Review
PRAISE FOR JONATHAN KELLERMAN
THERAPY
“Labyrinthine twists, excellent pacing, and hard-boiled, swaggering dialogue.”
–The Washington Post
“Immensely enjoyable . . . there’s even a shocking surprise.”
–Associated Press
“A tight, engaging . . . brainteaser.”
–New York Daily News
THE CONSPIRACY CLUB
“An unnerving, highly cinematic plot . . . [Kellerman has] headed off into different terrain . . . with striking success.”
–JANET MASLIN, The New York Times
“[Kellerman] keeps the creepiness coming until the big-twist finish.”
–People
“Turn the page and you’re hooked.”
–The New York Times Book Review
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Inside Flap
In a host of consecutive bestsellers, Jonathan Kellerman has kept readers spellbound with the intense, psychologically acute adventures of Dr. Alex Delaware and with excursions through the raw underside of L.A. and the coldest alleys of the criminal mind. Rage offers a powerful new case in point, as Delaware and LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis revisit a horrifying crime from the past that has taken on shocking and deadly new dimensions. Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age twenty-one, he s emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a pressing need: to talk once again with psychologist Alex Delaware. But the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation never takes place.
Has karma caught up with Rand? Or has someone waited for eight patient years to dine on ice-cold revenge? Both seem strong possibilities to Sturgis, but Delaware s suspicions run deeper . . . and darker. Because fear in the voice of the grownup Rand Duchay and his eerie final words to Alex: "I m not a bad person" betray untold secrets. Buried revelations so horrendous, and so damning, they re worth killing for.
As Delaware and Sturgis retrace their steps through a grisly murder case that devastated a community, they discover a chilling legacy of madness, suicide, and multiple killings left in its wake and even uglier truths waiting to be unearthed. And the nearer they come to understanding an unspeakable crime, the more harrowingly close they get to unmasking a monster hiding in plain sight.
Rage finds Jonathan Kellerman in phenomenal form orchestrating a relentlessly suspenseful, devilishly unpredictable plot to a finale as stunning and thought-provoking as it is satisfying.
About the Author
Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, and True Detectives. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored the first book of a new series, The Golem of Hollywood. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California and New Mexico.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
On a slow, chilly Saturday in December, shortly after the Lakers overcame a sixteen-point halftime deficit and beat New Jersey, I got a call from a murderer.
I hadn’t watched basketball since college, had returned to it because I was working at developing my leisure skills. The woman in my life was visiting her grandmother in Connecticut, the woman who used to be in my life was living in Seattle with her new guy—temporarily, she claimed, as if I had a right to care—and my caseload had just abated.
Three court cases in two months: two child-custody disputes, one relatively benign, the other nightmarish; and an injury consult on a fifteen-year-old girl who’d lost a hand in a car crash. Now all the papers were filed and I was ready for a week or two of nothing.
I’d downed a couple of beers during the game and was nearly dozing on my living room sofa. The distinctive squawk of the business phone roused me. Generally, I let my service pick up. Why I answered, I still can’t say.
“Dr. Delaware?”
I didn’t recognize his voice. Eight years had passed.
“Speaking. Who’s this?”
“Rand.”
Now I remembered. The same slurred voice deepened to a man’s baritone. By now he’d be a man. Some kind of man.
“Where are you calling from, Rand?”
“I’m out.”
“Out of the C.Y.A.”
“I, uh . . . yeah, I finished.”
As if it had been a course of study. Maybe it had been. “When?”
“Coupla weeks.”
What could I say? Congratulations? God help us?
“What’s on your mind, Rand?”
“Could I, uh, talk to you?”
“Go ahead.”
“Uh, not this . . . like talk . . . for real.”
“In person.”
“Yeah.”
The living room windows were dark. Six forty-five p.m. “What do you want to talk about, Rand?”
“Uh, it would be . . . I’m kinda . . .”
“What’s on your mind, Rand?”
No answer.
“Is it something about Kristal?”
“Ye-ah.” His voice broke and bisected the word.
“Where are you calling from?” I said.
“Not far from you.”
My home office address was unlisted. How do you know where I live?
I said, “I’ll come to you, Rand. Where are you?”
“Uh, I think . . . Westwood.”
“Westwood Village?”
“I think . . . lemme see . . .” I heard a clang as the phone dropped. Phone on a cord, traffic in the background. A pay booth. He was off the line for over a minute.
“It says Westwood. There’s this big uh, a mall. With this bridge across.”
A mall. “Westside Pavilion?”
“I guess.”
Two miles south of the village. Comfortable distance from my house in the Glen. “Where in the mall are you?”
“Uh, I’m not in there. I kin see it across the street. There’s a . . . I think it says Pizza. Two z’s . . . yeah, pizza.”
Eight years and he could barely read. So much for rehab.
It took awhile but I got the approximate location: Westwood Boulevard, just north of Pico, east side of the street, a green and white and red sign shaped like a boot.
“I’ll be there in fifteen, twenty minutes, Rand. Anything you want to tell me now?”
“Uh, I . . . can we meet at the pizza place?”
“You hungry?”
“I ate breakfast.”
“It’s dinnertime.”
“I guess.”
“See you in twenty.”
“Okay . . . thanks.”
“You sure there’s nothing you want to tell me before you see me?”
“Like what?”
“Anything at all.”
More traffic noise. Time stretched.
“Rand?”
“I’m not a bad person.”
