When The Bough Breaks

She looked at her hands as if unable to envision them holding anything as delicate as china.

"My job is pretense, Alex. I'm a glorified mailing service. But I'll not leave," she insisted, debating an unseen adversary. "Not yet. Not at this point in my life. I wake up and see the lake. I have my books and a good stereo. I can pick fresh blackberries not far from: ere. I eat them in the morning with cream."

I said nothing.

"Will you betray me?" she asked.

"Of course not, Margaret."

"Then go. Forget about including Jedson in your story. There's nothing here for an outsider."

"I can't."

She sat straight in her chair.

" "Why not?" There was terror and anger in her voice, something decidedly menacing in her eyes. I could understand her lover's flight to solitude. I was certain the mental deadness of Jedson's student body wasn't the only thing he'd been escaping.

I had nothing to offer her that would keep our lines of communication open, other than the truth and the chance to be a coconspirator. I took a deep breath and told her the real reason for my visit.

When I was through she wore the same possessive - dependent look I'd seen in her photograph. I wanted to back away, but my chair was inches from the door.

"It's funny," she said, "I should feel exploited, used. But I don't. You have an honest face. Even your lies sound righteous."

"I'm no more righteous than you are. I simply want to get some facts. Help me."

"I was a member of SDS, you know. The police were pigs to me in those days."

"These aren't those days, I'm not a policeman, and we're not talking about abstract theory and the polemics of revolution. This is triple murder, Margaret, child abuse, maybe more. Not political assassinations. Innocent people hacked into bloody gobbets, mashed into human garbage. Children run down on lonely canyon roads."

She shuddered, turned away, ran an unpolished fingernail along the top of a tooth, then faced me again.

"And you think one of them - a Jedsonite - was responsible for all of that?" The very idea was delicious to her.

"I think two of them had some involvement in it."

"Why are you doing this? You say you're a psychiatrist."

"Psychologist."

"Whatever. What's in it for you?"

"Nothing. Nothing you'd believe."

"Try me."

"I want to see justice done. It's been eating at me."

"I believe you," she said softly.

She was gone for twenty minutes and when she returned it was with an armful of oversized volumes bound in dark blue Morocco leather.

"These are the yearbooks, if your estimates of their ages are correct. I'm going to leave you with them and search for the alumni files. Lock yourself in when I'm gone and don't answer the door. I'll knock three times, then twice. That will be our signal."

"Roger."

"Ha." She laughed, and for the first time looked almost attractive.

Timothy Kruger had lied about being a poor boy at Jedson. His family had donated a couple of buildings and even a casual reading of the book made it obvious the Krugers were Very Important. The part about his athletic prowess, though, was true. He'd lettered in track, baseball and Greco - Roman wrestling. In his yearbook pictures he resembled the man I'd spoken to days before. There were shots of him jumping hurdles, throwing the javelin, and later on, in a'section on drama, in the roles of Hamlet and Petruchio. The impression I got was that of a big man on campus. I wondered how he'd ended up at La Casa de los Ninos operating under a phony credential.

L. Willard Towle's photo showed him to have been a Tab Hunter - type blond in his youth. Notations under his name mentioned presidency of the PreMed Club and the Biology Honor Society, as well as captain of the crew team. There was also an asterisk that led to a footnote advising the reader to turn to the last page of the book. I obeyed the instructions and came to a black - bordered photograph - the same picture I'd seen in Towle's office, of his wife and son against a backdrop of lake and mountains. There was an inscription beneath the photo:

In Memoriam Lilah Hutchison Towle

1930 - 1951

Lionel Willard Towle, Jr. 1949 - 1951

Under the inscription were four lines of verse.

How swiftly doth the night move
To dash our hopes and dim our dreams;
But even in the darkest night
The ray of peace yet beams.

It was signed "S."

I was rereading the poem when Margaret Dopplemeier's coded knock sounded on the door. I slid open the latch and she came in holding a manila envelope. She locked the door, went behind her desk, opened the packet and shook out two three - by - five index cards.

"These are straight out of the sacred alumni file." She glanced at one and handed it to me. "Here's your doctor."