CHAPTER 1

A few years ago a psychopath burned down my house.

The night it happened, I was out to dinner with the woman who'd designed the house and lived in it with me. We were driving up Beverly Glen when the sirens cut through the darkness, ululating, like coyote death wails.

The noise died quickly, indicating a nearby disaster, but there was no reason to assume the worst. Unless you're the worst kind of fatalist, you think: "Something lousy happened to some poor devil."

That night, I learned different.

Since then, the Klaxon of an ambulance or a fire truck in my neighborhood sets off something inside me--a crimp of shoulder, a catch of breath, an arrhythmic flutter of the plum-colored thing in my chest.

Pavlov was right.

I'm trained as a clinical psychologist, could do something about it but have chosen not to. Sometimes anxiety makes me feel alive.



When the sirens shrieked, Milo and I were having dinner at an Italian place at the top of the Glen. It was ten-thirty on a cool June night. The restaurant closes at eleven, but we were the last patrons, and the waiter was looking tired. The woman I was now seeing was teaching a night course in abnormal psychology at the U., and Milo's partner, Rick Silverman, was busy at the Cedars-Sinai ER trying to salvage the five most seriously injured victims of a ten-car pileup on the Santa Monica Freeway.

Milo had just closed the file on a robbery-turned-to-multiple- homicide at a liquor store on Pico Boulevard. The solve had taken more persistence than brainwork. He was in a position to pick his cases, and no new ones had crossed his desk.

I'd finally finished testifying at the seemingly endless child-custody hearings waged by a famous director and his famous actress wife. I'd begun the consult with some optimism. The director had once been an actor, and both he and his ex knew how to perform. Now, three years later, two kids who'd started out in pretty good shape were basket cases living in France.

Milo and I chewed our way through focaccia and baby artichoke salad, orrechiati stuffed with spinach, veal pounded to paper. Neither of us felt like talking. A bottle of decent white wine smoothed the silence. Both of us were strangely content; life wasn't fair, but we'd done our jobs well.

When sirens came, I kept my eyes on my plate. Milo stopped eating. The napkin he'd tucked in his shirt collar was spotted with spinach and olive oil.

"Don't worry," he said. "Not a fire."

"Who's worrying?"

He pushed hair off his forehead, picked up his fork and knife, speared, chewed, swallowed.

I said, "How can you tell?"

"That it's not a big-red? Trust me, Alex. It's a black-and-white. I know the frequency."

A second cruiser wailed by. Then a third.

He pulled his tiny blue cell phone out of his pocket and punched a button. A preset number rang.

I raised my eyebrows.

"Just curious," he said. His connection went through, and he told the phone, "This is Lieutenant Sturgis. What call just went out in the vicinity of upper Beverly Glen? Yeah, near Mulholland." He waited, green eyes dimmed to near brown in the miserly light of the restaurant. Under the spotted napkin was a baby blue polo shirt that really didn't work well with his pallid complexion. His acne pits were flagrant, his jowls gravid as freshly filled wineskins. Long white sideburns frizzed his big face, a pair of skunkish stripes that seemed to sprout artificially from his black hair. He's a gay policeman and my best friend.

"That so," he said. "Any detective assigned, yet? Okay, listen, I happen to be right near there, can make it over...

 

"LABYRINTHINE TWISTS, EXCELLENT PACING, AND HARD-BOILED, SWAGGERING DIALOGUE."

 

"IMMENSELY ENJOYABLE . . . THERE'S EVEN A SHOCKING SURPRISE."

 

"A TIGHT, ENGAGING . . . BRAINTEASER."

 

Therapy by Jonathan Kellerman
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