Free Survival of the Fittest by Jonathan Kellerman Page B

financial district. Unusual location for a therapist but if he got lots of referrals from LAPD and other government agencies, I guess it made sense.
    Just as I hung up, Milo called, his voice charged with some kind of energy.
    “Got another case. Retarded girl, strangled.”
    “Pretty quick—”
    “Not from the files, Alex. I’m talking brand-new, here and now. Caught the radio call a few minutes ago and I’m headed over to Southwest Division—Western near Twenty-eighth. If you come by now you might get a look at the body before they take it away. It’s a school. Booker T. Washington Elementary.”

Chapter
    11
     
     
     
    Southwest Division was twenty miles and a universe away from the park where Irit Carmeli had lost her life. I took Sunset to La Cienega, headed south down San Vicente, and picked up the Santa Monica Freeway east at La Brea. Exiting at Western, I covered the next few blocks of inner city with relative speed. Few cars were on the street as I passed shuttered buildings and burned-out lots that hadn’t been rebuilt since the riots and maybe never would be. The sky was very pale gray, almost white, looked as if it had given up on blue.
    Washington Elementary was old, dun-colored, and cruelly graffitied. Set on acres of potholed playground, the entire property was surrounded by twelve-foot chain-link fencing that hadn’t prevented vandals from pretending they were artists.
    I parked on Twenty-eighth, near the main gate. Wide open but guarded by a uniform. Squad cars, technical vans, and the coroner’s station wagon had converged at the south end of the playground, between the monkey bars and the swings. Yellow tape divided the lot in two. On the northern half children ran and played under the eyes of teachers and aides. Most of the adults watched the activity across the field. Few of the kids did and the yard was filled with laughter and protest, the scrappy doggerel of childhood.
    No media cars, yet. Or maybe a murder down here just wasn’t good enough copy.
    It took a while to get past the uniform but finally I was allowed to make my way to Milo.
    He was talking to a gray-haired man in an olive suit and writing in his notepad. A stethoscope hung around the other man’s neck and he talked steadily, without visible emotion. Two black men with badges on their sportcoats stood twenty feet away, looking at a figure on the ground. A photographer snapped pictures and techs worked under the swing set with a portable vacuum, brushes, and tweezers. Other uniforms crowded the scene but they didn’t seem to have much to do. Among them was a short, bearded Hispanic man around fifty, wearing gray work clothes.
    As I came closer, the black detectives stopped chatting and watched me. One was fortyish, five nine and soft-heavy, with a head shaved clean, bulldog jowls, and a dyspeptic expression. His jacket was beige over black trousers and his tie was black printed with crimson orchids. His companion was ten years younger, tall and slim with a bushy mustache and a full head of hair. He wore a navy blazer, cream slacks, blue tie. Both had analytic eyes.
    Milo saw me and held up a finger.
    The black detectives resumed their conversation.
    I took a look at the dead girl on the field.
    Not much bigger than Irit. Lying the same way Irit had been positioned, hands to the sides, palms up, feet straight out. But this face was different: swollen and purplish, tongue extending from the lower left corner of the mouth, the neck circled by a red, puckered ring of bruise.
    Her age was hard to make out but she looked in her teens. Black, wavy hair, broad features, dark eyes, some acne on the cheeks. Light-skinned black, or Latino. She wore navy sweatpants and white tennis shoes, a short denim jacket over a black top.
    Dirty fingernails.
    The eyes open, staring sightlessly at the milk-colored sky.
    The tongue lavender-gray, huge.
    Behind her, a foot of rope hung from the top bar of the swing set, the end cut cleanly. No breeze,