Twisted

Maybe there’s a confrontation, right there. Or perhaps Marta, caught off-guard, tries to smooth things out. Kurt’s beyond appeasement; he’s brought a weapon.

Or perhaps he’d planted it in the trunk of Marta’s car. Or had used something already there- a jack, a tire iron.

No, the coroner’s report said something wider, smoother.

Marta tries to escape, runs from the car. He grabs her.

Spins her, gets behind her. A tall guy like Kurt would have had plenty of leverage for a crushing occipital blow.

She goes down, he continues bashing her brains out. Doing it on the street. You act like a slut, you die like a slut.

Had he intended on leaving her there, remembered that the bleeding thing on the sidewalk had once been his wife and relented? Propped her back in the car? Or had that just been an attempt to conceal the body in order to give him more time to get home, crawl into bed, and enjoy murderer’s dreams?

Marta hadn’t been found until morning. Kurt, getting Katya ready for school, would’ve had plenty of time to be “surprised.”

As she passed the Canyon Market, Petra thought of a third possibility. Positioning Marta behind the wheel had been a different kind of message: You drove into the city to meet your lover. Now sit in the driver’s seat in that same damn car with your brains leaking out.

Destroying her humanity, her soul. Would a tech type like Kurt Doebbler believe in the soul? Or would he view people as nothing more than the sum of their cells?

I pulverize your gray matter, I reduce you to nothing.

Pastern had called Kurt compulsive. Maybe that cold, flat demeanor masked volcanic rage.

He does Marta, gets away with it. Decides he likes it.

Decides to commemorate the date.

What were a

Nice little profile she was developing. The only problem was, lots of stuff didn’t fit. Like the dog hairs on Coral Langdon when Kurt hated animals. And Kurt, as charmless a man as Petra had ever encountered, seemed the last guy Coral would have stopped to have a pooch chat with.

Did he have acting skills no one knew about?

She decided she’d made too much out of the hairs. Langdon was a dog person, ran into other dog people, picked up foreign hairs.

But what of the phony cable visit to Geraldo Solis’s house? How did Doebbler synch with that?

Maybe Kurt had worked in the cable business before becoming a missile designer- some sort of student job? Even so, if he’d wanted to commemorate his wife’s murder, why not choose a victim similar to Marta? At the very least a woman, not a grumpy old ex-Marine like Solis.

Unless Solis had somehow been involved with the Doebblers… could he have been Marta’s lover in the city? Then why wait a year to get him?

Solis was a cantankerous old loner, thirty years Marta’s senior. People made strange choices but it just didn’t fit.

She ran through the rest of the victim list. Langdon, Hochenbre

What was the damned pattern?

By the time she made it to Sunset, her head throbbed and she decided she’d been fixing air sandwiches.

As she reached Fairfax and Sixth, her phone beeped. Mac Dilbeck’s mobile.

“Just heard, Petra. Sorry.”

“I really couldn’t expect different, Mac.”

“Only because they’ve got their heads tucked so tightly up their posteriors they can’t see the light of wisdom.”

“Thanks, Mac.”

“I should be thanking you,” he said. “For clearing the case. Saving us the paperwork and the city a trial. Some types deserve killing and he fit the bill, right?”

“Right.”

“What’s Eric’s situation?”

“Meetings at Parker.”

“When the dust clears, he’ll be okay. It was righteous.”

“It sure was.”

“I’m also calling to fill you in on Sandra Leon. The gods from Olympus allowed me to sit in on her interview. She wouldn’t talk to them no matter what they did so finally they left to confer.” He snorted. “So while they’re gone, I do the old grandfatherly bit and guess what? She starts to open up.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Petra, smiling.

“Oh, yeah, indeed,” said Mac. “I made sure the tape was ru

“Sounds like a motive for murder to me.”

“You should’ve heard the kid, Petra. Cold. She was the one told Omar that Marcella had aborted his baby. Told him Marcella had joked about it, called the baby garbage.”

“Lord,” said Petra. “She set Marcella up.”

“She did more than that. She told Omar the two of them would be at the Paradiso, pinpointed where and when Marcella would be coming out.”

“Omar photographed the parking lot a full week before the concert. The whole thing was well pla

“Oh, boy,” he said.

“That’s why Sandra was so cool after the shooting. She stuck around to gloat, got a little nervous when I tried to interview her. But no grief, she was digging the scene. That is one sick kid. What’s she being charged with?”

“D.A.’s not sure yet. I’m pushing for a full one eighty-seven, but the only evidence is what Sandra said on tape, so maybe they’ll plea it down to something juvie. She’s pretty smug, seems to think she’ll get away scot-free because she’s seventeen. For all I know, she will. Some slick private attorney showed up this afternoon. He wouldn’t tell me who hired him, but I’m sure he’s being paid by The Players. He’s already making noises about dismissing the confession because I didn’t give Sandra her rights right before she talked. The Downtown guys Mirandized her at the begi

“Here goes the system,” said Petra.

“So what else is new?”

“What about Lyle? He’s open to a big fat pedophilia charge.”

“Lyle rabbited right after we let him out of the holding cell. Which would’ve posed some problems if Omar had gone to trial. So it’s pretty nice that he won’t be needed. For that I thank you again.”

“You’re welcome,” said Petra.

“You all right?”

“Taking some downtime. How about you?”

“I’m off to play putt-putt golf with my grandson. Don’t let them grind you down, kid. You’re a solid girl.”

Shrinks kept forty-five-minute hours, so at four forty-five Petra tried the clinic where Dr. Sarah Casagrande worked, was transferred to voice mail, left a forceful message. No return. She repeated the process at five forty-five and this time a woman’s voice broke in.

“This is Sarah.” Soft, breathy, hesitant. “I was just about to call you.”

“Thanks,” said Petra. “As I said in my message, Doctor, this is about Marta Doebbler.”

“All these years,” said Casagrande. “Has something changed?”

“In terms of…”

“The detective I spoke to led me to believe the case was unlikely to be solved.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes,” said Casagrande. “I suppose he was being honest, but at the time it was hard to hear.”

“Do you remember what reason he gave?”

“He said there was no evidence. He had suspicions, but nothing more.”