Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 17 - A Cold Heart

by A Cold Heart(Lit)

  'Would it be fair to call him a mediocre student?'

  Shull laughed very softly. 'Okay, let's go with that.'

  'Was there a change in his grade pattern over time?'

  Shull hesitated. 'I might possibly recall a slight drop in effort toward the end of his stay here.'

  'When?'

  'The last couple of years.'

  Right after Angelique Bernet's murder. Sometime before he'd graduated, Kevin Drummond had conceived GrooveRat.

  I said, 'Are you aware that Kevin tried his hand at publishing?'

  'Oh, that,' said Shull. 'His zine:

  'You saw it?'

  'He talked to me about it. In fact, it was the only time I ever saw him get animated.'

  'He never showed you the zine?'

  'He showed me some articles he'd written.' Shull's smile was crooked, rueful. 'He was needy for praise. I tried to comply.'

  'But his writing wasn't praiseworthy,' I said.

  Shull shrugged. 'He was a kid. He wrote like a kid.'

  'Meaning?'

  'Sophomoric - juniormoric, seniormoric. I get a steady diet of it. Which is fine. Any craft takes time to develop. The only difference between Kevin and hundreds of other kids is that he thought he was ready for the big time.'

  'Did you let him know he wasn't?'

  'Lord, no,' said Shull. 'Why would I shatter his confidence, a troubled kid like that? I knew the world would do that to him, all by itself.'

  'A troubled kid,' I said.

  'You're telling me he's involved in murder.' Shull returned to his chair. T really don't want to bad-mouth him. He was quiet, a little weird, a little delusional about his talent. That's all. I don't want to make him sound like a maniac. He wasn't that different from other nerdy-types I've seen.'

  He placed his elbows on the desk and looked at me earnestly. 'There's no way you could give me any details, is there? My old journalistic impulses are coming to the fore.'

  'Sorry,' I said. 'So you went from journalism to academia.'

  'Academia has its charms,' said Shull.

  'What else can you tell me about Kevin?'

  'That's really it. And I've got office hours in a few minutes.'

  'I won't take much more of your time, Professor. What else can you tell me about Kevin's publishing dreams?'

  Shull pulled on his chin. 'Once he got on the publishing kick - his senior year - it was all he could talk about. Kids are like that.'

  'Like what?'

  'Obsessive. We accept them to college and call them adults but they're really still adolescents, and adolescents obsess. Entire industries have been built on that fact.'

  'What was Kevin obsessed with?'

  'Success, I suppose.'

  'Did he have a particular point of view?'

  'With regard to what?'

  'Art.'

  'Art,' echoed Shull. 'Once again, we're talking adolescent attitudes. Kevin adhered to the seminal sophomoric belief.'

  'What's that?'

  'Anticommercialism. If it sells, it sucks. Basic dorm-debate stuff.'

  'He told you that.'

  'More than once.'

  'You feel differently?'

  'My job is to nurture the little ducklings, not pepper them with the buckshot of criticism.'

  'When Kevin showed you his articles, did you do any editing?'

  'Not his articles. On papers I'd assigned, I suggested minor revisions.'

  'How'd he take criticism?'

  'Well.' Shull shook his knobby head. 'Very well as a matter of fact. Sometimes he asked for more. I guess he looked up to me. I got the feeling he wasn't getting much support anywhere else.'

  'Are you aware Kevin wrote arts reviews for the Daily Bobcat?'

  'Those,' said Shull. 'He was quite proud of them.'

  'He showed them to you.'

  'Showed them off. I suppose he came to trust me. Which didn't mean pizza-and-beer, anything outside of office hours. Kevin wasn't that type of kid.'

  'What type is that?'

  'The kind you'd enjoy having a beer with.'

  I said, 'Did he tell you about his pen names?'

  Shull's eyebrows arced. 'What pen names?'

  ' "Faithful Scrivener," ' I said.' "E. Murphy." He used them to write for his zine and other arts magazines.'

  'Did he,' said Shull. 'How curious. Why?'

  'I was hoping you could tell me, Professor.'

  'Enough with the title. Call me Gordie... pen names... you're implying Kevin was concealing something?'

  'Kevin's motivations are still a mystery,' I said.

  'Well, I wouldn't know about any pen names.'

  'You said his grades dropped over time. Did you notice any change in his writing style?'

  'How so?'

  'He seems to have gone from simple and direct to wordy and pretentious.'

  'Ouch,' said Shull. 'You're the critic, not me.' He pulled down his tie, opened the collar of his plaid shirt. 'Pretentious? No, on the contrary. The little I saw of Kevin's development seemed to indicate improvement. A little more elegance. But I guess that would make sense. If you're right about Kevin being disturbed. If his mind deteriorated, that would show up in his writing, wouldn't it? Now, I'm sorry, but I do have an appointment.'

  When we reached the door, he said, 'I don't know what it is you think Kevin did - probably don't want to know. But I have to say I feel sorry for him.'

  'Why's that?'

  Instead of answering, he opened the door and we stepped out into the hallway. A pretty Asian girl sat on the floor a few feet away. When she saw Shull she got to her feet and smiled.

