When the Bough Breaks (23 page)

He stood, thanked me for coming, and took my hand in both of his. “I hope we see more of you, Doctor. Soon.”

It was my turn to smile.

“Plan on it, Reverend.”

Grandma was ready for me as I stepped into the waiting room, with a sheaf of stapled booklets and two sharpened number two pencils.

“You can fill these out right here, Doctor Delaware,” she said sweetly.

I looked at my watch.

“Gee, it’s much later than I thought. I’ll have to take a raincheck.”

“But—” She became flustered.

“How about you give them to me to take home? I’ll fill them out and mail them back to you.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that! These are psychological tests!” She clutched the papers to her breast. “The rules are that you must fill them out here.”

“Well, then, I’ll just have to come back.” I started to leave.

“Wait. Let me ask someone. I’ll ask Reverend Gus if it’s—”

“He told me he was going to retire for a period of meditation. I don’t think he wants to be disturbed.”

“Oh.” She was disoriented. “I must ask someone. You wait right here, Doctor, and I’ll find Tim.”

“Sure.”

When she was gone I slipped out the door, unnoticed.

The sun had almost set. It was that transitional time of day when the diurnal palette is slowly scraped dry, colors falling aside to reveal a wash of gray, that ambiguous segment of twilight when everything looks just a little bit fuzzy around the edges.

I walked toward my car unsettled. I’d spent three hours at La Casa and had learned little other than that the Reverend Augustus McCaffrey was a shrewd old boy with overactive charisma glands. He’d taken the time to check me out and wanted me to know it. But only a paranoiac could rightfully see anything ominous in that. He was showing off, displaying how well-informed and prepared he was. The same went for his advertising the abundance of friends in high places. It was psychological muscle-flexing. Power respected power, strength gravitated to strength. The more connections McCaffrey could show, the more he was going to get. And that was the way to big bucks. That, and collection boxes illustrated with sad-eyed waifs.

I had the key in the door of the Seville, facing the campus of the institution. It looked empty and still, like a well-run farm after the work’s all done. Probably dinner time, with the kids in the cafeteria, the counselors watching, and the Reverend Gus delivering an eloquent benediction.

I felt foolish.

I was about to open the door when I caught a glimpse of a flurry of movement near the forestlike Grove, several hundred feet in the distance. It was hard to be certain, but I thought I saw a struggle, heard the sound of muffled cries.

I put the car keys back in my pocket and let the copy of McCaffrey’s
book drop to the gravel. There was no one else in sight, except for the guard in the booth at the entrance and his attention was focused in the opposite direction. I needed to get closer without being seen. Carefully I made my way down the hill upon which the parking lot sat, staying in the shadow of buildings whenever I could. The shapes in the distance were moving, but slowly.

I pressed myself against the flamingo-pink wall of the southernmost dormitory, as far as I could go without abandoning cover. The ground was moist and mushy, the air rotten with fumes given off by a nearby trash dumpster. Someone had tried to write FUCK in the pink paint, but the corrugated metal was a hostile surface and it came out chicken scratches.

The sounds were clearer and louder now, and they were definitely cries of distress—animal cries, bleating and plaintive.

I made out three silhouettes, two large, one much smaller. The small one seemed to be walking on air.

I inched closer, peering around the corner. The three figures passed before me, perhaps thirty feet away moving along the southern border of the institution. They walked across the concrete of the pool deck and came under the illumination of a yellow anti-bug light affixed to the eave of the poolhouse.

It was then that I saw them clearly, flash frozen in the lemon light.

The small figure was Rodney and he’d appeared suspended because he was being carried in the firm grip of Halstead, the coach, and Tim Kruger. They grasped him under the arms so that his feet dangled inches from the ground.

They were strong men but the boy was giving them a struggle. He squirmed and kicked like a ferret in a trap, opened his mouth and let out a wordless moan. Halstead clamped a hairy hand over the mouth but the child managed to wrench free and scream again. Halstead stifled him once more and it went on that way as they retreated out of the light and my line of vision, the alternating sounds of cries and muted grunts a crazy trumpet solo that grew faint then faded away.

