Flesh and Blood

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Was it a five-day-a-week job?” said Milo.

  “No, it was irregular. Sometimes she'd work every day of the week, then she'd have days off. But I really wasn't paying attention to her schedule. Half the time she was up and around, I was sleeping.”

  “What else did she tell you about the job?”

  “Just that she enjoyed it.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did she mention who she worked for? What the project was?”

  “No, just that she enjoyed it. I'm sure you can find out at the U.”

  “That's the problem, Andy,” said Milo. “We can't seem to find any trace of her working at the U.”

  Salander's mouth dropped open. “How can that be? I'm sure it's some mistake— she definitely told me it was on campus. That I do remember.”

  “Well,” said Milo.

  “Why would she make up something like that?”

  “Good question, Andy.”

  “My . . . You think the job had something to do with . . .”

  “I'm not saying anything, Andy. But when people don't tell the truth . . .”

  “Oh, Lauren,” said Salander. He put his back to the wall of the building, cupped his hand over his eyes. “Oh, my.”

  “What is it?” said Milo.

  “I'm all alone now.”

  * * *

  During the drive to Hauser and Sixth, Milo ran Salander's name through the files. One traffic ticket last year, no wants or warrants, no criminal record. Milo closed his eyes, and I realized how numb I felt— deadened and tired and marginal. We cruised the rest of the way in silence, gliding through city streets stripped of light and humanity.

  Two squad cars and a crime-scene van were parked outside Lauren's building. A uniform guarded the entrance. Another was stationed upstairs. Someone had opened the door to apartment 4. Inside the living room a young black woman kneeled and dusted and scraped.

  “Loretta,” said Milo.

  “Morning, Milo.”

  “Yeah, guess it is. Anything?”

  “Lots of prints, as usual. So far, no blood, and the only semen's on the roommate's sheets. Nothing looks disturbed.”

  “The roommate,” said Milo.

  “Did both bedrooms,” said the tech. “Was that okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Nothing's perfect,” said Loretta. “Not even me.”

  * * *

  We entered Salander's room first. Midnight blue velvet walls and shabby-looking tapestry drapes turned the stingy space gloomy. A black iron queen-sized bed canopied by billows of what looked like cheesecloth took up most of the floor. A fake Persian rug left only a foot-wide border of scuffed board. Lining the ceiling were more of the gilded moldings I'd seen in the living room. A small TV and VCR perched atop a pale blue bureau decoupaged with pink cabbage roses. Replicas of Russian icons and filigreed crucifixes hung on the wall along with a white-framed photo of Salander and a stolid-looking couple in their fifties. At the bottom of the frame, someone had written in black marker: “Mom and Dad, Bloomington, Ind. ‘The Olde Country.'”

  In the top drawer of the bureau, Milo found neatly folded clothing, tissues and eyedrops, a box of disposable contact lenses, six packets of condoms, and a passbook from Washington Mutual Bank.

  “Four hundred bucks,” he said, flipping pages. “Little Andy's highest balance for the year is fifteen hundred.” He ran through the book several times. “Every two weeks he deposits nine hundred— gotta be his take-home. On the fifteenth, he withdraws six hundred— the rent— spends around eight or so. Leaving a hundred or so in savings, but it looks like he eventually spends that too.”

  “Tight budget,” I said. “He will have trouble making the rent by himself.”

  He frowned and replaced the bankbook. “Giving him a legit reason to cut out.”

  “You're worried about him? I noticed you did ask him about time and place.”

  “No specific reason to worry,” he said. “But no reason not to either. He's the last person to see her alive, and that's always interesting.”

  Opening the closet door, he ran his hands over pressed jeans and khakis, two pairs of black slacks, several blue button-down shirts like the one Salander wore at the bar, a black leather jacket. Black oxfords, brown loafers, Nikes, and one pair of tan demiboots on the floor. Nothing on the top shelf. Plenty of empty space.

  “Okay,” said Milo. “On to the main event.”

  * * *

  Lauren's room was larger than Salander's by half. Bare oak floors, walls painted the palest of yellows, and a low, narrow single bed with no headboard increased the feeling of space. Her dresser was a white, three-drawer affair. Flanking it on each side were low teak bookcases with the slightly askew stance of self-assembly. Hardback books filled every shelf.

  Next to the bed was a matching teak desk with a built-in file drawer. Milo began there, and it didn't take long to find what he was looking for.

  “Smith Barney brokerage account. Out of town— Seattle.”

  “Wanting things private?” I said. Thinking: Lauren had thrived on secrets. Kept everything segmented.

  He turned pages, ran his finger down columns. “She kept some loose cash in a money market, the rest is in high-yield mutual funds. . . . Well, well, well, look at this: quite a different league from little Andy. She's put away three hundred forty thousand dollars and some change in . . . a little over four years. . . . First deposit is a hundred grand, four years ago, December. . . . Then fifty a year for the next three— last one was three weeks ago. Nice and steady— wonder where it came from.”

