Savage Spawn

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Savage Spawn

  Reflections on Violent Children

  Jonathan Kellerman

  The Library of Contemporary Thought

  The Ballantine Publishing Group • New York

  The Library of Contemporary Thought

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1999 by Jonathan Kellerman

  Excerpt from Guilt © 2013 by Jonathan Kellerman

  All rights reserved under International

  and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published

  in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously

  in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Contemporary Thought and Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks and the Library of Contemporary Thought colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  http://www.randomhouse.com/BB/

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Kellerman, Jonathan.

  Savage spawn : reflections on violent children / Jonathan

  Kellerman.

  p. cm. — (The library of contemporary thought)

  1. Violence in children—United States. 2. Children and violence—United States. 3. Child psychopathology—United States. 4. Conduct disorders in children—United States. I. Title. II. Series: Library of contemporary thought (Ballantine Publishing Group)

  RJ506.V56K45 1999

  616.85′82′00835—dc21 98-47234

  CIP

  This book contains an excerpt from Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-46366-1

  v3.0_r1

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Dedication

  Bibliography

  Index

  Other Books by Jonathan Kellerman

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Guilt

  A Note on The Library of Contemporary Thought

  Praise for Savage Spawn

  Backads

  Don't miss these thrilling suspense novels from Jonathan Kellerman!

  I

  An Idea That Wouldn’t

  Go Away

  I know the exact day I decided to write this book.

  I love writing novels, am obsessive about writing novels, resent anything that gets in the way of writing novels. Sometimes this single-mindedness conflicts with a cranky, highly opinionated disposition, most evident during the early morning hours, that presses me to vent spleen in print. Fortunately, a combination of deep breathing, strong coffee, and solitude usually prevails, and yet another page is added to the mountain of unwritten letters to the editor and op-ed pieces moldering in some dark corner at the back of my skull.

  Thursday, March 26, 1998, was different. My novel in progress was nearly completed, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

  The day before, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Arkansas, had dressed in camouflage garb, stolen a van, filled it with a tent, a sleeping bag, tools, food, and enormous quantities of ammunition and stolen weapons. Thus equipped, they drove to nearby Westside Middle School, where they set off the fire alarm. As the bells clanged, Johnson and Golden ran for cover behind a wooden ridge, waited for students and teachers to emerge, then unleashed a fusillade. Four little girls and a teacher were killed. Ten other children and a teacher were wounded. A motive was suggested: Mitchell Johnson had been jilted by a girl. No rationale was offered for Andrew Golden’s behavior. Both Johnson and Golden had warned other children they were going to kill someone. Both had troubled pasts, but no one took them seriously.

  One hundred thirty-four spent shells were found at the crime scene, ranging from rat shot to .357 Magnum bullets. In Andrew Golden’s pockets were 312 more shells. Johnson and Golden’s arsenal consisted of a .30-06 Remington rifle, a Ruger .44 Magnum rifle, a Universal .30 carbine, a Davis Industry .38 special two-shot, an FIE .380 handgun, a Ruger Security Six .357 revolver, a Remington model 742 .30-06 rifle, a Smith & Wesson .38 pistol, a Double Deuce Buddie two-shot derringer, a Charter Arms .38 special pistol, a Star .380 semiautomatic, six knives, and two speed loaders.

  At the time of the attack, Mitchell Johnson was thirteen years old, Andrew Golden eleven.

  The Jonesboro massacre wasn’t the first of its type—several other school slaughters carried out by youths had occurred within recent months. Nor would it be the last. Two months later to the day, fifteen-year-old Kipland Kinkel, of Springfield, Oregon, would slay his parents in the family home, steal the family car, drive to Thurston High School, enter the cafeteria, and spray the room with bullets from a semiautomatic rifle, killing two students and wounding twenty-two others. Inadequately searched by the police, Kinkel would be taken into custody with a knife strapped to his leg and, soon after, would attempt to escape by stabbing a cop.

  Childhood violence is by no means confined to the bloody rampages of small-town white boys. Drive-by shootings committed by urban gangbangers, usually members of racial and ethnic minorities, proceed with regularity, never attracting the level of media attention and pontification elicited by the Johnsons, Goldens, and Kinkels of our time. A bit of covert racism, perhaps? We don’t expect it of white kids?

  Nevertheless, something about the horror perpetrated by Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden seemed especially nauseating: to be so young and yet kill with such a finely honed sense of premeditation.

  To be so cold.

  I’d been trained as a child clinical psychologist, worked for two decades at a major urban hospital and as a private practitioner, had witnessed plenty of psychopathology firsthand. But on March 26, 1998, my education and experience seemed pathetically inadequate. I struggled to make sense of the rampage. Was there anything I’d learned about human development that could come close to explaining calculated slaughter carried out by a fresh-faced pair who hadn’t even nudged puberty?

