Survival Of The Fittest

“Thanks again, Dr. Delaware. I'll be in touch.”

She sped away and I returned to the house, thinking about the meager history she'd given me.

Nolan too smart to be a cop. But plenty of cops were smart. Other characteristics- athletic, macho, dominant, attracted to the dark side- fit the police stereotype. A few years bumming around before seeking the security of a city job and a pension. Right-wing political views; I'd have liked to hear more about that.

She'd also described a partial family history of serious mood disorder. A cop judged “different” by his peers.

That could add to the alienation brought about by the job.

Nolan's life sounded full of alienation.

So even though his sister was understandably shocked, no big surprises, so far.

Nothing that came close to explaining why Nolan had sucked his gun at Go-Ji's.

Not that I was likely to get any closer to it, because the way she'd left told me it would probably be a one-shot deal.

In my business you learn to make do with unanswered questions.

3

Milo called two days later, at 8:00 A.M.

“They just gave me another cold one, Alex. I'm not sure I can pay you, though we did get brownie points on the last thing, so maybe.”

The last thing was the murder of a psychology professor stalked and stabbed a few yards from her home in Westwood. Thinking it unsolvable after months of no leads, Milo 's superiors had handed it to him as punishment for being the only openly gay detective in LAPD. We'd learned a few secrets about the victim and he'd managed to close the file.

“Well, I don't know,” I said. “Why the hell should I do you any favors?”

He laughed. “Because I'm such a pleasant fellow?”

I simulated a game-show buzzer. “Try again.”

“Because you're a shrink and committed to unconditional acceptance?”

“Don't go on Jeopardy! What's the case?”

I heard him sigh. “A kid, Alex. Fifteen years old.”

“Oh.”

“I know how you feel about that but this is an important one. If you have any time at all I'd appreciate tossing things around.”

“Sure,” I said. “Come over right now.”

He showed up carrying a box of files, wearing a turquoise polo shirt that proclaimed his gut, wrinkled brown jeans, scarred beige desert boots. His weight had stabilized at around 240, most of it distributed around the middle of his six-three frame. His hair was freshly cut in his usual style, though to use style in conjunction with Milo was a felony: clipped short at the sides and back, shaggy on top, sideburns to the earlobes. Gray was winning the battle with black and the sideburns were nearly white. He's nine months older than I am and sometimes looking at him reminds me time is passing.

He put the box down on the kitchen table. His pocked face was chalky and his green eyes lacked spark. A long night, or several of them. Looking at the refrigerator, he frowned. “Need I spell it out?”

“Solid or liquid?” I said.

“Been working on this since six.”

“So both.”

“You're the doctor.” He stretched and sat heavily and I heard the chair creak.

I fixed him a cold roast beef sandwich and brought it over along with a quart of milk. He ate and drank quickly and exhaled noisily.

The box was filled to the top. “Looks like plenty of data.”

“Don't confuse quantity with quality.” Pushing his plate away, he began removing bound folders and rubber- banded stacks, arranged them neatly on the table.

“The victim is a girl named Irit Carmeli. Fifteen, slightly retarded. Thirteen weeks ago, someone abducted her and killed her during a school field trip up in the Santa Monica Mountains- some nature conservancy owned by the city. Her school goes there every year, the idea is to get a little beauty into the kids' lives.”

“Are all the kids retarded?”

“All with some kind of problem. It's a special school.”

He ran a hand over his face, as if washing without water. “Here's how it lays out: The kids were dropped off near the entrance by a chartered bus, and hiked about a half-mile into the park. It gets thickly wooded pretty quickly but there are marked pathways for novice hikers. The kids ran around for an hour or so, had snacks, bathroom breaks, then reboarded. Almost two hours had lapsed by then. They called roll, Irit wasn't there, they went looking for her, couldn't find her, 911'd Westside Division, who sent a couple of units, but they couldn't find her either and called for K-9 backup. It took half an hour for the dogs to get there, another half to sniff her out. The body was about a mile away, lying in a pine grove. No overt signs of violence, no ligature striations, no subdermal hemorrhaging, no swelling, no blood. Except for the positioning they would have assumed she'd had a seizure or something like that.”

“Sexual positioning?”

“No, show you in a second. The coroner found bruising on the hyoid and the sternohyoid and the pharyngeal muscles. No sexual assault.”

“Strangulation,” I said. “Why no external marks?”

“Coroner said you can get that when the choke-force is spread out over a broad area- using a soft ligature like a rolled-up towel or a clothed forearm. Gentle strangulation, they call it.”

Grimacing, he removed the top file and flipped it open to two pages of snapshots in plastic strip-fasteners.

Some were of the surrounding forest. The rest were of the girl. Thin and fair-haired, she wore a white T-shirt with lace trim around the neck and sleeves, blue jeans, white socks, pink plastic shoes. Very thin. Pipe-cleaner limbs, the elbows prominent, as if recently enlarged by a growth spurt. I would have guessed her age at twelve, not fifteen. Lying on her back, brown earth beneath her, arms at her sides, feet pressed together. Too symmetrical to have fallen. Arranged.

I studied a facial close-up. Eyes closed, mouth slightly parted. The dirty-blond hair, long and very curly and spread on the ground.

More arrangement.

Someone taking the time… playing.

Back to the full-body shot. Her hands were next to her thighs, palms up, curled open, as if asking Why?

Insipid olive-gray shadows washed across the pale face like brushstrokes.

Light filtering through the trees above.

My chest felt clogged and I started to close the file. Then I noticed something small and pink near the girl's right ear. “What's that?”

“Hearing aid. She was also deaf. Partially in one ear, totally in the other.”

“Jesus.” I put the file down. “Irit Carmeli. Is that Italian?”

“Israeli. Her father's a honcho at the Israeli Consulate. Which is why the department's inability to develop a single lead in three months is problematic.”

“Three months,” I said. “I never read about it in the papers.”

“It wasn't in the papers. Diplomatic pull.”