Therapy

by Jonathan Kellerman

I said, “Anything new on Koppel?”

  “Oh. Hi. Coroner estimates time of death some time last night or early morning. No forced entry, no reports of strange vehicles in the neighborhood.”

  “What about the gunshot?”

  “The neighbors to the north are in Europe. To the south is a woman in her nineties under the care of a nurse. The nurse hears fine, but they both sleep in the old lady’s room, and there’s a humidifier and an air filter blowing, which blocks out anything short of a nuclear blast.” He laughed. “It’s like the gods are conspiring. You have any fresh insights?”

  Before I could answer, a tall, red-haired man in his late twenties knocked on the door frame. He wore a four-button gray suit, dark blue shirt, dark blue tie. Doc Martens on his feet. His hair was cut short, and freckles speckled his brow and cheeks. He was loose-limbed and built like a point guard, had the rounded, baby-faced look you see on some redheads.

  “Hey,” said Milo.

  “Lieutenant.” Small salute.

  “Alex, this is Detective Sean Binchy. Sean, Dr. Alex Delaware, our psych consultant.”

  Binchy remained in the doorway and extended his hand. The room was small enough for us to shake that way.

  “Sean’s gonna be helping me on Koppel.” To Binchy: “Any news on her family?”

  “Both parents are dead, Lieut. I found an aunt in Fairfield, Connecticut, but she hadn’t seen Dr. Koppel in years. Quote-unquote: ‘After Mary Lou moved to California, she wanted nothing to do with any of us.’ She did say the family would probably pay for the funeral, send them the bill.”

  “No one’s coming out?”

  Sean Binchy shook his head. “They’re pretty much detached from her. Kind of sad. In terms of the ex-husband, he’s here. In L.A. I mean. But he’s not a lawyer. He’s into real estate.” He pulled out a notepad. “Encino. I left a message, but so far he hasn’t gotten back. I thought I’d do more on the neighborhood canvass near Dr. Koppel’s house, then try again.”

  “Sounds good,” said Milo.

  “Anything else you need, Lieut?”

  “No, finishing the canvass is a good idea. Still nothing from the neighbors?”

  “Sorry, no,” said Binchy. “Seems like it was a quiet night in Cheviot Hills.”

  “Okay, Sean. Thanks. Sayonara.”

  “See you, Loot. Nice to meet you, Doc.”

  When Binchy was gone, Milo said, “His former occupation was, get this: bass player in a ska band. Then he got born-again and decided being a cop was the way he’d serve the Lord. He cut his hair and let his pierces close up and scored in the top ten percent of his academy class. This is the new blue generation.”

  “He seems like a nice kid,” I said.

  “He’s smart enough, maybe a little on the concrete side— A to B to C. We’ll see if he learns how to be creative.” He grinned. “ ‘Loot.’ Too much TV . . . so far he hasn’t brought up the born-again stuff, but I can’t help feel one day he’s going to try to save me. Bottom line is I can’t juggle Gavin and the blonde and Koppel all by myself, and he’s a good worker ant . . . so, any thoughts since yesterday?”

  “Koppel brought Gavin’s chart home, had it at the top of her stack,” I said. “She brushed off two murders in her practice as a statistical quirk, but it bothered her, and she went back to review her notes. The fact that Newsome’s chart wasn’t there means she was probably telling the truth about shredding it.”

  “Not a lot of notes on Gavin to review.”

  “Maybe the intake was enough. In it, she detailed Gavin’s legal problems. What if she tied his murder to the Gallegos stalking? Came up with a suspect, voiced her suspicions to someone, and got killed for her efforts?”

  “She voiced her suspicion directly to the bad guy? She’d be stupid enough to confront him?”

  “She might have if he was her patient,” I said. “If she suspected someone in her caseload, she’d be reluctant to violate confidentiality and go straight to you.”

  “Back to the nut-in-the-waiting-room theory.”

  “It’s also possible that she wasn’t sure, just suspicious. So she discussed it with him.”

  “Foolhardy,” he said.

  “Therapy’s a lopsided relationship. Despite all the talk of a partnership, the patient’s needy and dependent, and the therapist has wisdom to grant. It’s easy to overestimate your personal power. Mary Lou was a strong personality to begin with. And she got caught up in the media game, convinced herself she was an expert on everything. Maybe she got overconfident, felt she could convince him to give himself up.”

  “Talk about an ego trip, if she succeeded.”

  “Psychologist solves multiple murders,” I said. “Talk about public relations.”

  He thought about that for a long time. “One of her patients is a very bad guy.”

  “No forced entry,” I said. “Someone she knew and let into the house. It’s worth looking into.”

  “I can’t get hold of her patient records.”

  “Her partners might know something.”

  “They’re shrinks, too, Alex. Same confidentiality restriction.”

