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Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 17
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
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
About the Author
Other Books by Faye Kellerman
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
The Mercedes Coffin
Faye Kellerman
For Jonathan—for now and forever
And welcome to Lila
Contents
Chapter 1
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, they were called nerds.
Chapter 2
THE CONVERSATION WENT like this: ‘The case is fifteen years…
Chapter 3
THE DRY FACTS of the homicide played out like this.
Chapter 4
TOOLING THROUGH THE Santa Monica canyons with the windows opened…
Chapter 5
WHEN HOMICIDE DETECTIVES were a hair shy of a solve,…
Chapter 6
CALVIN VITTON AND Arnie Lamar had turned in their guns…
Chapter 7
BY SIX IN the evening, most of the detectives had…
Chapter 8
THE NUMBERS WRITTEN on Decker’s notepaper matched a small stucco…
Chapter 9
WHAT?” MARGE SHRIEKED.
Chapter 10
MELINDA LITTLE WARREN was not surprised by the detectives at…
Chapter 11
A NUGGET POPPED INTO Decker’s mind.
Chapter 12
AFTER WRITING COPIOUS notes on two packs’ worth of index…
Chapter 13
WHILE THE MORNING coffee was brewing, Decker turned on the…
Chapter 14
THE MESSAGE POPPED onto the machine after ten rings, giving…
Chapter 15
THE STOREFRONT WAS old but spotless with Formica tubular tables…
Chapter 16
MARGE LANDED WITH a half hour to spare, just about…
Chapter 17
RINA POURED THE coffee. “Who were you talking to in…
Chapter 18
ALTHOUGH DECKER HAD never met Rip Garrett, he recognized him…
Chapter 19
THE ELEVATOR STILL wasn’t working, and the stairwell hadn’t gotten…
Chapter 20
THEY CLEARED THE table, piling the china and silver into…
Chapter 21
THE SHELL OF a 240Z took up valuable driveway space.
Chapter 22
BANKS’S CELL HAD gone immediately to voice mail. It was…
Chapter 23
IMRY KERIC WAS a spectral figure. Decker could see veins…
Chapter 24
THE SUNSET WAS on the right, a fiery ball spewing…
Chapter 25
JARED AND AMY Little were home by 9:45. There were…
Chapter 26
STRAPP SCRATCHED HIS head. “Whatever you did to calm her…
Chapter 27
BETWEEN THE MEMORIAL and his impromptu meeting with Genoa Greeves…
Chapter 28
DECKER HANDED MARGE a slip of paper on which was…
Chapter 29
DRESSED IN WHITE pants, a yellow polo shirt, and a…
Chapter 30
WENDERHOLE STROKED THE arms of his wheelchair.
Chapter 31
THE CALL WAS from Marge.
Chapter 32
BY THE TIME Decker arrived home, Rina was dressed in…
Chapter 33
VENICE BEACH SPANNED the socioeconomic spectrum in a ten-block radius:…
Chapter 34
THE HOLLYWOOD SUBSTATION of the LAPD was a cinder-block bunker…
Chapter 35
BY THE TIME Decker made it over to County Jail…
Chapter 36
DECKER HAD BEEN operating on casino time—protracted periods under artificial…
Chapter 37
THE WOMAN LOOKED as if she had just stepped off…
Chapter 38
DECKER TOSSED MARGE the keys to the Crown Vic. “You…
Chapter 39
DECKER LEANED BACK in his desk chair and regarded his…
Chapter 40
PATIENCE WAS NOT only a virtue, it was a necessity.
Chapter 41
WHO THE FUCK is this?”
Chapter 42
IT TOOK A full week for Rina to even speak…
About the Author
Other Books by Faye Kellerman
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, they were called nerds.
Today, they’re called billionaires.
Even among outcasts, Genoa Greeves suffered more than most. Saddled with a weird name—her parents’ love for Italy produced two other children, Pisa and Roma—and a gawky frame, Genoa spent her adolescence in retreat. She talked if spoken to, but that was the extent of her social interaction. Her teenage years were spent in a self-imposed exile. Even the oddest of girls would have nothing to do with her, and the boys acted as if she’d been stricken by the plague. She remained an island to herself: utterly alone.
Her parents had been concerned about her isolation. They had taken her through an endless parade of shrinks who offered multiple diagnoses: depression, anxiety disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, autism, schizoid personality disorder, all of the above in comorbidity. Medication was prescribed: psychotherapy was five days a week. The shrinks said the right things, but they couldn’t change the school situation. No amount of ego bolstering or self-esteem-enhancing exercises could possibly counteract the cruelty of being so profoundly different. When she was sixteen, she fell into a deep depression. Medication began to fail. It was Genoa’s firm opinion that she would have been institutionalized had it not been for two entirely unrelated incidents.
