news with equanimity, never having seen him as a
calculating killer. Besides, I’d already convinced
myself I was the sniper’s intended victim. Accept-
238
Jonathan Kellerman
lng the role didn’t make for tranquillity but at least
I’d be vigilant.
I went for a swim at four more for exercise than
pleasure, returned to my room, and called for the
evening paper and a Grolsch. The flu seemed to
have surrendered. I sank into an armchair to read
and drink.
The news of Valcroix’s death was a two-inch
filler piece on page twenty-eight entitled DOCTOR
LOSES LIFE IN AUTO CRASH. From it I learned the
genre, if not the make, of the car the Canadian had
driven (“foreign compact”) before crashing it into
an abutment near the Wilmington harbor. He’d been
pronounced dead at the scene and relatives in Montreal
had been notified.
Wilmington is midway between L.A. and San
Diego if you take the coastal route, a drab section of
warehou}es and shipyards. I wondered what hed
been doing there and which direction he’ll, been
headed before the collision. He’d visited La Vista
before. Was he returning from there when he
crashed?
I thought of his boasts to Beverly about having an
ace up his sleeve with regard tothe Swopes. More
questions reverberated relentlessly: was the crash
an accident, the result of drug-numbed reflexes, or
had he tried to play that ace and lost his, life in the
process? And what was the secret he’d nsidered
his salvation? Could it solve the murder of the
Swopes ? Or help locate their children?
I turnedtt over, again and again, until my head
hurt, sitting tensely on the edge of the chair, gropr
lng haphazardly like a blind man in a maze.
It wasn’t until I realized what was missing that I
was able to focus on what had to be done. Had I
BLOOD TEST 239
looked at it clinically,, as a psychologist, clarity of
purpose might have come sooner.
I’d been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the
excavation of the past as a means of untangling the
present and rendering it livable. It’s detective work
of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of
the unconscious. And it begins with the taking of a
careful and detailed history.
Four people had perished unnaturally. If their
deaths seemed a jumble of unrelated horrors, I knew
it was because such a history was missing. Because
insufficient respect had been paid to the past.
That had to be remedied. It was more than an
academic exercise. There were lives at stake.
I refused to compute the odds on the Swope children
being alive. For the time being, it was sufficient
that they weregreater than zero. I thought,
for the hundredth time, of the boy in the plastic
room, helpless, dependent, potentially curable but
harboring an internal time bomb … He had to be
found or he’d die in pain.
Seized with anger at my helplessness, I shifted
from altruism to self-preservation. Milo had urged
me to be careful but sitting still-could be ‘the most
dangerous act of all.
Someone had hunted me. The news of my sur-viva]
would eventually emerge. The hunter would
return to claim his prey, taking his time so as to do
it right. I wouldn’t, couldn’t play that waiting game,
living like a man on death row.
There was work to be done. Exploration. Exhumation.
The compass pointed south.
19
To TRUST someone is to’take the greatest risk of all.
Without trust nothing ever happens.
The issue, at this juncture, wasn’t whether or
not to take the risk. It was who could be trusted.
There was Del Hardy of course, but I didn’t see
him, or the police in general, as being much .help.
They were professionals who dealt with facts. Alii
had to offer were vague suspicions and intuitive
dread. Hardy would hear me out politely, thank me
for my input, tell me not to worry, and that would
be it.
The answers I needed had to come fram an iw
sider; only someone who had known the Swopes in
life could shed light on their deaths.
Sheriff Houten had seemed straight. But like many
a ‘large frog in a small pond, he’d overidentified