Serpentine: An Alex Delaware Novel Read online

  Serpentine is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Jonathan Kellerman

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kellerman, Jonathan, author.

  Title: Serpentine: an Alex Delaware novel/Jonathan Kellerman. Description: First edition. | New York: Ballantine Books, [2021] | Series: Alex Delaware

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020012952 (print) | LCCN 2020012953 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525618553 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780525618560 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Delaware, Alex (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Sturgis, Milo (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Police—California—Los Angeles—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3561.E3865 S47 2021 (print) | LCC PS3561.E3865 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012952

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012953

  Ebook ISBN 9780525618560

  randomhousebooks.com

  Cover design: Scott Biel

  Cover art: trekandshoot/Getty Images

  ep_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Dedication

  By Jonathan Kellerman

  About the Author

  CHAPTER

  1

  My best friend, a seasoned homicide detective, is a master of discontent.

  Some say Milo Sturgis enjoys the cold comfort of a sour mood.

  Grumbling, grimacing, and mumbled curses peak during the muddled middle of murder investigations, when promising leads break their promises. He always gets past it; his solve rate is near-perfect. Which is why his bosses tolerate the biliousness, messages ignored, memos tossed in the trash unread.

  I’ve come to think of Milo as allergic to obedience, wonder if it’s rooted in his rookie days when gay cops didn’t “exist” in the department and he had to look over his shoulder and write his own rulebook.

  But I could be wrong. Temperament’s a strong factor in determining personality so it could just be the way he is. I wonder what his baby pictures look like. Imagine him as one of those infants who look as though they’ve been weaned on sour pickles.

  Like a lot of things, we don’t talk about it.

  * * *

  —

  He doesn’t call me in on all of his cases, just the ones he terms “different” once he’s gotten his bearings. This time, he didn’t wait.

  I picked up his phone message when I returned from an eight a.m. run up Beverly Glen. “Misery lusts for company, I’m coming over. If it’s a problem, text me.”

  I left the door unlocked and headed for the shower. Before I took two steps, the bell rang.

  He’d called from the road.

  “Open.”

  He barreled through, convex gut leading the way, head lowered, bulky shoulders piled up around his neck like a muscular shawl.

  A charging bull if a bull could find an aloha shirt that fit.

  He took a moment to stoop and pat the head of my little French bulldog, Blanche, murmured, “At least someone’s smiling,” and continued toward the kitchen.

  Blanche cocked her head and looked up at me, expecting clarification. When I shrugged and followed him in, she gave a world-weary sigh and padded along.

  * * *

  —

  Milo’s usual thing is to raid the fridge and assemble snacks worthy of construction permits. This time he filled a coffee cup, sat down heavily at the table, and tugged at the aloha shirt as if aerating his torso. The shirt was sky-blue polyester patterned inexplicably with cellos and bagels. He wore it tucked into baggy khaki cargo pants that puddled over scuffed desert boots.

  My true love is a master artisan. She’d designed the kitchen to be sunlit from the south, and this morning’s glow was kind to Milo’s pallid, pockmarked face. But nothing could mask the cherry-sized lumps rolling up and down his jawline.

  I filled a mug and settled across from him. “Now I’m scared.”

  “By what?”

  I pointed to his cup. “No food.”

  “Sorry for defying your expectations.” His lips curled but the end product wasn’t a smile. “Maybe I had a big breakfast? Maybe I’m showing discretion?”

  “Okay.”

  “That was a shrink okay if I’ve ever heard one—which is fine, I need therapy.”

  I said nothing.

  He said, “There it is, the old strategic-silence bit…sorry, I’ll dial it down.” He breathed in and out. Pressed mitt-like palms together. “Namaste or whatever. Glad I caught you.” Sip. “Hoping you’re free today.” Sip. “Are you?”

  “Appointments from two to five.”

  “That’ll work.” He picked up his cup, put it down. “I plead guilty to acute petulance. But it’s called for.”

  “Tough case.”

  “It should be so simple.” Sausage fingers drummed the table. Another long inhale–exhale. “Okay, here’s the deal. Just got a mega-loser shoved in my face like I’m a goddamn rookie. Thirty-six-year-old unsolved. We’re talking freezer burn.”

  “There’s a new cold-case campaign?”

