Evidence

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Inches away, blocked by glass, Helga Gemein wobbled. Clutching her abdomen, she let out a gasp.

  Retched.

  Something green and slimy trickled out of her mouth.

  Slack mouth, the smile was gone.

  Thomas said, “Omigod,” and ran out of the room. Boxmeister hustled after her.

  I stayed in my chair. No reason to crowd the space.

  Helga began convulsing. Her breath grew labored. Staggering closer to the one-way, she panted raggedly. Filmed the glass. Flecked it with glassy spit, then pinpoints of pink.

  The massive convulsion began at her eyes, raced downward as her entire body was seized.

  Rag doll, shaken by an unseen god.

  Foam began pouring out of her mouth, a Niagara of bile. Chunks of slime coated the glass, clouded my view. But I managed to make out Milo rushing in, catching her as she fell.

  Laying her down gently, he began chest compressions. Thomas and Boxmeister stood by, transfixed.

  Milo’s technique was perfect. Rick insists he recertify every couple of years. He gripes about the colossal waste of time, homicide is brain-work, when would he ever have the opportunity to get heroic.

  Today, he did.

  Today, it didn’t matter.

  CHAPTER 34

  The police chief’s face is pocked more severely than Milo’s. A lush white mustache does a pretty good job of camouflaging a harelip.

  He’s a lean man with no discernible body fat. The lack of spare flesh stretches the skin that sheaths his skull, highlighting pit and crater, glossing lump and scar. The skull is an oddly shaped triangle, broad and unnaturally flat on top, coated with silky, blond-white hair, and tapering to a knife-point chin. His eyes are small and dark and they alternate between manic bounces and long stretches of unblinking immobility. When he turns his head a certain way, patches of taut, tortured dermis give him the look of a burn victim.

  He turns that way a lot and I wonder if it’s intentional.

  Take me on my terms.

  Everything in his history supports a Screw-you approach to life: the up-from-nothing ascent, the graduate degree at an Ivy League university he disparages as “an asylum for rich brats.” War heroism followed by clawing up the ranks of a notoriously corrupt East Coast police force, the combative years spent kicking bureaucratic ass and clearing out departmental deadweight. Defying the brass and the police union with equal-opportunity contempt, he arm-twisted his way to dramatically lowered felony rates in a city considered “ungovernable” by pundits he dismissed as “fat-assed brats with mental constipation and verbal diarrhea.” Stunning success was exploited to demand and receive the highest law enforcement salary in U.S. history.

  A month later, he quit unceremoniously, when L.A. upped the ante.

  Everyone said L.A. would be his fatal challenge.

  Within a year of arriving, he’d divorced his third wife ten years his junior, married a fourth twenty years his junior, attended a lot of Hollywood parties and premieres, and lowered felony rates by twenty-eight percent.

  When he’d taken the job, departmental wienies had bad-mouthed Milo as “a notorious troublemaker and a deviant,” and urged demotion or worse.

  The chief checked the solve-stats, most of the wienies ended up taking early retirement, Milo got the freedom to do his job with relative flexibility. As long as he produced.

  I’d met the chief once before, when he’d invited me to his office, showed off his collection of psych texts, expounded on the finer points of cognitive behavior therapy, then made me an offer: full-time job heading the department’s department of behavioral sciences. Even with his promise to raise the pay scale by forty percent, the salary didn’t come close to what I earned working privately. Even if he’d tripled the money, it would never be an option. I know how to play well with others, but prefer my own rulebook.

  During that meeting, he was dressed exactly as he was today: slim-cut black silk suit, aqua-blue spread-collar shirt, five-hundred-dollar red Stefano Ricci tie embedded with tiny crystals. On a lesser man it would’ve screamed Trying too hard. On him, all that polish emphasized the roughness of his complexion.

  My terms.

  He faced Milo and me across a booth at a steak house downtown on Seventh Street. A pair of massive plainclothes cops watched the front door; three more had staked out positions inside the restaurant. A velvet rope blocked other diners in this remote, dim section. The waiter assigned to us was attentive, vaguely frightened.

  The chief’s lunch was a chicken breast sandwich, seven-grain bread, side salad, no dressing. He’d ordered a thirty-ounce T-bone, medium-rare, all the fixings, for Milo; a more moderate rib eye for me. The food arrived just as we did.

  Milo said, “Good guess, sir.”

  The chief’s smile was crooked. “In the gulag, we keep files on dissidents.”

  His sandwich was divided into two triangles. He picked up a knife and bisected each half. Got five bites out of each quarter, chewing daintily and slowly. Sharp white teeth, somewhere between fox and wolf.

  He wiped his lips with a starched linen napkin. “I bought you an insurance policy on Gemein, Sturgis. Know what I mean?”

  “Captain Thomas.”

  A gun-finger aimed across the table. “Lucky for you Maria was there when that crazy bitch cyanided, because, like all hot air, blame floats to the top. Extra-lucky for you, Maria was the one who didn’t want to strip-search. She’s smart and industrious but she does tend to overthink.”

