Jonathan Kellerman - When The Bough Breaks

"Let me check your file."

She got up and slid open the drawer of a black lacquered file cabinet, and came up with a blue folder.

"No," she said, "you're all paid up. You'll be getting a notice for next year in a couple of months."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

She returned the folder.

"How about a cup of coffee?" I asked casually.

She looked at me, then at her watch.

"I'm not due for a break until ten, but what the hell, live it up, huh?"

"Right."

"Let me go to the little girls' room and freshen up." She fluffed her hair, picked up her purse and left the office to go into the lavatory across the hall.

When I saw the door shut after her I walked to the file cabinet. The drawer she'd opened was labeled "Staff A - G." Two drawers down I found what I wanted. Into the old briefcase it went.

I was waiting by the door when she came out, flushed, pink and pretty, and smelling of patchouli. I extended my arm and she took it.

Over hospital coffee I listened to her talk. About her divorce - a seven - year - old wound that wouldn't heal - the teenage daughter who was driving her crazy by doing exactly what she'd done as an adolescent, car troubles, the insensitivity of her superiors, the unfairness of life.

It was bizarre, getting to know for the first time a woman whose body I'd entered. In the scrambled word game of contemporary mating rituals, there was greater intimacy in her tales of woe than there had been in the opening of her thighs.

We parted friends.

"Come by again, Alex."

"I will."

I walked to the parking lot marveling at the ease with which I was able to slip on the cloak of duplicity. I'd always flattered myself with a self - assessment of integrity. But in the last three days I'd grown proficient at sneak - thievery, concealment of the truth, bald - faced lying and emotional whoring.

It must be the company I'd been keeping.

I drove to a cozy Italian place in West Hollywood. The restaurant had just opened and I was alone in my rear corner booth. I ordered veal in wine sauce, a side order of linguini with oil and garlic, and a Coors.

A shuffling waiter brought the beer. While I waited for the food I opened the briefcase and examined my plunder.

Towle's medical staff file was over forty pages long. Most of it consisted of Xeroxes of his diplomas, certificates and awards. His curriculum vitae was twenty pages of puffery, markedly devoid of scholarly publications - he'd co authored one brief report while an intern, and nothing since - and filled with television and radio interviews, speeches to lay groups, volunteer service to La Casa and similar organizations. Yet he was a full clinical professor at the medical school. So much for academic rigor.

The waiter brought a salad and a basket of rolls.

I picked up my napkin with one hand, started to return the file to the briefcase with the other, when something on the front page of the resume caught my eye.

Under college or university attended, he'd listed Jedson College, Bellevue, Washington.

I got home, called the L.A. Times, and asked for Ned Biondi at the Metro desk. Biondi was a senior writer for the paper, a short, nervous character right out of The Front Page. I'd treated his teenager daughter for anorexia nervosa several years back. Biondi hadn't been able to come up with the money for treatment on a journalist's salary - compounded with a penchant for playing the wrong horse at Santa Anita - but the girl had been in trouble and I'd let it go. It had taken him a year and a half to clear his debt. His daughter had gotten straightened out after months of my chipping away at layers of self - hatred that were surprisingly ossified in someone seventeen years old. I remembered her clearly, a tall, dark youngster who wore jogging shorts and T - shirts that accentuated the skeletal condition of her body; a girl ashen - faced and spindly legged who alternated between deep, dark spells of brooding silence and flights of hyperactivity during which she was ready to enter every category of Olympic competition on three hundred calories a day.

I'd gotten her admitted to Western Pediatric, where she'd stayed for three weeks. That, followed by months of psychotherapy, had finally gotten through to her, and allowed her to deal with the mother who was too beautiful, the brother who was too athletic, and the father who was too witty…

"Biondi."

"Ned, this is Alex Delaware."

It took a second for my name, minus title to register.

"Doctor! How are you."

"I'm fine. How's Anne Marie?"

"Very well. She's finishing up her second year at Wheaton - in Boston. She's got As and a few Bs, but the Bs didn't panic her. She's still too rough on herself, but she seems to be adjusting well to the peaks and troughs of life, as you called them. Her weight is stable at a hundred and two."

"Excellent. Give my regards when you speak to her."

"I certainly will. It's nice of you to call."

"Well actually there's more to this than professional followup."

"Oh?" A foxy edge, the conditioned vigilance of one who pried open locked boxes for a living, came into his voice.

"I need a favor."

"Name it."

"I'm flying up north to Seattle tonight. I need to get into some transcripts at a small college near there. Jedson."

"Hey, that's not what I expected. I thought you wanted a blurb about a book in the Sunday edition or something. This sounds serious."

"It is."

"Jedson. I know it. Anne Marie was going to apply there - we figured a small place would be less pressure for her - but it was fifty percent more expensive than Wheaton, Reed, and Oberlin - and they're no giveaways themselves. What do you want with their transcripts?"

"I can't say."

"Doctor." He laughed. "Pardon the expression, but you're prick - teasing. I'm a professional snoop. Dangle something weird in front of me I get a hard - on."

"What makes you think anything's weird?"

"Doctors running around trying to get into files is weird. Usually it's the shrinks who get broken into, if my memory serves me correctly."

"I can't go into it now, Ned."

"I'm good with a secret, Doc."

"No. Not Yet. Trust me. You did before."

"Below the belt, Doc."

"I know. And I wouldn't gut - punch you if it wasn't important. I need your help. I may be onto something, maybe not. If I am you'll be the first to hear about it."

"Something big?"

I thought about it for a moment.

"Could be."

"Okay," he sighed, "what do you want me to do?"

"I'm giving your name as a reference. If anyone calls you, back up my story."

"What's the story?"

He listened.

"It seems harmless enough. Of course," he added cheerfully, "if you get found out I'll probably be out of a job."

"I'll be careful."

"Yeah. What the hell, I'm getting ready for the gold watch, anyway." There was a pause, as if he were fantasizing life after retirement. Apparently he didn't like what he saw, because when he came back on the line, there was verve in his voice and he offered a reporter's priapic lament.

"I'm gonna go nuts wondering about this. You sure you don't want to give me a hint about what you're up to?"

"I can't, Ned."

"Okay, okay. Go spin your yarn and keep me in mind if you knit a sweater."

"I will. Thanks."

"Oh, hell, don't thank me, I still feel crummy about taking all that time to pay you. I look at my baby now and I see a pink - checked, smiling young lady, a beauty. She's still a little too thin for my taste, but she's not a walking corpse like before. She's normal, at least as far as I can tell. She can smile now. I owe you, Doctor."

"Stay well, Ned." "You too."

I hung up. Biondi's words of gratitude made me entertain a moment's doubt about my own retirement. Then I thought of bloody bodies and doubt got up and took a seat in the rear of the hearse.