“Congratulations.”
“The Gee-Gees are entertaining, but you don’t get as close as with the grandchildren. More like diversion from senility. Get yourself some coffee and we’ll chat.”
I filled a cup and sat down.
“You look the same, Alex.”
“So do you.”
“You lie the same, too.”
Dipping her head, she batted long white lashes. I’d seen a photo from her youth: Grace Kelly’s undersized sib. Her eyes were still clear, a delicate shade of aqua. Her hair, once dyed ash-blond, had been left its natural silver. The cut hadn’t changed: jaw-length pageboy, shiny as a freshly chromed bumper, bangs snipped architecturally straight.
Born to a wealthy Berlin family, she was one-quarter Jewish, which qualified her to enroll in Dachau. Escaping to New York in the thirties, she worked as a governess while attending City College night school, got into Harvard Med, trained at Boston Children’s where she did research on whooping cough. At thirty, she married a Chaucer scholar who never made much money but dressed as if he did. Widowed at fifty, she raised five kids who’d turned out well.
“Down to business,” she said. “Tell me more about that skeleton.”
I filled in a few more details.
“Ach,” she said. “A fully formed baby?”
“Four to six months old.”
“Intact.”
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” she said. “In view of the rumors about that place.”
She returned to her cottage cheese. It took me a moment to decode her remark.
“It was an abortion mill?”
“Not exclusively, my dear.”
“But …”
“If you were a girl from a well-to-do family who’d gotten into a predicament, the talk was Swedish could be exceptionally discreet. The founders were well-meaning Lutheran missionaries, seeking to help the poor. Over the years, any religious affiliation was dropped and priorities changed.”
“They went for-profit?”
“What else? One thing they didn’t have was a pediatrics department. Or a conventional maternity ward. So I really can’t see how a baby would ever come in contact with the place.”
I described the blue box, asked if she knew what it was.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing. We wrap our bodies in shrouds, then bag them. Typically, mortuaries pick them up, there’d be no reason to use solid brass containers.”
“Maybe it was designed for something else and whoever buried the baby improvised.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Yes, why not—how about storage for tissue samples? A precaution when dealing with infectious material. Back in those days all kinds of nasties were rampant—TB, polio. My old friend, pertussis. I don’t see bronze serving any particular antiseptic purpose but someone could’ve had a theory.”
“Makes sense. Did you know any of the staff?”
“My work was always here.”
Not really an answer. I said, “But you know quite a bit about the place.”
She smiled. “It’s not only psychologists who know how to listen.”
“Who did the talking?”
“A friend of mine attended there briefly.”
“Why only briefly?”
She used her fork to section a perfect cube of Jell-O. “I’d imagine something drew his attention elsewhere.”
“Was he bothered by what went on?”
She speared the Jell-O, ate, drank tea. “I can’t remember what was related to me back in the Jurassic era.”
“I’ll bet you can, Salome.”
“Then you lose the bet.”
“Was it the abortions?”
Carving and piercing another cube, she withdrew the tines slowly. Red liquid oozed onto her plate. “I don’t need to tell you, Alex. Those were different times. In any event, I can’t see any direct link between Swedish Hospital and a full-term baby.”
I said, “Eleanor Green.”
The fork wavered. She put it down. “Who’s that?”
“A pediatric nurse. She lived in the house where the bones were found.”
“If you already have a name, why all the circumlocution? Go and track her down.”
“She seems to have disappeared.”
“Nurse on the run.” She chuckled. “Sounds like a bad movie.”
I said, “The friend who told you about Swedish—”
“Is gone, Alex. Everyone from my wanton youth is gone, leaving me the last woman standing. That’s either my triumph or cause for clinical depression, take your pick.”
“No peds, no ob-gyn,” I said. “Besides abortions, what brought in the profit?”
“My guess would be the same kinds of things that bring it in now. Procedures—radiology, short-term surgery.”
“Were the attending physicians from any particular part of town?”
She stared at me. “I appreciate your persistence, darling, but you’re pressing me for data I simply don’t have. But if we’re still in a betting mood, I’d wager against Watts or Boyle Heights.” She took hold of the fork, speared the abandoned Jell-O. Savored. “How have things been going for you, my dear? Doing anything interesting other than police work?”
“Some court work,” I said.
“Custody?”
“Custody and injury. One more question, Sal: Did your friend ever mention a doctor who drove a Duesenberg?”
She blinked. “That’s a car.”
I said, “It’s a very expensive car, made in the thirties and forties.”
“I’ve never been much for automobiles, Alex. A fact that greatly distressed my boys when they wanted fancy-shmancy wheels and I insisted on no-frills functionality.” She looked at her watch. “Oops, need to get going.”
Standing on tiptoes, she pecked my cheek hard, marched away, stiff-shouldered, stethoscope swinging.
I called her name but she never broke step.
CHAPTER
9
Milo said, “Abortion mill. Plenty of those, back then.”
I said, “This one served wealthy families.”
“Good business model.” He speared a massive forkful of curried lamb, studied the outsized portion as if daring himself. Engulfed, chewed slowly.
