Jonathan Kellerman_Petra Connor 02 (22 page)

“All of a sudden I'm working for you?”

Lucido said, “You're working for the department. Same as us. You got a problem with any of this, feel free to complain.”

Petra felt an urge to bolt and twisted the door handle. It didn't budge. Why would it? She was in the suspect seat.

Before she could say anything, Lew Rodman laughed and pushed another release button.

As she got out, Lucido said, “So who's Omar?”

Petra leaned into his window. He drew away and she stuck her head in the car.

“You guys from the Valley?”

Lucido shook his head. “Central Gang.”

“Then you don't need to know.”

CHAPTER

34

P
etra watched the Crown Victoria drive off the parking lot.

Isaac into something
really
bad.

She changed her mind about walking, decided to get her stuff, play hooky. As she reached the station's back door, someone called her name.

She turned.

And there he was, Mr. Double Life, waving with the hand that wasn't gripping his briefcase. Wearing what appeared to be the same clothes he'd had on in Nueva Cantina.

Had he been watching her chat with the Gang D's? Could the kid be that savvy?

He trotted up to her. The bruise was paler but still swollen and covered with pancake makeup.

“Hey,” she said. “Been a while.”

“Sorry, I've been burning the midnight oil.”

Bet you have.
“Dissertation stuff?”

“Mostly. Some June 28 research. Nothing to show on that, unfortunately. The librarian's still looking.” He frowned. “To be honest, I've been wondering if I was wrong. Maybe I made too big a deal out of what was actually a statistical artifact.”

“You didn't,” said Petra. She eyed the bruise conspicuously.

Isaac's hand rose toward the spot, dropped back down. “You're convinced it's genuine.”

“Seems that way.” She showed him her watch. Tiny black numerals in the calendar window declared 21.

“I know,” he said. He shifted the briefcase to his left hand. His shoulders drooped.

Petra said, “You look a little beat.”

“The buses were running late so I took an alternate route, ended up walking a few extra blocks.”

Did you, indeed?

Petra said, “Must be hard, without a car.”

“You get used to it. I heard one of the Leons' face was on TV. My father saw it on the news. I'd mentioned to my parents that you were working the case. I hope that wasn't indiscreet.”

“Nope,” said Petra. “My name was on the broadcast.”

“So is Leon the shooter?”

She shook her head, unsure how much to tell him—now.

Engine noise made her look over his shoulder. A black SUV had entered the lot and it nosed aggressively into the first empty slot. At the wheel was one of the Downtown hotshots. Square-shouldered and confident as a movie cop. His buddy rode shotgun, same demeanor. Reflective sunglasses on both of them. The motor gunned, then turned off. Petra said, “Let's talk later,” and held the door open for Isaac.

Reverse chivalry, he thought, as he entered the station. To her I'm nothing but a kid.

Hotshot I said, “Hi, ready for the meeting?”

“What meeting?”

“In five. We called.”

“When?”

“Fifteen minutes ago.”

While she'd been sitting in Rodman and Lucido's car. Short notice, like she was their handservant.

She said, “What's up?”

Hotshot II said, “Let's meet and find out.”

Isaac set up his computer at his corner desk. Two other detectives were in the room, Barney Fleischer and a heavy man he didn't know, wearing an X-shaped, leather gun harness that bit into a tight green polo shirt.

He plugged in, logged on to the Doheny Library database, pretended to have something to do.

Pretended nothing had happened with Klara.

But it had and now he'd fouled things up personally and professionally.

Taking advantage of a vulnerable woman, which by itself was sleazy. The bigger issue was mixing business with . . . pleasure and the risk of a screwup on the June 28 investigation.

He tried to rationalize it away by telling himself that Klara had taken advantage of him. The impressionable student wanting only peace and quiet and musty books, not the clashing of thighs, the moaning . . .

It had been great. The second time, not the first. The first had been over before he could digest the fact that his head throbbed with surprise and orgasm. Klara had kept moving and he'd stayed hard. Cupping his face in both her hands, she'd whispered, “Yes, keep going, keep it going.”

Which, of course, had only charged him up further.

