“Accepted.” My antennae were tuned for cynicism, and I immediately wondered whether she was disarming me or placating me or both with her apology. “You thought I was a crank, I bet.”
“We get some crazy calls sometimes. You have a child?”
“A daughter.” I still didn’t want to talk about my family.
“This doesn’t have to be difficult,” she said.
“Although it’s not a pleasant subject, I don’t expect it has to be difficult, either, Detective Reynoso. I’m happy to tell you anything that I have permission to share with you.”
“Ah,” she said, and returned her attention to her mug. “That’s the rub, though, isn’t it?”
“The rub?”
“You deciding what you have the right to tell me. That’s the complication for us, right?”
“Your profession has rules. My profession has rules. I’m sure that we can respect each other’s positions.”
Actually I wasn’t at all certain that we could respect each other’s positions, but it seemed like a cordial thing to say, and it was apparent that we were both trying hard to be cordial.
The posted odds in Vegas were a hundred to one against things remaining cordial between us, however.
Reynoso said, “My profession’s rules are geared toward discovering the truth. That’s all.”
I didn’t want to joust with her. But I was willing to, if that’s what she wanted. I said, “Mine aren’t.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You don’t have a goal of helping your… patients learn the truth about their lives?”
I figured it was a trick question. “Psychologically? Yes. Factually? No.”
“I was in therapy once.”
What would the American Psychological Association want me to say? “I hope you found it helpful.”
“Very.”
“Great.”
“I don’t have much leverage with you,” she said with her eyes averted and her hand reaching for her purse.
I thought,Good. The fact was, I didn’t think she had any leverage with me. But in the interest of extending the cordiality as far as possible, I said, “You don’t need any leverage, Detective. I’m happy to do whatever I’m able to do to help you solve this crime.”
She took a notepad and slender pen from her shoulder bag along with a small tape recorder and a purse-size bottle of Tylenol. She set the recorder on the coffee table between us, threw a couple of pain relievers into her mouth, and washed them down with a gulp of tea. After flicking the recorder on, she pointed at the red light for my benefit, stated the date and time, and then touched the pause button. “Where are we right now? The address?”
I told her my address, adding, “You feeling okay?”
She touched her temple. “I’ve had a headache since I got here.”
“It could be altitude sickness. Happens a lot. Drinking more water might help.”
“Altitude sickness?”
I nodded.
“You have headaches all the time?” she asked.
“No, you get over it.”
“Good.” She returned her attention to the recorder, removed her finger from the pause button, repeated the address, explained the purpose of the interview, stated her name and mine, and asked me if I was participating voluntarily.
I had to think about my answer. Finally, I said I was.
“When did you first meet Gibbs and Sterling Storey?”
I considered that question carefully, too. “I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to answer that one.”
It was obvious that Detective Reynoso hadn’t expected my response. She’d thought she was lobbing a softball my way.
She said, “What?”
“The circumstances of my meeting the Storeys-if, indeed, I have met the Storeys-might be part of a therapeutic relationship, and any details about a therapeutic relationship, even simply whether or not there is a therapeutic relationship, and if there is, when it may have begun, are things that I’m not permitted to reveal under Colorado law.”
“What?”
The second “What?” was born of incredulousness. “Dr. Gregory, I know you know her. You’ve already told me you’re treating her. Come on. Don’t be difficult just for the sake of being difficult.”
“You didn’t ask me whether I know Gibbs Storey, Detective. If that is the question, the answer is yes, I know Gibbs Storey. If you would like me to tell you when I first learned the information that brought you to Colorado, I can tell you that, too. It was last Monday. What you asked me was when I met Gibbs and Sterling Storey. That is a question that I’m not at liberty to answer.”
“Why not?”
“I can only answer questions that are covered by an affirmative release of information. I have a limited release from Gibbs Storey. I do not have a release of any kind from Sterling Storey.”
She sighed. “Have you ever met Sterling Storey?”
“Next question.”
“Am I correct in assuming that if the answer was no, you would be free to tell me so?”
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t having very much fun.
“I’ll assume that, then.”
“Assume what you wish. Whether someone is in therapy, and thus whether I know them professionally, is privileged information. I can’t discuss it without a release. We’ll get a lot farther a lot faster if you just limit yourself to questions that I’m free to answer.”
My frustration was showing. I’d expected that Detective Reynoso would know the rules as well as I did. If she did, she wasn’t letting on, and her attempt to frustrate me was intentional.
And it was working.
She said, “And you are free to answer questions that…”
I swallowed a sigh. “I’m free to answer questions that relate to Gibbs Storey’s accusation that her husband, Sterling, is responsible for murdering a woman named Louise Lake in Laguna Beach, California, back in nineteen…” I’d forgotten the year. “Whatever. That’s it.”
“Ninety-seven. What is Gibbs Storey’s current diagnosis, Doctor?”
“I can’t tell you that, Detective. I’m sorry, but it’s not covered by the release.”
“The release is that specific?”
“Yes, Ms. Storey has been quite specific about what she would like me to tell you and what she would prefer to remain privileged.”
Carmen Reynoso sat back on the sofa, crossed her long legs, and smiled such a big engaging smile that I reflexively smiled in return.
“Twenty questions with you just isn’t any fun,” she said. “How about this? Why don’t you tell me what you can tell me?”
So I did.
TWENTY-FIVE
I knew only what Gibbs wanted me to know.
Louise Lake was a British flight attendant who had shared two homes with two other flight attendants. One of the homes was an almost-derelict, two-bedroom, to-die-for maid’s quarters attached to a ramshackle, early-twentieth-century shingled palace high on the rocky cliff above Crescent Bay in Laguna Beach in the southern L.A. metro area. The woman who owned the property and rented out the apartment was an elderly Australian who spent most of the year in Sydney.
The other home shared by the trio of flight attendants was a tiny one-bedroom flat in the fashionably tony Hyde Park section of London. Louise and another woman, named Helena, owned the London flat together. Their third roommate, Paulie, paid them a healthy rent for the privilege of crashing occasionally at one place or the other and, when circumstances dictated, didn’t complain about sleeping on the sofa in the front room of the London flat.
All three close friends typically flew the busy Heathrow-LAX run for British Airways.
Sterling had met Louise in business class while he was on the long trip back from doing the coverage on the British Open in the summer of 1997. She told him that she was looking forward at the time to an almost full fortnight of holiday at her Laguna Beach hideaway. Sterling revealed to her that they were practically neighbors-that he and his wife were only weeks away from completing renovations on a cottage in Corona Del Mar, just a few miles up PCH from Crescent Bay.