Killer: An Alex Delaware Novel

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I said, “Get some hair extensions and you’ve got a whole new career.”

  “If goose-farts ever become the new big thing in vocals.”

  The units were accessible through an open staircase. No answer at Melandrano’s apartment. Milo pushed the buzzer a few more times, knocked harder, said, “If life was too easy, we’d take it for granted … don’t think I’ll leave my card, just in case he’s helping Ree rabbit.”

  As we turned to leave, a woman with a small boy in tow appeared at the top of the stairs, stopped to study us, continued warily, stopped again.

  Young Latina, hair down to her waist, wearing some kind of medical uniform. The child was four or five, sported a Los Lobos tee that reached his knees, rolled-up jeans, kiddie-Nikes. The woman stepped in front of him. Instinctive protectiveness.

  Milo said, “Hi, ma’am, police,” then offered his warmest smile along with a badge-flash.

  She said, “Police is looking for Winky? How come?” A badge on her uniform bore the logo of a drugstore chain over a name in cursive. L. Vega.

  “We need to talk to him.”

  “He did something?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She looked relieved. “He left.”

  “When?”

  “Couple days ago. You sure he didn’t do nothing?”

  “Really,” said Milo, “we just need to talk to him about a friend of his who’s missing.”

  “Oh. ’Cause sometimes he babysits Carlos, he always seemed okay.”

  “No reason to worry about him, Ms.… Vega.”

  “Lourdes.” She looked down at the boy. “Hear that? No worry ’bout Mr. Winky, hijo.”

  Carlos began shadowboxing.

  Milo said, “So Winky left two days ago.”

  “Around then,” said Lourdes Vega. “I went over to ask him to babysit Carlos and he was out.”

  “So you didn’t see him leave?”

  “No. I couldn’t get help so I stayed home.”

  “He’s your regular babysitter.”

  “When my mother can’t I sometimes ask him. It’s easy, him being next door. He plays guitar for Carlos, he’s teaching Carlos to play—you like Mr. Winky’s guitar, hey, hijo?”

  The boy nodded gravely. Threw more punches. Eyed Milo as if considering something naughtier. Milo’s smile made him scurry behind his mother.

  She said, “Winky say Carlos has talent but his fingers got to grow. You gonna do that, hijo, grow your fingers so you can play like Mr. Winky?”

  No response.

  Milo said, “Sounds like he’s a good neighbor.”

  “Oh, yeah. Real quiet and nice.”

  “What time did you go over and find him gone?”

  “It was at night, like … nine? I was doing a double shift, picked up Carlos at the day care, got home like at eight, had dinner, Carlos was sleeping, I figure maybe I can go out with my friends, Carlos would be sleeping anyway, Winky could watch TV. I got more cable stations than him.”

  “His car’s here.”

  “Really?”

  “Gray Explorer, parked out back.”

  “Yeah, that’s his,” said the woman. “Well, I don’t know …”

  “Who are his friends?”

  “Other guys in the band—he’s got a band. They dress up.”

  “Dress up?”

  “Like Oldies guys—extra hair, leather.” She giggled. “Like a uniform I guess.” She plucked at her blouse. “I got to wear one at Health Aid, so whatever.”

  “These other guys in the band have names?”

  “Um, one I think is Chuck, the other’s Morris?”

  “Maybe Boris?”

  “Could be. I didn’t really meet ’em ever to talk, I just seen ’em picking up Winky, everyone’s wearing extra hair, so I figure they working. They play at a club, Winky said I could come for free.”

  “You ever take him up on the offer?”

  “Uh-uh, I work two doubles a week at Health Aid, Carlos’s daddy’s in Afghanistan, I’m doing everything myself except when my mother has time but she works, too.”

  “Super-busy.”

  “Well … I’ll get there to hear ’em, I’m sure they’re good. I guess. Also, I don’t want to bring Carlos to a place like that and Winky can’t watch him if he’s playing music so I need to wait for my mother to have all night and lately she works doubles, too. At the Farmer John sausage factory over in Vernon.”

  “Does Winky charge you to babysit?”