  I do great with tips.

  He opened another drawer. “Let's see if she keeps her tax returns here. Be interesting to know how she categorized her employment.”

  He found a paper-clipped stack of Visa Gold receipts that he examined as I looked over his shoulder.

  Six months’ worth of records. Lauren had charged only a handful of purchases each month: supermarkets and gas stations, the campus bookstore at the U. And bills from Neiman-Marcus and several designer boutiques that amounted to 90 percent of her expenditures.

  Dressing for the job . . .

  No motel or hotel charges. That made sense if she'd paid cash to avoid leaving a trail. Or if someone else had paid for her time and lodgings.

  The bottom dresser drawer yielded another stapled sheaf. “Here we go,” he said, “tucked in with the cashmere sweaters. Four years of short forms . . . Looks like she prepared them herself. Nothing before that— everything started when she was twenty-one.”

  He scanned the IRS paper. “She called herself a ‘self-employed photographic model and student,’ took deductions for car expenses, books, and clothing. . . . That's about it. . . . No student loans, no medical writeoffs . . . no mention of any research gig either. . . . Every year for the past four, she reported fifty thousand gross, deducted it down to thirty-four net.”

  “Fifty thousand a year coming in,” I said, “and she manages to invest every penny?”

  “Yeah— cute, isn't it.” He moved to the closet, opened a door on a tightly stacked assortment of silk dresses and blouses, pantsuits in a wide array of colors, leather and suede jackets. Two fur coats, one short and silver, the other full-length and black. Thirty or so pairs of shoes.

  “Versace,” he said, squinting at a label. “Vestimenta, Dries Van Noten, Moschino—‘arctic silver fox’ from Neiman . . . and this black thing is . . .” He peeled back the long coat's lapel. “Real mink. From Mouton on Beverly Drive— hand me back those Visa receipts. . . . The average is a grand or so a month on threads— that's less than one of these suits, so she had to be spending more, had cash she didn't declare.”

  He closed the closet door. “Okay, add tax evasion to her hobby list. . . . Over three hundred grand saved up by age twenty-five. Like Momma said, she took care of herself.”

  “That first hundred plus the three fifty-thousand deposits is two fifty,” I said. “Wher
e'd the rest come from, stock appreciation?”

  He returned to the brokerage papers, trailed his finger to a bottom line. “Yup, ninety thou five hundred and two worth of ‘long-term capital appreciation.’ Looks like our girl played the skin game and rode the bull market.”

  “That would explain the lie about having a job at the U,” I said, feeling a sad, insistent gnawing in my gut. “When she was arrested in Reno at nineteen, she called her father for bail money, claimed she was broke. Two years later, she deposited a hundred thousand.”

  “Working hard,” he said. “The American way. She didn't call Mom because Mom was poor.”

  “That and she might've cared enough about Jane to keep secrets.” I took the brokerage packet from him, stared at zeros. “The first hundred was probably money she saved up. When she turned twenty-one, she decided to invest. I wonder if it came from multiple clients or just a few high rollers.”

  “What makes you wonder?”

  “A long-term client could be the reason she didn't take her own car on Sunday. Someone sent one for her.”

  “Interesting,” Milo said. “When the sun comes up, I'll check with taxi companies and livery services. Gonna also have to canvass the neighborhood, see if anyone saw her getting into a car. If she was hooking up with some pooh-bah who wanted it hush-hush, he wouldn't have had her wait right in front of her apartment. But maybe she didn't walk too far.” He whipped out his pad, scrawled furiously.

  “Something else,” I said. “Being in a cash business— wanting cash handy for expenditures— she could've been carrying a lot of money in her purse.”

  He looked up. “A high-stakes mugging?”

  “It's possible, isn't it?”

  “I suppose. . . . In any event, the money stink has now grown putrid.” He placed the tax returns atop the desk. Nothing but papers on the desk. That made me wonder about something else.

  “Where's her computer?” I said.

  “Who said she had one?”

  “She was a student. Every college kid has a computer, and Lauren was an A student.”

  He gave the dresser drawers another shuffle, found a pocket calculator, grunted disgustedly. Returning to the closet, he searched the corners and the shelves. “Nada. So maybe she was storing data someone wanted. As in trick book. As in a pooh-bah with a good reason to value his privacy.”

  “Trick database,” I said. “She was a modern girl.”

  He frowned. “I'll ask Salander if he ever saw a computer. And I just thought of something else that should be here but isn't. Birth control. No pills or diaphragm in her drawers.”

  “No medical charges on her Visa either. So she either paid her doctor in cash or used the Student Health Service.”

  “Call girls get checked up regularly,” he said. “High-priced entertainment would have to be especially careful. She had to be using some kind of protection, Alex— Let me check the bathroom again. Why don't you take a look at her books meanwhile, see if anything pops out.”

  * * *

  Starting at the top of the left-hand case, I traced two and a half years of required reading.

  Basic math, algebra, geometry, basic science, biology, chemistry.

