Flesh and Blood

Flesh and Blood

Alex Delaware [15]

Kellerman, Jonathan

Ballantine Books (2008)

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Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline-delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Alex Delaware's office. But for all Alex's skill and effort, Lauren resists--angrily, provocatively. Reluctantly, the psychologist chalks Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of a challenging profession. But years later, when Alex encounters Lauren as a stag party's featured entertainment, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame. And the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren's brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with longtime lover Robin Castagna in order to pursue Lauren's murderer. As he investigates his young patient's troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry, and then into mortal danger when lust and big money collide in Southern California.

Jonathan Kellerman's L.A. is evil, seductive, erotic, and unforgiving, and Flesh and Blood is mind-opening in its drama of a driven man's personal quest, breathtaking in its ingenious plot, filled with unforgettable characters, and topped off by a terrifying climax. This is suspense fiction as its best.

Flesh and Blood

Alex Delaware – Book 15

By Jonathan Kellerman

To my children—

Jesse, Rachel,

Ilana, and Aliza

1

SAD TRUTH: Had she been just a patient, I probably wouldn't have remembered her.

All those years listening, so many faces. There was a time I recalled every one of them. Forgetting comes with experience. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

Her mother phoned my service on a Saturday morning soon after New Year's.

“A Mrs. Jane Abbot,” said the operator. “She says her daughter's an old patient. Lauren Teague.”

Jane Abbot's name meant nothing to me, but Lauren Teague sparked an uneasy nostalgia. It was an 818 number, somewhere in the Valley. When I'd known the family they'd lived in West L.A. I searched my old case files before returning the call.

Teague, Lauren Lee. Intake date, ten years ago, the tail end of my Wilshire Boulevard practice. Shortly after, I cashed in some real estate profits, tried to drop out, met a beautiful woman, became friends with a sad, brilliant detective, learned more than I wanted to know about bad things. Since then I'd avoided the commitment of long-term therapy cases, stuck to court consults and forensic work, the kinds of puzzles that removed me from the confines of my office.

Lauren had been fifteen at referral. Thin file: one history-taking meeting with the parents followed by two sessions with the girl. Then a missed appointment, no explanation. The next day the father left a message canceling any future treatment. Unpaid balance for the final session; I'd made a halfhearted effort to collect, then written it off.