Alex 18 - Therapy

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “The patient did file an ethical complaint against me.”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  “The charge was dismissed.”

  “Course it was,” he said. “What, a disgruntled weirdo?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Assholes.”

  Supportive therapy.

  I said, “Anyway, that’s about it on Gavin’s emotional state.”

  “Not as smart as he used to be and obsessive.”

  “We knew that before.”

  “It’s still interesting.”

  I said, “Anything new on the girl’s ID?”

  “Nope. Not much in terms of physical evidence, either. Gavin’s prints popped up on the steering wheel but nothing on any of the door handles, not his, not the girl’s. Someone did a careful wipedown. Meaning an organized mind, right? Which would fit with the stalker scenario. Plenty of tire tracks on the driveway. Unfortunately, a whole mesh of them, too much overlay, so the techies couldn’t pick out a good impression. With Realtors going in and out, it’s what you’d expect. None of the neighbors saw or heard anything, no reports of suspicious characters or unfamiliar cars. I’m having the Sex Crimes people look at their files, see if any scary Peeping Toms are newly out on parole.”

  “Any more about the sequence of death?”

  “The coroner agrees with your logic about Gavin getting shot first, but he can’t make a definitive statement, has no physical evidence to back it up. The blood spatter says both Gavin and the girl were sitting down when they got popped, and the blood all over the girl’s chest plus almost nothing around the head wound says she was alive when that iron stick got jammed through her. I drove around looking for construction sites, see if I could find any missing wrought iron, but nada. I’m getting the feel of a surprise blitz. That make sense?”

  “It makes perfect sense,” I said. “The bad guy follows them, watches, probably parks out on Mulholland and continues onto the property on foot. He waits, sees some necking, gets aroused. If the condom was Gavin’s, he and the girl would’ve been about to consummate. At that point, the bad guy steps out of the dark and boom.”

  “The element of surprise. There was no semen in or on her, even though she was topless, her leggings were still on, so that sounds right.”

  “Anything else on the autopsy?”

  “Her last meal was half a Big Mac, a few fries, and ketchup. The estimate is six hours before she died. Gavin’s stomach gave up pasta with basil and garlic bread. Mrs. Quick confirms that’s what she’d cooked for dinner. She and Gavin ate together five hours before the murder. Then he spent some time in his room, and she went to hers and watched TV.”

  “No dinner date,” I said. “Gavin and the girl ate separately, then hooked up. What time did Gavin leave his house?”

  “Sheila didn’t hear him leave—got defensive about that and went on about Gavin being an adult, she didn’t want to hover.”

  “Given what he’d been through,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I showed Blondie’s picture to her again, ’cause she didn’t seemed as drugged. Same answer: total stranger.”

  “Maybe it was a pickup,” I said.

  “I thought about that and assigned a D-I to comb the clubs with both their pictures. The coroner prepared blood and tissue samples for DNA processing, but unless the girl’s physical data got coded in some official data bank, that’s likely to dead-end. So far, she doesn’t seem to be listed in any of our Missing Persons files. That could mean a runaway from another town, or the running away would’ve happened years ago. The coroner’s reluctant to estimate her age, but I had a close look at her and she seems slightly older than Gavin, maybe twenty-three to twenty-five. And she doesn’t look like a runaway. Her clothes were good, and she was put together nicely—makeup, earrings, nail polish. Not great teeth—she’s missing a few in the rear—but what shows is straight. Tint in the hair, but she’s a natural blonde. Coroner said he could smell perfume on her, thought it was Armani. I didn’t pick that up at the scene, and by the time I got to the morgue she was smelling of other things. But I’ll buy it, Dr. Quan has a good nose.”

  “Too put-together for a prostitute?” I said.

  “For a street girl, yes. Too conservatively dressed for your basic hooker. A higher-priced spread? Maybe. Why?”

  “No dinner date,” I said. “Hooking up for one purpose.”

