When the Bough Breaks (17 page)

“I don’t want to take you on a cruise. I just want to ask a few questions about Elena.”

She sat down.

“What kind of psychologist are you? You don’t talk like one.”

I gave her a capsulized, deliberately vague history of my involvement in the case. She listened and I thought I saw her soften.

“A child psychologist. We could use you around here.”

I looked around the classroom, counted forty-six desks in a space meant for twenty-eight.

“I don’t know what I could do—help you tie them down?”

She laughed, then realized what she was doing and cut it off, like a bad connection.

“It’s no use talking about Elena,” she said. “She only got—into trouble because of being involved with that …” She trailed off.

“I know Handler was a creep. Detective Sturgis—the big guy—knows. And you’re probably right. She was an innocent victim. But let’s make sure, okay?”

“You do this a lot? Work for the police?” She evaded me.

“No. I’m retired.”

She looked at me with disbelief. “At your age?”

“Post-burnout.”

That hit home. She dropped her mask a notch and a bit of humanity peeked through.

“I wish I could afford it. Retirement.”

“I know what you mean. It must be crazy working with this kind of bureaucracy.” I threw out the lure of empathy—administrators were the object of every teacher’s ire. If she didn’t go for it I wasn’t sure what I’d do to gain rapport.

She looked at me suspiciously, searching for a sign that I was patronizing her.

“You don’t work at all?” she asked.

“I do some free-lance investing. It keeps me busy enough.”

We chatted for a while about the vagaries of the school system. She carefully avoided mention of anything personal, keeping it all in the realm of pop sociology—how rotten things were when parents weren’t willing to get emotionally and intellectually involved with their children, how difficult it was to teach when half the kids came from broken homes and were so upset they could barely concentrate, the frustration of dealing with administrators who’d given up on life and stuck around only for their pensions, anger at the fact that a teacher’s starting salary was less than that of a trash collector. She was twenty-nine and she’d lost any shred of idealism that had survived the transition from East L.A. to the world of Anglo bourgeoisie.

She could really talk when she got going, the dark eyes flashing, the hands gesticulating—flying through the air like two brown sparrows.

I sat like the teacher’s pet and listened, giving her what everyone wants when they’re unloading—empathy, an understanding gesture. Part of it was calculated—I wanted to break through to her in order to find out more about Elena Gutierrez—but some of it was my old therapeutic persona, thoroughly genuine.

I was starting to think I’d gotten through when the bell rang. She became a teacher again, the arbiter of right and wrong.

“You must go now. The children will be coming back.”

I stood up and leaned on her desk.

“Can we talk later? About Elena?”

She hesitated, biting her lip. The sound of a stampede began as a faint rumble and grew thunderous. High-pitched voices wailed their way closer.

“All right. I’m off at two-thirty.”

An offer to buy her a drink would have been a mistake. Keep it businesslike, Alex.

“Thank you. I’ll meet you at the gate.”

“No. Meet me in the teachers’ parking lot. At the south side of the building.” Away from prying eyes.

Her car was a dusty white Vega. She walked toward it carrying a stack of books and papers that reached up to her chin.

“Can I help you?”

She gave me the load, which must have weighed at least twenty pounds, and took a minute to find her keys. I noticed that she’d put on makeup—eye shadow that accentuated the depth of her orbs. She looked around eighteen.

“I haven’t eaten yet,” she said. It was less an angling for an invitation than a complaint.

“No brown bag?”

“I threw it out. I make a lousy lunch. On a day like today it’s too lousy to take. There’s a chop house on Wilshire.”

“Can I drive you?”

She looked at the Vega.

“Sure, why not? I’m low on gas, anyway. Toss those on the front seat.” I put the books down and she locked the car. “But I’ll pay for my own lunch.”

We left the school grounds. I led her to the Seville. When she saw it her eyebrows rose.

“You must be a good investor.”

“I get lucky from time to time.”

She sank back in the soft leather and let out a breath. I got behind the wheel and started up the engine.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “You pay for the lunch.”

