Alex 18 - Therapy

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Robin said, “Thanks so much, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Down deep he loves you.”

  “Must be extremely deep. When do you want to bring him over?”

  “The plane leaves from Santa Monica as soon as we’re ready, so I was thinking soon.”

  “Come on over.”

  *

  This is not your typical dog.

  His flat face implies as much frog DNA as canine heritage, his ears are oversized, upright, batlike, and they flex and pivot and fold in response to a wide range of emotions. He doesn’t take up much more space than a Pomeranian but manages to pack twenty-six pounds into that cubic area, most of it lead-bone and rippling muscle, clothed in a black brindle coat. His neck is twenty-one and three-quarter inches around, and his knobby head is three handbreadths wide. His huge brown eyes shine with confidence and he allows himself the barest, patronizing interest in the lives of others. His worldview is simple: Life is a cabaret, and it’s all about him.

  When I used to take him out alone, women flocked. “Oh, that’s the most beautiful ugly dog I’ve ever seen!” was the operative phrase.

  This afternoon, he had as much interest in leaving Robin’s side as in snarfing a bowl of lint.

  I held out a chew stick. He shot Robin a mournful gaze. She sighed and stooped. “It’ll be fine, handsome.”

  The Saran-wrapped nugget of hamburger I’d concealed in my shirt pocket perked his radar and brought him over, but once he gobbled it, he raced back and hid behind Robin’s legs. Great legs.

  She said, “Look at this, he’s guilt-tripping me.”

  “The joys of parenthood.”

  Spike nuzzled her jeans. Tight jeans above suede boots. She wore a black silk T-shirt under a tapestry vest. Her auburn curls were loose, her face was scrubbed and fresh. Those big, liquid brown eyes. The clean sweep of jaw and thin, straight nose.

  Those lips; the oversized incisors.

  I said, “Let me take him, and you go. He’ll fuss, then he’ll be fine.”

  “You’re right,” she said. She took Spike’s face in both her hands. “Listen, you rascal. Daddy will take good care of you, you know that.”

  What did she call Tim? Stepdaddy?

  Spike’s trapdoor mouth dropped open, teeth flashed, a purplish tongue flapped.

  Beseeching the heavens, he bayed.

  I swooped him into my arms, held his taut little body tight against my chest as he sniveled and writhed and hyperventilated. It was like restraining a bowling ball with legs.

  “Oh dear,” said Robin.

  I said, “Bon voyage, Rob.”

  She hesitated, headed for her truck, changed her mind, and came back. Throwing her arm around my shoulder, she kissed Spike full on the snout.

  She was kissing me on the cheek just as Allison drove up in her black Jaguar XJS.

  *

  The convertible top was down and her black hair blew like something out of a crème rinse commercial. She wore blue-tinted sunglasses and cream-colored knits with an aqua scarf. Glints punctuated her ears, neck, fingers, wrists; Allison is unafraid of adornment.

  She switched off the engine and Robin’s arm dropped. Spike tried to leap out of my arms and reacted to his failure with a heart-wrenching howl.

  “Hey, everyone,” said Allison.

  “Hi,” said Robin, smiling.

  Spike tried his I’m-strangling-do-the-Heimlich bit.

  “Well, look who’s here.” Allison patted Spike’s head, then she kissed my lips. Robin backed away a few steps.

  Spike froze; his head shifted from woman to woman.

  It can get like that, buddy.

  He moaned.

  *

  After Robin drove away, I trailed Allison up the stairs to the terrace, carrying a still-shuddering dog. When we reached the landing, she looked at me—no, at him. Touched his whiskered flews tentatively. “Look at this little guy. I forget how cute he is.”

  Spike licked her hand.

  “You are very, very cute!”

  Spike began panting heavily, and she petted him some more. He wriggled, twisted his head back and managed to make eye contact with me.

  A knowing look, rich with triumph.

  Moments later, he was lying at Allison’s feet, nibbling on his second chew stick in as many minutes, damning my approach with a jaundiced eye.

  Some guys have all the luck.

