Therapy

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 co

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 ru

“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 Mulholland 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 Mi

“Baudette, Mi

“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 Mi

“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 di

“Which hotels?”

“That’s important?” said Marsh.

“Anything could be important, sir.”

“You’re the expert… let’s see, one was a Holiday I

“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, a

“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 reco

“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.”