Jonathan Kellerman_Petra Connor 01 by Billy Straight Read Free Book Online Page B

loose from the zoo and bought himself dinner, it’s probably safe to say Homo sapiens.”
    Lau frowned. “Probably. Anything else?”
    “Any other fluids?”
    “Like blood?”
    “Like anything, Alan.”
    Lau flinched. “Not so far.”
    “Check it out. Please.”
    Lau returned to swabbing, dusting, probing. Susan Rose was summoned back to take pictures of the rocks. Petra sketched them anyway, then drifted away.
    All that scientific work going on, but it was she who had the next find.
    Twenty feet above the rocks, where she’d gone to explore because there was nothing for her to do and the dogs had moved on.
    But they’d missed something, half concealed by leaves and pine needles. Flash of color beneath the green and brown.
    Red. At first she thought: More blood, uh-oh. Then she bent and saw what it was; looked around for Stu.
    He was back at the car, talking on his cell phone—the minuscule one his father the retired eye surgeon had given him for Christmas. Petra beckoned Lau. He sifted and found nothing around the red object, and Susan snapped away. They left, and Petra gloved up and picked it up.
    A book. Thick, heavy hardcover; rebound in red leatherette. Library call number on the spine.
    Our Presidents: The March of American History.
    She flipped it open. L.A. Public Library, Hillhurst branch, the Los Feliz district.
    Checkout card still in the pocket. Not much action on this one. Seven stamps in four years, the most recent nine months ago.
    Stolen? Deacquisitioned? She knew the library got rid of stock all the time, because back in her starving artist days she’d filled her bookshelves with some great rejects.
    She flipped pages. No deacquisition stamp, but that didn’t prove anything.
    Petra’s mental camera began snapping. Had some homeless guy with an interest in U.S. history found himself a nice little natural lean-to where he could read and eat a taco and take a leak in the great wide open, only to witness a murder?
    But no grease on the book, so maybe it had no connection to the person who sacked out behind the U-shaped rocks.
    Or maybe Mr. Taco was a neat eater.
    Even if the book
was
his, no big deal. There was nothing to say he’d been around precisely when Lisa Ramsey was being butchered.
    Except for the fact that the urine
was
fresh. Within twelve hours, according to Lau, and Dr. Leavitt had estimated the murder at between midnight and 4 A.M.
    A witness, or the murderer himself? The Fiend from the Hills hiding behind the rocks, waiting for the perfect victim.
    Susan Rose had made the logical assumption that wife-beater Ramsey was the prime suspect, but other theories had to be considered.
    But what would have brought Lisa Boehlinger-Ramsey to Griffith Park at night? And where was her car? Jacked? Was robbery the motive, after all?
    Would someone this vicious
need
a motive?
    A nut crime? Then why had the money been taken? Why not the jewelry?
    Something didn’t mesh. She just couldn’t see a woman like Lisa coming alone to the park at that hour, all made up, wearing jewelry, that little black dress.
    It spelled date. Out for the evening and she’d detoured. Or had been detoured. Why? By whom? Something hush-hush?
    Buying drugs? There were lots of easier ways to score dope in L.A.
    A date with the murderer? Had he driven her here with intent?
    If Lisa had gone out on the town with a man, maybe someone had seen the two of them together.
    One thing was sure: If it was a date, the lucky guy hadn’t been some loner who read old library books and ate tacos and peed behind rocks.
    Crashing in the park, no indoor plumbing, spelled homeless.
    Modern-day caveman staking out his spot behind the rocks and marking it?
    A spot from which he had a vantage view of the murder scene.
    Or maybe he’d wet himself out of
fear.
    Seeing it.
    Looking between those rocks and
seeing
it.

CHAPTER

7
    Almost there for sure now. The sun is out and I
feel uncovered—like a target on a video game, something small that gets