JONATHAN KELLERMAN. A COLD HEART

Three for three. Petra’s overall solve-rate was approaching the champ’s—Milo Sturgis’s over in West L.A.—and she knew she was fast-tracking to DIII, might make it by year’s end, was sure to incur lots of envy among her colleagues.

Good. Men were . . .

No, enough of that. Men are our biological partners.

Oh, Lord . . .

Day Ninety, she decided that bitterness was eroding her soul and resolved to be positive. Returning to her easel for the first time in months, she tried painting in oils, found her sense of color wanting, switched to pen-and-ink and filled pages of bristol board with tight, hyperrealistic faces.

Children’s faces. Well drawn but tacky. She ripped the drawings to shreds, went shopping.

She needed to go for color, one look in her closet made that painfully obvious.

Her casual clothes consisted of black jeans and black T’s and black shoes. Her work duds were dark pantsuits: a dozen black, two navy blues, three chocolate browns, one charcoal. All slim-cut to fit her skinny frame, all designer-labels that she purchased at discount outlets and the Barney’s warehouse sale and last-day markdowns wherever she found them.

She drove from her Wilshire District apartment to the big Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and splurged on a half-price Vestimenta soft wool number.

Silk-lined lapels, ticket pocket cut on the bias, strong shoulders, pegged trousers.

Powder blue.

She wore it that night and drew shocked looks from the other detectives. One wiseass covered his eyes, as if shielding himself against glare. Another said, “Nice, Petra.” A couple of others whistled, and she grinned at the lot of them.

Before anyone else could crack wise, phones began ringing, and the squad room filled with the business of death. Taking her place at her metal desk, in a corner next to the lockers, Petra shuffled paper and touched a powder blue sleeve and figured she knew what was running through the guys’ heads.

Morticia changes her style.

Dragon Lady comes up for light.

She came across funereal, but a lot of it was biology. She had sharp features, ivory skin, thick, straight jet hair that she kept in a glossy wedge cut, deep brown eyes that leaned toward piercing.

Kids brought out the softness in her, but now Alicia and Bea were out of her life and Billy Straight—a young boy she met working a case who’d touched her heart—was nearly fourteen, had found himself a girlfriend.

Billy never called her anymore; the last time Petra had phoned him, more silence than conversation had passed between them.

So she supposed she could be forgiven a Dragon Lady persona.

The D.A.’s office had faxed her some questions on the Elsa Brigoon case—stuff the novice ADA could’ve known from reading the file. But she answered anyway and faxed back her replies.

Then her phone rattled and a patrol officer named Montez went on about a 187 cutting on Fountain near El Centro and Petra was out of the station in a flash.

She arrived at the scene and conferred with the assistant coroner. He informed her that the morgue was backlogged and the autopsy would take a while. But cause of death didn’t look to be any great mystery.

Single knife wound, exsanguination, most of the blood pooled beneath the DB, establishing the kill spot. Petra, in powder blue, was glad there wasn’t more gore.

Then she read the victim’s license and got sad because, for the first time since she’d been a detective, this was a name she recognized. She’d never been into the blues—not musically, anyway—but you didn’t have to be to know who Edgar Ray Lee was.

AKA Baby Boy. The driver’s license in his pocket just stated the basics: male Caucasian, a DOB that put him at fifty-one. Height: six-two, weight: two-seventy. Petra thought he looked bigger than that.

As she recorded the data in her pad, she overheard someone—one of the morgue drivers—remark that the guy was a guitar god, had jammed with Bloomfield, Mayall, Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Petra turned and saw a ponytailed and bearded ex-hippie type in morgue coveralls staring at the body. White ponytail. Wet-eyed.

“Talented,” she said.

“Those fingers,” said the driver, as he unfolded a black plastic body bag.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *