COMPULSION

By

Jonathan Kellerman

Book 22 in the Alex Delaware series

Copyright © 2008 by Jonathan Kellerman

To Gina Centrello

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER
1

Kat loved breaking the rules.

Don’t talk to strangers.

She’d talked to plenty of them tonight. Danced with a few, too. If you could call the way those losers moved dancing. The big, scary consequence: a stomped toe, courtesy of a loser in a red shirt.

Don’t go crazy mixing your drinks.

Then how did you account for Long Island Iced Tea, which was basically everything tossed together and the best buzz in the world?

She’d had three tonight. Plus the tequila shots and the raspberry beer and the weed the guy in the retro bowling shirt had offered her. Not to mention… hard to remember. Whatever.

Don’t drink and drive.

Yeah, great plan. What was she supposed to do tonight, let one of those losers drive her Mustang home?

The plan was Rianna would limit herself to two drinks and be the designated wheel-girl so Kat and Bethie could party. Only Bethie and Rianna hooked up with a couple fake-o blond guys in fake-o Brioni shirts. Brothers, some kind of surfboard business in Redondo.

We’re thinking maybe we’ll go party with Sean and Matt, giggle, giggle. If that’s cool with you, Kat.

What was she supposed to say? Stay with me, I’m the ultimate loser?

So here she was three, four a.m., staggering out of the Light My Fire, looking for her car.

God, it was so dark, why the hell didn’t they have outside lights or something…?

She took three steps and one of her spike-heels caught on the asphalt and she stumbled, nearly twisting her ankle.

Fighting for balance, she righted herself.

Saved by quick reflexes, Supergirl. Also all those dancing lessons she’d been forced into. Not that she’d ever admit it to Mother, giving her fuel for more I-told-you-so bullshit.

Mother and her rules. No white after Labor Day. That made sense in L.A.

Kat took two more steps and one of the spaghetti straps on her plum lamé top fell off her shoulder. She left it that way, liking the kiss of the night air on her bare skin.

Feeling a little bit sexy, she flipped her hair, then remembered she’d had it cut, not much to flip.

Her vision blurred — how many Long Islands had she polished off? Maybe four.

Taking a deep cleansing breath, she felt her head clear.

Then it clouded again. And cleared. Like shutters being opened and closed. Crazy, maybe that weed was messed up… where was the Mustang… she walked faster, tripped again, and Supergirl reflexes weren’t enough and she had to grab out for something — the side of a car… not hers, crappy little Honda or something… where was the Mustang?

With only a few cars in the lot, it should’ve been easy to spot. But the darkness screwed everything up… losers who owned the Light My Fire too damn cheap to invest in some spots, like they weren’t making enough packing the bodies in, the bouncers and velvet ropes a big joke.

Cheap bastards. Like all men.

Except Royal. Would you believe that, Mother finally lucking out big-time? Who knew the old girl had it in her?

Kat laughed out loud at the image. Something in Mother.

Not likely, Royal was in the bathroom every ten minutes. Didn’t that mean a screwed-up prostrate?

She lurched across the inky lot. The sky was so black she couldn’t even see the chain-link fence surrounding the lot, or the warehouses and storage lots that made up this crappy neighborhood.

The club’s Web site said it was in Brentwood. More like the hairy, stinky armpit of West L.A…. okay, there it was, her stupid Mustang.

She hurried toward the car, heels clacking against knobby asphalt. Each impact set off little echoes that reminded her of when she was seven and Mother forced her to take tap.

When she finally got there, she groped in her purse for her keys, found them. Dropped them.

She heard the rattle as they landed, but it was too dark to see where. Bending sharply, she teetered, braced herself with one hand to the ground, and searched with the other.

Nowhere.

Squatting, she smelled something chemical — gasoline, like when you fill up your car and no matter how many times you wash your hands afterward you can’t get rid of the stink.

A fuel leak? That’s all she needed.

Six thousand miles and the car was nothing but problems. She’d thought it was cool at first, but decided it was lame and stopped making payments. Hello, Re-po Man. Again.

