Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “Where are you going?”

  “Got a date.” I hear the shower turn on.

  “A date?”

  “Not that kind of a date.”

  I feel relieved. I wonder why. A minute later, the shower goes off, and she walks out of the bathroom toweling off, her hair still dry. I get up and grab my boxers from the floor.

  “Okay. Maybe Billy didn’t initiate the idea,” I say. “What if Lynch did?”

  She grabs a necklace that’s lying on the coffee table and pulls it into position, turning her back to me, inviting me to clasp it. I do. She gives me a quick peck on the lips then heads into her bedroom.

  “So door number two,” she calls out, “you’ve got a psychiatrist suggesting to a patient’s father, out of the blue, that they band together to plunder the girls’ estate by manipulating her into believing she was molested by her own grandfather?”

  She walks back into the living room in an unbuttoned, cream-colored blouse, zipping up a navy-blue skirt.

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “The guy’s a psychiatrist, Nob. He stands to lose everything if he gets caught. And for what? The chance to maybe skim money he doesn’t need from Lana’s estate? It’s just too loosey-goosey.”

  “Maybe Lynch had gambling debts and an aversion to shattered kneecaps.” I can feel my logic stretching like taffy as I slip into my shoes.

  She grabs a spray can of air freshener and sprays it around, adding an artificial lavender scent to the prevailing smells of sweat and Runt. The combination makes me queasy.

  “You know that stuff is carcinogenic, right?”

  “Spare me,” she says. But she opens a window, admitting a hot breeze.

  “Okay. What if it has nothing to do with the money or Nathaniel?” I ask. “Maybe it’s just coincidental timing. Remember that matricide story I did last year? The fourteen-year-old pyromaniac who thought his mother was sleeping with his shrink so he killed her to keep them from talking about him in bed?”

  Gloria shakes her head as she buttons her blouse. She’s starting one buttonhole off, but I don’t mention it.

  “It’s that Freudian thing,” I say. “What’s it called? Where the patient can’t deal with the guilt over her sexual feelings for her father, so she transfers them to her therapist?”

  “Let me guess: transference?”

  “Right. Transference. The thing every therapist is taught to expect and trained how to deal with.”

  Gloria realizes her blouse is on lopsided. “Shit.” She unbuttons and starts over.

  “So here’s Dr. Karl,” I continue, despite the fact that her interest seems to be waning. “Middle-aged, handsome, but maybe not too social, hasn’t gotten laid in a while, and he has to listen to this gorgeous young thing expose her most intimate thoughts, week after week. He watches her body slowly bloom into young womanhood, and as she shares her growing erotic desires, he becomes consumed with the fantasy of acting them out. She’s a teenager, she’s a client, she’s taboo. But he’s becoming obsessed.”

  Gloria slips into a stiletto sandal and puts her foot on the coffee table. “Lick it,” she says.

  I ignore the command but kneel down to strap her in. “She’s in and out of therapy. After a few years, she’s not jailbait anymore. The taboo shrinks, the obsession grows. Then one day she breaks down in therapy. He gives her a comforting hug. She looks up at him, cheeks flushed, wet with tears, yearning in her eyes. Transference kicks in and takes over. She pulls him into a kiss, and he can feel her heat, her lust, her defenselessness. His resistance crumbles.”

  “It’s always the woman’s fault.” Gloria’s sarcasm has the bite of a barracuda.

  “She doesn’t really want him. It’s the transference talking. He knows it, but in the heat of passion he doesn’t care. He has to have her.”

  Gloria switches feet and I strap up the other sandal as I continue to weave my theory.

  “Then it’s over. They’re both flooded with shame, embarrassment, self-pity. Lynch knows he abused her trust; he essentially raped her. He tries to persuade her it was some sort of radical psychiatric technique, some bullshit mumbo-jumbo. Catharsis therapy, transference release, who knows? Then, to drive the point home, he makes her pay for the session.”

  Gloria scowls at this detail. “Only you would think of a touch like that.”

