Jonathan Kellerman - Breakdown

No calls that night from Sherry Andover or Milo. From anyone except sociopaths trying to sell me term insurance, home security, and lawn care. I chose to interpret that as encouraging.

By eleven the following morning I’d taken on a new custody case in Superior Court, an evaluation on hold until the two children in question returned from Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the judge would email me background info, with my billable hours commencing upon receipt.

Just as I printed the file, my service put through a call from BrightMornings.

“Dr. Delaware? This is Carlos, I volunteer for Sherry at the shelter. Have you recently seen your patient, Zelda Chase? She left and hasn’t returned.”

“When?”

“Our gate camera has her pushing the button this morning at five-eighteen. Clients are free to come and go but Sherry decided to drive around looking for her because apparently Zelda has a history of wandering and trespassing and she figured she’d know where to find her. But she didn’t locate her and then she had to leave for meetings and she doesn’t talk on the phone while driving, so she asked me to call you.”

“Could I have Sherry’s mobile number, anyway?”

“She really won’t answer, Doctor. A fender-bender and three tickets.”

“I’ll leave a message.”

“Suit yourself, Doctor.”

I instructed my service to put Andover through immediately. An hour and twenty minutes later, they did just that.

She said, “Not a rousing success. No warning signs, she was starting to look a little more alert, took the initiative to shower, changed into fresh clothes. Grooming’s always a good sign but I guess not in this case.”

“Carlos said your camera picked her up leaving. What was her emotional state?”

“Can’t say, the images we get are distant and blurry, sometimes you can’t even identify who it is. I recognized her because of the clothes, I put them in the closet myself. That’s when I went to check her room. She even made up the bed.”

“Which way did she head?”

“The lens angle doesn’t capture that, just that they’ve triggered the gate and split.”

“Thanks for taking the time to search for her.”

“I figured if she was a creature of habit, finding her would be easy. Tough luck, but who knows? She wandered out, she could wander in. Wish it would’ve turned out smoother but at least I got her a Mounds bar. Left it right on her nightstand and she took it with her.”

I phoned Milo and told him.

He said, “That didn’t last long.”

“I don’t suppose Central Division could be asked to keep an eye out for her.”

“I could get them to say they will but it won’t mean much. She have any money for bus-fare?”

“No.”

“You think she’d walk all the way from Santa Monica to downtown?”

“Psychotics can cover long distances and she was busted twice downtown.”

“Let’s say they do find her wandering around Skid Row. Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Love your honesty,” he said. “Okay, I’ll put in a call but maybe she’s got homing instincts and you should start somewhere else. Like the last place she invaded — that house in Bel Air? Not a hop-skip from Santa Monica but a helluva lot closer than Central.”

“Good point,” I said. “What’s the address?”

“Not kosher, amigo. Let’s keep the investigatory process procedurally appropriate.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning see you in forty, and I’ll drive. You’re rescuing me from a shit-pile of paperwork.”

There’s Bel Air, then there’s Bel Air.

The verdant, gently sloping streets a couple of miles below my house contain some of the grandest estates in the world. That’s the Bel Air populated by celebrities, heirs, and amassers of fortunes. The Bel Air where open-air buses crammed with squinting tourists snail up and down leafy lanes as smooth liars clutching hand mikes ladle out a broth of vicious gossip and unhappy endings.

You may not be able to live here, folks, but you’ll love hearing about all those rich bastards humiliated.

Above all that is a Bel Air that crawls along Mulholland Drive and transitions to the San Fernando Valley, an area exploited during the seventies and eighties by developers eager to cash in on the zip code.

Upper Bel Air costs a fortune but much of it looks like a suburban tract.

No tour buses in sight as Milo hooked west of Mulholland and we were met with the choice of two ungated developments.

To the left, Bel Aurora, to the right, La Belle Aire.

He checked the address in his pad, swung right, continued for half a mile. Both of us looking for an empty-eyed woman wearing brand-new sneakers.

We’d passed similar neighborhoods along the way, stingily treed streets filled with ranch houses and white boxes set on narrow lots. The lack of shade could be painful: Pivot the wrong way and your eyeballs bleached instantly. Portable basketball hoops in driveways promised youthful exuberance but no kids were in sight.

No one at all; post-nuclear silence is the badge of a fine L.A. neighborhood.

The property Zelda had invaded was on Bel Azura Drive, one of the ranches, positioned on the south side of the street where the views were less dramatic. An older gray BMW sedan sat next to an oil stain. Drapes drawn.

We drove on, reached a cul-de-sac a few blocks up, and returned for a second look.

Milo said, “That bolt in the gate is new. Without it, not much security, I can see why she’d choose it.”

He drove away.

We started by guessing the route Zelda might’ve taken from BrightMornings to Bel Air: Pico to Lincoln, Lincoln north to Wilshire, Wilshire east to the same campus entrance that had led me to Ravenswood Hospital, then, rather than continuing through the U.’s sprawl, a turn on Hilgard and north to Sunset.

After that, it was anyone’s guess.

The first few miles of the journey gave Milo the opportunity to query homeless people, roach-coach proprietors, gas station attendants, Santa Monica PD cop-teams. Anyone in a position to notice comings and goings. No success. The beach city teemed with homeless; even a woman as disabled as Zelda would blend in.

He’d come equipped with a wad of cash to loosen civilian tongues — what he calls “my data retrieval trust fund.” For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been dipping into his own pocket, not bothering to put in for reimbursement because “that would be like begging my old man for the keys to the car when he was ornery, which was always.”

He repeated the line this morning.

I said, “Fine, but let me pay.”

“And lose my status as a venture capitalist? I’d rather walk on glass.”

Moot point, anyway. Nothing to pay for; no one had seen Zelda.

Back at the station, he said, “What now?”

“Time to move on.”

“Glad to hear you say that. Your IQ is better spent on real stuff. Like helping me.”

“With what?”

“Nothing at the moment but I prefer my consultants undistracted.”

I said, “Sure. But if you could ask Central...”

“Already done. Now go home and take your OCD meds.”

“I was thinking Chivas.”

“Whatever works.”

Two days passed before he phoned at ten-twenty p.m. Robin had gone to bed. The kids from the new custody case might be flying in next week from Hong Kong and I was reviewing their pediatric and school records.

“She’s been found, Alex.”

“Great—”

“ Not great. God, I hate doing this with anyone, let alone you.”

I felt the blood rush from my head. “How?”

“Don’t have details, I just got to the scene.”

“Where’s that?”