JONATHAN KELLERMAN. THE CLINIC
JONATHAN KELLERMAN. THE CLINIC
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
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
By Jonathan Kellerman
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Copyright Page
To
Beverly Lewis
CHAPTER
1
Few murder streets are lovely. This one was.
Elm-shaded, a softly curving stroll to the University, lined with generous haciendas and California colonials above lawns as unblemished as fresh billiard felt.
Giant elms. Hope Devane had bled to death under one of them, a block from her home, on the southwest corner.
I looked at the spot again, barely exposed by a reluctant moon. The night-quiet was broken only by crickets and the occasional late-model well-tuned car.
Locals returning home. Months past the curious-onlooker stage.
Milo lit up a cigarillo and blew smoke out the window.
Cranking my window down, I continued to stare at the elm.
A twisting trunk as thick as a freeway pylon supported sixty feet of opaque foliage. Stout, grasping branches appeared frosted in the moonlight, some so laden they brushed the ground.
Five years since the city had last pruned street trees. Property-tax shortfall. The theory was that the killer had hidden under the canopy, though no hint of presence other than bicycle tracks, a few feet away, was ever found.
Three months later, theory was all that remained and not much of that.
Milo’s unmarked Ford shared the block with two other cars, both Mercedeses, both with parking permits on their windshields.
After the murder, the city had promised to trim the elms. No follow-through yet.
Milo had told me about it with some bitterness, cursing politicians but really damning the cold case.
“A couple of news stories, then nada.”
“Current events as fast food,” I’d said. “Quick, greasy, forgettable.”
“Aren’t we the cynic.”
“Professional training: aiming for rapport with the patient.”
That had gotten a laugh out of him. Now he frowned, brushed hair off his forehead, and blew wobbly smoke rings.
Edging the car up the block, he parked again. “That’s her house.” He pointed to one of the colonials, smallish, but well-kept. White board front, four columns, dark shutters, shiny fittings on a shiny door. Three steps up from the sidewalk a flagstone path cut through the lawn. A picket gate blocked the driveway.
Two upstairs windows were amber behind pale curtains.
“Someone home?” I said.
“That’s his Volvo in the driveway.”
Light-colored station wagon.
“He’s always home,” said Milo. “Once he gets in he never leaves.”
“Still mourning?”
He shrugged. “She drove a little red Mustang. She was a lot younger than him.”
“How much younger?”
“Fifteen years.”
“What about him interests you?”
“The way he acts when I talk to him.”
“Nervous?”
“Unhelpful. Paz and Fellows thought so, too. For what that’s worth.”
He didn’t think much of the first detectives on the case and the common ground probably bothered him as much as anything.
“Well,” I said, “isn’t the husband always the first suspect? Though stabbing her out on the street doesn’t sound typical.”
“True.” He rubbed his eyes. “Braining her in the bedroom would have been more marital. But it happens.” Twirling the cigar. “Live long enough, everything happens.”
“Where exactly were the bicycle tracks?”
“Just north of the body but I wouldn’t make much of those. Lab guys say they could have been anywhere from one to ten days old. A neighbor kid, a student, a fitness freak, anyone. And no one I talked to when I did the door-to-door noticed an unusual biker that whole week.”
“What’s an unusual biker?”
“Someone who didn’t fit in.”
“Someone nonwhite?”
“Whatever works.”
“Quiet neighborhood like this,” I said, “it’s surprising no one saw or heard anything at eleven P.M.”
“Coroner said it’s possible she didn’t scream. No defense wounds, no tentatives, so she probably didn’t struggle much.”