A Cold Heart

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I raised the point. Milo chewed on it but said nothing.

  I got closer to the body, stepping into greenish light.

  In life, Levitch had been a handsome young man— a golden-haired boy, literally. His sculpted face stared up into the night, topped by a mass of curls that caressed his shoulders. Prominent nose, chin, cheekbones, an aggressive forehead. Long-fingered hands were frozen in palms-up supplication. The tails of his cutaway coat had crumpled under him. A starched white shirt, now mostly crimson, had been ripped open, exposing a hairless chest. A seven-inch slit, the edges curling, ran vertically from umbilicus to the hollow beneath the pianist’s sternum. Something pale and wormy peeked out from the wound. A curl of bowel.

  Levitch’s white pique bow tie was also blood-splotched. His eyes popped, a distended tongue flopped from one corner of his mouth, a bloody ring necklaced his gullet.

  I said, “Paramedics rip the shirt?”

  He nodded.

  I stared at the corpse some more, moved away.

  “Any thoughts?”

  “Baby Boy was stabbed, Julie Kipper was strangled, and this poor guy endured both. Was the cut pre- or postmortem?”

  “Coroner says probably pre because of all the blood spray. Then the wire was looped around his neck. So what are you saying? A serial with escalation?”

  “Or strangulation is the killer’s goal and sometimes he needs to make concessions. Sadists and sexual psychopaths enjoy choking out their victims because it’s intimate, slow, and feeds the power lust incrementally. Julie was an easy target because she was tiny, and the cramped space of the bathroom trapped her, so the killer was able to go straight for his fun. Levitch, on the other hand, was a strong young guy, so he had to be disabled first.”

  “What about Baby Boy? Far as I’ve heard, there was nothing around his neck.”

  “Baby Boy was a huge man. Choking him out would’ve been a challenge. And Baby Boy’s kill spot was public— a city alley, easy for someone to walk by. Maybe the killer was being careful. Or he got spooked before he could finish.”

  “Be interesting to know how Levitch’s stab wounds match up with Baby Boy. I’ll check with Petra. Till now we didn’t think our cases had anything in common.”

  He stared at me, shook his head. Took another look at Levitch.

  “However this shakes out, I need to do the routine, Alex. Which in this case is major-league scut: IDing audience members, canvassing the neighborhood for sightings of suspicious strangers, checking the files for recent prowler calls. Too much for one noble soldier. The guys who pulled the case initially are a couple of D-Is, green, no whodunit experience, claim they’re interested in getting their feet wet. They actually seem grateful for Uncle Milo’s council. I’ll sic ’em on the grunt work, get on the phone tomorrow with Levitch’s agent in New York and see what I can learn about him.”

  “Hey, boss-man,” I said.

  “That’s me,” he said. “Chairman of the Gore. Seen enough?”

  “More than enough.”

  We walked back to the house, and I thought about Vassily Levitch left to die in the company of garbage cans. Baby Boy, dumped in a back alley, Juliet Kipper’s life terminated in a toilet.

  “Demeaning them is the thing,” I said. “Reducing art to trash.”

  17

  The next day Milo asked me to a meeting. Five P.M. in the back room of the same Indian restaurant.

  “I’ll be there. Anything new?”

  “Levitch’s agent and mother had nothing to offer. She mostly sobbed, all the agent could say was Vassily was a beautiful boy, amazing talent. The reason I want to put heads together is Petra said Levitch’s wound sounds like a perfect match to Baby Boy’s. Plus, the coroner’s telling me the ligature used on Levitch is the same gauge and consistency as the one used to choke out Julie. And guess what— your idea about Baby Boy’s killer being spooked might be right-on. Turns out there was a witness in the alley, some homeless guy. Pretty well booze-blasted, and between that and the darkness, his description didn’t amount to much. But maybe the killer sensed him and split.”

  “What’s the description?”

  “Tall guy in a long coat. He came up to Lee, shmoozed, then moved in for what looked like a hug. Guy walks away, Lee falls down. The killer made no move on the homeless guy— Linus Brophy— but you never know.”

  “The killer wouldn’t go for Brophy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Out of his focus,” I said. “We’re talking about someone with very specific goals.”

  • • •

  I gathered together my notes and drove to Café Moghul. The same amiable sari’d woman beamed as she ushered me through the restaurant and over to an unmarked door next to the men’s room. “He is here!”

  The windowless, green room had probably once served as storage space. Milo sat at a table set for three. Behind him was a sleeper couch pushed up against the wall. On the couch was a tightly curled bedroll, a stack of Indian magazines, and a box of tissues. Curry smells drifted in through a ceiling grate.

  I sat down as he dipped some kind of wafer into a bowl of red sauce. The sauce tinted his lips liverish.

  “Our hostess seems quite impressed with you.”

  “I tip big. And they think my presence offers protection.”

  “They’ve had problems?”

  “Just the usual— drunks wandering in, unwanted solicitors. Couple of weeks ago I happened to be here when some idiot peddling dried flowers for an instant nirvana cult got unruly. I engaged in diplomacy.”

