“Which doctor is that?”
“All of them. There was a neurologist, what was his name—” Quick smoked and removed the cigarette and tapped his cheek with his free hand. “Some Indian guy, Barry Silver, our family doctor, referred us to him. Indian guy, over at Saint John’s . . . Singh. He wears a turban, must be one of those . . . you know. Barry is a friend as well as our doctor, I golf with him, so I trusted his referral. Singh did some tests and told us he really didn’t see anything off in Gav’s brain. He said Gav would take time to heal, but he couldn’t say how much time. Then he sent us over to a therapist—a psychologist. To help Gav recover from the trauma.”
“A neuropsychologist?” I said.
Quick said, “She’s a therapist, that’s all I know. Woman shrink, Koppel, she’s been on TV, radio.”
“Mary Lou Koppel.”
“You know her?”
“I’ve heard of her,” I said.
“At first Gav saw one of her partners, but they didn’t hit it off, so he switched to her.”
“What was wrong with the first partner?”
Quick shrugged. “The whole process—you pay for your kid to go in and talk to someone, it’s all hush-hush, you’re not allowed to know what’s going on.” He dragged on his cigarette. “Gavin told me he wasn’t comfortable with the guy and that Koppel was going to see him. Same price. They both charged two hundred bucks an hour and didn’t accept insurance.”
“Was it helpful?”
“Who knows?”
“What feedback did Dr. Koppel give you?”
“Nothing. I was out of that loop—the whole therapy thing. I travel a lot. Too much, been meaning to cut back.”
He smoked the cigarette down to the butt, snatched another, and chain-lit, then snuffed out the first one between his thumb and index finger. Onto the carpet.
He mumbled something.
Milo said, “Sir?”
Quick’s smile was abrupt and unsettling. “I travel all the time, and it’s hell. You know the airlines, disciples of the devil. Frequent business flyer? They could care less. This time, after Sheila called me about Gavin, and I told them why I needed to go home, I got treated like a king. They tag you as bereaved, and you get prioritized all the way. Upgrade to first class, no one could do enough for me.”
He barked what might’ve been laughter. Smoked, coughed, smoked some more.
“That’s what it took. That’s what it took to get treated like a human being.”
*
Milo asked him about his daughter, and Quick said, “I told Kelly to stay in Boston. She’s got law school, what good can it do her to come here? If you release the . . . release Gavin to us and we have a funeral, then she can come home. When will that be?”
“Hard to say, sir,” said Milo.
“That seems to be your tune.”
Milo smiled. “Kayla Bartell—”
“Haven’t seen her around for a while. She knew Gav from high school, and they fooled around for a while.”
“Fooled around?”
“Like kids do,” said Quick. “Her father’s some kind of composer. Eileen informs me he’s important.”
“You’ve never met him.”
“Why would I?”
“Gavin and Kayla—”
“That was Gav’s business . . . to be honest, guys, I don’t get these questions,” said Quick. “What happened can’t have anything to do with Gav. He went up to Mulholland with some girl and a pervert—some sex fiend—took advantage, right? It’s obvious, right? Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”
Before Milo could answer, Quick’s eyes swung to the stairs. Eileen Paxton stomped down, ignored us, and hurried into the kitchen.
A kitchen faucet opened. Then, the hard clash of pans. Moments later, Sheila Quick made her way down the stairs, tentative, unsteady. She stopped on the bottom step, studied the floor, as if unwilling to commit. Her eyes were unfocused, and she gripped the banister for support. She wore a pink housecoat, had aged a decade overnight.
She saw us, said, “Hello” in a slurred voice. She noticed the cigarette in her husband’s hand, and her lips turned down.
Jerome Quick smoked defiantly. “Don’t stand on the bottom like that, come all the way down—be careful, you’re on Valium.” He made no effort to help her.