Billy Straight: A Novel (Petra Connor)

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Her dad had once told her it was a lie that only people murdered. Chimpanzees and other primates did, sometimes just to dominate, sometimes for no apparent reason. So was bloody homicide aberrant behavior or just basic primate impulse taken to an extreme?

  Pointless, time-filling conjecture. Head-game horseshit, her brother Bruce used to call it. Though not the oldest of the Connor boys, he was the biggest, the strongest, the most aggressive. Now an electronics engineer for NASA in Florida, he thought anything that couldn’t be measured with a machine was voodoo.

  When she’d finally confessed her new police status to the family, Dick, Eric, and Glenn had been stunned, muttering congratulations and telling her to be careful. Bruce had said, “Cool. Go out and kill some bad guys for me.”

  The cop with the shepherd came out in front of a boulder pile and said, “You’d better take a look at this.”

  Nature had arranged the rocks in a tight U, like a backless cave. The boulders were high—seven or eight feet tall—and there were cracks where the rocks pressed up against each other, invisible from below, but Petra could look between them and see the parking lot clearly.

  Perfect vantage point for an observer.

  And there’d been someone there observing. Recently.

  The floor of the U was a soft bed of leaves. Petra was no forest ranger, but even she could see the body-shaped compression. Nearby was a piece of wrinkled yellow paper, darkening to brown translucence where grease had saturated it.

  Food wrapper. Specks of something that looked like ground beef.

  The shepherd had sniffed out bits of shredded lettuce, barely wilted, amid some dry leaves a few inches from the paper.

  Petra sniffed the wrapper. Chili sauce. Last night’s taco dinner?

  Then the dog began nosing frantically at one corner of the U, and Stu summoned a tech over to check it out.

  “Probably body fluid,” said the shepherd’s handler. “He acts that way when he smells body fluid.”

  Alan Lau came over. Petra noticed he had nervous hands.

  A few minutes later, the field kit results: “Urine. On these leaves.”

  “Human?”

  “Human or ape,” said Lau.

  “Well,” said Stu, “unless some chimp got loose from the zoo and bought himself dinner, it’s probably safe to say Homo sapiens.”

  Lau frowned. “Probably. Anything else?”

  “Any other fluids?”

  “Like blood?”

  “Like anything, Alan.”

  Lau flinched. “Not so far.”

  “Check it out. Please.”

  Lau returned to swabbing, dusting, probing. Susan Rose was summoned back to take pictures of the rocks. Petra sketched them anyway, then drifted away.

  All that scientific work going on, but it was she who had the next find.

  Twenty feet above the rocks, where she’d gone to explore because there was nothing for her to do and the dogs had moved on.

  But they’d missed something, half concealed by leaves and pine needles. Flash of color beneath the green and brown.

  Red. At first she thought: More blood, uh-oh. Then she bent and saw what it was; looked around for Stu.

  He was back at the car, talking on his cell phone—the minuscule one his father the retired eye surgeon had given him for Christmas. Petra beckoned Lau. He sifted and found nothing around the red object, and Susan snapped away. They left, and Petra gloved up and picked it up.

  A book. Thick, heavy hardcover; rebound in red leatherette. Library call number on the spine.

  Our Presidents: The March of American History.

  She flipped it open. L.A. Public Library, Hillhurst branch, the Los Feliz district.

  Checkout card still in the pocket. Not much action on this one. Seven stamps in four years, the most recent nine months ago.

  Stolen? Deacquisitioned? She knew the library got rid of stock all the time, because back in her starving artist days she’d filled her bookshelves with some great rejects.

  She flipped pages. No deacquisition stamp, but that didn’t prove anything.

  Petra’s mental camera began snapping. Had some homeless guy with an interest in U.S. history found himself a nice little natural lean-to where he could read and eat a taco and take a leak in the great wide open, only to witness a murder?

  But no grease on the book, so maybe it had no connection to the person who sacked out behind the U-shaped rocks.

  Or maybe Mr. Taco was a neat eater.

