Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest

by Survival Of The Fittest(Lit)

  Both of the alibied murderers had killed children known to them: One had beaten a girlfriend's two-year-old daughter to death with his fists. The other, a woman, had intentionally scalded her own son in the bathtub.

  Nearly two hundred predators, roaming free in this relatively small area...

  Why only four zip codes?

  Because the detectives couldn't be everywhere and you had to draw the line somewhere.

  Would doubling, tripling, quadrupling the area have accomplished much?

  L.A. was a country-sized sprawl, ruled by the car. Give a stalker some gas money and coffee and he could go anywhere.

  Hop on the freeway, weave nightmares, be back in bed in time for the evening news. Munching chips and masturbating, eyes glued to the headlines, hoping for fame.

  Aimless driving was one characteristic of sexual sadists.

  But Irit hadn't been tortured.

  Still, maybe we did have a traveler. Someone who liked the backroads. Maybe this killer was up in Alaska by now, fishing salmon, or strolling the boardwalk in Atlantic City, or in New Orleans, hunkered down in a French Quarter club eating gumbo.

  Watching...

  For all their numerical precision, the printouts seemed primitive. I put them down and picked up the next file, thin and black.

  Still drinking of two hundred predators in four zip codes. What kind of society let people who raped and beat children back out on the streets?

  It's been a long time, Alex.

  Inside the black file were aerial photographs of the murder scene - fluffy, green-black patches of treetops, as distant and artificial as an architect's design sketch.

  Tan laces at the upper periphery - the roads. Capillaries feeding mountains, gullies, the city sprawl beyond.

  Facing the photos was a crisp white letter on FBI stationery. Dear Detective Gorobich correspondence from FBI Special Agent Gail Gorman of the bureau's Behavioral Sciences Regional Unit in San Diego.

  Gorman acknowledged receipt of the aerial shots, the crime-scene data, and the completed questionnaire, but regretted that insufficient information existed for a definitive profile of the killer. However, she was willing to guess that he was most likely male, white, over thirty, of average to above-average intelligence, nonpsychotic, probably compulsive and perfectionistic, presenting a neat, clean, unremarkable appearance, probably employed at the present, though possibly with an inconsistent or checkered job history.

  With regard to the crime being 'sexual in nature', she repeated the disclaimer of insufficient data and went on to say that 'despite the obvious organization of the crime, the lack of sadistic or vicious elements mitigate against a sexual homicide, as does the absence of obvious or covert sexual activity at the scene. However, should future homicides bearing precisely these signature elements show themselves, we would be interested in hearing about them'.

  The letter ended by suggesting that 'victim characteristics should be explored further: age, ethnicity, specific disabilities. While this homicide might very well turn out to have been committed by an opportunistic or premeditating stranger, the possibility that the victim knew the perpetrator cannot be ruled out and, in fact, should be looked into, though, once again, this is only a suggestion, not a conclusion. Factors mitigating against victim-perpetrator acquaintance include leaving the body faceup in a location where it would eventually be found. Factors mitigating for acquaintance include the use of diffuse-force ("gentle") strangulation and other evidence of care and time taken to avoid brutalization and degradation of the body.'

  Average to above-average. Organised, compulsive, perfectionistic.

  That meshed with my first impression.

  A planner - someone who took pride in setting things up and watching the elements fall into place.

  Taking his time - spiriting Irit a mile from the bus so he'd have time.

  It implied a certain relaxation - self-confidence? Arrogance?

  Someone who believed he was clever.

  Because he'd gotten away with it before?

  No M.O. match existed in any of the state files.

  Had he evaded detection by concealing other bodies?

  Going public, now?

  More confident?

  I let my mind dance around the data.

  Someone who craved control because he'd been controlled as a child, perhaps brutally?

  Maybe he was still under someone's thumb. A worker bee or submissive spouse?

  Faking self-confidence?

  Needing release.

  Employed, possibly a checkered history...

  Agent Gorman using sound psychological logic, because psychopaths' achievements nearly always lagged behind their own inflated self-images.

  Leading to dissonance. Tension.

  The need for release: the ultimate control.

  I thought of a killer I'd met in graduate school. A strangler, as it happened, locked in a back ward of County General Hospital, waiting for the court system to evaluate his sanity. A professor who earned extra money as an expert witness had taken us to the killer's cell.

  A gaunt, almost skeletal man in his thirties, with sunken cheeks and wispy black hair, the stranger lay on a cot, restrained by wide leather straps.

  One of my classmates asked him what it felt like to kill. The gaunt man ignored the question at first, then a slow smile spread across his lips and they darkened, like paper held to a flame. His victim had been a prostitute whom he hadn't wanted to pay. He'd never known her name.

