“She says none,” he said. “Claims the revenge thing was all Coburg's game, she didn't really know what he was up to. She says she met him at a mental health convention—advocacy for the homeless. Struck up a conversation at the bar and found they had lots in common.”

“Social worker encounters public interest lawyer,” I said. “A couple of idealists, huh?”

“God help us.” He loosened his tie.

“Coburg probably went to lots of conventions. With his phony law degree and his public-interest persona, he would have fit right in. Meanwhile, he's looking for de Bosch disciples. And trying to undo his past. Symbolically. All those years he spent in institutions. Now he's in the power role, hobnobbing with therapists. He was like a little kid, thinking magically. Pretending he could make it all go away.”

“We're still trying to unravel his travel schedule, place him and Jeffers together at least once: Acapulco, the week Mitchell Lerner was killed. Jeffers admits going along for the weekend—she presented a paper—but claims to know nothing about Lerner. She also admits using her position to get Coburg shrink mailing lists, but says she thought he just wanted to use them in order to advertise the law center.”

“How does she explain trussing up Robin and taking potshots at me?”

He grinned. “What do you think?”

“The Devil made her do it.”

“You bet. As their relationship developed, Coburg began to dominate her psychologically and physically. She'd started to have some suspicions about him, but was too afraid to back away from him.”

“Does physically mean sexually?”

“She says there was some of that, but mostly she claims he used mind control, threats, and intimidation to get into her head. Kind of a mini-Manson thing: poor, vulnerable woman taken in by psychopathic Svengali. She says the night he announced he was going to get you, she didn't want any part of it. But Coburg threatened to tell her husband the two of them had been screwing for five years, and when that didn't work, he flat out said he'd kill her.”

“How does she explain being so vulnerable?”

“Because she'd been abused as a kid. She says that was what drew her to Coburg—their mutual experiences. At first, their relationship was platonic. Lunch, talking about work, Coburg helping some of her clients out of legal jams, she helping him get social services for his. Eventually, it got more personal, but still no sex. Then one day, Coburg took her to his apartment, cooked lunch, had a heart to heart and told her all the shit he'd been through as a kid. She told him she had, too, and they ended up having this big emotional scene—cathartic, she called it. Then they went to bed and the whole relationship started taking another turn.”

“Five years,” I said. “That's when the murders began. . . . Who does she say abused her?”