  “I offered,” she said. “He wouldn’t take it. Says he had no kids, always wanted a son of his own, Carlos is a cool little dude, got talent, he’s gonna make him a little musician.” Reaching behind, she ruffled the little boy’s hair. “That right, Carlito? You gonna play music?”

  Grave nod.

  “Know what talent means, hijo?”

  “I play good.”

  “That’s right,” she said, stooping and kissing his cheek. “You’re like a genius, my smart baby.”

  Carlos squirmed. “I’m hungry.”

  “Okay, okay—anyway, sir, nice to meet you.”

  Milo said, “One more question: Does Winky have any female friends?”

  “Not that I saw.” Her mouth constricted. “But he’s not like that. I don’t think.”

  “Like what?”

  She cupped her hand to the side of her mouth. Mouthed, Gay.

  “Likes girls.”

  “I never saw different,” said Lourdes Vega. “All he does is teach Carlos guitar. You’re not saying I should be nervous?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. I mean I figured he was okay. I mean a mother knows.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  Black in the car, Milo got a text. He read, scowling.

  “Binchy. Ree Sykes’s car just showed up in the lot at Union Station, parking stub puts it there since the night Connie was killed. If she paid cash she’s untraceable. Motive, timing, a definite rabbit, and that blood in her apartment says a lot to me, amigo.”

  I didn’t answer.

  He started the car. “Just what I need, Mama and baby riding the rails to who-knows-where. Most likely with ol’ Winky, seeing as he cut out right around the same time. Talk about a paternity test.”

  Steering with one hand, he phoned Sean Binchy, ordered him to remain at the train station for as long as it took to show DMV photos of Cherie Sykes and William Melandrano to Amtrak clerks, porters, and security guards. “They’ve got cameras but with all the in and out, who knows. Nothing pans out, Sean, have a big steak on Uncle Milo then go back and see if the night shift remembers anything. Really work the place. You need help, get Reed. He’s busy, draft someone else.”

  He hung up and drove faster. I said, “Ree kept her secret all these years, finally told Melandrano he was the daddy.”

  “Why now?”

  “Who knows?”

  Thinking to myself: They’re creating a new family.

  He said, “She took a chance he’d be pissed, her keeping it from him all this time. Maybe she risked it because she wanted help in her time of homicidal need.”

  “The two of them did Connie together?”

  “Why not? A tag team fits the crime scene perfectly: Ree knocks on Connie’s door, says she wants to talk things over, work out an amicable arrangement. Connie lets her in, before she knows it, Melandrano’s there, sticking her in the gut. Connie goes down, Melandrano finishes her off with her own belt. No resistance, no mess, nice and organized. Baby was probably in the car the whole time. Now they’re gone, traveling light because they’re serious about disappearing.”

  My head was flooding with what-ifs. So many things to be wrong about.

  Taking on a case that should never have been allowed in the first place and nearly dying for it.

  Milo rubbed his hands together. “Let’s bust up a happy-family road trip.”

  Pulling over, he got back on the phone, initiating the APB process on Cherie Sykes and William Melandrano. Then he rea
ched Binchy again and checked the progress of the workup on Ree’s car.

  A few fingerprints in the expected places but no obvious signs of anything suspicious. The vehicle would be towed to the auto lab for a closer look. Once the prints were cataloged, an AFIS search would start rolling.

  He pocketed his phone. “Her arrests are dinky and they predate AFIS, and Melandrano’s not in the system. Too bad, I’d love to confirm his presence in the car, start laying the grounds for conspiracy.”

  I said, “You could send someone to swab his apartment door, see if anything matches.”

  He looked at me. “If you weren’t so helpful I’d be irritated.” Brief call to the crime lab before turning back to me. “Someone’ll be at Winky’s place in a couple of hours, thank you, Perfessor. Okay, let’s try to talk to the lucky guy who isn’t the father, see what he has to say.”

  Bernard “Boris” Chamberlain’s address was on Franklin just east of the avenue’s terminus at La Brea. This was the heart of residential Hollywood, a mixed bag of run-down short-term rentals and once-lavish structures from the twenties prettied up to varying degrees.

