Private Eyes Read online

  Private Eyes

  Alex Delaware [6]

  Kellerman, Jonathan

  Ballantine Books (1991)

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  Alex Delawarettt

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  The voice belongs to a woman, but Dr. Alex Delaware remembers a little girl. It is eleven years since seven-years-old Melissa Dickinson dialed a hospital help line for comfort--and found it in therapy with Alex Delaware. Now the lovely young heiress is desperately calling for psychologist's help once more. Only this time it looks like Melissa's deepest childhood nightmare is really coming true ... Twenty years ago, Gina Dickinson, Melissa's mother, suffered a grisly assault that left the budding actress irreparably scarred and emotionally crippled. Now her acid-wielding assailant is out of prison and back in L.A.--and Melissa is terrified that the monster has returned to hurt Gina again. But before Alex Delaware can even begin to soothe his former patient's fears, Gina, a recluse for twenty, disappears. And now, unless Delaware turns crack detective to uncover the truth, Gina Dickinson will be just one more victim of a cold fury that has already spawned madness--and murder.

  Private Eyes

  Alex Delaware – Book 6

  By Jonathan Kellerman

  Special thanks to Beverly Lewis, whose sharp eye and soft voice make a big difference.

  To Gerald Petievich, for an insider’s view— of lots of things.

  And to Terri Turner, California Parole Department, for her efficiency and good cheer.

  To my children,

  who put everything in perspective

  For all of us our own particular

  creature lurks in ambush.

  — HUGH WAPOLE

  1

  A therapist’s work is never over.

  Which isn’t to say that patients don’t get better.

  But the bond forged during locked-door three-quarter hours— the relationship that develops when private eyes peek into private lives— can achieve a certain immortality.

  Some patients do leave and never return. Some never leave. A good many occupy an ambiguous space in the middle— throwing out occasional tendrils of reattachment during periods of pride or sorrow.

  Predicting who’ll fall into which group is an iffy business, no more rational than Vegas or the stock market. After a few years in practice I stopped trying.

  So I really wasn’t surprised when I came home after a July night-run and learned that Melissa Dickinson had left a message with my service.

  First time I’d heard from her in . . . what? It had to be nearly a decade since she’d stopped coming to the office I once maintained in a cold-blooded high-rise on the east end of Beverly Hills.

  One of my long-termers.

  That alone would have made her stand out in my memory, but there had been so much more. . . .

  Child psychology’s an ideal job for those who like to feel heroic. Children tend to get better relatively quickly and to need less treatment than adults. Even at the height of my practice it was rare to schedule a patient for more than one session a week. But I started Melissa at three. Because of the extent of her problems. Her unique situation. After eight months we tapered to twice; at year’s anniversary, were down to one.

  Finally, a month shy of two years, termination.

  She left therapy a changed little girl; I allowed myself a bit of self-congratulation but knew better than to wallow in it. Because the family structure that had nurtured her problems had never been altered. Its surface hadn’t even been scratched.

  Despite that, there’d been no reason to keep her in treatment against her will.

  I’m nine years old, Dr. Delaware. I’m ready to handle things on my own.

  I sent her out into the world, expecting to hear from her soon. Didn’t for several weeks, phoned her and was informed, in polite but firm nine-year-old tones, that she was just fine, thank you, would call me if she needed me.

  Now she had.

  A long time to be on hold.

  Ten years would make her nineteen. Empty the memory banks and be prepared for a stranger.

  I glanced at the phone number she’d left with the service.

  An 818 area code. San Labrador exchange.

  I went into the library, dug into my CLOSED files for a while, and finally found her chart.

  Same prefix as her original home number, but the last four digits were different.

  Change of number or had she left home? If she had, she hadn’t gone very far.

  I checked the date of her last session. Nine years ago. A birth date in June. She’d turned eighteen a month ago.

  I wondered what had changed about her. What was the same.

  Wondered why I hadn’t heard from her sooner.

  2

  The phone was picked up after two rings.

  “Hello?” Voice of a stranger, young, female.

  “Melissa?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Dr. Alex Delaware.”

  “Oh. Hi! I didn’t . . . Thanks so much for calling back, Dr. Delaware. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until tomorrow. I didn’t even know if you’d call back.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Your listing in the phone boo— Excuse me. Hold on for one second, please.”

  Hand over the phone. Muffled conversation.

  A moment later she came back on. “There’s no office address for you in the phone book. No address at all. Just your name, no degree— I wasn’t even sure it was the same A. Delaware. So I didn’t know if you were still in practice. The answering service said you were but that you worked mostly with lawyers and judges.”