We were at Café Moghul, a storefront Indian restaurant on Santa Monica near the station. The bespectacled woman who runs the place believes Milo is a one-man strategic defense system and treats him like a god in need of gastric tribute.
Today, the sacrificial array was crab and chicken and the lamb, enough vegetables to fill a truck garden. The woman came over, smiling as always, and refilled our chai. Her sari was hot pink printed with gold swirls and loops. I’d seen it before. More than once. Over the years, I’ve seen her entire wardrobe but I have no idea what her name is. I’m not sure Milo does, either.
“More of anything, Lieutenant?”
“Fine for the time being.” He snarfed more lamb to prove it, reached for a crab claw.
When the woman left, he said, “Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“I go with Dr. Greiner’s logic. No reason for a baby to be linked to a place like that. Same for Ellie Green, seeing as she worked with kids. Anyone with access to medical equipment coulda gotten hold of that box.”
I said nothing.
He put the claw down hard enough for it to rattle. “What?”
“When I asked Salome if she recalled a doctor who drove a Duesenberg, she tensed up and terminated the conversation and walked out on me.”
“You touched a nerve? Okay, maybe Duesie-man was the guy who worked at Swedish and he was more than a friend and she didn’t want to get into details with you. Was Greiner married back then?”
“Yes.”
“Happily?”
I thought about that. “Don’t know.”
“Kids?”
“Five.”
“What was her husband like?”
“He wrote books about Chaucer.”
“Professor?”
“Never got his Ph.D.”
“How’d he earn a living?”
“He didn’t.”
“Real alpha male, Alex. So she was the breadwinner. So a fellow doc with hot wheels coulda been appealing. She doesn’t want to dredge all that up, so she terminates the tête-à-tête.”
“Why have a tête-à-tête in the first place?” I said. “Why not just talk over the phone?”
“She bothers you that much,” he said.
“I’m not saying Salome did anything criminal. I do think she knows more than she let on.”
“Fine, I respect your intuition. Now, what do you suggest I do about it?”
I had no answer, didn’t have to say so because his phone began playing Debussy. Golliwog’s Cakewalk.
He slapped it to his ear. “Sturgis … oh, hi … really? That was quick … okay … okay … okay … yeah, makes sense … could be … if I need to I’ll try it … no, nothing else from this end. Thanks, kid.”
Clicking off, he snatched up the crab claw, sucked meat, swallowed. “That was Liz Wilkinson. She dates the bones consistent with the clippings. No new evidence of trauma, internal or external, not a single deformity or irregularity. She didn’t find any marrow or soft tissue but will ask DOJ to try to get DNA from the bone tissue. Problem is between budget cuts and backlog, this is gonna go straight to the bottom of the pile. If I want to speed it up, she suggested I ask Zeus to descend from Olympus. Only thing that’ll motivate him is if the media continue to cover the case. And Liz just got a call from a Times reporter.”
“The press contacts her but not you?”
“When did you hear me say I wasn’t contacted?” His tongue worked to dislodge food from a molar. Placing the crab claw on a plate piled with empties, he scrolled his phone through a screen of missed calls. The number he selected was from yesterday afternoon.
“Kelly LeMasters? This is Lieutenant Milo Sturgis returning your call on the bones dug up in Cheviot Hills. Nothing new to report, if that changes, I’ll let you know.”
He returned to his food.
I said, “So we forget about Swedish Hospital.”
“I don’t see it leading anywhere, but feel free to pursue. You come up with something juicy, I’ll say it was my idea in the first place.”
An innocuous chime sounded in my pocket. My phone’s turn to join the conversation.
Milo said, “The ringtone era and you’re living in a cave?”
I picked up.
“Hi, Doctor, Louise at your service. Just took one from a Holly Ruche. She said no emergency but to me she sounded kind of upset so I thought I’d be careful.”
“Thanks, Louise.”
“All these years talking to your patients,” she said, “you pick things up. Here’s her number.”
I walked to the front of the restaurant, made the call.
Holly Ruche said, “That was quick. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“No bother. What’s up?”
“Is there anything new on the … on what happened at my house?”
“Not yet, Holly.”
“I guess these things take time.”
“They do.”
“That poor little thing.” Sharp intake of breath. “That baby. I was all about myself, didn’t even think about it. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. Not that I’m OCD or anything.”
“It’s a tough thing to go through, Holly.”
“But I’m fine,” she said. “I really am … um, would you have time to talk? Nothing serious, just one session to clear things up?”
“Sure.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, thank you. I couldn’t do it tomorrow. Or the day after.”
“What works for you, Holly?”
“Um … say in three days? Four? At your convenience.”
I checked my calendar. “How about three days, one p.m.?”
“Perfect. Um, could I ask what your fee is?”
“Three hundred dollars for a forty-five-minute session.”
She said, “Okay. That’ll work. Seeing as it’s only once. Where’s your office?”
“I work out of my home.” I told her the address. “Off of Beverly Glen.”
“You must have fantastic views.”
