Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 16 - The Murder Book

by The Murder Book(Lit)

  The gray-haired woman got up and took the crepe. 'Beautiful, Aimee.'

  The cook nodded. She looked to be forty or so, had a squashed face and downturned eyes. The hairs that had peeked out from under the bandana were light brown and silver.

  I smiled at her. Her face registered no expression, and she continued chopping. I read the blackboard. 'How about a mixed-cheese crepe and coffee?'

  She turned around, left the kitchen through a side door. I stood there, listening to bells and flute and harp.

  Behind me, the gray-braided woman said, 'Don't worry, she'll be back.'

  'I was wondering if it was something I said.'

  She laughed. 'No, she's just shy. Heck of a cook, though.'

  Aimee returned with a small wheel of white cheese. 'You can sit,' she said, in a very soft voice. Til bring it to you.'

  'Thanks much.' I tried another smile, and her mouth quivered upward for less than a second, and she began wiping the crepe pan.

  The gray-haired woman finished her meal just as Aimee brought me my plate, a mug of coffee, utensils wrapped in a heavy yellow linen napkin. She returned to her vegetables and the gray-braided woman said, 'Here you are, dear,' and paid her cash. No change exchanged. No credit card signs anywhere in the cafe.

  I unfolded the napkin, looked at my plate. Two crepes.

  With her back to me, Aimee said, 'You only have to pay for one. I had lots of cheese.'

  'Thank you,' I said. 'They look delicious.'

  Chop chop chop.

  I cut into the first crepe and took a bite and flavor burst on my tongue. The coffee was the best I'd had in years, and I said so.

  Chop chop chop.

  I was working on the second crepe when the front door opened, and a man walked in and headed for the counter.

  Short, chubby, white-haired, he wore a purplish red polyester jumpsuit, zipped in front, with big floppy lapels. Crimson clogs and white-socks-clad stubby feet. His fingers were attenuated, too, the thumbs little more than arced nubs. His ruddy face was impish but peaceful - an elf in repose. A leather-thonged bolo tie was held in place by a big, shapeless purple rock. Flashing on his left hand was a huge gold pinkie ring set with a violet cabochon.

  He looked to be in his midsixties, but I knew he was seventy-seven because I knew him. I also understood why he wore a single color: it was the only hue he could perceive in an otherwise black-and-white world. A rare form of color blindness was one of a host of physical anomalies he'd been born with. Some, like the shortened digits, were visible. Others, he'd assured me, were not.

  Dr Wilbert Harrison, psychiatrist, anthropologist, philosopher, eternal student. A sweet and decent man, and even a murderous psychopath bent on revenge had recognized that, sparing Harrison

  as he conducted a rampage against the doctors he believed had tormented him.

  I hadn't been spared, and I'd met Bert Harrison years ago, trying to figure all of that out. Since then we talked occasionally -infrequently.

  'Bert,' I said.

  He turned, smiled. 'Alex!' Holding up a finger, he greeted Aimee. Without making eye contact, she poured him tea and selected an almond-crusted pastry from the glass case beneath the blackboard.

  A regular.

  He said, 'Thank you, darling,' sat down at my table, placed his cup and plate in front of him, and grasped my hand with both of his.

  'Alex. So good to see you.'

  'Good to see you too, Bert.'

  'What have you been up to?'

  'The usual. And you?'

  Soft gray eyes twinkled. 'I've embarked on a new hobby. Ethnic instruments, the more esoteric the better. I've discovered eBay -how wonderful, the global economy in its finest form. I find bargains, wait like a child on Christmas Eve for the packages to arrive, then try to figure out how to play them. This week my project is a one-stringed curiosity from Cambodia. I haven't learned its proper name, yet. The seller billed it as a "Southeast Asian thingamajig." Sounds dreadful, so far - like a cat with indigestion, but I have no neighbors, per se.'

  Harrison's home was a purple cottage, high on a hill above Ojai, bordered by olive groves and empty fields and nearly hidden by snarls of agave cactus. Bert's old Chevy station wagon sat in a dirt driveway, always freshly waxed. Each time I'd visited, the house's front door had been unlocked.

  'Sounds like fun,' I said.

  'It's great fun.' He bit into the pastry, let loose a flow of custard, licked his lips, wiped his chin. 'Delicious. What have you been doing for fun, Alex?'

  Figuring out how to answer that must have done something to my face, because Harrison placed his hand atop mine and looked like a concerned parent.

  "That bad, son?' 'Is it that obvious?' 'Oh, yes, Alex. Oh, yes indeed.'

  I told him about Robin. He thought a while, and said, 'Sounds like small things have been amplified.'

  'Not so small, Bert. She's really had it with my risk-taking

  behavior.'

  'I was referring to your feelings. Your anxiety about Robin.'

