When I do custody evaluations, I make it a point to talk to therapists, and these combatants each had one. The father’s was an eighty-year-old Indian swami who spoke heavily accented English and took medication for high blood pressure. I made a trip to Santa Barbara, spent a pleasant two hours with the corpulent, bearded fellow, breathing in incense and learning nothing of substance. The father hadn’t kept an appointment with his avatar in six months.
“Is that okay with you?” I asked the swami.
He shifted out of lotus position and did something impossible with his body, winked, and smiled. “What will be, will be.”
“There’s a song like that.”
“Doris Day,” he said. “Terrific singer.”
*
The mother’s therapist was Mary Lou Koppel, and she refused to talk to me.
First she avoided me completely by ignoring my calls. After my fifth attempt to get through, she phoned and explained. “I’m sure you understand, Dr. Delaware. Confidentiality.”
“Dr. Wetmore’s given consent.”
“I’m afraid it’s not hers to give.”
“Whose is it?”
The phone crackled. She said, “I’m speaking conceptually, not legally. Teresa Wetmore is in an extremely vulnerable place. Thad is extremely abusive, as I’m sure you know.”
“Physically?”
“Emotionally,” she said. “Where it counts. Teresa and I have made progress, but it’s going to take time. I can’t risk unleashing the demons.”
“My concerns are for the child.”
“You have your priorities, I have mine.”
“Dr. Koppel, what I’m after is any insight you can give me that might help me make recommendations to the court.”
Silence on the line. Static.
“Dr. Koppel?”
“The only insight I can give you, Doctor,” she said, “is to avoid Thad Wetmore like the plague.”
“You’ve had troubles with him.”
“I’ve never met him, Doctor. And I intend to keep it that way.”
I wrote her a follow-up letter that was returned unopened. The custody case festered until the Wetmores ran out of money, and the lawyers quit. The judge followed my recommendations: Both parents needed extensive child-rearing education before joint custody had a chance of working. In any event, a weekly two-hundred-mile round-trip shuttle wasn’t in the best interests of the child. When the judge asked if I’d like to be the educator, I said I’d supply a list of names, then I thought about who’d annoyed me recently.
Three months later, Teresa and Thaddeus Wetmore filed separate ethical complaints against me with the state psychology board. It took a while to get out from under that, but finally the charges were dismissed for no cause. Shortly after that, Dr. Mary Lou Koppel seemed to be popping up all over the airwaves.
An expert on couples communication.
*
Milo finished his sandwich. “Sounds like a lovely person. What’s her shtick for the media?”
“Anything she wants it to be.”
“Self-proclaimed expert?”
“Talk shows are always hungry for filler,” I said. “If you say you’re a specialist, you are. My guess is Koppel hired a publicist and bought herself a nice little dog and pony show that feeds her practice.”
“So young, yet so cynical.”
“One out of two ain’t bad.”
He grinned, sopped juice from his plate with his sandwich, and finished off the soggy mess. “Is head injuries a hot media topic?”
“If you’re asking whether Koppel’s a qualified neuropsychologist, I don’t know. Which is what Gavin needed, at least in the beginning. Someone who could find out what was really going on with his brain and make specific recommendations for rehabilitation.”
“The neurologist said he couldn’t find anything.”
“All the more so,” I said. “If I had to bet, I’d say Koppel wasn’t into neuropsych. It’s a small field that requires specialized training. Most neuropsych people don’t do straight psychotherapy and vice versa.”
His eyes half closed. “Claire Argent was into that, right?”
Dr. Claire Argent had been one of many victims of a monster we’d chased a couple of years ago. A quiet woman, cloaked in secrets, found bisected at the waist and stashed in the trunk of her car.
“She was,” I said.
He breathed in deeply. Closed his eyes and massaged the lids. “You’re saying Gavin mighta been mishandled by Koppel?”
“Or I’m wrong, and he got a thorough workup.”
“I was thinking it would be smart to talk to Koppel. Even if Gavin turns out not to be the primary vic, maybe he mentioned the blonde to his shrink, and I can cut through a lot of procedure.”
“Don’t hold your breath trying to get through. Given her high profile, I don’t imagine she’d want to be associated with a murdered patient.”
“I’ve got written consent from the parents.”
“That allows her to talk,” I said. “It doesn’t compel her. She can be choosy about what she tells you. If she tells you anything.”
“You really don’t like her.”
“She was obstructive when she didn’t have to be. A child’s welfare was at issue, and she didn’t care.”
He smiled. “Actually, I was thinking I could ask you to speak with her. One doc to another. That would free me up to do the other stuff. As in following up with Missing Persons, maybe expanding to searches up and down the state, going over the autopsy reports, ballistics records, checking out the girl’s clothes. No sweat, though. I took this one on, I’ll see it through.”
