A Cold Heart

by Jonathan Kellerman

  • • •

  She stayed with the Stahls for another three hours. Day broke, and the parents left for an hour to make personal calls.

  Petra entered the ICU.

  A nurse said, “He’s doing a lot better, Detective. Amazingly better, actually. Vitals are good, temperature’s just slightly elevated. He must’ve been in really great shape.”

  “Yup,” said Petra.

  “Cops,” said the nurse. “We love you guys, hate when this happens.”

  Petra said, “Thanks— can I go in?”

  The nurse glanced through the glass. “Sure, but gown up, and I’ll show you how to wash your hands.”

  Clad in a yellow paper gown, she approached Eric’s bed. He was draped from neck to toe tip, connected to multiple IV lines and catheters, backed by a bank of high-tech gizmos.

  Eyes closed, mouth slightly parted. Oxygen tubes running up his nose.

  So vulnerable. Young.

  With the gut wound obscured, he looked okay. If you blanked out the apparatus, he could be sleeping peacefully.

  She placed a gloved hand on his fingers.

  His color was better. Still pale— pale was his normal state— but none of that creepy green around the edges.

  “You had an adventure,” she whispered.

  Eric kept breathing evenly. His vitals remained steady. No dramatic movie-of-the-week response to the sound of her voice. He couldn’t hear her. Which was fine.

  Not a bad-looking guy, when you got past his personality.

  She’d thought him weird, now she knew him as another victim.

  Life was like a prism; what you saw depended on how you turned the glass.

  His mother described him as depressed. Sometimes depressed people duked it out with the police, wanting to end it all but lacking the courage and hoping to force the police’s hand.

  Suicide by cop, they called it.

  Had Eric chosen suicide by perp?

  Experienced guy like that— all that Special Forces experience— how had he ended up getting shanked by a ninny like Shull?

  It made you wonder.

  She looked down at him.

  Not a bad-looking guy at all. Kind of handsome, really. She tried to picture him younger, tan, easygoing as he rode the waves.

  “Eric,” she said, “you’re going to pull out of this.”

  No response. Just like when they rode together.

  Petra stroked his fingers, feeling warmth through the latex of her gloves.

  “You are definitely going to pull though, Detective Stahl. And then you and I are going to talk.”

  52

  Allison and I were naked on her bed. My left hand rested on the nape of her neck. Her nails grazed my arm.

  She released a long exhalation, freed herself, slipped under the covers. Lifting her hair above her head, she knotted it loosely. “How’s Robin doing?”

  “Better.”

  “Good. Could you hand me that water, please?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  Moments ago we’d been lost in each other. Now we were having a civilized conversation.

  I said, “Robin’s on your mind?”

  “I’m not preoccupied with her. I feel for her.”

  She drank water. Placed the glass down carefully. “Darling, eventually you’re going to have to deal with it.”

  “With what?”

  “Saving her. What it means to her.”

  “Tim’s with her. She’s getting support.”

  I’d stopped by the house in Venice two days ago. Tim had met me at the door, wanting to say something. The words had frozen in his throat— vocal guru struck mute. He clasped my hand, shook it hard, walked out. Leaving Robin and me alone in the living room. Strange to see her, just sitting there. As long as I’d known her, she’d had trouble doing nothing.

  She accepted a hug, thanked me, told me she was okay.

  I agreed that she was.

  Both of us, getting through the moment. I stayed for a while, then left.

  Allison said, “I’m not talking about support, darling.”

  I said, “The way I see it, I didn’t save her. Far from it. Tim’s the hero, his call got the ball rolling. I didn’t even answer the first time he tried to reach me. And if it wasn’t for you, who knows if I’d have followed through.”

  “If not for me, you’d have been there sooner.” She smiled.

  “What?”

  “A group effort,” she said. “That’s how you see it.”

  I got up on my elbow. “Is this the best time to have this discussion?”

  “What better time?”

  “Tonight,” I said, “I was thinking more of a romantic evening.”

  “To my mind, honesty’s part of romance,” she said. “At least a bit of it.” She rolled toward me, took my face in her hands, kissed my lips.

  “I’d better not argue,” I said. “Woman with a gun and all that.”

  She smiled again. Lay back down.

  Got up on her elbows. Kissed me in a new way.

  53

  “An ironic tale for when they write my biography,” said Milo, finishing his sandwich. “I get my warrant, am feeling like an ace, and the show goes on without me.”

  “Shull’s mommy hired a good lawyer,” I said. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

  “True,” he said, wiping his face. The sandwich was a do-it-yourself project. Turkey and steak and cold meatballs and whatever vegetables he’d found in my fridge, stuffed between slabs of hand-cut rye. Big enough to require a building permit.

  “Still,” he said, “I confess to optimism.”

  “There’s a switch.”

  “You see, Alex: I am open to change.”

  “You are, indeed.”

  He folded his napkin. “It kills me that I missed it. Nothing like catching one in the act. In twenty years, I can count the times.”

  The act had been Robin. I said nothing.

  “Stahl’s doing better,” he said. “Rick says he’ll definitely live. Guy’s lucky. And stupid. Going one-on-one with Shull, no call for backup. Petra says his explanation is everything happened too fast.”

  “Thank God he was there to slow Shull down.”

  “Thank God you were there.”

  “I owe that to Allison.” Thinking: Robin owes Tim and Allison.

  Thinking: Life is complicated.

  “How’s Robin doing?” he said.

  “She’s coping.”

  He played with his napkin. “I went by to see her, right after. She looked pretty numb.”

  I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee.