We took care of the down payment, Katrina. All you had to do was remember on the fifteenth of each…

Where were the goddamn keys! She scraped her knuckles on the ground. A fake nail popped off and that made her feel like crying.

Ah, got it!

Struggling to her feet, she flicked the remote, dropped into the driver’s seat, started up the engine. The car balked, then kicked in and here we go Supergirl she was driving straight into the black night — oh, yeah, put on the headlights.

Slowly, with a drunk’s exaggerated care, she coasted, missed the exit, backed up, passed through. Turning south onto Corinth Avenue, she made her way to Pico. The boulevard was totally empty and she turned onto it. Oversteered, ended up on the wrong side of the road, swerved and compensated, finally got the stupid car in the lane.

At Sepulveda, she hit a red light.

No cars at the intersection. No cops.

She ran it.

Sailing north, she felt free, like the whole city — the whole world was hers.

Like someone had dropped a nuke and she was the last survivor.

Wouldn’t that be cool, she could drive over to Beverly Hills, run a gazillion red lights, waltz into the Tiffany store on Rodeo and scoop up whatever she wanted.

A planet without people. She laughed.

She crossed Santa Monica and Wilshire and kept going until Sepulveda turned into the Pass. Off to her left was the 405, just a scatter of taillights. On the other side was hillside that bled into moonless sky.

No lights on in gazillion-dollar hill houses full of sleeping rich people. The same kind of idiots she had to deal with at La Femme.

Women like Mother, pretending they weren’t shriveling or fat as pigs.

Thinking about work made Kat tense up and she deep-breathed. That made her burp real loud and she cracked up, drove faster.

At this rate, she’d be over the hill and at her apartment real soon.

Stupid little dump in Van Nuys, but she told everyone it was Sherman Oaks because it was on the border and who cared?

All of a sudden her eyes began to close and she had to shake herself awake. A hard shove down on the gas pedal and the car shot forward.

Saaiiiling…. You go, girl!

Seconds later, the Mustang sputtered, whined, stopped.

She managed to steer to the right, stop just off the road. Let the car sit for a sec and tried again.

Nothing but a whiny noise.

Two more attempts, then five.

Shit!

It took a while to find the switch for the interior lights and when she brightened the car, her head hurt and she saw little yellow things dancing in front of her eyes. When they cleared, she looked at the gas gauge.

E

Shit shit shit! How had that happened, she could swear—

Mother’s voice nagged at her. She put her hands over her ears and tried to think.

Where was the nearest gas station… nowhere, nothing for miles.

She punched the dashboard so hard it hurt her hands. Cried, sat back, drained.

Realizing she was exposed by the interior lights, she switched them off.

Now what?

Call the Triple A! Why hadn’t she thought of that?

It took what seemed like a long time to find her cell phone in her purse. Even longer to locate her Triple A card.

Tapping out the toll-free number was hard because even with the phone light the numbers were teeny and her hands were shaky.

When the operator answered, she read off her membership code. Had to do it twice because her eyes had blurred and it was hard to see what was a 3 and what was an 8.

The operator put her on hold, came back and said her membership had lapsed.

Kat said, “No way.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but you haven’t been active for eighteen months.”

“That’s frickin’ impossible—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”

“Like hell you are—”

“Ma’am, there’s no reason to be—”

“Like hell there isn’t.” Kat clicked off.

Now what?

Think, think, think — okay, plan B: Call Bethie’s cell and if that interrupted something, too frickin’ bad.

The phone rang five times before Bethie’s voice mail kicked in.

Kat hung up. Her phone went dead.

Jabbing the Power button did nothing.

That brought back a vague memory of something she’d neglected.

Charging up before she went out tonight — how the hell had she forgotten?

Now her whole body was shaking and her chest was tight and she was sweating.

She double-checked to make sure the car was locked.

Maybe a highway patrol dude would come by.

What if another car did?

Don’t talk to strangers.

What was her choice, sleeping here all night?

She nearly fell asleep before the first car showed up, speeding toward her, headlights startling her.

