When the Bough Breaks

by Jonathan Kellerman

  She wasn't. Her mother led her into the living room and then left with Milo. She stared off into the distance, sucking her thumb. She was a small child. If I hadn't known her age I would have guessed it at five, maybe five-and-a-half. She had a long, grave face with oversized brown eyes. Her straight blond hair hung to her shoulders, held in place by twin plastic barettes. She wore blue jeans and a blue-greenandwhite-striped T-shirt. Her feet were dirty and bare.

  I led her to a chair and sat opposite her on the couch.

  "Hello, Melody. I'm Dr. Delaware. I'm a psychologist. Do you know what that is?"

  No response.

  "I'm the kind of doctor who doesn't give shots. What I do is talk and draw and play with kids. I try to help kids who are sad, or angry, or scared."

  At the word scared she looked up for a second. Then she resumed staring past me and sucked her thumb.

  "Do you know why I'm talking to you?"

  A shake of the head.

  "It's not because you're sick or because you've done anything wrong. We know you're a good girl."

  Her eyes moved around the room, avoiding me.

  "I'm here because you may have seen something last night that's important. When you couldn't sleep and were looking out the window."

  She didn't answer. I continued.

  "Melody, what kind of things do you like to do?"

  Nothing.

  "Do you like to play?"

  She nodded.

  "I like to play too. And I like to skate. Do you skate?"

  "Uh-uh." Of course not. Skates make noise.

  "And I like to watch movies. Do you watch movies?"

  She mumbled something. I bent closer.

  "What's that, hon?"

  "On TV." Her voice was thin and quivering, a trembling breathy sound like the breeze through dry leaves.

  "Uh-uh. On TV. I watch TV, too. What shows do you like to watch?"

  "ScoobyDoo."

  "Scooby-Doo. That's a good show. Any other shows?"

  "My mama watches the soap operas."

  "Do you like the soap operas?"

  She shook her head.

  "Pretty boring, huh?"

  A hint of a smile, around the thumb.

  "Do you have toys, Melody?"

  "In my room."

  "Could you show them to me?"

  The room she shared with her mother was neither adult nor childlike in character. It was no more than ten foot square, low-ceilinged with a solitary window set high in the wall, which gave it the ambience of a dungeon. Melody and Bonita shared one twin bed unadorned by a headboard. It was half unmade, the thin chenille spread folded back to reveal rumpled sheets. On one side of the bed was a nightstand filled with bottles and jars of cold cream, hand lotion, brushes, combs and a piece of cardboard onto which a score of bobby pins were clasped. On the other side was a huge, moth-eaten stuffed walrus, made of fuzzy material and colored an atrocious turquoise blue. A baby picture was the sole adornment on the wall. A sagging bureau made of unfinished pine and covered with a crocheted doily, and the TV, were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.

  In one corner was a small pile of toys.

  Melody led me over to it, hesitantly. She picked up a grimy, naked plastic baby doll.

  "Amanda," she said.

  "She's beautiful."

  The child clutched the doll to her chest and rocked back and forth.

  "You must really take good care of her."

  "I do." It was said defensively. This was a child who was not used to praise.

  "I know you do," I said gently. I looked over to the walrus. "Who's he?"

  "Fatso. My daddy gave him to me."

  "He's cute."

  She walked over to the animal, which was as tall as she, and stroked it purposefully.

  "Mama wants me to throw him out 'cause he's too big. But I won't let her."

  "Fatso's really important to you."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Daddy gave him to you."

  She nodded, emphatically, and smiled. I'd passed some kind of test.

  For the next twenty-five minutes we sat on the floor and played.

  When Milo and the mother returned, Melody and I were in fine spirits. We'd built and destroyed several worlds.

  "Well, you're sure lookin' frisky," said Bonita.

  "We're having a good time, Mrs. Quinn. Melody's been a very good girl."

  "That's good." She went over to her daughter and placed a hand on her head. "That's good, hon."

  There was unexpected tenderness in her eyes, then it was gone. She turned to me and asked:

  "How'd it go with the hypnotism?"

  She asked it the same way she might inquire, how's my kid doing in arithmetic.

  "We haven't done any hypnosis yet. Melody and I are just getting to know each other."

  I drew her aside.

  "Mrs. Quinn, hypnosis requires trust on the part of the child. I usually spend a little time with children beforehand. Melody was very cooperative."

  "She didn't tell you nothin'?" She reached into the breast pocket of her shirt and pulled out another cigarette. I lit it for her and the gesture surprised her.

  "Nothing of importance. With your permission I'd like to come over some time tomorrow and spend a little more time with Melody."

  She eyed me suspiciously, chewed on the cigarette, then shrugged.

  "You're the doctor."

