The Wedding Guest (Alex Delaware #34) - Jonathan Kellerman Page 0,112
Heating up and swelling. Maybe more than a graze but nothing felt broken.
Stirring from the chaise drew me away from the pain. A series of gurgles, coughs, and mewls as Amanda Burdette came to.
Milo said, “There you go, kid,” and lightly slapped her face.
She looked up at him, groggily.
“You’re okay, kid.”
Cloudy eyes flinched, shut, opened.
It took a few moments for anything close to lucidity to appear.
“There you go, kid,” said Milo.
“Go away,” she said. “I don’t like people.”
CHAPTER
48
Even a high-end building needs somewhere to put garbage. The pink tower’s refuse-storage facility consisted of eight industrial dumpsters tucked into a caged square at the rear of the structure.
Directly below the south-facing units, but no reason to look down when up was so beautiful.
Thurston Nobach landed atop the left-most bin.
Postmortem photos didn’t reveal much in the way of humanity. More like a clotted stain, which Milo termed “Beyond apropos.”
Once Nobach’s parents were notified of his death, they reacted the way people used to getting their way do: mustering a battalion of lawyers to draft a demand letter, ordering immediate release of all information and material related to the cruel, callous, negligent police behavior leading to the death of an innocent young man in the privacy of his own home. Page two announced intention to file criminal charges against the perpetrators of said behavior, to be named. The final page tacked on a civil suit for damages related to…
Multiple copies were couriered simultaneously to the mayor, the D.A., several state and federal legislators, the local office of the FBI, and the city councilwoman and county supervisor whose districts encompassed the Wilshire Corridor.
That died quickly when the lawyers had a look at the contents of evidence obtained at Thirsty Nobach’s condo and a unit in the building he “managed.”
Radio silence. New goal: damage control.
* * *
—
Futile goal. Six hours after Nobach went over the glass, Maxine Driver called me at home. I was in the kitchen, ice pack pushed to my face, Robin and Blanche trying not to look upset.
“Sorry,” she said. “I got caught up in convention nonsense—serving on an inane committee but you know how it is. Anyway, the serendipity I mentioned was a historian from Emory on the same committee—maybe kismet, huh? Turns out his much younger wife was here as an R.A. and she interviewed to be an advisor for that program. She didn’t get it, Alex, but she knows who did—”
“Thurston Nobach.”
Silence. “You got there without me.”
“No big deal, Maxine.”
“We’re still pals?”
“You bet.”
“When the time’s right you’ll tell me the story?”
“Got a few minutes right now?”
* * *
—
With Maxine in the loop, everyone on campus knew by morning. By noon the following day, lurid details, some of them true, quite a bit not, spread to social media.
As Thurston Nobach became the fiend of the moment, the people who’d created him withdrew from public life.
No attempt to achieve accuracy. That’s the way it is, nowadays: facts, lies, the stuff in between.
CHAPTER
49
I got to read the material soon after Milo.
LAPD Document 18-4326-187D: Materials seized from two units at Academo-Strathmore Student Residences, Westwood Village.
Unit C-418
1. One socket wrench yielding blood, hair, and cranial bone matching that of assault victim Sandra Burdette, the handle additionally yielding latent fingerprints consistent with those of suspect T. Nobach.
2. Additional latent fingerprints consistent with those of suspect T. Nobach on the edge of a dresser and a bathroom counter in Unit C-418, the latter admixed with blood from victim Burdette.
A. Supplementary data: eyewitness identification of suspect T. Nobach by victim Burdette as the man who assaulted her from behind when she attempted to leave an argument she’d had regarding his relationship with her daughter, attempted homicide victim Amanda Burdette.
B. Related supplementary data obtained at 12345 Wilshire Boulevard, Unit 24, PH1, former primary residence of suspect T. Nobach: latent fingerprints from a used hypodermic syringe containing traces of heroin and fentanyl matching Suspect T. Nobach’s fingerprints and found near the unconscious form of attempted homicide victim A. Burdette, subsequently revived by LAPD Lieutenant Detective Milo Bernard Sturgis.
Unit B-425
Two glassine envelopes containing heroin laced with fentanyl. The proportion of fentanyl consistent with that found in the system of homicide victims Susan Koster and Michael Lotz and attempted homicide victim Amanda Burdette.
Three glassine envelopes containing powdered cocaine.
A bottle containing five benzodiazepam tablets, the label authorizing prescription of 50 tablets issued to Michael Lotz, prescribing physician Manuel Licht, M.D., The East Venice Community Clinic.
An acoustic guitar labeled King-Tone internally, manufactured