Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 06 - Private Eyes

by Private Eyes(Lit)

  His mouth was still for a moment. I could see the gum wadded up inside one cheek, like a plug of tobacco. "Do you think a behaviorist is capable of producing a first-rate wine?"

  "They say great wine is the result of intangibles."

  He smiled. "No such thing," he said. "Only incomplete data."

  "Maybe so. Good luck."

  He sat back and rested his hands on his belly. The shirt billowed around them.

  "The air," he said between chews, "is what really draws me up there.

  Unfortunately my wife can't enjoy it. Allergies. Horses, grasses, tree-pollens, all sorts of things that never bothered her back in Boston. So she concentrates on clinical work and leaves me free to experiment."

  It wasn't the conversation I'd have imagined having with the great Leo Gabney. Back in the days when I used to imagine things like that. I wasn't sure why he'd invited me in.

  Perhaps sensing that, he said, "Alex Delaware. I've followed all your work, not just the sleep studies. "Multimodal Treatment of SelfDamaging Obsessions in Children." "The Psychosocial Aspects of Chronic Disease and Prolonged Hospitalization in Children."

  "Disease-Related Communication and Family Coping Style." Et cetera. A solid output, clean writing."

  "Thank you."

  "You haven't published in several years."

  "I'm working on something currently. For the most part I've been doing other things."

  "Private practice?"

  "Forensic work."

  "What kind of forensic work?"

  "Trauma and injury-related cases. Some child custody."

  "Ugly stuff, custody," he said. "What's your opinion about joint custody?"

  "It can work in some situations."

  He smiled. "Nice hedge. I suppose that's adaptive when dealing with the legal system. Actually, parents should be strongly reinforced for making it work. if they fail repeatedly, the parent with the best child-rearing skills should be selected as primary custodian, regardless of gender. Don't you agree?"

  "I think the best interests of the child are what counts."

  "Everyone thinks that, Doctor. The challenge is how to operationalize good intentions. If I had my way, no decisions about custody would be made until trained observers actually lived with the family for several weeks, keeping careful records using structured, valid, and reliable behavioral scales and reporting their results to a panel of psychological specialists. What do you think of that notion?"

  "Sounds good, theoretically. In practical terms-" "No, no," he said, chewing furiously. "I speak from practical experience. My first wife set out to murder me legally this was years ago, when the courts wouldn't even hear what a father had to say. She was a drinker and a smoker and irresponsible to the core. But to the idiot judge that heard the case, the crucial factor was that she had ovaries. He gave her everything my house, my son, sixty percent of the paltry estate I'd accumulated as an untenured lecturer.

  A year later, she was smoking in bed, dead-drunk. The house burned down and I lost my son forever."

  Saying it matter-of-factly, the bass voice flat as a foghorn.

  Resting his elbows on the desk, he placed the fingertips of both hands together, creating a diamond-shaped space that he peered through.

  I said, "I'm sorry."

  "It was a terrible time for me." Chewing slowly. "For a while it seemed as if nothing would ever have reinforcement value again. But I ended up with Ursula, so I suppose there's a silver lining."

  Heat in the blue eyes. Unmistakable passion.

  I thought of the way she'd obeyed him. The way he'd looked at her rear. Wondered if what turned him on was her ability to be both wife and child.

  He lowered his hands. "Soon after the tragedy I married again.

  Before Ursula. Another error in judgment, but at least there were no children. When I met Ursula, she was an undergraduate applying for graduate school and I was a full professor at the university and the medical school as well as the first non-M.D. associate dean the medical school had ever appointed. I saw her potential, set out to help her realize it. Most satisfying accomplishment of my life. Are you married?"

  "No."

  "A wonderful convention if the proper confluence can be achieved. My first two were failures because I allowed myself to be swayed by intangibles. Ignored my training. Don't segregate your scholarship from your life, my young friend. Your knowledge of human behavior gives you a great advantage over common, bumbling homo incompetens."

  He smiled again. "Enough lecturing. What's your take on this whole thing poor Mrs. "I don't have a take, Dr. Gabney came here to learn."

  "This McCloskey thing very distressing to think such a man is roaming free. How did you find out?"

  I told him.

  "Ah, the daughter. Managing her own anxiety by attempting to control her mother's behavior. Would that she'd shared her information. What else do you know about this McCloskey?"

  "Just the basic facts of the assault. No one seems to know why he did it."

  "Yes," he said. "An atypically close-mouthed psychopath usually those types love to brag about their misdeeds. I suppose it would have been nice to know from the beginning. In terms of defining variables. But in the end, I don't feel the treatment plan suffered. The key is to cut through all the talk and get them to change their behavior. Mrs. Ramp has been doing very well. I hope it hasn't all been for naught."

