Bad Love (50 page)

“What’s her connection to de Bosch?”

“She says none,” he said. “Claims the revenge thing was all Coburg’s game, she didn’t really know what he was up to. She says she met him at a mental health convention — advocacy for the homeless. Struck up a conversation at the bar and found they had lots in common.”

“Social worker encounters public interest lawyer,” I said. “A couple of idealists, huh?”

“God help us.” He loosened his tie.

“Coburg probably went to lots of conventions. With his phony law degree and his public-interest persona, he would have fit right in. Meanwhile, he’s looking for de Bosch disciples.
And
trying to undo his past. Symbolically. All those years he spent in institutions. Now he’s in the power role, hobnobbing with therapists. He was like a little kid, thinking magically. Pretending he could make it all go away.”

“We’re still trying to unravel his travel schedule, place him and Jeffers together at least once: Acapulco, the week Mitchell Lerner was killed. Jeffers admits going along for the weekend — she presented a paper — but claims to know nothing about Lerner. She also admits using her position to get Coburg shrink mailing lists, but says she thought he just wanted to use them in order to advertise the law center.”

“How does she explain trussing up Robin and taking potshots at me?”

He grinned. “What do you think?”

“The Devil made her do it.”

“You bet. As their relationship developed, Coburg began to dominate her psychologically and physically. She’d started to have some suspicions about him, but was too afraid to back away from him.”

“Does physically mean sexually?”

“She says there was some of that, but mostly she claims he used mind control, threats, and intimidation to get into her head. Kind of a mini-Manson thing: poor, vulnerable woman taken in by psychopathic Svengali. She says the night he announced he was going to get you, she didn’t want any part of it. But Coburg threatened to tell her husband the two of them had been screwing for five years, and when that didn’t work, he flat out said he’d kill her.”

“How does she explain being so vulnerable?”

“Because she’d been abused as a kid. She says that was what drew her to Coburg — their mutual experiences. At first, their relationship was platonic. Lunch, talking about work, Coburg helping some of her clients out of legal jams, she helping
him
get social services for his. Eventually, it got more personal, but still no sex. Then one day, Coburg took her to his apartment, cooked lunch, had a heart to heart and told her all the shit he’d been through as a kid. She told him she had, too, and they ended up having this big emotional scene — cathartic, she called it.
Then
they went to bed and the whole relationship started taking another turn.”

“Five years,” I said. “That’s when the murders began. . . . Who does she say abused her?”

“Daddy. She’s free and easy with the ugly details, but it’ll be impossible to verify — both parents and her only sibling, a brother, are dead.”

“Natural causes?”

“We’re looking into it.”

“Convenient,” I said. “Everyone’s a victim. I guess she could be telling the truth about being abused. First time I met her she told me violating a child’s trust was the lowest, she could never work with abuse cases. Then again, she could have been toying with me — she and Coburg got off on playing games.”

“Even if it’s true, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s a psychopathic witch.
Couple
of goddamn psychopaths — there’s your two pathologies scenario.”

“The bond between them couldn’t be that deep. It didn’t take long for her to sell him out.”

“Honor among scumbags.” His drink came and he cooled his hands on the glass.

I said, “So what about Becky? What does Jean say the link was between her and Coburg?”

“She claims to have no idea what his motive was, there.” He smiled. “And guess what? He didn’t have one, other than making Jean happy.”

“Becky was
Jean’s
thing?”

“You bet. And that’s what I’m gonna get her on. All her cooperation on the other murders isn’t going to help her there, because I’ve got independent info on a motive: Becky and Dick Jeffers were having an affair. For six months.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“From the newly talkative Ms. Adeline Potthurst. Adeline saw Becky and Dick Jeffers together, sneaking off during a Christmas party at the center. Kissing passionately, his hand up her skirt.”

“Not very discreet.”

“Apparently Becky and Dick weren’t — he used to come by to pick up Jean and end up talking to Becky, body language all over the place. The affair was semipublic knowledge at the center — I checked it out with some of the other workers and they confirm it.”

“Meaning Jean knew.”

“Jean knew because Dickie told her. I had a chat with him this morning — guy’s a basket case — and he admitted everything. Six months of illicit passion. Said he was planning to leave Jean for Becky, and he let Jean know it.”

