Time Bomb

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “September. Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing him for a while.”

  “Did Holly show any signs of being upset around that time?”

  “Upset? No, not that I noticed. How did he die?”

  “He was murdered.”

  “Oh, my. By whom?”

  “It’s unsolved. The police think it was some sort of drug deal gone bad.”

  “The police... Do they think there’s some connection to Holly?”

  “No. It just came up when they traced her former acquaintances.”

  “Acquaintances,” he said. “One thing I can guarantee you is that Holly had nothing to do with drugs.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t.”

  “She had nothing to do with shooting at children, either.” Pause. “But what if she got... caught up in something? If Novato got her into something.”

  “Such as?”

  “Some kind of corruption.”

  He closed his eyes. A long silence passed and his face lost expression; taking his self-absorption under wraps. One of the laser printers spewed paper. Some of it fell to the floor. He ignored it, finally opened his eyes.

  “Anything else?” he said, still sounding preoccupied.

  “The police said it was your rifle she took to the school. Did she know how to shoot?”

  “Not at all. She hated weapons. My firearms collection was the one part of the house she refused to clean. So that whole theory is nonsense.”

  “She was found with the rifle.”

  “That doesn’t make her a murderer. She could have been lured there, convinced to take the Remington with her.”

  A flight of wishful thinking rapid enough to make my nose bleed. I said, “Lured how?”

  “I don’t know. Yet. But this Novato situation gives me something to chew on. Perhaps one of his gang friends had something to do with it.”

  “There’s no evidence he was involved with gangs.”

  “In this city, drugs mean gangs.”

  Another long silence.

  I said, “When did you notice the rifle was missing?”

  “I didn’t, but that means nothing. I rarely looked at the collection—I’d lost interest in it.”

  “Where do you keep the collection?”

  He got up and took me back out into the hall. The door next to Holly’s room opened to a deep cedar closet lined with gun racks on three walls. The racks were empty. The floor had been vacuumed. The space smelled of machine oil and tarnish.

  “The police took all of it,” he said. “Every piece. For analysis. I’m supposed to get it back soon. But you can bet it will take plenty of wrestling with red tape.”

  I counted eight slots on each of the three racks. “Nice size collection.”

  “All long guns. Antiques, for the most part. Flintlocks. Black powder. In nonfunctional condition. I bought the lot as an investment when I was being discharged from the service. An old army acquaintance needed quick cash. They’ve performed quite nicely as investments, though I never bothered to sell because, frankly, I don’t need the money.”

  Thinking of Holly’s poor marksmanship, I said, “What about the Remington?”

  “What about it?”

  “Was it a collector’s item too?”

  “No, just a run-of-the-mill Remington. Legal and registered.”

  “For hunting?”

  He shook his head. “Used to hunt but haven’t since I was a boy. I was an excellent shot—won marksman’s ribbons in the army—but I had no reason to pursue it any further. The rifle was for personal protection.”

  I said, “Did you have some brush with crime that led you to arm yourself?”

  That amused him. “No, this was an ounce of prevention. Where I grew up—rural Wisconsin—guns are a part of any household, just like salt and meat and butter. No doubt you advocate gun control.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Being liberal—most mental health people are liberal, aren’t they? Stubborn believers in the basic goodness of humanity. In any event, I’m not apologetic about keeping arms, and the suggestion that somehow I’m to blame for what happened is absurd. Besides, Holly never shot at anyone—never would, never could. She didn’t know how to handle firearms. That’s why none of what they’re saying makes sense. Unless she was corrupted.”

  “The night before the shooting,” I said, “did you hear her leave the house?”

  “No,” he said. “I go to bed early. I’m an extremely sound sleeper.”

  “Does the house have an alarm system?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Though you’ll notice there’s no console pad in the entry hall. My system’s a good deal more subtle.”

  “Did Holly know how to operate it?”

  “Of course. She wasn’t imprisoned.”

  “And she switched it off before she left?”

  “The alarm never went off, so obviously she did. But she switched it on again—it was set when I woke up. I had no idea she’d left.”

  “Was that typical of her when she left at night?”

  “Leaving at night wasn’t typical.”

  “Mr. Burden, Holly was seen taking walks around the neighborhood at night.”

  More genuine surprise. “Well... she may have stepped out from time to time—to chase away a cat, or take some air. But by and large she stayed in her room. She had everything she needed right here.”

  His stare was fierce. He looked at his watch. “I suppose that’s it for today.”

  A statement, not a question.

  I said, “Sure.”

  He walked me to the door.

  “So,” he said, “How’re we doing? What do you think?”