  Chamberlain lived in one of the rehabbed buildings, a multi-turreted, five-story, vanilla-colored fantasy tagged Le Richelieu by a calligraphic neon sign dribbling over brass-framed double glass doors.

  The lobby evoked the reception hall of an old deco oceanliner with rounded corners and stepped molding tracing the perimeter of a twenty-foot ceiling. The plaster was moisture-spotted. A chrome chandelier was unlit. Puckered brown wallpaper was patterned with calla lilies. The carpet was a patchwork of gray remnants laid down clumsily.

  No doorman, no security of any sort. Two brass-cage elevators were each marked Out of Order. The directory between the lifts listed B. Chamberlain in Apt. 405.

  We climbed.

  Ash-colored floors, walls, and doors made the walk up the fourth-floor hallway an ooze through an oversized lead pipe. Milo’s knock on Chamberlain’s door elicited an immediate, emotionally neutral “Hold on.”

  The man who opened was middle-aged and bald but for gray side-hairs gathered into a foot of braid that rested atop his left shoulder. His features were meaty and compressed, his skin the color and texture of Muenster cheese. An immense torso balanced precariously on curiously spindly legs. He wore a black sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off to allow tree-trunk arms some room to maneuver, brown velvet pajama pants, Japanese sandals. Behind him was a dim space set up with a barbell on a rack, a pressing bench, a pair of electric basses, and a small, football-colored Pignose practice amp.

  Milo said, “Mr. Chamberlain?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Police—”

  “Finally. Those idiots.” Chamberlain crooked a thumb to his right. “Idiots,” said Milo.

  “The tweakers? Two doors down in 409? Rich kids slumming and slamming. They wear designer threads, have that rotting skin, look like skeletons.”

  Milo said nothing.

  Chamberlain said, “All’s I know is Cat and Jeremy, that’s what they call each other. All’s the directory says is Cat.”

  Mammoth arms crossed a convex slab of chest.

  Milo said, “What have they done to bother you?”

  “Done? Same damn thing, over and over,” said Chamberlain. “Since they moved in, it’s been hell. They’re out all day scoring and shooting, come back at three, four, five a.m., mistake my door for theirs, try to open it, wake me up with all the scratching and banging. Company that manages this dive is useless. Then I call you guys, you send officers over, by the time they arrive it’s quiet, they knock on those lowlifes’ doors, no one answers, they say they can’t do anything. One of your guys had a bad attitude, trying to make me feel I was paranoid. Actually said, ‘You live in a place like this, you can expect bad stuff.’ So what now, they finally did something violent?” He sneered. “Cat and Jeremy. Living off the parents, shooting everything right up the arm.”

  “We’re not here about that, sir.”

  “What? Jesus. Then what?”

  “Could we come in, Mr. Chamberlain?”

  “For what?”

  “A few minutes of your time.”

  “About what?”

  “Cherie Sykes.”

  Chamberlain squinted. “Cherie? She okay?”

  “Could we come in?”

  Chamberlain’s arms dropped heavily. “She’s not okay? Oh, man, don’t tell me something bad, it’s too early in the day for bad.”

  “She’s fine, Mr. Chamberlain. Could we come in? And I will make sure someone with authority knows about those tweakers.”

  “Cat and Jeremy,” said Boris Chamberlain. “Lowlifes like that, it’s only a matter of time, right?”

  Milo nodded. Took a step forward.

  Chamberlain didn’t budge.

  Milo pointed past him.

  Chamberlain said, “Sure, fine. But there’s nowhere to sit.”

  No false advertising; the front room was devoid of furniture and the adjoining kitchen looked unused. Bottles of protein shake and a blender crowded the counter. A single window was blocked by a blackout shade. A low-watt bare bulb in the ceiling allowed in some drear.

  The basses were a four-string Fender Precision that looked vintage and a six-string Alembic. Serious gear, same for the Bassman amp in a far corner. The barbell disks added up to three hundred pounds, not counting the bar. The brown vinyl of the bench was ripped and sweat-stained.

  The room stank of exertion.

