Confidential(25)

What people don’t realize is that when they’re eager to dish on others, they’re really telling me just as much about themselves. Though this Greer—she’s a cool character. I’m not getting much of a read on her so far. She’s just sitting there in her oversize top and skinny leggings, with her no-makeup makeup, perfectly composed. Yet there’s something else going on. Something’s seething. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s in the room.

“I don’t think my records are relevant,” she says.

“Have you read them?”

“No.”

“You worried at all about what’s in there?”

“No, because I trusted Dr. Michael.”

I can’t resist a smile. “That’s what you called him?”

She clearly doesn’t appreciate my tone. “A man’s dead. He doesn’t need your mockery, and neither do I.”

This woman grew up with money, you can just tell, and I know she lives well now. She thinks she’s untouchable.

But I’m not about bringing her down, unless she’s guilty. And I’ve got this feeling . . .

“You say you want to help, but you didn’t show up here on your own,” I tell her. “I had to bring you in. And now you’re telling me what’s relevant and what isn’t. Doesn’t seem like cooperation to me.”

“You’re taking an adversarial tone with me, and I don’t really understand that. Would you want someone in law enforcement to read through your mental health records? Those are my private thoughts, as transcribed and analyzed by someone else. Dr. Michael was an excellent therapist, but people get things wrong. They misremember. They misinterpret.”

She’s not wrong. I wouldn’t want anyone combing through the records of my talk with the department-mandated therapist I saw years ago. And yeah, I do feel kind of adversarial toward her. There’s just something about her manner, like she thinks she’s better than me.

I need to check myself. This isn’t about me.

It’s about Dr. Michael Baylor, who seems to have led a low-key, under-the-radar life: never married, engaged once more than ten years ago and it ended amicably, in private practice for more than twenty years with a sterling reputation. If the math stopped there, it wouldn’t have added up to murder. But I’m counting the last five years, in which two women filed and withdrew complaints alleging sexual misconduct, one who’s on the other side of the country and won’t return my calls and the other who’s aimed me like a drone strike toward three other women who were unprofessionally involved with him. What happened over the last five years? Did he just fall off a cliff, ethically speaking, or was it more of a slippery slope? Or did his MO let him down and his misdeeds caught up with him and he ultimately got what he deserved?

I’m a homicide detective. On the record, nobody deserves to get murdered. Off the record . . . like I said, I have opinions, just like everybody else.

“I want to see the killer brought to justice,” Greer says, “and I’ll tell you all I know that can make that happen. But that doesn’t mean I lay myself bare. I had no personal involvement with Michael, and I’m not going to answer any invasive questions without a lawyer present, but I am going to tell you what’s relevant. Like what was said at dim sum.”

I could almost believe her, except for that slip of the tongue, when she dropped the “Dr.” and called him Michael.





BEFORE





CHAPTER 19





FLORA


It was only Kate’s second visit since I’d moved to California, but she’d already developed this annoying habit: She’d insist we go out for Cuban food, and then she’d make subtle digs the whole time. Sometimes it wasn’t even verbal; it was just her expression after she’d sampled the ropa vieja or the arroz con pollo. Tonight she looked dubious from the second we walked in and she saw the exposed brick, like, That’s not how they do it in Miami.

But that wasn’t what was bothering me most. It was that the second we’d ordered our mojitos, she asked, “So where’s Michael tonight?”

“Working,” I said. “That’s the problem with being a therapist. He keeps some evening hours.”

She nodded, but that look . . . it was pretty similar to the one she’d wear later after we tried the empanadas and paella. Sour.

She wasn’t reserving judgment anymore.

But she wasn’t coming out and saying anything, either, which was what put me over the top. “What?” I demanded.

“I was just thinking that’s not the only problem with his being a therapist, that’s all.”

“What’s your problem with it?”

“I don’t have one. But if he were my man, I’d hate sharing him.”

“I don’t share him.”

The mojitos arrived, and we both started sipping away. Neither of us liked the tension, but sometimes it was unavoidable. We were family, and we told each other everything. That had its pitfalls.

“What?” I said again.

“He basically told you he gets off on being close to other women. All the stuff about his hedonism and getting pleasure from his work.”

“He never said ‘women.’” She raised an eyebrow just slightly, but I caught it. “It feels like you’re digging, looking for reasons not to like him.”