“It’s nice.”
“Bet it is,” she said. “I’d have loved something like that.”
CHAPTER
10
There are many reasons I became a psychologist. Some I understand, some I’ll never even be aware of.
One motive I think I do get is the urge to protect, to make up for the abandonment that ruled my childhood. It’s a trait that usually fits the job well, earning patient gratitude and delusions of godliness.
Sometimes I get heavy-handed, offering armor-plate when a thin sweater will do. That’s why figuring out how much to tell Robin about the bad stuff has always been an issue. I’ve learned to include her, but I’m careful about the details.
On this one, I didn’t even know how to start.
Robin’s an only child. Her mother’s a difficult woman, emotionally stingy, self-centered, competitive with her daughter. The loving parent was her dad, a master carpenter. He taught her what he knew about wood and the joy of craft, died when Robin was young. Now she works with power tools, doesn’t take well to being smothered by testosterone, no matter how well intended.
For all the support I got from my older sister, I might as well have been a singleton. Mom was too up and down mood-wise to be of use when Dad drank and went hunting for prey. I learned to value solitude because alone meant safe. Inherently a friendly child, I learned to be sociable and genuinely empathic, but more often than not any group of people makes me feel alienated.
Two people like that and you can see how it would take time to work out Relationship 101.
I believe Robin and I have done a pretty good job. We’ve been together for a long time, are faithful without strain, love each other madly, press each other’s erotic buttons. All that bliss has been ruptured twice by breakups, neither of which I understand fully. During one separation, Robin got pregnant by another man. The pregnancy and her time with him ended badly. I’ve worked with children my entire adult life but have never been a father. Robin and I haven’t talked about that in ages.
I hope she doesn’t spend too much time wondering.
I drove home thinking about tiny bones, a life barely lived, a nurse who could be anything between saint and monster. I still hadn’t figured out what to divulge when I reached the top of the old bridle path that snakes up to our property.
To look at the house, free of trim or artifice, high white stucco walls sliced into acute angles where the trees don’t shroud, you’d think emotionally distant people live here. The original structure, the one I bought for myself as soon as I had a bit of money, was tiny, rustic, all wood and shingle and quirk and creak. A psychopath burned it down and when we rebuilt we were looking for change, maybe a fortress.
Inside, matte-finished oak floors, comfortable, slouchy furniture, and art biased toward pretty rather than politics combine to warm things up. The square footage isn’t vast but it’s more than two people and one small dog need, and my footsteps echo when I cross the living room and head up the skylit corridor to my office.
Robin’s truck was parked out front but no sign of her in the house, so she was out in her studio, working. I postponed a bit, checking email, paying bills, scanning news sites and reassuring myself that the world continued to spin with all the logic of a grand mal seizure.
By the time I poured a mug full of coffee in the kitchen and walked down to the garden where I stopped to feed the koi, I was still unresolved about what to say.
“Baby bones,” I told the fish. “Don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.”
They slurped in gratitude.
I was dawdling by the water’s edge when the door to the studio opened. Blanche, our little French bulldog, trotted toward me, twenty pou
nds of blond charm and Zen-serenity. The breed tends to be stubborn; Blanche isn’t, preferring diplomacy to artillery. She nuzzled my pant leg, snorted coquettishly. I rubbed her head and she purred like a cat. She’d rolled on her back for a belly tickle when Robin emerged, fluffing her mass of auburn curls and brushing sawdust from her favorite red overalls.
Mouthing an air kiss as she hurried toward me, she arrived smiling, planted a real smooch on my lips. Her breath was sweet with cola, the black T-shirt under the overalls fragrant with wood dust. Spanish cypress, a material that holds on to its perfume for centuries. The feather-light flamenco guitar she’d been working on for weeks.
I kissed her back.
She said, “What’s the matter?”
“Who says anything?”
She stepped back, studied me. “Honey?”
“What was the tell?”
“The shoulders,” she said. “It’s always in the shoulders.”
“Maybe it’s just a kink.”
Taking my hand, she guided me toward the house. Blanche trotted at our side, checking me out every few seconds. Between the two of them, I felt like a patient. As we reached the door, Robin said, “The new case?”
I nodded.
“Especially bad?”
“Maybe.”
She put her arm around my waist. When we got in the kitchen, I offered her coffee.
“No, thanks, just water.” She fetched a bottle from the fridge, sat down at the table, propped her perfect chin in one hand. Chocolate eyes were soft, yet searching. Her lips parted. The slightly oversized central incisors that had turned me on years ago flashed into view.
I filled a second mug, joined her. “A baby. A baby’s skeleton.”
She winced. “That must have been terrible for everyone involved.”
She stroked my fingers.
I told her everything.
When I was through, she said, “One of the girls at that hospital changed her mind and had her baby? Gave it to that nurse to take care of and something went wrong?”
“Could be.”
“Wrong doesn’t have to mean a crime, Alex. What if the poor little thing died by accident? Or from a disease and it couldn’t be buried legally because officially it didn’t exist?”
Guilt Page 5
