Quick saw me looking. “That was Gav.” His voice caught. He cursed under his breath, said, “Let’s get to work.”
*
Milo prepared him for the picture, then showed it to him.
Quick waved it away. “Never seen her.” Quick’s eyes dropped to the carpet. “Did my wife tell you about the accident?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That and now this.” Quick sprang up, strode to a mock-Chippendale coffee table, studied a crystal box for a while, then opened it and pulled out a cigarette and lit up with a matching lighter.
Blue smoke rose toward the ceiling. Quick inhaled deeply, sat down, and laughed harshly.
“I quit five years ago. Sheila thinks it’s gracious to leave these out for guests, even though no one smokes anymore. Like the good old days in Hollywood, all that crap. Her sister tells her about Hollywood crap . . .” He stared at the cigarette, flicked ash on the carpet, and ground it into the pile with his heel. The resulting black scorch mark seemed to give him satisfaction.
I said, “Did Gavin talk about a new girlfriend?”
“New?”
“After Kayla.”
“Her,” said Quick. “There’s an airhead for you. No, he didn’t say anything.”
“Would he have told you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was he open about his personal life?”
“Open?” said Quick. “Less so than before the accident. He tended to get confused. In the beginning, I mean. How could he not be confused, he caught a tremendous blow right here.” Quick touched his forehead.
Same spot where the bullet had entered his son’s skull. He didn’t know yet. No reason for him to know yet.
“Confusion,” I said.
“Just temporary. But he found he couldn’t concentrate on his studies, so he dropped out of school.”
Quick smoked and grimaced, as if inhaling hurt.
“He got hit on the prefrontal lobes,” he said. “They told us it controls personality. So obviously . . .”
“Gavin changed,” I said.
“Nothing huge, but sure, there’d have to be changes. But then he got better, almost everything got better. Anyway, I’m sure Gav’s accident has nothing to do with this.”
Quick puffed rapidly, flicked more ash. “We need to find out whoever did this. Bastard leave any clues?”
Milo said, “We have no suspects and very little information. We haven’t even been able to identify the girl.”
“Well I don’t know her, and I doubt Sheila does. We know the same people.”
“Is there anything you can tell us about Gavin that might help?”
“Gavin was a great guy,” said Quick, as if daring us to argue. “Had his head on his shoulders. Hell of a golfer. We both loved golf. I taught him, and he learned fast, leaped right over me— a seven handicap, and he was getting better. That was before the accident. Afterward, he wasn’t as coordinated, but he was still good. His attention would wander . . . sometimes he’d want to take the same shot over and over— wanted to do it perfectly.”
“Perfectionistic,” I said.
“Yeah, but at some point you’re causing a traffic jam on the green, and you have to stop. In terms of his interests, he liked business, same as me.” Jerry Quick slumped. “That changed, too. He lost interest in business. Got other ideas. But I figured it was temporary.”
“Other career ideas?” I said.
“More like career fantasies. All of a sudden econ was down the drain, and he was going to be a writer.”
“What kind of writer?”
“He joked about working for the tabloids, getting the dirt on celebrities.”
“Just a joke,” I said.
Quick glared. “He laughed, and I laughed back. I told you, he couldn’t concentrate. How the hell could he write for a newspaper? One time Eileen was over, and he asked her if she knew any celebrities he could get dirt on. Then he winked at me, but Eileen just about dirtied her pants. Gave some big speech about celebrities deserving their privacy. The thought of offending some big shot scared the hell out of her . . . anyway, where was I . . .” Quick’s eyes glazed. He smoked.
“Gavin becoming an investigative reporter.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t serious.”
“How did Gavin fill his time after he dropped out?”
Quick said, “By hanging around. I was ready for him to go back to school, but apparently he wasn’t, so I— it was a hard time for him, I didn’t want to push. I figured maybe he’d reenroll in the spring.”
“Any other changes?” I said.
“He stopped picking up his room. Really let it go to seed. He’d never been the neatest kid, but he’d always been good about personal grooming. Now he sometimes had to be reminded to shower and brush his teeth and comb his hair. I hated reminding him because he got embarrassed. Never argued, never gave me attitude, just said, ‘Sorry, Dad.’ Like he knew something was different and felt bad about it. But that was all getting better, he was coming out of it, getting in shape— he started running again. He was light on his feet, used to do five, six miles like it was nothing. His doctor told me he was going to be fine.”
“Which doctor is that?”