As a woman, Genoa had definitely been born without feminine wiles, or any attributes that made girls desirable sexual beings. But if she wasn’t born with the right female qualities, at least Genoa did have the extremely good fortune to be born at the right time.
That is, the computer age.
High tech and the personal computer proved to be Genoa’s manna from heaven: chips and motherboards were her only friends. When she spoke to a computer—mainframes at first and then the omnipresent desktops that followed—she found at last that she and an inanimate object were communicating in a language that only the blessed few could readily understand. Technology beckoned, and she answered the summons like a siren’s call. Her mind, the primary
organ of her initial betrayal, became her most welcome asset.
As for her body, well, in Silicon Valley, who cared about that? The world that Genoa eventually inhabited was one of ingenuity and ideas, of bytes and megabytes and brilliance. Bodies were merely skeletons to support that great thinking machine above the neck.
But even growing up at the cutting edge of the computer age wasn’t a guaranteed passport to success. Achievement was surely destined to elude Genoa had it not been for one individual—other than her parents—who believed in her.
Dr. Ben—Bennett Alston Little—was the coolest teacher in high school. His specialty was history with a strong emphasis on political science, but he had been so much more than just an educator, a guidance counselor and the boys’ vice principal. Handsome, tall, and athletic, he had made the girls swoon and had garnered the boys’ respect by being tough but fair. He knew everything about everything and had been universally loved by the twenty-five hundred high school students he had served. All that was good and fine, but virtually meaningless to Genoa until that fateful day when she passed him in the hallway.
He had smiled at her and said, “Hi, Genoa, how’s it going?”
She had been so stunned she hadn’t answered, running away, her face burning as she thought, Why would Dr. Ben know my name?
The second time she passed him, she still didn’t answer back when he asked “how’s it going?” but at least she didn’t exactly run away. It was more like a fast step that converted into a trot once he was safely down the hall.
The third time, she looked down and mumbled something.
By the sixth time, she managed to mumble a “hi” back, although she still couldn’t make eye contact without her cheeks turning bright red.
Their first, last, and only actual face-to-face conversation happened when she was a junior. Genoa had been called into his office. She had been so nervous that she felt her bladder leaking into her cotton underwear. She wore thick baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, and her frizzy hair had been pulled back into a thick, unwieldy ponytail.
“Sit down, Genoa,” he told her. “How are you doing today?”
She couldn’t answer. He looked serious, and she was too anxiety ridden to ask what she did wrong.
“I just wanted to tell you that we got your scores back from the PSAT.”
She managed a nod, and he said, “I’m sure by now that you know that you’re a phenomenal student. I’m thrilled to report that you got the highest score in the school. You got the highest score, period. A perfect 1600.”
She was still too frightened to talk. Her heart was pumping out of her chest, and her face felt as if it had been burned by a thousand heat lamps. Sweat was pouring off her forehead, dripping down her nose. She quickly wiped away the drops and hoped he didn’t notice. But of course, he probably did.
“Do you know how unusual that is?” Little went on.
Genoa knew it was unusual. She was painfully aware of how unusual she was.
“I just called you in today because I wanted to say congratulations in person. I expect big things from you, young lady.”
Genoa had a vague recollection of muttering a thank-you.
Dr. Ben had smiled at her. It had been a big smile with big white teeth. He raked back his sandy blond hair and tried to make eye contact with her, his eyes so perfectly blue that she couldn’t look at them without being breathless. He said, “People are all different, Genoa. Some are short, some are tall, some are musical, some are artistic, and the rarefied few like you are endowed with incredible brainpower. That head of yours is going to carry you through life, young lady. It’s like the old tortoise and the hare story. You’re going to get there, Genoa. You’re going to get there, and I firmly believe you’re going to surpass all your classmates because you have the one organ that can’t be fixed by plastic surgery.”
No comment. His words fell into dead air.
Little said, “You’re going to get there, Genoa. You just have to wait for the world to catch up to you.”
Dr. Ben stood up.
“Congratulations again. We at North Valley High are all very proud of you. You can tell your parents, but please keep it quiet until the official scores are mailed.”
Genoa stood and nodded.
Little smiled again. “You can go now.”
TEN YEARS LATER, from her cushy office on the fourteenth floor looking over Silicon Valley, about to take her morning hot cocoa, Genoa Greeves opened the San Jose Mercury News and read about Dr. Ben’s horrific, execution-style homicide. If she would have been capable of crying, she would have done so. His words, the only encouraging words she had received in high school, rang through her brain.
She followed the story closely.