  “No, there’s just this. Listen to the chain of command, Alex. An equally rich buddy of Andrea Bauer—remember her?—sits next to a relative of the victim at a rich persons’ thing. Bauer butts in, she’s connected to the cops, can help. Instead of calling me directly, Bauer contacts a state assemblyman. He hands off to the mayor who can’t even clear the goddamn sidewalks of garbage, couple of cops downtown just got typhus at a homeless encampment.�
�

  He pushed his cup to the side. Lowered a fist to the table but stopped short of contact.

  “City’s returning to the Dark Ages but Handsome Jack’s got time to personally contact the chief who punts to Deputy Chief Veronique Martz who calls me yesterday just as I’m about to go off-shift. Important meeting, her office, can’t be handled over the phone. I drive eighty-six minutes downtown, cool my heels in her waiting room for another twenty, finally get ushered into her sanctum for the ninety seconds it takes for her to give me the victim’s name and the basics and warn me not to argue.”

  I said, “Thin file?”

  “She didn’t have the goddamn file, locating it is part of my assignment. I asked where the basics came from. She said there’s a coroner’s summary, I should ask for that, too. I called Bauer to ahem thank her. She’s in Europe.”

  Andrea Bauer was the widow of a developer who’d left her a couple hundred million bucks’ worth of real estate. Her home base was an estate in Montecito but she owned board-and-care facilities for mentally challenged adults in several states. Last year one of her charges had been murdered along with five other human victims and two dogs. A week after closing the case, Milo had received a Rolex from Bauer. Against the rules. He’d groused, “Steel, not gold?” and sent it back.

  I said, “Maybe you should’ve kept the watch.”

  He stared at me. Cracked up. Brought the cup back to arm’s reach and drank.

  As he ingested caffeine, his shoulders lowered a bit. Running his hand over his face, he shot up, went to the fridge and pulled out an apple, sat back down and chomped. “Don’t say a thing. This is for the pepsin. Good for digestion.”

  One bite later: “Thirty-six years.”

  I said, “Look at it this way: You’re the A-student who got rewarded with extra homework.”

  “The bright side, huh?”

  “You said you wanted therapy. Who’s the victim?”

  “Woman named Dorothy Swoboda, all Martz could tell me is she was found shot to death on Mulholland east of Coldwater. Which isn’t even my shop, it’s Hollywood Division. Which I noted to Martz. Only to be ignored. Google gives up nothing on it, only thing I’ve found is in the Times archives. Twenty-four years old, found in her car over the side of a cliff, everything burned up. Nothing in the article about murder, the implication was a one-vehicle accident.”

  I said, “Maybe a bullet was found at autopsy and the paper didn’t follow up.”

  “That would be par for the course,” he said. “Even back then, you’re not Natalie Wood or O.J. or Baretta, who cares?”

  “Who’s the relative?”

  “Swoboda’s daughter, woman named Ellie Barker. Her, Google likes. She made a fortune from exercise wear, sold out a couple years ago for gazillions.”

  “How old is she?”

  His eyebrows arched. “Thirty-nine.”

  “Three at the time,” I said. “She probably has no memories of Mommy.”

  “Exactly, Alex. This isn’t a police thing, it’s a psych thing, that’s one reason I’d like you along when I talk to her. Maybe you can slide some insight her way and she’ll realize she needs you more than me.” His smile was an off-center crescent. “Think of it as a potential high-end referral, we both come out ahead.”

  “What are the other reasons you want me there?”

  “Just one,” he said. “Turn on the laser, give me your impression of her, so I know who I’m dealing with. Ultra-rich folk expect the world to spin around them. If she’s unbalanced on top of that, it could get nasty when I fail.”

  “When not if.”

  “I’m being realistic. You know what usually solves the oldies: DNA, bad guy’s in CODIS. Thirty-six-year-old homicide, the body burned to a crisp? What’s the chance any bio-material was there in the first place, let alone collected. This is a woman who can activate politicians with a phone call. I don’t give her what she wants, she’s not gonna be charitable.”

  “A woman who lost her mother at three might be more humbled than you think.”

  He finished the apple. “You’ve made a new friend without meeting her?”

  “Just pointing out possibilities.”

  He got up, tossed the core in the trash. “Fine. I’ll give her a chance. But the case may not give me one.”

  “When are you due to meet her?”

  “Forty-five minutes, Los Feliz.”

  “If we leave now, barely enough time to get there.”