  “And now the U.N.’s requesting your résumé.”

  “Hey, those clowns could use the help— here she is.”

  He stood and greeted Petra Connor.

  She looked around and grinned. “You really know how to treat a girl, Milo.”

  “Only the best for Hollywood Division.”

  She had on the usual black pantsuit, the brownish lipstick and pale matte makeup. Her short, black hair was glossy, and her eyes shone. Like Milo, she’d brought a bulging, soft attaché case. His was cracked and gray, hers, black and oiled.

  She gave me a wave. “Hi, Alex.” Then she half turned as a round-shouldered man stepped into the room. “Guys, this is my new partner, Eric Stahl.”

  Stahl wore black, too. A baggy suit over a starched white shirt and skinny gray tie. He had collapsed cheeks, eyes recessed as deeply as those of a blind man. His spiky crew cut was a deep brown shade one half tone lighter than Petra’s ebony coif, but, hue-wise, that was a fine distinction. A few years older than Petra, but like her, thin with fair skin. In Stahl’s case, a tallowy pallor rendered sickly by contrast to Petra’s crisp, cosmetic kabuki. But for rosy spots on his cheeks, he might’ve been fashioned of wax.

  He appraised the room. Flat, inert eyes.

  Milo said, “Hey, Eric.”

  Stahl said, “Hey,” in a low voice and shifted his gaze to the table.

  Three place settings.

  Milo said, “I’ll get you fixed up.”

  “Just get a chair, Eric won’t be eating,” said Petra.

  “Oh, yeah?” said Milo. “Don’t like Indian, Eric?”

  “I ate already,” said Stahl. His voice matched his eyes.

  “Eric doesn’t eat,” said Petra. “He claims he does, but I’ve never seen it.”

  The smiling woman brought platters of food. Milo snarfed, Petra and I picked, Eric Stahl placed his hands flat on the table and stared at his fingernails.

  Stahl’s presence seemed to discourage small talk. So did the situation, and Milo got right down to business, passing around Julie Kipper’s case file, then summarizing the little he had on Vassily Levitch.

  Both Hollywood detectives took it in without comment. Milo said, “Could you recap Baby Boy?”

  Petra said, “Sure.” Her account was concise, focused on the relevant details. The precise delivery emphasized how little she’d unearthed, and when she finished, she seemed bothered.

  Stahl remained
mute.

  Milo said, “Sounds like a match to Levitch, at least. How about the psych wisdom, Alex?”

  I summarized the out-of-town cases quickly, glossed over Wilfred Reedy because his murder sounded like a drug hit, and moved on to China Maranga. As I put forth the suggestion that she might’ve been stalked without knowing it, the three of them listened but didn’t react.

  A trio of blank faces; if I was right, they were faced with monumental work.

  “The night China disappeared,” I said, “she left the studio in a foul mood and quite possibly stoned. Under the best of circumstances, she had a bad temper, was known to unload on people without warning. Here’s a prime example: She refused an interview with a fanzine, but the editor was persistent and ran the story anyway. A puff piece. China’s thanks was to phone the guy and abuse him. Viciously, was the way her band mate put it. She had no sense of personal safety, lived high-risk. That and a major tantrum in the wrong setting could’ve proved fatal.”

  “What was the name of the fanzine?” said Petra.

  “Something called GrooveRat. I looked for it but couldn’t—”

  Her slim, white fingers on my wrist stopped me midsentence.

  “GrooveRat did a piece on Baby Boy,” she said. She opened her attaché case, drew out a blue murder book, and began paging. “The editor was persistent with me, too. Real pest, kept calling, bugging me for details . . . here we go: Yuri Drummond. I didn’t take him seriously because he sounded like an obnoxious kid. He told me he’d never actually met Baby Boy but ran a profile on him.”

  “Same as China,” said Milo. “Baby Boy turn him down, too?”

  “I didn’t ask. He claimed interviews weren’t the magazine’s style, they were into the essence of art, not the persona, or some nonsense like that. He sounded about twelve.”

  “What did he want from you?” I said.

  “The gory details.” She frowned. “I figured him for an adolescent ghoul, shined him on.”

  Milo said, “Be interesting to know if he ever wrote up Julie Kipper.”

  “Wouldn’t it,” said Petra.

  I said, “I tried to find a copy of GrooveRat at the big newsstand on Selma, but they didn’t carry it. The owner suggested a comics store on the boulevard, but they were closed.”

  “Probably a dinky fly-by-night deal,” said Milo.

  “That’s what China’s band mate said. He didn’t save a copy, either.”

  “Yuri Drummond . . . sounds like a made-up name. What, he wants to be a cosmonaut?”

  “Everyone reinvents themselves,” said Petra. “It’s the L.A. way.” Glancing at Stahl. He didn’t respond.

  “Especially if they’re running from something,” I said.

  “GrooveRat,” she said. “So what does this mean? A fan gone psycho?”