  “I’m not sure of the legal issues; but if the bad guy isn’t officially their patient, they might be okay talking about him in general terms.”

  “Sounds like legal precedent to me,” he said. “What the hell, it’s worth a shot.” He phoned information, got numbers for Drs. Larsen and Gull, and left messages to call him.

  I said, “How’s it going with the prints from Koppel’s house?”

  “There are so damn many, the print guys are figuring at least a week. One thing they did tell me: not a single print near the body. At least a ten-foot radius had been wiped clean. A psych patient who’s meticulous. Not an overt nutcase, right?”

  “Not even close to nuts,” I said.

  He flipped open the murder book that had been opened on Mary Lou Koppel. “Ballistics faxed a report this morning. The .22 used to shoot her was similar but not identical to either the Gavin Quick or the Flora Newsome guns. Even discounting Flora, we’ve got two separate weapons for two murders. This is some guy with easy access to cheapies, knows his way around the street.”

  “An experienced con,” I said. “The kind Flora Newsome could’ve met on the job.”

  “Would a guy like that go into therapy?”

  “If he had to. Look at Gavin Quick.”

  His eyes widened. “Alternative sentencing. Someone who had to get shrunk. And that gives me a way to get around the goddamn confidentiality. Go through court records, see if any judges assigned any other patients to Koppel.”

  He slumped. “Huge job.”

  “Narrow it down to a year or two and put your worker ant on it.”

  “I will,” he said. “I will definitely do that. It’s also time to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Quick again, find out about their boy’s problem, if he harassed anyone else. So far all I get is their answering machine. I called the D.A. who prosecuted Gavin and the defense attorney. No help at all from them, just another case. I also recontacted Gavin’s two friends from the accident, and they had no idea he stalked Beth Gallegos or anyone else. On the intake Koppel did for the court, she said Gavin’s obsession could be related to brain damage. What do you think?”

  “Another form of obsessive behavior,” I said. “Sure, it could be consistent with a prefrontal injury. The other thing to consider is that the vindictive boyfriend wasn’t the blonde’s. He’s Beth Gallegos’s beau. What if Gavin broke the terms of his probation and resumed stalking?”

  “So the guy stalks Gavin in return, offs him and the blonde? And Koppel?”

  “No accounting for passion,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, “let’s visit the object of Gavin’s passion.”

  *

  Phone work revealed that Beth Gallegos had switched jobs again, from the Long Beach clinic to a private educational therapy firm in Westwood.

  “Westwood’s close to Beverly Hills,” I said, as we drove there.
“If Gavin was still stalking her, I doubt she’d have chanced it.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  *

  Beth Gallegos was gorgeous. That did nothing to explain Gavin’s obsession— stalking is psychopathology, and plain people are victimized as often as lookers— it was simply a fact.

  Petite and black-haired and dusky-skinned, she wore a pale blue uniform cut for blandness that couldn’t conceal her tiny waist, flaring hips, and bountiful breasts. Her eyes were amber, her lashes long and curling. Twenty-seven years old, she wore no makeup and looked eighteen. A clean, fresh eighteen. Her nails were unpolished and clipped short. The black hair, sleek and wavy, was tied back in a ponytail and fastened by a rubber band.

  Aiming for low-key. Her perfect-oval face and cameo features and lush body rendered the effort useless.

  She was uncomfortable talking to us in the lobby of the educational service, and we took the elevator down to the ground-floor coffee shop. A young waitress approached us with a smile, but even though Milo smiled back, something in his greeting wiped the joy from her face.

  Beth Gallegos ordered tea, and Milo and I had Cokes. When the order came, he pressed a bill into the waitress’s palm. She left quickly and never reappeared.

  Gallegos had been edgy since we’d shown up, and Milo tried to put her at ease with chitchat about her job. The outfit she worked for was called Comprehensive Rehab and specialized in stroke victims. Her job was to help patients regain fine motor skills. She found the challenge satisfying.

  Milo said, “Sounds like it would be.”

  Gallegos fumbled with her teacup and avoided our eyes.

  “Let’s talk about Gavin Quick,” said Milo. “Have you heard what happened to him?”

  “Yes. I read it in the paper. It was horrible. I cried.” She had a slightly nasal, little-girl voice and narrow hands with smooth fingers. A diamond chip ring banded the third finger of her left hand.

  More than a boyfriend.

  “You cried,” said Milo.

  “I did. I felt terrible. Despite what Gavin put me through. Because I knew what he’d been through. Knew it was the CHI making him do it.”

  Milo blinked.

  “Closed head injury,” I said.

  Beth Gallegos nodded and spooned sugar into her tea but didn’t drink. “CHIs are weird that way. Sometimes nothing shows up on scans, but people change drastically. I’m sure Gavin wouldn’t have done those things if he hadn’t been injured.”

  “You’ve had other brain-damaged stalkers?” said Milo.

