Survival of the Fittest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  He stared at me. “Checking you out? He was in on it, too? Instead of helping Dahl, he somehow drove the asshole to eat chrome?”

  “Who better than Dahl's therapist, Milo? And as police consultant, working downtown, he's someone Wes Baker may have known. Someone to whom Baker could have referred Nolan.”

  “Oh, my,” he said. “Oh my, oh my. . . . How far does it go?”

  He looked at his Timex. “Where the hell is Sharavi? Haven't heard from him since he and Petra tagged Sanger to the Beverly Hills Hotel. She got Sanger's room number, went home, and Sharavi did a solo tail.”

  Pulling out his cell phone, he punched.

  “The mobile customer is out. . . . Okay, let's lay out this blood-club scenario again: A bunch of Meta assholes get together, decide to play a different kind of game. How many members do you see in the club?”

  “There couldn't be too many,” I said. “Too dangerous sharing a secret like that with a crowd.”

  Without opening his mouth, he produced a frightening zoo-cage sound. “Okay, so Baker takes charge— he assigns Tenney to do Raymond Ortiz?”

  “Maybe not specifically Raymond, just some kid at the park. A kid Tenney judged defective. Or maybe Tenney volunteered to go first and suggested Raymond because he'd seen Raymond, knew he was retarded. We know Tenney was bucking authority on the job, had been reprimanded. What better way to thumb his nose at the job than to use the job to commit murder?”

  “Man with a uniform,” he said, staring at Tenney's photo.

  “Average-looking man in a uniform,” I said. “Race discrimination goes both ways and this time it played in Tenney's favor: To the homeboys at the park, Tenney was just another faceless Anglo.”

  He rubbed his face. “No body, because Tenney wanted to be careful not to leave physical evidence. Then after he and Baker and the others saw no progress had been made, they left the bloody shoes on the steps of the police station.”

  “Blood they brushed in after they wrote DVLL,” I said. “So they'd planned it. Maybe Tenney's idea, probably Baker's. Not as clean a murder as Irit's because unlike Baker and Nolan, Tenney never fancied himself a centurion with ideals. Just an angry, hate-filled guy with a supposedly high IQ who couldn't get a better job than sweeping up dog dirt and hated the world because of it. Also, because Raymond was a boy, Tenney might not have seen the killing as a sex crime, felt no need to desexualize it. He snatched Raymond in the bathroom, got him to the van and incapacitated him or murdered him right there, drove somewhere, disposed of the body. Then he quit his job, disappeared.”

  “Living at Zena's.”

  “Not all this time,” I said. “Maybe he lived out of the van, maybe he crashed with other members of the club. And he won't be at Zena's for long. She said no more guests by tomorrow night. I got the sense some kind of movement's afoot.”

  “Another killing?”

  “Could be. What districts haven't been hit?”

  “Half the city,” he said, “and the whole goddamn Valley. I could talk to Carmeli again about releasing that gag order— on the other hand, all we've got is supposition, not a shred of evidence, and if we alert Baker, anything he might have held on to will be destroyed, not a chance of ever getting to the truth— goddamn it, Alex, it's like having a map but no car— okay, onward. Irit. Baker and Dahl— they just happen to stake out the park, because they know kids go there?”

  “Handicapped kids,” I said. “After Tenney got away with Raymond, I can see the group going for another retarded kid in a park. But there's a big difference between Raymond's and Irit's murders. Tenney worked in that park, was familiar with the layout. Raymond was a local kid, his class was using the park daily while the school was being painted, so Tenney had plenty of time to study him. Maybe he'd even had a run-in with Raymond. Or one of Raymond's gang-banger brothers.”

  I motioned him to the door, led him out of the apartment, to the front steps.

  “What?” he said.

  “Just in case you don't want Carmeli to hear this,” I said. “The conservancy wasn't part of Baker and Dahl's patrol area. And Irit's school only visited once a year. So why was Irit selected as victim? Baker's into control. Manipulative, a planner. He took the time to manipulate the daily log for weeks, so I can't believe he'd choose a victim randomly. What made Irit right for him? Could it have been something to do with work after all?”

  “Carmeli?”

  “We've both felt he's been hostile to the police from the beginning, Milo. Made remarks about police incompetence the first time we met him. I assumed he meant the lack of progress on Irit's murder but maybe it was something else. An unpleasant experience he had with LAPD before Irit's murder.”

  “A run-in with Baker?” he said. “Something bad enough to cause Baker to murder the guy's daughter?”

  “Ideologically and psychologically, Baker was already there,” I said. “He wouldn't need a big push, just a nudge. If Carmeli got on his bad side— something a mere mortal might have shrugged off— that could have been it. Both of us suspect Carmeli's Mossad or something like it. More than just the deputy consul for community liaison, but that's the face he presents to the public. Events organizer— the big Israeli Independence Day parade he ran last spring. LAPD would have had to be involved, for crowd management. Wouldn't it be interesting if Baker was part of the police contingent?”

