Self-Defense

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Have you heard from him since?”

  “No. I tried him a couple times from here, no answer.” He looked at his watch. “Maybe I should try again.”

  There was a pay phone up the hall. He called, waited, and came back shaking his head.

  “Poor kid,” he said, looking at the door to Lucy’s room. “Puck said she’d been through some kind of rough jury duty and was pretty freaked out, but I had no idea she was this . . . vulnerable.”

  He buttoned his jacket. Tight around the waist. “Too many business dinners,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Not that I imagine she’s had it easy. Did she tell you who our father is?”

  I nodded.

  He said, “I don’t know if she’s had any contact with him, but if she has, I’d be willing to bet that’s at least part of her stress.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The man’s a total and complete sonofabitch.”

  “Have you had contact with him?”

  “No way. He lives here—up in Topanga Canyon, big spread. But that’s a call I’ll never make.” Unbuttoning his jacket. “When I first started in the business, I used to have fantasies of his going bankrupt and me buying his land up cheap.” Smile. “I’ve been in counseling myself—got divorced last year.”

  “What happened twenty years ago?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said the last time you saw Lucy was twenty years ago.”

  “Oh. Yeah, twenty, twenty-one, something like that.” He squinted and scratched the side of his nose. “I was nine, so it was twenty-one. It was the summer my mother decided to go to Europe to take painting lessons—she was an artist. She drove us—my sister Jo and me—down to L.A. and dropped us off at Sanctum. That’s the name of his place in Topanga.”

  “I’ve heard of it—a writer’s retreat.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, here she is, dumping us on him, no advance notice. He was about as happy as getting a boil lanced, but what could he do, kick us out?”

  “And Lucy was there too?”

  “Lucy and Puck. They came up a couple of weeks after we did. Tiny little kids, we didn’t know who they were; our mother had never told us they even existed, only that he’d left her for another woman. As it turned out, their mom had died a few years before, and the aunt who had taken care of them had gotten married and dumped them.”

  “How old were they?”

  “Let’s see, if I was nine, Puck would have had to be . . . five. So Lucy was four. We looked at them as babies, had nothing to do with them. Tell the truth, we resented them—our mother was always bad-mouthing their mother for stealing him away.”

  “Who took care of them?”

  “A nanny or some kind of baby-sitter. I remember that because they got to sleep with her in the main house while Jo and I had to stay in a little cabin and basically fend for ourselves. But that was okay. We ran around, did whatever we wanted.”

  “Twenty-one years ago,” I said. “That must have been right after Sanctum opened.”

  “It had just opened,” he said. “I remember they had this big party for the opening, and we were forced to stay in our cabin. Along with plates of food. Tons more spread out on these long white banquet tables, leftovers for weeks. I used to sneak into the kitchen and swipe pastries. I gained ten pounds—that was the beginning of my weight problem.”

  People shouting or maybe they’re laughing . . . and lights like fireflies.

  Another glance at his watch. “Well,” he said, “good to meet you. If there’s anything I can do—”

  He turned to leave.

  “How long will you be in L.A.?”

  “I was supposed to fly back tonight. Do you think—is there a chance Lucy would want to meet me?”

  “Hard to say, right now. She’s pretty out of it.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” he said sadly. “I wonder where Puck is, why he didn’t show. Here.”

  Pulling out a crocodile billfold, he removed a business card and gave it to me.

  “I’ve got meetings all day, but I probably can stick around till tomorrow morning. If she does want to meet me, or if you hear from Puck, I’m staying at the Westwood Marquis.”

  “Do you have Puck’s number handy?”

  “Right here.” An identical card came out of the wallet. On the back was a Valley exchange, written in blue ballpoint.

  “Let me get some paper and copy it down,” I said.

  “Take it,” he said. “I know it by heart.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  He left and I returned to Lucy’s room. She was still sleeping, and I gave my name to the ward clerk along with a message for Dr. Embrey. Then I phoned West L.A. Detectives and got Milo at his desk.