  Mitchell Johnson and Drew Golden’s bloody adventure kept me up all night. On Thursday morning I was feeling pretty ragged and no more enlightened. I retired to my office, closed the door, turned off the phone, did a lot of thinking, reviewed dozens of books and scores of scholarly articles, meandered mentally through hundreds of case histories, and thought some more. Then I sat down, composed an essay, and sent it to Glen Nishimura, op-ed editor at USA Today, where it was published the following morning.

  Late in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, before I heard back from Nishimura, I received a phone call from my literary agent, Barney Karpfinger. Well aware of my reluctance to interrupt my fiction writing, he wondered nonetheless if I’d consider a nonfiction project: Peter Gethers, vice president and editor at large at Random House, had created a series titled The Library of Contemporary Thought, a collection of short books, issued monthly, authored by established writers on topics that resonated for them personally. My name had come up: Would I be willing to contribute a volume on childhood violence?

  “Barney,” I said, “I’ve already started.”

  II

  Tim

  This kid scared me.

  Call him Tim. I’ve forgotten his name, but Tim will do fine.

  He was thirteen but could have passed easily for sixteen. Tall, angular, muscular, tan, with clean-cut good looks, he wore pressed, conservative clothing uninfluenced by the trends of the day, possessed
a ready smile, the gift of gab—and a stack of personalized business cards, one of which he handed me as he sat down across from my therapist’s chair.

  It was the late seventies, a smog-choked California summer, early in the evening. I was working days at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, conducting research on the psychological effects of catastrophic illness and isolation upon children, setting up psychosocial support systems for kids with cancer and their families, and learning more about human misery and resilience than I’d ever imagined possible.

  Nights, I treated private patients, working out of a sublet office in a working-class San Fernando Valley neighborhood, a district of white faces, smallish stucco homes, stingy backyards, pampered pickups, loud motorcycles.

  Tim’s parents had died in an auto accident when he was eighteen months old and he’d been raised by his grandmother, a well-meaning but noticeably anxious woman in her sixties who projected an air of profound ineptitude. She wasn’t happy about seeing a psychologist. In the late seventies, few people outside of Beverly Hills and upper Manhattan were—certainly not the tradesmen and housewives who comprised the bulk of the population in my district. Most of the parents referred to me never called. I didn’t mind. It meant that the children who did arrive at my office were more likely to have real problems. After all, I was a medical school professor, had no desire to be a high-priced baby-sitter.

  Tim’s pediatrician had convinced Grandma to bring Tim for evaluation, having exhausted all the advice at his disposal. He termed Grandma “nice but antsy,” hoped “some of your behavior modification will help her.”

  I asked him about any physical ailments Tim might have. He said Tim was one of the healthiest boys he’d ever encountered.

  On the face, Tim’s presenting problem seemed no different from that of many boys I saw that summer or in summers past: noncompliant behavior and poor school grades. Neither Grandma nor his school could garner much cooperation from him.

  As was my custom, first I met with Grandma alone for a history-taking session. Her initial descriptions of Tim’s behavior set off no warning signals. The boy didn’t “mind,” was lax about cleaning his room. Bright and a quick learner, he refused to do homework, was performing below capability, wasn’t affected by her attempts at discipline—scolding, yelling, withdrawal of privileges, occasional grounding.

  I asked if she thought losing his parents had made an impact upon Tim. Tears welled up in her eyes. Tim’s father had been her son, and memories of her own loss, more than a decade past, caused her face to collapse.

  No, she finally said. Tim had been too young. He had no recollection of the accident and rarely asked about his parents—she couldn’t recall the last time.

  I asked if there was anything else she wanted to tell me.

  She shook her head, dabbed at her eyes, stared at me full-face. Then something new came into her weary brown irises. Not the usual frustration, anger, fatigue—parental emotions with which I was well acquainted, though I had no children of my own yet.

  This was something else, something more than anxiety . . . fear?

  She broke the stare, averted her eyes.

  “Tim’s upsetting you,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  I waited. Allowed one of those therapeutic silences to hang there for a while. Knowing when to keep the therapeutic mouth shut is as important as—maybe more important than—having something to say.

  But these empty seconds evoked nothing. She looked down at her purse. If whatever I’d seen in her eyes remained, the angle of her glance prevented me from confirming it.

  Finally she said, “What can you do for me, Dr. Kellerman?”

  This early in the game, I had nothing to offer, but I knew she needed to go home with something, so I slung placebo: talked soothingly about gaining Tim’s trust, helping Tim focus on what was bothering him, then working together with the two of them to develop a structured behavioral plan. The word structure can be reassuring for parents reeling from loss of control. It seemed to offer Grandma a bit of comfort, and she left the office thanking me. But then I saw her eyes again. . . .