“All of them. There was a neurologist, what was his name—” Quick smoked and removed the cigarette and tapped his cheek with his free hand. “Some Indian guy, Barry Silver, our family doctor, referred us to him. Indian guy, over at Saint John’s . . . Singh. He wears a turban, must be one of those . . . you know. Barry is a friend as well as our doctor, I golf with him, so I trusted his referral. Singh did some tests and told us he really didn’t see anything off in Gav’s brain. He said Gav would take time to heal, but he couldn’t say how much time. Then he sent us over to a therapist— a psychologist. To help Gav recover from the trauma.”
“A neuropsychologist?” I said.
Quick said, “She’s a therapist, that’s all I know. Woman shrink, Koppel, she’s been on TV, radio.”
“Mary Lou Koppel.”
“You know her?”
“I’ve heard of her,” I said.
“At first Gav saw one of her partners, but they didn’t hit it off, so he switched to her.”
“What was wrong with the first partner?”
Quick shrugged. “The whole process— you pay for your kid to go in and talk to someone, it’s all hush-hush, you’re not allowed to know what’s going on.” He dragged on his cigarette. “Gavin told me he wasn’t comfortable with the guy and that Koppel was going to see him. Same price. They both charged two hundred bucks an hour and didn’t accept insurance.”
“Was it helpful?”
“Who knows?”
“What feedback did Dr. Koppel give you?”
“Nothing. I was out of that loop— the whole therapy thing. I travel a lot. Too much, been meaning to cut back.”
He smoked the cigarette down to the butt, snatched another, and chain-lit, then snuffed out the first one between his thumb and index finger. Onto the carpet.
He mumbled something.
Milo said, “Sir?”
Quick’s smile was abrupt and unsettling. “I travel all the time, and it’s hell. You know the airlines, disciples of the devil. Frequent business flyer? They could care less. This time, after Sheila called me about Gavin, and I told them why I needed to go home, I got treated like a king. They tag you as bereaved, and you get prioritized all the way. Upgrade to first class, no one could do enough for me.”
He barked what might’ve been laughter. Smoked, coughed, smoked some more.
“That’s what it took. That’s what it took to get treated like a human being.”
*
Milo asked him about his daughter, and Quick said, “I told Kelly to stay in Boston. She’s got law school, what good can it do her to come here? If you release the . . . release Gavin to us and we have a funeral, then she can come home. When will that be?”
“Hard to say, sir,” said Milo.
“That seems to be your tune.”
Milo smiled. “Kayla Bartell—”
“Haven’t seen her around for a while. She knew Gav from high school, and they fooled around for a while.”
“Fooled around?”
“Like kids do,” said Quick. “Her father’s some kind of composer. Eileen informs me he’s important.”
“You’ve never met him.”
“Why would I?”
“Gavin and Kayla—”
“That was Gav’s business . . . to be honest, guys, I don’t get these questions,” said Quick. “What happened can’t have anything to do with Gav. He went up to Mulholland with some girl and a pervert— some sex fiend— took advantage, right? It’s obvious, right? Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”
Before Milo could answer, Quick’s eyes swung to the stairs. Eileen Paxton stomped down, ignored us, and hurried into the kitchen.
A kitchen faucet opened. Then, the hard clash of pans. Moments later, Sheila Quick made her way down the stairs, tentative, unsteady. She stopped on the bottom step, studied the floor, as if unwilling to commit. Her eyes were unfocused, and she gripped the banister for support. She wore a pink housecoat, had aged a decade overnight.
She saw us, said, “Hello” in a slurred voice. She noticed the cigarette in her husband’s hand, and her lips turned down.
Jerome Quick smoked defiantly. “Don’t stand on the bottom like that, come all the way down— be careful, you’re on Valium.” He made no effort to help her.
She remained in place. “Is there anything . . . new, Detective?”
Milo shook his head. “Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Qui—”
“No, no, no, you’re helping me— us. You were very . . . gracious. Last night. It can’t have been easy for you. You were gracious. It wasn’t easy for you or for me.”
Jerry Quick said, “Sheila, go back to bed. You’re—”
“They were nice last night, Jerry. It’s only polite that I—”
“I’m sure they were great, but—”
“Jerry. I. Want. To. Be. Polite.” Sheila Quick came down the stairs and sat down on a side chair. “Hello,” she said, brightly.
“Ma’am,” said Milo, “we have learned that the girl with Gavin wasn’t Kayla Bartell.”
Sheila Quick said, “You said she was blond.”
Jerome Quick said, “There’s a rare commodity in L.A.”
“I do have a picture,” said Milo. “It’s not a pleasant picture, it’s postmortem, but if you could look at it— if we could identify her, it might speed things along.”
Sheila Quick stared at him. He showed her the death shot.
