going was talking to Rick. He’d heard of Munchausen-the adult type.
Said he’d seen nurses and doctors with those tendencies.
Mistakes in dosage that aren’t accidental, heroes rushing in and saving
the day-like pyromaniac firemen.”
“Chip talked about that,” I said. “Medical errors, dosage
miscalculations. Maybe he senses something about Stephanie without
realizing It. . . . So why’s she calling me in? To play with me? We
never worked that closely together. I can’t mean that much to her,
psychologically.”
“Calling you in proves she’s doing a thorough job. And you’ve got a
rep as a smart guy-real challenge for her if she’s a Munchie.
Plus, all the other shrinks are gone.”
“True, but I don’t know. . . Stephanie?”
“There’s no reason to get an ulcer over it it’s all theory. I can peel
em off, right and left.”
“It makes my stomach turn, but I’ll start looking at her more
closely.
Guess I’d better watch what I say to her, stop thinking in terms of
teamwork.”
Ain’t it always that way? One guy, walking the road alone.”
“Yeah. . . Meantime, as long as we’re peeling off theories, how about
this one? We’re not making headway because we’re concentrating on one
bad guy. What if there’s some kind of collusion going on?”
“Who?”
“Cindy and Chip are the obvious choice. The typical Munchausen husband
is described as passive and weak-willed.
Which doesn’t fit Chip at all. He’s a savvy guy, smart, opinionated.
So if his wife’s abusing Cassie, why isn’t he aware of it? But it
could also be Cindy and Vicki-” “What? Some romantic thing?”
“Or just some twisted motheraaughter thing. Cindy rediscovering her
dead aunt in Vicki-another tough R.N. And Vicki, with her own child
rearing a failure, ripe for a surrogate daughter. It’s possible their
pathology’s meshed in some bizarre way. Hell, maybe Cindy and
Stephanie have a thing going. And maybe it is romantic. I don’t know
anything about Stephanie’s private life. Back in the old days she
hardly seemed to have one.”
“Long as you’re piling it on, what about dad and Stephanie?”
“Sure,” I said. “Dad and doc, dad and nurse-Vicki sure kisses up
plenty to Chip. Nurse and doc, et cetera. Ad nauseum. E pluribus
unum. Maybe it’s all of them, Milo. Munchausen team-the Orient
Express gone pediatric. Maybe half the damn world’s psychopathic.”
“Too conservative an estimate,” he said.
“Probably.”
“You need a vacation, Doc.”
“Impossible,” I said. “So much psychopathology, so little time.
Thanks for reminding me.”
He laughed. “Glad to brighten your day. You want me to run Steph
through the files?”
“Sure. And as long as you’re punching keys, why not Ashmore?
Dead men can’t sue.”
“Done. Anyone else? Take advantage of my good mood and the LAPD’s
hardware.”
“How about me?”
Already did that,” he said. “Years ago, when I thought we might become
friends.”
I took a ride to Culver City, hoping Dawn Herbert stayed home on
Saturday morning. The drive took me past the site of the cheesy
apartment structure on Overland where I’d spent my student/intern
days.
The body shop next door was still standing, but my building had been
torn down and replaced with a used-car lot.
At Washington Boulevard, I headed west to Sepulveda, then continued
south until a block past Culver. I turned left at a tropical fish
store with a coral-reef mural painted on the windows and drove down the
block, searching for the address Milo had pulled out of the DMV
files.
Lindblade was packed with small, boxy, one-story bungalows with
composition roofs and lawns just big enough for hopscotch.
Liberal use of texture-coat; the color of the month was butter. Big
Chinese elms shaded the street. Most of the houses were neatly
maintained, though the landscaping-old birds of paradise, arborvitaes,
spindly tree roses-seemed haphazard.
Dawn Herbert’s residence was a pale-blue box one lot from the corner.
An old brown VW bus was parked in the driveway. Travel decals crowded
the lower edge of the rear window. The brown paint was dull as cocoa
powder.
A man and a woman were gardening out in front, accompanied by a large
golden retriever and a small black mutt with spaniel pretensions.
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