  Boris Chamberlain said, “I’m not much for entertaining. So what’s up with Ree—with Cherie?”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “The last time … had to be a couple of weeks ago. Why?”

  “What about William Melandrano?”

  “Winky? What about him?”

  “They both seem to have left town. Possibly together.”

  “Left? No way. Why would Winky do that? We’ve got a gig every—we’re in a band together. Left? What for?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  “Me? First I’ve heard of it. You’re sure you’ve got your facts straight?”

  “What was their relationship?”

  “Ree and Winky? Friends. We all are. From junior high, we go way back. Why? What’s this about?”

  “Far as you know they weren’t intimate?”

  “Intimate?” Back went the arms, closing across thorax. The resulting sound was a side of beef slammed against a meat-locker wall. “I don’t really want to be having this conversation.”

  Instead of replying, Milo produced his cell phone. Punching a preset, he said, “Petra? Milo. Listen, I happen to be here on your turf, got a concerned citizen who’s not getting the service he deserves from your blue meanies.”

  He went on to summarize Chamberlain’s woes with Cat and Jeremy. “Yeah, I know Scott, that would be great, kid. And hey, I might be saving you some work, ounce of prevention, you know? These two sound like they’ll cause problems.”

  Boris Chamberlain’s mouth had dropped open during the conversation.

  Milo said, “That was a Hollywood detective named Connor. She does homicide but she’s passing the information along to a narcotics detective named Scott Perugia. Will contact you personally regarding your neighbors. That doesn’t satisfy you, you call me.” Handing over his card.

  “Okay … thanks.” Chamberlain’s eyes dropped to the card. “Homicide. What’s going on?”

  “We’ll get to that but first please answer my questions. Were Mr. Melandrano and Ree Sykes intimate?”

  “Did they ever do it?” Chamberlain’s cheese-face turned pink. “Yeah, sure, but a long time ago. Fact is … whatever.” He tapped a foot.

  “Ree was your band’s groupie?”

  “No, no, nothing that tacky. We all knew each other, did some traveling together.” Chamberlain’s eyes rounded. “Oh, that’s what you’re getting at. Them hitting the road because they’ve got a thing? No way, I’d know if that was the
plan. What the hell’s going on? These are people I care about, if something happened to them—”

  “Are you aware of Ree’s problems with her sister?”

  “Connie? Trying to steal the baby? What a bitch, she always was. One of those brainiacs but you don’t have to make other people feel stupid.”

  I said, “She lorded her smarts over everyone else.”

  “Megatons of attitude. We had nothing to do with her. No one did, she was a loner. And way older than us. Then all of a sudden Ree comes in looking like someone died, we say what, she says Connie’s trying to steal my baby. Ree loves that kid, she’d do anything for it and Connie saying she’s unfit? What bullshit. But Connie’s got money, she can keep torturing Ree, that’s the way the system works.”

  “Ree’s still worried about that,” I said.

  “Could you blame her? Taking her to court in the first place was evil. Making her go broke so she’ll give up?”

  “Nasty.”

  “Evil.”

  “Winky have feelings about that?”

  “We all do, who wouldn’t?” said Chamberlain. “Ree’s good people. Got a heart out to here.” His arms uncrossed and spread.

  I said, “Ree’s raising the baby all by herself and now she has to deal with Connie on top of it.”

  “Evil,” he repeated.

  “What about the father?”

  “What about him?”

  “If she had a partner it would be easier.”

  “Yeah. Well, she doesn’t.”

  “You have no idea who the father is?”

  “Ree never said.”

  “Connie had theories.”

  “Did she.”

  I said, “Two names came up in her lawsuit.”

  “Did they.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “In court documents Connie named Winky and you as possible fathers.”

  Pink turned to vermillion. “That’s bullshit! No way. That kid was born like … a couple of years ago and we …” He trailed off.

  I said, “The baby’s sixteen months old.”

  “Even more true. Ree and me haven’t been—we were never really like that, anyway.”

  Milo and I said nothing.

  “Oh, man,” said Chamberlain. He waved Milo’s card. “You got to tell me: Did someone get killed?”