Free Therapy by Jonathan Kellerman

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    CHAPTER
    6
    M y house, designed for two, is set among pines and perched above a bridle path that snakes through Beverly Glen. High white walls, polished wood floors, skylights in interesting places, and not too much furniture make it look larger than it is. Realtor’s hype would label it, “airy yet proportioned for intimacy.” When I arrive home alone, it can be a mass of echoes and negative space.
    This evening it felt cold. I walked past the mail on the dining room table and headed for my office. Booting the computer, I looked up Mary Lou Koppel in the American Psychological Association directory and ran her through a few Internet search engines.
    She’d earned her Ph.D. at the same place I had, the U. A year older than I, but she’d entered grad school shortly after I’d finished. Her dissertation on breast-feeding and anxiety in new mothers had been accepted five years later, and she’d followed up with an internship at one of the university hospitals and a postdoc fellowship at a mental health clinic in San Bernardino.
    Her license was bona fide, and the state board listed no disciplinary actions against her. I’d been right about her lacking any training or certification in neuropsychology.
    Her name pulled up 432 hits on the computer, all excerpts from interviews she’d given on various TV and radio shows. A closer look revealed lots of repetition; it cooked down to three dozen actual references.
    Mary Lou Koppel had spoken with great confidence about communication barriers between men and women, gender identity, eating disorders, weight loss strategies, corporate problem solving, midlife crisis, adoption, learning disabilities, autism, puberty, adolescent rebellion, premenstrual syndrome, menopause, panic disorder, phobias, chronic depression, posttraumatic stress, sexism, racism, ageism, sizeism.
    One topic that had held her interest was prison reform. She’d given eight radio interviews last year in which she decried the shift from rehabilitation to punishment. In two of the talks, she’d been joined by a man named Albin Larsen, listed as a psychologist and human rights worker.
    The photos I found showed a pleasant-looking woman with short, shagged caramel hair. Her face was round with chipmunk cheeks and terminated in a sharp little off-center chin. Her neck was graceful but starting to loosen. Crisp, dark eyes. Wide, determined mouth. Gorgeous teeth, but her smile seemed posed. In every picture she wore red.
    Now I knew whom to look for.
    *
    I left for her office the next morning at eleven-forty-five, figuring my best bet was to catch her during her lunch break. Her office was in Beverly Hills but not Bedford Drive’s Couch Row or any of the other fashionable streets where high-priced therapists congregated.
    Dr. Mary Lou Koppel plied her trade in a two-story building on Olympic Boulevard and Palm Drive—a mixed-use stretch near the glitzy city’s southern border.