  He said, 'Go in, Amy. Be with you in a sec'

  When the girl was gone, I said, 'Why do you feel sorry for Kevin?'

  'Sad kid,' he said. 'Lousy writer. And now you're telling me he's a psycho killer. I'd say that qualifies for pitiable.'

  I left the college, got on the 134 East and was headed back toward L.A. when my cell phone beeped. Milo said, 'Last couple hours, I could've used you. Grief counseling with Levitch's mom. Vassily was a wonderful son, boy prodigy, total genius, apple of Mama's eye, who in the world would want to hurt him. Then I got a prelim report from my Ds. Nothing turned up on the Bristol Street neighborhood canvass, and all the audience members they've talked to noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Ditto for the security guard and the parking valets. So whoever offed Vassily either blended in or slipped in unnoticed.'

  'You said the audience was older. Wouldn't a kid like Kevin Drummond stand out?'

  'Maybe he went in disguise. Maybe he took a back-row seat in the darkness. Plus, you attend a piano recital, you're not exactly looking for suspicious characters. There are still some personal checks from the nonmem-bers to go over. Get over to the college, yet?'

  'I did. Kevin Drummond wrote a few arts reviews for the student paper, for the most part nothing illuminating. But during his senior year - shortly before he started

  GrooveRat - his style shifted suddenly. From straightforward prose to what we found in the Seldom-Scene pieces. Maybe he experienced some sort of psychological change at that time.'

  'Going schizo?'

  'Not if he's our guy. These crimes are too organized for a schizophrenic. But a mood disorder - mania -would fit with the overheated prose and the delusions of grandeur. Which is how Drummond's faculty advisor described his publishing plans. Mania can mean a loosening of boundaries - and inhibitions. And periodic departures from usual demeanor. The advisor describes Kevin as quiet, unassertive. He had no friends, was very serious, a mediocre student with high aspirations. Not fun to be around. All of which could be the depressive component of a bipolar disorder. Another thing that synchs with mania is the hoarding behavior his landlady described. The history of flitting from fad to fad may very well have been a precursor to a manic break. Mania's not often associated with violence, but when it is, the violence can be serious.'

  'So now we've got a diagnosis,' he said. 'But no patient.'

  'Te
ntative diagnosis. The advisor also said Kevin felt strongly that commercial success and quality were incompatible. By itself that means little - he termed it dorm-room doctrine, and he's right. But most college students move past dorm life and develop autonomy. Kevin doesn't seem to have made big strides in that direction.'

  'Arrested development... success is corrupt, so nip it in the bud. Meanwhile, no sign of him, and it's looking

  more and more as if he's rabbited. Petra says Stahl's been on the apartment like a rash, hasn't caught a glimpse of the guy. I'm putting a BOLO on Drummond's Honda but without declaring him an official suspect, it'll be prioritized at the bottom of the basket.'

  'Despite the missing car, it's possible Drummond's holed up in his apartment,' I said. 'A loner like that, some canned soup and a laser printer could sustain him for a while. Has Stahl checked?'

  'He had the landlady knock. No answer, no sounds of movement on the other side of the door. Stahl thought of having her use her master key - go in on pretense of a gas leak, whatever. But he thought better of it, called Petra, she called me, and we all decided to wait. Just in case a search does pull up something serious. Kevin's daddy is a lawyer. We ever bust the kid, he's gonna be represented by a shark, no sense jumping the gun and risking an evidentiary mess. Just to make sure, I had a chat with an assistant D.A. who leans toward permissive about grounds for warrants. She listened to what I had, asked me if I was taking my routine to open-mike night at the Comedy Store.'

  'So what's the plan?'

  'Stahl keeps watching, and Petra continues checking out Hollywood spots, clubs, alternative bookstores, to see if anyone knows Kevin. I'm going over the file on Julie Kipper to see if there's anything I missed. I also called Fiorelle in Cambridge and suggested he scour hotel registers for Drummond. He said he'd try, but that was a lot to ask for.'

  'One more thing,' I said. 'I spoke to Christian Bangs-ley, China Maranga's other living band mate. He says

  China was certain someone was stalking her.' I recounted the incident near the Hollywood sign. 'It made her angry, not frightened. The night she disappeared, she was enraged at the band. Throw in drugs and her aggressive personality, and it could add up to a volatile situation.'

  'With a guy like Kevin.'

  'With any wrong guy. China being buried near the sign is consistent with a stalker. She had a thing for the sign, went up there regularly. Someone watched her, learned her patterns. Maybe she wasn't picked up walking the streets. Maybe she chose that night to hike, was followed and ambushed. Bangsley said when she screamed, no one heard. Up there in the hills, the sound of a struggle would be muted.'

  'What kind of thing did she have for the sign?'

  'The story of that starlet flinging herself to her death appealed to her.'

  'Unfulfilled dreams,' he said. 'Sounds like she and Drummond would've had some common ground.'

  'Sure,' I said. 'Until they didn't.'

