We all know the one-liner: A true friend is someone who’ll help you hide the body.
For the most part, I like people. Have never experienced social anxiety though I’ve helped others deal with it. I choose to think empathy’s been enough for my patients and so far no one’s complained.
Despite all that, I’ve got two true friends: the woman I love and live with and a homicide detective with whom I’ve worked on scores of horrific murders. What Milo Sturgis calls “those cases.”
So there you have it: a lifetime of relating but only two people who’d help me hide a body. Three, if you include Blanche, the little French bulldog to whom Robin and I have been catering for years. Dogs are way above us emotionally and canine love’s unconditional but I’m not sure what Blanche could accomplish in a pinch.
I see her and Robin daily. My contact with Milo is a different story. Occasionally social—Robin and I having dinner with him and the man he lives with—but mostly work-related.
The worst in people brings out the best in Milo and me.
I hadn’t heard from him in over a month, had assumed none of “those cases” had surfaced. But when he finally called on a Monday afternoon, he sounded low and I began to wonder.
“What’s up?”
“Can I come by?”
“Sure.”
Seven minutes later he was at the front door, meaning he’d phoned from the road, hoping I’d be available.
Today, he’d lucked out. I’d just finished a morning of child custody consults and phone chats with attorneys and judges, had planned to wind down with a run. Not just for the exercise. Looking out for speeding cars on Beverly Glen heightens my senses and I return to the house adrenalized like a fox who’s avoided the hounds.
Now that energy was pinging like a series of manic texts.
I heard the engine of his unmarked Impala and opened the door. He trudged up the stairs and walked in looking the way he’d sounded. His suit was gray and wrinkled, his shirt gray-beige and wrinkled, his tie limp and brown. Pink-soled desert boots were scuffed glossy at the toes.
Green eyes that could be startlingly bright were bleary. Bison-shoulders drooped, causing his gut to protrude. His default pallor had bleached to chalky, heightening the cruel legacy of the acne pits and welts that brocade his face.
He stood there for a second, rolled enormous hands into fists, and tugged at spiking black hair before loping past me toward the kitchen.
Improvising at our fridge is another of Milo’s defaults. When he fails to do so he’s usually distracted by a strong lead.
Today was odd. No evidence of progress in his walk but he still didn’t forage, choosing instead to settle heavily at the table and shake his head like a weary, wet mastiff.
I said, “Coffee?”
“Experience is supposed to make you smarter.” I kept silent.
He said, “Not true?”
“It can help.”
He growled. “Put it this way: What am I always preaching to the junior D’s about?”
“Avoid assuming.”
He clicked his tongue. “Go to the head of the class. Yeah, coffee sounds okay.”
I pulled out a bag of Ethiopian beans Robin had just roasted and ground and loaded the machine.
When I produced cream and sugar, he said, “No thanks, black. To match my mood . . . where’s the pooch?”
“Out back with Robin.”
“Probably for the best. Just read an article, dogs can sniff out the stink of stress. Don’t want her to suffer my reek.”
I laughed reflexively.
He smiled, “Yeah, I’m whining. Figured if anyone would have something supportive to say it would be you.”
I switched to a plummy voice. What screenwriters have determined shrinks should sound like. “Sounds like you’re upset.”
He broke into laughter. The coffee machine beeped.
“Perfect timing,” he said. “At least someone’s got it.”
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Excerpted from JIGSAW by Jonathan Kellerman. Copyright © 2026 by Jonathan Kellerman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
