Bad Love

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “An—”

  “An insument! He laid all down with Satan and became a sinful spirit. When he dies, he's going to burn in hell, that's for sure.”

  Chondra's hands flew to her face.

  “Stop!” said Tiffani. She rushed over to her sister, but before she got there, Chondra stood and let out a single, deep sob. Then she ran for the door, swinging it open so hard it almost threw her off balance.

  She caught it, then she was out.

  Tiffani watched her go, looking tiny and helpless.

  “You got to tell the truth,” she said.

  I said, “Absolutely. But sometimes it's hard.”

  She nodded. Now her eyes were wet.

  She paced some more.

  I said, “Your sister's older but it looks like you take care of her.”

  She stopped, faced me, gave a defiant stare, but seemed comforted.

  “You take good care of her,” I said.

  Shrug.

  “That must get hard sometimes.”

  Her eyes flickered. She put her hands on her hips and jutted her chin.

  “It's okay,” she said.

  I smiled.

  “She's my sister.” She stood there, knocking her hands against her legs.

  I patted her shoulder.

  She sniffed, then walked away.

  “You got to tell the truth,” she said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Punch, jab. “Pow poom . . . I wanna go home.”

  Chondra was already with Evelyn, sharing the front seat of the thirty-year-old, plum-colored Chevy. The car had nearly bald blackwalls and a broken antenna. The paint job was homemade, the color nothing GM had ever conceived. One edge of the car's rear bumper had been broken and it nearly scraped the ground.

  I got to the driver's window as Tiffani made her way down the steps from the landing. Evelyn Rodriguez didn't look up. A cigarette drooped from her lips. A hardpack of Winstons sat on the dashboard. The driver's half of the windshield was coated with greasy fog. Her fingers were busy tying a lanyard keychain. The rest of her was inert.

  Chondra was pressed up against the passenger door, legs curled beneath her, staring at her lap.

  Tiffani arrived, making her way to the passenger side while keeping her eyes on me. Opening the rear door, she dove inside.

  Evelyn finally took her eyes off her work, but her fingers kept moving. The lanyard was brown and white, a diamond stitch that reminded me of rattlesnake skin.

  “Well, that was quick,” she said. “Close that door now, don't kill the battery.”

  Tiffani scooted over and slammed the door.

  I said, “The girls haven't started school yet.”

  Evelyn Rodriguez looked at Tiffani for a second, then turned to me. “That's right.”

  “Do you need any help with that?”

  “Help?”

  “Getting them started. Is there some kind of problem?”

  “Nah, we been busy—I make 'em read at home. They're okay.”

  “Planning to send them soon?”

  “Sure, when things calm down—so what's next? They have to come again?”

  “Let's try again tomorrow. Same time okay?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Matter of fact, it isn't. Got things to do.”

  “What's a good time for you, then?”

  She sucked the cigarette, adjusted her glasses, and placed the lanyard on the seat. Her slash lips twitched, searching for an expression.

  “There are no good times. All the good times already been rolled.”

  She started the car. Her lips were trembling and the cigarette bobbed. She removed it and turned the wheel sharply without shifting out of park. The car was low on steering fluid and shrieked in protest. The front tires swung outward and scraped the asphalt.

  “I'd like to see them again fairly soon,” I said.

  “What for?”

  Before I could answer, Tiffani stretched herself out along the back seat, belly down, and began kicking the door panel with both feet.

  “Cut that out!” said Mrs. Rodriguez, without looking back. “What for?” she repeated. “So we can be told what to do and how to do it, as usual?”

  “No, I—”

  “The problem is, things are upside down. Nonsensical. Those that should be dead aren't, and those that are, shouldn't be. No amount of talking's gonna change that, so what's the difference? Upside down, completely, and now I got to be a mama all over again.”

  “He can write a book,” said Tiffani. “So that—”

  Evelyn cut her off with a look. “You don't worry yourself about things. We got to be heading back—if there's time, I'll get you an ice cream.”