  We rejoined Milo and the child. He was kneeling on one leg and showing her his detective's badge. Her eyes were wide.

  "Melody, if it's okay with you, I'd like to come by tomorrow and play with you some more."

  She looked up at her mother and began sucking her thumb again.

  "It's fine with me," Bonita Quinn said curtly. "Now run along."

  Melody sprang for her room. She stopped in the doorway and gave me a tentative look. I waved, she waved back and then she disappeared. A second later the TV began blaring.

  "One more thing, Mrs. Quinn. I'll need to talk to Dr. Towle before I do any hypnosis with Melody."

  "That's okay."

  "I'll need your permission to talk with Dr. Towle about the case. You realize he's professionally bound to keep this confidential, just as I am."

  "That's okay. I trust Dr. Towle."

  "And I may ask him to take her off her medicine for a couple of days."

  "Oh all right, all right." She waved her hand, exasperated.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Quinn."

  We left her standing in front of her apartment, smoking frantically, taking the towel off her head and shaking her hair loose in the midday sun.

  I took the wheel of the Seville and drove slowly up toward Sunset.

  "Stop smirking, Milo."

  "What's that?" He was looking out the passenger window, his hair flapping like duck wings.

  "You know you've got me hooked, don't you? A kid like that, those big eyes like something out of a Keene painting."

  "If you want to quit right now, it wouldn't make me happy, Alex. But I wouldn't stop you. There's still time for gnocchi."

  "The hell with gnocchi. Let's talk with Dr. Towle."

  The Seville was consuming fuel with customary gluttony. I pulled into a Chevron self-serve at Bundy. While Milo pumped gas I got Towle's number from information and dialed it. I used my title and got through to the doctor in a half-minute. I gave him a brief explanation of why I needed to talk with him and told him we could chat now over the phone.

  "No," he said. "I've got an office full of kids." His voice was smooth and reassuring, the kind of voice a parent would want to hear at two in the morning when the baby was turning blue.

  "When would be a good time to call you?"

  He didn't answer. I could hear the bustle of activity in the background, then muffled voices. He came back on the line.

  "How about dropping by at four-thirty? I've got a lull around then."

  "I appreciate your time, Doctor."

  "No bother." And he hung up.

&
nbsp; I left the phone booth. Milo was removing the nozzle from the rear of the Seville, holding it at arm's length to avoid getting gasoline on his suit.

  I settled in the driver's seat and stuck my head out the window.

  "Catch the windshield for me, son."

  He made a gargoyle face--not much of an effort and gave me the finger. Then he went to work with paper towels.

  It was two-forty and we were only fifteen minutes from Towle's office. That left over an hour to kill. Neither of us was in a good enough mood to want first rate food, so we drove back to "West L.A. and went to Angela's.

  Milo ordered something called a San Francisco Deluxe Omelette. It turned out to be a bright yellow horror stuffed with spinach, tomatoes, ground beef, chilies, onions and marinated eggplant. He dug into it with relish while I contented myself with a steak sandwich and a Coors. In between bites he talked about the Handler murder.

  "It's a puzzler, Alex. You've got all the signs of a psychotic thrill killer--both of them trussed up in the bedroom, like animals ready for the slaughter. And stuck about five dozen times. The girl looked like she ran into Jack the Ripper with her--"

  "Spare me." I pointed to my food.

  "Sorry. I forget when I'm talking to a civilian. You get used to it after wading in it for a few years. You can't stop living, so you learn to eat and drink and fart through all of it." He wiped his face with his napkin and took a long, deep swallow of his beer. "Anyway, despite the craziness, there's no sign of forced entry. The front door was open. Normally that would be very puzzling. Except in this case with the victim being a psychiatrist, it might make sense, his knowing the bad guy and letting him in." "You think it was one of his patients?"

  "It's a good possibility. Psychiatrists have been known to deal with crazies."

  "I'd be surprised if it turned out that way, Milo. Ten to one Handler had a typical West Side practice-depressed middle-aged women, disillusioned executives, and a few adolescent identity crises thrown in for good measure."

  "Do I detect a note of cynicism?"

  I shrugged.

  "That's just the way it is in most cases. High priced friendship--not that it's not valuable, mind you. But there's very little real mental illness in what most of us--psychiatrists, psychologists--see in practice. The real crazies, the really disturbed ones, are hospitalized."

  "Handler worked at a hospital before he went out on his own. Encino Oaks."

  "Maybe you'll dig up something there," I said doubtfully. I was tired of being the wet blanket so I didn't tell him that Encino Oaks Hospital was a repository for the suicidal progeny of the rich. Very little sexual psychopathy, there.

  He pushed his empty plate away and motioned for the waitress.

  "Bettijean, a nice slab of that green apple pie, please."

