Johnithan Kellerman – Bad Love

“You can.”

“I appreciate that,” she said wearily, “but let’s be honest. What good will more talking do? Becky’s dead and I’m going to have to live with the fact that I might have been able to prevent it.”

“I don’t see it that way. You did all you could.”

“You’re sweet.” She looked at my hand, as if ready to touch it again.

But she didn’t move and her eyes shifted to her salad.

“Happy lunch,” she said glumly.

“Jean, it’s possible the notes might be relevant to Detective Sturgis.”

“How?”

“‘G’ may not be a woman.”

“You know who it is?” This time her hand did move. Covering mine, taking hold of my fingers. Ice cold.

“That lawyer whose card you gave me–Andrew Coburg? I went over to see him and he told me Hewitt had a friend named Gritz. Lyle Edward Gritz.”

No reaction.

I said, “Gritz is a heavy drinker, and he has a criminal record. He and Hewitt hung out together, and now no one can find him. A week or two ago, Gritz told some street people he expected to get rich, then he disappeared.”

“Get rich? How?”

“He didn’t say, though in the past he’d talked about becoming a recording star. For all I know, it was drunk talk and has nothing to do with Becky. But if G’ does refer to him, it indicates tension between him and Becky.”

“Gritz,” she said. “I assumed G was a woman. Are you saying Hewitt and this Gritz had something homosexual going on and Becky stepped in the middle of it?

Oh, God, it just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe there was nothing sexual between Gritz and Hewitt. Just a close friendship that Becky intruded upon.”

“Maybe. ..” She pulled out the envelope, removed the notes, ran her finger down the page, and read. “Yes, I see what you mean. Once you think of G as a man you don’t have to see it that way at all. Just friendship…. But whatever the reason, Becky felt G was hostile to her.”

“She was getting between them,” I said. “The whole therapy process was challenging whatever Hewitt had with Gritz. How did Becky phrase it in that last note?”

“Let me see–here it is: Relationship between D and G strained. Me?

D’s growth?” Yes, I see what you mean. Then right after that, she mentions another p-c–the session where he actually kissed her…. You know, you could read this and feel almost as if she was seducing him.”

She crumpled the notes.

“God, what a travesty–why are you interested in this Gritz? You think he could be the one harassing people?”

“It’s possible.”

“Why? What else has he done criminally?”

“I’m not sure of the details, but the harassment involved the words bad love’-” “What Hewitt screamed. .. Does that actually mean something?

What’s going on?”

Her fingers had become laced with mine. I looked at them and she pulled away and fooled with her hair. The flap covered one eye. The exposed one was alive with fear.

I said, “I don’t know, Jean. But given the notes, I have to wonder if Gritz played a role in getting Hewitt to murder Becky.”

“Played a role? How?”

“By working on Hewitt’s paranoia–telling Hewitt things about Becky.

If he was a close friend, he’d know which buttons to push.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “And now he’s missing. .. it’s not over, is it?”

“Maybe it is. This is all conjecture, Jean. But finding Gritz would help clear it up. Any chance he was a patient at the center?”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell. .. bad love. .. I thought Hewitt was just raving, now you’re saying maybe he was reacting to something that had gone on between him and Becky? That he killed her because she rejected him.”

“Could be,” I said. “I found a reference to bad love’ in the psych literature.

It’s a term coined by a psychoanalyst named Andres de Bosch.”

She stared at me, nodded slowly. “I think I’ve heard of him. What did he say about it?”

“He used it to describe poor child rearing–a parent betraying a child’s trust. Building up faith and then destroying it. In extreme cases, he theorized, it could lead to violence. If you consider the therapist-patient relationship similar to child rearing, the same theory could be applied to cases of transference gone really bad.

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