Джонатан Келлерман - When the Bough Breaks

He grabbed the Coors out of my hand, tilted it over his mouth, and let some of the foam dribble down his chin.

“The things that I see – the monstrous things that we supposed humans do to each other. The shit I’ve become inured to. Sometimes it makes me want to puke.”

He drank silently for a few minutes.

“You’re a goddamn good listener, Alex. All that training wasn’t for naught.”

“One good turn, my friend.”

“Yeah, right. Now that you mention it, Hickle was another shitty case. I never convinced myself that was suicide. It stunk to high heaven.”

“You never told me.”

“What’s to tell? I’ve no evidence. Just a gut feeling. I’ve got lots of gut feelings. Some of them gnaw at me and keep me up at night. To paraphrase Del, my gut feelings and ten cents.”

He crushed the empty can between his thumb and forefinger, with the ease of someone pulverizing a gnat.

“Hickle stunk to high heaven, but I had no evidence. So I wrote it off. Like a bad debt. No one argued, no one gave a shit, just like no one’ll give a shit when we write off Handler and the Gutierrez girl. Keep the records tidy, wrap it up, seal it, and kiss it goodbye.”

Seven more beers, another half-hour of ranting and punishing himself, and he was stoned drunk. He crashed on the leather sofa, going down like a B-52 with a bellyful of shrapnel.

I slipped his shoes off and placed them on the floor beside him. I was about just to leave him that way, when I realized it had turned dark.

I called his home number. A deep, rich male voice answered.

“Hello.”

“Hello, this is Alex Delaware, Milo’s friend.”

“Yes?” Wariness.

“The psychologist.”

“Yes. Milo’s spoken of you. I’m Rick Silverman.”

The doctor, the mother’s dream, now had a name.

“I just called to let you know that Milo stopped by here after work to discuss a case and he got kind of intoxicated.”

“I see.”

I felt an absurd urge to explain to the man at the other end that there was really nothing going on between Milo and me, that we were just good friends. I suppressed it.

“Actually, he got stoned. Had eleven beers. He’s sleeping it off now. I just wanted you to know.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” Silverman said, acidly.

“I’ll wake him, if you’d like.”

“No, that’s quite all right. Milo’s a big boy. He’s free to do as he pleases. No need to check in.”

I wanted to tell him, listen you insecure, spoiled brat, I just called to do you a favor, to set your mind at ease. Don’t hand me any of your delicate indignation. Instead, I tried flattery.

“Okay, just thought I’d call you to let you know, Rick. I know how important you are to Milo, and I thought he’d want me to.”

“Uh, thanks. I really appreciate it.” Bingo. “Please excuse me. I’ve just come off a twenty-four-hour shift myself.”

“No problem.” I’d probably woken the poor devil. “Listen, how about if we get together some time – you and Milo and my girlfriend and myself?”

“I’d like that, Alex. Sure. Send the big slob home when he sobers up and we’ll work out the details.”

“Will do. Good talking to you.”

“Likewise.” He sighed. “Goodnight.”

At nine thirty Milo awoke with a wretched look on his face. He started to moan, turning his head from side to side. I mixed tomato juice, a raw egg, black pepper, and Tabasco in a tall glass, propped him up and poured it down his throat. He gagged, sputtered, and opened his eyes suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning had zapped him in the tailbone.

Forty minutes later he looked every bit as wretched but he was painfully sober.

I got him to the door and stuck the files of the nine psychopaths under his arm.

“Bedtime reading, Milo.”

He tripped down the stairs, swearing, made his way to the Fiat, groped at its door handle and threw himself in with a single lurching movement. With the aid of a rolling start, he got it ignited.

Alone at last, I got into bed, read the Times , watched TV – but damned if I could tell you what I saw, other than that it had lots of flat punch lines and jiggling boobs and cops who looked like male models. I enjoyed the solitude for a couple of hours, only pausing to think of murder and greed and twisted evil minds a few times before drifting off to sleep.

“All right,” said Milo. We were sitting in an interrogation room at West L.A. Division. The walls were pea-green paint and one-way mirrors. A microphone hung from the ceiling. The furniture consisted of a gray metal table and three metal folding chairs. There was a stale odor of sweat and falsehood and fear in the air, the stink of diminished human dignity.

He had fanned out the folders on the table and picked up the first one with a flourish.

“Here’s the way your nine bad guys shape up. Number one, Rex Alien Camblin, incarcerated at Soledad, assault and battery.” He let the folder drop. “Number two, Peter Lewis Jefferson, working on a ranch in Wyoming. Presence verified.”

“Pity the poor cattle.”

“That’s a fact – he looked like a likely one. Number three, Darwin Ward – you’ll never believe this – attending law school, Pennsylvania State University.”

“A psychopathic attorney – not all that amazing, really.”

Milo chuckled and picked up the next folder.

“Numero cuatro – uh – Leonard Jay Helsinger, working construction on the Alaska pipeline. Location likewise confirmed by Juneau P.D. Five, Michael Penn, student at Cal State Northridge. Him we talk to.” He put Penn’s file aside. “Six, Lance Arthur Shattuck, short-order cook on the Cunard Line luxury cruiser Helena , verified by the Coast Guard to have been floating around in the middle of the Aegean Sea somewhere for the past six weeks. Seven, Maurice Bruno, sales representative for Presto Instant Print in Burbank – another interviewee.” Bruno’s file went on top of Penn’s.

“Eight, Roy Longstreth, pharmacist for Thrifty’s Drug chain, Beverly Hills branch. Another one. And – last but not least – Gerard Paul Mendenhall, Corporal, United States Army, Tyler, Texas, presence verified.”

Beverly Hills was closer than either Northridge or Burbank, so we headed for Thrifty’s. The Beverly Hills branch turned out to be a brick-and-glass cube on Canon Drive just north of Wilshire. It shared a block with trendy boutiques and a Haagen Dazs ice-cream parlor.

Milo showed his badge surreptitiously to the girl behind the liquor counter and got the manager, a light skinned middle-aged black, in seconds flat. The manager got nervous and wanted to know if Longstreth had done anything wrong. In classic cop style, Milo hedged, “We just want to ask him a few questions.”

I had trouble keeping a straight face through that one, but the cliche seemed to satisfy the manager.

“He’s not here now. He comes on at two-thirty, works the night shift.”

“We’ll be back. Please don’t tell him we were here.”

Milo gave him his card. When we left he was studying it like a map to buried treasure.

The ride to Northridge was a half-hour cruise on the Ventura Freeway West. When we got to the Cal State campus, we headed straight for the registrar’s office. Milo obtained a copy of Michael Penn’s class schedule. Armed with that and his mug shot, we located him in twenty minutes, walking across a wide, grassy triangle accompanied by a girl.

“Mr. Penn?”

“Yes?” He was a good-looking fellow, medium height, with broad shoulders and long legs. His light brown hair was cut preppy short. He wore a light blue Izod shirt and blue jeans, penny loafers with no socks. I knew from his file that he was twenty-six but he looked five years younger. He had a pleasant, unlined face, a real all-American type. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d try to run someone down with a Pontiac Firebird.