* * *
Three hours later, she was at my door, dangling her car keys. Her hair was tied up in a careless way I’d never seen before, black as the night sky behind her. One of her stockings sported a run from knee to mid-calf, the polish on some of her nails was chipped, and her lipstick had faded. A picture I.D. badge was clipped to the lapel of her black cotton suit. Temporary privileges, Department of Psychiatry. Her eyes, always deep-set, were captives in fatigue-darkened sockets.
She said, “I haven’t meant to be distant. Though I still have problems— big problems— with the whole deception thing.”
“Have any dinner yet?”
“Not hungry.”
“C’mon in.”
She shook her head. “Too tired, Alex. I just wanted to say that.”
“Come in anyway.”
Her chin trembled. “I’m exhausted, Alex. Won’t be good company.”
I touched her shoulder. She edged past me as if I were an obstacle. I followed her into the kitchen, where she tossed the keys and her purse on the table and sat staring at the sink.
* * *
She refused food but accepted hot tea. I brought a mug with some toast.
“Persistent,” she said.
“So I’ve been told.” I took a chair across from her.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’ve had patients go through worse than this. A lot worse. I think it’s a combination of this particular patient— maybe I let the countertransference get out of hand— and your being involved.”
She raised the mug to her lips. “When I met you, what you do . . . it turned me on. The whole police thing, the whole heroic thing— here was someone in my profession doing more than sitting in an office and listening. I never told you this, but I’ve had hero fantasies of my own. Probably because of what happened to me. I guess I’ve been living through you. On top of that you’re a sexy guy, no question. I was a sucker.”
What “had happened” to her was sexual assault at age seventeen. Warding off attempted robbery and gang rape years later.
She eyed her purse and I knew she was thinking about the shiny little gun. “What you do still turns me on, but this has been a rude awakening. I’m realizing that maybe there are aspects of it that aren’t healthy.”
“Like deception.” And holding down a woman’s ankles so a detective can hog-tie her.
Her eyes turned the color of gas jets. “You flat-out lied to her, Alex. A girl you didn’t know, with no consideration of the risks. I’m sure most of the time it’s no big deal, just a fib in the service of law enforcement and no one gets hurt. This time . . . maybe in the long run it will be good for her. But now . . .”
She put the mug down. “I keep telling myself if she was this close to the edge she would’ve been tipped over eventually. Maybe it’s my ego that’s wounded. I got caught unawares. . . .”
I touched her hand. She didn’t touch back.
“Deception’s okay for Milo, I understand the kind of people cops come into contact with. But you and I took the same licensing exam and we both know what our ethics code says.”
She freed her hand. “Have you thought it through, Alex?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“I’m not sure my answer’s going to make you happy.”
“Try me.”
“When I see patients in a therapeutic setting, the rules apply. When I work with Milo, the rules are different.”
“Different how?”
“I’d never hurt anyone intentionally, but there’s no promise of confidentiality.”
“Or truthfulness.”
I didn’t answer. No sense mentioning the man I killed a few years ago. Clear self-defense. Sometimes his face came to me in dreams. Sometimes I manufactured the faces of his unborn children.
“I don’t mean to attack you,” said Allison.
“I don’t feel attacked. It’s a reasonable discussion. Maybe one we should’ve had earlier.”
“Maybe,” she said. “So basically, you compartmentalize. That doesn’t wear on you?”
“I deal with it.”
“Because bad people sometimes get what’s coming to them.”
“That helps.” I worked hard at keeping my tone even. Saying the right things though I did feel attacked. Thinking about six bodies, maybe seven, no obvious solution. Thinking about Cherish Daney in a way that I couldn’t let go of.
Allison said, “Is deception a big part of what you do?”
“No,” I said. “But it happens. I try never to grow glib, but I rationalize when I have to. I’m sorry about what happened to Beth and I’m not going to make excuses. The only lie I told her was that I was researching foster parenting in general. I don’t see that as a factor in her breakdown.”
“Getting into the whole issue precipitated her breakdown, Alex. She’s an extremely vulnerable girl who should never have been drawn into a police investigation in the first place.”
“There was no way to know that.”
“Exactly. That’s why we learned about discretion and taking our time and thinking things through. About doing no harm.”
“Witnesses are often vulnerable,” I said.
Long silence.
She said, “So you’re fine with all this.”
“Would I have approached Beth directly if I’d known she was going to decompensate? Of course not. Would I have taken another approach— like going through you? You bet. Because a lot is at stake, even more than I’ve told you, and she was a potential source of crucial information.”
“What more is at stake?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?” she said.
“There’s no need for you to know.”
“You’re mad so you’re doing a tit for tat.”