“How’d she react?”

“Calmly. They had a nice chat and she told him she loved him, was committed to him, please give it some thought, let’s get some counseling, et cetera.”

“Did they?”

“No. A month later, Becky’s dead. And there’s no reason for anyone to make a connection — a nut hacking her up. The way I see it, it’s just like you said: Jean and Coburg searched for a nut who could be
manipulated
to hack her up and came up with Hewitt — both of them had ties to him.”

“What was Jeffers’ tie?”

“She was his therapist before transferring him to Becky — supposedly because of a heavy workload.”

“She told me Becky was the only therapist he had.”

“Adeline says no, Jeffers definitely treated him. And Mary Chin, Jeffers’ secretary, confirms it. Twice-a-week sessions, sometimes more, for at least three or four months before Becky took over. We can’t find any therapy notes — no doubt Jeffers destroyed them — but that only makes it look worse for her.”

I said, “She made a point of telling me she didn’t do therapy anymore — another mind game . . . why didn’t the fact that she was working with Hewitt ever come out after Becky’s murder?”

The hand went over his face. “We didn’t ask, and no one volunteered. Why would they? Everyone saw it as psycho kills girl. And we killed the psycho. No one suspected a damn thing — none of the staffers at the center or Dick Jeffers. He’s pretty freaked out now. Coming to grips with the monster he’s been living with. Says he’s willing to testify against her — whether or not he sticks with that remains to be seen.”

“An affair,” I said. “So goddamned mundane. Jean sleeps with Coburg for five years, but Becky gets the death penalty . . . typical psychopathic thinking, the ego out of control: you hurt me, I kill you.”

“Yeah,” he said, drinking and licking his lips. “So tell me, specifically, how would you get a nut like Hewitt to kill?”

“I’d pick someone with strong paranoid tendencies whose fantasies got violent when he was off his medicine. Then I’d
get
him off his medicine, either by convincing him to stop taking it or by substituting a placebo, and try to get as much control as I could over his psyche as he deteriorated. Maybe use some age-regression techniques — hypnosis or free association, bring him back to his childhood — get him to confront the helplessness of childhood. To
feel
it. The pain, the rage.”

“The screams,” he said.

I nodded. “That’s probably why they taped him. They got him to scream out his pain, played it back for him — you remember how hard it was to listen to. Can you imagine a schizophrenic dealing with that? Meanwhile, they’re also teaching him about bad love, evil shrinks — indoctrinating him, telling him he’s been a victim. And insinuating
Becky
into the delusion, as a major-league evil shrink — the purveyor of bad love. They continue to increase his paranoia by praising him for it. Convincing him he’s some kind of soldier on a mission: get Becky. Then they transfer him to her. But I’ll bet Jean continued to see him on the side. Prepping him, directing him. Backed up by Coburg — another authority figure for Hewitt. And the beauty of it is even if Hewitt hadn’t been killed at the scene and had talked, who would have believed him? He was crazy.”

“That’s about the way I had it,” he said. “But hearing you organize it that way helps.”

“It’s not hard evidence.”

“I know, but the circumstantial case is building up, bit by bit. The DA’s going to let Coburg’s attorney know how extensively Jeffers is ratting him out, then offer a deal: no death penalty in return for Coburg ratting on Jeffers over Becky. My bet is Coburg takes it. We’ll get both of them.”

“Poor Becky.”

“Yeah. Guess how she and Dick got started? Jean had Becky over for dinner, supervisor-student rapport and all that. Eyes across the fried chicken, a couple of knee nudges. Next day Becky and Dick are at a motel.”

“Mrs. Basille said she thought Becky had a new beau. Becky wouldn’t talk about it, which led Mrs. Basille to suspect it was someone she wouldn’t have approved of — what she called a loser. Becky’d gone with married men before — guys who promised to get divorced but never did. Dick was
exactly
her type — married
and
disabled.”

“What does disabled have to do with it?”

“Becky had a thing for guys with problems. Wounded birds. Jeffers’ missing leg meshed nicely with that.”

“He’s missing a leg? That’s what the limp is?”

“He wears a prosthesis. Becky’s dad was diabetic. Lost some of
his
limbs.”

