The Wedding Guest (Alex Delaware #34) - Jonathan Kellerman Page 0,70
her knobby head against my leg, she told me about her day, an oration of grunts, beeps, and snuffles.
When she finished, I said, “Sounds like you had more fun than I did,” refilled her water bowl, gave her a liver snap that she mouthed daintily, and brewed a half pot of coffee. My cup filled, we headed for my office.
She lay at my feet as I called Younger Peter Kramer in Florida. Disconnected number. Older, skullcapped Peter in Maryland answered in a hoarse, husky voice. “Kray-mer.”
Fudging my qualifications, I asked if he’d ever worked in L.A.
“Why do you want to know?”
“It’s related to a case, here. A property manager with your name worked in Westwood—”
“I don’t know any Westwood,” he said. “Police? I take care of buildings in Baltimore, near the race course.”
“Pimlico.”
“You been there.”
I lied, “Long time ago.”
“It’s the same dump, things happen, try to get cops to show up. California? Haven’t been out there in twenty years. Good luck.”
I ran another Peter Kramer search using real estate management, building supervisor, dormitory, dorm, and private dorm.
Nothing.
Back to the name by itself, unlimited. Two and a half million hits.
Logging off, I tried Basia Lopatinski’s number at the crypt and lucked out.
She said, “Alex. Something new?”
“We got an I.D. on the wedding victim.”
“Good! Who is she?”
I gave her the basics.
“Studio City,” she said. “I will put this in the file. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Anything on Michael Lotz’s tox screen and autopsy?”
“The bloods aren’t back, yet, but he shows all the external signs of an opioid O.D. His body’s a pincushion and he’s got all sorts of Nazi-type tattoos. No decision on an autopsy, they’re having a scheduling meeting tomorrow. I’m hoping they’ll take my recommendation to cut him open. Why didn’t Milo call himself?”
“He’s swamped so I volunteered.”
“Nice of you,” she said. “It’s an interesting thing the two of you have. I’ve heard some other detectives are jealous.”
“And others have nothing good to say about it.”
She laughed. “So you know. Okay, check back with me by the end of tomorrow on the autopsy. Maybe the tox will also be back.”
“One more thing. I was wondering if you could look up an old case. Suicide a couple of years ago in Westwood. A student at the U. named Cassandra Booker.”
A pen scratched. “What would you like to know about her?”
“Cause of death.”
“This has something to do with Ms. DaCosta?”
“Same address as the building where Lotz worked.”
“Hold on.” A series of keyboard clicks. “Heroin and fentanyl, but a lot more fentanyl than DaCosta. Without an immediate shpritz of naloxone, this would’ve been rapidly fatal. It’s listed as undetermined not suicide. We do that for the family’s sake when an accidental O.D. is a reasonable possibility.”
Maxine Driver had heard differently. School gossip?
I said, “Any psychiatric data in the file?”
“Let me see…no, sorry.”
“Any way to ask the pathologist?”
“That was Doctor…Fawzi. He’s not with us anymore, somewhere in the Mideast, no idea where, and there’s no guarantee he’d remember.”
“Where did she die?”
“Says…in her room on her bed,” said Lopatinski. “Not the bathroom like DaCosta if that’s what you’re getting at. That, the dosage, no garrote, I have to say I’m seeing more discrepancies than similarities, Alex. To either Ms. DaCosta or Mr. Lotz—no needle marks on Ms. Booker, new or old.”
“She snorted.”
“A lot of kids do it that way. They don’t like pain but aren’t afraid of long-term consequences. That’s the definition of youth, right, Alex?”
* * *
—
I returned to the Peter Kramer search, using Los Angeles as a limiter. Still well over a hundred possibilities. Of those, only a handful of commercial sites included phone numbers, a good portion of which were inoperative or linked to clickbait or other nonsense. That’s the internet: an ocean of quantity, droplets of quality.
The Kramers I was able to reach were baffled by my questions; a few grew irritated.
What could Bob Pena’s assistant tell me, anyway? The facts of Cassy Booker’s death were sad but nonprobative. The poor kid had died alone on a bed in a private dorm, the victim of the same cocktail that had created a national scourge.
Fentanyl, cheap, fast acting, turbocharged, and snortable, was the current rock star of brain poisons, and people of Cassy Booker’s age were a prime audience. Combine that with the discrepancies Basia Lopatinski had noted and there wasn’t much to work with.
Except.
Suzanne had been murdered at the wedding of Amanda Burdette’s brother and Cassy had lived in the same complex as Amanda and been part of