Джонатан Келлерман - When the Bough Breaks

The ground at my feet radiated heat and the stench of something burning. Congealed tar. Toxic waste. Bioundegradable garbage. Polyvinyl vegetation. A bluejay had landed on Halstead’s face. It pecked at his eyes.

I found a dusty drop cloth peppered with specks of dried cement. The bird fled at my approach. I covered the body with the cloth, weighted down the corners with large stones and left him that way.

The address the receptionist had given me for Tim Kruger matched the oversized steel numbers on the face of a bone-white highrise on Ocean, just a mile or so from where the Handler-Gutierrez murders had taken place.

The entry hall was a crypt of marble floors and mirrors, furnished with a single white cotton sofa and two rubber plants in wicker canisters. The upper half of one wall was given over to rows of alphabetically arranged brass mailboxes. It didn’t take long to locate Kruger’s apartment on the twelfth floor. I took a short silent ride on an elevator padded with gray batting and exited into a corridor floored in royal-blue plush and papered with grasscloth.

Kruger’s place was located in the northwest corner of the building. I knocked on the royal-blue door.

He opened it, dressed in jogging shorts and a Casa de los Niños T-shirt, shiny with perspiration and smelling as if he’d been exercising. He saw me, stifled his surprise and said, “Hello, Doctor” in a stagey voice. Then he noticed the gun in my hand and the stolid face turned ugly.

“What the–”

“Just get in,” I said.

He backed into the apartment and I followed. It was a small place, low ceilings sprayed with plaster cottage cheese and starred with glitter. The walls and carpet were beige. There was little furniture and what there was looked rented. A wall of glass offering a panoramic view of Santa Monica Bay saved it from being a cell. There was no artwork on the walls, except for a single, framed wrestling poster from Hungary. A tiny convenience kitchen was off on one side, a foyer to the other.

Athletic equipment filled a good portion of the living room – snow skis and boots, a pair of waxed wooden oars, several sets of tennis rackets, running shoes, a mountaineer’s backpack, a football, a basketball, a bow and quiver of arrows. A beige-painted brick mantel was topped by a dozen trophies.

“You’re an active boy, Tim.”

“What the hell do you want?” The yellow-brown eyes moved around like pachinko balls.

“Where’s the little girl – Melody Quinn?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Put that thing away.”

“You know damn well where she is. You and your fellow murderers abducted her three days ago because she’s a witness to your dirty work. Have you killed her too?”

“I’m no killer. I don’t know any kid named Quinn. You’re crazy.”

“No killer? Jeffrey Saxon might not agree.”

His mouth dropped open, then shut abruptly.

“You left a trail, Tim. Pretty arrogant to think no one would find it.”

“Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I’m who I said I was. A better question is who are you? A rich boy who can’t seem to stay out of trouble? A guy who enjoys snapping twigs at hunchbacks and waiting for the tears? Or just an amateur actor whose best bit is an impression of Jack the Ripper?”

“Don’t try to pin that on me!” He rolled his hands into fists.

“Hands up,” I waved the gun.

He obeyed very slowly, straightening his thick, brown arms and lifting them above his head. It drew my attention upward, and away from his feet. That enabled him to make his move.

The kick came at me like a boomerang, catching the underside of my wrist and numbing the fingers. The gun flew from my grasp and landed on the carpet with a thud. We both leaped for it and ended in a tangle on the floor, punching, kicking, gouging. I was oblivious to pain and seething with fury. I wanted to destroy him.

He was an iron man. It was like fighting an outboard motor. I clawed at his abdomen, but couldn’t find an inch of extra flesh. I elbowed him in the ribs. It knocked him backward, but he rebounded as if on springs and landed a punch to the jaw that threw me off-balance long enough for him to get me in a headlock, then hold me skillfully at bay so that my arms were ineffective.

He grunted and increased the pressure. My head felt ready to burst. My vision blurred. I struck at him helplessly. With a strange kind of delicacy he danced out of reach, squeezing me tighter. Then he started pulling my head back. A little more and I knew my neck would snap. I experienced a sudden kinship with Jeffrey Saxon, drew upon a reserve of strength and brought my heel down hard on his instep. He cried out and reflexively let go, then tried to renew the lock, but it was too late. I landed a kick that snapped his head to the side and followed it with a series of rapid straight arm punches to the lower belly. When he doubled over I chopped down on the place where his head joined his neck. He sank to his knees, but I didn’t take any chances – he was strong and skilled. Another kick to the face. Now he was down. I placed one foot under the bridge of his nose. One quick forward motion and splinters of bone would lobotomize him. It turned out to be an unnecessary precaution. He was out.

I found a coil of thick nylon rope in the mountaineer’s pack and trussed him as he lay on his abdomen, feet drawn up behind him, bound and secured to another piece of rope that similarly raised his arms. I checked the knots, drew them tight and dragged him clear of any weapon. I retrieved the .38, kept it in one hand, went into his kitchen and soaked a towel in cold water.

When several minutes of slapping him with the towel elicited no more than a half-conscious groan, I made another trip to the kitchen, pulled a Dutch oven out of a dish drainer, filled it with water and dumped the contents on his head. That brought him around.

“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned. He tried those first struggles that all prisoners attempt, gnashed his teeth, finally realized his predicament and sank back down, gasping.

I prodded the back of one leg with the muzzle of the .38.

“You like sports, Tim. That’s fortunate because they’ll let you exercise in prison. Without exercise the time can go very slowly. But I’m going to ask you questions and if you don’t give me satisfactory answers I’m going to maim you, bit by bit. First I’ll shoot you right here.” I pressed cold steel into warm flesh. “After that your leg might be good for getting you on the John. Then I’ll do the same to the other leg. From there to fingers, wrists, elbows. You’ll do your time as a vegetable, Tim.”

I listened to myself talk, hearing a stranger. To this day I don’t know if I would have followed through on the threat. I never had to find out.

“What do you want?” His speech came out in spurts, constricted with fear and hampered by the uncomfortable position.

“Where’s Melody Quinn?”

“At La Casa.”

“Where at La Casa?”

“The storage rooms. Near the forest.”

“Those cinder block buildings – the ones you avoided discussing when you gave me the tour?”

“Uh-huh. Yes.”

“Which one? There were four.”

“The last one – furthest from the front.”

A spreading stain darkened the carpet at my feet. He’d wet himself.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Let’s keep going, Tim. You’re doing fine.”

He nodded, seemingly eager for praise.

“Is she still alive?”

“Yes. As far as I know. Cousin Will – Doctor Towle wanted to keep her alive. Gus and the judge agreed. I don’t know for how long.”

“What about her mother?”

He closed his eyes and said nothing.

“Talk, Tim, or your leg goes.”