“Jesus.” He smoked. “So maybe there is something to this psychology stuff, huh?”

I thought about Becky Basille, trapped in a locked room with a madman. “Everything Jean and Coburg
did
was part of the ritual. Like forging Becky’s therapy notes and scripting them to make it seem Becky was having an affair with
Hewitt
. In addition to diverting us, once more, to Gritz, it added insult to injury by humiliating Becky. As if that could undo the humiliation Becky’d caused Jean.”

He stubbed out his cigar. “Speaking of Gritz, I think I found him. Once I realized Coburg and Jeffers were probably using him as a distraction, I figured the poor sucker’s life expectancy wasn’t too great and started to call around at morgues. Long Beach has someone who fits his description perfectly. Multiple stab wounds and ligature around the neck — a guitar string.”

“The next Elvis. I’d check Coburg’s guitar case.”

“Del Hardy already did. Coburg’s got a bunch of guitars. And a phase shifter and other recording stuff. In one of the cases was a set of brand-new strings. Missing the low E. The other interesting things that came up were a man’s shirt too small to be Coburg’s, torn up and used for a rag, still stinking of booze. And an old Corrective School attendance roster with nineteen seventy-three ripped out.”

“Small shirt,” I said. “Gritz was a little man.”

He nodded. “And a client of the law center. Coburg had gotten
him
off a theft thing, too, couple of months ago.”

“Any indication he ever knew Hewitt?”

“No.”

“Poor guy,” I said. “They probably lured him with notions of being a recording star — let him play with the guitars and the gizmos, make a demo. That’s why he talked about getting rich. Then they killed him and used him as a red herring. No family connections, the perfect victim. Where was the body found?”

“Near the harbor. Naked, no ID, quite a bit worse for wear. He’d been in one of their coolers with a John Doe toe tag. They figure he’s been dead anywhere from four days to a week.”

“Right around the time you called Jeffers and asked her to speak to me. You said she thought she recognized my name. When I got there she pretended it was because of the Casa de los NiÑos case. But she knew it from Coburg’s hit list — it must have shocked them, their next victim in their face, like that. Your making the connection between the “bad love’ tape and what happened to Becky. Someone else might have backed off, but clearing the list just meant too much to Coburg — he couldn’t let go of it. So he and Jean decided to stay on track and use Gritz as extra insurance. Jeffers sends me to Coburg, Coburg just happens to remember Gritz was Hewitt’s friend and directs me to Little Calcutta. Then, just in case we still weren’t biting, Jeffers produces the therapy notes with all those references to “G.’ Maybe I should have wondered — Jeffers made such a big deal about Becky being a lousy note taker, then magically these appear. Mrs. Basille said Becky was a real stickler for the rules, but I figured she was just out of touch.”

“There was no way to know,” he said. “These people are from another planet.”

“That lunch with Jeffers,” I said, feeling suddenly chilled. “She sat across from me — touching my hand, letting loose the tears. Bringing Dick along was another ritual: Becky vanquished, Jean was showing off her spoils. After we were finished eating, she insisted on walking me to my car. Stood on the sidewalk, misbuttoned her sweater, and had to redo it. Probably a signal to Coburg, waiting somewhere across the street. She stayed with me all the way to the Seville — tagging the car for Coburg. He followed me up to Benedict and learned where I was hiding out.”

He shook his head. “We hadn’ta caught them, they’d probably run for office.”

“At lunch, I told Jeffers that I was going to Santa Barbara the next day to talk to Katarina. That got them worried I’d learn something — maybe even bring back the school roster. So they were forced to break sequence — Coburg beat me up there and killed Katarina before me. And tossed the house. Any idea why Coburg called himself Silk and Merino?”

“I asked the asshole. He didn’t answer, just smiled that creepy smile. I started to walk out and then he said, “Look it up.’ So I did. In the dictionary. “Coburg’ is an old English word for imitation silk or wool. . . . Enough of this, my head’s splitting. . . . How are you and Robin doing?”

“We’ve been able to go back to the house.”

“Anything left?”

“Mostly ashes.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

I said, “We’ll survive — we’re surviving. And living in the shop’s not bad — the smallness is actually kind of comforting.”