Then it was silent and I was alone, back to the wall, bathed in sweat, clothes clammy and sticking to me. I wanted to perform some heroic act, to break out of the deadening inertia that had settled around my ankles like quick-drying cement.

But I couldn’t save anybody. I was a man out of his element. If I followed them there’d be rational explanations for everything and a herd of guards to quickly turn me out, taking careful note of my face so that the gates of La Casa would never again open before it.

I couldn’t afford that, just yet.

So I stood, up against the wall, rooted in the ghost-town stillness,
feeling sick and helpless. I clenched my fists until they hurt and listened to the dry urgent sound of my own breathing like the scraping of boots against alley stones.

I forced the image of the struggling boy out of my mind.

When I was sure it was safe I sneaked back to my car.

17

THE FIRST TIME
I called, at 8
A.M
., nobody answered. A half-hour later the University of Oregon was open for business.

“Good morning, Education.”

“Good morning. This is Dr. Gene Adler calling from Los Angeles. I’m with the Department of Psychiatry at Western Pediatric Medical Center in Los Angeles. We’re currently recruiting for a counseling position. One of our applicants has listed on his resume the fact that he received a master’s degree in counseling education from your department. As part of our routine credentials check I was wondering if you could verify that for me.”

“I’ll switch you to Marianne, in transcripts.”

Marianne had a warm, friendly voice but when I repeated my story for her she told me, firmly, that a written request would be necessary.

“That’s fine with me,” I said, “but that will take time. The job for which this individual has applied is being competitively sought by many people. We were planning to make a decision within twenty-four hours. It’s just a formality—verification of records—but our liability insurance stipulates that we have to do it. If you’d like I can have the applicant call you to release the information. It’s in his best interests.”

“Well … I suppose it’ll be all right. All you want to know is if this person received a degree, right? Nothing more personal than that?”

“That’s correct.”

“Who’s the applicant?”

“A gentleman named Timothy Kruger. His records list an M.A. four years ago.”

“One moment.”

She was gone for ten minutes, and when she returned to the phone she sounded upset.

“Well, Doctor, your formality has turned out to be of some value. There is no record of a degree being granted to a person of that name in the last ten years. We do have record of a Timothy Jay Kruger attending one semester of graduate school four years ago, but his major wasn’t in counseling, it was in secondary teaching, and he left after that single semester.”

“I see. That’s quite disturbing. Any indication of why he left?”

“None. Does that really matter now?”

“No, I suppose not—you’re absolutely certain about this? I wouldn’t want to jeopardize Mr. Kruger’s career—”

“There’s no doubt whatsoever.” She sounded offended. “I checked and double-checked, Doctor, and then I asked the head of the department, Dr. Gowdy, and he was positive no Timothy Kruger graduated from here.”

“Well, that settles it, doesn’t it? And it certainly casts a new light on Mr. Kruger. Could you check one more thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Mr. Kruger also listed a B.A. in psychology from Jedson College in Washington State. Would your records contain that kind of information as well?”

“It would be on his application to graduate school. We should have transcripts, but I don’t see why you need to—”

“Marianne, I’m going to have to report this to the State Board of Behavioral Science examiners, because state licensure is involved. I want to know all the facts.”

“I see. Let me check.”

This time she was back in a moment.

“I’ve got his transcript from Jedson here, Doctor. He did receive a B.A. but it wasn’t in psychology.”

“What was it in?”

She laughed.

“Dramatic arts. Acting.”

I called the school where Raquel Ochoa taught and had her pulled out of class. Despite that, she seemed pleased to hear from me.

“Hi. How’s the investigation going?”

“We’re getting closer,” I lied. “That’s what I called you about. Did Elena keep a diary or any kind of records around the apartment?”

“No. Neither of us were diary writers. Never had been.”

“No notebooks, tapes, anything?”

“The only tapes I saw were music—she had a tape deck in her new car—and some cassettes Handler gave her to help her relax. For sleep. Why?”

I ignored the question.

“Where are her personal effects?”

“You should know that. The police had them. I suppose they gave them back to her mother. What’s going on? Have you found out something?”

“Nothing definite. Nothing I can talk about. We’re trying to fit things together.”

“I don’t care how you do it, just catch him and punish him. The monster.”

