Jonathan Kellerman_Petra Connor 01 Read Online Free PDF

flattered her figure without flaunting it.
    After graduation, she was even happier, though she didn’t invite anyone to the ceremony, still nervous about what Dad and her brothers would think.
    A month into her probationary year, she told them, and they were all surprised, but no one put her down. By then, she was in the groove.
    Everything about police work felt right. Keeping fit, cruising, roll call, shooting on the range. Even the paperwork, because one thing boarding school had taught her was good study habits and proper English, and that put her ahead of most of the buff-jocks with their pencil-chewing agony over syntax and punctuation.
    Within eighteen months, she made Detective-I.
    Earning the right to guard a molt.
     
    A new car joined the others in the parking lot. Subcompact with a department emblem on the door. A woman police photographer came out lugging a professional Polaroid camera. Young, around the victim’s age, in sloppy clothes and long, too-black hair. Four pierces in one ear, two in the other, just holes, no earrings. Plain face, sunken cheeks, a spot of acne on each. Combative Generation-X eyes.
    As she approached the body, Petra constructed a hypothetical identity for her: like Petra, an artistic type gone practical. At night she probably put on black duds, smoked dope, and drank stingers at Sunset Strip clubs, hanging out with failed rock musicians who took her for granted.
    She opened her camera, looked down, and said, “My God, I know who this is!”
    Petra said, “Who?” as she waved Stu over.
    “I don’t know her name, but I know who she is. Cart Ramsey’s wife. Or maybe it’s ex-wife by now. I saw her on TV around a year ago. He hit her. It was one of those tabloid shows, showbiz exposé. She made Ramsey out to be a real asshole.”
    “You’re sure this is her?”
    “Hundred percent,” said the woman, peeved. Her photo badge ID’d her as Susan Rose, Photog.-I. “This is her, believe me. They said she was a beauty queen and Ramsey met her at a pageant—God, look at her, what a sick
fuck
!” The hand holding the camera tightened and the black box swayed.
    Stu came over, and Petra repeated what Susan Rose had said.
    “You’re sure,” he said.
    “Jesus. Yeah, very.” Susan began to shoot pictures rapidly, thrusting the camera forward as if it were a weapon. “On the show she had a black eye and bruises. Fucking
bastard
!”
    “Who?” said Petra.
    “Ramsey. He’s probably the one who did this, right?”
    “Cart Ramsey,” Stu said without inflection, and Petra found herself wondering if Stu had ever worked on Ramsey’s show. What was it called?
The Adjustor,
some private-eye hero who solved the problems of the downtrodden.
    Wouldn’t that be cute?
    Susan Rose removed a cartridge and dropped it into her case. Petra told her, “Thanks, we’ll get verification. Meanwhile, do your thing.”
    “It’s her, believe me,” said Susan Rose, irritably. “Can I turn her over? I already got all of the front.”

CHAPTER

5
    Two hours of walking. I’m not tripping as much.
    The way he stabbed her.
    PLYR 1. There’s a bar on the Boulevard called Players where pimps hang out. Maybe they call themselves that because they fool around, don’t do real work.
    What he did to her makes me think of something I saw in Watson, out in one of the dry fields behind the orange groves.
    These two dogs were passing each other. One was white with brown spots, full of muscles, kind of like a pit bull but not exactly. The other was a big black mutt that didn’t walk well. The white dog looked calm, happy with life, had almost a smiley face. Maybe that’s why at first the black dog didn’t seem afraid of him. Then the white dog just turned without barking, jumped on the black dog, got his jaws around the black dog’s neck, twisted a couple of times, and the black dog was dead. That fast. The white dog didn’t eat the black dog or lick the blood or anything, he just kicked the dirt with his