  “You see a kid like Gavin knowing how to find himself a nice-looking pro like that? He was dressed like a student, it’s not like he put on a Zegna suit and trolled the B.H. hotels with a wad of cash.”

  “But growing up in B.H. he might know about the hotels. With enough cash in his pocket, he’d be in a position to negotiate.”

  “We found thirty bucks in his wallet.”

  “What if he’d already paid the girl, and she had the money? Her purse is missing. If so, robbery would have been icing on the cake for the bad guy.”

  “A call girl doing an outdoor trick with a brain-damaged kid,” he said.

  “That’s the thing about some closed-head injuries. The problems can be subtle. Unless you knew what Gavin was like before, he wouldn’t have come across brain-damaged. Just a clean-cut kid driving a cute little red convertible. We know he could be impulsive and compulsive, and maybe that’s what led him to approach a pro. He’d have his needs—especially since the relationship with Kayla Bartell was over.”

  “Koppel say why they broke up?”

  “She assumed it was due to the accident. I don’t get the feeling she really knew much about Gavin.”

  “A pro,” he said. “A young, horny guy, his girl breaks up with him, maybe his confidence slipped . . . could be.”

  “Something else,” I said. “His talk about digging up dirt. What if he actually followed up on his tabloid dreams? What better place to nab a celebrity than an expensive hotel?”

  “He starts out trawling for movie stars and picks up a pro?”

  “Youthful impulsiveness heightened by brain damage.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll check out the concierges at all the Beverly Hoo-Has. Not that they’re going to admit letting pros through the door. I’ll also ask BHPD if they know her, as well as show her picture to our Vice guys. Meanwhile, she’s just a well-dressed blonde.”

  “Anything traceable in her clothing?”

  “The blouse was DKNY, Calvin Klein thong panties and pushup bra, no label in the leggings. Good shoes. Excellent shoes—Jimmy Choo. From what I hear, that’s a serious investment. There’s a Jimmy Choo store right in B.H, on Little Santa Monica, so I went over there. We’re talking five, six hundred bucks for a spike and a strap. No one recognized her as a customer, but when I described the shoe, the saleswoman knew it right away. Two seasons old, coulda been bought at discount at Neiman’s, Barneys, whatever.”

  “Expensive shoes,” I said. “Well put-together. You’d think someone like that would be missed.”

  “Sure, but a girl living alone, it could take a while for someone to realize she’s missing. It looks like this is gonna be a long, drawn-out deal. Thanks for your help, Alex. If I learn anything, I’ll let you know.”

  *

  I picked Allison up outside her office. Her hair was loose, and she laced her fingers through mine and kissed me hard. Neither of us was hungry, and we opted for movie first, food later. An old Coen Brothers film, Blood Simple, was playing at the Aero, a few blocks up on Montana. Allison had never seen it. I had, but the picture merited a second look.

  We left the theater shortly after nine and drove over to Hakata on Wilshire where we sat in a booth, away from the rock-star posters and the good cheer of the sushi bar, and ordered sake and salmon skin salad and steak teriyaki and mixed sashimi.

  I asked Allison how she’d have treated Gavin Quick.

  “When I get head injuries they’ve usually been through a complete neuropsych eval,” she said. “If they haven’t, I send them for one. If the testing pinpoints deficits, I recomm
end some targeted special ed. With that out of the way, I concentrate on marshaling the patient’s strengths.”

  “Supportive therapy.”

  “Sometimes they need more than that. The challenge is learning to deal with a whole new world. But sure, support’s a big part of it. It can be tough, Alex. Two steps backwards for every step forward, lots of mood changes, and you never know what the end result will be. Basically you’ve got a person who knows he’s not what he used to be and feels helpless to change.”

  “Gavin told his therapist he missed being himself.”

  “Pretty eloquent.”

  I poured sake for both of us. “Nice lighthearted date, huh?”

  She smiled and touched my wrist. “Are we still dating?” Before I could answer, she said, “Why all these questions about the technique, honey? Is his mental status related to his murder?”