I dredged up a rancid lump of false confidence and smeared it all over my voice. “We will.”

“I know you will.”

Her faith made me uneasy.

“Raquel, I’m away from the files. Do you have her mother’s home address handy?”

“Sure.” She gave it to me.

“Thanks.”

“Are you planning on visiting Elena’s family?”

“I thought it would be helpful to talk to them in person.”

There was silence on the other end. Then she spoke.

“They’re good people. But they may shut you out.”

“It’s happened before.”

She laughed.

“I think you’d do better if I went with you. I’m like a member of the family.”

“It’s no hassle for you?”

“No. I want to help. When do you want to go?”

“This afternoon.”

“Fine. I’ll get off early. Tell them I’m not feeling well. Pick me up at two-thirty. Here’s my address.”

She lived in a modest West L.A. neighborhood not far from where the Santa Monica and San Diego Freeways merged in blissful union, an area of crackerbox apartment buildings populated by singles who couldn’t afford the Marina.

She was visible a block away, waiting by the curb, dressed in a pigeon-blood crepe blouse, blue denim skirt and tooled western boots.

She got in the car, crossed a pair of unstockinged brown legs and smiled.

“Hi.”

“Hi. Thanks for doing this.”

“I told you, this is something I want to do. I want to feel useful.”

I drove north, toward Sunset. There was jazz on the radio, something free form and atonal, with saxophone solos that sounded like police sirens and drums like a heart in arrest.

“Change it, if you’d like.”

She pushed some buttons, fiddled with the dial, and found a mellow rock station. Someone was singing about lost love and old movies and tying it all together.

“What do you want to know from them?” she asked, settling back.

“If Elena told them anything about her work—specifically the child who died. Anything about Handler.”

There were lots of questions in her eyes but she kept them there.

“Talking about Handler will be especially touchy. The family didn’t like the idea of her going out with a man who was so much older. And” she hesitated, “an Anglo, to boot. In situations like that the tendency is to deny the whole thing, not even to acknowledge it. It’s cultural.”

“To some extent it’s human.”

“To some extent, maybe. We Hispanics do it more. Part of it is Catholicism. The rest is our Indian blood. How can you survive in some of the desolate regions we’ve lived in without denying reality? You smile, and pretend it’s lush and fertile and there’s plenty of water and food, and the desert doesn’t seem so bad.”

“Any suggestions how I might get around the denial?”

“I don’t know.” She sat with her hands folded in her lap, a proper schoolgirl. “I think I’d better start the talking. Cruz—Elena’s mom—always liked me. Maybe I can get through. But don’t expect miracles.”

She had little to worry about on that account.

Echo Park is a chunk of Latin America transported to the dusty, hilly streets that, buttressed by crumbling concrete embankments on either side of Sunset Boulevard, rise between Hollywood and downtown. The streets have names like Macbeth and Macduff, Bonnybrae and Laguna, but are anything but poetic. They climb to the south and dip down into the Union District ghetto. To the north they climb, feeding into the tiny lake-centered park that gives the area its name, continue through arid trails, get lost in an incongruous wilderness that looks down upon Dodger Stadium, and Elysian Park, home of the Los Angeles Police Academy.

Sunset changes when it leaves Hollywood and enters Echo Park. The porno theaters and by-the-hour motels yield to
botánicas
and
bodegas
, outlets for Discos Latinos, an infinite array of food stands—taco joints, Peruvian seafood parlors, fast-food franchises—and firstrate Latino restaurants, beauty shops with windows guarded by styro-foam skulls wearing blond Dynel wigs, Cuban bakeries, storefront medical and legal clinics, bars and social clubs. Like many poor areas, the Echo Park part of Sunset is continually clogged with foot traffic.

The Seville cut a slow swath through the afternoon mob. There was
a mood on the boulevard as urgent and sizzling as the molten lard spitting forth from the fryers of the food stands. There were homeboys sporting homemade tattoos, fifteen-year-old mothers wheeling fat babies in rickety strollers that threatened to fall apart at every curb, rummies, pushers, starched-collared immigration lawyers, cleaning women on shore leave, grandmothers, flower vendors, a never-ending stream of brown-eyed children.