Jonathan Kellerman - When The Bough Breaks

"You'll call me?"

"Sure, sure. You do the same for me, too, okay? I wouldn't mind finding Miss Bonita, get my checks back, give her a piece of my mind." He fished in his pocket, pulled out an alligator billfold and from it produced a pearl - gray business card that said M and M Properties, Commercial and Residential, Marduk I. Minassian, President, followed by a Century City address.

"Thanks, Mr. Minassian."

"Marty."

He continued probing and inspecting, opening drawers and shaking his head, bending to look under the bed Bonita Quinn had shared with her daughter. He found something under there, stood up, looked at it and tossed it in a metal wastebasket where it landed with a clang.

"What a mess."

I looked in the basket, saw what he had discarded, and pulled it out.

It was the shrunken head Melody had shown me the day we'd spent together at the beach. I held it in my palm and the rhinestone eyes glared back, glossy and evil. Most of the synthetic hair had come loose but a few black strands stuck out of the top of the snarling face.

"That's junk," said Minassian. "It's dirty. Throw it away."

I closed my hand over the child's keepsake, more sure than ever that the hypothesis I'd developed on the plane was right. And that I had to move fast. I put the shrunken head in my pocket, smiled at Minassian, and left.

"Hey!" he called after me. And then he muttered something that sounded like "Crazy doctors!"

I retraced my route, got back on the freeway and headed east, driving like a demon and hoping the

Highway Patrol wouldn't spot me. I had my LAPD. consultant badge in my pocket but I doubted it would help. Even police consultants aren't supposed to weave in and out of traffic going eighty miles an hour.

I was lucky. Traffic was light, the guardians of the asphalt were nowhere to be seen, and I made it to the Silver Lake exit just before one. Five minutes later I was walking up the steps to the Gutierrez home. The orange and yellow poppies drooped, thirsty. The porch was empty. It creaked as I stepped onto it.

I knocked on the door. Cruz Gutierrez answered, knitting needles and bright pink yarn in her hands. She didn't seem surprised to see me.

"Si, senor?"

"I need your help, senora."

"No hablo ingles."

"Please. I know you understand enough to help."

The dark, round face was impassive."

"Senora, the life of a child is at stake." That was optimism speaking. "Una nina. Seven years old - siete anos. She's in danger. She could be killed. Muerta - like Elena."

I let that sink in. Liver spotted hands tightened around the blue needles. She looked away.

"Like the other child - the Nemeth boy. Elena's student. He didn't die in an accident, did he? Elena knew that. She died because of that knowledge."

She put her hand on the door and started to close it. I blocked it with the heel of my palm.

"I feel for your loss, senora, but if Elena's death is to take on meaning, it can be through preventing more killing. Through stopping the deaths of others. Please."

Her hands started shaking. The needles rattled like chopsticks in the grasp of a spastic. She dropped them and the ball of yarn. I bent and retrieved them.

"Here."

She took them, held them to her bosom.

"Come in, please," she said, in English that was barely accented. I was too edgy to want to sit but when she motioned me to the green velvet sofa I settled in it. She sat across from me as if awaiting sentence.

"First," I said, "you must understand that darkening Elena's memory is the last thing I want to do. If other lives were not at stake I wouldn't be here at all."

"I understand," she said.

"The money - is it here?"

She nodded, got up, left the room and came back minutes later with a cigar box.

"Take." She gave me the box as if it held something alive and dangerous.

The bills were in large denominations - twenties, fifties, hundreds - neatly rolled and held together by thick rubber bands. I made a cursory count. There was at least fifty thousand dollars in the box, probably a good deal more.

"Take it," I said.

"No, no. I don't want. Black money."

"Just keep it here, until I come back for it. Does anyone else know about it - either of your sons?"

"No." She shook her head adamantly. "Rafael know he take it and buy the dope. No. Only me."

"How long have you had it here?"

"Elena, she bring it over the day before she was killed." The mother's eyes filled with tears. "I say, what is this, where you get this. She say, can't tell you, Mama. Jus' keep it for me. I come back for it. She never come back." She pulled a lace - trimmed handkerchief from up her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

"Please. Take it back. Hide it again."

"Only a little while, senor, okay? Black money. Bad eye. Mal ojo."

"I'll come back for it if that's what you want."

She took the box, disappeared again, and returned shortly.

"You're sure Rafael didn't know?"

"I sure. He know, it would all be gone."

That made sense. Junkies weren't known for being able to hold on to their nickels and dimes, let alone a small fortune.

"Another question, senora. Raquel told me that Elena had in her possession certain tapes - recorded tapes. Of music, and of relaxation exercises given to her by Dr. Handler. When I went through her things I found no such tapes. Do you know anything about that?"

"I don' know. This is the truth."

"Has anyone been through those boxes before I got here?"

"No. Only Rafael an' Antonio, they look for books, things to read. The policia take boxes first. Nothin' else."

"Where are your sons, now?"

She stood up, suddenly agitated.

"Don' hurt. They good boys. They don' know nothin'."

"I won't. I just want to talk to them."

She looked to one side, at the wall covered with family portraits. At her three children, young, innocent and smiling; the boys with short hair, slicked and parted, and open - necked white shirts; the girl in a frilly blouse between them. At the graduation picture: Elena in mortarboard and gown, wearing a look of eagerness and confidence, ready to take on the world with her brains and her charm and her looks. At the somber tinted photo of her long - dead husband, stiff and solemn in starched collar and gray serge suit, a workingman unaccustomed to the fuss and fiddling that went with having one's countenance recorded for posterity.

She looked at the pictures and her lips moved, almost imperceptibly. Like a general surveying a smoldering battlefield, she conducted a silent body count.

"Andy working," she said, and gave me the address of a garage on Figueroa. v

"And Rafael?"

"Rafael I don' know. He say he go look for work."

She and I both knew where he was. But I'd opened enough wounds for one day, so I kept my mouth shut, except to thank her.

I found him after a half - hour's cruising up and down Sunset and in and out of several side streets. He was walking south on Alvarado, if you could call the stumbling, self - absorbed lurch that propelled him headfirst, feet following, a walk. He stayed close to buildings, veering toward the street when people or objects got in his way, quickly returning to the shadow of awnings. It was close to eighty but he wore a long sleeved flannel shirt hanging loose over khakis and buttoned to the neck. On his feet were high - topped sneakers; the laces on one of them had come loose. He looked even thinner than I remembered.

I drove slowly, staying in the right lane, out of his field of vision, and keeping pace with him. Once he passed a group of middle - aged men, merchants. They pointed at him behind his back, shook their heads and frowned. He was oblivious to them, cut off from the external world. He pointed with his face, like a setter homing in on a scent. His nose ran continuously and he wiped it with his sleeve. His eyes shifted from side to side as his body kept moving. He ran his tongue over his lips, slapped his thin thighs in a steady tattoo, pursed his lips as if in song, bobbed his head up and down. He was making a concentrated effort at looking cool but he fooled no one. Like a drunk working hard at coming across sober his mannerisms were exaggerated, unnatural and lacking spontaneity. They produced the opposite effect: He appeared to be a hungry jackal on the prowl, desperate, gnawed upon from within and hurting all over. His skin was glossy with sweat, pale and ghostly. People got out of his way as he boogied toward them.