“I’m not mad, I want to keep you from the bad stuff.” The way I used to keep Robin.
“Because I can’t hope to understand.”
I thought you did. But it’s too much ugly.
“There’s just no reason for you to get involved, Allison.”
“I’m already involved.”
“As a therapist.”
“So I just run off and do my therapy thing and keep my nose out of your business?”
That would simplify things.
“It’s one of the ugliest cases I’ve ever worked on, Ali. You already spend your days soaking up other people’s crap. Why would you want more soul pollution?”
“And you? What about your soul?”
“Such as it is.”
“I won’t accept that it doesn’t affect you.”
Unborn children . . .
I didn’t answer.
She said, “You can handle it, but I can’t?”
“I don’t ask you about patients.”
“That’s different.”
“Maybe it really isn’t.”
“Fine,” she said. “So now there’s a new taboo in our relationship. What binds us together? Hot sex?”
I pointed to the toast. “And haute cuisine.”
She worked at a smile. Got up and took the mug to the sink, where she emptied and washed. “I’d better be going.”
“Stay.”
“Why?”
I walked behind her, slipped my arm around her waist. Felt her abdominal muscles ripple as she tensed up. She removed my hand, turned, and looked up at me. “I’ve probably put some kind of wedge between us. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel like a first-class idiot, but right now I’ve still got some righteous indignation burning in my belly.”
I said, “The higher stakes are six murders, maybe seven. If you include the girl who succeeded Beth as Daney’s assistant. She seems to have vanished and she’s not on the foster rolls.”
She stepped out of my arms, braced herself against the counter, and stared out the kitchen window.
“Plus a toddler,” I went on. “Two teenage boys, three women, a mentally challenged young man. And so far, no way to prove any of it.�
�
She lowered her head into the sink, heaved and dry-retched.
I tried to hold her as she shuddered.
“Sorry,” she whimpered, pulling away. Splashing water on her face, she dried it with her sleeve. Snatched up her purse and keys, left the kitchen.
I caught up as she opened the front door. “You’re exhausted. Stay. I’ll take the couch.”
Her lips were parched and tiny blood spots freckled her cheeks. Petechiae from the strain of vomiting. “It’s a nice offer. You’re a nice man.”
“I’d like to be a good man.”
Her eyes shifted. “I need to be alone.”
CHAPTER 40
I returned to the kitchen, chewed on the toast I’d made Allison, and thought about what had just happened.
Tomorrow I might also wake up feeling rotten. If I slept at all. Right now I was glad to be alone, reunited with the possibilities that had flooded my head.
It was eleven-fifteen. I figured Milo wouldn’t be sleeping much either. And if he had drifted off, too damn bad.
* * *
“What time is it?” he rasped.
“Cherish Daney told me she tried to open Rand up, wished she’d been more effective. For his sake. But what if she had another motive? What if she found out what Drew had done, wanted Rand to come forward about Drew’s involvement in Kristal’s murder?”
He let out a couple of barking coughs, cleared his throat. “Good evening to you, too. Where’d all this come from?”
“You’ve been saying all along Cherish had to know something. Maybe she had suspicions but was able to deny them until she finally came upon something blatant.”
“Like what?”
“Trophies. Someone with Drew’s control obsession might very well keep some. He got a kick out of sneaking around Cherish, a hidden cache would be great fun. But arrogance leads to carelessness. Maybe he slipped up and left something for her to find. Or all those trips with ‘assistants’ got her suspicious and she started to snoop around the house. If she’s anything but a monster herself, finding hard evidence of Drew’s crimes would horrify her. She’d also be scared on a selfish level: If the truth ever came out, she was sure to come under suspicion as an accomplice. One way to deal with all that would be to come forward with evidence of her own and bail. Having Rand corroborate Drew’s involvement in Kristal’s murder would be a big step in that direction.”
“Daney molests and murders for years and she’s Little Miss Clueless until now?”
“Nothing we’ve learned so far says she did anything worse than exceed the foster limit. Beth Scoggins said she filled her days cooking, cleaning, and teaching. My bet is she kept busy so as not to think.”
“Not to mention seven grand a month.”
“For Drew it was the money,” I said. “Maybe for her, too. But she drives an old heap and lives simply. Plus you saw how she worked with Valerie. Patient, despite Valerie’s resentment.”
“The dutiful hausfrau,” he said. “Meanwhile Drew’s out doing his sperm thing . . . I’m still not convinced she’s squeaky clean, but fine, let’s run with it. She wants Rand to rat out Drew, does therapy with him, then what?”
“She fails. The most common errors unqualified therapists make are moving too fast and talking too much. Toss in Cherish’s anxiety and she’d have come on way too strong. She needed Rand to ‘see’ that Drew had contracted Troy to kill Kristal. Whether or not he had.”