  "A la mode, Milo?"

  He patted his gut and pondered.

  "What the hell, why not. Vanilla."

  "And you, sir?"

  "Just coffee, please."

  When she had gone he continued, thinking out loud more than talking to me.

  "Anyway, it appears as if Dr. Handler let someone in to his place sometime between midnight and one and got ripped up for his efforts."

  "And the Gutierrez woman?"

  "Your quintessential innocent bystander. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  "She was Handler's girlfriend?"

  He nodded.

  "For about six months. From the little we've learned she started out as a patient and ended up going from couch to bed."

  A not uncommon story.

  "The irony of it was that she was hacked up worse than he was. Handler got his throat slit and probably died relatively quickly. There were a few other holes in him but nothing lethal. It looks as if the killer took his time with her. Makes sense if it's a sexual crazy."

  I could feel my digestive process come to a halt. I changed the subject.

  "Who's your new love?"

  The pie came. Milo smiled at the waitress and attacked the pastry. I noticed that the filling was indeed green, a bright, almost luminescent green. Someone in the kitchen was fooling around with food dyes. I shuddered to think what they could do with something really challenging, like a pizza. It would probably end up looking like a mad artist's palette.

  "A doctor. A nice Jewish doctor." He looked heavenward. "Every mother's dream."

  "What happened to Larry?"

  "He's gone off to find his fortunes in San Francisco."

  Larry was a black stage manager with whom Milo had conducted an on-again, off-again relationship for two years. Their last half-year had been grimly platonic. "He's hooked up with some show sponsored by an anonymous corporation. Something racy for educational television, along the lines of "Our Agricultural Heritage: Your Friend the Plough." Hot stuff."

  "Bitchy, bitchy."

  "No, really, I do wish the boy well. Behind that neurotic exterior was genuine talent."

  "How did you meet your doctor?"

  "He works the Emergency Room at Cedars. A surgeon, no less. I was following up an assault that turned into manslaughter, he was commandeering the catheters, and our eyes locked. The rest is history."

  I laughed so hard the coffee almost went up my nose.

  "He's been out of the closet for about two years. Marriage in medical school, messy divorce, excommunication by family. The whole bit. Fantastic guy, you'll have to meet him."

  "I'd like to."

  "Give me a few days to slog through Morton Handler's life history and we'll double."

  "It's a deal."

  It was five to four. I let the Los Angeles Police Department pay for my lunch. In the best tradition of policemen the world over, Milo left an enormous tip. He patted Bettijean's fanny on the way out and her laughter followed us out on to the street.

  Santa Monica Boulevard was beginning to choke up with traffic and the air had started to foul. I closed the Seville's windows and turned on the air conditioning. I slipped a tape of Joe Pass and Stephane Grappelli into the deck. The sound of "Only a Paper Moon," delivered hot forties style, filled the car. The music made me feel good. Milo took a cat nap, snoring deeply. I eased the Seville into the traffic and headed back to Brentwood.

  4

  Towle's office was on a side street off San Vicente, not far from the Brentwood Country Mart--one of the few neighborhoods where movie stars could shop without being harassed. It was in a building designed during the early fifties, when tan brick, low-slung roofs and wall inserts of glass cubes were in vogue. Plantings of asparagus fern and climbing bougainvillaea did something to relieve the starkness, but it still looked pretty severe.

  Towle was the building's sole occupant and his name was stenciled in gold leaf on the glass front door. The parking lot was a haven for wood-sided station wagons. We pulled in next to a blue Lincoln with a speak up for children bumper sticker that I figured belonged to the good doctor himself.

  Inside, the decor was something else. It was as if some interior decorator had tried to make up for the harshness of the building by cramming the waiting room full of mush. The furniture was colonial maple with nubby seat cushions. The walls were covered with needlepoint homilies and cutesy-poo prints of little boys fishing and little girls preening themselves in front of mirrors, wearing mommy's hat and shoes. The room was full of children and harried-looking mothers. Magazines, books and toys cluttered the floor. There was an odor of dirty diapers in the air. If this was Towle's lull I didn't want to be there during his busy period.

  When we walked in, two childless males, we drew stares from the women. We had agreed beforehand that Towle would relate better doctor to doctor, so Milo found a seat sandwiched in between two five year-olds and I walked to the reception window. The girl on the other side was a sweet young thing with Farrah Fawcett hair and a face almost as pretty as that of her role model. She was dressed in white and her name tag proclaimed her to be Sandi.

  "Hi. I'm Dr. Delaware. I've got an appointment with Dr. T
owle."

  I got a smile fronted by lots of nice, white teeth.

  "Appointments don't mean much this afternoon. But come right in. He'll be with you in just a minute."