Rage

by Jonathan Kellerman

  A thirteen-year-old bleeding out in a prison supply room.

  I said, “Thank God my parents never knew some of the things I did.”

  “You were a wild guy?” he said, shifting closer. Engaging me with those warm dark eyes. As if I were the most important person on earth.

  Return of the teeth.

  Charisma. The most skillful psychopaths know how to play it like a guitar. Sometimes the smartest ones get to the top of the corporate ladder or the highest rungs of elected office. In the end, though, shallow theatrics are often counterbalanced by laziness and sloppiness.

  Doing someone else’s wife in the marital bed.

  Writing and shopping a thinly described screenplay and expecting it to make you an overnight millionaire.

  Impregnating minors for a hobby and billing the state for their abortions.

  For all his wizardry at manipulation, Daney was miles from where he wanted to be, the lifestyle he’d glimpsed after hooking up with Sydney Weider: Brentwood, Aspen, private jets, red carpet fantasies. All that upscale pillow talk fevering his brain.

  Look at me look at me look at me!

  Eight years later, instead of all that, he was a middle-aged guy running around singing camp songs and trying to cadge money from Dr. Marta Demchuk.

  Fool’s move; Demchuk was tough and Daney’s smarmy mojo worked only on the weakest of victims.

  He flexed a thick wrist, ran his hand through his thick, wavy hair.

  I said, “I was never wild enough to get into serious trouble, but I had my moments.”

  “I’ll bet you did.”

  “How about you?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “Nah, I was a good boy. Maybe too good.”

  “Choir boy?”

  “I was brought up thinking fun meant good deeds.”

  “Preacher’s kid?”

  “You guessed it . . .” A shadow darkened his face.

  Then a larger shadow, bearish, tinted the aluminum table pewter.

  Daney turned to see Milo looming behind him, holding a greasy cardboard box. “Fresh out of the fat.”

  “Smell’s yum, Detective.”

  * * *

  Milo let him have the first pick.

  Jelly-filled. Just like last time.

  As he chewed with obvious pleasure, I told myself to turn off the analysis, maybe he just loved jelly-filled doughnuts.

  He wiped his beard, took another bite. “Aren’t these just the best?”

  Milo said, “Guilty pleasures, Rev,” and swallowed a mouthful of cruller.

  I got to work on a maple-glaze. Cars drove in and out of the lot. The air got warmer. A flock of pigeons flew over from across Vanowen and began exploring the leavings. Milo tossed them a crumb and they flittered like paparazzi.

  Daney said, “There’s your good deed for the day.”

  We laughed.

  Just a bunch of guys, stuffing their faces with junk food, on a damp day in the Valley.

  Milo said, “So have you come up with any insights, Rev?”

  Drew Daney scanned the doughnut box, picked out a pink thing topped with chocolate sprinkles. “You haven’t been able to learn anything at all about Malley?”

  “I wish. Guy seems to be a cipher.”

  “Guess that fits,” said Daney.

  “With what?”

  “If he had a history of antisocial behavior, he’d want to cover his tracks.”

  “Well,” said Milo, “if there are serious tracks, we’ll uncover them.”

  “That sounds pretty confident, Lieutenant.”

  “We usually get to the bottom of things. It’s just a matter of how long it takes— hand me that chocolate thing.”

  The box was within Milo’s reach but Daney stretched to comply. “Anyway,” he said, “after you called last night I spent some time thinking about why Malley would get so violent after all these years. The only thing I can think of is that Rand became some sort of threat to him. Or Malley perceived Rand that way. Now, that would mean the two of them communicated somehow, so I looked at my phone bill to see if Rand made any calls over the weekend. He didn’t. So unless he spoke to Malley from prison, or used a pay phone, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Where’s the pay phone closest to your house?” said Milo.

  Daney’s eyes shifted to the left. “You’re able to check them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well,” said Daney, “I think there’s one a few blocks that way.” Pointing east. “I never really paid attention. Nowadays, with cell phones, who uses pay booths?”

  “People with no money,” said Milo.

  “Hmm . . . guess so.”

  I said, “Seems to me the ‘where’ isn’t important. It’s the ‘what’ we’re after. What Rand told Malley.”

  Daney put his pink doughnut down. “That was speculation on my part. Because you asked me to speculate. For all we know, Malley simply went nuts after he heard Rand was getting out. Old wounds, opening.”

  “Or wounds that never healed,” said Milo. “The way he looked at you in that hardware store.”

  “True,” said Daney. “That was pretty intense. Still . . .”

  “Any sign of the black truck?”

  Daney shook his head. “But I’m gone a lot.”

  Milo turned away, seemingly distracted. Daney watched him, then returned to his pink doughnut but didn’t eat.

