Book 19 in the Alex Delaware series, 2005

Special thanks to Larry Malmberg, P.I.,

and Detective Miguel Porras

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.”

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.