“She tried to plant it in his head?”
“It started during prison visits. Hinting around, hoping to set off a spark in Rand’s head. Rand was a submissive personality, impressionable, so perhaps he actually recalled something— seeing Drew talk to Troy shortly before the murder, an offhand comment by Troy about Drew. Or he thought he did. Because an adult mastermind would be welcome news for him. Reduce his own culpability.”
“ ‘I’m a good person.’ ”
“ ‘I’m a good person because Daney was behind it and Troy was his henchman and I was in the wrong place at the right time.’ Cherish could’ve even presented it to him that way.”
“If he bought it, why didn’t he open up?”
“Eight years in jail, being beaten and stabbed and left to fend for himself, had taught him to be wary. Nevertheless, the idea Cherish planted took root and it terrified him: He’d be living under the roof of the devil who’d ruined his life. That’s why he was so anxious when he was released to the Daneys.”
“Then why’d he go there in the first place?”
“He had no immediate alternatives. No family, no resources, no grasp of what the world outside prison was like. He also had to be careful not to set off Drew’s suspicions with a sudden shift in plans. But I’ll bet he intended to get out of there as soon as possible. As soon as he could get someone to listen.”
“You.”
“Cherish’s eagerness could have made him even more wary. Lauritz Montez had defended him by the numbers. He sure wouldn’t view the D.A. or the police as sympathetic. That left me.”
“Modesty, modesty,” he said. “So he gives the Daneys a phony story, walks away, somehow makes it over the hill, calls you from Westwood.”
“I don’t think he made it over the hill alone. He couldn’t keep his anxiety under control and Drew did catch on that something was wrong. Drew was out of the house when Rand left. He could’ve been nearby, watching Rand. Or he called in and Cherish told him Rand had gone to the construction site. That fed Drew’s suspicions because he knew the site was closed Saturday except for cleanup. He went after Rand, spotted him, picked him up in the Jeep.”
“And took him into the city? Why?”
“To allay Rand’s fears,” I said. “Rand’s shuffling along, disoriented, looking for a pay phone, or just trying to clear his head. Daney cruises by, all smiles, says hop in, let’s grab a bite. Caught off guard, Rand would’ve felt forced to comply, so as not to appear nervous. Daney drove over the hill and disarmed Rand further with small talk. Dropped him off at the entrance to Westside Pavilion with some pocket change, told him to have a good time, he’d pick him up later. No one from the mall remembers Rand, he may never have gone in. This was a dull, confused kid who’d grown up behind bars. It would have been like dropping him on Mars.”
“Why would Daney go to all that trouble? Why not drive him somewhere secluded and kill him right off?”
“Daney had his suspicions, but at that point, Daney wasn’t sure killing Rand was necessary. Another Kristal-related death might set off a whole chain of events he couldn’t control. Which is exactly what happened. After he dropped Rand off, he stuck around to watch. Saw Rand walk away from the mall, watched him head for the phone booth. Rand was agitated when he called me, his body language would’ve been easy to read. When Rand left the booth, Drew went after his quarry.”
“Picking him up again,” he said. “This time it would have to be at gunpoint, Rand wouldn’t have gone willingly.”
“Drew’s deviousness can’t be discounted. I can see him using a phony story— Cherish had suddenly taken ill, they needed to get home fast. Maybe Rand figured that if he didn’t show up at the pizza place, I’d sound some kind of alarm and someone would come to his aid.”
If so, he’d overestimated me.
Milo said, “Okay, one way or the other, he gets back in the Jeep and Drew drives somewhere secluded— the dump site says it was probably up into the foothills of Bel Air. Rand, not knowing the city, doesn’t catch on that Drew’s taken a detour. Drew finds a spot, pulls over. Then what?”
“Rand was big and strong, so Drew needed to avoid a physical struggle by keeping it friendly. He’d prepared by opening the Jeep’s passenger window. Came across calm, paternal, even spiritual. Rand was probably looking straight ahead, scared and confused but fighting to maintain calm, when Drew pressed the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger. Drew had plenty of time to wipe down the Jeep and look for the bullet. Then he cruised back to Sunset after dark, drove to the on-ramp, mad
e sure no one was watching, and dumped the body. The next day, he probably washed the Jeep. But there still might be some kind of transfer— blood, powder residue, tiny bone fragments.”
“Good story, Alex. Great story, makes perfect sense. But clever plots don’t earn warrants.”
“You’ve already got grounds for a warrant,” I said. “Drew’s statutory rapes. Get the downtown juvey team interested, toss the house, include the Jeep in the paperwork.”
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