Therapy

by Jonathan Kellerman

  He said, “Hacker has no lease, just a month-to-month. He and his roommate.”

  “Raymond Degussa?”

  “Raymond something. Let me check.” Parks tapped the keys of a laptop. “Yup, Degussa.”

  “Did he move in the same time as Hacker?”

  “Two months later. Hacker cleared it with me. I told him no subleases, the check had to come from him, no split obligations.”

  “How are they as tenants?”

  “They’re okay. Your month-to-months, they’re the ones who give you troubles. I prefer leases, but it’s not one of the best units, stayed vacant a long time.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not one of our best. Not the harbor side, and the way the trees grow at that particular height you can’t see much of anything on the other side.”

  “What trouble has he given you?”

  Parks frowned and played with a pencil, stippling three fingertips, then passing the shaft between his fingers. “Look, I’m not just the manager, I’m part owner. So if there’s something going on that affects the building, I need to know.”

  “Who are the other owners, sir?”

  “My brothers-in-law, the dentists.” The elevator vibrated the room. Parks sat through it, stoic. “I depend on this place. Is there something I should worry about?”

  Milo said, “At this point, no. What kind of problems have Hacker and Degussa given you?”

  “At this point,” said Parks.

  “The problems, sir?”

  “A few noise complaints at the beginning. I spoke to Hacker, and it stopped.”

  “What kind of noise?”

  “Loud music, voices. Apparently, they bring women in, throw parties.”

  “Apparently?”

  “Mostly I’m sitting in here,” said Parks.

  “Ever see the women?”

  “A couple of times.”

  “The same women?”

  Parks shook his head. “You know.”

  “Know what, sir?”

  “The type.”

  “What type is that?” said Milo.

  “Not exactly . . . high society.”

  “Party girls.”

  Parks’s eyes rolled. “Hacker pays his rent. I don’t get involved in the tenants’ personal lives. After those first few complaints, they’ve been fine.”

  “What’s the rent on their unit?”

  “This is a money issue? Some sort of financial crime?”

  “The rent, please.”

  Parks said, “Hacker pays 2200 a month. The unit has two full bedrooms and a den, two baths, and a built-in wet bar. On the harbor side it would be over three thousand.”

  “The women you saw, would you recognize any of them?”

  Parks shook his head. “Everybody minds their own business here. That’s the point of the Marina. You get your divorced people, your widowed people. People want their privacy.”

  Milo said, “Everyone doing their own thing.”

  “Like you, Lieutenant. You ask all these questions, tell me nothing. You seem pretty good at keeping your business to yourself.”

  Milo smiled.

  Parks smiled back.

  Milo asked to see Hacker’s parking slot, and Parks took us down to a subgarage that smelled of motor oil and wet cement. Half the slots were empty, but the black Explorer was in place. Milo and I looked through the windows. Food cartons, a windbreaker, maps, loose papers.

  Stan Parks said, “Is this about drugs?”

  “Why would it be?” said Milo.

  “You’re examining the car.” Parks went over and peered through the windows. “I don’t see anything incriminating.”

  “Where’s Mr. Degussa’s spot, sir?”

  Parks walked us a dozen slots down to a Lincoln Town Car, big, square, the predownsize model. Chrome rims, shiny paint job. Custom job, a heavy, brownish red.

  Parks said, “Pretty ugly color, don’t you think? Put all that money into restoration and end up with something like that. I keep a few collector cars, no way would I go this color.”

  “This color” was the precise hue of dry blood.

  “Ugly,” I said. “What cars do you keep?”

  “A ’48 Caddy, ’62 E-type Jag, a ’64 Mini-Cooper. I’m trained as an engineer, do the work myself.”

  I nodded.

  Parks said, “By the way, Degussa also drives a motorcycle, puts it over there.” Indicating a section to the right, smaller slots for two-wheelers.

  No bikes in sight.

  “He pays extra for that,” said Parks. “Wanted it for free, but I told him twenty bucks a month.”

  “A bargain,” said Milo.

  Parks shrugged. “It’s not one of the better units.”

  *

  We left the Marina, and Milo asked for the 805 number I’d written down and the name that went with it.

  Cody Marsh.

  The Volvo was equipped with a hands-off phone system, and Milo plugged his little blue gizmo into it as he drove. He punched in Cody Marsh’s number. Two rings and a voice said he was being rerouted to a mobile unit. Two additional rings, and a man said, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Marsh?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Lieutenant Sturgis.”

  “Oh, hi.” Fuzzy reception. “Hold on, let me switch off the radio . . . okay, I’m back, thanks for calling. I’m in my car, coming down to L.A. Any way you can see me?”

  “Where are you?”

  “The 101 Freeway, coming up on . . . Balboa. Traffic’s not looking great, but I can probably be in West L.A. within half an hour.”

