Therapy

by Jonathan Kellerman

  *

  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 recommend 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.”

&nb
sp; “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.”

  *

  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.”

  I scanned the screen. “Folder. Looks like only one’s West L.A.”

  “Wouldn’t that be easy.”

  It was.

  *

  Flora Elizabeth Newsome, thirty-one years old, brown and brown, five-five, 130. A third-grade teacher at Canfield Street School, found in her Palms apartment on a Sunday morning, stabbed and shot. She’d been dead for at least twelve hours.

  Dr. Mary Lou Koppel had been interviewed by Detective II Alphonse McKinley and Detective II Lorraine Ogden on April 30. Dr. Koppel had nothing to offer other than the fact that she’d been treating Flora Newsome for “anxiety.”

  No Solve.

  I read the autopsy report. “Stabbed and shot with a .22. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the ballistics matched. And stabbing isn’t that far from impaling.”

  Milo sat back in his desk chair. “I can always count on you to spark up my woefully dreary life.”

  “Think of it as therapy,” I said.

  Detective Alphonse McKinley had transferred to the Metro Squad at Parker Center. Detective Lorraine Ogden was down the hall, trying to make sense of the gibberish her computer was dishing out.

  She was thirty-five or so, a big, square-shouldered woman with short, dark, gray-flecked hair and a determined jaw. She wore an orange-and-cream paisley blouse, brown slacks, cream-colored flats. Wedding band and half-carat diamond on one hand. High school ring on the other.

  “Milo,” she said, barely glancing up. Her screen filled with rows of numbers. “This thing hates me.”

  “I think you just broke into a Swiss bank.”

  “Don’t think so, no swastikas. What’s up?”

  Milo introduced me. Lorraine Ogden said, “I’ve seen you around. Something psychologically amiss?”

  “Always,” said Milo, “but this is about business.” He told her about the Mulholland murders and the similarities to Flora Newsome.

  “Same shrink,” she said. “I guess that’s a connection.”

  “A .22 was used on all of them. Our vic was impaled, and yours was stabbed.”

  “Impaled how?”

  “Iron rod through the sternum.”

  “Flora was cut up pretty badly. Knife jammed through the chest, too.” Ogden bit down on her lower teeth, and her jaw got wider. “I never made any headway on her, wouldn’t it be nice.”

  “I pulled the chart, but if you’ve got time, I wouldn’t mind hearing about it, Lorraine.”

  Ogden glared at the computer, clicked it off. Her touch was hard, and the machine quivered. “My son tells me not to do that without going through the proper steps. Says it puts garbage into the system. But all I’ve been getting is garbage.”

  She got up. Six feet tall in flats. The three of us left the detectives’ room and moved into the hallway.

  “How old’s your son?” I said.

  “Ten. Going on thirty. Loves math and all that techie stuff. He’d know what to do with that abysmal piece of crap.” To Milo: “I think Conference A’s vacant. Let’s play déjà vu.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Conference A was a ten-by-twelve, low-ceilinged space set up with a folding table and chairs, so brightly lit it made me want to confess to something. Wal-Mart sales labels on the backs of the chairs. The table was cluttered with empty pizza boxes. Milo shoved them to the far end and sat at the head. Lorraine Ogden and I flanked him.

  She took the Newsome file, paged through, paused at the autopsy photos, spent a lot of time on a five-by-seven glossy photo.

  “Poor Flora,” she said. “This was her graduation picture. Cal State L.A., she got her teaching credential there.”

  “She was thirty-one when she died,” said Milo. “Old picture?”

  “Recent picture. She took time off, worked as a secretary between college and teaching school, had just graduated a year before. She was finishing her probationary year at the school. The principal liked her, the kids liked her, she was going to be asked to stay on.”

  Her fingernail flicked the edge of the photo. “Her mother gave this to us, made a big point of telling us we could keep it— she kind of bonded with me and Al. Nice lady, she had faith in us, never bugged us, just called once in a while to thank us, let us know she was sure we’d solve it.” Her nostrils flared. “Haven’t heard from her in must be half a year. Poor Mrs. Newsome. Evelyn Newsome.”

  I said, “May I?” and she slid the folder across the table.

  In life, Flora Newsome had been attractive in a scrubbed, unremarkable way. Broad face, clear complexion, dark hair worn to her shoulders and flipped, bright pale eyes. For her grad shot, she’d put on a fuzzy white sweater and thin gold chain with a crucifix. An inscription on the back of the picture said, “To Mom and Dad. I finally made it!” Blue ink, beautiful penmanship.

  “Mom and Dad,” I said.

  “Dad died two months after Flora graduated. Mom wasn’t doing too great either— serious arthritis. Sixty years old, but she looked seventy-five. After Flora got killed, she mo
ved out of her house and checked herself into one of those board-and-care places. If that doesn’t turn you old at warp speed . . .” She frowned. “So what can I tell you guys about it . . . Flora’s boyfriend found her around 11:30 A.M., Sunday morning. The two of them had a date for brunch, were gonna head over to Bobby J’s in the Marina.” She snorted. “Funny I should remember that. We checked, the restaurant confirmed the reservation. The boyfriend shows up, knocks, no one answers. He keeps trying, finally uses his cell phone to call Flora, still nothing. He bangs on her window, tries to look through, but the drapes are blocking. So he goes and gets the manager. Who didn’t want to let him in— he’s seen the boyfriend around but doesn’t really know him. The boyfriend makes noise about calling the cops, and the manager agrees to have a quick look. Minute later, the manager’s puking in the bushes and the boyfriend’s calling 911, shouting for an ambulance. Not that there was a chance. Coroner said she’d gotten killed around midnight.”