Chapter One

I tell the truth. They lie.

I'm strong. They're weak.

I'm good.

They're bad.

This was a zero job but Doyle was getting paid.

Why anyone would shell out fifteen bucks an hour, three hours a
day, five times a week, to check out the empty shell of a
rich-idiot monster-house was something he'd never get.

The look-see took fifteen minutes. If he walked slow. Rest of the
time, Doyle sat around, ate his lunch, listened to Cheap Trick on
his Walkman.

Thinking about being a real cop if his knee hadn't screwed
up.

The company said go there, he went.

Disability all run out, he swallowed part-time, no benefits. Paying
to launder his own uniform.

One time he heard a couple of the other guys talking behind his
back.

Gimp's lucky to get anything.

Like it was his fault. His blood level had been .05, which wasn't
even close to illegal. That tree had jumped out of nowhere.

Gimp made Doyle go all hot in the face and the chest but he kept
his mouth shut like he always did. One day . . .

He parked the Taurus on the patch of dirt just outside the
chainlink, tucked his shirt tighter.

Seven a.m., quiet except for the stupid crows squawking.

Rich-idiot neighborhood but the sky was a crappy milky gray just
like in Burbank where Doyle's apartment was.

Nothing moving on Borodi Lane. As usual. The few times Doyle saw
anyone it was maids and gardeners. Rich idiots paying to live here
but never living here, one monster-mansion after another, blocked
by big trees and high gates. No sidewalks, either. What was that
all about?

Every once in a while, some tucked-tight blonde in Rodeo Drive
sweats would come jogging down the middle of the road looking
miserable. Never before ten, that type slept late, had breakfast in
bed, massages, whatever. Laying around in satin sheets, getting
waited on by maids and butlers before building up the energy to
shake those skinny butts and long legs.

Bouncing along in the middle of the road, some Rolls-Royce comes
speeding down and kaboom. Wouldn't that be something?

Doyle collected his camouflage-patterned lunch box from the trunk,
made his way toward the three-story plywood shell. The third being
that idiot castle thing-the turret. Unfinished skeleton of a house
that would've been as big as a . . . as a . . . Disneyland
castle.

Fantasyland. Doyle had done some pacing, figured twenty thousand
square feet, minimum. Two-acre lot, maybe two and a half.

Framed up and skinned with plywood, for some reason, he could never
find out why, everything stopped and now the heap was all gray,
warping, striped with rusty nail-drips.

Crappy gray sky leaking in through rotting rafters. On hot days,
Doyle tucked himself into a corner for shade.

Out behind in the bulldozed brown dirt was an old Andy Gump
accidentally left behind, chemicals still in the john. The door
didn't close good and sometimes Doyle found coyote scat inside,
sometimes mouse droppings.

When he felt like it, he just whizzed into the dirt.

Someone paying all that money to build Fantasyland, then just
stopping. Go figure.

He'd brought a good lunch today, roast beef sandwich from Arby's,
too bad there was nothing to heat the gravy with. Opening the box,
he sniffed. Not bad. He moved toward the chain-link swing gate . .
. what the-

Stupid thing was pulled as wide as the chain allowed, which was
about two, two and a half feet. Easy for anyone but a fat idiot to
squeeze through.

The chain had always been too long to really draw the gate tight,
making the lock useless, but Doyle was careful to twist it up, make
it look secure when he left each day.

Some idiot had monkeyed with it.

He'd told the company about the chain, got ignored. What was the
point of hiring a professional when you didn't listen to his
advice?

Sidling through the gap, he rearranged the chain nice and tight.
Leaving his lunch box atop raw-concrete steps, he began his
routine. Standing in the middle of the first floor, saying,
"Hel-lo," and listening to his voice echo. He'd done that first day
on the job, liked the echo, kinda like honking in a tunnel. Now it
was a habit.

Didn't take long to see everything was okay on the first floor.
Space was huge, big as a . . . as a . . . some rooms framed up but
mostly pretty open so you had clear views everywhere. Like peeking
through the skeleton bones of some dinosaur. In the middle of what
would've been the entry hall was a humongous, swooping, double
staircase. Just plywood, no railings, Doyle had to be careful, all
he needed was a fall, screw up some other body part.

Here we go, pain with every step. Stairs creaked like a mother but
felt structurally okay. You could just could imagine what it would
be like with marble on it. Like a . . . big castle staircase.

Nineteen steps, each one killed.

The second floor was just as empty as the first, big surprise.
Stopping to rub his knee and take in the western treetop view, he
continued toward the rear, stopped again, kneaded some more but it
didn't do much good. Continuing to the back, he reached the smaller
staircase, thirteen steps but real curvy, a killer, tucked behind a
narrow wall, you had to know where to find it.

Whoever had paid for all this was some rich idiot who didn't
appreciate what he had. If Doyle had a hundredth-a two-hundredth of
something like this, he'd thank God every day.

He'd asked the company who the owner was. They said, "Don't
pry."

Climbing the curvy staircase, every step crunching his knee,

the pain riding up to his hip, he began counting out the thirteen
stairs like he always did, trying to take his mind off the burning
in his leg.

When he called out "Nine," he saw it.

Oh Jesus.

Heart thumping, mouth suddenly dry as tissue paper, he backed down
two steps, reached along the right side of his gear belt.

Touching air.

Now he was the idiot, there'd been no gun for a long time, not
since he stopped guarding jewelry stores downtown.

Company gave him a flashlight, period, and it was in the trunk of
the Taurus.

He forced himself to look.

Two of them.

No one else, one good thing about the turret, it was round, mostly
open to the sky, nowhere to hide.

Doyle kept looking, felt his guts heave.

The way they were lying, him on top of her, her legs up, one hooked
around his back, it was pretty clear what they'd been doing.

Before . . .

Doyle felt short of breath, like someone was choking him.
Struggling to regain his air, he finally succeeded. Reached for his
phone.

Right in his pocket. At least something was going okay.

Excerpted from EVIDENCE: An Alex Delaware Novel © Copyright
2011 by Jonathan Kellerman. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine
Books. All rights reserved.