Jonathan Kellerman - Bad Love

"Was she in a relationship at the time she died?"

"I don't know- probably. The last time I saw her- couple of days before she stopped by to give me some laundry- I asked her how her social life was and she refused to talk about it. What that usually meant was she was involved with someone she knew I'd nag her about. I got upset with her- we didn't talk much. How was I supposed to know it was the last time and I should have enjoyed every minute I had with her?"

Her shoulders bowed and quivered.

I touched one of them and she sat up suddenly.

"Enough of this- I hate this moping around. That's why I quit that survivor's group your friend Sturgis recommended. Too much self-pity. Meanwhile, I haven't done a damn thing for you."

My head was full of assumptions and guesses. Learning of Becky's attraction to losers had firmed up the suspicions left by her notes. I smiled and said, "It's been good talking to you."

"Good talking to you, too. Do I get a bill?"

"No, the first hour's free."

"Well, look at that. Handsome, a Caddy, and a sense of humor to boot- you do pretty well, don't you? Financially."

"I do okay."

"Modesty- bet you do better than okay. That's what I wanted for Becky. Security. I told her, what are you wasting your time for, doing dirty work for the county? Finish up your degree, get some kind of license, open up an office in Beverly Hills and treat fat people or those women who starve themselves. Make some money. No crime in that, right? But she wouldn't hear of it, wanted to do important work. With people who were really needy."

She shook her head.

"Saving the bugs," she said, almost inaudibly. "She thought she was dealing with those potato thingies, but a scorpion got into the jar."

Her description of Becky as a stickler for the rules didn't fit with Jean Jeffers' recollections. A mother's vision could be overly rosy, but she'd been frank about Becky's chronic attraction to losers.

Had Becky finally been attracted to the ultimate loser? How loose had things gotten between her and Hewitt?

And what twisted dynamic bound the two of them to G?

Bad love.

Blaming the victim bothered me, but revenge seemed to be the fuel that powered the killer's engine, and I had to wonder if Becky had been a target of something other than random psychosis.

I drove home straining to make sense of it. No strange vehicles within a hundred yards of the gate, and last night's anxiety seemed silly. Robin was working, looking preoccupied and content, and the dog was chewing a nylon bone.

"Milo just called from Santa Barbara," she said. "The number's on the kitchen counter."

I went into the house, found an 805 exchange that wasn't Sally Grayson's, and punched it. A voice answered, "Records."

"Dr. Delaware returning Detective Sturgis's call."

"One minute."

I waited five.

"Sturgis."

"Hi. Just got through talking to Becky's mother. Becky never mentioned anyone by name, but she did talk about helping a poor unfortunate psychotic who could very well have been Hewitt."

"No mention of Gritz?"

"Nor of Silk or Merino. One thing that was interesting, though: she said Becky liked to mend broken wings and had a penchant for losers- guys who involved her in dead-end relationships. If you think of Hewitt as the ultimate loser, it supports what we suspected about things getting unprofessional between them. Having said all that, I don't know that it leads us anywhere."

"Well, we're not doing much better here. No school records at Katarina's house, so either she never kept them or the killer made off with them. We do have confirmation that Myra Evans was Myra Paprock, but it's a no-go on Rodney Shipler. His tax records show him working for the L.A. Unified School District for thirty years- right after he got out of the Army. Never up here- and I verified it with the S.B. district. No connection at all to the de Bosch school."

"What about summer vacations?" I said. "School personnel sometimes take part-time jobs during the off-season."

"Summers he worked in L.A."

"How long was he in the Army?"

"Fifteen years- staff sergeant, most of it over in the Philippines. Honorable discharge, no blots on his record."

"He made somebody mad."

"It doesn't look like it was someone at the school. In fact, we can't find any records of anything fishy happening out at the school. No fires or felonies or anything anybody would want to avenge, Alex. Just a few complaints about noise from Bancroft and one vehicular accident that did occur when Myra Evans was teaching there- May of seventy-three- but it was clearly an accident. One of the students stole a school truck and took a joyride. Made it up to the Riviera district and spun off a mountain road. He died, Santa Barbara PD investigated, found no foul play."

"How old was the student?"

"Fifteen."

"Vehicular accident off a mountain road," I said. "Grant Stoumen was hit by a car and Mitchell Lerner was pushed off a mountain."

"That's a little abstract, Alex."

"Maybe not, if matching things- achieving consistency- is part of the killer's fantasy."

Pause. "You'd know more about that than I would, but why focus on the school when we've got a victim with no connection to it? No obvious connection to de Bosch, period."

"Shipler could have been connected to the symposium."

"How? A janitor with a side interest in psychology, or did he sweep up afterward?"

"Maybe it's the race angle somehow. Shipler was black and de Bosch was a covert bigot."

"Why would someone pissed off about racism beat a black man to death?"

"I don't know… but I'm sure de Bosch is at the core of this. The school, the conference- all of it. Merino told Harrison the conference set off something in him- maybe it was seeing de Bosch lauded publicly, when he knew the truth to be otherwise."

"Maybe, but so far the school's got a clean record."

"Bancroft seemed to think it was a hotbed of antisocial behavior."

"Bancroft isn't your most reliable witness. Sally says he's been known to hit the bottle pretty hard, and his world view's somewhat to the right of the Klan. Compared to his old man, he's a pussycat. The two of them had a special thing for de Bosch because de Bosch overbid Bancroft Senior for the land the school was built on. When de Bosch broke ground in sixty-two, they tried to mobilize the neighbors against it- disturbed kids running amok. But no one went along with it because the Bancrofts had alienated everyone over the years."

"The neighbors didn't mind a school for problem kids?"

"There were some worries, but the lot being vacant bothered them more. Vagrants used to come off the highway, light fires, toss trash, make a mess. Bancroft Senior had dickered with the owner for years, making offers, withdrawing them. De Bosch's school was an improvement as far as the neighborhood was concerned. Real quiet, no problems."

"Except for a fifteen-year-old kid in a stolen truck."

"One incident in twenty years, Alex. Considering that de Bosch dealt with emotionally disturbed kids, wouldn't you say that's pretty good?"

"I'd say it's excellent," I said. "Exemplary. And one way to keep things so tidy is through firm discipline. Very firm discipline."

He sighed. "Sure, it's possible. But if de Bosch was running a torture chamber, wouldn't there be complaints?"

"Five dead people is a complaint."

"Okay. But if you want a hostility motive, look at Bancroft. He had a hard-on for de Bosch for over twenty years. But that doesn't mean he ran around the country murdering everyone associated with him."

"Maybe he should be looked into."

"He will be," he said wearily. "He's being looked into. Meanwhile, you be careful and sit tight. I'm sorry, Alex, I wish the goddamn pieces had fit together neatly, but it's turning out to be messy."