  I said, "Maybe her disappearance is related to her progress enjoying her freedom and deciding to grab a bigger chunk."

  "An interesting theory, but we discourage breaks in schedule."

  "Patients have been known to do their own thing."

  "To their detriment."

  "You don't think sometimes they know what's best for them?"

  "Not generally. If I did, I couldn't charge them three hundred dollars an hour in good faith, could I?"

  Three hundred. At that rate the kind of intensive treatment they did-three patients could carry the whole clinic.

  I said, "Is that for both you and your wife?"

  He grinned, and I knew I'd asked the right question. "Myself alone.

  My wife receives two hundred. Are you appalled by those figures, Dr. Delaware?"

  "They're higher than what I'm used to, but it's a free country."

  "That it is. I spent most of my professional life in academia and in public hospitals, ministering to the poor. Setting up treatment programs for people who never paid a penny. At this stage in my life I thought it only fair that the rich be offered the benefit of my accumulated knowledge."

  Lifting the silver pen, he twirled it and put it down. "So," he said, "you feel Mrs. Ramp may have run away."

  "I think it's a possibility. When I spoke to her yesterday, she hinted that she was planning to make some changes in her life."

  "Really?" The blue eyes stopped moving. "What kind of changes?"

  "She implied that she didn't like the house she was living in too big, all the opulence. That she wanted something simpler."

  "Something simpler," he said. "Anything else?"

  "No, that's about it."

  "Well, disappearing like this can hardly be thought of as a simplification.

  "Do you have any clinical impressions that would explain what's happened?"

  "Mrs. Ramp is a nice lady," he said. "Very sweet. Instinctively, one wants to help her. And clinically, her case is fairly simple, a textbook case of classically conditioned anxiety strengthened and maintained by operant factors: the anxiety-reducing effects of repeated avoidance and escape strengthened by the positively reinforcing qualities of reduced social responsibility and increased altruism of others."

  "Conditioned dependency?"

  "Exactly. In many ways she's like a child all agoraphobics are.

  Dependent, ritualistic, routinized to the extent that they cling to primitive habits. As the phobia endures, it gains strength, and their behavioral repertoire drops off sharply. Eventually they become frozen by inertia-a sort of psychologi
cal cryogenics. Agoraphobics are psychological reactionaries, Dr. Delaware. They don't move unless prodded sharply. Every step is taken with great trepidation. That's why I can't see her gaily running off in search of some ill-defined Xanadu."

  "Despite her progress?"

  "Her progress is gratifying but she has a ways to go. My wife and I have each mapped out extensive plans."

  That sounded more like competition than collaboration. I didn't comment.

  Unwrapping another stick of gum, he slid it between his lips.

  "The treatment is well thought out we offer full value in return for our appalling fees. In all probability, Mrs. Ramp will return to the roost and avail herself of it."

  "So you're not worried about her."

  He chewed hard, made squirting noises. "I'm concerned, Dr. Delaware, but worrying is counterproductive. Anxiety-producing. I train my phobics to stay away from it and I train myself to practice what I preach."

  He walked me to the door, talking about science. As I made my way across the lawn I noticed the Saab had been moved forward into the driveway. Behind it was a gray Range Rover. The windshield was dusty, except for wiper arcs.

  I visualized Gabney behind the wheel, forging through the mesquite, and drove away thinking what an odd couple the two of them were. At first glance she was an ice queen. Combative, accustomed to fighting for her rights I could see why she and Melissa had raised each other's hackles.

  But the frost was so thin it melted on scrutiny. Underneath, vulnerability. Like Gina's. Had that formed the basis for an exceptional empathy?

  Who'd introduced whom to small gray rooms and the art of Mary Cassatt?

  Whatever the reason, she seemed to care. Gina's disappearance had shaken her up.

  In contrast, her husband seemed intent upon distancing himself from the whole affair. Shrugging off Gina's pathology as routine, reducing pain to jargon. Yet, despite his nonchalance, he'd z' I peddown to L.A. all the way from SantaYnez a two-hour drive. So perhaps he was as worried as his wife and simply better at concealing it.

  The old male-female split.

  Men posture.

  Women bleed.

  I thought of what he'd told me about losing his son. How he'd told me.

  The ease with which he'd spun his tale suggested he'd mouthed it a thousand times before.

  Working it through? Desensitization?

  Or maybe he really had mastered the art of putting the past behind him.

  Maybe one day I'd call him up and ask for lessons.

  It was nine-fifty by the time I got back to Sussex Knoll. A single police cruiser was still patrolling the streets. I must have passed inspection because no one stopped me from pulling up to the gates.

  Over the talk box Don Ramp's voice was dry and tired.

  "No, nothing," he said. "Come on up.