  “That’s basically true—”

  “Oh. Then I guess—”

  “But I’m always available to former patients. And I’m glad you called. How are things, Melissa?”

  “Things are good,” she said quickly. Clipped laugh. “Having said that, the logical question is why am I calling you after all these years, right? And the answer is that it’s not about me, Dr. Delaware. It’s Mother.”

  “I see.”

  “Not that anything terrible’s— Oh, darn, hold on.” Hand over the phone again. More background conversation. “I’m really sorry, Dr. Delaware, this just isn’t a good time to talk. Do you think I could come and . . . see you?”

  “Sure. What’s a good time for you?”

  “The sooner the better. I’m pretty free— school’s out. I graduated.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. It feels good to be out.”

  “Bet it does.” I checked my book. “How about tomorrow at noon?”

  “Noon would be great. I really appreciate this, Dr. Delaware.”

  I gave her directions to my house. She thanked me and hung up before I could complete my goodbye.

  Having learned much less than I usually do during a preappointment call.

  A bright young woman. Articulate, tense. Holding back something?

  Remembering the child she’d been, I found none of that surprising.

  It’s Mother.

  That opened up a realm of possibilities.

  The most likely: She’d finally come to grips with her mother’s pathology— what it meant to her. Needed to put her feelings in focus, maybe get a referral for her mother.

  So tomorrow’s visit would probably be a one-shot deal. And that would be it. For another nine years.

  I closed the chart, comfortable with my powers of prediction.

  I might as well have been playing the slots in Vegas. Or buying penny stocks on Wall Street.

  • • •

  I spent the next couple of hours on my latest project: a monograph for one of the psych journals on my experiences with a school full of children victimized by
a sniper the previous autumn. The writing was more of an ordeal than I’d expected; the trick was to make the experience come alive within the confines of a scientific approach.

  I stared down at draft number four— fifty-two pages of defiantly awkward prose— certain I’d never be able to inject any humanity into the morass of jargon, scholarly references, and footnotes I had no clear memory of creating.

  At eleven-thirty I put my pen down and sat back, still unable to find the magic voice. My eyes fell on Melissa’s chart. I opened it and began reading.

  October 18, 1978.

  The fall of ’78. I remembered it as a hot and nasty one. With its filthy streets and septic air, Hollywood hadn’t worn its autumns well for a long time. I’d just given Grand Rounds at Western Pediatric Hospital and was itching to get back to the west side of town and the half a dozen appointments that made up the rest of my day.

  I’d thought the lecture had gone well. Behavioral Approaches to Fear and Anxiety in Children. Facts and figures, transparencies and slides— in those days I’d thought all that quite impressive. An auditorium full of pediatricians, most of them private practitioners. An inquisitive, practical-minded bunch, hungry for what worked, with little patience for academic nit-picking.

  I fielded questions for a quarter of an hour and was on my way out of the lecture hall when a young woman stopped me. I recognized her as one of the frequent questioners, thought I’d seen her somewhere else as well.

  “Dr. Delaware? Eileen Wagner.”

  She had a pleasant full face under cropped chestnut hair. Good features, bottom-heavy figure, a slight squint. Her white blouse was mannish and buttoned to the neck; her skirt, knee-length tweed over sensible shoes. She carried a black Gladstone bag that looked brand-new. I remembered where I’d seen her before: last year’s House Staff Roster. Third-year resident. M.D. from one of the Ivy League schools.

  I said, “Dr. Wagner.”

  We shook hands. Hers was soft and stubby, bare of jewelry.

  She said, “You gave a lecture on fears to the Four West staff last year, when I was PL-three. I thought it was quite good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I enjoyed today, too. And I’ve got a referral for you, if you’re interested.”

  “Sure.”

  She shifted the Gladstone bag to another hand. “I’m in practice now, out in Pasadena, have privileges at Cathcart Memorial. But the kid I have in mind isn’t one of my regular patients, just a phone-in through Cathcart’s help line. They didn’t know how to handle it and sent it over to me because I’m listed as having an interest in behavioral pediatrics. When I heard what the problem was, I remembered last year’s talk and thought it would be right up your alley. Then, when I read the Grand Rounds schedule, I thought: perfect.”

  “I’d be glad to help, but my office is on the other side of town.”

  “No matter. They’ll come to you— they have the means. I know because I went out a few days ago to see her— it’s a little girl we’re talking about. Seven years old. Actually I came here this morning because of her. Hoping to learn something that could help me help her. But after listening to you it’s clear her problems go beyond office management. She needs someone who specializes.”

