Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 01 - When The Bough Breaks

by When The Bough Breaks(Lit)

  The tides, I thought, the Coast Guard. Something there... "Several months later I'm accepted at the medical school," Towle was saying. "I move to Los Angeles. Stuart comes with me, though we both know he'll never be able to finish. Eddy goes to law school in Los Angeles. The Heads are reunited--that's what they called us. The Three Heads of State.

  "We go about our new lives, there is never a mention of the favor they've done for me. Of that night. However, they are far more open than ever before about their sexual perversions, leaving nasty photographs where I can see them, not bothering to hide or conceal anything. They know I'm powerless to say a thing, even should I find a ten-year-old in my bed. A rotten mutual interdependence now binds us.

  "Gus has disappeared. Years later, when I'm a doctor, on my way to prominence, the bedside manner fully developed, he appears at my office after the patients have all gone home. Further fattened, welldressed, no longer a janitor. Now, he jokes, he's a man of God. He shows me the mail-order divinity degree. And he's come to ask a few favors from me. To cash in some old lOUs is the way he puts it. I paid him that evening and I've been paying him, in one way or another, ever since."

  "It's time to stop paying," I said. "Let's not sacrifice Melody Quinn to him."

  "The child is doomed, as things stand. I urged Gus to put it off. Her accident. Told him it was by no means evident that she'd seen or heard anything. But he won't be delayed much longer. What's one more life to a man like that?" He paused. "Does she really pose a danger to him?"

  "Not really. She sat at the window and saw shadows of men." One of whom she'd recognized as her father--she didn't know him but she had a picture. On the day I hypnotized her, right after the session, she went into a spontaneous discussion of him. She showed me the picture and a trinket he'd given her. When she had the night terrors I should have figured it out. I thought the hypnosis hadn't evoked anything in her. It had. It had brought back memories of her father, of seeing him lurking outside her window, entering Handler's place. She knew something bad had happened in the apartment. She knew her daddy had done something terrible. She suppressed it. And it came back in her sleep.

  It had started coming together for me when I'd seen the clue she'd left behind when Ronnie Lee had come by and abducted her and her mother. A shrunken head, precious until now, a symbol of Daddy. For her to have abandoned it meant she'd kissed him off, had come to grips with the fact that Daddy was a bad man, come back not to visit, but to hurt. Perhaps she'd watched him manhandle Bonita, or maybe it was the rough, uncaring way he'd spoken to her. Whatever it had been, the child had known.

  Looking back it seemed so logical, but at the time the associations had been remote.

  "It's ironic," Towle was saying. "I prescribed Ritalin to control her behavior and it was that same prescription that caused her insomnia, that led her to be awake at the wrong time."

  "Ironic," I said. "Now let's go in there and get her out. You're going to help me. When it's over I'll see to it that you're cared for properly."

  He didn't say anything. Simply sat straight in the seat, working hard at looking noble.

  "Are you requesting my help?"

  "I am, Doctor."

  "Request granted."

  29

  I lay on the floor of the Lincoln, covered by a blanket.

  "My gun is pointed at your spine," I told him. "I don't expect any trouble but we haven't known each other long enough for trust to be worth much."

  "I understand," he said. "I'm not offended."

  He drove to the La Casa access road, turned left and steered smoothly and slowly to the chain link barrier. He identified himself to the voice on the squawk box and was let in. A brief stop at the guardhouse, an exchange of pleasantries, plenty of "Doctor, Sirs" from the guard and we were in.

  He drove to the far end of the parking lot.

  "Park away from the light," I whispered.

  The car came to a halt.

  "It's clear now," he said.

  I crawled from under the blanket, got out of the car and motioned him to follow. We walked up the path, side by side. Counselors passed us in pairs, greeted him with deference and moved on. I tried to look like his associate.

  La Casa was peaceful at night. Camp songs filtered through the trees. "A Hundred Bottles of Beer." "Oh Susanna." Children's voices. An off-key guitar. Microphoned adult commands. Mosquitoes and moths vied for space around mushroom lights imbedded in the foliage at our feet. The sweet smell of jasmine and oleander in the air. An occasional whiff of brine from the ocean, so close but unseen. To the right the open gray-green expanse of the Meadow. A pleasant enough graveyard... The Grove, dark as fudge, a piney refuge...

  We passed the pool, taking care not to slip on the wet cement. Towle moved like an old warrior heading into his last battle, chin up, arms at his side, marching. I kept the.38 within easy reach.

  We made it to the bunkers unnoticed.

  "That one," I said. "With the blue door."

  Down the ramp. A hard twist of the key and we were in.

  The building was divided into two rooms. The one in the front was empty except for a single folding chair pushed under an aluminum bridge table. The walls were of unpainted block and smelled of mildew. The floors were cold slab concrete, as was the ceiling. A square black wound of skylight marked the ceiling's center. The only light came from a single, unadorned bulb.