  “His mental status became an issue because Milo wondered if Gavin could’ve bothered the wrong person. But my guess is that the girl was the target, and Gavin was just unlucky.”

  “Unlucky again,” she said.

  We ate.

  A moment later: “Who’s the therapist?”

  “A woman named Mary Lou Koppel. Her stated goal was to open him up emotionally. Doesn’t sound as if it went too well.”

  She put her cup down. “Mary Lou.”

  “You know her?”

  She nodded. “How strange.”

  “What is?”

  “She’s had a patient murdered before.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  I pushed my food aside.

  Allison said, “I’d met Mary Lou a few times before. Conferences, symposia. Once we sat on a panel together. Back when I was foolish enough to sit on panels. What I remember about her most vividly are her red clothes and her smile—she always smiled, even when it didn’t seem appropriate. As if she’d been prepped by a media coach. On the panel, she had lots to say but no data to back it up. Clearly, she hadn’t prepared, was relying on charisma.”

  “You’re not a fan.”

  “She put me off, Alex. But I wondered if I was just jealous. Because everyone knew how well she was doing professionally. Word had it she was charging fifty percent more than the rest of us and was turning away patients. The murder was over a year ago. I was at the Western Psych Association convention in Vegas and Mary Lou was scheduled to give a talk on psychology and the media that was canceled at the last minute. I hadn’t planned to attend, but one of my friends was registered to hear her—Hal Gottlieb. That night I was having dinner with Hal and some other folks and he joked that he’d lost money at the blackjack tables and that he was going to sue Mary Lou Koppel for it. Because Mary Lou’s canceling her talk had given him free time and he’d ambled over to the casino. Then he told us she’d canceled because one of her patients had been murdered. There was a long silence; finally, someone made a crack about bad publicity, then someone else said for Mary Lou there was no such thing as bad publicity, she’d turn it to her advantage.”

  “Popular gal,” I said.

  “We mind-healers can be as catty as anyone. If only our patients knew.”

  “Do you recall any details about the murder?”

  “For some reason I remember it as a woman victim. But I could be making that up, I really can’t be sure, Alex.”

  “Over a year ago.”

  “Two Aprils ago—after Easter. That would make it fourteen months.”

  “Nothing about a murder came up when I ran Mary Lou through the search engines,” I said. “But she started giving interviews about prison reform around that time, so maybe the crime sparked her interest.”

  “Could be.”

  “On some of the interviews, she was joined by one of her partners, a guy named Albin Larsen. Know him?”

  She shook her head, probed her salad with a chopstick. “Two murders in one practice. I guess if the practice is large enough, it’s not that outlandish.”

  “And Mary Lou’s was large.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Well,” I said, “at the very least, it’s provocative. I’ll pass it along to Milo. Thanks.”

  “Always happy to help.” She pushed a wave of black hair off her face and nibbled her lower lip.

  I leaned across the table and kissed her. She took hold of my face with both her hands, pressed my mouth to hers, released me.

  I poured more sake.

  “This is good,” she said.

  “Premium brand,” I said.

  “I was referring to being here with you.”

  “Oh.” I knuckled my brow.

  She laughed and touched a diamond earring. “Despite my penchant for shiny things, I really don’t need much. We’re alive and our brains are working just fine—that’s a good start, wouldn’t you say?”

  *

  The following morning, I finished a custody report and, wanting to get out of the house, drove to the West L.A. courthouse and dropped off the papers at the judge’s chambers. The police station was nearby, and I walked over. The civilian clerk knew me and waved me up without clearance.

  I climbed the stairs and walked past the big Robbery-Homicide room where Milo had once worked with all the other detectives, continued up the hall.

  He’d spent a decade and a half in that room, never an insider because of his sexuality and his own loner tendencies. Early on there’d been plenty of hostility, mostly from uniforms and brass, but none recently and never from detectives.

  Detectives are too bright and too busy for that kind of nonsense. For the last few years, Milo’s high solve-rate had earned him silent respect.

