Obsession

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Last name?”

  She shook her head. “He’s probably not who you want. The person who met him said he was a nice guy.”

  “Where’d he meet him?”

  “She. Some party, she was one of the dancers, hired by an agency in the Valley, she couldn’t recall the name.”

  “Memory problems?”

  “Maybe a bit blurred by recreational substances.”

  “The bird streets,” I said. “Fog upon L.A., friends losing their way.”

  “Poor George. Remember when I met him?”

  “Ten years ago, fixing the Rickenbacher.”

  “Sweet man,” she said. “So gifted, so modest.”

  She sat down, rested her head on my shoulder. Blanche watched us kiss. Trotted back to the stairs and observed us with serenity.

  An almost parental joy.

  Robin said, “Let’s go inside. Spread our wings.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  By four p.m., Robin was sketching and I was at the computer running a search on mosey deejay.

  One hit, no images.

  Moses “Big Mosey” Grant was cited in a long list of people thanked for contributing to the success of a hospital fund-raiser.

  Western Pediatric, where I’d trained and worked.

  The party had been thrown a year ago by the Division of Endocrinology, the cause was juvenile diabetes, and the person offering thanks was the head, Dr. Elise Glass. Elise and I had worked together on several cases. I had her private number on file.

  She said, “Hi, Alex. Are you back to seeing patients or is it still that police stuff?”

  “As a matter of fact.” I asked her about Moses Grant.

  “Who?”

  “The deejay at your benefit last year.”

  “Mosey? Please don’t tell me he’s in trouble.”

  “You know him personally?”

  “No, but I remember him. Huge but gentle and really good with the kids. Am I going to be disillusioned?”

  “He’s not in trouble, but he’s been seen with someone who is. I’m sure it’ll turn out to be nothing.”

  “I hope so. First he cut his fees, then he insisted on working for free, stayed extra hours. He understood what we’re about.”

  “Diabetic relative?”

  “Diabetic himself. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be controlling it well. Toward the end of the evening, he was fading fast and I had to get him some juice.”

  “How’d you come to hire him?”

  “The Development Office hired him. He really seemed like a teddy bear, Alex.”

  “I’m sure he is. Do you have a number for him?”

  “That would be over in Development, too. Hold on, I’ll have Janice connect you.”

  I waited as a recorded voice lectured me about nutrition and exercise.

  “Development, this is Sue.”

  “This is Dr. Delaware. I’m planning an event and heard you use an excellent deejay named Moses Grant. Do you know how I can reach him?”

  “Hmm, let me check that.”

  A new recorded message filled me in on the virtues of charitable giving. “We got him through a broker—The Party Line. Here’s the number.”

  Valley exchange. Before I tried it, I plugged Moses Grant into the search engines and brought up a genealogy site and a lone reference to a miner who’d died in West Virginia a hundred and five years ago.

  At The Party Line’s number, a hoarse male voice answered, “Agency, Eli Romaine.”

  “I’m looking for a deejay you handle. Moses Grant.”

  “Don’t handle him anymore,” said Romaine. “I’ve got better people. What kind of party are you doing?”

  “Sweet sixteen,” I said. “I was told Grant’s one of the best.”

  “It’s not rocket science, he knows how to push buttons. What kind of sweet sixteen are we talking about? Kids acting their age or pretending to be twenty-one? I’m asking ’cause the music’s different, depending.”

  “These are just normal kids.”

  Romaine’s laugh was a nicotine bark. “Okay, I’ve got guys who can go either way. Girls, too, but sweet sixteens always want guys. Preferably hot guys. I got a couple who could be on soap operas and also know how to push buttons. I also got dancers, I recommend some blond girls, to get the action going. It’s not that much more.”

  “Grant wasn’t that good?” I said.

  “Do you want someone who’s going to show up or not?”

  “He flaked out.”

  “Six months ago, so what kind of setup do you want?”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “This isn’t about sweet sixteen. What, he owes you money? Don’t waste my time.”

