Jonathan Kellerman - When The Bough Breaks

"Look at them." She pointed to a covey of wet suited surfers riding waves in the distance.

"They look like seals, don't they?"

She giggled.

"Could I go in the water, Alex?"

"Take your shoes off and wade near the shoreline - where the water touches the sand. Try not to get your dress wet."

I popped shrimp in my mouth, leaned back and watched her run along the tide line skinny legs kicking up the water. Once she turned in my direction and waved.

I watched her play that way for twenty minutes or so, and then I rolled up my pants legs, took off my shoes and socks and joined her.

We ran together. Her legs worked better with every passing moment; soon she was a gazelle. She whooped and splashed and kept going until we were both out of breath. We walked back to our picnic site and collapsed on the sand. Her hair was a mess so I loosened the barettes and re - fastened them for her. Her small chest heaved. Her feet were crusted with grit from the ankle down. When she finally caught her breath she asked me:

"I - I've been a good girl, haven't I?"

"You've been great."

She looked unsure.

"Don't you think so, Melody?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I am and Mama gets mad or Mrs. Brookhouse says I'm bad."

"You're always a good girl. Even if someone thinks you've done something wrong. Do you understand that?"

"I guess so."

"Not sure, huh?"

"I - I get mixed up."

"Everyone gets mixed up. Kids and moms and dads. And doctors."

"Dr. Towle, too?"

"Even Dr. Towle."

She digested that for a while. The large, dark eyes darted around, moving from the water, to my face, to the sky, and back to me.

"Mama said you were going to hypnotize me." She pronounced it hip - motize.

"Only if you want me to. Do you understand why we think it might be helpful?"

"Sort of. To make me think better?"

"No. You think just fine. This - " I patted her head - "works fine. We want to try hypnosis - hypnotizing - so that you can do us a favor. So that you can remember something."

"About when the other doctor was hurt."

I hesitated. My habit was to be honest with children, but if she hadn't been told about Handler and Gutierrez being dead I wasn't going to be the one to break the news. Not without the chance to be around to help pick up the pieces.

"Yes. About that."

"I told the policeman I didn't remember anything. It was all dark and everything."

"Sometimes people remember better after being hypnotized."

She looked at me, frightened.

"Are you scared of being hypnotized?"

"Uh - huh."

"That's okay. It's okay to be scared of new things. But there really isn't anything scary about hypnotizing. It's really kind of fun. Have you ever seen anyone hypnotized before?"

"Nope."

"Never? Even in a cartoon?"

She lit up. "Yeah, when the guy in the pointy hat hypnotized Popeye and the waves came out his hands and Popeye walked out of the window into the air and he didn't fall."

"Right. I've seen that one too. The guy in the pointy hat made Popeye do all sorts of weird things."

"Yeah."

"Well that's great for cartoons, but real hypnotizing isn't anything like that." I gave her a child's version of the lecture I'd delivered to her mother. She seemed to believe me, because fascination took the place of fear.

"Can we do it now?"

I hesitated. The beach was empty; there was plenty of privacy. And the moment was right. To hell with Towle…

"I don't see why not. First, let's get real comfortable."

I had her fix her eyes upon a smooth shiny pebble as she held it in her hand. Within moments she was blinking in response to suggestion. Her breathing slowed and became regular. I told her to close her eyes and listen to the sound of the waves slapping against the shore. Then I instructed her to imagine herself descending a flight of stairs and passing through a beautiful door to a favorite place.

"I don't know where it is, or what's in it, but it's a special place for you. You can tell me or keep it secret, but being there makes you feel so comfortable, so happy, so in control…"

A bit more of that and she was in a deep hypnotic state.

"Now you can hear the sound of my voice without having to listen. Just continue to enjoy your favorite place, and have a real good time."

I let her go for five more minutes. There was a peaceful, angelic expression on her thin little face. A soft wind rustled the loose strands of her hair. She looked tiny, sitting in the sand, hands resting in her lap.

I gave her a suggestion to go back in time, brought her back to the night of the murder. She tensed momentarily, then resumed the deep, regular breathing.

"You're still feeling totally relaxed, Melody. So comfortable and in control. But now you can watch yourself, just as if you were a star on TV. You see yourself getting out of bed…"

Her lips parted, she ran the tip of her tongue over them.

"And you go to the window and sit there, just looking out. What do you see?"

"Dark." The word was barely audible.

"Yes, it's dark. And is there anything else?"

"No."

"Okay. Let's sit there a while longer."

A few minutes later:

"Can you see anything else in the dark, Melody?"

"Uh - uh. Dark."

I tried a few more times, and then gave up. Either she had seen nothing, and the talk of two or three dark men had been confabulation, or she was blocking. In either event I wasn't going to get anything from her.

I let her enjoy her favorite place, gave her suggestions for mastery, control, and feeling refreshed and happy, and brought her gently out of hypnosis. She came out smiling.

"That was fun!"

"I'm glad you liked it. You seemed to have a real good favorite place."

"You said I don't have to tell you!"

"That's true. You don't."

"Well what if I want to?" she pouted.

"Then you can." "Hmm." She savored her power for a moment. "I want to tell you. It was riding around on the merry - go round. Going round and round, faster and faster."

"That's a great choice."

"Each time I went around I felt happier and happier. Can we go again some time?"

"Sure." Now you've done it, Alex. Gotten yourself into something that won't be easy to pull out of. Instant daddy, just add guilt.

Back in the car she turned to me.

"Alex, you said hypnotizing makes you remember better?"

"It can." "Could I use it to remember my daddy?"

"When's the last time you saw him?"

"Never. He left when I was a little baby. He and Mama don't live together any more."

"Does he visit?"

"No. He lives far away. Once he called me, before Christmas, but I was sleeping, so Mama didn't wake me up. That made me mad."

"I can understand that."

"I hit her."

"You must have been really mad."

"Yeah." She bit her lip. "Sometimes he sends me stuff."

"Like Fatso?"

"Yeah, and other stuff." She dug in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a large dried pit, or seed. It had been carved to resemble a face - a snarling face - with rhinestone eyes, and strands of black acrylic hair glued to the top. A head, a shrunken head. The kind of hideous trash you can pick up at any Tijuana tourist stall. From the way she held it, it could have been the Crown Jewel of Kwarshiorkor.

"Very nice." I handled the knobby thing and gave it back to her.

"I'd like to see him but Mama says she doesn't know where he is. Can hypnotizing help remember him?"

"It would be hard, Melody, because you haven't seen him in a long time. But we could try. Do you have anything to remember him by - any picture of him?"

"Yeah." She searched in her purse again and came up with a spindled and mutilated snapshot. It had probably been fingered like a rosary. I thought of the photograph on Towle's wall. This was the week for celluloid memories. Mr. Eastman, if you only knew how your little black box can be used to preserve the past like a stillborn fetus in a jar of formalin.