  After a futile double shift combing Hollywood for someone who recognized Kevin Drummond, Petra went to bed at 3 A.M., got up at nine, and did phone work from her apartment, lying in bed, hair pinned, still in her T-shirt and panties.

  Milo had filled her in on Alex's visit to Drummond's college. Drummond's professor's description, firming up the profile.

  Your basic loner; big shock.

  One heck of a loner - not a single club owner or bouncer or patron or bookstore employee remembered his face.

  The only people she'd found who responded to Drum-mond's DMV photo at all, were the owner of a Laundromat within two blocks of Drummond's apartment and the clerk at a nearby 7-Eleven who thought, yeah, maybe the guy came in there and bought stuff from time to time.

  'What kind of stuff?'

  'Maybe Slim Jims?' The clerk was a skinhead with a vulnerable face who reacted with the edgy eagerness of a game show contestant.

  'Maybe?' said Petra.

  'Maybe pork rinds?'

  The Laundromat owner was a Chinese man who barely spoke English and smiled a lot. All Petra could get from him was 'Yeah, mebbe wash.' She resisted the impulse to ask if Drummond had rinse-cycled a load of bloody duds, trudged back to her car, and returned to the station, where she decided to work Drummond's pen names.

  No chance Faithful Scriveners would be in the system, but she found plenty of felonious E. Murphys. Too late to deal with it at this hour, so she put it off for tomorrow.

  Now, here she was all comfy and beddy-bye, working the phones.

  Two hours later: none of the E. Murphys looked promising.

  She located Henry Gilwhite, the transsexual-murdering husband of obnoxious Olive, the POB lady, and by 12:35 P.M. she knew that Gilwhite had begun his sentence at the state penitentiary at San Quentin only to be transferred to Chino within a year. A three-minute conversation with an assistant warden told her why.

  She thanked the A. W., brewed coffee, ate a hollowed-out bagel, showered, dressed, drove to Hollywood.

  She found a parking space in the strip-mall lot that afforded a clean view of the mail drop. A few scuz2y types entered and exited, then nothing for ten minutes. Petra made a smiling entrance and earned a brown-lidded glare from Olive.

  'Hi, there, Mrs Gilwhite. Heard from Henry, recently?'

  Olive went scarlet, the splotches on her face knitting into a rosaceous mask. 'You.'

  Never had a pronoun sounded more hostile.

  'Have you?' said Petra.

  Olive mumbled something foul under her breath.

  Petra put her hands in her pockets and stepped closer to the counter. Rolls of stamps sat at Olive's dimpled elbow. She snatched them up and turned her back on Petra.

  'Nice for you that Henry got transferred, Olive. Chi-no's a lot closer than San Quentin, easier to visit. And you do get there regularly. Every two weeks, like clockwork. So how's he doing? The old blood pressure under control?'

  Olive half turned, revealing a flabby profile. Her lips bunched, as if gathering spit. 'What's it to you?'

  'Chino's a lot safer, too,' said Petra. 'What with Armando Guzman, a cousin of Henry's victim, incarcerated at Quentin and being a big deal in the Vatos Locos gang. Turns out, there's a large contingent of V.L.s in Quentin, but only a few at Chino, so it's easier to segregate someone like Henry. What they tell me, though, is that Chino's getting overcrowded. Situation like that, you can never tell when things are going to change.'

  Olive wheeled around. Pale. 'You can't.' Hostility had been sucked from her voice, replaced by a nerve-scratching whine.

  Petra smiled.

  Olive Gilwhite's cheeks fluttered. The peroxide thatch above her drinker's face thrummed. Living with this harridan must've been fun for Henry. Then again, there

  were always trannies available for back-alley trysts.

  Olive Gilwhite said, 'You can't.'

  "The thing is,' said Petra, 'Henry being a convicted murderer, even at his age, even with the hypertension, he's not going to garner much sympathy from the prison administration. The fact that he's refused any psychological counseling isn't helping him in the brownie-points department, either. Stubborn fellow, your Henry.'

  Olive picked at the platinum bird's nest. 'What do you want?'

  'Box 248. What do you remember?'

  'A loser,' said Olive. 'Okay? Like all of them. What the hell kinda clientele you think I deal with? Movie stars?'

  'Give me details on the loser,' said Petra. 'What did he look like? How'd he pay for the box?'

  'He looked like... young, skinny, tall. Big glasses. Bad skin. One of those what-they-call nerds. A nerd fag.'

  'Gay?' said Petra.

  'That's what I said.'

  'What makes you think that?'

  'I don't think it, I know it. He got fag stuff in the mail,' said Olive, sneering again.

  'Gay magazines?'

  'No, an invitation from the Pope. Yeah, magazines. What do you think these are for?' Gesticulating at the wall of boxes. 'Not too many Bibles coming in.' Olive laughed, and even at this distance Petr
a could smell juniper berries on her breath. Midday gin.

  'Did he give you his name?'

  'Who remembers.'

  'He did give you a name.'

  'He had to fill out a form.'

  'Where is it?'

  'Gone,' said Olive. 'Once the box changes hands, I toss out the paperwork. You think I got space to keep it all?'