A Cold Heart

Padgett pouted. “I ask, he doesn’t answer.”

“Please?” said Milo, smiling at her again, but talking in the low, threatening tones of a bear emerging from its cave.

Padgett said, “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

“First name?” said Todd.

“Check any Drummond.”

“Check Bulldog,” said Padgett.

No one laughed.

***

No record of Kevin or Yuri or any other Drummond showed up in the SSA contributor files. No articles on Baby Boy Lee or China Maranga, either, but Todd did find a write-up of a recital given by Vassily Levitch. Another “Pits and Peaches” entry, one year ago. Levitch had played one piece at a group recital in Santa Barbara.

“Another Over The Transom,” said Milo.

The byline: E. Murphy.

The hyperbolic, sexually loaded prose evoked Faithful Scrivener: Levitch was “lithe as a harem houri” as he “stroked Bartok’s tumescent etude” and “squeezed every drop from the time/space/infinity between notes.”

Padgett rotated her chin stud. “Boy, do we print crap, this walk down memory lane is not making me proud.”

Todd said, “Keep your perspective, Patti. Your old man markets toxic chemicals.”

***

Patti Padgett photocopied the articles and walked us to the door. Sticking close to Milo.

He said, “Ever hear of GrooveRat?”

“Nope. Is it a band?”

“A zine.”

“There are hundreds of those,” she said. “Anyone with a scanner and a printer can do one.”

Her smile began fresh, ended up old, sad, defeated. “Anyone with a rich dad can take it a step higher.”

21

As we got back in the car, Milo’s cell phone chirped the first seven notes of Fur Elise. He slapped it to his ear, grunted, said, “Yeah, I’ll be there ASAP, treat her nice.”

To me: “Vassily Levitch’s mother flew in last night from New York and is waiting for me at the station. Maybe she’ll know something that ties Levitch to Drummond beyond ‘E. Murphy’- so what was that all about? Drummond using pen names? And if he’s got his own zine, why send stuff to Patti and Todd?”

“The Bernet piece was written before GrooveRat was started- if Kevin was the author, he would’ve still been a sophomore. Maybe he sent the others because Patti and Todd were getting distribution and he wasn’t.”

“The need for exposure,” he said. “Lots of sex in the prose. He wants to screw them.”

“He wants to own them,” I said. “And he traveled to do it. Levitch’s recital was in Santa Barbara. Angelique Bernet was reviewed in L.A. but murdered in Boston. If you could verify his presence in Boston at the time, that would be grounds for a warrant.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but how do I verify without a warrant? The airlines have tightened up big-time, and Kevin’s family isn’t going to volunteer the info.”

We traveled west on Santa Monica. When we reached Doheny, I said, “If Drummond freelanced for SeldomScene, he may very well have submitted to other magazines.”

His hands clenched around the wheel. “What if the bastard uses a dozen pseudonyms? What do I do- find some expert to conduct linguistic analysis of every fringe mag in the country?”

“I’d start with Faithful Scrivener and E. Murphy bylines, see where that leads.”

“Extracurricular reading. Meanwhile, a grieving mother waits.”

A few blocks later, he said, “Any other insights? From the writing?”

“It’s the type of inflated prose you see in college papers. Writing to impress. If it’s Kevin we’re dealing with, he didn’t get strokes at home, channeled his energies into projects, came to see himself as a maven of the art world. I’d check his college newspaper for reviews, see if the writing matches.”

“You keep saying that. ‘If it’s Kevin.’ “

“Something bothers me,” I admitted. “Even at twenty-four, Kevin seems young for these killings. If he murdered Angelique Bernet he did it at the age of twenty-one. There are elements of Angelique that fit a novice: multiple stab wounds that could mean a blitz attack, the body left out in the open. But traveling three thousand miles from his comfort zone’s pretty calculated.”

“What about this,” he said. “He sees Bernet dance in L.A., gets the hots, writes her up, checks the ballet company’s travel schedule, takes a trip to Boston. Maybe he’s not even sure why. All sorts of feelings bouncing around in his head. Then he stalks her, follows her to Cambridge, makes contact with her- he could’ve even come on to her and she rejected him. He freaks out, does her. Flies home. Sits thinking about it- realizes what he did. That he got away with it. Finally, he’s succeeded at something. Thirteen months after that, China disappears. The killer takes time to bury her, and no one finds her for months. Because now he’s being careful. Plotting it out. And he’s close to home. Make any sense?”

“If he’s a gifted boy.”

“Excitable boy,” he said. “Like that song.”

“The recent murders fit with rising confidence,” I said. “All three were done right at the venues. In Baby Boy’s and Levitch’s cases with the audience still present, in Julie’s with CoCo Barnes in the next room. That stinks of audaciousness. Could be he’s practiced his craft, is feeling like a virtuoso.”

“Practiced- meaning other murders we don’t know about.”

“Thirteen months lapsed between Angelique and China, then nothing for nearly two years until Baby Boy. After that, we’ve got six weeks to Julie and nine weeks to Levitch.”

“Great,” he said.

“The alternative is he managed, somehow, to suppress his urges for years and now he’s losing control.”

“How could he suppress?”

“By obsessing on a new project.”

“GrooveRat.”

“Being a publisher could grant serious illusions of power. Perhaps he’s finally realized that the zine’s a failure. Yet another one.”

“Daddy pulled the plug?”

“From what Petra says, Daddy was never enthusiastic.”

“The art world fails him,” he said. “So he takes it out on the artists. Let’s get back to the sexual angle. We’ve got male and female victims? What’s that say? A bisexual killer?”

“Or a sexually confused killer,” I said. “Certainly, a sexually inadequate killer. In no case was there any penetration. He’s intimidated by the clash of genitalia, substitutes the eroticism of talent. Targeting talent on the rise, he captures their essence at its peak. How’s that for a cheap Freudian shot?”

“You’re talking about an artistic cannibal,” he said.

“I’m talking,” I said, “about the ultimate critic.”

***