  Click.

  I reached Petra’s cell and gave her Moses Grant’s name.

  She said, “Thanks. I’m on my way to San Diego. Robert Fisk’s Mustang showed up not far from the long-term parking lot at Lindbergh Field. I may have to go through the airlines one by one. This is handy, I can also search for Grant’s name on the manifests.”

  “Good luck.”

  “If Fisk flew bye-bye, I’ll need it. Bye.”

  I put that aside and thought about Grant dropping out of sight half a year ago. Same time Robert Fisk had left his apartment and turned invisible.

  Had Grant stopped taking party jobs from Romaine because he’d found a better gig? Altruistic teddy bear or not, doing the club scene with Blaise De Paine or some other music-biz remora could be more enticing than spinning Raffi and Dan Crow for sick kids. Or dealing with sixteen-year-olds yearning for twenty-one.

  Or maybe Grant’s disappearance hadn’t been voluntary. A diabetic who failed to monitor his blood sugar could face all sorts of complications.

  I decided to start with hospitals and if that didn’t pan out, move on to emergency rooms and long-term-care units. The information I was after was confidential and I’d have to lie my way through layers of medical bureaucracy. Blitheness and my title might help.

  Grant’s 818 number said the logical place to start was the Valley. Then I remembered a hospital where I could be truthful.

  Rick said, “I’m walking to my computer as we speak. There’s an overall billing file for inpatients. Outpatients I’m not sure about, they may be classed by department. So you think this Grant person might have something to do with Patty and that guy Jordan?”

  “Grant was seen in the company of Jordan’s murderer.”

  “The kickboxer who left the fingerprints.”

  “Milo’s filled you in.”

  “I’ve been bugging him to keep me posted. I don’t know if you’ve sensed it, Alex, but he’s done a total turnaround on Patty. At first it was all I could do to get him to take Tanya’s concerns seriously. Jordan’s murder changed his mind, he’s convinced it’s tied to Patty. He’s also convinced it’s his fault because it happened right after he talked to Jordan.”

  “Didn’t know it bothered him that way.”

  “Guilt’s what Big Guy’s all about…okay, I have entered the General Billing System…looks like I need a code…oh, would you look at this. The codes are listed right out in the open by department, talk about inane…okay, I’m typing in the E.R. code and…here we go: Grant, Moses Byron, male, twenty-six years old, 7502 Los Ojos, Woodland Hills…oh, boy.”

  “What?”

  “Looks like he was one of ours. Came into the E.R. for hypoglycemia.”

  “When?”

  “Two and a half months ago.”

  “Right before Patty got sick.”

  “The hairs on my neck are standing up, Alex.”

  “Did he come in alone?”

  “That wouldn’t be in the billing records unless someone else guaranteed payment…let’s see…the account was settled in full, $869.23, no insurance co-pay or Medi-Cal. Either Grant’s check was good or he paid cash. Let me go find his chart. That could take a bit, would you prefer bad music or silence?”

  “I
could use some quiet.”

  Moments later: “Mr. Grant arrived at our portals barely conscious at three fourteen a.m. on a Saturday night. I was off, the attending was Pete Berger. Let’s check the nursing notes…oh, boy, they’re Patty’s. One of her double shifts.”

  “What did she write?”

  “Basic intake material…okay, she does mention Grant being brought by ‘friends,’ no names…one of them had communicated to the triage nurse that Grant had taken an insulin shot shortly before feeling faint and nearly passing out. We got some sugar in him, monitored his vitals, found some funny stuff with the R waves of his EEG and recommended admission for further observation. Grant refused, checked himself out against medical advice, we never saw him again.”

  “Would Pete Berger remember?”

  “With thousands of patients since? No way. And the resident was rotating through from Olive View. Let me try to reach both of them for you anyway, stay right there.”

  Ten minutes later: “Neither of them remember Grant, let alone his friends. I’m sure Patty would have total recall, her memory was astonishing.”