CHAPTER 2
What happened to Kristal Malley was no whodunit. The day after Christmas, the two-year-old accompanied her mother to the Buy-Rite Plaza in Panorama City. The promise of MEGA-SALE!!! DEEP DISCOUNTS!!! had stuffed the shabby, fading mall with bargain-hunters. Teenagers on winter break loitered near the Happy Taste food court and congregated among the CD racks of Flip Disc Music. The black-lit box of din that was the Galaxy Video Emporium pulsed with hormones and hostility. The air reeked of caramel corn and mustard and body odor. Frigid air blew through the poorly fitting doors of the recently closed indoor ice-skating rink.
Kristal Malley, an active, moody toddler of twenty-five months, managed to elude her mother’s attention and pull free of her grasp. Lara Malley claimed the lapse had been a matter of seconds; she’d turned her head to finger a blouse in the sale bin, felt her daughter’s hand slip from hers, turned to grab her, found her gone. Elbowing her way through the throng of other shoppers, she’d searched for Kristal, calling out her name. Screaming it.
Mall security arrived; two sixty-year-old men with no professional police experience. Their requests for Lara Malley to calm down so they could get the facts straight made her scream louder and she hit one of them on the shoulder. The guards restrained her and phoned the police.
Valley uniforms responded fourteen minutes later and a store-by-store search of the mall commenced. Every store was scrutinized. All bathrooms and storage areas were inspected. A troop of Eagle Scouts was summoned to help. K-9 units unleashed their dogs. The canines picked up the little girl’s scent in the store where her mother had lost her. Then, overwhelmed by thousands of other smells, the dogs nosed their way toward the mall’s eastern exit and floundered.
The search lasted six hours. Uniforms talked to each departing shopper. No one had seen Kristal. Night fell. Buy-Rite closed. Two Valley detectives stayed behind and reviewed the mall’s security videotapes.
All four machines utilized by the security company were antiquated and poorly maintained, and the black-and-white films were hazy and dark, blank for minutes at a time.
The detectives concentrated on the time period immediately following Kristal Malley’s reported disappearance. Even that wasn’t simple; the machines’ digital readouts were off by three to five hours. Finally, the right frames were located.
And there it was.
Long shot of a tiny figure dangling between two males. Kristal Malley had been wearing sweatpants and so did the figure. Tiny legs kicked.
Three figures exiting the mall at the east end. Nothing more; no cameras scanned the parking lot.
The tape was replayed as the D’s scanned for details. The larger abductor wore a light-colored T-shirt, jeans, and light shoes, probably sneakers. Short, dark hair. From what the detectives could tell, he seemed heavily built.
No facial features. The camera, posted high in a corner, picked up frontal views of incoming shoppers but only the backs of those departing.
The second male was shorter and thinner than his companion, with longer hair that appeared blond. He wore a dark-colored tee, jeans, sneakers.
Sue Kramer said, “They look like kids to me.”
“I agree,” said Fernie Reyes.
They continued viewing the tape. For an instant, Kristal Malley had twisted in her captor’s grasp and the camera caught 2.3 seconds of her face.
Too distant and poorly focused to register anything but a tiny, pale disk. The lead detective, a DII named Sue Kramer, had said, “Look at that body language. She’s struggling.”
“And no one’s noticing,” said her partner, Fernando Reyes, pointing to the stream of shoppers pouring in and out of the mall. People flowed around the little girl as if she were a piece of flotsam in a marina.
“Everyone probably figured they were horsing around,” said Kramer. “Dear God.”
Lara Malley had already viewed the tape through tears and hyperventilated breathing, and she didn’t recognize the two abductors.
“How can I?” she whimpered. “Even if I knew them, they’re so far away.”
Kramer and Reyes played it for her again. And again. Six more times. With each viewing, she shook her head more slowly. By the time a uniform entered the security room and announced “The father’s here,” the poor woman was nearly catatonic.
Figuring the video arcade attracted kids to the mall, the detectives brought in Galaxy’s owner and the two clerks who’d been on duty, brothers named Lance and Preston Kukach, acned, high-school dropout geeks barely out of their teens.
It took only a second for the owner to say, “The tape stinks but that’s Troy.” He was a fifty-year-old Caltech-trained engineer named Al Nussbaum, who’d made more money during three years of renting out video machines than a decade at the Jet Propulsion Labs. That day, he’d taken his own kids horseback riding, had come in to check the receipts.
“Which one’s Troy?” said Sue Kramer.
Nussbaum pointed to the smaller kid in the dark T-shirt. “He comes in all the time, always wears that shirt. It’s a Harley shirt, see the logo, here?”
His finger tapped the back of the tee. To Kramer and Reyes, the alleged winged logo was a faint gray smudge.
“What’s Troy’s last name?” said Kramer.
“Don’t know, but he’s a regular.” Nussbaum turned to Lance and Preston. The brothers nodded.
Fernie Reyes said, “What kind of kid is he, guys?”
Narrator John Rubinstein's timing is spot-on as psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware and LAPD Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis exchange theories and banter in Kellerman's latest psychological thriller. Eight years ago two teenagers, Troy Turner and Rand Duchay, confessed to the murder of a 2-year-old girl and were sent to a camp for juvenile offenders. Troy was murdered there, and now Rand is being released. He calls Alex, claiming to have information about the case, but is killed before Alex can reach him. As Kellerman's plot burrows deep into the horrors of the past, Rubinstein's performance handles the horrific brutality and revelations with masterful detachment, while still drawing listeners into the grisly details. Shameful secrets, unthinkable violence, a riveting conclusion, and Rubinstein's reading make for sensational listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