  “What’s up, Alex?”

  “Lucy tried to kill herself last night. She’s out of danger, physically, but still pretty knocked out. I’m at Woodbridge Hospital, out in the Valley. They’ll be keeping her here.”

  “Fuck. What’d she do, cut her wrists?”

  “Stuck her head in the oven.”

  “You find her?”

  “No, her half brother did. Lucky for her he stopped by looking for the other brother and saw her through the window, on her knees in the kitchen. Talk about Providence.”

  “Her drapes were open and she’s got her head in the oven? What was it, a cry for help?”

  “Who knows? She never dropped any hints to me. Still, I’m trying hard not to feel like an idiot.”

  “Jesus, Alex, what the hell happened?”

  “It’s complicated. More than you could ever imagine.”

  “And you can’t tell me.”

  “No, in fact, I need to. But not over the phone. When can we get together?”

  “Coming back into the city?”

  “Yup.”

  “Gino’s in forty-five.”

  Gino’s Trattoria is on Pico, not far from the West L.A. station: checkered tablecloths, hanging Chianti bottles, rough wines.

  Even during the day, the place is murky, lit by table candles in amber globes that are never washed. The one at Milo’s rear corner table illuminated him from the bottom, accentuating every crater and lump, giving him the look of a gargoyle with chronic back pain.

  He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie. Even at that distance I could tell his hair was freshly cut—military clip at the sides, long and shaggy on top, to-the-lobe sideburns that were hip, now, and against department regulations.

  Two beers sat in front of him. He pushed one over to me. In the dirty glare his green eyes were gray-brown.

  “How come all of a sudden you can talk to me?”

  “Because Lucy asked me to. She said someone was trying to kill her, and she wants you to protect her. I’m sure it’s some sort of gas-induced delusion—or massive denial because she just can’t face the fact that she tried to kill herself. But I’m taking it as a formal instruction.”

  “How does she figure someone tried to kill her with gas? Dragged her to the stove and jammed her head in?”

  “She’s nowhere near coherent enough to discuss details.”

  “Remember those four calls she put in? Seems she’s been getting some hang-ups.”

  “She told me. Said you didn’t think it was serious.”

  “I didn’t because she didn’t. She told me it might be some technical problem with her phone; the line goes out all the time. Kind of casual about the whole thing, made me wonder if she just wanted to talk.”

  “I’m sure she did. That’s part of what I have to tell you. She’s got a major crush on you. Admitted it to me during yesterday’s session.”

  He was silent and still.

  “She wanted approval from me, Milo. I couldn’t tell her you were gay because I didn’t want to violate your privacy. And I couldn’t warn you about the way she felt because of confidentiality. She got really upset and left. Now this. I feel like I’ve really screwed up, but I don’t know what I could’ve done differently.”

  “You cou
lda told her about me, Alex. I’m not your patient.”

  “I didn’t think it was appropriate to get into your personal life. She was the patient; I was trying to keep the focus on her.”

  “Jesus.” His cheeks turned to bellows and he blew out beery air.

  “Has she ever shown any romantic feelings?”

  “I don’t know,” he said furiously. “I guess looking back . . . I mean, she hung around, phoned, but I figured it was a cop-victim thing. Looking for big brother.” Rubbing one eye. “Pretty fucking dense, huh? Goddammit! I’m an asshole to let it get this far. All these years I’ve been careful not to get personal with victims or their families. So why her?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “You gave her support, and when it became clear she needed something more, you referred her to me.”

  “Yeah, but there was more. In my head. She probably picked up on it.”

  “More what?”

  “Involvement. I’d find myself thinking about her. Worrying. Couple of times I called her, just to see how she was doing.”

  He slammed a big hand down on the table. “How else could she take it? What am I, brain dead?”

  He shook his head. “For chrissake, she was only a juror. I’ve dealt with thousands of victims who had it a helluva lot worse. I must be losing it.”