  She yanked the gear lever down. The Chevy grumbled and bucked, then drove off, rear bumper flirting with the road.

  I stood there a while, sucking up exhaust fumes, then went back up to the house, returned to the library, and charted:

  “Strong resistance to eval. on part of m.g.m. T overtly angry, hostile to father, talks in terms of sin, retribution. C still not communic. Will follow.”

  Profound.

  I went to the bedroom and retrieved Ruthanne Wallace's police file.

  Big as a phone book.

  “Trial transcripts,” Milo had said, hefting it as he handed it over. “Sure isn't because of any hotshot detection. Your basic moron murder.”

  He'd pulled it from Foothill Division's CLOSED files, filling my request without question. Now I flipped pages, not knowing why I'd asked for it. Closing the folder, I took it into the library and crammed it down into a desk drawer.

  Ten in the morning and I was already tired.

  I went to the kitchen, loaded some coffee into the machine, and started going through the mail, discarding junk mail, signing checks, filing paper, then coming to the brown-wrapped package that I'd assumed was a book.

  Slitting the padded envelope, I stuck my hand in, expecting the bulk of a hardcover. But my fingers touched nothing and I reached deeper, finally coming upon something hard and smooth. Plastic. Wedged tightly in a corner.

  I shook the envelope. An audiocassette fell out and clattered onto the table.

  Black, no label or markings on either side.

  I examined the padded envelope. My name and address had been typed on a white sticker. No zip code. No return address either. The postmark was four days old, recorded at the Terminal Annex.

  Curious, I took the tape into the living room, slipped it into the deck, and sank back onto the old leather couch.

  Click. A stretch of static-fuzzed nothing started me wondering if this was some sort of practical joke.

  Then a shock of noise killed that theory and made my chest tighten.

  A human voice. Screaming.

  Howling.

  Male. Hoarse. Loud. Wet—as if gargling in pain.

  Unbearable pain. A terrible incoherence that went on and on as I sat there, too surprised to move.

  A throat-ripping howling interspersed with trapped-animal panting.

  Heavy breathing.

  Then more screams—louder. Ear-clapping expulsions that had no shape or meaning . . . like the soundtrack from the rancid core of a nightmare.

  I pictured a torture chamber, shrieking black mouths, convulsing bodies.

  The howling bore through my head. I strained to make out words amid the torrent but heard only the pain.

  Louder.

  I leaped up to turn down the volume on the machine. Found it already set low.

  I started to turn it off, but before I could, the screaming died.

  More static-quiet.

  Then a new voice.

  Soft. High-pitched. Nasal.

  A child's voice:

  Bad love. Bad love.

  Don't give me the bad love.

  Child's timbre—but with no childish lilt.

  Unnaturally flat—robotlike.

  Bad love. Bad love.

  Don't give me the bad love . . .

  Repeating it. T
hree times. Four.

  A chant, Druidish and mournful—so oddly metallic.

  Almost like a prayer.

  Bad love. Bad love . . .

  No. Too hollow for prayer—too faithless.

  Idolatrous.

  A prayer for the dead.

  By the dead.

  CHAPTER

  2

  I turned the recorder off. My fingers were stiff from clenching, my heart thumped, and my mouth was dry.

  Coffee smells drew me to the kitchen. I filled a cup, returned to the living room, and rewound the tape. When the spool filled, I turned the volume to near inaudible and pressed PLAY. My gut knotted in anticipation. Then the screams came on.

  Even that soft, it was hideous.

  Someone being hurt.

  Then the child's chant again, even worse in replay. The robotic drone conjured a gray face, sunken eyes, a small mouth barely moving.

  Bad love. Bad love . . .

  What had been done to strip the voice so completely of emotion?

  I'd heard that kind of voice before—on the terminal wards, in holding cells and shelters.

  Bad love . . .

  The phrase was vaguely familiar, but why?

  I sat there for a long time, trying to remember, letting my coffee go cold and untouched. Finally I got up, ejected the tape, and took it into the library.