“She looks so . . . dead. Poor little thing.” Shaking her head. She snatched the photo from Milo and held it closer. Her fingers trembled, and the corners flapped. “Are you showing pictures like this of Gavin to other people?”
“Sheila,” said Quick.
“No, ma’am,” said Milo. “We know who Gavin is.”
She examined the photo. “Gavin never said he had a new girlfriend.”
“Gavin was twenty,” said Jerome Quick. “He didn’t need to check in about his social life.”
Sheila Quick continued to stare at the picture. Finally, she handed it back.
“Another one,” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“Someone else’s baby is gone.”
CHAPTER 5
Milo received written permission to speak to Gavin’s doctors, and we left. It was nearly 5 P.M., the sky was milky white and poisonous, and both of us were low and hungry. We drove to a deli on Little Santa Monica, had sandwiches and coffee. Mine was roast beef with hot mustard on pumpernickel. Milo opted for a wet, multidecked monster layered with pastrami and coleslaw and pepperoncinis and some things I couldn’t identify, all stuffed into a French roll. When he bit into it, it collapsed. That seemed to give him joy.
He swallowed, and said, “Model family.”
“They’re no ad for domestic life,” I said, “but the father may be right, and it doesn’t matter.”
“Perverted stranger kills his boy. That sure distances it from the family.”
“I don’t see this as a family crime,” I said. “The fact that the family doesn’t know the girl could mean she’s the kind of girl you don’t bring home to Mother. Which may lead us to her being the primary target.”
“Someone with nasty friends.”
“The killer impaled her and took her purse. That could’ve been trophy-taking, but what if he didn’t want her identified quickly?”
“The primary target for sex, killing, or both?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “There was no sexual assault, but to me the impaling still has a sexual quality to it. Gavin was shot once— dispatched. That’s consistent with the killer wanting him out of the way so he could take care of his real business.”
“If Gavin was shot first. No way we can pinpoint that.”
“Logic says he was,” I said. “The girl was alive when the killer impaled her. It’s unlikely Gavin would’ve sat by passively while that happened. Or that the killer would’ve taken the risk of fighting a young, healthy male. He dispatched Gavin, with a single shot, then turned his attention to the girl. Her size, her fear, and the killer’s overwhelming dominance subdued her. Maybe he promised her he wouldn’t hurt her if she didn’t resist. Any signs she fought back?”
He shook his head.
I said, “She watched Gavin get murdered, sat there, terrified, and hoped for the best. The killer used the spear on her, then he shot her, too. To me that says big-time anger. With both kids dead, he had time to inspect his handiwork, fool with the scene. Either Gavin and the girl had already begun a sexually charged tableau, or he set one up. Either because it was a sex crime, or he wanted it to be seen that way.”
He put his sandwich down. “You’re offering me lots of choices.”
“What are friends for?” I said. “Have you come across any other impalement murders?”
“Nothing yet.” He picked up his sandwich, and a huge chunk disappeared in his maw. Think the condom was Gavin’s, or did the killer bring it?”
“It was in his pocket, so it was probably his.”
“So you think exploring Gavin’s psyche is a waste of time? I was thinking his therapist might be helpful. And you know her.”
“I know who she is.”
“From her being on TV.”
Here we go. I hid my mouth behind my coffee cup.
He said, “You make a face when you talk about her.”
“She’s not someone I’d refer to,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I can’t get into the details.”
“Give me the basics.”
*
Five years ago, an otherwise thoughtful judge had asked me to evaluate a seven-year-old girl caught in a vicious divorce. Both parents were trained marriage counselors. That should have been ample warning.
The mother was a young, passive, pinch-featured, preternaturally anxious woman who’d grown up with violent, alcoholic parents and had shifted from couples work to processing hardened drug addicts at a county-financed clinic in Bellflower. Her ex-husband, twenty years older, was pompous and psychopathic, a newly minted sex therapist and guru of sorts, with an Ivy League Ph.D. and a brand-new job at a yoga institute in Santa Barbara.
The two of them hadn’t spoken in over a year but each insisted upon joint physical custody. The arrangement was to be simple: three days at one home, four at the next. Neither parent saw the problem shuttling a seven-year-old girl ninety miles between her father’s faux-adobe house at the ashram and the mother’s sad, furnished apartment in Glendale. The alleged crux of the conflict was the calendar— who got four days, who got three, and what about holidays? After two months of raging debate, the topic switched to coordinating the conventional diet favored by the mother with the vegan regimen embraced by the father.
The real crux was mutual hatred, two hundred thousand d
ollars in a jointly owned investment account, and the alleged sexual rapaciousness of the father’s four girlfriends.
Therapy Page 4