JONATHAN KELLERMAN. A COLD HEART

“What was the name of the fanzine?” said Petra.

“Something called GrooveRat. I looked for it but couldn’t—”

Her slim, white fingers on my wrist stopped me midsentence.

“GrooveRat did a piece on Baby Boy,” she said. She opened her attaché case, drew out a blue murder book, and began paging. “The editor was persistent with me, too. Real pest, kept calling, bugging me for details . . . here we go: Yuri Drummond. I didn’t take him seriously because he sounded like an obnoxious kid. He told me he’d never actually met Baby Boy but ran a profile on him.”

“Same as China,” said Milo. “Baby Boy turn him down, too?”

“I didn’t ask. He claimed interviews weren’t the magazine’s style, they were into the essence of art, not the persona, or some nonsense like that. He sounded about twelve.”

“What did he want from you?” I said.

“The gory details.” She frowned. “I figured him for an adolescent ghoul, shined him on.”

Milo said, “Be interesting to know if he ever wrote up Julie Kipper.”

“Wouldn’t it,” said Petra.

I said, “I tried to find a copy of GrooveRat at the big newsstand on Selma, but they didn’t carry it. The owner suggested a comics store on the boulevard, but they were closed.”

“Probably a dinky fly-by-night deal,” said Milo.

“That’s what China’s band mate said. He didn’t save a copy, either.”

“Yuri Drummond . . . sounds like a made-up name. What, he wants to be a cosmonaut?”

“Everyone reinvents themselves,” said Petra. “It’s the L.A. way.” Glancing at Stahl. He didn’t respond.

“Especially if they’re running from something,” I said.

“GrooveRat,” she said. “So what does this mean? A fan gone psycho?”

“Someone overinvolved in the victims’ careers. Maybe someone whose identity became enmeshed with the creativity of others. ‘Leeches on the body artistic’ is how Julie Kipper’s ex-husband described critics and agents and gallery owners and all the other ancillaries of the creative world. The same can be said of fanatical followers. Sometimes attachments morph into business arrangements—presidents of fan clubs selling memorabilia—but the core remains emotional: celebrity by association. For most people, fandom’s a fling that ends when they grow up. But certain borderline personalities never mature, and what starts out as a harmless ego-substitution—the kid standing in front of a mirror playing air guitar and imagining himself to be Hendrix—can turn into a psychological hijacking.”

“Hijacking what?” said Milo.

“The adored one’s identity. ‘I know the star better than he knows himself. How dare he get married/sell out/not listen to my advice?’ “

“How dare he refuse my generous offer to be interviewed,” said Petra. “Adolescents are the biggest fanatics, right? And Yuri Drummond sounded adolescent. The fact that he published a zine makes him hard-core.”

“Desktop publishing’s elevated hard-core,” I said. “Buy a computer and a printer, and you, too, can be a media-master. I know these victims vary demographically, but I’ve thought all along that the crucial element is their career status: poised for a jump. What if the killer became attached to them precisely because they weren’t stars? Entertained rescue fantasies—he’d be the star-maker by writing about them. They rejected him, so he interrupted the climb. Maybe he convinced himself they sold out.”

“Or,” said Petra, “since we’re talking about vicarious talent, maybe he was an aspiring artist himself and simply got consumed with jealousy.”

Milo said, “Aspiring guitarist, painter, singer, and pianist?”

“A real megalomaniac,” she said.

All three detectives looked at me.

“It’s possible,” I said. “A dilettante who bounces from game to game. I had a patient years ago, a successful writer. Scarcely a week went by when he didn’t meet someone who planned to pen the Great American Novel if only they had time. This guy had written his first four books while holding down two jobs. One thing he told me stuck: When someone says they want to be a writer, they’ll never make it. When they say they want to write, there’s a chance. That could fit with our bitter-fan scenario: someone who gets off on the external trappings of creativity.”

Petra smiled. “Leeches on the body artistic.” Years ago, she’d worked as a painter. “I like that.”

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 *