  “Which could be the point,” I said. “She saw something while taking care of Grant that upset her. Soon after, she got sick, but it stuck in her mind.”

  “I guess so, but what could have bothered her that much…I told you she looked worn out two weeks before diagnosis. I’ve been assuming that was the disease taking its toll. You’re saying it could’ve been emotional stress?”

  “At this point it’s theory, but it does establish another link between Patty and Lester Jordan. She took care of him and an associate of the guy who killed him.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said, “Milo told me your suspicions about Patty pilfering drugs. I went back and checked our Class Three inventories for the last year and nothing looks funny. I’ve always run a really tight ship in that regard, Alex. I don’t delude myself that anything’s perfect and a twelve-month check says nothing about pilferage years ago but I have to believe that if anything significant was going on, I’d have known it. Beyond that, I just can’t see Patty involved in anything like that.”

  “I can’t either.”

  “Yet Tanya has a trust fund,” he said. “That’s been eating at me.”

  “Milo didn’t tell you the new theory about that?”

  “No. I’ve been on for the last two days, haven’t seen him.”

  I told him about Myron Bedard’s cash payments to Patty plus five years of free rent.

  He said, “That makes me feel a little bit better. What I just said about running a tight ship? I might as well be up front. When I didn’t check the dope cabinet personally, I had Patty do it.”

  “There’s no evidence she stole drugs, Rick.”

  “I guess I just want to hear you say it. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “No,” I said. “Thanks for helping with Grant.”

  “Sure. Listen, maybe it’s best if Big Guy doesn’t know the extent of my involvement. He likes to shield me from the bad stuff.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  The meeting took place the following night. Nine p.m. my house; Petra showed up first, at ten to the hour, though she’d driven from San Diego. “Big-rig overturn near Irvine, psycho traffic all the way to Newport and my cell phone battery died. Thank God I left early and changed into car clothes.”

  That meant a black cowl-necked top, charcoal velvet sweatpants, and white sneakers. After a bathroom break, she accepted the offer of a phone battery and coffee and began chatting with Robin. When I came back, they were talking handbags and Blanche was on Petra’s lap.

  “This one,” she said, “is star material.”

  Robin said, “I know ostrich leg sounds gory but I like it better than straight ostrich.”

  Petra said, “Is that the one with a larger pattern instead of dots? A little like croc but softer around the edges?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s nice. Poor bird—but they say ostriches are mean, so if you want to rationalize, there’s an out.”

  “Cows are nice,” said Robin, “but I’m not limiting myself to hemp.”

  I left to pour my own cup.

  Milo arrived with a corner of a pizza wedge in one hand and tomato sauce stains above his lip. The shoulders and back of his sport coat were coated with fine gray dust and random flecks of paper. His tweed slacks were seasons too heavy for the warm night.

  Taking a half-gallon milk carton from the fridge, he ripped at the spout and guzzled.

  Robin said, “Want a cookie?”

  “Home-baked?”

  “Mint Milanos.”

  “Kind of you, kid, but my standards are high.”

  Robin laughed and took Blanche to the bedroom.

  Milo and Petra and I sat around the kitchen table.

  She said, “So you found the bullets.”

  Milo said, “After two days of digging around. Some genius in the evidence room wrote down a 5 instead of a 3 and then another genius modified that to an 8 and added the wrong year code. They also had it clear on the wrong side of the room, with boxes from ’sixty-two.”

  “Maybe they were hoping you’d solve a few cold ones while you were there.” She leaned over and flicked dust from his jacket.

  “I got Bob Deal in Ballistics to agree to run comparison tests tomorrow. Anything happen with the airlines?”

  “If only,” she said. “Fisk’s name doesn’t show up on any outgoing flights since the day of Jordan’s murder and neither does Moses Grant’s. Plenty of prints in Fisk’s Mustang but so far the only ones that pull up an AFIS match are his. Stu got San Diego to agree to work it over, in the interests of time. They’ve gone over the interior and the trunk, haven’t found any body fluids. I’ve got a nice broad subpoena for all of Fisk’s phone records but I can’t find any evidence of a landline and if he uses a cell, it’s a rental.”

  “Bad-guy habits,” said Milo. “Any papers in the car?”

  “Old reg, some PowerBar wrappers. It’s neat but not freaky-clean, as if he did a recent wash. Back to our vic for a sec. Lester Jordan had only a landline, but it doesn’t look like he had much of a social life, maybe twenty calls a month. The only long-distances were to lona in Atherton and the last of those was seventy-four days ago.”

  Milo said, “Close-knit family.”

  “Regular Brady Bunch. The other numbers Jordan called were take-out restaurants and pay phones. The pay calls happened late at night, which fits with Jordan craving dope. Raul did a thorough recanvass of the building. Most of the tenants had no idea who Jordan was, it’s not a touchy-feely place where they greet each other in the hallways. And no one had heard Jordan was the manager, so if Iona’s palming him off as such for tax purposes, she’s scamming. But a few people said they’d noticed lowlifes going in and out of Jordan’s apartment in the wee hours. Still, the H left behind doesn’t indicate Jordan got dead because he was dealing. Or maybe Fisk really can’t stand drugs.”

  Milo said, “Even so, there’d be a profit motive.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “Fisk and whoever let him in got careless. They did leave the window open. In terms of Moses Grant, there’s absolutely no criminal record. Bassett Bowland saw Grant at Rattlesnake with Fisk and De Paine but he didn’t observe any conspiratorial behavior. Barring new information, I don’t think Grant merits much of my time.”

  I said, “Here’s new information: A couple of weeks before she got sick, Patty Bigelow treated Grant at Cedars.”

  “For what?”

  “Low blood sugar. He’s diabetic.”

  “He’s a sick guy, she’s a nurse, and Cedars is the main E.R. on the Westside. Thousands of people move through there, Alex.”

  “Grant came in with friends.”

  She pushed hair behind one ear, rubbed a temple with her thumb. “Another layer of complication. Okay, what else do we know about Grant?”

  Milo said, “According to his landlord in Woodland Hills,
he was a model tenant, no noise, no guests, even played his music with earphones. Then six months ago, he cut out on the rent with no notice. Landlord sued him in small claims and won, but she hasn’t collected because she can’t find him.”

  I said, “Six months ago Robert Fisk skipped out on his rent.”

  “The two of them moved in together?” she said. “Fine, I’ll keep Grant on the radar. Which so far has picked up nothing but noise.”

  She pulled out a sheet of paper and slid it across the table. San Diego PD fax sheet, an enlargement of Grant’s driver’s license in the center. “Real big teddy bear.”

  Milo peered at the photo. His neck muscles corded as he handed the paper to me.

  Moses Grant had smiled for the DMV camera. Round dark face. Shaved head, barbered mustache, and goatee.

  Six six, a wishful-thinking two fifty.

  The giant who’d exited the Hummer at Mary Whitbread’s place.

  Oh, here’s my son.

  That’s her kid? I love this city.

  Milo told Petra.

  She said, “Grant’s mommy was Patty’s landlord? Everywhere this woman moves has some kind of hidden meaning?”

  I said, “We assumed Grant was Mary Whitbread’s son because he was the only one who got out of the car. What if he was driving someone else who decided to stay out of sight? The Hummer’s windows were tinted black, no way to know who was riding.”

  Milo said, “Lester Jordan was still alive then, but not for long. Mary Whitbread was the last person we spoke to about Patty. Soon after, Jordan’s dead.”

  Petra took back the sheet. “Whitbread’s son is Robert Fisk? Grant hangs with Fisk, doing the club scene, drives for him. Fisk’s mommy tells him something about Patty that gets him worried so he takes care of business…meaning the second guy in the apartment could be Grant. Though why Jordan would let him in, I don’t know. Unless Grant really wasn’t a clean-living teddy bear.”