  *

  Mary Lou Koppel’s murder had shaken Allison, and that seemed to be why she’d dropped by. As I made coffee for both of us, she pressed for details.

  I told her the little I knew.

  “So it could be a patient,” she said.

  “At this point anything’s possible.”

  Her hands were tight around her mug.

  I said, “You’re upset.”

  “Not on a personal level.” She took a sip. “I have had patients—mostly husbands of patients—who made me uneasy. But that was mostly years ago, when I was taking more referrals from agencies . . . I guess Mary Lou’s death hits close to home. Thinking we know what we’re doing and maybe we get overconfident. It’s not just me. I’ve gotten calls from three other psychologists who just wanted to talk about it.”

  “People who knew Mary Lou?”

  “People who know I’m seeing you and thought they could get some inside information. Don’t worry, I was discreet.”

  “What was on their minds?”

  “Our line of work, the unpredictablity of human beings. I guess they want to convince themselves that Mary Lou was different, and that’s why it happened to her.”

  I said, “They’re hoping she ticked off some talk-show nut, and it had nothing to do with her practice.”

  “Bingo. But from what you’re telling me, it could be a patient. Someone who met the Quick boy in the waiting room.”

  “Given the Quick boy’s impulsiveness—his behavior with women—the suspect pool has grown beyond the waiting room.”

  “But Mary Lou’s murder,” she said. “It has to be something related to her work.”

  “Any idea about gaining access to her patient files?” I said. “I can’t figure out a way to get around confidentiality.”

  She thought about that. “Not without some kind of clear and present danger—documentation of a threat.”

  “There was nothing like that in Gavin’s chart. And if she was threatened by anyone, she didn’t let on to me or Milo. We’ve got a meeting with her partners tomorrow.”

  “Gull and Larsen.”

  “Know them?” I said.

  “I’ve said hi to both of them but nothing more.”

  “Any impressions?”

  “Gull comes across very smooth—very much the Beverly Hills shrink. Larsen’s more the academic type.”

  “Gull was Gavin’s initial therapist,” I said. “It didn’t work out, and Gavin was transferred to Koppel. Now that Gavin’s dead, maybe he can tell us why.”

  “What a troubled kid,” she said. “The stalking, putting the make on his aunt.”

  “If the aunt’s to be believed, the family’s beyond dysfunctional.”

  She drank more coffee, took my hand and held it. “At least you and I will never be out of work.”

  “Neither will Milo.”

  Spike rolled on his back and began pumping his stumpy legs.

  “He looks like an upended turtle,” she said. “What are you doing, cutie? Practicing for the upside-down bike race?”

  “That’s the signal to scratch his belly,” I said.

  She grinned and complied. “Thanks for decoding, I’m not fluent in dog.”

  She stopped scratching and made a move for her coffee mug. Spike protested, and she bent down again.

  I said, “One-trial learning. Consider yourself conditioned.”

  She laughed, took the mug, managed to sip and rub. Spike burped, then purred like a cat. Allison cracked up. “He’s a sound effects machine.”

  “He’s got all sorts of talents.”

  “How long�
��s he staying?”

  “Couple of days.” I told her about Robin’s call.

  “That was very nice of you.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” I said. “It was supposed to be joint custody, but he voted against it.”

  “Well, that was foolish on his part. I’m sure you were a great father.” She sat up and touched my face and ran a finger over my lips.

  Spike sprang to his feet and barked.

  “Here we go,” I said. To Spike: “Cool it, clown.”

  “Ooh, stern,” said Allison. “You do stern pretty well, my love. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “He brings it out in me.”

  “I always wanted a dog,” she said. “You know my mother. Way too neat for hair on the carpet. And Dad was always away on business. I did have a salamander once. It crawled out of its tank and hid under my bed and dried up. When I found it, it looked like a piece of beef jerky.”

  “Poor neglected child,” I said.

  “Yes, it was a tragic childhood—though, to be honest, I wasn’t very attached to Sally. Wet and slimy discourages bonding, don’t you think? But something like this.” She rubbed Spike’s head. “This I could see.”