  What it feels like? he finally said, in a disturbingly pleasant voice. It feels like nothing, it's no bigfucking deal, you stupid asshole. It's not actually doing it, anyway, it's being able to do it, asshole.

  The power...

  Opportunistic or premeditated.

  Had Irit's killer known about the annual field trip in advance or was he just aware that the park was frequented by schoolkids?

  Were the Carmelis right about Irit's victimization being one of those wrong-time/wrong-place horrors of chance that give atheists fuel?

  Predator leering as the school bus unloads.

  Feeling sweet contentment the way a fox might as it views chicklets hatching.

  Every parent's nightmare.

  Picking a weak one out of the herd - but why Irit?

  Special Agent Gorman had suggested the girl's disabilities, but Irit's problems weren't obvious to the casual observer. On the contrary, she'd been an attractive child. No shortage of other kids with more conspicuous handicaps.

  Was that the cue? The fact that she looked normal?

  Then I remembered the hearing aid on the ground.

  Despite all the care taken to arrange the body.

  Not an accident. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became.

  Leaving the pink disc behind - a message?

  Communicating what?

  I grabbed up the M.O. file again, looked for crimes committed against deaf people. Nothing.

  Had the hearing aid told him Irit was the easiest target of all - less likely to be aware as he came up behind her, less likely to scream?

  She wasn't mute, but maybe he'd assumed she was.

  Gentle strangulation.

  The phrase disgusted me....

  Care and time taken to avoid degradation of the body... No sex at the scene but perhaps he'd gone elsewhere to get off, masturbating to memories, as sex killers usually do.

  But sex killers often used trophies to trigger memories: clothing, jewelry. Body parts; the breasts were a favorite.

  Irit's body had been left pristine, nothing taken. Posed - almost primly. Expressly unsexual.

  As if the killer wanted the world to know she hadn't been touched.

  That he was different?

  Or maybe he had taken something - something unobtrusive, undetectable - a few strands of hair.

  Or had the souvenirs been the images themselves?

  Photos, snapped at the scene and pocketed for later.

  I pictured him, fac
eless, standing over her, tumescent with power, arranging - posing, snap, snap.

  Creating a tableau, a hideous artform.

  Polaroids. Or a private darkroom where he could modulate optical nuance.

  A self-styled artiste}

  Taking Irit far enough from the path so no one would hear the click, see the flash.

  Cleaning up... obsessive but not psychotic.

  You have many madmen in America!

  I reread S. A. Gorman's letter, everything else in the box.

  For all the hundreds of pages, something was missing.

  The Carmelis' friends and neighbors hadn't been interviewed. Neither had Mrs Carmeli, and her husband had been contacted only twice, both times briefly.

  Respect for the grieving or soft-glove treatment for a diplomat?

  Now, months later, a dead end.

  My head hurt and my lungs burned. I'd been at it for nearly three hours.

  As I got up to make coffee, the phone rang.

  The operator at my service said, 'A Ms Dahl is on the line, Doctor.'

  'I'll take it, thanks.'

  'Dr Delaware? It's Helena. I just got my on-call schedule for the week so I thought I'd try for an appointment. Do you have anything in two days? Maybe around ten in the morning?'

  I checked. Several court reports were due. 'How about eleven?'

  'Eleven would be fine. Thank you.'

  'How's everything going, Helena?'

  'Oh... about as well as can be expected... I guess I'm going through a point where I really miss him - more than I did... right after. Anyway, thanks for seeing me. Bye.'

  'Bye.'

  I wrote down the appointment. So much for clinical predictions.

  What was the chance I could do better for a dead girl?

  'How far'd you get?' Milo asked the next morning. It was 9:00 a.m. and we were drinking orange juice in my office.

  'All of it.' I lifted the offender printout. 'New system?'

  'Funded by Sacramento in response to the victims' rights movement. Great idea but so far reporting procedures are sloppy and lots of cities - L.A. included - don't have a system in place. Also, most cops are scared of computers so the best way to get info is still the horn and teletypes. What'd you think of the FBI letter?'

  'Nothing I disagree with but Agent Gorman's careful not to commit herself.'

  'So what else is new.'

  I told him my conception of the murderer. The possibility that photos had been taken.

  'Polaroids or a darkroom?' he said. 'A professional photographer?'

  'Or a serious amateur. Someone with artistic pretensions - there's something pretentious about the crime, Milo. Fussy. Arranging the body, sweeping up. A psychopath who wants to believe he's something else. But all that's predicated upon it being a sex crime.'

  'You don't think it was?'