  A little over a year ago, his life had changed. Chasing down a vicious, twenty-year-old cold-case sex murder had led him to unearth some of the police chief’s personal secrets. The chief, now deposed, had offered a solution: Milo, in return for not ruining both of them, would get promoted to lieutenant but would be spared the pencil-pushing that went with a lieutenant’s position. Exiled to his own space, away from other D’s, he’d be a special case: allowed to pick his cases, expected to keep a low profile. If he needed assistance, he was free to enlist junior D’s. Otherwise, he’d be on his own.

  Shunting and coopting. It’s the kind of thing government does all the time. Milo knew he was being manipulated, and he hated the idea. He considered quitting—for a few moments. Veered away from self-destruction and convinced himself isolation could be freedom. Banking the extra salary wasn’t bad either, and while the chief was in power, his job security was assured.

  Now the chief was gone, and a new replacement had yet to be picked. Ten candidates had announced their intentions, including an assistant chief from Community Services who tossed his name in the ring after granting an interview to a San Francisco paper in which he came out of a thirty-year closet and named his longtime companion.

  I asked Milo if that would change things in the department.

  He laughed. “When Berger’s name hit the list, eyes rolled so loud you could hear it in Pacoima. His chance of winning is about the same as my growing a second pancreas.”

  “Even so. The fact that he went public.”

  “Public as far as the public’s concerned. Everyone in the department’s known about him for years.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Times are different than when I started,” he said. “No one looks, no one tells, no one leaves nasty stuff in my locker. But the basics—the psychodynamics—aren’t ever going to change, are they? The way I see it, humans are built that way, it’s in our DNA. Us-them, someone’s gotta be in, someone’s gotta be out. Every few years we have to beat someone up to feel good about ourselves. If most of the world was like me, straights would be stigmatized. Probably some evolutionary thing, though I can’t figure it out. Got any wisdom for me?”

  “Left the wisdom pills in the car.”

  He laughed again, in that joyless way he’s perfected. “Savagery reigns. I’ll never be lacking for work.”
<
br />   *

  The door to his office was open, and he was sitting at his desk, reading a file. The space is windowless, barely large enough for him, with nothing on the wall and a picture of Milo and Rick on the desk. Fishing, somewhere in Colorado. Both of them in plaid shirts, they looked like a couple of outdoorsmen. For most of the trip, Milo had suffered from altitude sickness.

  His computer was on, and his screen saver was a shark chasing a diver. Each time the fish’s rapacious jaws nudged the swimmer’s fins, he got kicked in the face. A floating legend read, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

  I knocked on the doorjamb.

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, without looking up.

  “Good day to you, too. Turns out Gavin Quick’s not the first patient of Koppel’s who’s seen an untimely end.”

  He looked up, stared as if we’d never met. His eyes cleared. The file was Gavin’s. He slapped it shut.

  “Say what?”

  I did.

  *

  I sat in a spare chair. Our noses were three feet apart. None of Milo’s cheap panatellas were in sight, but his clothes were ripe with stale tobacco.

  He said, “Two Aprils ago.”

  “Allison can’t be certain, but she thinks the victim was female. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Well, guess what? The department has finally limped into the cyberage.” He tapped his computer monitor. The shark and diver dissipated, giving way to several icons, haphazardly placed. The screen was clouded and cracked in one corner. “At least, theoretically. This little sucker tends to freeze—donated by some private high school in Brentwood, because the kids couldn’t use it anymore.” He began typing. The machine made washing-machine noises and loaded slowly. “Here we are, m’boy. Every felonious slaying under the department’s jurisdiction for the last five years listed by victim, date, division, and status. Probably no impaling, because I already searched for impaling . . . let’s see what April produces . . .”

  He scrolled. “I’m counting six . . . seven females. Five closed, two open. Let’s start with Westside cases because Koppel’s practice is on the Westside. More important, I can walk a few yards and get hold of the folders.”