  “It gets complicated,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I got up, stood behind her, rubbed her neck and kissed it. Waited for Spike to go bonkers.

  He stared. Defiant. Did nothing.

  Her top was V-necked and I slipped my hand under it. She said, “Umm. As long as I’m here . . .”

  “So you didn’t just come to talk about Mary Lou.”

  “I did, but so what?” she said. I pinched her nipple lightly, and she leaned back in her chair and sucked in her breath and let it out in a soft laugh. She reached behind and ran her hand along my flank. “You have time?”

  I glanced over at Spike. Impassive.

  I took Allison by the hand, walked her to the bedroom. Spike trotted ten steps behind us. I closed the door. Silence. Back when it was Robin and me, he’d complained incessantly.

  I drew the drapes, undressed Allison, got out of my own clothes. We stood belly to belly, blood rushing, cool flesh warming. I cupped Allison’s rear. Her hands were all over me.

  Still no complaints from the other side of the door as I carried her to the bed.

  We embraced and touched and kissed and I forgot about anything but Allison.

  It wasn’t till I entered her that the scratching and mewling began.

  Allison heard it right away. Lying there, her hands on my arms, her legs propped high on my back, she opened her blue eyes wide.

  We began moving together.

  The commotion on the other side of the door got louder.

  “Oh,” she said, still rocking. “See . . . what . . . you . . . mean.”

  I didn’t stop, and neither did she.

  Spike kept it up.

  To no avail.

  CHAPTER

  22

  When I awoke the next morning at 6 A.M., Allison was next to me, and Spike lay curled on the floor, at the foot of the bed. She’d let him in. For the next two days, he wouldn’t even be faking civil.

  I left her sleeping and took him outside to do his business. The morning was moist and gray and oddly fragrant. Mustaches of haze coiled down from the mountains. The trees were black sentries. Too early for the birds.

  I watched him waddle around the yard, sniffing and searching. He nuzzled a garden snail, decided escargot was an element of his Gallic heritage that he preferred to forget, and disappeared behind a bush. As I stood there in my bathrobe, shivering, head clearing, I wondered who’d been threatened to the point of murder by Gavin Quick and Mary Lou Koppel. Or maybe there was no threat at all, and this was all about pleasure killing.

  Then I recalled Gavin’s journalistic fantasies, and my questions took off in a different direction.

  At breakfast, I said nothing about the murders to Allison. By eight-thirty she’d left for her office, and I was doing some work around the house. Spike remained still in front of the cold TV. He’s always been a devotee of the blank screen; maybe he’s got something there. I headed for my office and cleared paper. Spike padded in and stared until I got up, went to the kitchen, and fetched him a scrap of turkey. That kept him happy for the rest of the morning, and by 10 A.M. he was sleeping in the kitchen.

  When Milo called soon after and asked me to pick him up at noon for the meeting with Drs. Gull and Larsen, I was glad to hear his voice.

  *

  I idled the Seville in front of the station. Milo was late to come down, and I was warned twice by uniforms not to loiter. Milo’s name meant nothing to the second cop, who threatened to ticket. I drove around the block a couple of times and found Milo waiting by the curb.

  “Sorry. Sean Binchy grabbed me as I was leaving.”

  He closed his eyes and put his head back. His clothes were rumpled, and I wondered when he’d last slept.

  I took side streets to Ohio, aimed the Seville east, fought the snarl at Sepulveda, and continued to Overland, where I could finally outpace a skateboard.

  Roxbury Park was fifteen minutes away, on Olympic, less than a mile west of Mary Lou Koppel’s office. Even closer to the Quick house on Camden Drive. I considered the constricted world that had become Gavin’s after his accident. Until he’d driven a pretty blond girl up to Mulholland Drive.

  Milo opened his eyes. “I like this chauffering stuff. You ever put in for mileage, the department takes a big hit.”

  “Saint Alex. What did Binchy want?”