  “Anyway,” said Milo, “this morning Stahl talked a bit more to Petra. Not a word about getting stabbed, and she didn’t want to stress him. What he was anxious to tell her was that before Shull drove to Robin’s, he headed for a vacant lot in Inglewood, not far from where Kevin’s car was found. We found the place, dispatched a couple of cadaver dogs, and they went nuts. Couple of hours ago, we dug up some bones. Techies are headed over to Encino right now, to get dental records on Kevin.”

  “Sad,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He worked on his sandwich. Took a breath. “We went through Shull’s place with the proverbial teeny little comb. Great big house for one guy. All this old expensive furniture he got from Mommy. But he lived liked a pig, didn’t take care of anything. He had a camera hooked up to remote, took photos of himself and hung them all over the place. All dudded up, posed like some Ralph Lauren sophisticate, but there was rotten food and roaches on the floor. We found all the good stuff in a basement storage room–combo–wine cellar. Shull kept a nice collection of vintage reds, there. From the empties all over the floor, looks like he sampled frequently. Along with copious amounts of happy powder.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Pills, too. Pharmaceuticals, some still with hospital tags, so you were right about that. He knew the area where he picked up Erna because he bought medical dope.”

  “
What was Erna’s role?” I said.

  “I thought you’d tell me.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll ever know. My best guess is he thought of her as his crazy cousin who he could use. Exploited her instability, her love of art. We know he expropriated her name for bylines. That allowed him to cover his tracks in case the articles were connected to the victims. He probably figured Erna would be too incoherent to do any damage if she was ever linked to the byline. Eventually he changed his mind and killed her.”

  “I think he also used her as a red herring,” he said. “Sending her over to the gallery and maybe to other sites, too. Figuring people would notice her, get sidetracked, and he could skulk around, check out the scene. Which is exactly what happened. Except that it backfired because looking into Erna’s death is what finally connected us to him. Best-laid plans of psychopaths and all that.”

  He unfolded the napkin, patted it flat, put it aside. “You’re probably right. His main motivation was fooling with Erna’s head. For the fun of it. Like he did with Kevin Drummond. Pretending to mentor the kid, helping to finance GrooveRat so he could keep Kevin delusional about his chances as a publisher. Meanwhile, Shull had an outlet for his own crappy articles— again, with his tracks covered. This making sense to you?”

  “Perfect sense,” I said. “And once again, he got too cute. Having Kevin call Petra for details on Baby Boy. He probably told Kevin it would be great material for a follow-up piece. Unless Kevin was in on the killings and the call was for his pleasure, too.”

  “So far we haven’t turned up a shred indicating Kevin was anything but a dupe. Unless we do, he remains a victim— give his parents at least a little comfort.”

  He got up, paced the kitchen. “Shull saw himself as a cut above, but he’s nothing but a cookie-cutter power freak. Before he made his move on Robin he spent hours driving around. Revisited the Snake Pit, Szabo and Loh’s place, the Marina where he dumped Mehrabian. Snacking on memories, working up the arousal. One thing does puzzle me, though. He changed his technique. Up until Robin, he did the smooth bit. Walking up friendly, slipping the knife in. Doing it in public places— taking risks. With Robin, it’s like he regressed. Covert break-in, blitz attack. Which is probably what he did to Angelique Bernet. Any idea why?”

  “He would’ve preferred the smooth bit,” I said. “Being subtle and dramatic meshed with his sense of theater. He probably decided to be cautious because of my questions about Kevin. He didn’t feel threatened enough to stop, but he knew we were getting closer.”

  “Guess so,” he said. “Still, the idiot never lost his arrogance. Drove all over town without thinking to check for a tail.”

  “In the end, an amateur,” I said.

  “Once a loser, always a loser.” He stretched, paced some more, sat back down. Stared past me. Crust in the corner of his eyes. Hit-or-miss shave.

  All those days with no sleep.

  I said, “What’s the good stuff you found in his basement?”

  “Baby Boy’s guitars, seven sets of low E guitar strings, a black trench coat that had been dry-cleaned recently, a box of surgical gloves, and newspaper clippings about all the victims. Not organized, tossed together in one big box file. He clipped reviews, interviews— like the one Robin gave to that guitar magazine— and newspaper accounts of the killings.”

  His jaw tightened. “Here’s the bad thing, Alex. In addition to Baby Boy, Julie, Vassily, China, the Bernet girl, and Mehrabian, there were four others. All within the last five years, filling the time period we wondered about. A potter snuffed in Albuquerque, another dancer— male theatrical dancer— killed in San Francisco and dumped in the Bay, a glass artist from Minneapolis, and Wilfred Reedy, the old jazz guy killed four a half years ago down on Main Street. Everyone assumed that was a dope thing, because like I told you, Reedy’s kid was an addict and Main Street can get mean, but looks like he was Shull’s first.”

  “Shull have all of Reedy’s LPs?”

  He stared at me. “Yeah. In terms of the out-of-town cases, we’re looking for conventions Shull might’ve attended.”

  I tried to feel relieved that it was over. Tried to get past the image of all those bodies.

  “You were right about something else, Alex. Shull didn’t go for writers because he considers himself an active writer. On top of the box file, was an envelope marked T.G.A.N. Took me a while to figure that out. The Great American Novel. Inside was a title sheet. I xeroxed it for you.”

  He drew a folded piece of paper from an inside pocket, opened it, spread it on the table.

  Blank, except for three lines typed in the center:

  The Artist

  A Novel by

  A. Gordon Shull

  “That’s it?” I said. “Just the title?”

  “That’s all he wrote. Literally. Guy must’ve blocked.”

  The End