Jonathan Kellerman - Blood Test

“He’s a crazy man, Doctor. He’s been getting crazier all along and now he won’t let me go without doing something really crazy.”

“How have the kids been doing?”

“April’s a little clingy — you saw her out there. She gets up a couple of times at night, wants to come into our bed. But she’s a sweet thing. He’s my problem, just angry all the time, refusing to mind. Yesterday he said the ef word to Carlton.”

“What did Carlton do?”

“Told him he’d whip him if he did it again.”

Great.

“It’s not a good idea to get Carlton involved in discipline at this point. Having him there is a big adjustment for the kids in the first place. If you let him take over they’ll feel abandoned.”

“But Doctor, he can’t use language like that!”

“Then you need to handle it, Mrs. Moody. It’s important for the children to know that you’re there for them. That you’re in charge.”

“Okay,” she said, without enthusiasm, “I’ll try it.”

I knew she wouldn’t comply. The word try was the tipoff. In a couple of months she’d be wondering why both children were ornery and miserable and impossible to manage.

I did my job anyway, telling her that both of the children could benefit from professional help. April, I explained, showed no serious problems but was insecure. Therapy for her was likely to be short-term and could reduce the risk of more severe problems in the future.

Ricky, on the other hand, was a troubled little boy, full of anger and likely to run away again. She interrupted at that point to blame the running away on the boy’s father and said that come to think of it he reminded her of his father.

“Mrs. Moody,” I said, “Ricky needs the chance to blow off steam on a regular basis.”

“You know,” she said, “Carlton and him are starting to get along better. Yesterday they were playing catch in the backyard and having a great time. I know Carlton’s gonna be a good influence on him.”

“Great. But that won’t take the place of professional help.”

“Doctor,” she said, “I’m broke. Do you know how much lawyers cost? Just being here today is draining me dry.”

“There are clinics that operate on a sliding scale based on ability to pay. I’ll give some numbers to Mr. Worthy.”

“Are they far? I don’t drive freeways.”

“I’ll try to find one close to you, Mrs. Moody.”

“Thank you, doctor.” She sighed, picked herself up, and let me hold the door for her.

Watching her trudge down the hall like an old woman it was easy to forget she was twenty-nine years old.

I dictated my findings to Mal’s secretary as she typed silently on a court stenographer’s machine. When she left he brought out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and poured us each a couple of fingers.

“Thanks for coming by, Alex.”

“No problem, but I don’t know that it did any good. She won’t follow through.”

“I’ll see to it that she does. Tell her it’s important for the case.”

We sipped Scotch.

“Incidentally,” he said, “the judge hasn’t gotten any nasty surprises so far — apparently Moody’s crazy but not stupid. But she’s mega-pissed about the whole thing. She called the D.A. and ordered him to get someone on it. He dumped it on Foothill Division.”

“Who said they’d been looking for him already.”

“Right.” He looked surprised. I told him about Milo’s call to Fordebrand.

“Very impressive, Alex. More?” He picked up the bottle. I declined a refill. Good Scotch is hard to resist but talking about Moody reminds me of the importance of staying clear-headed.

“Anyway, Foothill claims to be looking for him seriously but they think he’s gone into Angeles Crest.”

“Wonderful.”

Angeles Crest National Forest is 600,000 acres of wilderness bordering the city to the north. The Moodys had lived in nearby Sunland, and the forest would be familiar territory to Richard, a natural place to escape. Much of the acreage was impenetrable except on foot and a man could stay lost there for as long as he pleased. It was a haven for hikers, campers, naturalists, and climbers, as well as for packs of outlaw bikers who partied all night and sacked out in caves. And its ravines and washes were favorite dumping spots for bodies.

Just before we’d scuffled in the court parking lot, Moody’d talked about surviving in the wilderness, clearly including his children in the fantasy. I let Mal know that.

He nodded grimly.

“I’ve instructed Darlene to take the kids and get out of town for a while. Her folks have a farm up near Davis. They’re leaving today.”

“Won’t he be able to figure that out?”

“If he comes out in the open. I’m hoping he decides to play mountain man for a while.”

He threw up his arms.

“It’s the best I can do, Alex.”

The conversation was taking an unsettling turn. I got up to go and we shook hands. At the door I asked him if he’d ever heard of a lawyer named Norman Matthews.

“Stormin’ Norman? That’s a golden oldie. I went up against him at least a dozen times. Biggest ballbreaker in Beverly Hills.”

“He was a divorce lawyer?”

“The best. Super-aggressive, had a reputation for getting his clients what they wanted no matter who he offended in the process. Handled lots of Hollywood dissolutions with big bucks at stake and got to thinking of himself as a star. Very image conscious — an Excalibur and a Corniche, conspicuous clothes, blonds on each arm, blew Dunhill latakia through a thousand-dollar meerschaum.”

“He’s a bit more spiritual nowadays.”

“Yeah, I heard. Got a weird group down on the border. Calls himself Grand Noble Poobah or something like that.”

“Noble Matthias. Why’d he leave law?” He laughed uneasily.

“You might say it left him. This was five or six years ago. It was in the papers. I’m surprised you don’t remember. Matthews was representing the wife of some playwright. The guy had just hit it big — a smash on Broadway — after ten years of eating air sandwiches. At that point the wife found another loser to mother and filed. Matthews got her everything — a huge chunk of royalties from the play and a healthy percentage of everything the guy would bring in for the next ten years. It was a publicized case and there was a press conference scheduled on the courtroom steps. Matthews and the wife were headed there when hubby came out of nowhere with a twenty-two. He shot them both in the head. She died but Matthews squeaked by after half a year of touch and go. Then he dropped out of sight, resurfaced a couple of years later as a maharishi. Your basic California story.”

I thanked him for the information and turned to leave.

“Hey,” he asked, “why the interest?”

“Nothing important. His name came up in conversation.”

“Stormin’ Norman,” he smiled. “Sanctification through brain damage.”

The next morning, Milo knocked on my door and woke me at six forty-five. The sky was alley-cat gray. It had rained all night and the air smelled like damp flannel. The glen harbored a relentless chill that seeped into my bones the moment I opened the door.

He wore a thin shiny black raincoat over a wrinkled white shirt, a brown and blue tie, and brown slacks. His chin was blued with stubble, his eyelids weighted by fatigue. There was mud on his brogues, which he scraped off along the edge of the terrace before coming in.

“We found two of the Swopes, the mother and father, up in Benedict Canyon. Shot in the head and back.”

He talked rapidly without making eye contact and walked past me into the kitchen. I followed him and put up coffee. While it brewed I washed my face in the kitchen sink and he chewed on a log of French bread. Neither of us spoke until we’d sat down at my old oak table and punished our gullets with large swallows of scalding liquid.