The second time had felt fantastic. For Klara, too, if writhing and mewling and having to muffle her own cries with her hand counted for anything. Afterward, she remained in place, straddling him, trapping his detumescence. Kissing his neck, scratching the back of his shirt with her fingernails, loose strands of red hair tickling his face until he could no longer stand it and he turned his head and she took it for fatigue and said, “You poor guy. All my weight on you, I'm so fat.”

She was smiling but looked about to cry, so he said, “Not at all,” and kissed her and grabbed hold of her pillowy hips through the butterfly dress.

“God, I'm still tingling,” she said. Then the tears came. “I'm so sorry, Isaac. What do you need with a fat, hysterical old woman?”

That led to his reassuring her, caressing her. Kissing her some more, though by that time his emotions had shriveled along with his penis and body contact was the last thing he craved.

She
did
feel heavy.

“You're so sweet,” she said. “But this really can't happen again. Right?”

“Right,” he said.

“You agreed pretty fast.”

At a loss, he said, “I just want what you want.”

“Do you?” she said. “Well, if it were up to me, we'd fuck a hundred more times. But cooler heads must prevail.”

She kissed his chin. “It's a shame, isn't it? The way life gets so complicated. I'm old enough to be your mother.”

She frowned at the thought. A blade of shame cut through Isaac's brain. He fought to banish it, focused on butterflies and flowers. Shifted his weight to let her know he was uncomfortable.

“But,” she said, finally getting off him, stepping high, as if to avoid touching him. Avoiding his eyes, too, as she rolled up her panties and put on her shoes and fluffed her fiery hair.

Isaac fixed his khakis and zipped up his fly and sat there, waiting for the rest of her sentence. Got only a weak smile. Tremulous lips.

“But what?” he said.

“But what?”

“You said ‘but' and then nothing.”

“Oh,” she said, dropping her hand and grazing his groin with her fingernails. “
But
it was still fantastic. Even
though
I'm old enough to be your mother. We can be friends, can't we?”

“Of course,” said Isaac, not sure what he was agreeing to.

Klara's grin was crooked and complex. “So can we go out for coffee? As friends.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Now?”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

They left the library together and walked to a coffee shop on Figueroa, across the street from the campus's eastern border. Passing students and faculty, people walking with people their own age.

Klara's hips swayed and touched him from time to time. Isaac tried to put some space between them—enough to dispel any image of intimacy but not so much that she'd catch on. She kept bumping into his flank.

At the restaurant, she led him to a booth and ordered mint tea and a mixed green salad, Thousand Island on the side. Isaac, suddenly parched, asked for a Coke.

When the waitress left, Klara confided, “I always get hungry.” Her neck turned rosy.
“After.”

For the next hour she proceeded to tell him about her schooling, her childhood, the young marriage she'd once thought eternal, her two gifted children, her wonderful mother who could be controlling but only with the best of intentions, her corporate-attorney father, retired only for a year before he died of prostate cancer.

When she was through, she said, “You're a great listener. My ex was terrible about listening. Have you ever thought about becoming a psychiatrist?”

He shook his head.

“How come?”

“I haven't thought about any specialties yet. Too far off in the distance.”

She reached over and touched the tips of his fingers. “You're a beautiful boy, Isaac Gomez. One day you'll be famous. I hope you think of me kindly when you are.”

He laughed.

Klara said, “I'm not being funny.”

He walked her back to her desk in the reference section and turned away as she began chatting with her assistant, Mary Zoltan, a mole-faced woman ten years younger than Klara but somehow more cronelike. When Klara saw he was leaving, she ran after him, caught him by the door, touched his shoulder and whispered fiercely that he
was
beautiful,
it
had been beautiful, too bad it could never happen again.

Mary Zoltan was staring. No warmth in her rodent eyes.

Klara squeezed his shoulder. “Okay?”

“Okay.” He moved out of her grasp and left the library. Too wound up to concentrate on his doctoral research or June 28 or anything else. As he stepped out into the open air, the bulk between his legs throbbed, and Klara's scent adhered to his skin, his throat, his nasal passages. He stopped in a men's room in the neighboring building and washed his face. To no avail; he
stank
of semen and Klara.

No way could he face Petra.