  Milo said, “Even without her directive, I wouldn’t have strip-searched, sir.”

  “What’s that, Sturgis? Penance?”

  “Telling it like it is, sir.”

  “Why no strip?”

  “At that point, my emphasis was on getting rapport with Gemein.”

  “Plus,” said the chief, “even a super-sleuth like you couldn’t conceive the bitch would hide anything under her wig. Talk about an overblown sense of drama. Lucky for all of you, I managed to block the press-scum when they started up the trash-vacuum. They live to tear us down, Sturgis, because they’re useless pieces of crap. They’ve also got the attention spans of decorticate garden slugs. I recently devised what I think is a tasteful and adroit method of handling press cretins.”

  Out of a jacket pocket came a sterling-silver card case, conspicuously monogrammed with his initials. A single, deft button-push sprang the lid. Inside were pale blue business cards. He removed one, passed it across the table.

  Heavy-stock paper, elegant engraving. Three lines of type.

  Your Opinion Has Been Duly Received

  With Great Enthusiasm.

  Fuck You, Very Much.

  “Excellent, sir.”

  “Let’s have that back, Sturgis. I’m still not sure if the wording’s right.”

  The chief resumed eating. The side salad was half a head of ice-burg lettuce. Thin, pallid lips curled as his knife reduced it to coarse-cut coleslaw. Spearing a few green shreds, he masticated with relish, as if undressed greens were a sinful indulgence.

  “In any event, Ms. Gemein’s ludicrous act of self-destruction appears to be receding from the public’s attention span, ergo, no need to throw anyone under the bus.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So tell me, Dr. Delaware, why’d the bitch snuff herself?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “If it was easy, I wouldn’t be asking you. Theorize like you’re getting paid for it, I won’t hold you to your answer.”

  I said, “She may have been living with a serious underlying depression for a long time.”

  “Poor little rich girl? From what I hear she wasn’t the sniffly, breast-beating sort.”

  “Not a passive depression. She reacted like some men do, with hostility and isolation.”

  “Men with borderline personality disorder?”

  “That’s one possible diagnosis.”

  “Depressed.” He put down his fork. “What kind of family has a suicide, doesn’t give a f
uck? Not a squawk from Zurich. Which is good for us, these are über-rich people, all we need is a lawsuit. I had D.C. Weinberg call them personally in Switzerland, do his Colin Powell bit—august authority plus diplomacy. The mother thanked him for letting her know, like he was informing her about the weather, then she handed the phone off to the old man who did the same damn thing. Polite, unemotional, no questions, send the body when we’re finished with it. What a bunch of coldhearted fucks, guess that could depress you. You think that’s why she didn’t have sex, Doctor? Shaved her damn hair off—that was a good phrase, by the way, Sturgis. Self-abasement. I’m going to work that into a speech one day. You’re saying this mess was all the result of not enough Prozac, Doctor?”

  “I’m saying depression could’ve been her base state and she tried to give her life meaning by taking on a mission.”

  “Burning down that ridiculous heap of wood to avenge her sister, that whole tribal thing whatchamacallit ...”

  Milo said, “Sutma.”

  “Sounds like kama sutra,” said the chief. “Something out of a National Geographic special. Then again, we live in multicultural times, so far be it from me to disparage stupid primitive customs. Okay, she went on a mission, fucked up, offed herself out of shame. I’ll go with that. You see her for the turret murders?”

  “Can’t say for sure, sir, but my gut says no.”

  The chief ate more lettuce. “Anyone have a feel for whether Prince Teddy’s dead or alive?”

  Milo said, “No, sir.”

  “What’s your plan on the turret murders?”

  “No plan yet, sir.”

  “Then develop one and do it quickly. I’ve got a case I want you to deal with. Gang scum in Southwest Division sucking the federal tit—gang prevention grant. Which is like pedophiles getting paid to run a preschool. I’ve got reason to believe the money’s being used to buy heavy artillery.”

  “Southwest Division needs my help?”

  “I determine who needs what. You’ve got two weeks to close the turret murders before it goes in the fridge.” Manicured fingers lifted a quarter of sandwich. “Don’t like your steak?”

  “It’s great, sir.”

  “Then wolf it down the way you usually do. Couple of refreshing burps and you’re on your way to Van Nuys to check out that hangar.”

  “The Sranilese embassy granted permission?”

  “Forty-eight hours of ignoring our reasonable request, plus exigent danger? Fuck them, Sturgis. I grant permission.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Beautiful afternoon at Van Nuys Airport.

  No security lines, no delays or other indignities. This was the Mont Blanc of travel, all private, every happy sojourner owning or leasing one of the spotless white jets luxuriating on the tarmac.

  Quiet afternoon, a single craft ran its engines. Citation X as sleek as an Indy car. Porters hurried to fill the hold with a dolly-ful of Vuitton luggage as a well-fed, sunglassed family of four boarded. Thirtyish mother, fiftyish father, two kids under ten. Everyone in suede.