  “You didn’t put her head in the oven.”

  “Neither did you, but you still feel like shit.”

  Both of us drank.

  “If I hadn’t tried to help her,” he said, “I wouldn’t know about her head being in the oven, would I? And you and I would be sitting here talking about something else.”

  His glass was empty and he called for a refill, looking at me.

  “No, thanks.”

  He said, “Ignorance is bliss, right? All the talk about insight and self-understanding, but far as I can tell, being a good ostrich is the key to psychological adjustment. Christ, now I have her sitting on my shoulder. . . . So what do I do, tell her, Gee, honeybunch, if I went for women you’d be at the top of my list? Might as well shove her head back in the oven.”

  “There’s no need to do anything right now,” I said. “Let’s see how she handles the seventy-two hours. If the psychiatrist at Woodbridge is good, she’ll know how to deal with it.”

  “Seventy-two hours . . . praise the law.”

  “There’s more you need to know about.” I told him about Lucy’s summer as a prostitute.

  “Oh, man, it keeps getting better. Just a summer fling, huh?”

  “So she says. She confessed right after she told me how she felt about you. Asked me if I thought she wasn’t good enough for you. As if she was giving me a reason to reject her.”

  “Not good enough for me.” He gave a scary laugh. “Remember I told you she reminded me of a girl in high school who became a nun? Someone else who convinced herself I was wonderful.”

  This time he rubbed his face. Hard.

  “Prom night back in Hoosierville. All the little virgins and would-be virgins from Our Lady on the arms of us pimpled lads from St. Thomas. I was eighteen and knew I was gay for a couple of years, no one to tell it to. Her name was Nancy Squires, and when she asked me to be her date I said yes because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Orchid corsage, tux, Dad’s car washed and waxed. Doing the Twist in the gym. Mashed Potatoes and the fucking Hully Gully. Drinking the fucking spiked punch.”

  He looked into his beer glass.

  “She was pretty, if you liked skinny and pale and tortured. Wrote poetry, collected these little porcelain doohickeys, didn’t know how to dress, tutored the boys in math. Of course the other girls treated her like a leper.”

  He turned and faced me.

  “She was nice to talk to, a little lady. Then when I drove her home, she put her hands all over me, and when I parked in front of her house she told me she loved me. It was like being sucker-punched. Genius that I was, I told her I liked her as a friend but couldn’t love her. Then I explained why.”

  He gave another frightful laugh. In the bad light he looked homicidal.

  “She didn’t say a thing for a while. Just let her hands drop and stared at me as if I was the biggest goddamn disappointment in her eighteen-year life. She didn’t have it easy. Her whole family was a bunch of assholes, brothers in jail, father a drunken shit who slapped her around from time to time, maybe worse. And here I was, the last straw.”

  He rubbed his eyelids. “She kept staring at me. Finally shook her head and said, “Oh, Milo, you’re going to end up in Hell.’ No anger. Sympathetic. Then she patted her brand-new Tonette and got out of the car and that’s the last I saw her. Next week she shipped off to a convent in Indianapolis. Five years ago my mother wrote me she was murdered, over in El Salvador. She and a bunch of other nuns washing clothes in a stream.” He threw up his hands. “Let’s do a screenplay.”

  “Lucy reminds you of her that strongly.”

  “They could be sisters, Alex. The way she carries herself—the vulnerability.”

  “The vulnerability’s definitely there,” I said. “Given what I’ve learned of her childhood, it’s no surprise. Her mom died right after she was born; her father deserted the family. She’s functionally an orphan.”

  “Yeah, I know. She was talking to me about Shwandt, once. Said he had two parents, nice home, father who was a lawyer, so what was his excuse? Said her own father was a lowlife.”

  “Did she tell you who her father is?”

  He looked up. “Who?”

  “M. Bayard Lowell.”

  Staring, he put his hands around his beer glass. “What is this, Big Fucking Surprise Day? The goddamn moon in Pisces with Herpes or something? Lowell as in Mr. Belles Lettruh?”