  'Gorman may be right about its having something to do with Irit's background rather than being just a random thing. When Gorobich and Ramos did something, they were thorough. It's what they didn't do that's off. All those interviews with park neighbors but none in Beverlywood. The father talked to twice, the mother not at all.'

  He wiped his face. 'A family thing?'

  'Most kids are killed by relatives.'

  'Something about these parents comes across creepy?'

  'Just how little attention they've received. And how little information they've offered.'

  'A parent hiding in that forest - it would have to be the father 'cause the mother wouldn't be strong enough to carry Irit that far. And I know for sure it wasn't the father because when the call came in about Irit's being missing, he was at the consulate in a meeting.'

  'Okay,' I said. 'Any other relatives besides the younger brother?'

  'Don't know.' He put his big hands on the side of the box and rocked it. 'It's too weird, anyway, Alex. When relatives kill kids you know it's almost always at home. Or some family outing. I've never heard of them stalking like this. I know Gorobich and Ramos didn't turn over every rock but they claim there was nothing off about the Carmelis. Just parents destroyed by the worst possible scenario. Add VIP to the picture and you could see why they wouldn't want to pry too hard.'

  'Makes sense,' I said. 'Get a callback from Mr Carmeli yet?'

  'Nope. And I can't wait to tackle that one. Little old moi crashing the halls of diplomacy.'

  The image made me smile.

  'What?' he said. 'The tie?'

  The tie was a limp, narrow strip of blue-green pseudosilk, too short to stretch the hump of his belly and flipped-up at the tip. Perfect with the beige-and-black striped shirt and the faded olive sportcoat.

  I used to think he didn't know better but a month ago, Robin and I had gone with him to the art museum and he had looked at the pictures the way someone who understands pictures does, talking about how much he liked the Ashcan painters, why Fauvism stank because of the vulgar colors. After all these years I was beginning to suspect the way he dressed was intentional. A distraction, so people would think him inept.

  'The tie,' I said, 'could cause an international incident. Why, are you planning a drop-in?'

  'You know me. Mr Spontaneous.'

  'When?'

  'Soon as possible. Want to come along? No doubt you've got a diplomatically correct foulard - in fact, do you have one to lend me? More orange juice, too, long as you're up.'

  I lent him a conservative Paisley and we took the unmarked. The Israeli Consulate was on Wilshire near Crescent Heights, on the top floor of a faceless seventeen-story tower. The first three floors were parking lot and Milo drove in, ignored the wait for valet sign, and pulled into a space near the elevator. Pocketing the keys, he shoved a

  bill at the flustered attendant, flashed his badge, and called out, 'Have a nice day.'

  We rode up. The interior halls were narrow, white, free of decoration, topped by a low, gray, water-spotted acoustical ceiling. The carpeting was mint green with a faint dot pattern. Both needed cleaning and wallpaper seams had come loose in spots. Lots of doors, mostly white and blank.

  At the end of the corridor was a TV camera aimed at the last door. A brown plastic sign announced the presence of the consulate and the Israeli tourist office and spelled out hours for visa applications. Just to the right was another plaque - the blue-and-white Israeli flag - and below that a plate-glass window with a steel document tray, a call button, and a speaker.

  A young black-haired man in a blue blazer, white shirt, and tie sat behind the glass. His features were sharp and his hair was thick and cropped to the skull. He was reading a magazine and didn't look up until Milo pushed the button.

  'Yes?'

  'Mr Carmeli.'

  'Do you have an appointment?' Middle Eastern accent.

  Milo produced the badge again.

  'Drop it in, please.'

  The badge hit the tray and slid into the reception booth. A steel shutter dropped over the slot. The guard inspected the badge, looked at Milo, held up a finger, got up, and disappeared. The magazine was Sports Illustrated.

  Behind the booth was a nest of white cubicles and I could see two women and one man working at computers. A few travel posters hung on the walls. Everything looked just a bit off - cloudy. Refracted through the inch-thick glass.

  The young man came back a moment later. 'He's in a meeting-'

  'This is about-'

  The young man smiled and held up a finger again. 'But,' he said, 'he'll be out soon.'

  He sat down and returned to the world of soccer.

  'Doing us a big favor,' mumbled Milo.

  A low-pitched whine sounded above. The camera rotated, aiming at us.

  Milo pushed the button again and the young man looked up.

  'My badge?'

  'Mr Carmeli has it.'

  We stood in the hall as the guard read. A heavy black woman in blue blazer and gray slacks came from around the corner and walked down the hall, glancing at doors. She saw us and turned around.

  Thr
ee minutes passed, four, five. The guard picked up a phone, listened, put it back down.