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“Foster families?”
“That would be my guess. The girl—the victim, her name I remember. Persephone. It’s mythical, some girl who got raped by her father. You name a girl that, it’s no secret what your intentions are, right? She was a quiet one, close to majority. The boys, there were two of them, were younger so I assume they were in the system for a while. Hey. Just thought of something. We had a social worker handling them, very nice gal. I didn’t appreciate her bleeding-heart bullshit when she was trying to convince me some juvenile delinquentcriminal deserved compassion instead of punishment but with the Gilmore kids, I was glad she was there. What was her name…names, damn, it’s like they disappear…she was young, couple of years out of social worker school, so she’d be…late forties, maybe fifty…what the hell was her…damn, damn…okay, retrieved it from the Alzheimer file. Katherine…Kathy. Kathy Bookbinder. I used to tease her about that. Tell her you should be throwing the book, not binding it. Kathy Bookbinder, for all I know she’s still in Florida.”
—
She wasn’t.
Katrine J. Bookbinder, D.S.W., was now a professor of social work at Chandler University. Small selective institution in Orange, California. I’d lectured there a few years ago and said so.
Milo said, “Now you’re gonna tell me you know her.”
“Nope, but it’s an hour’s ride with decent traffic, so that’s decent karma.”
“I will take what I can get.”
His fingers pounced on his phone.
—
A husky voice said, “This is Kathy. It says LAPD on my screen, what’s going on? Is there something on campus?”
Milo began to explain.
She said, “Persephone? Oh no. That’s horrible. Repellent. My God, poor girl. Woman I guess. That’s evil. And here I was thinking this was going to end up a good day.”
“Sorry, Doctor.”
“No need to apologize, you’re doing your job,” said Kathy Bookbinder. “But it’s been a lifetime since I saw her and she was just a kid. What do you think I can contribute?”
“Anything you can tell me about her and her family situation would be helpful.”
“Situation,” said Kathy Bookbinder. “Talk about a euphemism. Well, it was a public case, not therapy, so yes, I can tell you what Iknow. But not over the phone. This is too…shocking. Too heavy. I need to compose myself. Can we meet somewhere close to here?”
“Happy to come to your office.”
“No, no, I need to get away from campus, under the best of circumstances it’s an altered reality…God, my heart’s pounding, my first thought was there was an active shooter and I was trapped.”
“Has that happened before?”
“Not yet. But we did have a student last month who was actively delusional and needed to be removed. And before that, there was a sexual predator who still hasn’t been caught.”
“Got it,” said Milo. “Again, sorry for alarming you.”
“You didn’t mean to…a margarita sounds like the right medicine, there’s a place I go, Rosita’s on Glassell Street. But the freeway could be a mess, why don’t we do it tomorrow.”
“The earlier the better, Dr. Bookbinder. I’ll cope with the freeway.”
“You’re dedicated…okay, but at the least it’ll be an hour and it could be a whole lot more. I’ll straighten up here, notify my husband, go over to Rosita’s and get settled. Call me from the road if it’s nuts.”
CHAPTER
43
The freeway wasn’t nuts, just slightly neurotic, turning a forty-eight-mile trip into a seventy-one-minute stop and go. During that time, Milo made two calls to Katrine Bookbinder. The first time, she was still in her office. By the second, she was at the restaurant nursing “my first dose.”
Milo said, “On our way.”
She said, “Don’t worry, not going anywhere.”