  I let the silence grow for a while before saying, “For argument’s sake, let’s go with the assumption that Rand told Malley something that set him off. What do you think it could’ve been?”

  Daney said, “Hmm . . . I guess it wouldn’t have been anything malicious. And I can’t see Rand being confrontational. He was basically a nice kid.”

  He waited for Milo’s reaction to that. None followed.

  “The only thing I can think of,” he went on, “is there was some sort of miscommunication.”

  “Such as?” said Milo.

  “I’m not sure what I mean,” said Daney. “Like I said, this is all theorizing.”

  “Understood,” said Milo. “But give it a try, ’cause we’ve got nothing else.”

  “Well,” said Daney, “when we brought Rand home, he was clearly troubled. Like I told you. The only explanation I can come up with is lingering guilt. Maybe he tried to get some closure by meeting Malley face-to-face and apologizing.”

  “Or Malley accosted Rand and demanded an apology,” I said.

  “Sure. That, too.”

  Milo said, “That makes more sense to me, Rev. Malley follows Rand when he leaves your house to go to the construction site, gets him in the truck, either by convincing him he’s friendly or at gunpoint. Then something— could be an apology demanded by Malley, or something else— goes haywire. What do you think, Doc?”

  I said, “Makes sense.”

  Daney said, “Rand’s verbal skills were poor, Detective. I can see him saying the wrong thing, phrasing something in a way that would spark Malley’s rage. I mean, isn’t that how so much crime originates?”

  “Miscommunication?”

  “Two guys in a bar,” said Daney. “An argument gets out of hand? Isn’t that a big part of police work?”

  “Sure,” said Milo.

  Daney took a bite of the pink doughnut. Ate half and put it down. “There is something else. Kind of far-fetched but as long as we’re theorizing . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  Daney hesitated.

  “Sir?”

  “This goes way back, Detective. To the boys’ hearings. I was spending a lot of my time on the case because the defense asked me to be there as support. Cherish and I attended everything and I got to look at the evidence.”

  “Something about the evidence was off?” said Milo.

  “No, no, nothing like that. What I’m getting at is in my field you learn to observe. People, their reactions. Kind of like what you do, Doctor.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m a little uncomfortable getting
into this,” said Daney. “It’s nothing I’d want to sign my name to, and I really wouldn’t be comfortable going on record as the source. But if you could confirm it independently . . .”

  He broke off. Scratched his beard. Shook his head. “Sorry for waffling, but it’s . . .”

  He slung his jaw, shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe it’s not a good idea.”

  Milo said, “We’re in bad shape on this one, Reverend. Anything you can tell us would be helpful. And if it’s something I can confirm independently, I promise you I will.”

  “Okay,” said Daney. “First, let me say that I never brought this up because the boys had clearly done the crime. That isn’t to say I didn’t think they deserved compassion. But everyone had suffered enough, there was simply no point.”

  He reached for another doughnut. Chose blindly and extracted an apple turnover. Holding the pastry in one hand, he watched as flakes of dough snowed on the table.

  “Eye color,” he said, barely audible. “Little Kristal had brown eyes. I’d never have noticed, but in the evidence packet were photos of that poor little girl. In life and in death. The postmortem shots I couldn’t bring myself to look at. The others were baby pictures, the prosecution was going to use them to build sympathy. Emphasizing how small and cute she’d been . . . that’s neither here nor there. The point is I saw those photos, but at that time the fact that Kristal’s eyes were brown didn’t mean much. Until I noticed that both Lara and Barnett had pale eyes. Hers were blue or green, I’m not sure. His are definitely blue. I’m no geneticist, but I’ve learned enough science to know that brown eyes are dominant and light-eyed parents usually can’t have dark-eyed kids. I had my suspicions, but like I say, there was no reason to open that can of worms, who would it help? But last night, after you called and asked me to give the case some serious thought, I went on the Internet to confirm and it’s highly unlikely— close to impossible— for two blue-eyed parents to produce a brown-eyed child.”

  His speech had grown rapid and the last few words had tapered to whispers, inaudible. Gulping air, he exhaled and put the turnover down. “I’m not out to slander anyone but . . .”

  “Kristal wasn’t Malley’s kid,” said Milo. “Whoa.”

  “It’s the only logical conclusion, Lieutenant. And that could be the source of Mr. Malley’s rage.”

  “Kristal was nearly two,” said Milo. “You’d think Malley would’ve figured it out.”

  “He struck me as an unsophisticated person. He worked rodeos or something like that.”

  “Rodeos?”

  “Riding, roping, or at least that’s what I heard,” said Daney. “From the defense.”

  “Sounds like Ms. Weider did her background research.”

