JONATHAN KELLERMAN. THERAPY

“There’s no fiscal oversight I can find, just bill the state and collect.”

“Any way to find out how much each program has billed?”

“Not for me, but Milo could probably do it,” she said. “If he wants to pursue it further, I’d call Sacramento. Ask for Dwight Zevonsky, he’s a good guy who investigates fraud.”

I copied down the number.

“What’s the official name of the program?” I said.

“No name, just Assembly Bill 5678930-CRP-M, Amendment F,” she said. “Subtitled ‘Psychocultural demarginalization of released offenders.’ Which was one of your buzzwords. I found a couple others in the text of the rider. ‘Attitudinal shifting,’ ‘Holistic emphasis.’ The individual programs are free to take on their own names. The one in Beverly Hills is called—”

“Sentries for Justice.”

“Yes, just like you said. So, what, this has been done before?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“Where?”

“You don’t want to know.”

*

I found out the name of Assemblyman Reynard Bird’s third wife and ran her through the Internet.

Dr. Michelle Harrington-Bird. A tall, Scottish-born redhead in her forties who favored African robes and spoke out frequently about political issues. The assemblyman was in his seventies, a legislative vet known for passionate oration and the ability to fix potholes in his district.

In one of the many photos I found, Harrington-Bird was posed with a group of fellow psychologists that included Albin Larsen. A bunch of therapists hanging out at a convention. Larsen stood next to Harrington-Bird, goateed, bespectacled, wearing a tweed suit over a sweater-vest and looking like Hollywood’s incarnation of Freud. His body language implied no intimacy with the assemblyman’s current spouse.

All business. Plenty of incentive for that.

Harrington-Bird had borrowed Larsen’s terminology for the wording of the bill. No doubt Larsen had impressed her with descriptions of his human rights work in Africa. I wondered what she’d think about his role in African genocide. About two little boys left in their beds with their throats cut.

I found Larsen and Harrington-Bird paired three more times, as signatories on political ads. After printing what I thought was relevant, I got on the phone.

*

Milo said, “Oh, man, Olivia. She should run the world.”

“She’s overqualified,” I said. “Now we know the funding’s real and that Larsen got in on it early.”

“Reynard Bird. Wonder how high this will go.”

“There’s no evidence Bird or his wife colluded on any scam. Larsen knew her professionally, and they hobnobbed politically. He may have used her, too.”

“She’s into human rights?”

“She’s into petitions. Protesting U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, et cetera. Larsen signed the same ads.”

He grunted. “So when did the funding start?”

“Year and a half ago. Reimbursements began sixteen months ago. Pacifica was in at the outset.”

“Thirty-five bucks for each con-hour,” he said. “Even more than we estimated.”

“Huge incentive to keep it going. And to cover up when exposure was threatened. If Mary Lou posed any sort of threat, the obvious solution was to eliminate her.”

“Bullet and impalement. Speaking of which, here’s my contribution to the database. Through some fancy detective footwork, I located a retired guard supervisor at Quentin who actually knew Raymond Degussa. He’s certain Degussa was responsible for not two but three inmate contract killings and maybe as many as five others. In-house hit man, the gangs hire them to keep their own noses clean. With all that, they just couldn’t get any evidence on the asshole. When Degussa wasn’t offing people, he did all things that make parole boards salivate. Attended church, served as a pastor’s assistant, volunteered to make Christmas toys for ghetto kids, worked as a volunteer library clerk. And get this: He went regularly for counseling. This is a guy who appreciates the value of therapy.”

“Bet he does.”

“And here’s the fun part, Alex: This supervisor, God bless him, told me all the hits featured some kind of impaling and a combination MO, which is unusual for prison killings, mostly it’s cut and run. Degussa cut all right—your basic throat and multiple body slashing by shiv. But he followed it up with a coup de grâce through the neck or chest with some sort of pointed object. In a couple of cases, the objects were found: sharpened fountain pen, meat skewer purloined from the prison kitchen. Raymond’s definitely our bad guy.”