  Down into the desk drawer, next to Ruthanne's file.

  Dr. Delaware's Black Museum.

  My heart was still chopping away. The screams and chants replayed themselves in my mind.

  The house felt too empty. Robin was not due back from Oakland till Thursday.

  At least she hadn't been home to hear it.

  Old protective instincts.

  During our years together I'd worked hard at shielding her from the uglier aspects of my work. Eventually, I realized I'd erected the barrier higher than it needed to be and had been trying to let her in more.

  But not this. No need for her to hear this.

  I sank lower into my desk chair, wondering what the damned thing meant.

  Bad love . . . what should I do about it?

  A sick joke?

  The child's voice . . .

  Bad love . . . I knew I'd heard the phrase before. I repeated it out loud, trying to trigger a memory. But the words just hovered, chattering like bats.

  A psychological phrase? Something out of a textbook?

  It did have a psychoanalytic ring.

  Why had the tape been sent to me?

  Stupid question. I'd never been able to answer it for anyone else.

  Bad love . . . most likely something orthodox Freudian. Melanie Klein had theorized about good breasts and bad breasts—perhaps there was someone out there with a sick sense of humor and a side interest in neo-Freudian theory.

  I went to my bookshelves, pulled out a dictionary of psychological terms. Nothing. Tried lots of other books, scanning indexes.

  Not a clue.

  I returned to the desk.

  A former patient taunting me for services poorly rendered?

  Or something more recent—Donald Dell Wallace, festering up in Folsom, seeing me as his enemy and trying to play with my head?

  His attorney, a dimwit named Sherman Bucklear, had called me several times before I'd seen the girls, trying to convince me his client was a devoted father.

  “It was Ruthanne neglected them, Doctor. Whatever else Donald Dell did, he cared about them.”

  “How was he on child support?”

  “Times are rough. He did the best he could—does that prejudice you, Doctor?”

  “I haven't formed an opinion yet, Mr. Bucklear.”

  “No, of course not. No one's saying you should. The question is, are you willing to form one at all or do you have your mind made up just because of what Donald Dell did?”

  “I'll spend time with the girls. Then I'll form my opinion.”

  “ 'Cause there's a lot of potential for prejudice against my client.”

  “Because he murdered his wife?”

  “That's exactly what I mean, Doctor—you know, I can always bring in my own experts.”

  “Feel free.”

  “I feel very free, Doctor. This is a free country. You'd do well to remember that.”

  Other experts. Was this bit of craziness an attempt to intimidate me so that I'd drop out of the case and clear the way for Bucklear's hired guns? Donald Dell's gang, the Iron Priests, had a history of bullying rivals in the meth trade, but I still didn't see it. How could anyone assume I'd make a connection between screams and chants and two little girls?

  Unless this was only the first step in a campaign of intimidation. Even so, it was almost clownishly heavyhanded.

  Then again, Donald Dell's leaving his ID at the murder scene didn't indicate finesse.

  I'd consult an expert of my own. Dialing the West L.A. police station, I was connected to Robbery-Homicide, where I asked for Detective Sturgis.

  Milo was out of the office—no big surprise. He'd endured a demotion and six months' unpaid suspension for breaking the jaw of a homophobic lieutenant who'd put his life in danger, then a butt-numbing year as a computer clerk at Parker Center. The department had hoped inertia would finally drive him into disability retirement; the LAPD still denied the existence of gay cops, and Milo's very presence was an assault upon that ostrich logic. But he'd stuck it out and finally gotten back into active service as a Detective II. Back on the streets now, he was making the most of it.

  “Any word when he'll be back?” I asked the detective who answered.

  “Nope,” he said, sounding put upon.

  I left my name. He said, “Uh-huh,” and hung up.

  I decided nothing further could be gained by worrying, changed into a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, and trotted out the front door, ready for a half-hour run, knees be damned.

  Bounding down the steps, I jogged across the motor court, passing the spot where Evelyn Rodriguez's car had leaked oil. Just as I rounded the eugenia hedge that blocked my house from the old bridle path winding above the Glen, something stepped in front of me and stopped.