  'I know I'm being paranoid, but I keep flashing back to the last time she left.'

  'She made a mistake,' he said. 'But she bore the brunt of it, and you might think about disconnecting yourself from her pain.'

  'Her pain,' I said. 'Think it still bothers her after all these years?'

  'If she allows herself to focus on it, my guess is she feels a good deal worse about it than you do.'

  He'd met Robin twice, and yet I didn't feel him presumptuous. A few months after our house had burned down, we'd driven up to Santa Barbara for a change of scenery and had run into Bert at an antiquarian bookstore on State Street. He'd been browsing through eighteenth-century scientific treatises. In Latin. ('My current hobby, kids.') Dust had speckled the front of his jumpsuit.

  'She loves you deeply,' he said. 'At least, she did when I saw her, and I have my doubts about that depth of feeling just vanishing.' He ate more pastry, picked almond slivers from his plate, and slipped them between his lips. 'The body language, the mind language, was all there. I remember thinking, "This is the girl for Alex." '

  'I used to think so.'

  'Cherish what you've got. My second wife was like that, accepted me with all my irregularities.'

  'You think Robin accepts me, no matter what.'

  'If she didn't, she'd have left long ago.'

  'But putting her through more of my risk-taking would be cruel.'

  He squeezed my hand. 'Life is like a bus stop, Alex. We map out our route but linger briefly between adventures. Only you can chart your itinerary - and hope God agrees with it. So what brings you to Ojai?'

  'Enjoying the scenery.'

  'Then come up to my house, let me show you my acquisitions.'

  We finished our food and he insisted on paying. The old station wagon was parked out front, and I followed him into town and onto Signal Street, where we climbed past a drainage ditch paved with fieldstones and spanned by footbridges, up to the top of the road.

  The front door to the purple house was open and shielded by a well-oxidized screen. Bert climbed the steps with agility and ushered me into the living room. The space was exactly as I remembered: small, dark, plank-floored, crammed with old furniture, shawls, throw pillows, an upright piano, the bay window lined with dusty bottles. But now there was no room to sit: a gigantic, hammered-bronze gong nudged the piano. Every couch and chair bore drums and bells and lyres and zithers and Pan pipes and harps and objects I couldn't identify. The floor space behind the piano bench was taken up by a six-foot dragon-shaped contraption topped with corrugated wood. Harrison ran a stick along the ridges and set off a percussive but melodic scale.

  'Bali,' he said. 'I've learned "Old MacDonald" on it.' Sigh. 'One day, Mozart.'

  He cleared instruments from a sagging sofa, and said, 'Be comfortable.'

  As I sat, something metallic behind the couch caught my eye. A folded-up wheelchair.

  Bert said, 'I'm storing it for a friend,' and settled his small fr
ame on a hard-backed chair. The fingers of his right hand brushed against a pedal harp, but not hard enough to make a sound. 'Despite your stress you look well.'

  'As do you.'

  'Knock wood.' He rapped the rim of the harp, and this time a note rang out. 'G sharp... so you're just passing through? Next time, call and we can have lunch. Unless, of course, you need solitude.'

  'No, I'd love to get together.'

  'Of course, we all need solitude,' he said. 'The key is finding the right balance.'

  'You live alone, Bert.'

  'I have friends.'

  'So do I.'

  'Milo.'

  'Milo and others.'

  'Well, that's good - Alex, is there anything I can do for you? 'No,' I said. 'Like what?'

  'Anything, Alex.'

  'If you could solve cold cases, that would be helptul. 'Cold cases,' he said. 'A murder.' I nodded.

  'The body may be cold,' he said, 'but I wonder if the memory ever really cools. Care to tell me about it?' I didn't. Yes, I did.

  described the Ingalls murder without mentioning names or places or the murder book. But there was no sense withholding Milo's name. Bert Harrison had met Milo, had given a statement to Milo on the Bad Love case.

  As I talked, he rarely allowed his gaze to wander from my face.

  When I finished, he said, 'This girl - the one who poisoned the dog - sounds monstrous.'

  'At the very least, severely disturbed.'

  'First a dog, then a person... that's the typical pattern... though you have only the neighbor's accusation to go on.'

  'The behavioral warning in the girl's chart is consistent with the neighbor's report. She didn't belong in that school, Bert. String-pulling by her family probably got her in - safe hiding during the investigation of the murder.'

  He folded his hands in his lap. 'And no word on the other possible victim... I assume Milo's been looking for her.'

  'No sign of her, yet,' I said. 'Most likely she's dead. The disturbed girl seems to have vanished, completely. No paper trail at all. That reeks of more string-pulling.'

  'A supportive family,' he said.

  'In terms of aiding and abetting.'

  'Hmm... Alex, if the case was taken out of Milo's hands twenty years ago, how did he manage to be reassigned?'