The articles that followed emphasized that Bennett Alston Little didn’t appear to have an enemy in the world. Progress on the case, slow even in the beginning, seemed to grind to a halt six months later. There were a few “persons of interest”—it should have been “people of interest,” Genoa thought—but nothing significant ever advanced the case toward conclusion. The homicide went from being a front-page story to obscurity, the single exception a note on the anniversary of the homicide. After that, the files became an ice-cold case sitting somewhere within the monolith of what was called LAPD storage.
Fifteen years came and went. And then, quite by happenstance, Genoa picked up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and read about a homicide with overtones of Dr. Ben’s murder. When she saw the article, she was sitting in the president’s chair, located in the CEO’s office of Timespace, which was housed on the fifteen through the twentieth stories of the Greeves Building in Cupertino. But unlike Dr. Ben’s murder, suspects had been arrested for this carjacking.
She wondered…
Then she picked up the phone and called up LAPD. It took a while to get through to the right person, but when she did, she knew she was talking to someone with authority. Though Genoa didn’t demand that the Little case be reopened, her intent was crystal. It was true that she had money to hire a battalion of private detectives to investigate the murder herself, but she didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes—and why should she shell out money when she paid an exorbitant amount of California state taxes? Surely the cash that she would have had to expend in private investigations could be put to better use in LAPD, aiding the homicide detectives in their investigation.
Lots of money, in fact, should the department decide to reopen the Ben Little homicide and actually solve it.
The inspector listened to her plaints, sounding appropriately eager and maybe just a tad sycophantic.
Genoa wanted to reopen the case to do right by Bennett Alston Little.
Genoa wanted to reopen the case because the more recent homicide brought to mind the Little case and she thought about a connection.
Genoa wanted to reopen the case to bring a murderer to justice.
Genoa wanted to reopen the case to bring peace and solace to all of the victims’ friends and families.
Genoa wanted to reopen the case because at this stage in her life, and sitting on 1.3 billion dollars, she could do whatever the hell she pleased.
CHAPTER 2
THE CONVERSATION WENT like this: ‘The case is fifteen years old,’ I say. Then Mackinerny responds, ‘Strapp, I don’t give a solitary fuck if it’s from the Jurassic era; there’s a seven-figure endowment riding on this solve, and you’re going to make it happen.’ I respond, ‘Not a problem, sir.’”
“Good comeback.”
“I thought so.”
Lieutenant Peter Decker regarded Strapp, who within the last ten minutes seemed to have gained a few more wrinkles from frowning. He was turning sixty this year, but still had the bull frame of a weight lifter. The man had a steel-trap mind and a matching metallic personality. “I’ll do what I can, Captain.”
“That’s the idea, Lieutenant. You’ll do what you can. I want you to handle this personally, Decker, not pass it off to someone in Homicide.”
/> “My homicide squad is more up to date on the latest techniques and forensics. They’d probably do a better job since most of my time is spent doing psychotherapy and scheduling vacations.”
“Horseshit!” Strapp rubbed his eyes. “Last summer you spent way more time in the field than in your office, judging from the amount of overtime you racked up flying Southwest to San Jose and to Santa Fe. Surely you got a couple of free trips out of that.”
“We cleared two homicides.”
“One of which was twenty-five years old, so this one should be a snap. We’ve got a hell of lot riding on this solve.”
A potential seven-figure gift could lift LAPD into state of the art. Equipping the department with the newest in forensic machinery could potentially put more felons behind bars. Still, Decker has found that in the end, it was always the human factor: men and women sweating hours on end to extract confessions, noticing a detail that was overlooked, doing just one more interview.
Not that technology didn’t have its place. And with a big endowment…
Money talks, etc.
“What prompted the call?” Decker asked Strapp.
“She read about the Primo Ekerling carjacking in Hollywood and it reminded her of the unfinished business with the Little case.”
“Doesn’t Hollywood have a few cholos in custody for that one?”
“It does, but that’s not the point. The parallels were similar enough to strike a chord in her very wealthy mind.”
“What’s her connection to Little other than the fact that he was her guidance counselor?”
“I think it’s as simple as that. She told Mackinerny that Little was the only one who had been kind to her during her awkward years, and now she has enough money to get people to jump,” Strapp said. “We were both in Foothill when the Little murder happened. From what I remember, he was a good guy.”
Decker hadn’t followed the details closely. He did recall that the case had occupied space in the local newspapers. “How soon do you want me on this?”
“How does yesterday sound, Lieutenant? Top priority. Got it?”
“Got it, and over and out.”
THOUGH HE COULDN’T delegate the thinking, Decker could certainly dole out the grunt work. He assigned one of the newest detectives the necessary but excruciatingly frustrating task of driving from the West Valley to downtown to pick up the Little file. In morning rush-hour traffic that was a heavy one-to two-hour commute, depending on the amount of Sigalerts on L.A.’s arteries. In the meantime, Decker went over his current assignments, clearing most of his paperwork to devote his attention to the Little case.
Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 17