Big Range Rover; good.

Kat waved out the window. Bastard sped right by.

A couple of minutes later, headlights brightened her rearview and enlarged. This vehicle stopped right next to her.

Crappy pickup, stuff piled in the back, under a tarp.

The passenger window rolled down.

Young Mexican guy. Another Mexican sat at the wheel.

They looked at her funny.

The passenger got out. Small and scruffy.

Kat slid down low in her seat and when the Mexican came over and said something through the glass, she pretended he wasn’t there.

He stood there, really freaking her out.

Kat kept making believe she was invisible and the Mexican finally returned to the pickup.

It took five minutes after the truck drove away before she was able to sit up and breathe normally. She’d wet her thong. Rolled it off her butt and down her legs and tossed it into the backseat.

Soon as the undies made contact, her luck turned.

A Bentley!

Screw you, Range Rover!

Big, black, and glossy, that aggressive grille.

And slowing down!

Oh shit, what if it was Clive?

Even if it was Clive, she could handle it, better than sleeping here all —

As the Bentley rolled to a halt, she opened the window, tried to get a look at who was inside.

The big black car idled, moved on.

Damn you, rich bastard!

She jumped out of the Mustang, waved frantically.

The Bentley stopped. Backed up.

Kat tried to make herself look safe by shrugging and smiling and pointing to her car.

The Bentley’s window lowered silently.

Just a driver inside.

Not Clive, a woman!

Thank you, God!

Kat said, “Ma’am,” in the syrupy voice she used at La Femme. “Thank you so much for stopping I ran out of gas and if you could just take me somewhere where I could maybe find a—”

“Certainly, dear,” said the woman. Throaty voice, like that actress Mother liked… Lauren Lauren… Hutton? No, Bacall. Lauren Bacall had rescued her!

Kat approached the Bentley.

The woman smiled at her. Older than Mother, with silver hair, huge pearl earrings, classy makeup, a tweed suit, some sort of silk scarf, purple, looked expensive, draped over her shoulders in that casual way that came easy to the classy ones.

What Mother pretended to be.

“Ma’am, I really appreciate this,” said Kat, suddenly wanting this woman to be her mother.

“Get in, dear,” said the woman. “We’ll find you some petrol.”

Petrol — a Brit.

A frickin’ aristocrat in a frickin’ Bentley.

Kat got in, beaming. What had started off as a shitty night was going to end up a cool story.

As the Bentley glided away, Kat thanked the woman again.

The woman nodded and switched on the stereo. Something classical — God what a sound system, it was like being in a concert hall.

“If there’s any way I can repay you…”

“That won’t be necessary, dear.”

Big-framed woman, sturdy bejeweled hands.

Kat said, “Your car’s incredible.”

The woman smiled and turned up the volume.

Kat sat back and closed her eyes. Thought of Rianna and Bethie with the fake-o shirts.

Telling this story was going to be delicious.

The Bentley cruised silently up the Pass. Cushy seats, alcohol, weed, and the adrenaline drop plunged Kat into sudden, nearly comatose sleep.

She was snoring loudly when the car made a turn, climbed smoothly into the hills.

Headed for a dark, cold place.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER
2

I was having lunch with Milo at the Surf Line Café in Malibu when the call came in.

No reason for either of us to be here other than gorgeous weather. The restaurant’s a clapboard bungalow with wall-sized windows and a wide plank deck, perched high on the west side of PCH, just south of Kanan Dume Road. At half a mile from the ocean with no view of the water, it was misnamed. But the food’s fantastic and even at that distance you can smell the salt.

It was one p.m. and we were out on the deck eating barbecued yellowtail and drinking beer. Milo was back from a week in Honolulu, where he’d managed to preserve a skim-milk pallor. Bad light brings out the worst of his complexion — the lumps, the acne pits, the scowl lines, gravity tugging at mastiff jowls. Today’s light was glorious but the best it could do was obscure the rough spots.