  'He was unofficially reassigned,' I said. 'By someone who knew we worked together and was sure I'd give him the message.'

  'What message, Alex?'

  I thought about how much to say. Told him about the murder book and its probable link to Pierce Schwinn.

  'Pierce?' he said. 'So that's why you're here.'

  'You knew him?'

  'I did. I know his wife, Marge, as well. Sweet woman.'

  'Milo and I were up at her ranch a few days ago,' I said. 'It's a good bet Schwinn assembled that book, but the only photos of his she claims to know about are nature shots.'

  'Claims?' said Harrison. 'You doubt her?'

  'She seemed truthful.'

  'I'd believe her, Alex.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Because she's an honest woman.'

  'And Schwinn?'

  'I have nothing bad to say about him either.'

  'How well did you know him, Bert?'

  'We ran into each other from time to time. In town - shopping, at the Little Theater.'

  'Are you aware of any confidante he might've had other than Marge? Someone he'd have trusted to send the book? Because it was mailed to me seven months after he died.'

  'You're certain it emanated from Pierce?'

  'The photos are LAPD crime-scene shots, probably purloined from old files. Schwinn was a shutterbug, used to bring his own camera to crime scenes in order to snap his own pictures. On top of that, Marge Schwinn said she purchased three identical blue leather albums for Pierce, over at O'Neill & Chapin. She showed us two but the third was missing and she had no idea where it was. That's what drew me back here. I wanted to speak to the shop's owners to see if they'd sold any others.'

  'The owner,' he said, 'is a lovely woman named Roberta Bernstein, and she's in Europe. O'Neill & Chapin are her pet terriers.' He pressed a blunt little index finger to his lips. 'Sounds like the totality of evidence does point to Pierce...'

  'But?'

  'No buts, Alex. You've put together a solid argument.'

  'Any idea who he might've passed it to?'

  He crossed his legs, hooked a finger under the hem of a purple trouser leg. 'The only person I ever saw Pierce with was Marge. And as I said, I doubt she's involved.'

  'Because she's honest.'

  'And because Pierce was protective of her, Alex. I can't see him exposing her to something like that.'

  'Sounds like you knew them both pretty well,' I said.

  He smiled. 'I'm a psychiatrist. I'm allowed to theorize. No, we never really socialized, but this is a small town. You meet the same people over and over. I suppose I'm drawing upon Pierce's body language when they were together.'

  'Protective.'

  'Very much so. Marge seemed to take well to that. I found that interesting. She'd never lived with anyone before. Her family goes way back in this region, and she's taken care of that ranch nearly single-handedly for years. People of a certain age can get set in their ways, not take well to the demands of a relationship. But Marge seemed quite content with domestic life. They both did.'

  'Did you know Pierce had been a detective?'

  'Marge told me,' he said. 'Soon after Pierce moved in. I believe it was at the theater, as a matter of fact. Out in the lobby, during intermission. She introduced me, and we began chatting about a crime story in the newspaper - something down your way, bank robbers, a shoot-out, the criminals had escaped. Marge said something along the lines of "If Pierce were still on the force, he'd solve it." '

  'How'd Pierce react to that?'

  'If I recall correctly, unreactive. Didn't say much of anything. That's the way he usually was. Reserved.'

  Milo had described Schwinn as verbally aggressive, prone to sermonizing. Lots had changed over twenty years.

  I said, 'Marge told us Pierce had grown serene.'

  'She'd know best... so Pierce was Milo's partner. How interesting. The world grows smaller yet.'

  'The way he died,' I said. 'Falling off that horse. Any thoughts about that?'

  He uncrossed his leg, tapped a rosy cheek, and allowed his hand to brush against an ornate concertina. 'You suspect something other than an accident? Why, Alex?'

  'Because that's the way my mind works.'

  'Ah,' he said.

  I could hear Milo laughing.

  'Small world,' he repeated. 'That's about all I can tell you... can I fix you some tea, Alex? Wait - you're a guitarist, aren't you? I've got something in back that might interest you. A turn-of-the-century Knutsen Hawaiian harp-guitar. Perhaps you can tell me how to tune the drone strings.'

  His spare bedroom was filled with instruments and antique music stands, and I hung around for a while watching him fiddle and tinker, listened to him expound on music and rhythm and culture. He began to reminisce about his time in Chile. Ethnographic research in Indonesia, a summer of musicology in Salzburg, ministering to Israeli kibbutz children who'd been traumatized by terrorism.

  No mention of his Santa Barbara days - the years he'd spent at a school for troubled kids, just a few miles away. The kind of place someone like Caroline Cossack might easily have ended up. That high-priced travesty had caused more problems than it had solved.

  Bert had a selective memory for the positive. Perhaps that's why he'd seemed reluctant to imagine a young girl evincing brutality.