  A few days later I met Tim. Though I knew I needed to maintain an open mind, I’d come prepared with a suitcaseful of preconceptions.

  The game plan I’d outlined for Grandma had been a bit of salesmanship, but I was willing to bet it would turn out to be on target. I’d treated or consulted on hundreds of cases involving noncompliant, underachieving boys and seemed to work well with that kind of patient, perhaps because I’d been far from compliant during my youth.

  The way I saw it, this boy had experienced severe loss and disruption of parental attachment, only to be handed over to a grieving, older woman ill prepared to be a parent again and ambivalent about resuming motherhood. The core problem seemed clear: Grandma had been unable, or unwilling, to set firm limits, and Tim had learned to take advantage of her laxness. What he needed, most likely, was a combination of support and discipline. First thing on the agenda, though, was rapport. Without building a sense of trust, nothing could be accomplished.

  Grandma brought him right on time. But she hung near the door and, with that same edginess in her eyes, muttered something about errands to run and quickly exited.

  I introduced myself. Tim grinned, stuck out his hand, and pumped mine heartily. That gave me pause. Most kids are apprehensive about visiting any new doctor, let alone a psychologist, but this young man seemed perfectly at home in my waiting room. Grandma had denied any previous psychotherapy. Had she left something out?

  I escorted him into the consulting room. He sat right down opposite me, crossed his legs, stretched, grinned again, said, “Nice place,” with all the casualness of a drinking buddy.

  The grin hung there, big and wide and . . . Was I overinterpreting when I sensed a mocking quality?

  I asked him if this was the first time he’d ever seen a psychologist.

  “Yup.” Still grinning. Not a trace of nervousness.

  With a flourish, he whipped out a stack of glossy black business cards and handed me one. His name was printed in the center, in oversized silver script, above a phone number.

  “Nice card,” I said.

  “Got to have one if you’re in business.”

  “What business are you in?”

  His smile stretched. He started to yawn, covered it. Chuckled. Said, “Anything to make money.”

  “Been doing okay making money?”

  “Great. How about you?” he said.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Bet you make a lot of money.”

  “Making money’s important to you?”

  “Hey,” he said, “with money you can buy anything.”

  “What kinds of things do you do to make money?”

  “Stuff,” he said. “Favors.”

  “Favors?”

  “Like if someone needs some help with something, I help ’em.”

  “What kind of help?”

  He stretched like a young lion. “If someone’s bugging someone and they want it to stop, I make it stop.”

  “You make it stop,” I said. “And you get paid for it.”

  He pointed a finger gun in my direction. “Correct.”

  “Kind of like a bodyguard.”

  He laughed. “Guess so.”

  “Got any other businesses?”

  “Sure. I sell stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Magazines, candy. Sold a bike last week.”

  “A bike?” I said.

  “Found it on the street.” The grin stretched.

  “Someone just left a bike on the street.”

  “Must’ve been someone stupid.” Laughter. “I don’t sell everything. Some stuff I give away.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “To girls. I get them stuff and give it to them free.” He recrossed his legs, sat back, let one hand rest on a thigh.

  Then he winked.

  “The girls get stuff
free,” I said.

  He laughed again. “They give me stuff back. In trade.” He licked his lips. Reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a chrome-plated lighter. “Okay if I smoke?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  Shrugging, he put the pack back but kept the lighter out, passing it from hand to hand.

  “Been smoking long?”

  Shrug. No more smile. Being refused had changed his demeanor. Now his long, handsome face was immobile, placid.

  More than calm. Emotionless.

  Dead-eyed.

  He yawned again. Looked at his watch. Expensive watch for a thirteen-year-old.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Tim?”

  Shrug.

  “Your grandmother’s been having some problems with you.”

  Shrug.

  “She feels she can’t get you to obey her.”

  “She’s stupid.”

  “Stupid?”

  He laughed. “She’s a stupid asshole. Doesn’t know what’s flying. She’s old.” He turned the last two words into the lowest epithet. But still no anger; the lack of passion made the little speech more vicious.

  “Has she been mean to you?”

  The question amused him. He shook his head. “She’s just a stupid asshole.”

  “She’s been raising you since you were a baby.”

  “Yup.”

  He began looking around the office. I used the time to contemplate my next move. Was it the right time to raise the topic of his parents’ death, or should I wait? Normally I’d have held back, but the complete lack of tension in Tim’s speech and posture intrigued me. At that point I was unwilling to believe anyone so young could be so dispassionate, so nakedly cruel.

  Defensiveness; had to be. This kid was so armored he had to hide behind a macho facade.

  Would broaching the subject cause the armor to crack too suddenly?

  On the other hand, not raising it could be a serious mistake. Most teens had their BS detectors set to high. Tim fancied himself streetwise, cool, and collected, and he seemed reasonably bright. He might interpret avoidance of the obvious as evidence I wasn’t being straight.