  The gates yawned. I sped through. More outdoor bulbs had been switched on, creating a false daylight, bright and cold.

  No other cars in front of the house. The Chaucer doors were open.

  Ramp stood between them in his shirtsleeves.

  "Not a damned thing," he said, after I'd climbed the steps.

  "What'd the doctors say?"

  "Nothing significant." I told him about Ursula's call regarding Melvin Findlay.

  His face fell.

  I said, "Have you heard anything more from Chickering?"

  "He called about half an hour ago. Nothing to report, she's probably fine, not to worry it's not his wife out there. I asked him about contacting the FBI. He claims they won't get involved unless there's evidence of abduction, preferably something involving interstate transport of the victim."

  He threw up his hands, let them fall limply. "The victim. I don't even want to think of her as that, but.

  He closed the doors. The entry hall was lit, but beyond it the house was in darkness.

  He headed for a light switch on the other side of the entry, making scuffing sounds as he crossed the marble.

  I said, "Did your wife ever say why McCloskey did it?"

  He stopped, half-turned. "Why do you ask?"

  "In terms of understanding her how she dealt with the assault."

  "Dealt with it in what way?"

  "Victims of crime often go on fact-finding missions wanting to know about the criminal, his motives. What turned them into victims. In order to try to make some sense out of it and protect themselves from future victimizations. Did your wife ever do that?

  Because no one seems to know what McCloskey's motive was."

  "No, she didn't." He resumed walking. "At least not as far as I know.

  And she had no idea why he did it. Frankly, we don't talk much about it I'm part of her present, not her past. But she did tell me that the bastard refused to say the police couldn't get it out of him. He was a drinker and a drug-fiend, but that doesn't explain it, does it?"

  "What kind of drugs did he use?"

  He reached the switch, flicked, illuminated the huge front room in which Gina Ramp and I had waited yesterday. Yesterday seemed like ancient history. A swan-necked decanter filled with something amber and very clear sat alongside several old-fashioned glasses on a portable rosewood bar. He held out a glass to me. I shook my head.

  He poured a finger for himself, hesitated, doubled it, then stoppered the decanter and sipped.

  "I don't know," he said. "Drugs were never my thing. This" raising the glass "and beer is about as daring as I get. I never knew him very well just a bit from the studios. He was a hanger-on.

  Hung around Gina like a little leech. A nothing. Hollywood's full of them. No talent of his own, so he got girls to pose for pictures."

  He walked farther into the room, stepped on carpeting that dampened his footsteps and restored the house to silence.

  I followed him. "Is Melissa back yet?"

  He nodded. "Up in her room. She went straight up, looked pretty beat."

  "Noel still with her?"

  "No, Noel's back at the Tankard my restaurant. He works for me, parking cars, busing, some waiting. Good kid, real up-fromthe-bootstraps story he's got a good future. Melissa's too much for him, but I guess he'll have to learn that for himself."

  "Too much in what way?"

  "Too smart, too good-looking, too feisty. He's madly in love with her and she walks all over him not out of cruelty or snobbery.

  It's just her style. She just forges straight ahead, not thinking."

  As if trying to compensate for the criticism, he said, "That's one thing she isn't-a snob. Despite all this." Waving his free hand around the room. "Christ, can you imagine growing up here? I grew up in Lynwood when it was still mostly white. My dad was an independent truck driver with a bad temper. Meaning there were plenty of times nobody hired him. We always had enough to eat, but that was about it.

  I didn't like having to scrounge, but I know now that it made me into a better person not that Melissa's not a good person. Basically she's a real good kid. Only she's used to having her way, just plows ahead when she wants something, regardless of what anyone else wants. Gina's... situation made her grow up fast.

  Actually it's kind of amazing she developed as well as she did."

  He sat down heavily on an overstuffed couch. "Guess I don't need to tell you about kids-I'm just going on because frankly I'm pretty rattled by all this. Where the hell could she be? What about this detective-you reach him yet?"

  "Not yet. Let me try again."

  He sprang up and brought back a cellular phone.

  I dialed Milo's home, got the recorded message, then heard it break.

  "Hello?"

  "Rick? This is Alex. Is Milo there?"

  "Hi, Alex. Sure. We just got in saw a bad movie. Hold on."

  Two seconds, then: "Yeah?"

  "Ready to start early?"

  "On what?"

  "Private-eyeing?"

  "It can't wait till morning?"

  "Something's come up." I looked over at Ramp. Staring at me, haggard.

&nb
sp; Choosing my words carefully, I recounted what had happened, including McCloskey's questioning and release, and the news of Melvin Findlay's death in prison. Expecting Milo to comment on either or both.

  Instead, he said, "She take any clothes with her?"