“My daughter, Amy, wants to be a physician. A surgeon, no less. She’s smart enough, but I tell her, ‘You’re twelve, there’s time to decide.’ She is a straight-A student, though. So maybe.”
“You must be proud of her,” said Isaac.
“I am. Proud of her brother, too.” A new kind of smile. Open, maternal. Suddenly Isaac couldn’t banish the vision of nursing at those pendulous… and then there they were, blocking his vision as she leaned down.
Presented her mouth to him.
Like stepping off a precipice, he moved in. Her tongue tasted lemony, the sweet lemon of hard candies. Had she schemed to do this? That possibility excited him further and he felt he’d burst out of his pants.
Now she was in his lap, a soft, substantive weight, arms curling around him. His hands found her back, her breasts, reached under her dress, touched smooth flesh. Smooth thighs, warm and moist lifted and she was allowing him, she wasn’t stopping him.
Then she took hold of his hand, placed it over the silky material. Butterflies jumped. Even as she pushed him down, she said, “Oh, Isaac, I’m sorry. This is wrong.”
He tried to pull away but she held his hand fast. Sandwiched the other between her legs. Looked him straight in the eye and said, “This won’t happen again.”
With a clumsy shifting of haunches, her eyes aimed at the ceiling, she rolled off her panties.
CHAPTER 33
FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 3:49 P.M., DETECTIVES’ ROOM, HOLLYWOOD DIVISION
No TGIF end of week joy for Petra. She sat at her desk, wondered why Isaac hadn’t shown up today or yesterday.
She asked Barney Fleischer if he’d seen the kid.
“Wednesday,” he said. “Last night. He was here until around eight.”
“All by himself?”
“I was here,” said Barney. “Have you heard about Schoelkopf?”
“No, what?”
“Split from his wife, the third one.” The old man smiled serenely.
“It’s L.A.” said Petra.
“Always has been.”
She sat back down. Exhausted from the meeting.
Such fun, detecting.
With Omar Selden I.D.’d as the prime suspect for Paradiso, the logical step would’ve been running an immediate search for the mass killer. Instead, Petra had been ordered to clear paper, specifying how she’d come up with Lyle Leon as a witness. Then: sit tight until notified further by the Homicide Special Squad.
The call came on Thursday. Big-time meeting tomorrow at two P.M.
They’d adjourned an hour ago, at three. She and Mac Dilbeck and three golden downtown boys. The agenda, actually written on the whiteboard: “intradivisional interfacing.”
The three H-S detectives had turned out to be relaxed types, nothing but praise for the way Hollywood had come up with Selden. Petra figured it for total b.s. but smiled prettily. The confab ended up being Petra and Mac fact-sharing and the hotshots reciting everything they knew about VVO and other Westside/Valley gangs. They’d brought props- an easel, charts, statistics. The last sheet on the easel was a crater-pored blowup of Omar Selden’s soft, glaring face.
Seeing him like that, there was no other way to think of Selden but as a Seriously Bad Guy. Petra realized how close she’d been to evil and fought not to shiver.
At two fifty-eight, the head Downtown guy announced the plan, obviously preordained: The new San Fernando Valley Gang Unit would search for Omar Selden because, even if Selden was the shooter, he’d been accompanied by other bangers and the takedown required specialists. H-S would handle “formal liaisoning” with the gang squad and get back to Mac about a follow-up meeting for the entire “apprehension team.”
Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Petra raised the issue of the missing Sandra Leon. The head Downtown guy said, “Wouldn’t you say she’s probably dead? We bring Selden in alive, maybe we’ll find out the details. That’s why it’s important to do it right.”
She left the conference room more worn-out than if she’d driven all over town looking for Omar.
Now she sat at her desk, thinking about the June brainings because there was nothing left to think about on Paradiso. The kill-date was seven days away and she and Isaac hadn’t sat down for a while.
She’d dropped the ball. But Paradiso had been the here and now, she could be forgiven.
Seven days; Lord help the next victim. Unless Isaac was wrong.
How could he be? The wound-stats were nearly identical.
That old gnawing feeling surfaced under her breastbone. Retrieving the June 28 files, she reviewed the cases yet again.
Concentrating on Marta Doebbler, lured out of the theater. Because she’d met Kurt Doebbler and he was weird.
Then: old man Solis and the phony cable guy. Coral Langdon, the dead dog. The more Petra thought about her dog-walking-killer scenario, the better it felt.
Nothing in common between the victims except a calculating, psychopathic flavor to the killings. Someone extremely clever, calculating, willing to shift his approach… chameleonlike.
Heterogeneous victims. Not a sexual thing? Or an ambisexual killer.
Or did it have to do with the challenge? Fun of the hunt?
Even so, there had to be something that tied the six dead people together.
She strained to come up with a unifying factor.
Half an hour later, it was killer six, detective zero.
Seven more days. Had the creep selected his quarry? What criteria did he use? What was it that marked them?
Why crack their skulls? A lot riskier than shooting or stabbing. That had to mean something.
Alex Delaware had told her about cannibals eating their victims’ brains in order to capture their souls. Was this some new-age cannibal thing?
Or was the killer boasting: I’m the brain.
A self-styled genius? Lots of psychos had inflated self-esteem. This one had gotten away with it for years, maybe he really was smart.
If so, her best weapon was a Big Brain on her side. Which she already had. But where was he?
All that youthful exuberance, the way Isaac had latched on to her like a puppy, why keep his distance now? Because she’d put him off? Or was it something to do with that facial bruise? No way did she buy his story about walking into a wall.
Some babysitter I am.
Was Isaac in trouble? She imagined a host of worst-case scenarios, pictured headlines, stories, her name paired with “neglectful cop.”
Councilman Reyes demanding her badge.
Now her stomach was a sloshing sack of acid.
Stop it, he’s fine. Working on his dissertation, gonna be a double-doctor one day. Why hang around here? You’ve given him no reason.
Or was Isaac making himself scarce because he couldn’t figure out June 28? If a genius couldn’t untangle the pattern, how could she hope to?
She placed the six files back in a drawer. Tried to rationalize away the stress-ache by reminding herself that she had produced Omar Selden.
The old-fashioned way. That would be useless for June 28…
She shifted her thoughts to Eric.
She hadn’t seen him since early Wednesday morning when he’d slipped away- limped away- from the station as Lyle Leon was being booked. Drawing Petra into the stairwell, kissing her briefly, then hurrying off.
One call since then. The message slip had greeted her when she arrived this morning.
I’ll be in touch soon. E.
Off doing his thing, whatever that was. Did that mean a prolonged retreat into one of those long, dark silences of his?
She tried to retrieve the taste of his lips on hers. Failed. Satisfaction over Selden began to tarnish. Because collaring the bastard wouldn’t bring back Marcella Douquette and the other Paradiso victims.