  “Just slipping into his shoes.”

  “Go on,” she says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt when you’re on a roll.”

  “Ginger’s a mess. She blames herself. She’s humiliated, teary, emotionally charged. He worries that she’ll break down and tell someone. He remembers how easy it was for him to create false memories during the McMartin case. He decides to give it a try on Ginger. He knows more about her than anyone. He knows how to push her buttons. And he knows she’s had a troubled relationship with her grandfather. Nathaniel Strain is the perfect fall guy. If Lynch can make her think she was molested by her grandfather, it’ll seed enough doubt and confusion to fog any future testimony she might give. Lynch brainwashes her into transferring her feelings of betrayal from himself to Nathaniel.”

  Gloria says good-bye to the sleeping Runt, opens the door, and leads me out.

  “You’ve been watching too much TV,” she says as she rummages in her purse for her key to lock the deadbolt.

  “Yeah? Well watch this. It’s ten, fifteen years later, and I start nosing around. Ginger has been repressing this stuff for two decades. But after a long hiatus, she’s back in therapy. She brings up my visit, and maybe her denial cracks and the truth boils to the surface. She freaks. Lynch prescribes tranks. Later that night, she calls. She makes threats. He tells her to take a few pills to calm down, that he’ll be right over. By the time he gets there, she’s drowsy. He slips a few more pills in her tea when she’s not looking, pockets the bottle, and waits for her to pass out.”

  Gloria walks to her car and opens the door but doesn’t get in.

  “Once she’s unconscious, he wipes down the cup,” I continue, “turns on the gas, and leaves. Mission accomplished.”

  Gloria lets this sink in for a moment then says, “You know? You’re making sense for the first time since you bit my nipple.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The next day I meet Gloria at West Hollywood Park, where I leave my car so she won’t have to take me all the way home. She’s in no hurry today as we drive through a quaint neighborhood of small cottages built after WWII that now fetch more than a million bucks each. Lower-middle class no more. Shrewd planning and gay aesthetics have transformed the sleepy town into one of the hottest model communities in the country.

  Gloria turns right at La Cienega.

  “You gotta love a city that builds Restaurant Row on a street that’s Spanish for swamp,” I say.

  No response. She’s focused on weaving through traffic to slip into the left-turn lane at Melrose.

  We pass Lucques restaurant in the former carriage house of silent film star Harold Lloyd. I remember the night Holly and I sat in the bar and shared a bottle of champagne and a grilled cheese and roasted shallot sandwich. We were so giddy with love that the chef sent over a complimentary chocolate tart with honeycomb. Holly broke off a piece and fed it to me. I licked the honey off her fingers and proposed.

  I try to stuff the memory back into deep storage as Gloria finds a parking spot in front of a two-story Tudorish building. The lobby directory reads like a BMW dealer’s mailing list: three architects, three designers, a dentist, an eBay philatelist and, of course, Dr. Karl Lynch, PhD, MD, a psychiatric corporation.

  We walk into Lynch’s reception area. An antique mahogany wall clock reads two forty-nine. Gloria sits down on a woven black leather chair, some sort of reproduction Bauhausy thing. I stay on my feet to check out a small but impressive collection of Yoruban fertility masks. I know what they are from a little brass plate on the wall, though I have no clue where in Africa Yoruba might be.

  Dr. Karl’s two o’clock patient will be le
aving momentarily. As we’d hoped, there is no one waiting for his three o’clock. It’s Wednesday, and he hasn’t filled Ginger’s slot yet.

  At two-fifty on the dot the door opens, and Karl Lynch ushers out a mousy, brown-haired woman who, as she skitters for the exit, conspicuously avoids eye contact. Lynch, on the other hand, glares at Gloria. He’s a study in grays with sharp-pressed charcoal slacks and an ash-gray cashmere cardigan that matches his eyes and hair. The brown shoes don’t make it.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  “Nice fertility masks,” I say.

  “I’m sure you’re not here to admire the art.”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” says Gloria.

  “I have nothing more to say to you.”