  “You bet. She was extremely hardworking and thorough. I was glad when she got the case.”

  “You were involved before she got the case?” I said. “I thought she brought you on as a support-person.”

  “Just the opposite, actually,” said Daney. “I brought her on. Not officially, but I had a hand in it.”

  “How so?”

  “I knew Troy from working with him at 415 City. I also knew Ms. Weider from some other youth work I’d done. My seminary had a program, working with inner-city teens, trying to get them involved in summer activities. In the course of that, I developed some contacts with the Public Defender’s Office, because that’s where so many of our kids ended up. I knew several of the P.D.s, but thought Ms. Weider would be perfect for the boys. Because she was so thorough. I called her and asked if she could help out. She said there was a system in place but she’d see what she could do.”

  “As a favor to you.”

  “Partly,” said Daney. “To be honest, the case attracted her because it was high-profile. She was pretty ambitious.”

  “And then she asked you to stay on for support,” said Milo.

  “Exactly.”

  “You ever tell her about the eye color thing?”

  “No, like I said, I didn’t see the point.”

  Milo exhaled. “Wow . . . that’s a bombshell, all right. Thank you, Rev.”

  “I don’t like telling tales, but . . .”

  “So you’re figuring Rand knew Kristal wasn’t Malley’s kid and mentioned it to Malley.”

  “No, no,” said Daney. “I hadn’t taken it that far.”

  “But it coulda happened that way.”

  “No, I honestly don’t think so, Lieutenant. How would Rand know?”

  “Same way you did. He noticed.”

  Daney shook his head. “Rand just wasn’t that observant. But even if he did know, there’d be no reason to throw it in Malley’s face.”

  “What, then?”

  “What I’m getting at— and this is really out there— is maybe Barnett Malley wasn’t a total victim.”

  Daney flinched, pushed the turnover away. “I feel like I’m . . . wading into something and I’m really not comfortable. Sorry.” Pushing up a corduroy sleeve, he peered at a black-faced sports watch. Milo placed a hand on his arm. Flashed that lupine smile. Daney stiffened for a second. Dropped his shoulders, shot us a look of misery.

  “I’ve got that sinking feeling, guys, like when you’ve gone too far, you know?”

  I said, “You’re saying Malley found out Lara had cheated on him, built up a whole lot of rage, and decided to act out against Kristal.”

  “I don’t want to say more,” said Daney. “Because I’m scared and not ashamed to admit it.”

  “Scared of Malley?” said Milo.

  “A lot of people depend on me, Detective. That’s why I don’t skydive or ride a motorcycle or go mountain climbing.”

  “Miss all that?”

  “Not anymore,” said Daney. “Now, I really need to get going— ”

  I said, “It’s a whole new way of looking at it, Milo.” To Daney: “Did Malley know Troy and Rand before the murder?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Daney.

  “Lara went to the mall frequently and so did the boys. So there’d be opportunity for Barnett to see them, as well.” I turned back to Milo: “They hung out at that arcade. Maybe Malley was into video games, too. Being an unsophisticated guy.”

  Both of us stared at Daney.

  He said, “It’s possible.”

  Milo said, “Troy and Rand never mentioned knowing Malley? After they got arrested?”

  “Troy definitely didn’t,” said Daney. “I wasn’t talking much to Rand, he was pretty nonverbal back then. Right, Doctor?”

  “You bet,” I said. “But I always got the feeling he was holding back.”

  “Defensive,” he said. “Yes, I sensed the same thing.”

  “Frustrating.”

  “I tried to open him up,” said Daney, “but not being a psychologist, I didn’t want to step into uncharted territory. In the end, it didn’t matter because the case got settled optimally. Or so I thought.”

  “What do you mean?” said Milo.

  “Look what happened to Troy. And to Rand.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Rev. About Rand not being perceptive. But if he really knew Malley had some culpability, would he hold on to it for eight years?”

  “Maybe,” said Daney, “he was confused.” He stood quickly. “I’m sorry, this is getting way too complicated and there’s nothing more I can tell you. If it ends up helping you, great. But please keep my name out of it.”

  He ran his hands over his shirt, as if brushing off dirt.

  Milo got up and faced him, used his height to advantage. “Absolutely, sir. I wouldn’t lose too much sleep because, to be honest, I don’t see any way of pursuing any of this.”

  Daney stared up at him.

  Milo said, “Like you said, too speculative.”

  Daney nodded. “Good luck.” He pivoted and began to walk away.

  “I mean the only time it would ever be relevant,” said Milo, “is if we got solid, physical evidence on Malley and put him behind bars. Then we’d ask you
to give a deposition.”

  Daney stopped. Weak smile. “If that happened, Detective, I’d be happy to do my part.”