  “We’re doing fine.”

  He took hold of my sleeve. “She was an innocent, believe me. Anaïf. IQ of eighty-seven. You, more than anyone, know what that means. She lacked the intellectual capacity to plot. And violence wasn’t in her nature—I didn’t raise her that way. She’d have no reason to shoot anyone. Certainly not children.”

  “Would she have reason to shoot a politician?”

  He shook his head, exasperated. “I can’t help but feel, Doctor, that you’re still not grasping who she was, the way she lived. She never read the papers, never cared a whit about politics or current affairs or the outside world. She slept late, listened to her radio, did her dances, cleaned the house. Scrubbed it until it sparkled. At the proper time, she prepared simple meals for both of us—cold food. I did all the cooking when cooking was called for. She liked her routine. She found comfort in it.”

  He removed his glasses, held them up to the entry light and peered through them.

  “It won’t be the same without her. I’ll be doing those things for myself now.”

  During the time I’d spent there, the sun had set and I walked out into darkness. It enhanced the feeling of having been away for a long time. Having been on another planet.

  An unsettling man. The portrait he’d painted of his daughter was bleak. But instructive.

  Living in a cell.

  Talking to herself.

  Scrubbing everything spotless.

  Not autistic, but aspects of her behavior had an autistic flavor: self-absorption to an extent that implied mental disorder.

  Creating her own world. Like father, like daughter.

  But he’d willed his isolation. Channeled it lucratively. The New Age Entrepreneur.

  Had she encased herself in a bubble only to be trapped within? A victim of genetic insult? Environmental accident? Some incalculable combination of both?

  Or had she taken on her father’s life-style of her own free will?

  Had she been capable of free will?

  She enjoyed doing things for me.

  Had the purveyor of gadgets manufactured himself a house-cleaning robot—efficient, mechanical, like some high-priced toy out of his catalogue? Adapted her inadequacies and pathology to his needs?

  I’ve done my reading on child psychology... know all the theori
es of child abuse... She wasn’t imprisoned....

  A little too quick on the draw?

  Or was I just letting clinical guesswork get the better of me because he wasn’t a likable man?

  I reminded myself he was a victim, wanted to feel more sympathy, not the resentment that had grown within me during my incarceration in that cold, empty house.

  I realized I was thinking of him, instead of Holly. Taken in by his narcissism.

  I forced myself back to the main subject.

  Whatever her motivations, an image of Holly Lynn Burden had emerged from the murky ground of the interview.

  Early childhood loss.

  Repressed anger.

  Mental confusion.

  Low intelligence.

  Low achievement.

  Low self-esteem.

  Social isolation.

  A young woman with no external life and a flood of unknown fantasies swimming through her head.

  Dark fantasies?

  Stir in a parental attitude that disparaged authority. Disparaged all schools, and one school in particular.

  Add a sprinkling of new friendship, snipped cruelly by violence. Buried rage that buds anew. And grows.

  Night walks.

  Guns in a closet.

  Mahlon Burden couldn’t have come up with a better profile of a mass murderer had I dictated it to him.

  A profile of a time bomb, ticking away.

  19

  I got home to a dark, empty house. Over the last few months—the post-Robin months—I’d worked hard at learning to consider that soothing. Worked hard under the tutelage of a kind, strong therapist named Ada Small. Ever the conscientious pupil, I’d applied myself, gaining an appreciation for the value of solitude—the healing and peace that could come from moderate doses of introspection. Not that long ago, Ada and I had agreed to cut the cord.

  But this evening, solitude seemed too much like solitary confinement. I switched on plenty of lights, tuned the stereo to KKGO, and cranked up the volume even though the jazz that blared out was some new wave soprano-sax stuff in a bloodcurdling-scream-as-art-form mode. Any-thing but silence.

  I kept thinking about my meeting with Burden. The shifting faces he’d shown during the course of the interview.

  The shifting attitudes he’d displayed toward his daughter.

  There’d been an introductory display of grief, but his tears had dried quickly in the sanctuary of his computer womb, only to be followed by a shallow lament: I’ll be doing those things for myself now.

  He might have been discussing the loss of a cleaning woman.

  Once again I told myself not to judge. The man had been through hell. What could be worse than the death of a child? Add to that the way she’d died—the public shame and collective guilt that even someone like Milo was quick to assign—and who could blame him for retreating, gathering whatever psychological armaments he had at his command?

  I let that rationalization settle for a while.

  His behavior still bothered me. The detachment when he’d talked about her.

  An IQ in the Dull Normal range...

  It was as if her weaknesses, her failure to be brilliant, had been a personal insult to him.

