During the years of his marriage to Rina, Decker has been assigned to some of his most difficult cases. He has worked steadily and hard, taken necessary exams, and has gotten several promotions. Currently, he’s a detective lieutenant, and although his job includes a lot more paperwork and politics, he is still out in the field if the case is unusual and needs his attention. He still enjoys the feeling of getting his hands dirty and his heart racing, but he doesn’t mind the desk work as much as he might have sixteen years ago.
For the living, the march of time is inexorable. Fictional characters have a lot more leeway. Some of them never age, fixed in the year of their appearance. Some age but not in real time. Peter and Rina have certainly aged, and their children are firsthand accounts of how old they are.
Decker started the series in his thirties; he is now in his fifties. His once bright red hair is streaked with silver, and his joints ache every once in a while. But he’s kept off the extra pounds and is still strong and vibrant. He continues to wear a thick mustache even though it’s no longer in style.
Rina, being much younger than her husband, is still in her early forties. She’s dynamic and full of energy, especially because her children are older and require less attention, although she keeps in daily contact with all of them, including Cindy.
For Decker, having worked twenty-plus years with the LAPD, retirement is an option, although it isn’t imminent. Once Hannah leaves home for college, both Rina and Decker would like to do a little traveling. They have never been together for extended periods of time without a child in tow and they look forward to taking a long-overdue honeymoon.
They can afford to do so. First of all, they have savings. Second, if Decker lasts a few more years-and all indications say this will happen-he will retire with a pension equal to his salary. Third, Rina inherited some valuable paintings from an acquaintance. It wasn’t until later that they realized that some of the artists were well-known and that their paintings were valuable. They’ve already sold a few at Christie’s Auction House, and the money helped defray the tremendous burden of private education for Rina’s sons and their daughter. Decker had help when sending Cindy to college. Jack Cohen picked up the lion’s share of the tuition, God bless him.
Cindy is now a GTA detective in Hollywood and aspires to homicide detail. She is married to Yaakov “Koby” Kutiel, who works as a neonatal nurse at Children’s Hospital. Recently Decker helped the two of them expand their tiny house and hopes the remodel was done in order to eventually welcome a new addition to the family. At last, all that shop class instruction paid off.
Sammy Lazarus is now in Einstein Medical School in New York. He is engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Rachel, who is also at Einstein but a year behind her fiancé. They both want to finish school before they marry. Jacob Lazarus is studying molecular biology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He also has a steady girlfriend, named Ilana. Hannah Decker is sixteen. Driver’s license in hand, she prides herself on being completely independent except when she needs money. She adores her parents even though she sometimes considers them a little wacky. But unlike a lot of her friends, she still talks to her parents, confiding intimate details of her life that sometimes Decker feels he’d be better off not knowing. She has many male admirers, although at the moment she is without a boyfriend. This pleases her father immensely.
Where the future will take them is anyone’s guess, including my own. I don’t schedule their lives; I don’t formulate their adventures. Peter and Rina live like any other married couple with children, one day at a time. I’m grateful that from time to time they decide to include me in their plans.
JONATHAN KELLERMAN
Born in New York City in 1949, Jonathan Kellerman grew up in Los Angeles, receiving a BA in psychology from UCLA and a PhD in psychology from the University of Southern California. He worked his way through school as an editorial cartoonist, a columnist, an editor, and a musician. He went on to become a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine. His first two books were about medicine: Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980) and Helping the Fearful Child (1981).
His first mystery, When the Bough Breaks (1985), introduced Alex Delaware and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It also won the Anthony Award at the World Mystery Convention (Bouchercon) and became a New York Times bestseller as well as a television movie.
In addition to the perennially bestselling Delaware series, he has written four novels about a beautiful Los Angeles homicide detective with a complicated past, Petra Connor: Survival of the Fittest (1997), Billy Straight (1998), Twisted (2004), and Obsession (2007); two stand-alone bestsellers with his wife, Faye Kellerman (also a bestselling author and the creator of the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series): The Butcher’s Theater (1988), The Conspiracy Club (2003), and Capital Crimes (2007); and two children’s books: Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994) and Jonathan Kellerman’s ABC of Weird Creatures (1995).
The Kellermans have four children, one of whom, Jesse Kellerman, is also a professional writer of crime fiction. They live in Southern California.
ALEX DELAWARE
BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN
Back when I practiced child clinical psychology, if you visited my private office in Sherman Oaks, California; or my hospital digs at Childrens Hospital of LA, in east Hollywood; or the suite I shared with two pediatricians in Glendale, you’d find few clues about my personal life.
No photos of the wife or the kids propped on the desk, no shots of me driving fast cars or playing guitar or posed with Faye in Hawaii or Paris or Santa Fe or Jerusalem. Nothing but a few framed diplomas.
The successful-and ethical-practice of psychotherapy depends upon a thorough ego vacuuming: putting your own needs, desires, conceits, and fantasies into cold storage during the forty-five minutes you spend facing another human being in emotional crisis. Realizing it’s all about that person and not about you.
According to some schools of psychotherapeutic thought, an occasional smidgeon of “self-disclosure”-dribbling out judicious bits of autobiography in the name of empathy-can benefit the patient. But even proponents of that open approach are clear that the only shrinks qualified to risk exploiting their private lives as therapeutic tools need to be experienced, rigorously self-appraising, and acutely aware of psychological boundaries-the precise spots where they end and the patient begins.
One cardinal trait of an effective psychotherapist is the ability to “actively listen,” a talent that transcends gimmicky phrases such as “I hear what you’re saying” and depends on a sincere suspension of the judgmental self as well as a genuine interest in the emotional life of the patient. After a few years, learning to listen on twelve cylinders can carry over to the so-called real world. You start to do it outside the office.
During my years as a psychologist, I prided myself on not playing shrink with my loved ones; when I left work, I was intent on being just another husband-dad. Sure, I’d try to be patient and sensitive, but I also needed to be free to occasionally lose my temper, pass judgment, and, yeah, even discipline the kids if they needed it. One of the nicest things my acclaimed novelist son, Jesse, ever told me was “Dad, you never treated me like a patient.” (Jesse’s a great guy and a terrific son, but I’m sure there were many less charitable appraisals by him and his three sisters when I blew my stack or otherwise indulged a sometimes bellicose nature.)