  Even if the book was his, no big deal. There was nothing to say he’d been around precisely when Lisa Ramsey was being butchered.

  Except for the fact that the urine was fresh. Within twelve hours, according to Lau, and Dr. Leavitt had estimated the murder at between midnight and 4 A.M.

  A witness, or the murderer himself? The Fiend from the Hills hiding behind the rocks, waiting for the perfect victim.

  Susan Rose had made the logical assumption that wife-beater Ramsey was the prime suspect, but other theories had to be considered.

  But what would have brought Lisa Boehlinger-Ramsey to Griffith Park at night? And where was her car? Jacked? Was robbery the motive, after all?

  Would someone this vicious need a motive?

  A nut crime? Then why had the money been taken? Why not the jewelry?

  Something didn’t mesh. She just couldn’t see a woman like Lisa coming alone to the park at that hour, all made up, wearing jewelry, that little black dress.

  It spelled date. Out for the evening and she’d detoured. Or had been detoured. Why? By whom? Something hush-hush?

  Buying drugs? There were lots of easier ways to score dope in L.A.

  A date with the murderer? Had he driven her here with intent?

  If Lisa had gone out on the town with a man, maybe someone had seen the two of them together.

  One thing was sure: If it was a date, the lucky guy hadn’t been some loner who read old library books and ate tacos and peed behind rocks.

  Crashing in the park, no indoor plumbing, spelled homeless.

  Modern-day caveman staking out his spot behind the rocks and marking it?

  A spot from which he had a vantage view of the murder scene.

  Or maybe he’d wet himself out of fear.

  Seeing it.

  Looking between those rocks and seeing it.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Almost there for sure now. The sun is out and I feel uncovered—like a target on a video game, something small that gets eaten.

  I can walk forever if I have to. All I’ve done in L.A. is walk.

  The bus let me off in a station full of people and echoes. Outside, the sky was a strange brownish gray and the air smelled bitter. I had no idea which way to go. In one direction were what looked like factories, power poles, trucks going back and forth. People seemed to be going the other way, so I followed them.

  So much noise, everyone staring straight ahead. Between each block were alleys full of garbage cans with weird-looking guys sitting against the wall. Some of them watched me pass with cold eyes. I walked three blocks before I realized I was being followed by one of them, a real crazy-looking guy with rags around his head.

  He saw me spot him and came at me faster. I ran and slid into the crowd, feeling the money in my shorts bouncing around but making sure not to touch it or look at it. Everyone was taller than me and I couldn’t see too far in front of me. I kept pushing through, saying, “Excuse me,” and finally, two blocks later, he gave up and turned around.

  My heart was going really fast and my mouth was dry. People kept piling onto the sidewalk, mostly Mexicans and a few Chinese. Some of the signs on restaurants were in Spanish and one huge movie theater with gold scrolls over the sign was playing something called Mi Vida, Mi Amor. A bunch of guys were selling fruit ices and churros and hot dogs from carts and now my mouth filled with spit. I started to wonder if I was dreaming or in some foreign country.

  I walked till I found a street where th
e buildings were cleaner and newer. The nicest-looking building was something called the College Club, with U.S. and California flags out in front and a pink-faced guy in a gray uniform and hat with his arms folded across his chest. As I walked by he looked down his nose, as if I’d farted or done something rude. Then a long black car pulled up to the curb and all of a sudden he was just a servant, hurrying to open the door and saying, “How are you today, sir?” to a white-haired guy in a blue suit.

  I made it to a little park that looked nice, with a fountain and some colorful statues, but when I got closer I saw that the benches were full of more weird guys. Right next door was a place called the Children’s Museum, but no kids were going in. I was tired and hungry and thirsty, didn’t want to spend any more of the Tampax money till I had a plan.

  I sat down on a corner of grass and tried to figure it out.

  I came to L.A. because it was the closest real city I knew, but the only neighborhoods I’d heard about were Anaheim, where Disneyland is, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Malibu. Anaheim was probably far, and what else was there besides Disneyland? I’d seen a TV show about Hollywood that said kids still came there looking for movie stars and got into trouble. Beverly Hills was full of rich people, and the way the guy in the gray uniform had looked at me told that wouldn’t be safe.