  “Christina Marsh is your sister?”

  “She is . . . was . . . can you find time to see me? I’d really like to find out about her.”

  “Sure,” said Milo. “Meet me at a restaurant near the station. Café Moghul.” He spelled the name and recited the address.

  Cody Marsh thanked him and cut the connection.

  *

  We drove straight to the restaurant, arrived in twenty-five. Cody Marsh was already seated at a corner table drinking milk-laced chai.

  Easy to spot; solitary patron.

  By the time we stepped through the glass beads, he was on his feet. Looking exactly as if someone had died.

  “Mr. Marsh.”

  “Thanks for seeing me, Lieutenant. When will I be able to see my sister— to identify the body?”

  “You’re sure you want to go through that, sir?”

  “I thought I had to,” said Cody Marsh. “Christi has no one else.”

  He looked to be around thirty, with long, wavy, brown hair parted in the middle, had on a gray shirt under a cracked, brown leather jacket rubbed white at the pressure points, rumpled beige cargo pants, white running shoes. Ruddy square face, thick lips, and tired blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. Five-ten with an incipient beer belly. The only hint of kinship to the dead girl, a dimpled chin.

  “Actually, sir,” said Milo, “you don’t have to do it in person. You can look at a photo.”

  “Oh,” said Marsh. “Okay. Where do I go to see a photo?”

  “I’ve got one right here, sir, but I have to warn you—”

  “I’ll look at it.”

  Milo said, “How about we all sit down?”

  *

  Cody Marsh stared at the death shot. His eyes closed and opened; he folded his lips inward. “That’s Christi.” He raised his fist, as if to pound the table, but by the time the arc was completed, the hand had stopped short of contact.

  “Dammit.”

  The pleasant sari-draped woman who ran the café turned to stare. Milo never talked business to her, but she knew what he did.

  He smiled at her, and she resumed folding napkins.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

  “Christi,” said Cody Marsh. “What happened?”

  Milo took the photo and put it away. “Your sister was shot while parked in a car on Mul
holland Drive, along with a young man.”

  “Was the young man a friend?”

  “Seemed to be,” said Milo. “His name was Gavin Quick. Know him?”

  Cody Marsh shook his head. “Any idea why it happened?”

  “That’s what we’re looking into. So Christi never mentioned Gavin Quick.”

  “No, but Christi and I weren’t . . . in close communication.”

  The saried woman came over. Milo said, “Just chai, right now, please. I’ll probably see you tomorrow for lunch.”

  “That would be lovely,” said the woman. “We’ll have the sag paneer and the tandoori salmon on special.”

  When she was gone, Cody Marsh said, “Can the . . . can Christi be released? For a funeral?”

  “That’s up to the coroner’s office,” said Milo.

  “Do you have a number for them?”

  “I’ll call for you. It’ll probably take a few days to get the papers in order.”

  “Thanks.” Marsh pinged his teacup with a fingernail. “This is horrible.”

  “Is there anything you could tell us about your sister that would be helpful, sir?”

  Ping ping. “What would you like to know?”

  “For starts, when did Christi move to L.A.?”

  “I can’t say exactly, but she called me about a year ago to tell me she was here.”

  “You guys hail from Minnesota?”

  “Baudette, Minnesota,” said Marsh. “Walleye Capital of the World. People who somehow find themselves there get their picture taken with Willie Walleye.”

  “A fish.”

  “A forty-foot model of a fish. I got out as soon as I could. Did my undergrad at Oregon State, taught grade school for a few years in Portland so I could save up enough money to go to grad school and study history.”

  “History,” Milo repeated.

  “Those who forget the past are condemned, and all that.”

  I said, “Did your being in Santa Barbara play a role in your sister’s coming out to California?”

  “It would be nice to say yes,” said Marsh, “but I seriously doubt it. The entire year we’ve seen each other exactly twice. Spoke on the phone maybe three or four times. And we’d been out of contact for a long time well before Christi left Minnesota.”

  “Those two times,” I said.

  “Here, in L.A. I was attending symposia and called her. Actually, I called her three times, but once she was busy.”

  “Busy doing what?” said Milo.

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “We had dinner at my hotels.”

  “Which hotels?”

  “That’s important?” said Marsh.

  “Anything could be important, sir.”

  “You’re the expert . . . let’s see, one was a Holiday Inn in Pasadena, the other was a Holiday Inn in Westwood. Christi met me in the coffee shop and came dressed totally inappropriately. For an academic meeting, I mean. Not that she was attending meetings, but the . . . the place was teeming with academics.”

  “And she didn’t look academic,” said Milo.

  “Not hardly.”

  “Inappropriate how?” I said.

  “I really don’t want to talk ill of my sister.”

  “I understand.”

