Jonathan Kellerman - Bad Love

I remembered the slide Katarina had shown. Blue skies behind a wheelchair. The ocean.

"Did she live there with her father?" I said.

"Since the two of them came to California."

"She was very attached to him, wasn't she?"

"She worshiped him." He continued to look preoccupied.

"Did she ever marry?"

He shook his head.

"When did the school close?" I said.

"Not long after Andres died- eighty-one, I believe."

"Katarina didn't want to keep it going?"

He put his hands around his coffee cup. He had hammer thumbs and his other digits were short. "You'd have to ask her about that."

"Does she do any kind of psychological work now?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Early retirement?"

He shrugged and drank. Put his cup down and touched the stone of his bolo tie. Something bothering him.

I said, "I only met her twice, but I don't see her as someone with hobbies, Bert."

He smiled. "You encountered the force of her personality."

"She was the reason I was at the conference against my will. She pulled strings with the chief of staff."

"That was Katarina," he said. "Life as target practice: set your sights, aim, and shoot. She pressured me to speak, too."

"You were reluctant?"

"Yes, but let's get back to Grant for a moment. Hit-and-run isn't really the same as premeditated murder."

"Maybe I'm wrong, but I still can't find anyone who was up on that dais."

He grabbed the cup with both hands. "I can tell you about Mitch- Mitchell Lerner. He's dead. Also the result of an accident. Hiking. Down in Mexico- Acapulco. He fell from a high cliff."

"When?"

"Two years ago."

One year before Stoumen, one year after Rodney Shipler. Fill in the gaps…

"… the time," he was saying, "I had no reason to assume it was anything but an accident. Especially in view of it being a fall."

"Why's that?"

He worked his jaws and his hands went flat on the table. His mouth twisted a couple of times. Anxiety and something else- dentures.

"Mitchell had occasional balance problems," he said.

"Alcohol?"

He stared at me.

"I know about his suspension," I said.

"I'm sorry, I can't talk any more about him."

"Meaning he was your patient- your bio mentioned your specialties. Impaired therapists."

Silence that served as affirmation. Then he said, "He was trying to ease his way back into work. The trip to Mexico was part of that. He was attending a conference there."

He put his finger in his mouth and fooled with his bridgework.

"Well," he said, smiling, "I don't go to conferences anymore, so maybe I'm safe."

"Does the name Myra Paprock mean anything to you?"

He shook his head. "Who is she?"

"A woman who was murdered five years ago. The words "bad love' were scrawled at the murder scene in her lipstick. And the police have found one other killing where the phrase was written. A man named Rodney Shipler, beaten to death three years ago."

"No," he said, "I don't know him, either. Are they therapists?"

"No."

"Then what would they have to do with the conference?"

"Nothing that I know of, but maybe they had something to do with de Bosch. Myra Paprock was working as a real estate agent at the time, but before that she was a teacher in Goleta. Maybe she moonlighted at the Corrective School. This was before she married, so her surname would have been something other than Paprock."

"Myra," he said, rubbing his lip. "There was a Myra who taught there when I was consulting. A young woman, just out of college… blond, pretty… a little…" He closed his eyes. "Myra… Myra… what was her name- Myra Evans, I think. Yes, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Myra Evans. And now you're saying she was murdered…"

"What else were you going to say about her, Bert?"

"Excuse me?"

"You just said she was blond, pretty, and something else."

"Nothing, really," he said. "I just remembered her as being a little hard. Nothing pathologic- the dogmatism of youth."

"Was she rough on the kids?"

"Abusive? I never saw it. It wasn't that kind of place- Andres's force of personality was enough to maintain a certain level of… order."

"What was Myra's method for maintaining order?"

"Lots of rules. One of those everything-by-the-rules types. No shades of gray."

"Was Dr. Stoumen like that too?"

"Grant was… orthodox. He liked his rules. But he was an extremely gentle person, somewhat shy."

"And Lerner?"

"Anything but rigid. Lack of discipline was his problem."

"Harvey Rosenblatt?"

"Don't know him at all. Never met him before the conference."

"So you never saw Myra Evans come down too hard on a child?"

"No… I barely remember her- these are just impressions, they may be faulty."

"I doubt it."

He moved his jaws from side to side. "All these murders. You actually think…" Shaking his head.

I said, "How important was the concept of "bad love' to de Bosch's philosophy?"

"I'd say it was fairly central," he said. "Andres was very concerned with justice- he saw achieving consistency in our world as a prime motive. Saw many symptoms as attempts to accomplish that."

"The search for order."

Nod. "And good love."

"When did you become disillusioned about him?"

He looked pained.

I held my gaze and said, "You said Katarina pressured you to speak at the symposium. Why would a faithful student have to be pressured?"

He got up, turned his back on me, and rested his palms on the counter. A little man in ridiculous clothing, trying to bring color to his world.

"I really wasn't that close to him," he said. "After I began my anthropology studies, I wasn't around much." Taking a couple of steps, he wiped the counter with one stubby hand.

"Your own search for consistency?"

He stiffened but didn't turn.

"Racism," he said. "I heard Andres making remarks."

"About who?"

"Blacks, Mexicans."

"Were there black and Mexican children at the school?"

"Yes, but he didn't malign them. It was the workers- hired laborers. There was acreage behind the school. Andres hired people down on lower State Street to come clear the weeds every month or so."

"What did you hear him say about them?"

"The usual garbage- that they were lazy, stupid. Genetically inferior. He called the blacks one half-step up from apes, said the Mexicans weren't much better."

"He said this to your face?"

Hesitation. "No. To Katarina. I overheard it."

I said, "She didn't disagree with him, did she?"

He turned around. "She never disagreed with him."

"How did you happen to overhear their conversation?"

"I wasn't eavesdropping," he said. "That would almost have been better. I walked in on the middle of the conversation and Andres didn't bother to interrupt himself. That really troubled me- the fact that he thought I would laugh along with it. And it wasn't just once- I heard him say those things several times. Almost taunting me. I didn't respond. He was my teacher and I became a worm."

He returned to his chair, slumping a bit.

I said, "Did Katarina respond at all to his remarks?"

"She laughed… I was disgusted. Lord knows I'm no paragon of virtue, I've done my share of pretending to listen to patients when my mind was elsewhere. Pretending to care. Been married five times, never longer than twenty-six months. When I finally achieved enough insight to realize I should stop making women's lives miserable, I opted for the solitary life. Drew plenty of blood along the way, so I don't put myself up on any moral pedestal. But I have always prided myself on tolerance- I'm sure part of it is personal. I was born with multiple anomalies. Other things besides the lack of color vision."