  “None other.”

  “Unbelievable. He still alive?”

  “Living in Topanga Canyon. His career died and he moved to L.A.”

  “I read him in school.”

  “Everyone did.”

  “She’s his daughter? Unreal.”

  “You can see why he’d have impact, even being absent.”

  “Sure,” he said. “He’s just there, like the goddamn Ten Foot Gorilla.”

  “Lucy compared it to being the President’s kid. I can understand her looking for a benevolent authority figure. Maybe your thoughts about a big brother weren’t all that far from the truth.”

  “Great. And now I disappoint her, too. . . . So how do I handle this? Visit or keep my distance?”

  “Let’s see how she does during the next few days.”

  “Sure. Head in the oven. . . . No idea what could have led her to it?”

  I shook my head. “She was upset, but nothing that pointed to suicide.”

  “Upset about me.”

  “That, but we’d also started to get into other things—the prostitution, feelings toward her father. And the dream she mentioned to you. That’s something else I want to talk to you about.”

  I described the buried girl story.

  He said, “I’m no shrink, but I hear, “Daddy scares the shit out of me.’ ”

  “She started having it midway through the trial, right after you testified about Carrie. I figured all that horror raised her anxiety level and released long-buried feelings toward Lowell—seeing herself as some kind of victim. His last poems are viciously anti-woman; she may have read them and had a strong reaction. And the last time we discussed the dream she said she’d felt her soul entering the dark-haired girl’s body—as if she were being buried too. Explicitly identifying with the victim. But something the half brother told me in the hospital makes me wonder if there’s even more. She claims she’s had no contact with Lowell her entire life, but the brother said twenty-one years ago she spent the summer with him in Topanga. All four of his kids did. Lucy was four years old at the time—the age she feels in the dream. And Lowell’s place has log buildings, exactly what she describes. Now, the newspapers did cover the opening of the retreat, down to the architecture; I found th
e clippings so she could’ve also. Or she could have heard about it from her brother Peter. He did some family research and filled her in. If that’s the case, she’s flat out denying being there. But the alternative is that she really doesn’t remember. Maybe because something traumatic happened that summer.”

  His jaw flexed. “Daddy did something to her?”

  “Like I said, his last poems are grossly misogynistic. If he abused her, I can see why the trial might kick in the memories—sex and violence thrown together. One thing’s for sure, she’s struggling with something major. The recurrent nature of the dream and its intensity—when she talks about it she actually seems to experience it—she’s trancelike. Almost as if she’s going into hypnosis by herself. That tells me her ego boundaries are weakening; this is something potent. So maybe I should’ve been more careful. But there was no profound depression, no hint she’d do this.”

  “What about the other two guys in the dream?”

  “Could be that part’s fantasy, or maybe what happened to her wasn’t a solo act. And I’ve got another possible participant. That summer, Lowell had a protÉgÉ living with him named Terry Trafficant. Career criminal, history of attempted rape, assault, manslaughter. Locked up long-term till Lowell helped him get parole and publish his jail diary. It became a best-seller.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t a cop yet, still in college, but I remember thinking how asinine.”

  “So did a lot of other people. The last cop who arrested him called him a stick of dynamite waiting to go off. There was a stink about Lowell’s patronage, then Trafficant disappeared. A guy like that, all those years in confinement, stick him in Topanga Canyon with a cute little girl running around, who knows.”

  He grimaced. “Trafficant’s record include pedophilia?”

  “I don’t remember reading that, but a guy like him might very well not be repulsed by sex with a little girl.”

  “Yeah. The other possibility, Alex, is that nothing happened directly to her but she saw something. And not even criminal violence—maybe wild sex, some kind of orgy. A girl and three guys—that would freak out a four-year-old, right? What if the grinding was exactly what she first thought it was and her mind ran away with it? Like you said, sex and violence are all mixed up in her head.”