The Clinic

“The new lieutenant?”

He dipped a shrimp in sauce and put the whole thing in his mouth. As he chewed, his jaw bunched. He kept looking around the room even though there was nothing to see.

New lieutenant, same old pattern.

He was the only acknowledged gay detective in the LAPD, would never be fully accepted. His twenty-year climb to Detective III had been marked by humiliation, sabotage, periods of benign neglect, near-violence. His solve record was excellent and sometimes that helped keep the hostility under the surface. His quality of life depended upon the attitude of the superior-of-the-moment. The new one was baffled and nervous, but too preoccupied with a dispirited postriot department to pay too much attention to Milo.

“He gave it to you because he thinks it's a low-probability solve?”

He smiled, as if savoring a private joke.

“Also,” he said, “he figures Devane might have been a lesbian. “Should be right up your… ahem ahem… alley, Sturgis.' ”

Another shrimp disappeared. His lumpy face remained static and he folded his napkin double, then unfolded it. His necktie was a horrid brown-and-ochre paisley fighting a duel with his gray houndstooth jacket. His black hair, now flecked with white, had been chopped nearly to the skin at the sides, but the top had been left long and the sideburns were still long- and completely snowy.

“Is there any indication she was gay?” I said.

“Nope. But she had tough things to say about men, so ergo, ipso facto.”

Robin returned. She'd reapplied her lipstick and had fluffed her hair. The royal-blue dress intensified the auburn, the silk accentuated every movement. We'd spent some time on a Pacific island and her olive skin had held on to the tan.

I'd killed a man there. Clear self-defense- saving Robin's life as well as mine. Sometimes I still had nightmares.

“You two look serious,” she said, slipping into the booth. Our knees touched.

“Doing my homework,” said Milo. “I know how much this guy enjoyed school, so I thought I'd share it.”

“He just got the Hope Devane murder,” I said.

“I thought they'd given up on that.”

“They have.”

“What a terrifying thing.”

Something in her voice made me look at her.

“More terrifying,” I said, “than any other murder?”

“In some ways, Alex. Good neighborhood like that, you go for a walk right outside your house and someone jumps out and cuts you?”

I placed my hand on top of hers. She didn't seem to notice.

“The first thing I thought of,” she said, “was she was killed because of her views. And that would make it terrorism. But even if it was just some nut picking her at random, it's still terrorism in a sense. Personal freedom in this city kicked another notch lower.”

Our knees moved apart. Her fingers were delicate icicles.

“Well,” she said, “at least you're on it, Milo. Anything so far?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Situation like this, what you do is start fresh. Let's hope for the best.”

In the kindest of times optimism was a strain for him. The words sounded so out-of-character he could have been auditioning for summer stock.

“Also,” he said, “I thought Alex might be able to help me. Dr. Devane being a psychologist.”

“Did you know her, Alex?”

I shook my head.

The waiter came over. “More wine?”

“Yes,” I said. “Another bottle.”

The next morning, Milo brought me the boxes and left. On top was the academic resume.

Her full name was Hope Alice Devane. Father: Andre. Mother: Charlotte. Both deceased.

Under MARITAL STATUS, she'd typed MARRIED, but she hadn't listed Philip Seacrest's name.

CHILDREN: NONE.

She'd been born in California, in a town I'd never heard of called Higginsville. Probably somewhere in the center of the state, because she'd graduated from Bakersfield High School as class valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar before enrolling at UC Berkeley as a Regent's Scholar. Dean's list every quarter, Phi Beta Kappa, graduation with a summa cum laude degree in psychology, then continuation at Berkeley for her Ph.D.

She'd published her first two papers as a graduate student and moved to L.A. for clinical training: internship and postdoctoral fellowship, crosstown, in the Psychiatry Department at County General Hospital. Then an appointment as a lecturer in women's studies at the University and a transfer, the following year, to the Psychology Department as an assistant professor.

Next came ten pages of society memberships, scholarly publications, abstracts, papers delivered at conferences. Her first research topic had been differential achievement in girls and boys on mathematics tests, then she'd shifted gears to sex roles and child-rearing methods, and, once again, to sex roles as they affected self-control.

An average of five articles a year in solid journals- premium gas for a Ferrari on the tenure fast track. It could have been any C.V., until I came to the tail end of the bibliography section where a subheading entitled Nonpeer Review Publication and Media Work gave an inkling of the turn she'd taken during the year before her death.

Wolves and Sheep, along with its foreign editions, followed by scores of radio and TV and print interviews, appearances on afternoon talk shows.

Shows with titles like FIGHT BACK! Dogging the Predator, The New Slaves, The Testosterone Conspiracy.

The final section was Departmental and Campus Activities and it brought things back to dusty academia.

As an assistant professor she'd sat on four committees. Scheduling and Room Allocation, Graduate Student Orientation, Animal-Subject Safety- the kind of drudgery I knew well- then, six months before her death, she'd chaired something called Interpersonal Conduct that I'd never heard of.

Something to do with sexual harassment? Exploitation of students by faculty? That was something with hostility potential. I placed a check next to the notation and moved on to Wolves and Sheep.

The book jacket was matte red with embossed gold letters and a small black graphic between author and title: silhouettes of the eponymous animals.

The wolf's mouth was crammed with fangs and its claws reached out for the undersized sheep. On the back was Hope Devane's color photo. She had an oval face and sweet features, wore a beige cashmere suit and pearls and sat very straight in a brown suede chair backed by shelves of books in soft focus. MontBlanc pen in hand, sterling inkwell within reach. Long fingers, pink-polished nails. Honey-blond hair swept back from fine bones, the cheeks accentuated by blush. Light brown eyes clear and wide and direct, soft without being weak. A confident, possibly ironic smile on nacreous lips.

The pages were dog-eared and Milo 's yellow underlining and pen scrawl were all over the margins. I read the book, drove two miles down Beverly Glen and over to the University, where I played with the Biomed library computers for a while.

Interesting results. I returned home, watched the talk-show tapes.

Four shows, four sets of noisy, giddy audiences, a quartet of smarmy, pseudosensitive, and altogether interchangeable hosts.

The Yolanda Michaels Show: What Makes a Real Woman?

Hope Devane tolerating the metal-grind rhetoric of an antifeminist woman who preached the virtues of Bible study, cosmetics, and greeting one's husband at the door in a see-through raincoat over nothing else.

Sid, Live!: Prisoners of Sex?

Hope Devane engaged in debate with a male anthropologist/ant specialist who believed all sex differences were inborn and unchangeable and that men and women should simply learn to live with one another. Hope trying to be reasonable, but the end result falling just short of shallow.