The Murder Book

by Jonathan Kellerman

  He made no move to exit the car. I said, "A girl using poison makes sense. Poisoning doesn't require physical confrontation, so a disproportionate number of poisoners are female. I don't have to tell you psychopathic killers often start with animals, but they're usually males who dig blood. For a girl that young to act out so violently would be a serious red flag. I'm wondering if Caroline's been confined all these years. Maybe because of something a lot worse than killing a dog."

  "Or she died."

  "Find the death certificate."

  He knuckled his eyes, looked up at my house. "Poison's sneaky. What was done to Janie was blatant— the way the body was dumped in an open spot. No way did a girl do that."

  "I'm not saying Caroline murdered Janie by herself, but she might've been part of it— might've served as a lure for whoever did the cutting. Plenty of killers have used young women as bait— Paul Bernardo, Charlie Manson, Gerald Gallegos, Christopher Wilding. Caroline would've been the perfect lure for Janie and Melinda— a girl their age, outwardly inoffensive. And rich. Caroline could've stood by and watched as some-one else did the wet work or participated the way the Manson girls did. Maybe it was a group thing, just like the Mansons, party scene gone bad. Females are affiliative— even female killers. Group settings lower their inhibitions."

  "Sugar and spice," he said. "And the family found out, put the screws on with the department to hush up the case, locked Crazy Caroline away somewhere . . . the ghoul in the attic."

  "Big family money can furnish a really nice attic."

  He accompanied me inside, where I went through the mail and he got on the phone with County Records and Social Security. No death certificate on Caroline Cossack; nor had she received a social security number or a driver's license.

  Melinda Waters had received a card at age fifteen, but she'd never driven in California or worked or contributed payroll tax. Which made sense if she'd died young. But no certificate on her, either.

  "Disappeared," I said. "Melinda probably died the same night Janie did, and Caroline's either very well hidden or she expired, too, and the family hushed it up."

  "Hidden as in hospitalized?"

  "Or just watched carefully. Rich kid like that, she'd have a trust fund, could be living in some Mediterranean villa with twenty-four-hour supervision."

  He began pacing. "Little Miss Nowhere . . . but at some point, when she was a kid, she had to have an identity. Be interesting to pinpoint when exactly she lost it."

  "School records," I said. "Living in Bel Air would've meant Palisades or University High if the Cossacks chose public school. Beverly, if they played fast and loose with residency forms. On the private side, there'd be Harvard-Westlake— which was Westlake School for Girls, back then— or Marlborough, Buckley, John Thomas Dye, Crossroads."

  He flipped open his pad, scrawled notes.

  "Or," I added, "a school for troubled kids."

  "Any particular place come to mind?"

  "I was in practice back then, can recall three very high-priced spreads. One was in West L.A., the others were in Santa Monica and the Valley— North Hollywood."

  "Names?"

  I recited, and he got back on the phone. Santa Monica Prep was defunct, but Achievement House in Cheviot Hills and Valley Educational Academy in North Hollywood were still in business. He reached both schools but hung up frowning.

  "No one'll give me the time of day. Confidentiality and all that."

  "Schools don't enjoy confidentiality privileges," I said.

  "You ever deal with either of the places, professionally?"

  "I visited Achievement House, once," I said. "The parents of a boy I was seeing kept holding the place over the kid's head as a threat. 'If you don't shape up, we'll send you to Achievement House.' That seemed to scare him, so I dropped by to see what spooked him. Talked to a so-cial worker, got the five-minute tour. Converted apartment building near Motor and Palms. What stuck in my mind was how small it was— maybe twenty-five, thirty kids boarding in, meaning it had to cost a fortune. No snake pit that I could see. Later, I talked to my patient and turns out what he was worried about was stigmatization. Being thought of as a 'weirdo-geek-loser.' "

  "Achievement House had a bad reputation?"

  "In his mind, any special placement had a bad reputation."

  "Did he get sent there?"

  "No, he ran away, wasn't seen for years."

  "Oh," he said.

  I smiled. "Don't you mean 'Ah'?"

  He laughed. Got himself grapefruit juice, opened the freezer and stared at the vodka bottle but changed his mind. "Ran away. Your version of loose ends."

  "Loose ends were a big part of my life, back then," I said. "The price of an interesting job. As it turns out, this particular kid made it okay."

  "He stayed in touch?"

  "He called after his second child was born. Ostensibly to ask about how to handle sibling jealousy. He ended up apologizing for being a surly teen. I told him he had nothing to be sorry about. Because I'd finally learned the whole story from his mother. His older brother had been molesting him since he was five."

  His face got hard. "Family values." He paced some more, finished his juice, washed the glass, got back on the phone. Contacting Palisades and University and Beverly Hills High Schools, then the private institutions. Putting on the charm, claiming to be conducting an alumnus search for Who's Who.

