Therapy

We muttered some words of comfort and left the club.

The detectives’ room was empty. We continued to Milo’s office, and he kept the door open and stretched in his chair. It was nearly 2 A.M.

He said, “So what’re they doing in Mi

I said, “Too early to start calling locals?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Want coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

He pulled out the picture of Christi Marsh and stared at it. “Finally, a name.” Switching on his computer, he ran her name through NCIC, the local databases. No hits. Not even a driver’s license, and her Social Security number pulled up no record of employment.

“Phantom girl,” he said.

“If she was freelancing at a cash business,” I said. “There’d be no need for record-keeping?”

“A pro, like you suspected. So where’d she meet Angie?”

“Working at a club that doesn’t file paper. Or Angie was hooking, too. The Vice guys didn’t know Christi because she was new in town, hadn’t gotten caught.”

“Mi

“No sleep for the weary?”

“I got out of the habit.” He pushed himself to his feet, slouched away, returned with a Styrofoam cup. Plopping down, he drank, rubbed his eyes some more.

“When’s the last time you did sleep?” I said.

“Can’t recall. What, you’re fading?”

“I’m good for a while longer.”

He put his cup down. “It’s like there are two parallel things going on, the Jerry Quick side and the Albin Larsen-So

“The two of them hiding out together,” I said.

“The question is: hiding from what?”

“Things are falling apart, the scam’s gone bad. Jerry and Angie know why Gavin was murdered. Know they could be next.”

He considered that. “I still can’t see any role for Quick in the scam, but who knows what the hell he’s really about… okay, so maybe he even feels guilty about Gavin, but most of all he doesn’t want the truth to come out because that’ll point the finger at him as helping cause his kid’s death. He cleans out Gavin’s room, stashes Sheila at her sister’s, plans to go back home and finish the cleanup but gets scared and lams, taking Angie with him. She’s got to be freaked out, too- losing her friend, Christi. The girl she and Jerry hooked up with Gavin, to keep Gavin happy.”

“Angie didn’t seem freaked when we talked to her,” I said. “She blinked when you showed her the picture- but that’s still pretty cool.”

“True,” he said. “Cool girl. A pro.”

“In terms of Jerry’s role in the scam, maybe he worked for So

“Jerry’s a pimp… They’d have Be

“For all we know,” I said, “it was Jerry who put Hacker and Degussa in contact with the others. Degussa is a bouncer, and a guy like Jerry who frequents strip clubs would meet bouncers. Through Degussa, Jerry met Hacker. He introduced the two of them to So

“Jerry’s being So

“And to distance himself from Jerry. An enterprising fellow like So

“Meeting of the nasty little minds,” he said. “Perfect till it wasn’t.”

I said, “Gavin’s accident started the downward spiral. He underwent personality changes, turned into a stalker, got busted, and needed court-ordered therapy. So

Milo closed his eyes, and sat without moving. For a moment I thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he sat up and stared at me, blankly, as if he’d been dreaming.

I said, “You still with me?”

Slow nod.

“Jerry lied to us about the referral, made up the story about Dr. Silver being his golf partner precisely because he wanted to hide his ties to the group. He suggested it was a sex crime. Another attempt to deflect you.”

“Dear old Dad,” he said. “Claims to be a metals dealer, but he’s really a pimp.”

“With Gavin’s stalking problem, Jerry probably figured he was being a great dad by setting him up with Christi. And Gavin seemed happy, bragged to Kayla about his sex life with his new girlfriend. The only trouble was his brain injury continued to skew his thinking. He took down license numbers, including his father’s. Someone found out, and that got him and poor Christi Marsh killed. Mary Lou figured it out, and it scared the hell out of her. Bilking the Department of Corrections is one thing, murder’s another. Maybe she pressured So

“If Bumaya can be believed about Larsen, we’re talking monster.”

“Monster with a Ph.D.,” I said. “Clever, calculating, dangerous. Mary Lou overvalued her own charisma.”

“What about Sheila? In the dark about all of it?”

“Sheila’s got serious emotional problems. She and Jerry have been unavailable to each other for years, but he’s stuck by her for appearances. Now one kid’s out of the house, and the other’s dead. Toss in some panic, and it would be the perfect time for him to split.”

“Appearances,” said Milo. “The house, the Benz, B.H. school district for the kids. Then Gavin gets his cranium shaken up, and it all falls apart. What about the impalement? The sexual angle? For simple executions, shooting would’ve been enough.”

“The impalement’s icing on the cake,” I said. “Someone who enjoys killing. Someone who’s done it before.”

“Ray Degussa,” he said. He got up, walked to the door, looked up and down the empty corridor, said, “It’s quiet,” and sat back down. “So Mary scammed but couldn’t handle murder?”

“She could’ve rationalized the scam, told herself they were doing good, just padding the bill a bit. Who was the victim anyway? A corrupt prison bureaucracy.”

“It’s exactly the line of bullshit an asshole like Larsen would’ve fed her.” He frowned. “Problem is, this whole house of cards is predicated upon a scam, and we don’t even know one exists.”

“I’ll check with Olivia in a few hours.”

“You really think Mary Lou would be foolish enough to threaten Larsen and the others? Would she be blind to the kind of people she was dealing with?”