“Sad, wiped out, guilty. He said he should’ve taken her depression more seriously, but they’d been having their problems and he’d been focusing on his work.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Marital stuff,” said Kramer. “I didn’t push. This was a guy who’d lost everything.”

“So he was feeling guilty for not paying attention to her.”

“Suicide does that. Right, Doctor? Leaves all that guilt residue. Like the case I’m working on right now. The wife hated the husband’s guts, did everything in her power to squeeze him dry during the divorce. But seeing him bleeding out in that bathtub freaked her out and now she’s remembering all sorts of wonderful things about him and blaming herself.”

Milo said, “Did Barnett express any guilt about Lara using his gun?”

“No,” said Kramer. “Nothing like that. I also talked to Lara’s mother and she said basically the same.”

“She and Barnett get along?” I said.

“I got the feeling they didn’t, but she never came out and said anything bad about him,” said Kramer. “What I got from her was that Lara had really struggled after Kristal’s death and she felt powerless to do anything about it, poor woman. Her name was Nina. Nina Balquin. She was devastated. How could she not be?”

“Lara was on medication,” I said. “She get that from a family doctor?”

“Lara refused to see a therapist, so Nina gave her some of her pills.”

“Mom was depressed, too.”

“Over Kristal,” said Kramer. “Maybe there was more. I got the sense this was a family that had dealt with a lot over the years.”

“Like what?” said Milo.

“It was just a feeling— I’m sure you’ve seen that, Doctor. Some families seem to live under a cloud. But maybe my opinion was colored because I was seeing them at their worst.”

“Twice,” I said.

“Talk about the pits. I’m getting profoundly depressed just thinking about it,” said Kramer. She laughed softly and stroked the poodle. “Fritzi’s my therapist. She loves stakeouts.”

“Walks in a straight line and doesn’t talk,” said Milo. “The perfect partner.”

“And doesn’t need privacy to pee.”

Milo chuckled. “Anything else that would be helpful, Sue?”

“That’s it, guys. Those cases made me so damn sad, I couldn’t wait to close both of them. So maybe I overlooked something on Lara, I don’t know. But there really was nothing to indicate Barnett had anything to do with it.” She sighed.

Milo said, “I wouldn’ta done different, Sue.”

“You really think he could’ve killed her?”

“You know him better than I do.”

“I knew him as a grieving father.”

“An angry, grieving father.”

“Isn’t anger how men deal with everything?”

Neither of us answered.