Free Time Bomb by Jonathan Kellerman Page A

never married, though we might as well have been.”
    “How long were you together?”
    “A little over five years.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “No reason for you to apologize for that either.”
    I realized my tone was sharp—irritation at doing all the revealing.
    Tension filled the space between us like an air balloon. We busied ourselves with dessert, let it deflate gradually.
    When we were through, she insisted on separate checks and paid with cash. “Well, Dr. Alex Delaware,” she said, putting away her wallet, “it’s been edifying, but I’ve got to get home and attack some paper. Will you be coming by tomorrow?”
    “Same time, same station.”
    We stood. She took my hand in both of hers. That same soft, submissive touch, so at odds with the rest of her. Her eyes were soft coals, burning.
    “I really want to thank you,” she said. “You’re a very nice man, and I know I’m not always the easiest person in the world to be around.”
    “I’m not always Joe Mellow either.”
    Face to face. Tight silence. I wanted to kiss her, contented myself with walking her to her car and watching the movement of her hips and legs as she got into it. As she drove off, I realized we’d talked more about ourselves than the sniping.
     
    But alone, back in the Seville, thoughts of the sniping kept intruding. I picked up an evening final at a 7-Eleven near Barrington, drove to Westwood and north through the village, and examined the front page as I waited out a red light at Hilgard and Sunset.
    Two photos—one of the storage shed, titled SNIPER ’ S LAIR ; the other a head shot of Holly Lynn Burden—shared center top. To the right a 64-point headline shouted SNIPER FIRE BREAKS OUT AT SCHOOL. LATCH AIDE ENDS IT. CHILDREN ON PLAYGROUND FLEE IN PANIC. FEMALE SNIPER SLAIN BY COUNCILMAN ’ S STAFFER .
    The head shot looked as if it had been taken from a high school yearbook: white collar over dark sweater, single strand of pearls, starched pose. Same face I’d seen on the photocopied driver’s license, but younger, some baby fat softening the edges. Longer hair, flipped at the shoulders. Dark-framed eyeglasses, that same sullen dullness behind them.
    The light turned green. Someone honked. I put down the paper and joined the chrome-surge onto Sunset. Traffic was slow but insistent. When I got home I started reading, skimming the recap of the shooting, slowing down when I got to the bio of the shooter.
    Holly Burden had lived all nineteen years of her life in the house on Jubilo Drive, sharing it with her father, Mahlon Burden, fifty-six, a “widower and self-employed technical consultant.” The contents of the father’s police interview hadn’t been made public and he’d declined to talk to the press, as had a brother, Howard Burden, thirty, of Encino.
    Through “School Board records” the paper had found out about Holly attending Hale but didn’t quote Esme Ferguson or anyone else who remembered her.
    The future sniper had gone on to attend a nearby public junior high, then Pacific Palisades High School, where she’d dropped out one semester short of a diploma.
    Guidance counselors had trouble remembering her, but an adviser at the high school managed to locate grade transcripts showing her to have been a poor student with “no participation in extracurricular activities.” The few instructors who remembered her at all described her as quiet, unobtrusive. One English teacher recalled she’d had “motivational problems, wasn’t academically oriented or competitive,” but hadn’t participated in remedial programs. Not an alumna to brag about, but no one had picked up the slightest hint of serious mental disturbance or violence.
    Neighbors “along the quiet, tree-lined street in this affluent West Side district” were a good deal more forthcoming. Speaking anonymously, they described the Burdens,
père et fille
, as “unfriendly, secretive”; “not involved in the community, they stuck to themselves.”