  Economics, political science, history, the type of fiction favored by English professors. Sections underlined in pink marker. Used stickers from the bookstore at Santa Monica College.

  The neighboring case was all sociology and psychology— dog-eared textbooks and collections of journals stored in transparent plastic boxes. The volumes on the top shelf matched Lauren's classes last quarter. More pink underlining, Used stickers from the U bookstore— the charges I'd just seen on her Visa. Fifty grand a year but she watched her pennies.

  Turning to the journals, I opened the first plastic box and found a collection of thirty-year-old issues of Developmental Psychology, each bearing the faded stamp of a Salvation Army thrift shop on Western Avenue and a ten-cent price tag. No receipt, no date of sale.

  The rest of the magazines were of similar vintage and origin: American Cancer Society thrift, Hadassah, City of Hope. In a copy of Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being, I found a Goodwill receipt dated six years ago. A few scraps from the same time span turned up in other volumes.

  Six years ago.

  Lauren had begun her self-education at nineteen, nearly four years before she'd enrolled in junior college.

  Intellectually curious. Ambitious. Straight A's. None of that had stopped her from selling her body for a living. Then again, why should it? Knowledge can be power in all kinds of ways.

  I took a closer look at the material Lauren had acquired before she'd gone back to school. Most of it centered on human relations and personality theory. No underlined sections; back then, she'd approached her books with the awe of a novice.

  I shook each volume, found no loose papers.

  Back to the required texts on the top shelf. Nothing illuminating or profound in the pink passages, just another student hypothesizing about what might appear on the final exam.

  I was just about to quit when something in the margin of her learning theory book caught my eye. A neatly printed legend that matched the lettering I'd seen on her school papers.

  INTIM. PROJ. 714 555 3342 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 714 555 3342 end_of_the_skype_highlightingDr. D.

  That flipped a switch: the “human intimacy” study that had run in the Cub three weeks before Shawna Yeager's disappearance. Disconnected Orange County number— the Newport Beach pizza parlor. Same area code, but this number was different.

  There was no evidence Shawna had even seen the ad, let alone checked it out, but she had been a psychobiology major . . . living off savings.

  Intim. proj.

  Right up Lauren's alley? What she considered a “research job”?

  But Lauren hadn't needed the money.

  Maybe she'd been greedy. Or something else had attracted her to the ad.

  Something personal, as Gene Dalby had suggested.

  Intimacy. A beautiful young woman who faked intimacy for cash.

  Dr. D.

  As in Dalby? No, Gene claimed to barely remember her, and I had no reason to doubt him. And his research was on politics, not intimacy.

  Another of her teachers’ names began with a D— de Maartens. The psychology of perception. Lots of D's.

  Who was I kidding— I knew whose initial she'd jotted.

  You were a great influence on her, Doctor.

  The last time I'd seen her, she'd paid for the privilege of unloading her anger— not unlike the pattern she'd adopted with her father.

  Years later she'd thought of me, made the notation.

  Intimacy . . .

  Wanting something from me? Never building up the courage to ask?

  I thought of that last, angry meeting, Lauren flashing the wad of bills, unleashing the acid of recrimination. I'd always felt she'd been after more than that.

  But what had been her goal when she'd picked up the phone and dialed my service?

  What had I not given her?

  12

  MILO CAME BACK shaking his head. “Nothing— maybe she kept her pills in her purse.”

  I said, “Here's something,” showed him the inscription, told him about the ad that had run before Shawna Yeager's disappearance.

  “Ads probably run all the time.”

  “Not really,” I said. “From what I saw, they tend to come and go.”

  “Did you find any ads before Lauren went missing?”

  “No, but she could've seen it elsewhere.” It sounded feeble, and both of us knew it. He was enough of a friend not to dismiss me, but his silence was eloquent.

  “I know,” I said. “Two girls, a year apart, no striking links. But maybe there were other girls in between.”

  “Blondes disappearing on the Westside? I'd know if there were. At this point I'm not eliminating anything, but I've got a full plate right now: get hold of Lauren's phone records, find out if she had a computer, look for possible
witnesses to a pickup. Maybe find some known associates too. There's got to be someone other than Salander and her mom who knew her. If all that dead-ends, I'll take a closer look at Shawna.” He returned the textbook to me. “‘Dr. D.' You're sure that's you?”

  “Theoretically it could be one of her professors— Gene Dalby or another one named de Maartens. Neither of them remembers her. Big lecture classes.”

  “Well,” he said, “I can't exactly interrogate them because of this— hell if it means anything at all. The main thing's still the money. Her job and the way she was killed— cold, professional, the body left out there, maybe as a warning— smacks to me of her getting in someone's way. That's why I'm not jumping on the Yeager girl's case— Leo Riley felt that one was sexual. If Lauren deposited fifty a year, who knows how much she was taking in. And that makes me wonder if some of her income came from supplemental sources. Like blackmail. Who better than a call girl to hoard nasty secrets and try to profit from them.”