He threw money on the table, and we left the deli.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said.
He stopped on the sidewalk. Beverly Hills women glided around us, in a cloud of perfume. “You’re sure.”
“Why not? No phone tag this time. Face-to-face, it’ll be interesting.”
CHAPTER 6
My house, designed for two, is set among pines and perched above a bridle path that snakes through Beverly Glen. High white walls, polished wood floors, skylights in interesting places, and not too much furniture make it look larger than it is. Realtor’s hype would label it, “airy yet proportioned for intimacy.” When I arrive home alone, it can be a mass of echoes and negative space.
This evening it felt cold. I walked past the mail on the dining room table and headed for my office. Booting the computer, I looked up Mary Lou Koppel in the American Psychological Association directory and ran her through a few Internet search engines.
She’d earned her Ph.D. at the same place I had, the U. A year older than I, but she’d entered grad school shortly after I’d finished. Her dissertation on breast-feeding and anxiety in new mothers had been accepted five years later, and she’d followed up with an internship at one of the university hospitals and a postdoc fellowship at a mental health clinic in San Bernardino.
Her license was bona fide, and the state board listed no disciplinary actions against her. I’d been right about her lacking any training or certification in neuropsychology.
Her name pulled up 432 hits on the computer, all excerpts from interviews she’d given on various TV and radio shows. A closer look revealed lots of repetition; it cooked down to three dozen actual references.
Mary Lou Koppel had spoken with great confidence about communication barriers between men and women, gender identity, eating disorders, weight loss strategies, corporate problem solving, midlife crisis, adoption, learning disabilities, autism, puberty, adolescent rebellion, premenstrual syndrome, menopause, panic disorder, phobias, chronic depression, posttraumatic stress, sexism, racism, ageism, sizeism.
One topic that had held her interest was prison reform. She’d given eight radio interviews last year in which she decried the shift from rehabilitation to punishment. In two of the talks, she’d been joined by a man named Albin Larsen, listed as a psychologist and human rights worker.
The photos
I found showed a pleasant-looking woman with short, shagged caramel hair. Her face was round with chipmunk cheeks and terminated in a sharp little off-center chin. Her neck was graceful but starting to loosen. Crisp, dark eyes. Wide, determined mouth. Gorgeous teeth, but her smile seemed posed. In every picture she wore red.
Now I knew whom to look for.
*
I left for her office the next morning at eleven-forty-five, figuring my best bet was to catch her during her lunch break. Her office was in Beverly Hills but not Bedford Drive’s Couch Row or any of the other fashionable streets where high-priced therapists congregated.
Dr. Mary Lou Koppel plied her trade in a two-story building on Olympic Boulevard and Palm Drive— a mixed-use stretch near the glitzy city’s southern border. Down the block were an auto-painting franchise and a private school housed in what had once been a residential duplex. Beyond those sat a florist and a pharmacy advertising discounts for seniors. Traffic on Olympic was nonstop and freeway-deafening.
Koppel’s building had a windowless front, with brick facing painted the color of wet sand. No identifying marks other than black plastic address numerals too small to read from across the street. The front door was locked, and a sign said to enter through the rear. Behind the structures was a six-space parking lot backed by an alley. Three slots marked RESERVED were occupied by small, dark Mercedes sedans, not unlike Jerry Quick’s.
I fed a meter on Palm and made my way over.
The ground floor was a long, dim, red-carpeted corridor that ran along the east side of the building and had the popcorn smell of a theater lobby. One occupant: an outfit called Charitable Planning. An arrow painted on the wall directed me to the stairway and when I got there faux-bronze letters specified what awaited me on the second story.
PACIFICA-WEST PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES
Upstairs was pewter-colored industrial carpeting, blue-gray walls, better lighting. Unlike the first floor, no long hallway. Progress was halted by a perpendicular wall set ten feet in. A single door was marked RECEPTION.
Inside was a large unoccupied waiting room set up with blue tweed chairs and coffee tables stacked with magazines. No reception window, just a door and three signs. FRANCO R. GULL, PH.D., MARY LOU KOPPEL, PH.D., ALBIN A. LARSEN, PH.D.
Larsen was the human rights activist with whom Koppel had shared some of her prison reform interviews. Feeding two practices for the price of one.
Next to each sign was a call button and a tiny, faceted bulb. A sign instructed patients to announce themselves with a button push. A clear light meant the doctor was free, red signified Occupied.
Gull’s and Larsen’s lights were red, Koppel’s wasn’t. I announced myself.
*
A few moments later, the blank door opened, and Mary Lou Koppel stood there wearing a red short-sleeved cashmere top over white linen pants and red shoes. In person, her dark eyes were nearly black. Clear and bright and inquisitive, and all over me. Her hair was tinted lighter than in the photos, she’d put on a few wrinkles, her bare arms were soft, freckled, plumper than the rest of her. Yellow diamond cocktail ring on her right index finger. Big canary-colored stone, surrounded by tiny sapphires. No wedding band.
