’s obvious I didn’t kill her. Why would I ruin my life for her?”