Confidential(5)

But I wasn’t paying him for a staring contest. “I haven’t had a real relationship in years,” I said. “I’m almost forty, and there’s no time to find one. If I want a baby, I need to start the process soon, on my own, and I need you to help me figure out what that’ll mean for me, since so much of how I see myself is work. I go and go and go, and I’m afraid of what I’ll find when I slow down. And I know motherhood will slow me down. So why do I want it?”

“That is the million-dollar question.”

“I’ll write you a check, you tell me the answer, and we’ll be done with it, then.”

He met my eyes. “Now where’s the fun in that?”





PRESENT DAY





CHAPTER 4

DETECTIVE GREGORY PLATH

I’ve been at this a long time, but I’ve never seen a case quite like this one.

The victim’s a doctor but not the real kind of doctor. He’s a head shrinker. I’m not supposed to think that, here in Progressive Land, but after that accidental shooting fifteen—no, more like twenty—years ago, I had to “see someone,” and it pretty much confirmed what a bunch of bullshit all that is. Not just bullshit but self-indulgence. We are what we do. You want to have higher self-esteem? Go do something to be proud of. You had a rough life? Go make something of yourself. I did it. You can, too.

I guess you could say I’m biased. But I’m fifty-seven years old. If you’re not biased by then, if you haven’t developed some opinions, there’s your problem.

I don’t prejudge, though. Like these three women. I’m not going to assume I know who they are until I bring them in. Then I’ll sit across from them and I’ll see what they’re made of.

Now, if I could get my hands on Dr. Baylor’s records, it would be a hell of a lot easier, but lucky for them: my request had to go before the judge, and he’s taking his sweet time in making a ruling. There’s no love lost between us from the Nicholson case. That guy holds a grudge.

Now those guys—they ought to be called “prejudges.” It used to make me crazy but not anymore. What would a head shrinker say? I’ve learned coping skills.

Based on his reputation in the therapy community, Dr. Baylor was a stand-up guy. Lots of people said they’d recommend him “without reservation.” Well, they used to. I doubt he’s getting any referrals wherever he’s found himself.

I asked about the couple of complaints against him to the professional board, the ones that never went anywhere, and I was told that’s par for the course. “It’s an occupational risk,” one female therapist told me. “We work with emotionally unstable people, Dr. Baylor most of all. He never shied away from a challenge. I sent him some of the hardest clients—people with histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, complex trauma—and he didn’t hesitate. He changed their lives.”

You could say that they had a reason to want to rose-color this guy. For one, he was dead, and it’s true, people generally don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But for another, this wasn’t exactly good PR for the profession. The first news reports didn’t say the cause of death, but now the word is out: we’re looking for a murderer.

What I’ve got so far are three people of interest. I can’t say they’re suspects yet, because it’s all circumstantial. But it’s a hell of a circumstance: three of Dr. Baylor’s clients and former clients meet up at a dim sum restaurant, and hours later, someone beans him in the head with the alabaster bust of some classical composer or philosopher or who-the-hell-ever from his bookshelf without leaving a trace of evidence, almost like they had their own forensic cleaning service on speed dial.

Not that the office was spotless, though. Far from it. There were plenty of hairs and fibers everywhere else—a whole lot of clients passed through that office in a week, and people shed their personal detritus at an alarming rate—but none on or immediately around the body. Nothing I can use.

Three very different women with only Dr. Michael Baylor in common meet in a dim sum restaurant. Sounds like one of those old jokes: a priest, a rabbi, and a Buddhist monk walk into a bar . . .

I wish I had those records—that would make this whole thing a lot easier—but I’ve gotta sit tight. That’s in the works. Until then, I just need one of these women to talk. Get one of them to crack. Apply enough pressure and most people do. It’s like they can’t help themselves. A little bit of genuine curiosity and people are dying to spill their secrets. That’s something Michael Baylor probably figured out, too. He and I, we’ve got something in common.

Unless they’re professional liars or professional killers, everyone cracks.





BEFORE





CHAPTER 5





FLORA


“He whipped it out under the table, right there in the restaurant?” Nat’s mouth was hanging open. Jeanie was in hysterics, so much so that she nearly slid off the U-shaped couch in the darkened lounge area of our favorite after-work bar.

“Yep, right there!” I said. It didn’t even feel like a lie. It was just a performance, and an entertaining one at that.

My divorce had been finalized for nearly a year. I couldn’t expect my friends to believe that I’d stayed entirely single and celibate all that time. After I’d feigned grieving, they were after me to get back on the horse, and I couldn’t tell them that I already had, and my stallion’s name was Dr. Michael Baylor, not without risking his career. I had no choice but to invent this life where I was freewheeling around Tinder. And the storytelling could be fun, like I was the one living vicariously through my own made-up adventures, in an alternate universe where I’d never met Michael. We all need to be the person others expect us to sometimes. Most of the time.