  No one had Caroline Cossack on their files. "Little Miss Nowhere." He'd talked about washing his hands of the Ingalls case, but his face was flushed, and hunter's tension bunched his shoulders.

  "I didn't tell you," he said, "but yesterday I went over to Parker Center and searched for Janie's case file. Disappeared. Nothing at the Metro office or in evidence or the coroner's, not even a cold-case classification or a notice that the file had been moved somewhere else. There is absolutely no paper anywhere that says the case was ever opened in the first place. I know it was because I opened it. Schwinn used to shove all the paperwork at me. I filled out the right forms, transcribed my street notes, created the murder book."

  "No coroner's records, so much for science," I said. "When's the last time you saw the file?"

  "The morning before my interrogation by Broussard and that Swede. After they worked me over, I was so shaken up I didn't return to my desk, just split the station. The next day, the transfer notice was in my box, and my desk had been cleared."

  He tilted back in his chair, stretched his legs, seemed suddenly relaxed. "You know, my friend, I've been working too damn hard. Maybe that's what I can learn from old Mr. Serene. Stop and sniff the manure."

  A smile, abrupt and broad, did something unsettling to his mouth. He rotated his head for several turns, as if working kinks out of his neck. Brushed black strands of hair out of his face. Sprang to his feet.

  "See you. Thanks for your time."

  "Where are you headed?" I said.

  "Into a life of meditative leisure. Got lots of vacation time stored up. Seems a good time to cash in."

  CHAPTER 15

  Leisure was the last thing I needed. The moment the door closed, I reached for the phone.

  Larry Daschoff and I have known each other since grad school. After our internships, I took a professorship at the med school crosstown and worked the cancer wards at Western Pediatric Medical Center, and he went straight into private practice. I stayed single and he married his high school sweetheart, sired six kids, made a good living, converted his square-meal-in-a-round-can defensive-guard physique to middle-aged fat, watched his wife go back to law school, took up golf. Now, he was a young grandfather, living on investment income, wintering in Palm Desert.

  I reached him at his condo, there. It had been some time since we'd spoken, and I asked him about the wife and kids.

  "Everyone's great."

  "Especially the Ultimate Grandchild."

  "Well, as long as you asked, yes Samuel Jason Daschoff is clearly the messenger of the Second Coming— another Jewish savior.
Little guy just turned two and has evolved from sweetness and light to age-appropriate obnoxiousness. Let me tell you, Alex, there's no revenge sweeter than watching your own kids contend with the crap they shoveled at you."

  "I'll bet," I said, wondering if I'd ever know.

  "So," said Larry, "how've you been doing?"

  "Keeping busy. I'm actually calling you about a case."

  "I figured as much."

  "Oh?"

  "You were always task-oriented, Alex."

  "You're saying I can't be purely sociable?"

  "Like I can be purely skinny. What kind of case, therapy or the bad stuff you do with the constabulary?"

  "The bad stuff."

  "Still subjecting yourself to that."

  "Still."

  "I guess I can understand the motivation," he said. "It's a helluva lot more exciting than breathing in angst all day, and you were never one to sit still. So how can I help you?"

  I described Caroline Cossack, without mentioning names. Asked him to guess where a teen that troubled might've been schooled twenty years back.

  "Dosing Rover with cyanide?" he said. "Impolite. How come she didn't end up in trouble?"

  "Maybe family connections," I said, as I realized incarceration would be an excellent reason not to have a social security card, and neither Milo nor I had thought of checking prison records. Both of us thrown off kilter.

  "A rich, not-nice kid," said Larry. "Well, back then there was no real place for a run-of-the-mill dangerous delinquent other than the state hospital system— Camarillo. But I suppose a rich family could've placed her somewhere cushy."

  "I was thinking Achievement House or Valley Educational, or their out-of-state counterparts."

  "Definitely not Valley Educational, Alex. I consulted there, and they stayed away from delinquents, concentrated on learning probs. Even back then they were getting fifteen-grand tuition, had a two-year waiting list, so they could afford to be picky. Unless the family covered up the extent of the girl's pathology, but that kind of violent tendency would be hard to suppress for very long. As far as Achievement House, I never had any direct experience with them, but I know someone who did. Right around that time period, too, now that I think about it— nineteen, twenty years ago. Not a pretty situation."

  "For the students?"

  "For the someone I know. Remember when I used to do mentoring for the department— undergrads considering psych as a career? One of my mentorees was a freshman girl, precocious, barely seventeen. She got herself a volunteer placement at Achievement House."

  "What problems did she have there?"

  "The director got . . . overtly Freudian with her."

  "Sexual harassment?"