Despite that and the ugliest aloha shirt I’d ever seen, he looked good. None of the twitches and split-second winces that betray his attempt to hide the pain in his shoulder.

The shirt was a riot of puce elephants, aqua camels, and ocher monkeys on a sea of olive-green rayon that clung to his kettledrum torso.

The Hawaiian trip had followed a twenty-nine-day stay in the hospital: recuperating from a dozen shotgun pellets embedded in his left arm and shoulder.

The shooter, an obsessive psychopath, was dead, sparing everyone the nuisance of a trial. Milo had dismissed his own injuries as “a stupid goddamn flesh wound.” I’d seen the X-rays. Some of the pellets had missed his heart and lung by millimeters. One chunk of deer shot was too deep to remove without causing serious muscle injury, hence the winces and twitches.

Despite all that, only a three-day hospitalization had been projected. On the second day, a staph infection set in and he ended up on antibiotic drips for nearly a month. Sequestered on the VIP floor because he lived with Dr. Rick Silverman, director of the E.R.

Bigger rooms and better food didn’t help where it counted. His fever ran high and at one point his kidney function didn’t look good. Eventually, he pushed through and started griping about the accommodations and the twenty-one-year-old actress in the corner suite up the hall. Her official diagnosis was “Exhaustion.” The hospital’s detox director had virtually moved in.

Two paparazzi had managed to breach security, only to be tossed unceremoniously by one of the starlet’s private security guards.

I said, “They don’t get her, maybe they’ll settle for you.”

“Oh, sure, People and Us can’t survive a circulation war without close-ups of the vast polar tundra that is my VIP ass.”

He worked his way out of the bed, stomped out into the hall, and glared at the rent-a-cop hovering near his door. The guy moved on.

“Intrusive asshole.”

Definitely on the mend.

After discharge, he pretended everything was fine. Rick and Robin and I and everyone else who knew him pretended not to notice the stiffness and the loss of energy. The department physician insisted he take some downtime and his captain wouldn’t debate the issue.

Milo and Rick had been talking about a tropical vacation for months but when the time came, Milo’s mood suggested an impending prison sentence.

He sent me a single postcard: gargantuan Samoan sumo wrestlers tussling on white sand.

A:

Having a great blah blah blah yawn yawn yawn. These are the locals. A few more luaus and there goes my modeling contract.

Primitively yours,
M.

Now he finished his second beer and said, “What are you smirking about?”

“Didn’t know I was.”

“I’m a trained observer. You were.”

I shrugged.

“It’s the shirt, right?”

“The shirt’s great.”

“Lucky for you there’s no polygraph around. What, you don’t dig authentic island couture?”

“Elephants in Oahu?”

“Dr. Literal.” He rolled rayon between sausage fingers. “I’da found one with Freud analyzing a mahimahi I’da brought it back for you.”

“The macadamia nuts were fine.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He brushed black hair off his forehead, called for another beer, finished it fast. Bright green eyes took in the view of the highway below. His eyelids half lowered.

“You okay?”

“Back to work tomorrow, the leisure thing was driving me out of my mind. Problem is, once I get to the office, there’s nothing to do. No new cases, period — let alone an interesting one.”

“How do you know?”

“I e-mailed the captain yesterday.”

I said, “Quiet time in West L.A.”

“Calm before the storm, or worse.”

“What would be worse?”

“No storm.”

He insisted on paying and was reaching for his billfold when his cell squawked. I used the opportunity to hand the waiter my credit card.

“Sneaky.” He clicked in, listened. “Okay, Sean, why not? But if a real crime happens, all bets are off.”

As we left, I said, “Sean’s got a fake crime?”

“Car theft in Brentwood. Recovered car theft.” Like many homicide detectives, he considers anything less than the loss of human life on a par with jaywalking.

“Why’d he call you?”

“He thinks it might be more because there’s blood on one of the seats.”

“That sounds like more.”

“Not buckets, Alex. Maybe a spoonful.”

“Whose?”

“That’s the big hoohah mystery. Nervy kid wants my expertise. No one told him I’m a free bird until tomorrow.”

