Silent Partner

“Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid gang.” Milo’s big face had darkened with anger.

“On a one-to-one level,” I said. He got up and brought back a beer.

As he drank I said, “He took her under his wing, Milo. Convinced her she’d make a great psychologist- her grades made that realistic- brought her out to California with him, set her up in grad school, set himself up as her adviser. He supervised her cases, which always involves some therapy. He turned it into intensive therapy. For Kruse that meant bizarre communications, hypnotic manipulation. Like many people with confused identities, she was an excellent hypnotic subject. His power role in their relationship increased her susceptibility. He ageregressed her, exposed early childhood memories that intrigued him further. Some sort of early trauma that she was unaware of on a conscious level- maybe even something about Belding. Kruse started snooping.”

“And making movies.”

I nodded. “An updated version of her mother’s loop- part of the ‘therapy.’ Kruse probably presented it to her in terms of reattaching her to her roots- to mother love. His game was controlling her- building up one part of her, tearing down another. Using hypnosis, he could suggest amnesia, keep her consciously unaware. End up knowing more about her than she knew herself. He fed her bits of her own subconscious in calculated nibbles, kept her dependent, insecure. Psychological warfare. No matter what you saw in Vietnam, he was an expert. Then, when the time was right, he turned her loose on Belding.”

“Big bread, big-time control.”

“And I think I know exactly when it happened, Milo. The summer of ’75. She disappeared with no explanation, for two months. The next time I saw her, she had a sports car, a house, a damned comfortable life-style for a grad student without a job. My first thought was that Kruse was keeping her. She knew that, even made a joke about it, told me the inheritance story- which we now know was bullshit. But maybe, in a sense, there was some truth to it. She’d put in a claim on her birthright. But it played havoc with her mind, accentuated her identity problems. The time I found her staring at the twin picture, she was in some kind of trance, almost catatonic. When she realized I was standing there, she went crazy. I was sure we were through. Then she called me up, asked me to come over and came on to me like a nymphomaniac. Years later she was doing the same thing with her patients- patients Kruse set her up with. She never got her license, remained his assistant, worked out of offices he paid the rent on.”

I felt my own rage grow. “Kruse was in a position to help her, but all the bastard did was play with her head. Instead of treating her, he had her write up her own case as a phony case history and use it for her dissertation. Probably his idea of a joke- thumbing his nose at the rules.”

“One problem,” said Milo. “By ’75, Belding was long dead.”

“Maybe not.”

“Cross admitted he lied.”

“Milo, I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. But even if Belding was dead, Magna lived on. Lots of money and power to leech off. Let’s say Kruse leaned on the corporation. On Billy Vidal.”

“Why’d they let him get away with it for twelve years? Why’d they let him live?”

“I’ve been turning that over in my mind and I still can’t come up with an answer. The only thing I can come up with was that Kruse also had something on Vidal’s sister, something they couldn’t risk coming out. She endowed his professorship, set him up as department head. I’ve been told it was gratitude- he treated a child of hers, but in her husband’s obituary there was no mention of children. Maybe she remarried and had some- I was going to check on that before I found out about Willow Glen.”

“Maybe,” said Milo, “the Blalock thing is just a cover- Vidal using his sister as a screen, with the payoff really coming from Magna.”

“Maybe, but that still doesn’t explain why they let him get away with it for so long.”

He got up, paced, drank beer, had another.

“So,” I said, “what do you think?”

“What I think is you’ve got something there. What I also think is we may never get to the bottom of it. People thirty years in the grave. And it all depends on Belding being the daddy. How the hell you going to verify that?”

“I don’t know.”

He paced some more, said, “Let’s get back to the here and now for a sec. Why did Ransom kill herself?”

“Maybe it was grief over Kruse’s death. Or maybe it wasn’t suicide. I know there’s no proof- I’m just hypothesizing.”

“What about the Kruse killings? Like we said before, Rasmussen’s not exactly your corporate hit man.”

“The only reason we latched on to Rasmussen was that he talked about doing terrible things around the time the Kruses were murdered.”

“Not just that,” he said. “Asshole had a history of violence, killed his own father. I liked all that psych stuff you dished out- killing Daddy all over again.”

“To paraphrase an expert, that ain’t evidence, pal. Given Rasmussen’s history, terrible things could mean anything.”

“Fucking pretzel,” he said. “’Round and around.”

“There’s someone who could clear it up for us.”

“Vidal?”

“Alive and well in El Segundo.”

“Right,” Milo said. “Let’s just waltz into his office and a

I threw up my hands, went to get a beer of my own.

“Don’t get miffed,” he called after me. “I’m not trying to piss on your parade, just striving to keep things logical.”

“I know, I know. It’s just damned frustrating.”

“How she died, or the things she did when she was alive?”

“Both, Sergeant Freud.”

He used his finger to draw a happy face in the frost of his glass. “Something else. The twin photo- how old were the girls in it?”

“About three.”

“So they couldn’t have been separated from birth, Alex. Meaning either both were cared for by someone else, or both were given to the Ransoms. So what the hell happened to the sister?”

“Helen Leidecker never mentioned a second girl living in Willow Glen.”

“Did you ask her?”

“No.”

“Didn’t bring up the picture?”

“No. She seemed…”

“Honest?”

“No. It just didn’t come up.”

He said nothing.

“Okay,” I said, “flunk me in Freshman Interrogation.”

“Easy,” he said. “Just trying to get a clear picture.”

“If you get one, share it with me. Goddammit, Milo, maybe the damned picture wasn’t even Sharon and her sister. I don’t know what the hell is real anymore.”

He let me stew, then said, “Suggesting you let go of it all would be stupid, I suppose.”

I didn’t answer.

“Before you indulge yourself in self-contempt, Alex, why not just give the Leidecker woman a call? Ask her about the picture, and if you get a weird reaction, that’ll be the tip-off that she hasn’t been Honest A

“Who? The Ransoms? I don’t see them as abusers.”

“Not abusers- neglecters. You yourself said they weren’t parent material, could barely cope with one kid. Two would have been impossible. What if they turned their back at the wrong moment and one twin had an accident?”

“As in drowning?”

“As in.”

My head was spi

Milo leaned over and patted my shoulder. “Don’t fret. Even if we can’t take it to court, we can always sell it to the movies. Show Dickie Cash the way it’s done.”

“Call my agent,” I said.

“Have your people call my people and let’s take a power bran muffin.”

I forced a smile. “Have you checked Port Wallace birth records yet?”