  She was in the back, on an army cot, covered with a coarse olive drab blanket and restrained with leather straps across her ankles and chest. Her arms were pinioned under the blanket. She breathed slowly, mouth open, sleeping, head to one side, her pale, tear-streaked skin translucent in the semidarkness. Wisps of hair hung loosely around her face. Tiny, vulnerable, lost.

  At the foot of the cot was a plastic tray holding an uneaten, congealed fried egg, limp french fries, shriveled brown-tipped lettuce and an open wax container of milk.

  "Untie her." I pointed the gun.

  Towle bent over her, working in the dimness to unfasten the straps.

  "What do you have her on?"

  "Valium, high dose. Thorazine on top of that."

  Dr. Towle's magic elixir.

  He got the restraints loose and peeled back the blanket. She was wearing dirty jeans and a red-and white striped T-shirt with Snoopy on the front. He lifted the shirt and palpated her abdomen, took her pulse, felt her forehead: played doctor.

  "She looks thin, but otherwise healthy," he pronounced.

  "Wrap her back up. Can you carry her?"

  "Certainly," he replied, miffed that I could doubt his strength.

  "All right then, let's go."

  He gathered her up in his arms, looking for all the world like the Great White Father. The child let out a sigh, a shudder, and clung to him.

  "Keep her totally covered once we get outside."

  I began a half-turn. A soft, musical voice at my back drawled:

  "Don't move, Doctor Delaware, or you'll lose your fucking head."

  I stood still.

  "Put the young one down, Will. Take his gun."

  Towle looked at me blankly. I shrugged. He placed Melody on the cot gently and covered her. I handed him the.38.

  "Against the wall with your hands up, Doctor. Search him, Will."

  Towle patted me down.

  "Turn around."

  McCaffrey stood there grinning, filling the opening between the two rooms, a.357 magnum in one hand, a Polaroid camera in the other. He wore an iridescent lime-green jumpsuit decorated with a score of snap-pockets and buckles, and matching lime patent leather shoes. In the dim light his complexion reflected greenly as well.

  "Tsk, tsk, Willie. What mischief are we up to tonight?"

  The great physician hung his head and shuffled nervously.

  "Not feeling loquacious tonight, Willie? That's all right. We'll talk later." The colorless eyes narrowed. "Right now there's business to attend to."

  "Is this your idea of altruism?" I looked at Melody's limp form.
<
br />   "Shut up!" he snapped. To Towle: "Remove the child's clothing."

  "Gus--I--why?"

  "Just do as I say, Willie."

  "No more, Gus," Towle pleaded. "We've done enough."

  "No, you idiot. We haven't done enough at all. This smartass here has the potential to cause us--you and me--lots of trouble. I made plans to eliminate him, but apparently I'll have to do the job myself."

  "Plans," I sneered. "Halstead's rotting in a vacant lot with a spike in his throat. He was a humbler, like all of your slaves."

  McCaffrey pursed his thick lips.

  "I'm warning you," he said.

  "That's your specialty, isn't it?" I continued, playing for time. I saw his massive silhouette shift as he tried to keep me in his sights. But the darkness made it difficult as did Towle's body, which had gotten between us as he fidgeted under his master's glare. "You have a knack for finding bumblers and losers, emotional cripples, misfits. The same knack flies have for locating shit. You zero in on their open wounds, sink your fangs into them, suck them dry."

  "How literary," he replied in a lilting voice, obviously fighting to maintain control. We were in close quarters and impulsiveness could prove hazardous.

  "Her clothes, Will," he said. "Take them all off."

  "Gus--"

  "Do it, you sniveling piece of turd!"

  Towle raised his arm in front of his face like a child warding off a blow. When none was forthcoming he moved toward the child.

  "You're a doctor," I said. "A respected physician. Don't listen to him--"

  Fast, faster than I thought possible, McCaffrey stepped forward in the clearing Towle had created. He slashed with one elephantine sleeve and raked the side of my head with his gun. I fell to the floor, my face exploding with pain, hands protecting myself from further assault, blood running between my fingers.

  "Now you stay there, sir, and keep your fucking mouth shut."

  Towle removed Melody's T-shirt. Her chest was concave and white, the ribs twin grilles of gray-blue shadow.

  "Now the pants. The panties. Everything."

  "Why are we doing this, Gus?" Towle wanted to know. To my ears, which were far from perfect, one being ripped and bloody, the other filled with watery echoes, his speech sounded slurred. I wondered if stress could break through the biochemical barrier he'd erected around his damaged mind.

  "Why?" McCaffrey laughed. "You're not used to seeing this type of thing firsthand, are you, Willie? You've had a sanitized role up until now, enjoying the luxury of distance. Well, no matter, I'll explain it to you."