  That left Malibu, but that was the beach—nowhere to hide.

  Maybe something near Hollywood would be okay. I wasn’t like those other kids, thinking life was a movie. All I wanted was to be left alone, no one putting my dick in a wire cutter.

  I sat there for a long time, thinking I’d been crazy to leave. Where would I live? What would I eat; where would I sleep? The weather was good now, but what would happen in the winter?

  But too late to go back now. Mom would find out about the money and think of me as a thief. And Moron . . . My stomach started to hurt really bad. I started to think people were looking at me, but when I checked, no one was. My lips felt like sandpaper again. Even my eyes felt dry. It hurt to blink.

  I stood up, figuring I’d just walk. Then I saw two people coming through the park holding hands, a guy and a girl, maybe twenty or twenty-five, wearing jeans and long hair and looking pretty relaxed.

  I said, “Excuse me,” and smiled, asked them where Hollywood was—and Malibu, just to play it safe.

  “Malibu, huh,” said the guy. He had a fuzzy little beard and his hair was longer than the girl’s.

  “My parents are in there,” I said, pointing to the museum. “They took my little brother in, but I figured it was boring. They promised to take me to the beach and Hollywood if we can find it.”

  “Where’re you from?” said the girl.

  “Kinderhook, New York.” The first thing that spilled out.

  “Oh. Well, Hollyweird’s about five, six miles that way—west—and the beach is the same direction, another fifteen miles after that. Kinderhook, huh? That a small town?”

  “Uh-huh.” I had no idea. All I knew was it was Martin Van Buren’s birthplace.

  “You a farm boy?”

  “Not really, we live in a house.”

  “Oh.” She smiled again, even wider, and looked at the guy. He seemed bored. “Well, tell your parents Hollyweird is weird; all kinds of freaks. Be careful, you know? During the day if you’re with your parents it should be okay, but not at night. Right, Chuck?”

  “Yeah,” said Chuck, touching his little beard. “If you go, check out the Wax Museum on Hollywood Boulevard, little dude. It’s pretty cool. And the Chinese Theater, ever hear of that?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Where the movie stars put their hands and feet in the cement.”

  “Yeah,” said the guy, laughing. “And their minds in the gutter.”

  They laughed and walked on.

  The first bus I got on the driver said I needed exact change, so I had to get off and buy a lime snow-cone and get change. Which was fine, because it took care of my thirst and put a sweet taste in my mouth. Half an hour later, another bus came along and I was ready with the right coins, like someone who belonged.

  The bus made a lot of stops and there was so much traffic I could see the sky turning grayish-pink through the tinted bus windows by the time the driver called out, “Hollywood Boulevard.”

  It didn’t look that much different from where’d I’d just been: old buildings with cheap-looking stores and theaters. Same noise, too. Waves of noise that never stopped. Watson has its sounds—dogs barking, trucks rumbling over the highway, people yelling when they’re mad. But each noise is separate; you can make sense of things. Here in L.A., everything’s one big soup.

  At the trailer park, I could walk around at night, look in windows. I’ve even seen people doing sex—not just young people, old ones, too, with white hair and flabby skin, moving around under a blanket with their eyes closed and their mouths open, holding on to each other like they’re drowning. I knew places in the groves where it was always quiet.

  Hollywood didn’t look like a place where I could find quiet, but here I was.

  I walked up Hollywood Boulevard, looking out for the freaks Chuck had warned me about, not sure who they really were. I saw a big tall woman with huge hands that I realized was a man, and that sure qualified; teenagers with rooster hair and black lipstick; more drunks, some of them pushing shopping carts; black people, brown people, Chinese, whatever. The restaurants sold stuff I’d never heard of, like gyros and shwarma and oki-dogs. The stores sold clothing, costumes and masks, souvenirs, boomboxes, fancy underwear for girls.

