Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page B

that?”
    “If she runs off excavating by herself, it could be worse.”
    “She’d do that?”
    “She’s a determined young woman.”
    “Obsessive? Rick said Patty had tendencies in that direction. Did the kid start imitating her and that’s why you treated her?”
    I stared at him. “Very good, Sigmund.”
    “All these years absorbing your wisdom, something was bound to rub off.”
    He opened his car door. “Get ready for a whole new world of false starts and dead ends.”
    “Your optimism is touching.”
    “Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience.”
    “What’s pessimism?” I said.
    “Religion without God.”
    He got in the car, started up the engine.
    I said, “I just thought of something. What about Isaac Gomez? He was compiling some pretty good databases.”
    “Petra’s boy genius…yeah, maybe he’ll have some spare time. Hollywood went this whole year without a single murder. If it stays that quiet, the chatter has Stu Bishop vaulting to assistant chief.”
    “What’s Petra been doing with herself?”
    “My guess would be digging up cold cases.”
    “Patty and Tanya’s first address was in Hollywood,” I said. “Back then there were plenty of murders. Maybe Petra will want to hear about this.”
    “An unsolved she just happens to be working on? Wouldn’t that be screenplay-cute. Sure, call her. Talk to Dr. Gomez, too, if Petra’s cool with that.”
    “Will do, boss.”
    “Keep up that attitude, assistant, and you just might make the grade.”
     
     
    I took Laurel Canyon south to the city, used the red light at Crescent Heights and Sunset to call Hollywood Division and asked for Detective Connor.
    “She’s out,” said the civilian clerk.
    “Is Isaac Gomez still working there?”
    “Who?”
    “Graduate student intern,” I said. “He was doing research on—”
    “Not listed,” said the clerk.
    “Could you connect me to Detective Connor’s voice mail?”
    “Voice mail’s down.”
    “Do you have another number for her?”
    “No.”
    I drove east. At Fuller and Sunset, a group of Nordic-looking tourists risked a crosswalk sprint and nearly got pulverized by a Suburban. Naive Europeans, pretending L.A. was a real city and walking was legal. I could hear Milo laughing.
    As I neared La Brea, development continued its encroachment: big-box outlets and strip malls and chain restaurants sweeping through blocks that had once hosted by-the-hour motels and ptomaine palaces.
    Some things never change: Hookers of both primary genders and a few that couldn’t be determined were working the street with ebullience. My eyes must’ve been restless because a couple of them waved at me.
    Heading north to Hollywood Boulevard and hooking a right, I cruised past the Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theatre, the tourist traps attempting to feed off the overflow, continued to Cherokee Avenue. Just past the hustle of the boulevard sat a couple of padlocked clubs, mean and sad the way nightspots get during the daylight. Trash was piled at the curb and birdshit pollocked the sidewalk.
    Farther north, the block had been rehabbed a bit, with relatively clean multiplex apartment buildings promising
Security
elbowing shabby prewar structures that offered no illusion of safety.
    The first address on Tanya’s list matched one of the old ones. A three-story, brick-colored stucco building a short walk below Franklin. Plain front, frizzy lawn, limp beds of overwatered succulents struggling to breathe. As tired-looking as the homeless guy pushing a shopping cart nowhere. He made split-second, paranoid eye contact, shook his head as if I were hopeless, and trudged on.
    A cloudy glass door cut through the center of the brick-colored building, but two ground-floor units in front had entrance from the street. Tanya remembered drunks knocking on the door, so my bet was on one of those.
    I got out and tried the handle on the glass door. Cold and unpleasantly crusty but unlocked.
    Inside, a back-to-front