  And stared.

  A dog, but I'd never seen one like it.

  Small dog—about a foot high, maybe twice that in length. Short, black coat brindled with yellow hairs. A lot of muscle crammed into the compact package; its body bulged and gleamed in the sunlight. It had thick legs, a bull neck, a barrel chest, and a tight, tucked-in belly. Its head was disproportionately wide and square, its face flat, deeply wrinkled, and pendulously jowled.

  Somewhere between frog, monkey, and extraterrestrial.

  A strand of drool dangled from its flews.

  It continued to look me straight in the eye, arching forward, as if ready to spring. Its tail was an inch of stub. Male. Neutered.

  I stared back. He snorted and yawned, showing big, sharp, white teeth. A banana-sized tongue curled upward and licked meaty lips.

  A diamond of white hair in the center of his chest throbbed with cardiac excitement. Around his beefy neck was a nailhead-studded collar, but no tag.

  “Hi, fella.”

  His eyes were light brown and unmoving. I thought I detected a softness that contradicted the fighter's stance.

  Another yawn. Purple maw. He panted faster and remained rooted in place.

  Some kind of bulldog or mini-mastiff. From the crust around his eyes and the heaving of his chest, the early autumn heat wasn't doing him any good. Not a pug—considerably bigger than a pug, and the ears stood upright, like those of a Boston terrier—in fact, he looked a bit like a Boston. But shorter and a lot heavier—a Boston on steroids.

  An exotic dwarf fighter bred to go for the kneecaps, or a pup that would turn massive?

  He yawned again and snorted harshly.

  We continued to face off.

  A bird chirped.

  The dog cocked his head toward the sound for half a second, then peered back at me. His eyes were preternaturally alert, almos
t human.

  He licked his lips. The drool strand stretched, broke, and fell to the pavement.

  Pant, pant, pant.

  “Thirsty?”

  No movement.

  “Friend or foe?”

  Another display of teeth that seemed more smile than snarl, but who knew?

  Another moment of standoff, then I decided letting something this pint-sized obstruct me was ridiculous. Even with the bulk, he couldn't weigh more than twenty or twenty-five pounds. If he did attack, I could probably punt-kick him onto the Glen.

  I took a step forward, then another.

  The dog came toward me deliberately, head lowered, muscles meshing, in a rolling, pantherish gait. Wheezing.

  I stopped. He kept going.

  I lifted my hands out of mouth range, suddenly aware of my exposed legs.

  He came up to me. Up to my legs. Rubbed his head against my shin.

  His face felt like hot suede. Too hot and dry for canine health.

  I reached down and touched his head. He snorted and panted faster, letting his tongue loll. I lowered my hand slowly and dangled it, receiving a long lick on the palm. But my skin remained bone dry.

  The pants had turned into unhealthy-sounding clicks.

  He tremored for a second, then worked his tongue over his arid face.

  I kneeled and patted his head again, feeling a flat plate of thick, ridged bone beneath the glossy coat. He looked up at me with a bulldog's sad-clown dignity. The crust around his eyes looked calcified. The folds of his face were encrusted, too.

  The nearest water source was the garden-hose outlet near the pond. I stood and gestured toward it.

  “Come on, buster—hydration.”

  The dog strained but stayed in place, head cocked, letting out raspy breaths that grew faster and faster and began to sound labored. I thought I saw his front legs quaver.

  I began walking to the garden. Heard soft pads and looked behind me to see him following a few paces behind. Keeping to the left—a trained heeler?

  But as I opened the gate to the pond, he hung back, remaining well outside the fence.

  I went in. The pond water was greening due to the heat, but still clear. The koi were circling lazily. A couple of them saw me and approached the rim for feeding—babies who'd survived the surprise spawn of two summers ago. Most were over a foot long now. A few were colored brilliantly.

  The dog just stood there, nose pointed at the water, suffering.