  “That’s not your decision to make.”

  “I believe it is, unless you’re planning to arrest me.”

  This is beginning to feel like a tennis match.

  “This is not some petty crime,” she says. “You’re a material witness in a homicide investigation. You were the last person known to have seen the victim alive. You will answer my questions until such time as I’m satisfied.”

  “I’ll call my lawyer then.”

  “You have every right. Tell him to meet us downtown in half an hour. If he’s in court, I’ll find you a suitable place to wait for as long as it takes him to get there.” Something in her voice implies that the criteria for suitability do not include windows, freedom of movement, or even padding unless it’s on the walls.

  Dr. Karl ponders the choice between getting this over with here and now or calling his lawyer, canceling his afternoon patients, and chancing the accommodations downtown. It’s a classic Gloria move: effective and probably unconstitutional.

  As he considers, she hits a backhand smash to his ego. “Look, Dr. Lynch, if you’re afraid that I’m going to beat you at some mental game, you don’t have to worry. I just want to ask you about a few things we forgot to ask before.”

  He gives her the finger and turns into his office, but he leaves the door open for us to follow. “Make it quick,” he says without looking back.

  The place is painted in muted green hues, each wall a slightly different shade, probably named after plants like sage, moss, or split pea. I suspect some feng shui chose the colors for spiritual balance, but the place feels like bad karma anyway.

  Lynch sits down in a forest-green leather chair with brass-nailhead-studded trim. It sits in front of his desk, facing what are apparently two client-seating alternatives: a wooden ladder-back chair and a crushed-suede sofa the color of creamy tomato soup. He picks up a leather folder and opens it to reveal a legal pad. I’m not sure if he’s doing this out of habit or intending to take notes.

  Gloria takes the ladder-back, sitting stiffly as if nailed to the rails. I take the sofa, wondering what Dr. Karl infers from a client’s choice of one seat over the other. I assume such decisions are never random in the mind of a psychiatric corporation.

  Lynch looks at me then turns his gaze to Gloria. “What’s he doing here? He’s not a cop.”

  “Mr. Brown is aiding in the investigation. He’s extremely well versed in the details of the case. Is that a problem?”

  He takes my measure and then shrugs. “I’d just as soon have a member of the press as a witness, I suppose. Might temper your abusive personality.”

  I’m flattered that he considers me a member of the press, but I keep my trap shut.

  “Thanks for the free diagnosis,” says Gloria. “Why don’t you tell us how you got involved with the Strain-Kidd family?”

  “I met Claudine Hugo in the mideighties,” he says, “in a hot tub at Esalen. I was just starting out, and I’d gotten an opportunity to teach a seminar in somatic psychology there.”

  “Somatic psychology?”

  “It’s kind of Reichian. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Gloria lets it pass. “Claudine introduced you to Lana Strain?”

  “I never met Lana. She was there at the same time but for some sensory deprivation tank workshop. Claudine came to keep her company. Whenever Lana was in the isolation tank, Claudine would hit the hot tub. Our schedules coincided and we enjoyed each other’s company, so we stayed in touch. After Lana’s death, Billy was looking for a therapist for the girls, and Claudine gave him my number.”

  Gloria shifts in her chair then stiffens in a new position. I can tell that she finds it uncomfortable.

  “You saw both girls?” she asks.

  “Yes. It was a sort of family therapy, except Billy didn’t come.”

  “How was it that they stopped talking to each other?”

  “I can’t discuss anything that pertains to our conversations in therapy.”

  She stiffens again. This time it’s not the chair. “How is it that after they stopped speaking to each other you continued to see them separately? Isn’t it a breach of ethics to see two members of the same family in individual therapy?”

  “It was an unusual situation.” He makes some sort of note on his pad. For his defense? “I was concerned that it could do irreparable harm to make one of them feel rejected at the expense of the other.”

  “You could have dropped them both.”

  “It was a critical time in their therapy.”

  “How long did you treat them?”