  I imagined a Burden family crest. Crossed muskets over a field of Straight A’s.

  A man used to having his way. She’d upset his sense of organization, had been an affront to his system.

  Using her to clean house. Prepare cold food.

  Some sort of punishment? Or simply an efficient allocation of resources?

  Yet at the same time, against all logic, he was proclaiming her innocence.

  Contracting me for... what? A psychological whitewash?

  Something didn’t fit. I sat struggling with it. Finally told myself to stop taking my work home. Once upon a time I’d been good at following that dictum. Once upon a time life had seemed simpler....

  Suddenly the music was ear-shattering. I realized I’d blocked it out. Now I could barely stand it and went to switch stations. Just as I touched the dial, the saxophonist quit and some Stanley Jordan guitar wizardry came on. Good omen. Time to push all thoughts of the Burden family from my mind.

  But my mind was no different from anyone else’s: It abhorred a vacuum. I needed something to fill the space.

  Call Linda. Then I remembered her restlessness. Needing to breathe. I’d learned the hard way not to crowd.

  I realized I was hungry, went into the kitchen and took out eggs, mushrooms, and an onion. Jordan gave way to Spyro Gyra doing “Shake Her.” I cracked eggs, chopped vegetables in tempo. Paying attention in order to get it just right.

  I fried up an omelet, ate, read psych journals, and did paperwork for an hour, then stepped onto the skiing machine and pretended I was crossing some snow-filled meadow in Norway. Midway through the fantasy, Gregory Graff’s bearded visage appeared through the sweat-haze, urging me to work harder. Reciting a list of brand-new products that could maximize my performance. I told him to fuck himself and huffed away.

  I got off a half hour later, dripping and ready to sink into a hot bath. The phone rang.

  Milo said, “So how’d it go?”

  “No big surprises. She was a girl with lots of problems.”

  “Homicidal problems?”

  “Nothing that overt.” I gave him a brief rundown on what Burden had told me.

  He said, “Sounds like she led like a great life.” I thought I detected sympathy in his voice. “That’s all the father knows about Novato?”

  “That’s what he says. You learn anything new?”

  “Called Maury Smith at Southeast. He remembered the case—said it was still unsolved, one of many. He wasn’t working on it actively because no leads had turned up. There was definitely some of that attitude Dinwiddie had picked up—just another dope burn. He did wake up a bit when I told him it might be related to something on the West Side and he agreed to meet with me tomorrow for lunch and pull the file. I also got the address of the land-lady—Sophie Gruenberg. He remembered her pretty vividly. Said she was an old commie, really hostile to the police, kept asking him how he could stand being a black cossack. That sounded so inviting I thought I’d drop in on her tomorrow morning.”

  “Care for a ride-along?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Do pinkos relate well to shrinks?”

  “Hell, yes. Marx and Freud bowled together every Tuesday at Vienna Lanes. Freud got strikes; Marx fomented them.”

  He laughed.

  “Besides,” I said, “what makes you think she’ll relate to a white cossack?”

  “Not just any cossack, m’lad. This one’s a member of a persecuted minority.”

  “Planning on wearing your lavender uniform?”

  “If you put on your feather boa.”

  “I’ll go digging in the attic. What time?”

  “How’s about nine.”

  “How’s about.”

  He came by at eight-forty, driving an unmarked Ford that I’d never seen before. Sophie Gruenberg’s address was on Fourth Avenue, just north of Rose. A short stroll to the beach but this wasn’t Malibu. It was a cold morning, the sun lurking like a mugger behind a grimy bank of undernourished, striated clouds, but zinc-nosed pedestrians were already tramping down Rose, headed for the ocean.

  The business mix on Rose proclaimed Changing Neighborhood. In Venice, that meant business as usual; this neighborhood never stopped changing. Designer delis, gelato parlors, and cubbyhole trendtiques shared the sidewalk with laundromats, check-cashing outlets, serious-drinking bars, and crumbling bungalow courts that could be emptied by scrutiny from the Immigration Service. Milo turned right on Fourth and drove for a block.

  The house was a one-story side-by-side duplex on a thirty-foot-wide lot. The windows were covered with iron security bars that looked brand-new. The walls were white stucco with red-painted wood trim under a brick-colored composition roof. The front lawn was tiny but green enough to satisfy the Ocean Heights Landscap
e Committee, and backed by a large germinating yucca plant and a nubby bed of ice plants. Dwarf iceberg roses lined a concrete path that forked to a pair of front stoops. The two doors were also red-painted wood. Brass letters designated them “A” and “B.”