I remembered the slide Katarina had shown. Blue skies behind a wheelchair. The ocean.

“Did she live there with her father?” I said.

“Since the two of them came to California.”

“She was very attached to him, wasn't she?”

“She worshiped him.” He continued to look preoccupied.

“Did she ever marry?”

He shook his head.

“When did the school close?” I said.

“Not long after Andres died—eighty-one, I believe.”

“Katarina didn't want to keep it going?”

He put his hands around his coffee cup. He had hammer thumbs and his other digits were short. “You'd have to ask her about that.”

“Does she do any kind of psychological work now?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Early retirement?”

He shrugged and drank. Put his cup down and touched the stone of his bolo tie. Something bothering him.

I said, “I only met her twice, but I don't see her as someone with hobbies, Bert.”

He smiled. “You encountered the force of her personality.”

“She was the reason I was at the conference against my will. She pulled strings with the chief of staff.”

“That was Katarina,” he said. “Life as target practice: set your sights, aim, and shoot. She pressured me to speak, too.”

“You were reluctant?”

“Yes, but let's get back to Grant for a moment. Hit-and-run isn't really the same as premeditated murder.”

“Maybe I'm wrong, but I still can't find anyone who was up on that dais.”

He grabbed the cup with both hands. “I can tell you about Mitch—Mitchell Lerner. He's dead. Also the result of an accident. Hiking. Down in Mexico—Acapulco. He fell from a high cliff.”

“When?”

“Two years ago.”

One year before Stoumen, one year after Rodney Shipler. Fill in the gaps. . . .

“. . . the time,” he was saying, “I had no reason to assume it was anything but an accident. Especially in view of it being a fall.”

“Why's that?”

He worked his jaws and his hands went flat on the table. His mouth twisted a couple of times. Anxiety and something else—dentures.

“Mitchell had occasional balance problems,” he said.

“Alcohol?”

He stared at me.

“I know about his suspension,” I said.

“I'm sorry, I can't talk any more about him.”

“Meaning he was your patient—your bio mentioned your specialties. Impaired therapists.”

Silence that served as affirmation. Then he said, “He was trying to ease his way back into work. The trip to Mexico was part of that. He was attending a conference there.”

He put his finger in his mouth and fooled with his bridgework.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “I don't go to conferences anymore, so maybe I'm safe.”

“Does the name Myra Paprock mean anything to you?”

He shook his head. “Who is she?”

“A woman who was murdered five years ago. The words “bad love' were scrawled at the murder scene in her lipstick. And the police have found one other killing where the phrase was written. A man named Rodney Shipler, beaten to death three years ago.”