Bad Love

'Did he ever work at the school?'

'He did occasional consultations. Coming up summers for a week or two, combining vacation with business. Hit-and-run…' He shook his head.

'And as I was saying, I can't locate any of the other speakers or co-chairs.'

'You've located me.'

'You're the only one, Dr. Harrison.'

'Bert, please. Just out of curiosity, how did you find me?'

'From the Directory of Medical Specialists.'

'Oh. I suppose I forgot to cancel it.' He looked troubled.

'I didn't want to impose on your privacy, but-'

'No, no, that's fine. You're here for my own good… and, to tell the truth, I welcome visitors. After thirty years in practice, it's nice to talk to people rather than just listen.'

'Do you know where any of the others are? Katarina de Bosch, Mitchell Lerner, Harvey Rosenblatt.'

'Katarina is just up the coast, in Santa Barbara.'

'She's still there?'

'I haven't heard that she's moved.'

'Do you have her address?'

'And her phone number. Here, let me call it for you.'

He reached over, pulled a crimson rotary phone from the counter, and put it on the table. As he dialed I wrote down the number on the phone. Then he held the receiver to his ear for a while, before putting it down.

'No answer,' he said.

'When's the last time you saw her?'

He thought. 'I suppose about a year or so. By coincidence. I was in a bookstore in Santa Barbara and ran into her, browsing.'

'Psychology?'

He smiled. 'No, fiction, actually. She was in the science-fiction section. Would you like her address?'

'Please.'

He wrote it down and gave it to me. Shoreline Drive.

'The ocean side,' he said, 'just up from the marina.'

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?'