  Marsh pinged his cup some more. “Both times she wore halter tops with no backs, very, very short skirts, spike heels, lots of makeup.” Marsh sighed. “There was faculty all around, people were staring. The first time I let it go, figuring she didn’t know what to expect. The second time I said something to her and it was a very tense meal. She cut it short, announced she had to go, and just walked out without saying good-bye. I didn’t try to follow her. Afterward, I realized I’d been a prissy jerk, phoned her to apologize, but she didn’t return the call. I tried again but by that time her number was inactive. A month later I heard from her, and she didn’t mention a thing about walking out. I asked for her new number, but she said she was using prepaid cell phones— disposable, so there was no sense copying down the number. I’d never heard of that.”

  “She say why she was using prepaids?”

  “She said it was simpler. I took that to mean she didn’t have enough of a credit history to get a real phone account. Or she had no permanent home.”

  “Out on the streets?”

  “No, I think she was living somewhere, but not in a permanent place. I tried to find out, she refused to tell me. I took that to mean she thought I’d disapprove.”

  Ping ping. “I probably would’ve. Christi and I are very different.”

  I said, “She called you to reconnect.”

  “She managed to track me down at the History Department, I walk in one day and find a message in my box that my sister called. At first I thought it was a mistake.” Cody Marsh winced. “I didn’t think of myself as having a sister. Christi and I have the same father but different mothers, and we didn’t grow up together. Christi’s significantly younger than I— I’m thirty-three and she’s . . . was twenty-three. By the time she was old enough to relate to, I was in Oregon, so we really didn’t have a relationship.”

  “Are her parents alive?”

  “Our father’s dead. And so is my mother. Christi’s mother is alive, but she has serious mental problems, has been institutionalized for years.”

  “How many years?” I said.

  “Since Christi was four. Our father was a raging alcoholic. As far as I’m concerned, he killed my mother. Smoking in bed, blind-drunk. My mother was drinking, too, but the cigarette was his. The house went up in flames, he managed to stagger out. Lost an arm and part of his face, but it didn’t put a dent in his drinking. I was seven, went to live with my maternal grandparents. Soon after, he met Christi’s mom in a bar and started a whole new family.”

  “Serious mental problems,” I said.

  “Carlene’s schizophrenic,” said Marsh. “That’s why she hooked up with a one-armed, scar-faced drunk. I’m sure drinking was what they had in common. I’m sure drinking and living with my father didn’t help her mental state. I was the lucky one, my grandparents were educated, both teachers, religious. My mother was trained as a social worker. Marrying him was her big rebellion.”

  “And he raised Christi after her mom was institutionalized?”

  “It couldn’t have been much of a raising. I don’t know the details, I was living in Baudette, and he took Christi over to St. Paul. I heard that she dropped out of high school, but I’m not sure exactly what grade. Later, she went to Duluth with him— he was working on some sort of land crew. Then back to St. Paul. A really bad neighborhood.”

  Milo said, “Sounds like you kept tabs.”

  “No,” said Marsh. “I heard things from my grandparents. Filtered through their biases.” Marsh worked several strands of hair over his face, spread them back, shook his head. “They hated my father, blamed him for my mother’s death and everything else that was wrong in the world. They loved recounting his misfortunes in great detail. The slum neighborhoods he was forced to live in, Christi failing in school, dropping out. Christi getting into trouble. We’re talking editorializing, not straight reporting. They saw Christi as an extension of him— bad seed. They wanted nothing to do with her. She wasn’t their blood. So Christi and I were kept apart.”

  “What kind of trouble did Christi get into?” I said.

  “The usual: drugs, keeping bad company, shoplifting. My grandparents told me she got sent to one of those wilderness camps, then juvenile hall. Part of it was their schadenfreude— reveling in someone else’s misery. The other part was that deep down they worried about me. Being half-Dad genetically. So they used Dad and Christi as negative examples. They were preaching to the converted because Christi represented everything I despised about my roots. The trash side, as my grandparents called it. I was a good student, well behaved, destined for better things. I bought into that. It wasn’t until my divorce—” He smiled. “I neglected to mention that somewh
ere along the way I got married. That lasted nineteen months. Soon after the divorce, both my grandparents died, and I was feeling pretty alone, and I realized I did have a half sib I barely knew and maybe I should stop being a self-righteous jerk. So I tried to get in touch with Christi. Nagged my great-aunt— my grandmother’s sister— until she told me Christi was still living in St. Paul, ‘doing burlesque.’ I phoned a few strip clubs— I was motivated, the whole rebonding fantasy— and finally located the place where Christi worked. She wasn’t happy to hear from me, very distant. So I bribed her by wiring her a hundred bucks. After that, she started calling every couple of months. Sometimes to talk, sometimes to ask for more money. That seemed to bother her— having to ask. There was a shy side to her, she’d pretend to be tough but she could be sweet.”