  We went back inside. The phone was ringing. I picked it up.

  “It's Daniel. I'm down the block. May I join you?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “I've got a key. I'll let myself in.”

  52

  He wore his electrician's uniform under a windbreaker and carried a small black backpack. His expression was one I hadn't seen before. Guarded. Tense. “How was the party?”

  Before I could answer, Milo motioned him to a chair. “What's with Sanger?”

  “He never went to the party. I followed him from the hotel, downtown, to a building on Seventh Street near Flower, where he met with a psychologist.”

  “Roone Lehmann,” I said. The guarded look dropped off. I told him about Nolan and Baker, my meeting with Lehmann. My suspicion about Lehmann.

  He sat there, eyes half-closed, both hands on his knees.

  “Lehmann is confirmed,” he finally said. “I got into his building, used a parabolic mike to listen to his conversation with Sanger. My station was a service closet. The mike's a small one, reception wasn't great. If I'd had a surveillance post in a neighboring building, I'd have chosen something more powerful. But I did manage to get most of it.”

  “On tape?” said Milo.

  Daniel took a microcassette out of the backpack. Milo held out his hand and Daniel gave it to him.

  “As I said, the quality's poor, sometimes words are hard to understand, but the general meaning's clear. Want me to summarize?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sanger and Lehmann are related— cousins. First they talked about aunts and uncles, children, a family party last Christmas in Connecticut. Lehmann's a bachelor and Sanger asked if he was getting laid. Lehmann said wouldn't you like to know and laughed. Then Sanger laughed, too.”

  “There's a family resemblance,” I said. “Both are big, thick, have flat features and baggy eyes. Both are probably related to the Loomis family— you said cousins ran the company now.”

  “The names we got weren't Lehmann or Sanger but you may be right. . . . Yes, there is a resemblance, now that you point it out.”

  “Something else,” I said. “The Loomises pride themselves on links to colonial England. When I was in Lehmann's office he made a big deal about a piece of silver on his desk that had sat in British Parliament.”

  “Noble blood,” said Milo. “These two jokers do anything besides reminisce?”

  Daniel said, “There was nothing about Meta or the murders or DVLL, I'm afraid, though there was plenty of racism. Lehmann said, “How's the hotel?' Sanger said, “Not bad, considering it's owned by a towel-head.' “Does that
mean no hundred-thousand-dollar bar mitzvahs?' That kind of thing. Then they left the office and went down to a private club on the floor below. I couldn't figure out a way to get in there. Even if I had, all the cross-conversation would have made the mike useless. So instead, I entered Lehmann's office, because Sanger had brought a briefcase but didn't take it with him. I found it on a chair in Lehmann's inner office. We were guessing Sanger was a bagman for Meta, so I expected to find it full of money, but just the opposite: completely empty. In Lehmann's desk, however, I did come across a bag of cash. Two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Right process, wrong route,” said Milo. “The funds flow from west to east. Lehmann's the bagman.”

  “Looks that way,” said Daniel. “They stayed in the club for an hour, came back smoking cigars and looking happy. They talked some more in the office, still no mention of Meta by name but Lehmann did say he was disappointed in “the group.' It had deteriorated into a social club, he hoped New developed into something.”

  “ “New'?” said Milo. “Not “something new'?”

  “No, New, one word. The name of something.” Daniel pointed to the cassette. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “Later— New— so there's your subgroup.”

  “Maybe it's spelled N-U,” I said. “As in New Utopia. In his article, Sanger called for that.”

  They looked at each other.

  “What else did they talk about?” Milo asked Daniel.

  “Lehmann said, “Here's a little something from the family, it should tide you over for a while,' and they laughed some more. I heard a latch being closed— the briefcase— and a few minutes later, Sanger came out with it and left the building. I don't know what Lehmann did because I figured staying with Sanger made more sense. He drove straight back to the hotel and retired for the evening. I tried to call his room and the switchboard said he'd left instructions not to be disturbed. Just to be careful, I stuck around for another hour and figured he really had gone to sleep. Then I called again, impersonating his rental-car agent, and verified he'd be checking out tomorrow. I'll be watching him to make sure and then we'll have our New York people pick up his trail. We'll stay on him tighter, now. Helga Cranepool, too.”

  “One big happy family,” said Milo. “So how'd Baker get connected?”

  “Probably through LAPD,” I said. “Lehmann consults to the department. That also could explain Zena's involvement. She was a police scout in Lancaster. Maybe she applied to LAPD, too, somehow ran into Baker and he gave her a private training course. Maybe Nolan Dahl wasn't the only one into young girls.”

  Milo shot up and circled the room and lit up a cigarillo.

  “What bothered me,” said Daniel, “was that Lehmann's name never came up in our investigations. We were concentrating on New York and the South, because of the Loomises' origins in Louisiana and Professor Eustace's sudden death in Mississippi. But I couldn't stop thinking that I'd heard the name before. As it turns out, I had.”