  Gallegos’s hand flew to her mouth. “No, God forbid I should ever go through that more than once. I’m just saying the brain controls everything, and when it’s compromised, you get problems. That’s why I did everything I could to avoid making it a criminal situation for Gavin.” Her eyes got wet.

  “The way I see it, ma’am, he left you no choice.”

  “That’s what everyone told me.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “My family.”

  “Your family local?”

  “No,” she said. “My parents live in Germany. My father’s a captain in the Army. At first, I didn’t tell them what was going on because I knew how my dad would react.”

  “How’s that?”

  “For sure he’d have gotten himself a leave, flown right over, and had a stern talk with Gavin. Once he did find out, I had a hard time convincing him not to do exactly that. That’s part of what led me to file charges. I had to assure Dad I was taking care of myself. But I had to do it, no matter what. It was just getting too intense, and Gavin obviously needed help.”

  “You never told your family, but they found out.”

  “My sister told them. She lives in Tucson and I confided in her and made her promise not to tell.” She smiled. “Of course, she didn’t listen to me. Which I understand, I’m not mad. We’re close, she had my best interests at heart.”

  “Anyone else tell you to file charges?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Milo looked at her ring.

  Beth Gallegos said, “He wasn’t my fiancé, then. Actually, we started dating right before I filed charges.”

  Milo tried to put warmth in his smile. “What’s the lucky young man’s name?”

  “Anson Conniff.”

  “When’s the big day?”

  “Fall.” Gallegos’s dark eyes picked up some wattage. “Lieutenant, why all these questions about me and my family?”

  “I need to tie up loose ends.”

  “Loose ends? Lieutenant, please don’t get me involved. I really can’t go through it again— please.”

  Raising her voice. The coffee shop was nearly empty, but the few patrons present turned to stare. Milo glared at them until they turned away.

  “Go through what, ma’am?”

  Gallegos whimpered and wiped her eyes. “Legal stuff, the courts— I never want to see an affidavit again. Please keep me out of it.”

  “I’m not out to cause you grief, Ms. Gallegos, but I do need to talk to anyone Gavin had conflict with.”

  Gallegos shook her head. “There was no conflict. I never yelled at Gavin, never complained. It’s just that the problem got out of hand. He needed to deal with it.”

  “Did he stop?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Completely?”

  “Completely.”

  Her eyes danced to one side. I said, “You never heard from him again?”

  She picked at her napkin, shredded the corners, created a small pile of confetti that she collected and placed on her saucer.

  “It was basically over,” she said. “It was over.” Her voice shook.

  Milo said, “Beth, you’re obviously a good person. That means you’re also a very poor liar.”

  Gallegos glanced at the coffee shop door, as if plotting her escape.

  Milo said, “What happened?”

  “It was just once,” she said. “A month ago. Not really a problem call, a nothing call, that’s why I never told anyone.”

  “Where’d he find you?”

  “Here. At the office. I was between patients, and the secretary handed me the phone. He told her he was a friend. She has no idea about my . . . history with Gavin. When I heard his voice I . . . it made my heart pound, and I broke into a sweat. But he was . . . okay. Nothing weird. He said he was sorry for what he’d done, wanted to apologize. Then he told me he’d met someone and was getting his life together, and he hoped I’d forgive him. I said I already had, and that was that.”

  “You figure he was telling the truth?” said Milo. “About meeting someone.”

  “He sounded sincere,” she said. “I told him congratulations, I was happy for him.” She exhaled. “He sounded more . . . mature. Settled.”

  “Did he tell you about the person he’d met?”

  “No. He sounded happy.”

  “He’s happy, he doesn’t bug you.”

  “That, too,” she said, “but at the time what I thought was, ‘Gavin’s finally getting it together.’ ” She touched the handle of her teacup, swirled the bag. “I never disliked him, Lieutenant. All I ever felt for him was pity. And fear, when things got really intense. But I was happy things were working out for him.”

  I said, “Anson’s probably happy, too.”

  “I didn’t tell Anson about the call.”

  “Too upsetting.”

  “He’s been through enough with me,” she said. “We just started dating when the stalking began. It’s not a great way to start a relationship.”

  Milo said, “Anson must’ve been pretty upset.”

  “Wouldn’t anyone be?” Gallegos’s eyes got clearer. “You’re not going to talk to him, are you?”

  “We are, Beth.”

  “Why?”

  “Like I said, anyone who had conflict with Gavin.”

  “Anson didn’t have conflict— please, don’t go there— don’t draw Anson into this. He’d never hurt Gavin, or anyone else. He’s
not like that.”

  “Easygoing?” said Milo.

  “Mature. Disciplined. Anson knows how to control himself.”

  “What kind of work does he do?”

  “Work?” said Gallegos.

  “His job.”

  “You’re actually going to talk to him?”