He got to Sunset and joined the smooth, fast traffic flowing west from Beverly Hills. Amid the Teutonic tanks and cigarillo sports jobs, the Fiat looked like a mistake. A Mercedes cut in front of us and Milo swore viciously.
I said, "You could give him a ticket."
"Don't tempt me."
A mile later, I said, "Robin came up with a possible link between Paprock and Shipler. Both could have been in group therapy with de Bosch. Treatment for themselves, or some kind of parent's group to talk about problem kids. The killer could also have been in the group, gotten treated roughly- or thought he had- and developed a grudge."
"Group therapy…"
"Some kind of common problem- what else would draw two people from such different backgrounds to de Bosch?"
"Interesting… but if it was a parent's group, de Bosch didn't run it. He died in eighty, and Paprock's kids are six and seven years old now. So they weren't alive when he was. In fact, at the time Myra died, they were only babies. So what kind of problems could they have had?"
"Maybe it was a child-rearing program. Or some kind of chronic illness support group. And are you sure Paprock was only married once?"
"According to her file she was."
"Okay," I said. "So maybe Katarina was the therapist. Or someone else at the school- maybe the killer believes in collective guilt. Or it could have been an adult treatment group. Child therapists don't always limit themselves to kids."
"Fine. But now we're back to the same old question: what's your link?"
"Has to be the conference. The killer's gotten severely paranoid- let his rage get out of control. To him, anyone associated with de Bosch is guilty, and where better to start than a bunch of therapists paying public homage to the old man? Maybe Stoumen's hit-and-run was no accident."
"What? Major-league mass murder? The killer's going after patients and therapists?"
"I don't know- I'm just grasping."
He heard the frustration in my voice. "It's okay, keep grasping. Doesn't cost the taxpayers a dime. For all I know we're dealing with something so crazy it'll never make sense."
We rode for a while. Then he said, "De Bosch's clinic was private, expensive. How could a janitor like Shipler afford getting treatment there?"
"Sometimes private clinics treat a few hardship cases. Or maybe Shipler had good health insurance through the school system. What about Paprock? Did she have money?"
"Nothing huge, as far as I can tell. Husband worked as a car salesman."
"Can you get hold of their insurance records?"
"If they had any, and haven't been destroyed."
I thought of two motherless grade-school children and said, "How old, exactly, were Paprock's children at the time of her murder?"
"Don't remember exactly- little."
"Who raised them?"
"I assume the husband."
"Is he still in town?"
"Don't know that either, yet."
"If he is, maybe he'll be willing to talk about her, tell us if she was ever a therapy patient at de Bosch's clinic."
He hooked a finger toward the rear seat. "Got the file right there. Check out the address."
I swung around toward the darkened seat and saw a file box.
"Right on top," he said. "The brown one."
Colors were indistinguishable in the darkness, but I reached over, groped around, and came up with a folder. Opening it, I squinted.
"There's a penlight in the glove compartment."
I tried to open the compartment, but it was stuck. Milo leaned across and slammed it with his fist. The door dropped open and papers slid to the floor. I stuffed them back in and finally found the light. Its skinny beam fell on a page of crime-scene photos stapled to the right-hand page. Lots of pink and red. Writing on a walclass="underline" a closeup of "bad love" in big, red block letters that matched the blood on the floor… neat lettering… a bloody thing below.
I turned to the facing page. The name of Myra Paprock's widower was midway through the intake data.
"Ralph Martin Paprock," I said. "Valley Vista Cadillac. The home address is in North Hollywood."
"I'll run it through DMV, see if he's still around."
I said, "I need to keep looking for the other conference people to warn them."
"Sure, but if you can't tell them who and why, what does that leave? "Dear Sir or Madam, this is to inform you you might be bludgeoned, stabbed, or run over by an unidentified, revenge-crazed psycho?"
"Maybe one of them can tell me the who and why. And I know I'd have liked to have been warned. The problem is finding them. None of them are working or living where they were at the time of the conference. And the woman I thought might be Rosenblatt's wife hasn't returned any of my calls."
Another stretch of silence.
"You're wondering," he said, "if they've been visited, too."
"It did cross my mind. Katarina's not been listed in the APA directory for five years. She could have just stopped paying dues, but it doesn't seem like her to just drop out of psychology and close up the school. She was ambitious, very much taken with carrying on her father's work."
"Well," he said, "it should be easy enough to check tax rolls and Social Security records on all of them, find out who's breathing and who ain't."
He reached Hilgard and turned left, passing the campus of the university where I'd jumped through academic hoops for so many years.
"So many people gone," I said. "Now the Wallace girls. It's as if everyone's folding up their tents and escaping."
"Hey," he said, "maybe they know something we don't."
• • •
The strip-mall at Olympic and Westwood was dark except for the flagrant white glare from the minimart. The store was quiet, with a turbaned Pakistani drinking Gatorade behind the counter.
We stocked up on overpriced bread, canned soup, lunch meat, cereal, and milk. The Pakistani eyed us unpleasantly as he tallied up the total. He wore a company shirt printed repetitively with the name of the mart's parent company in lawn green. The nametag pinned to his breast pocket was blank.
Milo reached for his wallet. I got mine out first and handed the clerk cash. He continued to look unhappy.
"Whatsamatter?" said Milo. "Too much cholesterol in our diet?"
The clerk pursed his lips and glanced up at the video camera above the door. The machine's cyclops eye was sweeping the store slowly. The screen below filled with milky gray images.
We followed his gaze to the dairy case. An unkempt man stood in front of it, not moving, staring at cartons of Half-and-Half. I hadn't noticed him while shopping and wondered where he'd come from.
Milo eyed him for a long moment, then turned back to the clerk.
"Yeah, police work's strenuous," he said in a loud voice. "Got to shovel in those calories in order to catch the bad guys."
He laughed even louder. It sounded almost mad.
The man at the dairy case twitched and half turned. He glared at us for a second, then returned to studying the cream.
He was gaunt and hairy, wearing a dirt-blackened army jacket, jeans, and beach sandals. His hands shook and one clouded eye had to be blind.
Another member of Dorsey Hewitt's extended family.
He slapped the back of his neck with one hand, turned again, tried to match Milo's stare.
Milo gave a salute. "Evening, pal."
The man didn't move for a second. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and left the store, sandals slapping the vinyl floor.
The clerk watched him go. The cash register gave a computer burp and expelled a receipt. The clerk tore off the tape and dropped it into one of the half-dozen bags we'd filled.