Free Psych:Mind-Altering Murder by William Rabkin Page A

Mandy's former employer.
    That didn't mean he was happy about doing it or that he believed they would find anything up here. But partners stick up for each other, he said. If Juliet hadn't been willing to back down--and he could tell she wasn't--then his only choice was to let her lead or put in for a new partner.
    They'd spent the first part of the drive up the 101 going over the details of the case. Since there were essentially no details, that took them about as far as Solvang; then they'd ridden the remaining ninety percent of the way in silence. That was fine with her. She knew if they'd talked Lassiter would have spent most of the time trying to convince her that Mandy's death had been self-inflicted and that they should close the case. That was a conversation she wasn't eager to have again because she still didn't have a substantive response for him. She couldn't say why she refused to believe that Mandy had killed herself. She just did.
    She knew it wasn't just because, as Lassiter had hinted several times, she was identifying with the victim. It was true that the sight of a twenty-eight-year-old woman hanging by the neck in her cheerleader's outfit had an immediate emotional resonance with anyone who'd ever called the Rebel Yell or the Tiger Roar or the Duck Quack. You couldn't help but think of that time you were at your lowest ebb, fired from a job or dumped in a relationship or just lost in your life, and you put on the colors "just to see if they still fit."
    But she knew there was more to it than that. She wasn't projecting her own psyche onto a suicide victim. She was too good a cop for that. Something about the crime scene was making her crazy. So far she'd just seen little things that didn't make sense for an imminent suicide: a prescription for her mother she'd arranged to pick up the day after her death, a book on caring for ill relatives she'd requested from the library's interbranch loan.
    There had to be something bigger. She just couldn't identify it. Whatever it was, it had registered somewhere in the back of her mind and she hadn't been able to bring it forward yet. Usually if she took a quick walk or a long shower she could turn off enough of her conscious brain to allow the subconscious to seep through. But she'd walked and showered and showered and walked and still she was no closer to the solution. She'd hoped the hours in the car, staring out at the scenery, might coax the clue out of hiding, but by the time they cruised past old Candlestick Park and into the city there was still nothing.
    That was why this interview with Mandy's supervisor was so important. If she couldn't find a lead here she'd have to admit there really was no case. She was not going to cut it short, no matter if the parking threatened to cost more than the unmarked Crown Vic was worth.
    The digital readout on the elevator's control panel flipped to 34 and the car decelerated suddenly. The doors slid open and they stepped out into open space. At least that was what it looked like. The vast lobby was nearly empty, a black slate floor running uninterrupted the entire length and width of the building, so that whichever direction you looked you saw nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows.
    Or almost nothing, anyway. A football field's length away from the elevators the slate rose to form some kind of large shelf, and behind that a wide spiral staircase led up to what Juliet assumed was the thirty-fifth floor. As they walked toward the eruption they saw a pair of tanned legs coming down the stairs, and by the time they were halfway there the legs had been joined by a torso and finally a head. The body parts belonged to an athletic young blond woman in a dress so short a professional tennis player might think twice about wearing it at Wimbledon. She seated herself behind the shelf and gave them a gleaming smile as they approached.
    "May I help you?" she said.
    "We have an appointment with Sam Masterson," O'Hara said.
    The blond woman's