  “Someone overinvolved in the victims’ careers. Maybe someone whose identity became enmeshed with the creativity of others. ‘Leeches on the body artistic’ is how Julie Kipper’s ex-husband described critics and agents and gallery owners and all the other ancillaries of the creative world. The same can be said of fanatical followers. Sometimes attachments morph into business arrangements— presidents of fan clubs selling memorabilia— but the core remains emotional: celebrity by association. For most people, fandom’s a fling that ends when they grow up. But certain borderline personalities never mature, and what starts out as a harmless ego-substitution— the kid standing in front of a mirror playing air guitar and imagining himself to be Hendrix— can turn into a psychological hijacking.”

  “Hijacking what?” said Milo.

  “The adored one’s identity. ‘I know the star better than he knows himself. How dare he get married/sell out/not listen to my advice?’ “

  “How dare he refuse my generous offer to be interviewed,” said Petra. “Adolescents are the biggest fanatics, right? And Yuri Drummond sounded adolescent. The fact that he published a zine makes him hard-core.”

  “Desktop publishing’s elevated hard-core,” I said. “Buy a computer and a printer, and you, too, can be a media-master. I know these victims vary demographically, but I’ve thought all along that the crucial element is their career status: poised for a jump. What if the killer became attached to them precisely because they weren’t stars? Entertained rescue fantasies— he’d be the star-maker by writing about them. They rejected him, so he interrupted the climb. Maybe he convinced himself they sold out.”

  “Or,” said Petra, “since we’re talking about vicarious talent, maybe he was an aspiring artist himself and simply got consumed with jealousy.”

  Milo said, “Aspiring guitarist, painter, singer, and pianist?”

  “A real megalomaniac,” she said.

  All three detectives looked at me.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “A dilettante who bounces from game to game. I had a patient years ago, a successful writer. Scarcely a week went by when he didn’t meet someone who planned to pen the Great American Novel if only they had time. This guy had written his first four books while holding down two jobs. One thing he told me stuck: When someone says they want to be a writer, they’ll never make it. When they say they want to write, there’s a chance. That could fit with our bitter-fan scenario: someone who gets off on the external trappings of creativity.”

  Petra smiled. “Leeches on the body artistic.” Years ago, she’d worked as a painter. “I like that.”

  “So we’re talking two possibilities,” said Milo. “A rescue fantasy turned on its head or pathological jealousy.”

  “Or both,” I said. “Or, I’m dead wrong.”

  Petra laughed. “Don’t say that up on the witness stand, Doctor.” She picked up a piece of wafer bread, cracked a corner between sharp, white teeth, chewed slowly. “Yuri Drummond went on about his zine capturing the essence of art. When he started nagging me for the gories, it could’ve been revisiting the scene— psychologically.”

  “Ego trip,” said Milo. “Like arsonists standing around watching the flames.”

  “Did Drummond write the story on Baby Boy?” I said.

  “I think he told me a writer did,” said Petra. “All I copied down was the guy’s name. At the time it seemed irrelevant.” She placed her napkin on the table. “Time to check the guy out, earn my salary. This was good, Milo. Let me split the check with you.”

  “Forget it. I run a tab here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m a rajah,” he said. “Go detect. Stay in touch.”

  Petra touched Milo’s shoulder briefly, favored me with a smile, turned and headed for the door.

  Stahl got up and followed her out. During the entire discussion, he hadn’t said a word.

  18

  The silent type. Some women thought they liked that.

  Petra had thought she liked it. But working with Stahl was proving to be a trying experience.

  The guy never spoke unless spoken to, and even then, he drew upon his verbal bank account one scroogy syllable at a time.

  Now here they were, driving away from the meeting with Milo and Alex, when there should’ve been animated discussion. Stahl just stared out the passenger window, inert as dirt.

  What? Looking for another stolen car? He’d spotted two GTAs in one week, and the second had contained a passenger with a felony manslaughter warrant, so brownie points for the two of them. But if that’s what floated Stahl’s dinghy, he should’ve asked for an assignment to Auto Theft.

  Why he’d chosen Homicide puzzled her. Why he’d given up the security of an Army gig for the streets was an even bigger question mark.

  She’d hazarded a few polite questions. Every attempt to crack the shell revealed a granite egg.

  Not that old Eric was any big old stoic macho man with obvious dominance needs or glory lust. On the contrary, he’d made it clear, right from the beginning, that Petra was the senior partner.

  And unlike most men, he knew how to apologize. Even when it wasn’t necessary.

  Two days int
o their partnership, Petra had arrived early and found Stahl at his desk, reading a folded newspaper and sipping herbal tea— that was another thing, he didn’t drink coffee, and if anything contravened the detective code of ethics, it was caffeine phobia.

  When he saw her he looked up and Petra sensed unease— the merest hint of restlessness— in his flat, brown eyes.

  “Evening, Eric.”

  “This wasn’t my idea,” he said, handing her the paper. A two-paragraph article toward the back had been circled in black marker.