  “Ginger stopped seeing me when she was twenty-one then came back eight or nine years later. Sophia quit therapy several years ago.”

  “After you started seeing her socially?”

  Now he stiffens. “Well before,” he snarls, every bit the alpha wolf chastening an insolent pup.

  “Of course.” She smiles innocently, as if her implication was unintentional. None of us buys it. Lynch writes something else on the pad.

  “And the last time you saw Ginger?”

  “Wednesday afternoon. At her last session.”

  “Was she particularly upset about anything?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Do you know if she had a date that night? Or where she might have been going?”

  “I told you I won’t comment on anything she said in therapy.”

  “Even at the risk of protecting her killer?”

  “At the risk of violating her confidentiality, I’ll go so far as to say that she told me nothing that might help identify her killer.” He scribbles another note.

  I’ve never seen an interviewee take notes before. I’m dying to know what he’s writing. Clarence Darrow was said to have spiked his cigar with piano wire during the Scopes Monkey Trial then smoked it when the prosecution was making its case. Members of the jury were so distracted waiting for the growing ash to fall that they barely heard the prosecutor’s case. Maybe Lynch’s note-taking is his cigar trick, designed to distract Gloria.

  “You’d be surprised at how insignificant a detail can be and still trip up a murderer,” she says. “I once caught a killer who wore a shower cap to commit the crime to make sure he didn’t leave even a strand of hair at the site. But we still found a few flakes of dandruff on the corpse, and that gave us his DNA.”

  “How interesting,” he says deadpan, circling a word on his pad.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Billy Strain,” Gloria continues.

  “He paid for each girl’s therapy until she turned twenty one. That’s about it.”

  “You didn’t socialize?”

  “It would be inappropriate to socialize with the parent of a patient.”

  “But not to shack up with a former patient?”

  His face flushes. “Get the hell out of my office.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “I am.”

  Knowing a lost cause when she sees it, Gloria stands and walks out.

  “Nice talking to you,” I say and follow her out. At the door, I stop and turn back, feeling just like Columbo. “One more question. Were you prescribing her Elavil?”

  “That’s confidential,” he says, but the pause in h
is delivery answers my question.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I’m Googling Ginger’s zip code and “pharmacy” to get a list of the drug stores closest to the Strain house when Melody walks into my office dressed like a whale. Or is she a dolphin? I know she’s not a shark because she’s got a spout.

  “Nice outfit,” I say.

  “I just came from a gig for two hundred sixth graders. Dance interpretation of Moby Dick.”

  “Spouting rhetoric?”

  “That’s pretty rich talk for a hack.”

  I don’t know how I’d keep my ego in check without Melody around.

  “You’re not going to wear that thing to work the pharmacies, are you?”

  She strips out of her costume to reveal a T-shirt and shorts. I print the two-page pharmacy list and split it with her.

  “Start with the closest,” I say.

  We take our separate cars and head out to do some legwork. I start at the Rite Aid on the corner of Sunset and Fairfax. It used to be a Thrifty that sold my dad’s favorite ice cream. Brain scans have proved that humans like the taste of higher-priced food more than the same food tagged for less, but my dad had different wiring. Thrifty ice cream was the cheapest in town, and to his accountant’s brain that made it taste better.

  I park in back and head into the pharmacy. There’s a young Asian woman behind the counter. Her name tag says Lucy Chow, so I assume she’s Chinese. I wrack my brain for the name of an Asian actress and tell her that her pearl earrings make her look like Maggie Q. Lucy blushes. Good start. Then I tell her I’m picking up an Elavil prescription for my sister-in-law, Ginger Strain. She rifles through a lineup of bags in the S bin and tells me there’s nothing ready. I ask if she’ll check the records to make sure the prescription was received, and she taps into the computer to discover that they’ve got nothing under Ginger’s name. Strike one.

  Next stop is the pharmacy in the Ralphs supermarket down the street. The clerk is tall and Latina. I ask if she’s tired of being told she looks like Sofia Vergara. Ginger Strain has no account here either. Strike two.