  He turned to me. “Do you have your copy of Twisted Science here?”

  I nodded, retrieved the book from under the bed.

  Turning pages, he said, “Right in Professor Eustace's article. One of the papers he cites as Loomis-funded nonsense was written by Lehmann ten years ago in a journal called Biogenics and Culture.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Neither has the Library of Congress. Here's Eustace's summary.”

  I read. “Intelligence, crime, and weather?”

  “To me it's crazy stuff, Alex. Lehmann's main point is people from hot climates are inherently stupider and more “dissolute' than those from Nordic regions because they have less need to build shelters from harsh weather, don't develop a sophisticated culture. In cold-weather regions, only smart and creative people are able to cope and propagate.”

  “Survival of the fittest,” I said.

  “Lehmann also claims that hot weather creates ill temper that leads to violence. Thus the expression hot blood.”

  He flexed the fingers of his good hand.

  “Eustace uncovers this,” said Milo, “and a few months later his car goes off the road.”

  “Something else about Lehmann,” I said. “His degree's from a place called New Dominion University. That's one of the Loomis diploma mills, isn't it?”

  “Yes,” said Daniel.

  “And his clinical training was at the Pathfinder Foundation. The same name as the Meta newsletter that carried Sanger's article. Lehmann told me he'd had a career in business before switching to psychology. Most of the books in his office were on management, not clinical psych. He even recited a business motto—“It's not enough that I succeed. You have to fail.' The guy's a Loomis put-up and he's wangled himself a position as a police consultant.”

  Milo stopped pacing but kept smoking.

  “Not a banner day for gendarmes,” he said. “Speaking of which, Daniel, what does Carmeli have against the department?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Milo came closer and stood over him. “This is not the time to be coy, friend. Your boss made it clear there's no love lost between him and LAPD. Did he have a run-in with someone? The parade? Something else?”

  Daniel rubbed his eyes, removed his windbreaker. The black plastic gun sat in the mesh holster. “It was related to the parade. A security briefing at the consulate, run by Zev for LAPD and our people. Setting up perimeters, crowd control, security, both groups had agreed to share any information about terrorist threats, maintain full communication. Zev had been working overtime, hadn't seen his family much, so he decided to have Liora and the children over to the consulate. That day they were waiting out in the hallway for him to take the family to lunch. Zev ran overtime and as they waited, one of the LAPD officers came over to Liora and Irit— Oded was down the hall playing with a toy car— and sat down next to them. At first he was friendly, trying to talk to Irit, then he realized she was deaf and he concentrated on Liora. Asking her about Israel, Tel Aviv, telling her he'd traveled all over the world.”

  “Got to be Baker,” said Milo.

  “I'm sure you're right,” said Daniel, very grim. “Liora told Zev the man made her feel uncomfortable. Too friendly, just sitting there when he should have been in the briefing. But she said nothing. That's Liora's style. Then, somehow, the officer turned it into something inappropriate. Sexually.”

  “He came on to her?”

  “Not explicitly, Milo. But Liora said the connotation was clear. At that point, she got up and walked away. Later, she told Zev and he went— how do you say— ballistic. Complained to the mayor and was told the officer would be removed from parade detail and disciplined.”

  “Moved downtown. But he wasn't demoted,” I said. “Still, maybe that's why for all his alleged brainpower he's still a sergeant.”

  “Baker,” said Milo, punching his fist. “That son of a whore— so he knew Irit by sight. Knew she was deaf.”

  Daniel looked pained. “But to kill someone— a child— over that—”

  “Think of it as a tracer bullet,” said Milo. “After the Ortiz boy's murder went off perfectly, Baker and the other New Utopia assholes decided someone else was gonna die, it didn't really matter who, as long as it was someone they judged to be a life not worth living. Alex told me before that despite all the eugenics bullshit, this boils down to killing for fun. What greater fun for Baker than revenge? Mrs. C. rejects him, Mr. C. gets him disciplined, and their daughter just happens to be handicapped. It must have seemed like karma to the bastard. When I knew him, he was into Eastern religions, talked a lot about karma.”

  Daniel slumped, stared past us, into the kitchen.

  “What?” said Milo.

  “It's . . . disgusting. All of it's disgusting.”

  “Each murder has a connection to someone in the group,” I said. “Ponsico and Zena, Raymond and Tenney, Irit and Baker. Nolan Dahl helped with Irit— Baker training him in all sorts of things. And I'll bet Latvinia was one of Dahl's play
mates. Maybe Baker's, too. To them, a dark-skinned girl with handicaps was something to be used and thrown away. Baker could have killed her for fun, or because she knew about him and Nolan. Or both. Probably both.”

  “And Melvin Myers?” said Daniel.

  “He got on the wrong side of someone in the group,” I said. “Someone downtown. Baker or Lehmann?”

  Looking into the backpack, Daniel removed a handful of papers and took out a color brochure. I examined it with him.