Jonathan Kellerman - Therapy

He’d spent a decade and a half in that room, never an insider because of his sexuality and his own loner tendencies. Early on there’d been plenty of hostility, mostly from uniforms and brass, but none recently and never from detectives.

Detectives are too bright and too busy for that kind of nonsense. For the last few years, Milo’s high solve-rate had earned him silent respect.

A little over a year ago, his life had changed. Chasing down a vicious, twenty-year-old cold-case sex murder had led him to unearth some of the police chief’s personal secrets. The chief, now deposed, had offered a solution: Milo, in return for not ruining both of them, would get promoted to lieutenant but would be spared the pencil-pushing that went with a lieutenant’s position. Exiled to his own space, away from other D’s, he’d be a special case: allowed to pick his cases, expected to keep a low profile. If he needed assistance, he was free to enlist junior D’s. Otherwise, he’d be on his own.

Shunting and coopting. It’s the kind of thing government does all the time. Milo knew he was being manipulated, and he hated the idea. He considered quitting- for a few moments. Veered away from self-destruction and convinced himself isolation could be freedom. Banking the extra salary wasn’t bad either, and while the chief was in power, his job security was assured.

Now the chief was gone, and a new replacement had yet to be picked. Ten candidates had announced their intentions, including an assistant chief from Community Services who tossed his name in the ring after granting an interview to a San Francisco paper in which he came out of a thirty-year closet and named his longtime companion.

I asked Milo if that would change things in the department.

He laughed. “When Berger’s name hit the list, eyes rolled so loud you could hear it in Pacoima. His chance of winning is about the same as my growing a second pancreas.”

“Even so. The fact that he went public.”

“Public as far as the public’s concerned. Everyone in the department’s known about him for years.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Times are different than when I started,” he said. “No one looks, no one tells, no one leaves nasty stuff in my locker. But the basics- the psychodynamics- aren’t ever going to change, are they? The way I see it, humans are built that way, it’s in our DNA. Us-them, someone’s gotta be in, someone’s gotta be out. Every few years we have to beat someone up to feel good about ourselves. If most of the world was like me, straights would be stigmatized. Probably some evolutionary thing, though I can’t figure it out. Got any wisdom for me?”

“Left the wisdom pills in the car.”

He laughed again, in that joyless way he’s perfected. “Savagery reigns. I’ll never be lacking for work.”

The door to his office was open, and he was sitting at his desk, reading a file. The space is windowless, barely large enough for him, with nothing on the wall and a picture of Milo and Rick on the desk. Fishing, somewhere in Colorado. Both of them in plaid shirts, they looked like a couple of outdoorsmen. For most of the trip, Milo had suffered from altitude sickness.

His computer was on, and his screen saver was a shark chasing a diver. Each time the fish’s rapacious jaws nudged the swimmer’s fins, he got kicked in the face. A floating legend read, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

I knocked on the doorjamb.

“Yeah,” he grumbled, without looking up.

“Good day to you, too. Turns out Gavin Quick’s not the first patient of Koppel’s who’s seen an untimely end.”

He looked up, stared as if we’d never met. His eyes cleared. The file was Gavin’s. He slapped it shut.

“Say what?”

I did.

I sat in a spare chair. Our noses were three feet apart. None of Milo’s cheap panatellas were in sight, but his clothes were ripe with stale tobacco.

He said, “Two Aprils ago.”

“Allison can’t be certain, but she thinks the victim was female. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Well, guess what? The department has finally limped into the cyberage.” He tapped his computer monitor. The shark and diver dissipated, giving way to several icons, haphazardly placed. The screen was clouded and cracked in one corner. “At least, theoretically. This little sucker tends to freeze- donated by some private high school in Brentwood, because the kids couldn’t use it anymore.” He began typing. The machine made washing-machine noises and loaded slowly. “Here we are, m’boy. Every felonious slaying under the department’s jurisdiction for the last five years listed by victim, date, division, and status. Probably no impaling, because I already searched for impaling… let’s see what April produces…”

He scrolled. “I’m counting six… seven females. Five closed, two open. Let’s start with Westside cases because Koppel’s practice is on the Westside. More important, I can walk a few yards and get hold of the folders.”

I scanned the screen. “Folder. Looks like only one’s West L.A.”

“Wouldn’t that be easy.”

It was.

Flora Elizabeth Newsome, thirty-one years old, brown and brown, five-five, 130. A third-grade teacher at Canfield Street School, found in her Palms apartment on a Sunday morning, stabbed and shot. She’d been dead for at least twelve hours.

Dr. Mary Lou Koppel had been interviewed by Detective II Alphonse McKinley and Detective II Lorraine Ogden on April 30. Dr. Koppel had nothing to offer other than the fact that she’d been treating Flora Newsome for “anxiety.”

No Solve.

I read the autopsy report. “Stabbed and shot with a.22. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the ballistics matched. And stabbing isn’t that far from impaling.”

Milo sat back in his desk chair. “I can always count on you to spark up my woefully dreary life.”

“Think of it as therapy,” I said.

Detective Alphonse McKinley had transferred to the Metro Squad at Parker Center. Detective Lorraine Ogden was down the hall, trying to make sense of the gibberish her computer was dishing out.

She was thirty-five or so, a big, square-shouldered woman with short, dark, gray-flecked hair and a determined jaw. She wore an orange-and-cream paisley blouse, brown slacks, cream-colored flats. Wedding band and half-carat diamond on one hand. High school ring on the other.

“Milo,” she said, barely glancing up. Her screen filled with rows of numbers. “This thing hates me.”

“I think you just broke into a Swiss bank.”

“Don’t think so, no swastikas. What’s up?”

Milo introduced me. Lorraine Ogden said, “I’ve seen you around. Something psychologically amiss?”

“Always,” said Milo, “but this is about business.” He told her about the Mulholland murders and the similarities to Flora Newsome.

“Same shrink,” she said. “I guess that’s a connection.”

“A.22 was used on all of them. Our vic was impaled, and yours was stabbed.”

“Impaled how?”

“Iron rod through the sternum.”

“Flora was cut up pretty badly. Knife jammed through the chest, too.” Ogden bit down on her lower teeth, and her jaw got wider. “I never made any headway on her, wouldn’t it be nice.”

“I pulled the chart, but if you’ve got time, I wouldn’t mind hearing about it, Lorraine.”

Ogden glared at the computer, clicked it off. Her touch was hard, and the machine quivered. “My son tells me not to do that without going through the proper steps. Says it puts garbage into the system. But all I’ve been getting is garbage.”

She got up. Six feet tall in flats. The three of us left the detectives’ room and moved into the hallway.