The doctor sighed. “Thank you for staying so I could talk to you about this issue. I’m sure you’re ready to have this morning come to an end.”
“No problem at all,” Mary said. “Anything I can do to help the mental health industry in Los Angeles is important. After all, you’ve got your hands full in this town.”
Dr. Blevins smiled at Mary. She was in her fifties, with short, stylish gray hair. A silver fox, Mary thought.
“It’s about a former patient of mine,” Blevins said.
“Isn’t all of that confidential?”
“It is if they’re still alive.”
Mary waited.
“His name is Craig Locher. He was stabbed to death two nights ago. It was a sad, tragic end to a very fine man. A man not without problems, certainly. But with a lot of good qualities, too. He didn’t deserve to die that way; in fact, he shouldn’t have died at all. He had a lot going for him.”
“Okay, I assume the police are looking into the case? It was a murder, correct?”
“Yes, I believe they are looking into it. But their initial feedback seemed to indicate they were considering it a drug deal gone bad. Or a robbery involving drugs. And they are not correct in that assumption. Craig Locher was no drug dealer.”
“Was he taking drugs of any kind?” Mary said.
“I believe he was. But, again, they were not street drugs, I’m sure of that.”
“How can you be so sure?” Mary said.
“First, I have nothing against the police. They may turn out to do a very fine job of investigating this case. It just seemed that, initially, they were not interested in pursuing it very far. And I think there was more to it than drugs and robbery. Locher was a very interesting man, you see. A very talented, creative, intelligent man. Like I said, not without his flaws. But still, not the kind of man to be stabbed over a drug deal.”
Mary weighed her response. “Can you tell me what you were treating him for?”
The doctor sighed again. “Unfortunately, I can’t. However, I can tell you that he was a peaceful man for whom I had great respect. And frankly, I’ve led a very successful practice over the years. I’m single, with no children, and I can afford to hire a private investigator to make sure one of my former patients receives the proper investigation into his death.”
“Can you tell me the general nature of his treatment?” Mary said. “It might help me focus my investigation.”
“Here’s what I will tell you,” Blevins said. “Craig Locher was very, very fond of the opposite sex. Sometimes so much so that it was a detriment to his personal life. Sometimes, enough to qualify as a probable addiction.”
Mary nodded, understanding the doctor’s point.
“I see,” she said.
“You should also know, and I assume you would have found this out anyway, that according to the police Mr. Locher’s body was found in some very unusual circumstances. I’d rather not go into those details now, especially as I have no way to verify anything. But the story I heard is that Mr. Locher was found wearing nothing but a diaper.”
Mary had a million comments, but much to her surprise, kept them all to herself.
“I’d like to hire you,” the psychologist said. “Now, are you interested in the case? Can you fit me into your schedule?”
Mary’s active case list was currently comprised of only three other jobs, all of them fairly small and mundane.
“I believe I can,” Mary said. She outlined her prices to Dr. Blevins.
“How about I give you three weeks to nose around and see what you can come up with?” Blevins said. She scribbled out a check for fifty percent of the amount and handed it to Mary along with a folder.
“When Jason arranged this, he told me you were a private investigator, so I came prepared,” Blevins said.
Mary shook her head. “Let’s just hope Jason can get the help that he so needs and occasionally schedules for himself.”
“When can you get started?” the psychologist said.
“As soon as you tell me this intervention was a success and I’m free to go,” Mary said.
Blevins nodded. “See you next time.”
Mary walked out, happy to have a new case and a check in hand.
Maybe she could get used to therapy after all.
Chapter Four
Mary drove straight to her office. It was in Venice on Main Street, in a building that shared a variety of other businesses including a recording studio, a toy reseller, and a doctor from South America with a mysterious specialty. Mary had no idea if he was a real doctor or if it was some sort of medical dodge, and it didn’t help that he spoke no English at all.
In any event, she went into her office, a tidy three-room affair with a waiting area, a small bathroom, and her main office. There was also a storage closet that had been big enough to turn into a supply room. Her supplies consisted of several boxes of paper for her printer, and a shitload of beer.
Her desk was a simple affair with one drawer, her desktop computer, and a laptop off to the side. The windows were big and looked out over the tops of the restaurants and shops that made up most of Venice’s main street.
There was also a small refrigerator stocked with Point beer, her favorite from a small brewery in northern Wisconsin.
Since she had wasted most of the morning already, Mary was determined to get something done. She fired up the desktop Mac and checked her calendar. One appointment in the afternoon to review a surveillance report on a male stripper who claimed he was being stalked by a five hundred pound beautician named Princess. Mary had subcontracted the job to an ex-cop she knew, only initially telling him that the job involved around-the-clock surveillance on a stripper.
So, that meant Mary had time to look into the psychologist’s dead-man-wearing-a-diaper case. Mary opened the folder Blevins had given her and scanned it quickly. There was very little information. His name, address, and insurance information. But no case notes, no list of medications. Mary assumed all of that was confidential and Blevins had not included it in the folder.
She set that information aside and Googled ‘dead man in a diaper’ and the result was a flurry of pictures of grown men doing things no grown man ought to do. Role playing was apparently alive and well. She especially liked one where the guy put beer in his baby bottle. A method actor, apparently.
Eventually, she found a small article in the online version of the Los Angeles Times.
The article simply confirmed that a Craig Locher, aged 46, was found dead by police in what appeared to be a random killing. No one had been arrested. And the police would welcome any information on the case.
Mary used one of her databases to look up Craig Locher’s address. She quickly found it on the map, a place out in Northeast Los Angeles. Mary jotted the address down on a small note, then checked the clock.
She had enough time to call Homicide Detective Jacob Cornell and ask him out to dinner.
While it was true that she could get most of the information she needed from other sources within the Los Angeles Police Department, she preferred Jake. One, because technically he was her boyfriend, even though she despised the word. They had some ups and downs over the past couple of years, but now the relationship seemed on solid ground. In other words, Mary thought, Jake was becoming better trained.
And two, he was quite possibly the world’s sweetest man and rarely turned down a request for a favor.
Mary would simply slip in a small request to bring what he knew about the murder of Craig Locher to dinner tonight and she would make it up to him.