“Yes?” she said. Smooth, soft, low-pitched voice. Radio voice.
I gave her my name, handed her the card that says I sometimes consult to the police. She read the small print. “Delaware.” She handed it back, looked into my eyes. “That’s an unusual name . . . have we met?”
“A few years ago, but only telephonically.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“The Wetmore divorce case. I was assigned by the court to make custody recommendations. You were Teresa Wetmore’s therapist.”
She blinked. Smiled. “If I recall correctly, I wasn’t very cooperative, was I?”
I shrugged.
“Unfortunate,” she said. “What I couldn’t tell you at the time, Dr. Delaware— what I probably still shouldn’t tell you— was that Terry Wetmore tied my hands. She didn’t like you one bit. Didn’t trust you, forbade me to divulge anything to you. It put me in a bit of a bind.”
“I can imagine.”
She placed a hand on my shoulder. “The rigors of our profession.” Her hand lingered, trailed my jacket sleeve, dropped. “So what brings you here today— what else can I not cooperate with you about?”
“Gavin Quick.”
“What about Gavin?”
“He was murdered two nights ago.”
“Mur— oh my God. Oh, no . . . come in.”
*
She led me through a short corridor, past a copying machine and a watercooler, to one of three doors at the rear. Her office was paneled in slabs of pale bird’s-eye maple, carpeted in double-plush deep blue wool, and furnished with a glass desk on a black granite base, a Lucite desk chair, oversized, baby blue leather sofas and recliners arranged with a designer’s eye. The ceilings were cork— soundproofing. Nothing was nailed to the highly figured wood walls. Her diplomas and a framed psychologists’ license were propped in a glass étagère off to one side, along with crystal paperweights and what looked to be pueblo pottery. Sea-green drapes concealed what I assumed were the windows. Their placement meant a view of the parking lot and the alley. The room managed to be generous yet cozy. Airy yet proportioned for intimacy . . .
Mary Lou Koppel sat behind the glass desk. I took the nearest soft chair. Very soft. I sank low, was forced to look up at her.
She said, “This is horrible. I just saw Gavin last week. I just can’t believe it.”
I nodded.
“What happened?”
I gave her the bare details, ended with the unidentified blond girl.
She said, “That poor boy. He’d been through so much.”
“The accident.”
She placed her hands on the glass desktop. Her wrists were tiny, her fingers short but thin, the nails coated by clear polish. Near her right hand was a Limoges box filled with business cards, a pair of reading glasses, and a small, silver cellular phone. “Do the police have any idea what happened?”
“No. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m not clear what it is that you do for them.”
“Sometimes the same goes for me,” I said. “This time they’ve asked me to make contact with you because we’re peers.”
“Peers,” she said. “They think I can help solve a murder?”
“We’re talking to everyone.”
“Well,” she said, “I was Gavin’s therapist, but I don’t see how that can be relevant. Surely you don’t think this had anything to do with Gavin’s treatment.”
“At this point, it’s an open book, Dr. Koppel.”
“Mary Lou,” she said. “Well, sure, I can understand that logic . . . in the abstract.” She fluffed her hair. “Before we go any further, perhaps I should see some sort of written release. I’m aware that with Gavin deceased, there’s no legal confidentiality. And I certainly don’t want to be seen as obstructive. Again. But . . . you understand, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.” I gave her the release form the Quicks had signed. She glanced at it. “Can’t be too careful. Okay, what would you like to know?”
“Gavin’s parents implied there were personality changes following the accident. Some falling off in his personal hygiene, what sounds like obsessive behavior.”
“Are you familiar with the sequelae of closed-head injuries, Dr. Delaware?”
“I’m not a neuropsychologist,” I said, “but it sounds as if there was postconcussive syndrome and some personality changes.”
“With closed-head, anything goes— may I call you Alex?”
“Sure.”
She showed me gorgeous teeth. Switched back to serious. “This was a prefrontal-lobe assault, Alex. You’re aware of the role of the prefrontals in terms of emotional reactivity. For all we know, when Gavin’s head hit the back of the seat, he received the equivalent of a minor lobotomy.”
“I
t had been ten months,” I said, “and he hadn’t recovered fully.”
“Yes . . . I found that worrisome. Then again, the human brain— especially the young human brain— can be wonderfully plastic. I was hopeful.”
“For full recovery?”
She shrugged.
“Plasticity,” I said. “You do neuropsych.”
She studied me for half a second. “I keep up with the journals. There was no need for neuropsych because the organic end was being handled by a neurologist. He and I agreed there was nothing further to be gained by subjecting Gavin to yet more tests. What the patient needed was emotional support, and my job was to provide it.”
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