U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone 21)

“Why not ask him?”

“I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Too bad. I don’t intend to conduct a conversation behind his back so there you have it.”

“We don’t have to behave like antagonists. I’m here to save you a few headaches . . .”

I opened my mouth to interrupt and she held up one hand.

“Just listen to me,” she said. “I didn’t realize what was going on until I saw his MG parked by the side of the road. I’d been sent to cover the story, so I waited like everyone else to see what they’d find. I assumed the police were operating on an anonymous tip and then it dawned on me Michael was involved.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

She cocked her head and the light glinting off her glasses was like a quick camera flash. “I’m his sister, Dee.”

Ah. Dee, the difficult one. I looked at her closely, seeing for the first time Sutton’s solemn brown eyes staring back at me. “Alvarez is your married name.”

“I’m divorced. Pete’s my ex.”

“Peter Alvarez, the radio talk-show host?”

“The very one,” she said. “I take it Michael mentioned me.”

“Briefly. He told me you were estranged.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“No, and I didn’t ask.”

“Shall I fill you in?”

“To what end?”

“I think you should know what you’re dealing with.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. A conversation about him is inappropriate.”

“Hear me out. Please.”

I debated with myself. Technically, I was no longer in his employ and nothing she said would have any bearing on the job he’d hired me to do. I couldn’t imagine where she was headed and I confess my curiosity got the better of me. “Keep it short,” I said, as though a brief airing of the dirty laundry would be less objectionable.

“I’ll have to backtrack first.”

“No doubt,” I said. Long-winded storytelling must have been a family trait. Michael had done the same thing, making sure the facts were arranged in date order. I could see her composing sentences in her head.

“Michael’s been depressed all his life. As a child, he was always anxious, subject to all manner of imaginary illnesses. He did poorly at Climp and barely managed to graduate. He couldn’t find a job and since he had no income, he asked Mom and Dad if he could go on living at home. My parents agreed on one condition: he had to get help. If he’d find a therapist, they’d pay for it.”

I was getting restless. Unless Michael Sutton was a spree killer, I didn’t care about his psychiatric history.

She must have caught my impatience because she said, “Bear with me.”

“It would help if you’d get to the point.”

“Are you going to listen to me or not?”

She fixed me with a stony stare and I could barely keep from rolling my eyes. I gestured for her to continue, but I felt like an attorney questioning the relevance of her testimony.

“The family doctor referred him to a licensed marriage and family counselor, a psychologist named Marty Osborne. Does her name ring a bell?”

“Nope.” I could tell she was teasing out the narrative for dramatic effect and it annoyed me no end.

“Michael seemed to like her and we were all relieved. After he’d been seeing her for a couple of months she suggested his depression was symptomatic of early childhood sexual abuse.”

“Sexual abuse?”

“She said it was just an educated guess, but she felt they should explore the possibility. He didn’t believe a word of it, but she assured him it was natural to block trauma of that magnitude. We didn’t know any of this at the time. It all came out later.”

“Shit.”

“Shit is right.” Diana shook her head. “Marty continued to work with him and, little by little, the ugly ‘truth’ came out. She was using hypnosis and guided imagery to help him recover his ‘repressed’ memories, sometimes with the aid of sodium amytal.”

“Truth serum.”

“That’s correct. Next thing we knew, she’d diagnosed him with multiple personality disorder. As luck would have it—now here’s a happy coincidence—she ran an MPD support group, which Michael joined. More cash changed hands, his to hers. Meanwhile, my parents were blissfully unaware of what was happening. My brothers and I were out of the house by then so we saw much less of him than they did. After three months, Michael started seeing her twice a week and talking to her on the phone three and four times a day. He didn’t eat. He scarcely slept. We could see that, psychologically, he was disintegrating, coming apart at the seams, but we thought his getting worse was part of the process of getting better. Little did we know. She persuaded him it would be ‘healing’ if he confronted the past, which he did with a vengeance. He accused my father of molesting him from the time he was eight months old. He had these shadowy memories that he knew were real. Soon, his hazy mental movie came into focus and he ‘remembered’ my mother was also in on the abuse. Next thing you know, my younger brother Ryan was added to the list. We’re talking nasty stuff—claims of satanic ritual, bestiality, animal sacrifice, you name it.”