He had nothing to offer her, anyway.

Why was he feeling as if he'd been unfaithful to her?

He walked back to Figueroa, caught the Metro 81 bus to Hill and Ord, picked up the 2 at Cesar Chavez and Broadway, and bypassed the Sunset/Wilcox exit for the station house. Continuing to La Brea, he got off and walked all the way to Pico Boulevard. There, he caught a Santa Monica Blue Line 7 to the beach.

It was nearly six by the time he arrived at the pier, where he bought a chewy corn dog, crisp fries, and another Coke, walked a while, checked out the few old Japanese guys fishing from the far end. Then he just hung out. His grad-student clothes and briefcase drew stares from tourists and tough-faced teens and vendors.

Or were they seeing something else?

The person who never fit in, never would.

If they only knew what bounced at the bottom of the case.

Leaving the pier, he walked down to the beach, got sand under his socks and didn't care as he continued to the shoreline where he rolled up his khakis and got barefoot and waded out into the cold surf.

Standing there until his feet grew numb, he thought about nothing.

That felt great.

Then he flashed back to June 28.

Petra thinks I'm right, but I could still be wrong. It would be good to be wrong once in a while.

He walked back onto the sand, put his socks and shoes back on without bothering to dry his feet.

By the time he got back home it was close to ten and his mother was sulking because he'd missed the dinner she'd prepared.
Albondigas
soup teeming with meatballs and herbs, beef tamales, a big pot of black beans with salt pork. As Mama hovered and counted every forkful, he ate as much as he could stomach. When his guts were about to burst, he wiped his chin, told her it was great, kissed her cheek, and headed for his room.

Isaiah was already asleep in the upper bunk, lying on his back snoring rhythmically, his left arm flung across his eyes. For the past year, Isaiah, an apprentice roofer, had bounced from one construction job to another, working for barely above minimum wage, acquiring a permanent reek of tar. Generally, Isaac was used to it, but tonight the tiny space smelled like a freshly asphalted freeway.

His older brother snuffled and rolled over and returned to his original position. The job demanded rising at five
A.M
. in order to be in place at the pickup spot when the shift boss drove by in his panel truck and collected day laborers.

Isaac removed his shoes and placed them down on the floor quietly. His younger brother Joel's rollaway cot was empty, still made-up from the morning. A part-time city college student when he wasn't clerking at the Solario Spanish Market on Alvarado, Joel had taken to staying out late without explanation. The same transgression committed by the older Gomez boys would've brewed a parental storm. But Joel, good-looking, with a Tom Cruise smile, got away with everything.

Isaiah snuffled again, louder. Muttered something in his sleep. Went silent. Isaac disrobed carefully, folded his clothes over a chair, and slipped into the lower bunk.

A slurred “Hmmm” came from above and the bed frame squeaked. “That you, bro?”

“It's me.”

“Where you been? Mom's pissed.”

“Working.”

Isaiah laughed.

“What's funny?” said Isaac.

“I can smell it all the way up here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You smell like heavy-duty fucking, man. Yo, little bro. Right
on.
”

The following day, he returned to the library, determined to meet Klara's eyes forthrightly.

We're all adults here.

She wasn't at her desk.

“Sick,” said Mary Zoltan.

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“When she called in this morning, she sounded pretty bad.”

“A cold?” said Isaac.

“No, more like . . .” Mary stared at him and Isaac felt his face catch fire. He'd showered for a long time but if Isaiah, half-asleep, could smell it . . .

“Whatever,” said Mary. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“No, thanks.”

She smirked.

Sick. More than a cold.

A woman on the edge and he'd driven her over.

Bad enough on its own, but there goes June 28.

As he made his way down to the third subbasement, nightmare scenes tumbled out of his brain like a payoff of slot-machine quarters.

Klara, having convinced herself she'd been sexually exploited—by a young, ambitious man—had plunged into a deep, dark depression.

And dealt with it by self-medicating.

Overdosing.

Or, she'd drowned her sorrows in pills and alcohol—pills and white wine.

Yes, that fit: tranqs and chardonnay. Besotted, she staggers to her minivan. Another car heads her way but it's too late.