  Lots of bars. One of them, called the Cave, had a row of Harleys parked in front and guys coming in and out, big and ugly, dressed like Moron. Seeing them made my stomach burn. I went past there really fast.

  I saw a hamburger stand that looked normal, but the guy inside was Chinese and he didn’t look up when I stood there. One hand kept frying meat, and his face was half hidden by smoke and steam.

  Two dollars forty-two cents for a burger. I couldn’t spend anything till I had a plan, but I did manage to take some ketchup packets lying out on the counter. I ducked behind a building, opened them, and sucked out the ketchup, then I kept walking to a street called Western Avenue and turned right, because I saw some mountains in the distance.

  To get to them I had to pass a porno theater with XXXXX’s all over the front and posters of blond women with big, open mouths, then some really dirty buildings with wood over the windows. I saw women in short shorts talking on pay phones and giving each other cigarettes and guys hanging nearby smoking. The mountains were pretty and by now the sun was behind them, with a yellow-orange glow shooting up and spreading on top, like a hat made of melted copper.

  A block later I had to cross the street because teenagers were laughing and pointing at me. I passed another alley. No weird drunks here, just lots of garbage Dumpsters and the back doors of stores and restaurants. A sweating fat guy wearing a stained white apron came out of a place called La Fiesta holding armfuls of bread wrapped in plastic. He threw them in a Dumpster and went back inside.

  I waited for him to come back, but he didn’t. Looked around to make sure still no one was watching and went over to the Dumpster. To get a look inside, I had to stand on a cardboard box that didn’t feel too strong and keep hitting flies away. Once I got up there, the smell was terrible. The bread sat on top of rotten-looking vegetables with brown edges, wet paper, scraps of meat and bones and hunks of uncooked white fat. Little white worms crawled all over the meat, which smelled worse than a dead dog. But the bread looked clean.

  Hot dog buns, still totally wrapped. Probably stale. When people go to restaurants they want everything superfresh. One time—the only time—Mom and Moron and I went to a restaurant, it was a Denny’s in Bolsa Chica and Moron sent his fried chicken back because he said it tasted like “warmed-over shit.” The waitress called the manager, who told Moron not to use that language. Moron stood up to show he was taller than the manager, with Mom holding on to his arm, saying, “Cowbo
y, c’mon, c’mon.” Finally, the manager agreed to give us our food to go for free if we left.

  I reached in and grabbed two packages of buns, almost falling into the Dumpster and getting some crud on my T-shirt.

  But I had the buns, and they were clean. After looking around some more, I walked a ways into the alley, found a dark spot between two other Dumpsters, tore open the first package, bit into a bun.

  Stale, all right, but my chewing mushed it up and by the third mouthful it started to taste sweet. Then the smell of the Dumpster came back to me and I started to gag.

  I got up, walked around, took deep breaths, and told myself it was my imagination; pretend these were homemade buns right out of the oven, baked by some TV commercial mom with a wide-awake smile and a strong interest in nutrition.

  It worked a little. The rest of the bun didn’t taste great, but I got it down. Back to the mountains.

  As I climbed, the road got steeper and I started to pass houses. Mowed lawns, and all sorts of trees and plants and flowers, but no people I could see, not a one. Now, after four months in L.A., I’m used to that. People here like to stay inside, especially at night, and anyone out there after dark is probably prowling for something.

  At the top, Western curved and turned into another street called Los Feliz and these houses were huge, behind high walls with fancy metal gates and surrounded by pine trees and palms. This must have been what Hollywood was like when the movie stars lived here.

  The mountains were still far away, but in front of them was a big stretch of clean green grass, a few people lying on blankets, some of them sleeping, even with all the traffic noise. Behind the grass, tons of trees.

  A park.

  I waited for traffic to slow down and ran across the street.

  GRIFFITH PARK, the sign said.

  The only park in Watson is a dry little square in the center of town with one bench, an old cannon, and a brass sign saying it’s dedicated to men who’ve died in wars. This was different. Humongous. You could get lost in here.