She ate meticulously, cutting her steak into tiny pieces, spearing each morsel individually and slipping it into her mouth, and wiping her mouth with her napkin every third bite. I was willing to bet she was a tough grader.

“She was my best friend,” she said, putting down her fork and picking up her water glass. “We grew up together in East L.A. Rafael and Andy—her brothers—played with Miguel.” At the mention of her dead brother her eyes misted then grew hard as obsidian. She pushed her plate away. She’d eaten a quarter of her food. “When we moved to Echo Park the Gutierrezes moved with us. The boys were always getting into trouble—minor mischief, pranks. Elena and I were good girls. Goody-goodies, actually. The nuns loved us.” She smiled.

“We were as close as sisters. And like sisters there was a lot of competition between us. She was always better-looking.”

She read the doubt in my face.

“Really. I was a scrawny kid. I developed late. Elena was—voluptuous, soft. The boys followed her around with their tongues hanging out. Even when she was eleven and twelve. Here.” She reached into her purse and took out a snapshot. More photographic memories.

“This is Elena and me. In high school.”

Two girls leaned against a graffiti-filled wall. They wore Catholic school uniforms—short-sleeved white blouses, gray skirts, white socks and saddle shoes. One was tiny, thin and dark. The other a head taller, had curves the uniform couldn’t conceal and a complexion that was surprisingly fair.

“Was she a blonde?”

“Surprising, isn’t it? Some German rapist way back, no doubt. Later she lightened it even more, to be really all-American. She got sophisticated, changed her name to Elaine, spent lots of money on clothes,
her car.” She realized she was criticizing the dead girl and quickly changed her tune. “But she was a person of substance underneath all of that. She was a truly gifted teacher—there aren’t many like that. She taught EH, you know.”

Educationally Handicapped classes were for children who weren’t retarded but still had difficulties learning. The category could include everything from bright kids with specific perceptual problems to youngsters whose emotional conflicts got in the way of their learning to read and write. Teaching EH was tough. It could be constant frustration or a stimulating challenge, depending on a teacher’s motivation, energy and talent.

“Elena had a real gift for drawing them out—the kids no one else could work with. She had patience. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at her. She was—flashy. She used lots of makeup, dressed to show herself off. Sometimes she looked like a party girl. But she wasn’t afraid to get down on the floor with the children, didn’t mind getting her hands dirty. She got into their heads—she dedicated herself to them. The children loved her. Look.”

Another photograph. Elena Gutierrez surrounded by a group of smiling children. She was kneeling and the kids were climbing on her, tugging at the hem of her skirt, putting their heads in her lap. A tall, well-built young woman, pretty rather than beautiful, with an earthy, open look, the yellow hair a styled, thick shag framing an oval face, and contrasting dramatically with the Hispanic features. Except for those features she was the classic California girl. The kind who should have been lying face down in the Malibu sand, bikini top undone, smooth brown back exposed to the sun. A girl for cola commercials and custom van shows and running down to the market in halter and shorts for a six-pack. She shouldn’t have ended up as savaged, lifeless flesh in a refrigerated drawer downtown.

Raquel Ochoa took the picture out of my hands and I thought I saw jealousy in her face.

“She’s dead,” she said, putting it back in her purse, frowning, as if I’d committed some kind of heresy.

“It looked like they adored her,” I said.

“They did. Now they’ve brought in some old bag who doesn’t give a damn about teaching. Now that Elena’s—gone.”

She started to cry, using her napkin to shield her face from my eyes. Her thin shoulders shook. She sank lower in the booth, trying to disappear, sobbing.

I got up, moved to her side and put my arms around her. She felt as frail as a cobweb.

“No, no. I’m all right.” But she moved closer to me, burying herself in the folds of my jacket, burrowing in for the long, cold winter.

As I held her I realized that she felt good. She smelled good. This was a surprisingly soft, feminine person in my arms. I fantasized swooping her up, featherweight and vulnerable, carrying her to bed where I’d still her painful cries with that ultimate panacea: orgasm. A stupid fantasy because it would take more than a fuck and a hug to solve her problems. Stupid because that wasn’t what this encounter was all about. I felt an annoying heat and tension in my groin. Tumescence rearing its ugly head when least appropriate. Still, I held her until her sobbing slowed and her breathing became regular. Thinking of Robin, I finally let her go and moved back to my side.

