“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.
“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
“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
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