  “Anxiety problems?”

  Emphatic nod. “She’s just racked with fears. Multiple phobias as well as a high level of general anxiety. I’m talking really pervasive.”

  “When you say you went out there, do you mean a house call?”

  She smiled. “Didn’t think anyone did them anymore? At Yale Public Health they taught us to call them “home visits.’ No, actually I don’t make a habit of it— wanted them to come into the office to see me, but that’s part of the problem. They don’t travel. Or rather, the mother doesn’t. She’s an agoraphobic, hasn’t left her house for years.”

  “How many years?”

  “She didn’t get any more specific than “years’— and I could see even that much was hard for her, so I didn’t push. She really wasn’t prepared for being questioned at all. So I kept it brief, focused on the kid.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “What did she tell you about the kid?”

  “Just that Melissa— that’s her name— was afraid of everything. The dark. Loud noises and bright lights. Being alone. New situations. And she often seems tense and jumpy. Some of it’s got to be constitutional— genetics— or maybe she’s just imitating the mother. But I’m sure some of it’s the way she lives— it’s a very strange situation. Big house— huge. One of those incredible mansions on the north side of Cathcart Boulevard out in San Labrador. Classic San Labrador— acres of land, huge rooms, dutiful servants, everything very hush-hush. And the mother stays up in her room like some Victorian lady afflicted with the vapors.”

  She stopped, touched her mouth with a fingertip. “A Victorian princess, actually. She’s really beautiful. Despite the fact that one side of her face is all scarred and there appears to be some mild facial hemiplegia— subtle sagging, mostly when she talks. If she weren’t so beautiful— so symmetrical— you might never notice. No keloiding, though. Just a mesh of fine scars. I’d be willing to bet she had top-level plastic surgery years ago for something really major. Most likely a burn or some kind of deep flesh wound. Maybe that’s the root of her problem— I don’t know.”

  “What’s the little girl like?”

  “I didn’t see much of her, just caught a glimpse when I walked in the front door. Small and skinny and cute, very well dressed— your basic little rich girl. When I tried to talk to her she scampered away. I suspect she actually hid somewhere in her mother’s room— it’s a bunch of rooms, actually, more like a suite. While the mother and I were talking I kept hearing little rustles in the background and each time I stopped to listen, they’d stop. The mother never remarked on it, so I didn’t say anything. Figured I was lucky enough just getting up there to see her.”

  I said, “Sounds like something out of a Gothic novel.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what it was. Gothic. Sort of spooky. Not that the mother was spooky— she was charming, actually. Sweet. In a vulnerable way.”

  “Your basic Victorian princess,” I said. “She doesn’t leave the house at all?”

  “That’s what she said. What she confessed— she’s pretty ashamed. Not that shame’s convinced her to try to leave the house. When I suggested she see if she could make it to my office, she started to get really tense. Her hands actually started shaking. So I backed off. But she did agree to have Melissa be seen by a psychologist.”

  “Strange.”

  “Strange is your business, isn’t it?”

  I smiled.

  She said, “Have I piqued your interest?”

  “Do you think the mother really wants help?”

  “For the girl? She says she does. But more important, the kid’s motivated. She’s the one who called the help line.”

  “Seven years old and she called herself?”

  “The volunteer on the line couldn’t believe it either. The line’s not intended for kids. Once in a while they get a teenager they refer to Adolescent Medicine. But Melissa must have seen one of their public service commercials on TV, copied down the number, and dialed it. And she was up late to do it— the call came in just after ten P.M.”

  She lifted the Gladstone bag chest-high, popped it open, and pulled out a cassette.

  “I know it sounds bizarre, but I’ve got the proof right here. They tape everything that comes over the line. I had them make me a copy.”

  I said, “She must be pretty precocious.”

  “Must be. I wish I’d had a chance to actually spend some time with her— what a neat kid, to take the initiative.” She paused. “What a hurt she must be going through. Anyway, after I listened to the tape I phoned the number she gave the volunteer and reached the mother. She had no idea Melissa had called. When I told her, she broke down and started to cry. But when I asked her to come in for a consultation, she said she was ill and
couldn’t. I thought it was something physically debilitating, so I offered to go out there. Hence, my Gothic home visit.”

  She held the tape out to me. “If you’d like, you can have a listen. It’s really something. I told the mother I’d be talking to a psychologist, took the liberty of giving her your name. But don’t feel any pressure.”

  I took the cassette. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I honestly don’t know if I can make home visits to San Labrador.”

  “She can come to the other side of town— Melissa can. A servant will bring her.”