She avoided my eyes, took out her compact and fixed her face.

“That was really dumb.”

“No it wasn’t. That’s what eulogies are for.”

She thought for a moment then managed a faint smile.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” She reached across the table and placed a small hand on mine. “Thank you. I miss her so much.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” She drew her hand away, suddenly cross.

“No, I guess not. I’ve never lost anyone to whom I was that close. Will you accept a serious attempt at empathy?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been rude—from the moment you walked in. It’s been so hard. All of these feelings—sadness, and emptiness and anger at the monster who did it—it had to be a monster, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Will you catch him? Will that big detective catch him?”

“He’s a very capable guy, Raquel. In his own way, quite gifted. But he’s got little to go on.”

“Yes. I suppose I should help you, shouldn’t I?”

“It would be nice.”

She found a cigarette in her purse and lit it with trembling hands. She took a deep drag and let it out.

“What do you want to know?”

“For starts, how about the old cliché—did she have any enemies?”

“The clichéd answer: No. She was popular, well-liked. And besides, whoever did this to her was no acquaintance—we didn’t know anyone like that.” She shuddered, confronting her own vulnerability.

“Did she go out with a lot of men?”

“The same questions.” She sighed. “She dated a few guys before she met
him
. Then it was the two of them all the way.”

“When did she begin seeing him?”

“She started as a patient almost a year ago. It’s hard to know when she began sleeping with him. She didn’t talk to me about that kind of thing.”

I could imagine sexuality being a taboo topic for the two best friends.
With their upbringing there was bound to be lots of conflict. And given what I had seen of Raquel and heard about Elena it was almost certain they had gone about resolving those conflicts in different ways: one, the party girl, a man’s woman; the other, attractive but perceiving herself in pitched battle with the world. I looked across the table at the dark, serious face and knew her bed would be ringed with thorns.

“Did she tell you they were having an affair?”

“An affair? That sounds so light and breezy. He violated his professional ethics and she fell for it.” She puffed on her cigarette. “She giggled about it for a week or so then came out and told me what a wonderful guy he was. I put two and two together. A month later he picked her up at our place. It was out in the open.”

“What was he like?”

“Like you said before—a creep. Too well-dressed—velvet jackets, tailored pants, sunlamp tan, shirt unbuttoned to show lots of chest hair—curly gray chest hair. He smiled a lot and got familiar with me. Shook my hand and held on too long. Lingered with a good-bye kiss—nothing you could pin him on.” The words were almost identical to Roy Longstreth’s.

“Slick?”

“Exactly. Slippery. She’d gone for that type before. I couldn’t understand it—she was such a good person, so real. I figured it had something to do with losing her dad at a young age. She had no good male role model. Does that sound plausible?”

“Sure.” Life was never as simple as the psych texts but it made people feel good to find solutions.

“He was a bad influence on her. When she started going with him was when she dyed her hair and changed her name and bought all those clothes. She even went out and bought a new car—one of those Datsun-Z turbos.”

“How did she afford it?” The car cost more than most teachers made in a year.

“If you’re thinking he paid for it, forget it. She bought it on payments. That was another thing about Elena. She had no conception of money. Just let it pass through her fingers. She always joked how she was going to have to marry a rich guy to accommodate her tastes.”

“How often did they see each other?”

“At first once or twice a week. By the end she might as well have moved in with him. I rarely saw her. She’d drop in to pick up a few things, invite me to go out with them.”

“Did you?”

She was surprised at the question.

“Are you kidding? I couldn’t stand to be around him. And I have a life of my own. I had no need to be the odd one out.”

A life, I suspected, of grading papers until ten and then retiring, nightgown buttoned high, with a gothic novel and a cup of hot cocoa.

“Did they have friends, other couples with whom they associated?”