What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin Page B

that Freddy Krueger never would.
    He used to have nightmares—the teen killer, coming for him in the middle of the night with her pistol, shooting holes through his brain, slaughtering his family, her expression never changing. The Mona Lisa Death Smile . Man.
    To Barry, to many who were children in L.A. in the early ’80s he was sure, Kelly Lund was a bogeyman on a level with Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez or Charlie Manson. And even as Barry grew, even as he took boxing lessons and stood up to the bullies in school who called him Carrot Top and gave him wedgies on a daily basis, even as he graduated—sixty-five pounds bigger than when he entered high school and knowing full well he’d be a cop one day—even then, and even now, a grown man with a detective’s shield and a black belt in mixed martial arts and a registered .40 caliber Glock in his shoulder holster ( Try and call me Carrot Top now, dickheads ) he couldn’t shake the uneasiness he felt at the sound of her name.
    Kelly Lund is coming for you!
    Could you blame him? Could you blame anyone who had grown up with that photo emblazoned in his brain?
    Lund had her champions, no question. She had her conspiracy theorists and her marshmallow-hearted movie stars and her knee-jerk feminist bloggers, writing letters to the parole board on this “poor girl’s” behalf.
    But Barry Dupree wasn’t one of them. And when, five years after Kelly Lund’s release, practically to the day, he and his partner hadlooked at surveillance video of a slim, hooded figure leaving the Marshalls’ house, shortly after the approximate time of Sterling Marshall’s death and getting into a car that resembled Kelly Lund’s, it took every ounce of restraint not to yell “ I told you so .”
    Hadn’t Marshall’s wife, Mary, fought for Kelly Lund’s release? Hadn’t she been one of those misguided letter writers? He’d asked his partner, Louise Braddock, about that at the police building at five in the morning, right after they’d caught the case and they were sitting at their desks, speed-reading old newspaper articles, mainlining coffee, getting ready.
    â€œIf it wasn’t for Mary Marshall’s letters,” he’d said, jittery from caffeine, “Kelly Lund might have never gotten paroled, and so she would never have killed Sterling Marshall. Am I right?”
    But Louise had reacted the way she almost always did, which was to roll her eyes and tell him to calm the hell down. “Innocent until proven guilty, Barry,” she’d said.
    Sure you make it into Robbery-Homicide, but you get your mother for a partner .
    The worst part of it was, Barry was somewhat indebted to Louise. She’d been in the prestigious division for more than ten years when he arrived six months ago from Monrovia, riding the coattails of a major bank robbery he’d caught simply because he’d forgotten his car keys at the station, and had gone back in to get them when the case had come in. It was a professional job—way too big for their understaffed division, yet working with him, the lieutenant at Robbery-Homicide had been impressed enough by Barry’s thoroughness and dedication that he’d extended the invitation that he had always dreamed of. His big break . . . well, it would be his big break if they could find him a partner.
    As luck would have it, Louise Braddock’s partner had just retired and, given a choice between Barry and a douchebag named CameronKeogh who stunk as though he stewed in Axe spray six hours every night, she’d gone for the new guy. “Keep in mind, Cameron Keogh gives me migraines,” Louise had said to Barry at the time and continued to say to him, any chance she got. “You were saved by the smell.”
    Whatever. Barry didn’t care what Louise thought. He never cared what Louise thought any more than he cared what his own mother