  “He found a neighbor of Koppel’s, some kid living seven houses up McConnell, who spotted a van cruising the street the night of the murder. Kid was coming home late, around 2 A.M., and the van passed him, heading north, away from Koppel’s house and toward his. He locked his doors, stayed in his car, watched it turn around and return. Going really slowly, like the driver was looking for an address. The kid waited until the taillights had disappeared for a while. He can’t say if the van parked or just drove out of sight, but it didn’t make another pass.”

  “Vigilant kid,” I said.

  “There was a follow-home mugging over on the other side of Motor a few weeks ago, and his parents made a big deal about being observant.”

  “Two o’clock fits the coroner’s estimate. Any look at the driver?”

  “Too dark. Kid thought maybe the windows were tinted.”

  “How old a kid?”

  “Seventeen. Binchy says he’s an honor student at Harvard-Westlake, seems solid. He’s into cars, too, was pretty sure the van was a Ford Aerostar. Black or gray or navy blue, no customization he could spot. He didn’t get a peek at the plate, that would be too much to hope for. It’s not much, but if we turn up some suspect with an Aerostar, it’ll be a nice bit of something.”

  “Any progress getting access to Koppel’s files?”

  “I asked three ADAs, and each told me the same thing. Without overt violent behavior or threats by a specific patient against a specific person, forget it.”

  “Maybe there’s another way to learn about Gavin’s private life,” I said. “He fancied himself a budding journalist, and journalists take notes.”

  “Oh, man.” He sat up, pressed the dashboard with both hands, as if protecting himself from falling forward. “That sty he called a room. All that paper piled up, maybe he wrote something down. And I never checked. Shit.”

  “It was only a suggestion—”

  “The night we notified Sheila Quick, she showed us the room. I felt bad for her, seeing how embarrassed she was. I never bothered to toss.” He dug his thumbs into his temples. “Oh, that was brilliant.”

  “That night we notified Sheila,” I said, “it presented as a lover’s lane sex murder. No one suspected Gavin might’ve played a role in his own death. We still don’t know that he did.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the therapy, Alex, but the fact is, I should’ve tossed the damn room right awa
y. Maybe I’m losing it . . . I have to write things down or they leak outta my brain. Okay, no more whining. Proactive, proactive. After Gull and Larsen, I head back to the Quick house. Mrs. Q’s gonna love my excavating her dead boy’s personal effects.” He grimaced. “Hopefully, she didn’t throw stuff out.”

  “I think it’ll be a while before she has the energy to face the job.”

  “The life she leads,” he said, softly. “I looked into her hubby’s background. Ol’ Jerome has earned himself one ticket for speeding and one for failure to make a complete stop. He’s not known to our Vice unit or any other I talked to, including Santa Monica and West Hollywood. So if he hired call girls for himself or Gavin, he did it carefully. I ran him through a few search engines and his name comes up once. Reunion of Vietnam vets five years ago, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

  At Century Park East, I stopped at a red light. A few blocks later, I passed the college-sized campus that was Beverly Hills High. Then a block-long stretch of green, clean, and orderly park, with that Potemkin village rightness that characterizes Beverly Hills’s public areas.

  Milo said, “Ready to be collegial? Should I tell them who you are?”

  “No, keep it low-key. I’ll just listen.”

  “Ever the observer. Probably a good idea. Okay, turn here on Roxbury, keep going till you get to the south side of the park, and circle around. They said they’ll be waiting in the picnic area, off the Spalding side alley on the western edge. Near where the kids and the mommies play.”

  *

  Albin Larsen and a larger, dark-haired man in a black suit sat at a wooden table just inside the green iron fencing that marked the western border of the park. One of six tables, all shaded by a grove of old Chinese elms. Beverly Hills treats its trees like show poodles, and the elms had been clipped into towering green umbrellas. The psychologists had chosen a spot just north of a sand pit, where toddlers frolicked under the watchful eyes of mothers and maids. Their backs were to the children.

  I found a parking slot facing the green fence. Most of the others were taken up by SUVs and vans. The exception was a pair of Mercedes 190s, both deep gray, positioned next to each other. Same cars I’d seen in the parking lot of Koppel’s building. Same model as Jerome Quick’s.