  He raised an eyebrow at Towle contemptuously, looked down at me and laughed again. The sound reverberated painfully in my injured skull. The blood continued to run down my face. My head felt mushy, loose on its stalk. I began to grow nauseated and dizzy, and the floor rose up at me. Terror gripped me as I wondered if he'd hit me hard enough to cause brain damage. I knew what a subdural hematoma could do to the fragile gray jelly that made life worth living... Crazily, fighting for strength and clarity, I pictured my brain in an anatomist's tray, pinioned and splayed, and tried to localize the site of the injury. The gun had smashed against my left side--the dominant hemisphere, for I am right-handed... that was bad. The dominant side controlled logical processes: reasoning, analysis, deduction--the stuff to which I'd grown addicted over thirty-three years. I thought about losing all of that, of fading into dimness and confusion, then remembered two-year-old Willie Junior, struck down in much the same way. He'd lost it all... which might have been merciful. For had he survived, the damage would have been great. Left side right side... the tides...

  "We're going to put on a little stage play, Willie," McCaffrey lectured. "I'll be the producer and director. You'll be my assistant, helping me with the props." He swung the camera in an arc. "The stars of the show will be little Melody and our friend Doctor Alex Delaware. The name of the play will be--"Death of a Shrink," subtitled "Caught in the Act." A morality play."

  "Gus--"

  "The plot is as follows: Doctor Delaware, our erstwhile villain, is well-known as a caring, sensitive child psychologist. However, unbeknownst to his colleagues and his patients, his choice of profession did not arise out of any great sense of--altruism. No, Doctor Delaware has chosen to become a kiddy shrink to be closer to the kiddies. To be able to fondle and abuse their genitals. In sort, a deviate, an opportunist, the lowest of the low. An evil and gravely sick man." He paused to look down on me, chuckling, breathing hard. Despite the chill, he was sweating, his glasses sliding low on his nose. The top of his kinky head was a halo of moisture. I looked at the38 in Towle's hand, and measured the distance between it and the spot where I lay. McCaffrey saw me, shook his head, and mouthed the word no, showing me his teeth.

  "With these same depraved motivations in mind, Doctor Delaware applies for membership in the Gentleman's Brigade. He visits La Casa. We show him around. We screen him and our tests reveal him to be unsuitable for inclusion into our honorable fraternity. We reject him. Furious and frustrated at being denied a lifetime supply of hairless pussy and tiny little pricks, he simmers."

  He stopped the narration and made loud slurping noises. Melody stirred in her sleep.

  "He simmers," he repeated. "Stews in his own juices. Finally, at the height of his sick rage, he breaks into La Casa one night and roams the grounds until he finds a victim. A poor orphan girl, defenseless, alone in her dormitory because she is sick in bed with the flu. The madman loses control. Rapes her, virtually tears her apart--the autopsy will show uncommon savagery, Will. Takes pictures of the ghastly deed. A hideous crime. As the child cries out, screaming for her life, we--you and me, Will--happen to be passing by. We rush to her aid, but it is too late. The child has succumbed.

  "We take in the carnage before us with horror and disgust. Delaware, discovered, rises up against us, gun in hand. Heroically we wrestle him to the ground, struggle for the weapon and in the process the murderer is fatally wounded. The good guys win, and there is peace in the valley."

  "Amen," I said.

  He ignored me.

  "Not bad, eh, Will?"

  "Gus, it won't work." Towle stepped between us again. "He knows everything--the teacher and the Nemeth boy--"

  "Quiet. It will work. The past is the best predictor of the future. We have succeeded before, we will continue to triumph."

  "Gus--"

  "Silence! I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Strip her!"

  I propped myself on my elbows and spoke through aching, swollen jaws, struggling to make sense out of what I was saying even as I told it.

  "How about another script? This one's called The Big Lie. It's about a man who thinks he's murdered his wife and child and sells out his entire life to a blackmailer."

  "Shut up." McCaffrey advanced on me. Towle blocked his way, aiming the.38 at the half-acre of green-clad fat. It was a Mexican standoff.

  "I want to hear what he has to say, Gus. Things are confusing me. Things hurt. I want him to explain..."

  "Think," I said, talking as fast as the pain allowed. "Did you ever check Willie Junior's body for signs of life? No. He did. He told you your boy was dead. That you'd killed him. But was the body ever found? Did you ever actually see the body?"

  Towle's face tightened with concentration. He was slipping, losing his grip on reality, digging his nails in, fighting to hold on.

  "I--I don't know. Willie was dead. They told me. The tides..."

  "Maybe. But think: It was a golden opportunity. Lilah's death wouldn't have brought a charge greater than involuntary manslaughter. Domestic violence wasn't even taken seriously in those days. With the lawyers your family would have hired, you might have gotten off with probation. But two deaths--especially with one a child--would have been impossible to brush off. He needed you to believe Junior was dead to be able to hook you."

  "Will," said McCaffrey, threateningly.

  "I don't know--such a long time..."

  "Think! Did you hit him hard e
nough to kill him? Maybe not. Use your brain. It's a good one. You remembered before."

  "I used to have a good brain," he muttered.

  "You still do! Remember. You hit little Willie on the side of the head. What side?"

  "Don't know--"