  The luxury terminal backing the runways was nestled in greenery. So were the three other luxury depots we’d passed. The hangars sat at the north end of the airport, monumental toy chests.

  The bomb squad was waiting at Hangar 13A when Milo and I arrived. Familiar faces from the search at Helga’s house and her workshop, all the tech toys in place, ready for a replay.

  New dog today, a beautifully groomed flat-coated retriever named Sinead who stood patiently at her handler’s side, emitting the confidence that comes from good looks and serious talent.

  Milo said, “Okay to pet her, Mitch?”

  The handler said, “Sure.”

  A big hand stroked the dog’s head. Sinead purred like a cat. “She’s a solo act?”

  Mitch said, “She’s the only one we can trust because she won’t get distracted by jet fuel and such.”

  “Good nose, huh?”

  “The best,” said Mitch. “We already did the outside perimeter. Clean. Let’s go inside.”

  Sinead was in and out within seconds. The bomb squad followed up with a detailed search, declared the hangar safe, motioned us in.

  The interior was smaller than the house on Borodi, but not by much, with twenty-foot ceilings, a carpeted floor, and cedar paneling. At the center sat a navy-blue Gulfstream 5. Numbers on the tail conformed to Sranil’s international designation. One of three planes registered to the island, all belonging to the royal family. A gold-painted crest on the door showcased the Sranilese flag: palm fronds, a crown, three stars in a single horizontal row.

  Behind the jet were stacks of wooden crates piled ten feet high. Milo had officers lower a few to the ground, began prying them open.

  Mikimoto pearls in the first. Thousands of them in velvet-lined boxes. The next three contained plastic-wrapped fur coats with an emphasis on sable. Crate number four was devoted to a four-foot-wide Tiffany chandelier: hollyhocks in a riot of color and luminosity.

  Five and six: gold ingots. Onward to platinum jewelry. Tapestries. Paintings, mostly of the sweet-domestic-scene variety. Old Master etchings, more gold, bags of loose-cut diamonds.

  One of the cops said, “We get a finder’s fee?”

  Milo put down his crowbar, walked to the opposite end of the hangar where, blocked by the jet’s mammoth body, a fleet of cars sat under navy-blue covers. Same royal insignia on each.

  Removing the cloths revealed a red Ferrari Enzo, a black Bugatti Veyron, a lime-green Lamborghini convertible, a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine. Behind the limo, a white Prius.

  “Oh, man,” said the same cop. “I shoulda been born in Saudi Arabia.”

  “Sranil,” said another.

  “Whatever, dude. This level of bling, call me Hussein and circumcise me with a dull knife and no anesthesia.”

  “The first time didn’t hurt enough?” said his buddy.

  Another officer said, “Heard they didn’t leave much to work with.”

  “You heard wrong, dude. Ask your wife.”

  Laughter.

  The first cop said, “What’s with the hybrid, looks like a zit on the Roller’s butt.”

  “Probably got a solid-gold engine block, dude. Or maybe some serious tuning—can I pop the hood, Loo?”

  Milo held up a restraining palm. Circled the cars, gloved up. Smoked windows on each vehicle, but unlocked doors. He opened the Prius’s driver’s door and stopped.

  We rushed over.

  A cop said, “Oh, Jesus, that’s rank.”

  Two skeletons took up the rear of the hybrid, huddled, embracing, a duet of interlocking bones. To my eyes, not a staged pose; the natural instinct to draw together when faced with the worst news of all.

  Milo aimed his flashlight on the bones and I peered around his bulk. Cottony blond tufts fuzzed the smaller skull, darker strands greased the other.

  Femurs and tibias pressed together, fingers entwined.

  Eternal lovers.

  Milo said, “Two bullet holes in each skull, forehead and under the nose.”

  “Execution,” said the cop who’d asked for a look under the hood. “And they made ’em watch.”

  Milo continued to work his flashlight. “There’s some skin, mostly at the lower extremities, looks leathery.”

  “Mummification,” said another cop. “This place is humidity-and temperature-controlled, probably slowed the decomp but didn’t block it.”

  “Whoa, dude, someone’s been watching Forensic Files.”

  “Loo, how long do you think they’ve been there?”

  Milo said, “We’ll wait for the coroner on that but my guess is a couple of years.”

  “Makes sense, Loo. Security guy didn’t remember seeing anyone here and he’s been on the job eighteen months. As opposed to the next one over, that’s Larry Stonefield’s little Porsche garage, Larry likes to drive a different car every day, his crew’s in and out all the time.”

  “Fifteen? Gimme one, dude, I’m happy.”

&
nbsp; “Gimme one of those boxes, my girlfriend would kill for a millionth of what’s inside.”

  “Good choice of words, dude.”

  Milo aimed his flashlight at the skeleton’s feet, poked his head in deeper, emerged. “All sorts of crust and stains on the carpet. If they weren’t done in the car, they were done nearby. Okay, let’s get this place roped off.”

  Mitochondrial DNA comparison of bone marrow from the blond skeleton and Helga Gemein’s corpse confirmed that Dahlia Gemein had never made it to Sranil.