I kept my mouth shut. When he’s like that, irony is wasted.

Sean Binchy was waiting in front of a vanilla-colored house, wearing his usual dark suit, blue shirt and tie, spit-polished Doc Martens. He’s a young, gangly, redheaded Detective I, a former ska-punk bassist who’d found Jesus and the LAPD simultaneously. He’d been mentored by Milo, whisked away by the brass and transferred to Robbery, then moved to Auto Theft. Rumor said all that movement had something to do with his “lack of creativity.”

The house behind him was one of those imposing, bland, grand dream-projects starting to dominate L.A.’s luxury districts.

This was a high-end part of Brentwood, west of Bundy, north of Sunset, where the streets narrow and sidewalks are replaced by grass. Shaggy eucalyptus hovered above much of the street. The vanilla house’s immediate neighbors were one-story ranches, sitting on residential death row as they awaited the wrecking ball.

Sean pointed to a wide stone driveway leading to twin garages. A black Bentley Arnage sedan sat in front of one of the doors.

“VIP wheels,” said Milo. “Just what I need.”

“Hi, Loot. Hi, Dr. Delaware.”

The conventional department contraction for Milo’s rank is “Loo.” Milo is not one to deal with the small stuff.

“How was Hawaii?”

Milo said, “I got you some macadamia nuts.”

“Thanks — great shirt.”

Milo’s eyes shifted to the Bentley. “Someone stole that and had the nerve to leave blood?”

“Or something that looks a whole lot like blood.”

“As opposed to?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s blood, Loot. Haven’t called for analysis because I wanted to see what you thought.”

“Who recovered it?”

“The owner.” Binchy thumbed his pad. “…Nicholas Heubel. Solid citizen, didn’t have to call us in the first place.”

Milo walked over to the Bentley. Unfettered sunlight bore down on a paint job so shiny it looked like molten tar. “How’d he find it?”

“Drove around and spotted it three blocks away.”

“Not much of a joyride.”

“If you think I should forget it, I will. I just want to make sure I wasn’t missing something.”

“Car unlocked?”

“Yup.”

“Give me some gloves and show me this alleged blood.”

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER
3

Several cows’ worth of premium hides, a tree or two of burl veneer.

All of it smelling like a private club in Mayfair.

The Bentley’s interior was off-white piped with black; missing the stain was impossible. The blemish in question was a smear about an inch square, on the right side of the driver’s seat. Sloping down toward the welting, at its lowest point more diluted. Rundown or someone had wiped it that way.

I supposed it could have been old ketchup, but my bet was on hemoglobin.

Milo said, “Not too impressive.”

Sean said, “There could be more, but with the carpet black it’s hard to spot anything without an up close and personal.”

“Check the trunk?”

“I popped it and did a visual scan. Looks like nothing’s ever been in there. I mean literally. There’s a couple umbrellas still rolled up and belted to the firewall. Owner says they were an option, cost eight hundred bucks and he hasn’t used them once.”

Milo stretched latex over his paws, leaned in, stuck his head close to the smear but didn’t touch it. Studying and sniffing, he checked out the carpet, the door panels, an array of glass gauges. Opening a rear door, he said, “Car smells new.”

“It’s a year old.”

“Three thousand miles on the odometer. Looks like it’s not just the umbrellas the owner doesn’t use.”

“He has a Lexus,” said Sean. “Says it’s less showy and more reliable.”

Milo examined the smear again. “Looks like blood but I’m seeing no impact, high or low velocity. Some asshole, probably a neighbor kid, took a joyride and cut himself on a chipped bong. Was the car taken from the garage?”

“From the driveway.”

“Wheels like that, owner doesn’t lock up?”

“Guess not.”

“Keys left in the ignition?”

“Owner claims no. I was going to ask him more but he had to go inside and take a call.”

Milo said, “They probably were left in, no one wants to look stupid. Boosting something this conspicuous says immaturity and impulsivity. Which fits with a neighborhood punk. So does dumping it close by. What do you think, Alex?”

“Makes sense.”

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!