Джонатан Келлерман - When the Bough Breaks

We went into the studio, which was empty. He placed the flowers in a vase. The practice room was an expanse of polished oak floor bordered by whitewashed walls. Autographed photographs of stars and near-stars hung in clusters. I went into a dressing room with the set of stiff white garments he gave me and emerged looking like an extra in a Bruce Lee movie.

Jaroslav was silent, letting his body and his hands talk. He positioned me in the center of the studio and stood facing me. He smiled faintly, we bowed to each other and he led me through a series of warm-up exercises that made my joints creak. It had been a long time.

When the introductory katas were through, we bowed again. He smiled, then proceeded to wipe the floor with me. At the end of one hour I felt as if I’d been stuffed down a garbage disposal. Every muscle fiber ached, every synapse quivered in exquisite agony.

He kept it up, smiling and bowing, sometimes letting out a perfectly controlled, high-pitched scream, tossing me around like a bean bag. By the end of the second hour, pain had ceased to be obtrusive – it had become a way of life, a state of consciousness. But when we stopped I was starting to feel in command of my body once again. I was breathing hard, stretching, blinking. My eyes burned as the perspiration dripped into them. Jaroslav looked as if he’d just finished reading the morning paper.

“You take a hot bath, Doctor, get some chickie to massage you, use a little witch hazel. And remember: practice, practice, practice.”

“I will, Andre.”

“You call me when I get back, in a week. I tell you about Shandra Layne and check if you’ve been practicing.” He poked a finger in my gut, playfully.

“It’s a deal.”

He held out his hand. I reached out to take it, then tensed, wondering if he was going to throw me again.

“Ya, good,” he said. Then he laughed and let me go.

The throbbing agony made me feel righteous and ascetic. I had lunch at a restaurant run by one of the dozens of quasi-Hindu cults that seem to prefer Los Angeles to Calcutta. A vacant-eyed, perpetually smiling girl swaddled in white robes and burnoose took my order. She had a rich kid’s face coupled with the mannerisms of a nun and managed to smile while she talked, smile as she wrote, smile as she walked away. I wondered if it hurt.

I finished a plate heaped with chopped lettuce, sprouts, refried soya beans and melted goat cheese on chapati bread – a sacred tost ada – and washed it down with two glasses of pineapple-coconut-guava nectar imported from the holy desert of Mojave. The bill came to ten dollars and thirty-nine cents. That explained the smiles.

I made it back to the house just as Milo pulled up in an unmarked bronze Matador.

“The Fiat finally died,” he explained. “I’m having it cremated and scattering the ashes over the offshore rigs in Long Beach.”

“My condolences.” I picked up Bruno’s file.

“Contributions to the down payment on my next lemon will be accepted in lieu of flowers.”

“Get Dr. Silverman to buy you one.”

“I’m working on it.”

He let me read for a few minutes then asked, “So what do you think?”

“No profound insights. Bruno was referred to Handler by the Probation Department after the bad check bust. Handler saw him a dozen times over a four-month period. When the probationary period was over so was the treatment. One thing I did notice was that Handler’s notes on him are relatively benign. Bruno was one of the more recently acquired patients. At the time he started therapy, Handler was at his nastiest, yet there are no vicious comments about him. Here, in the beginning Handler calls him a ‘slick con man.’ “ I flipped some pages. “A couple of weeks later he makes a crack about Bruno’s ‘Cheshire grin’. But after that, nothing.”

“As if they became buddies?”

“Why do you say that?”

Milo handed me a piece of paper. “Here,” he said, “look at this.”

It was a printout from the phone company.

“This,” he pointed to a circled seven-digit code, “is Handler’s number – his home number, not the office. And this one is Bruno’s.”

Lines had been drawn between the two, like lacing on a high-topped shoe. There’d been lots of connections over the last six months.

“Interesting, huh?”

“Very.”

“Here’s something else. Officially the coroner says it’s impossible to fix a time of death for Bruno. The heat inside the house screwed up the decomposition tables – with the flack they’ve been getting they’re not willing to go out on a limb and take the chance of being wrong. But I got one of the young guys to give me an off-the-record guess and he came up with ten to twelve days.”

“Right around the time Handler and Gutierrez were murdered.”

“Either right before or right after.”

“But what about the differing m.o.’s?”

“Who says people are consistent, Alex? Frankly there are other differences between the two cases besides m.o. In Bruno’s case it looks like forced entry. We found broken bushes under a rear window and chisel marks on the pane – used to be a kid’s room. Glendale P.D. also thinks they’ve got two sets of heel prints

“Two? Maybe Melody really saw something.” Dark men. Two or three.

“Maybe. But I’ve abandoned that line of attack. The kid will never be a reliable witness. In any event, despite the discrepancies, it looks like we might be on to something – what, I don’t know. Patient and doctor, concrete proof that they maintained some kind of contact after treatment was over, both ripped off around the same time. It’s too cute for coincidence.”

He studied his notes, looking scholarly. I thought about Handler and Bruno and then it hit me.

“Milo, we’ve been held back in our thinking by social roles.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Roles. Social roles – prescribed sets of behaviors. Like doctor and patient. Psychiatrist and psychopath. What are the characteristics of a psychopath?”

“Lack of conscience.”

“Right. And an inability to relate to other people except by exploiting them. The good ones have a glib, smooth façade, often they’re good-looking. Usually above-average intelligence. Sexually manipulative. A predilection to engage in cons, blackmail, frauds.”

Milo’s eyes opened wide.

“Handler.”

“Of course. We’ve been thinking of him as the doctor in the case and assuming psychological normalcy – he’s been protected, in our eyes, by his role. But take a closer look. What do we know about him? He was involved in insurance fraud. He tried to blackmail Roy Longstreth, using his power as a psychiatrist. He seduced at least one patient – Elaine Gutierrez – and who knows how many more? And those putdowns in the margins of his notes – at first I thought they were evidence of burnout, but now I don’t know. That was cold, pretending to listen to people, taking their money, insulting them. His notes were confidential – he never expected anyone else to read them. He could hang it all out, show his true colors. Milo, I tell you the guy comes across like your classic psychopath.”

“The evil doctor.”

“Not exactly a rara avis, is it? If there can be a Mengele, why not scores of Morton Handlers? What better façade for an intelligent psychopath than the title of Doctor – it yields instant prestige and credibility.”

“Psychopathic doctor and psychopathic patient.” He mulled it over. “Not buddies, but partners in crime.”

“Sure. Psychopaths don’t have buddies. Only victims and accomplices. Bruno must have been Handler’s dream come true if he was plotting something and needed one of his own kind for help. I’ll bet you those first sessions were incredible, the two of them hungry hyenas, checking each other out, looking over their shoulders, sniffing the ground.”