  "Back then it was just called mashing and groping. Despite her age, the girl was a clearheaded feminist way ahead of her time, complained to the board of directors, who promptly gave her the boot. She talked to me about pursuing it— she was really traumatized— and I offered to back her up if she wanted to take it further, but in the end she decided not to. She knew it was his word against hers, he was the respected health administrator, and she was a good-looking teenager who wore her skirts too short. I supported the decision. What would she have gained other than a mess?"

  "Was there ever any suggestion the director was molesting students?"

  "Not that I heard."

  "Remember his name?"

  "Alex, I really don't want my mentoree drawn into it."

  "I promise she won't be."

  "Larner. Michael Larner."

  "Psychologist or psychiatrist?"

  "Business type— administrator."

  "Are you still in touch with the mentoree?"

  "Occasionally. Mostly for cross-referrals. She stayed on track, graduated summa, got her Ph.D. at Penn, did a fellowship at Michigan, moved back here. She's got a nice Westside practice."

  "Is there any way to ask her if she'd talk to me?"

  Silence. "You think this is important."

  "Honestly, I don't know, Larry. If asking her will put you in a difficult position, forget it."

  "Let me think about it," he said. "I'll let you know."

  "That would be great."

  "Great?" he said.

  "Extremely helpful."

  "You know," he said, "right as we speak, I've got my feet up and my belt loosened and I'm looking out at miles of clean white sand. Just finished a plate of chile rellenos con mucho cerveza. Just let out a sonic-boom belch and no one's around to give me a funny look. To me, that's great."

  I heard from him an hour later. "Her name's Allison Gwynn, and you can call her. But she definitely doesn't want to get involved in any police business."

  "No problem," I said.

  "So," he said. "How's everything else?"

  "Everything's fine."

  "We should get together for dinner. With the women. Next time we come into town."

  "Good idea," I said. "Call me, Larry. Thanks."

  "Everything's really okay?"

  "Sure. Why do you ask?"

  "Don't know . . . you sound a bit . . . tentative. But maybe it's just that I haven't talked to you in a while."

  I called Dr. Allison Gwynn at her Santa Monica exchange.

  A you-have-reached-the-office tape answered, but when I mentioned my name, a soft-around-the-edges female voice broke in.

  "This is Allison. It's funny, Larry calling out of the blue and asking if I'd talk to you. I've been reading some articles on pain control, and a couple were yours. I do some work at St. Agnes Hospice."

  "Those articles are ancient history."

  "Not really," she said. "People and their pain don't change that much, most of what you said still holds true. Anyway, Larry says you want to know about Achievement House. It's been a long time— nearly twenty years— since I had anything to do with that place."

  "That's exactly the time period I'm interested in."

  "What do you need to know?"

  I gave her the same anonymous description of Caroline Cossack.

  "I see," she said. "Larry assures me you'll be discreet."

  "Absolutely."

  "That's essential, Dr. Delaware. Look, I can't talk now, have a patient in two minutes and after that I'm running a group at the hospice. This evening, I'll be teaching, but in between I will be eating dinner— fiveish, or so. If you want to stop by, that's fine. I usually go to Café Maurice on Broadway near Sixth, because it's close to St. Agnes."

  "I'll be there," I said. "I really appreciate it."

  "No problem," she said. "I hope."

  I endured the afternoon by running too fast for too long. Trudged up my front steps winded and dehydrated and checked the phone machine. Two hang-ups and a canned solicitation for discount home loans. I pressed *69 and traced the hang-ups to a harried woman in East L.A. who spoke only Spanish and had dialed a very wrong number, and a Montana Avenue boutique wondering if Robin Castagna would be interested in some new silk fashions from India.

  "I guess I should've left a message," said the nasal girl on the other end, "but the owner likes us to make personal contact. So do you think Robin might be interested? According to our records, she bought a bunch of cool stuff last year."

  "When I talk to her, I'll ask her."

  "Oh, okay . . . you could come in yourself, you know. Do like a gift thing? If she doesn't like it, we'll give her full store credit on return. Women love to be surprised."

  "Do they?"

  "Oh, sure. Totally."

  "I'll bear that in mind."

  "You really should. Women love when guys like surprise them."

  "Like a trip to Paris," I said.

  "Paris?" She laughed. "You can surprise me with that— don't tell Robin I said that, okay?"

  At 4 P.M., I stepped out the kitchen door to the rear patio, crossed the garden to Robin's studio, unlocked the cool vaulted room, and walked around smelling wood dust and lacquer and Chanel No. 19 and listening to the echos of my footsteps. She'd swept the f
loor clean, packed her tools, put everything in its place.

  Afternoon sun streamed through the windows. Beautiful space in perfect order. It felt like a crypt.

  I returned to the house and skimmed the morning paper. The world hadn't changed much; why did I feel so altered? At four-thirty, I showered, got dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt, clean blue jeans, brown suede loafers. At ten after five, I walked into Café Maurice.