  “So she’ll wait,” he said. “Good moral training.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  We took Milo’s latest unmarked, an Impala the color of brussels sprouts reeking of pine disinfectant and refried beans. He generally drives with a heavy foot. This time he was ballet-light and a stickler for amber lights. That and traffic clogs from Bel Air into Beverly Hills, the Strip, and Hollywood ate up fifty-five minutes. He savored the red light at Western and Sunset before turning left and climbing the loop that begins Los Feliz Boulevard.

  Los Feliz is an interesting district. Unlike the high-end homogeneity of the Westside, it’s a kernel of affluence set between the urban grit and enthusiastic crime rate of East Hollywood to the south and the Eden that’s Griffith Park to the north. One section, Laughlin Park, is gated, filled with mammoth estates, and boasts a roster of film-biz residents dating back to Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, and Rudolph Valentino.

  Ellie Barker’s address was on Curley Court, a street neither of us knew.

  Milo said, “Probably Laughlin, I’ll have to get past some rent-a-guard.” But GPS proved him wrong and we reached our goal after making an untrammeled right and cruising through a roundabout followed by four brief, open streets.

  The Curley Court street sign was nearly obscured by the shaggy branches of a monumental deodar cedar, one of a score that lined the block.

  Like its neighbors, the house we were looking for was generous but no mansion: two-story cream-colored Spanish from the twenties with a flat lawn leading to a low-walled courtyard.

  The grass had been tended but not coddled; dandelions sprouted like stubble on a carelessly shaved face. Hugging the wall, two forty-foot coconut palms shared space with a pair of equally towering Italian cypresses. Close to an unlocked iron-scroll gate, doddering birds-of-paradise coexisted with spatulate clumps of blue agapanthus.

  Old-school landscaping. It would be easy to assume a resident with a traditionalist view, maybe one preoccupied with the past. But my training’s led me to run from easy answers. For all I knew, Ellie Barker rented the place.

  The courtyard was gravel-floored and empty. The front door had a Gothic peak and was equipped with a rectangular peep-window and a tarnished brass loop for a knocker.

  He stood back. “Go for it.”

  “What do I say, psychologist on duty?”

  “Hmph, no sense of adventure.” Stepping past me, he lifted the loop and let it fall hard.

  From inside the house, a woman’s voice trilled, “One second!”

  “Cheerful,” he said. “Why the hell not when the universe is your toy.”

  Rapid footsteps followed by a flash of pale eyes in the window, then the door swung wide.

  A smiling strawberry blonde held out a hand. “Lieutenant? I’m Ellie.”

  Milo pretended to not see her fingers. Ellie Barker’s smile shrank to something tentative and anxious as she dropped her hand.

  Pleasant-looking woman, medium height, medium build, the hair wavy, worn to her shoulders and parted in the middle. Her clothing revealed nothing about socioeconomic status: short-sleeved white jersey top, straight-leg blue jeans, white canvas slip-ons. No jewelry other than an Apple Watch around her left wrist.

  Eyes, now doubtful, were gray-green, the skin surrounding them lightly tanned and sporadically freckled. Thirty-nine and show
ing the advent of laugh lines and forehead furrows.

  She looked at me.

  Milo said, “This is Dr. Delaware, our consulting psychologist.”

  I shook her hand and her smile managed to stretch but lose wattage. “Someone thinks I need help? I do but I wasn’t thinking psychotherapy.”

  “Dr. Delaware helps us with unusual cases.”

  “I see,” she said without conviction. “Sorry, please come in.”

  She led us through a domed Mexican-tiled entry hall and into a step-down living room with a high, wood-beam ceiling. Across the hall, a smaller dining room was brightened by lead-mullioned windows. Cutting through both spaces, a Mexican-tiled staircase climbed to the second floor.

  The furniture in the living room was beige and brown and sparse. Bare white walls, unused fireplace lacking tools or a screen. The rental hypothesis gained traction.

  “Please, guys.” Indicating a three-seat sofa facing a bare oak coffee table. “Can I get you something to drink—Coke, tea, water? I can make some coffee?”

  “Water’s fine,” said Milo, sitting near the left arm of the sofa. I took the opposite end.

  “Flat or fizzy?”

  “Flat.”

  Ellie Barker looked at him, hoping for thaw. He studied the ceiling.

  She said, “Sure, water coming up,” and hurried off past the dining room into a kitchen doorway.

  I said, “Looks like the butler’s on vacation.”

  “So she’s doing the regular-gal thing for our benefit.”