As for why he'd chosen my office for his swan song, the supporting cast of shrinks had an easy answer: Because of my role as the victims' therapist, I was a symbolic father figure, undoing the damage he'd perpetrated. His death was an equally symbolic gesture of repentance.

Finis.

But even suicides - especially those connected with felonies - must be investigated, the loose ends tied up, and there began a buck - passing contest between the Beverly Hills Police Department and LAPD. Beverly Hills acknowledged the suicide had taken place on their turf but claimed that it was an extension of the original crimes - which had occurred in West L.A. Division territory. Punt. West L.A. would have liked to kick it back but the case was still in the papers and the last thing the department wanted was a dereliction - of duties story.

So West L.A. got stuck with it. Specifically, Homicide Detective Milo Bernard Sturgis got stuck with it.

I didn't start to have problems until a week after finding Hickle's body, a normal delay, because I was denying the whole thing and was more than a little numb. Since, as a psychologist, I was presumed able to handle such things, no one thought to inquire after my welfare.

I held myself in check when facing the children and their families, creating a facade that was calm, knowledgeable and accepting. I looked in control. In therapy we talked about Hickle's death, with an emphasis upon them, upon how they were coping.

The last session was a party during which the families thanked me, hugged me and gave me a framed print of Braggs' The Psychologist. It was a good party, lots of laughter and mess on the carpet, as they rejoiced at getting better, and, in part, at the death of their tormentor.

I got home close to midnight and crawled between the covers feeling hollow, cold and helpless, like an orphaned child on an empty road. The next morning the symptoms began.

I grew fidgety and had trouble concentrating. The episodes of labored breathing increased and intensified. I became unaccountably anxious, had a constantly queasy feeling in my gut, and suffered from premonitions of death.

Patients began asking me if I was all right. At that point I must have been noticeably troubled because it takes a lot to shift a patient's focus away from himself.

I had enough education to know what was going on but not enough insight to make sense of it.

It wasn't finding the body, for I was used to shocking events, but the discovery of Hickle's corpse was a catalyst that plunged me into a full - fledged crisis. Looking back now I can see that treating his victims had allowed me to step off the treadmill for six weeks, and that the end of treatment had left me with time to engage in the dangerous pastime of self evaluation. I didn't like what I learned.

I was alone, isolated, without a single real friend in the world. For almost a decade the only humans I'd related to had been patients, and patients by definition were takers, not givers.

The feelings of loneliness grew painful. I turned further inward and became profoundly depressed. I called in sick to the hospital, canceled my private patients and spent days in bed watching soap operas.

The sound and lights of the TV washed over me like some vile paralytic drug, deadening but not healing.

I ate little and slept too much, felt heavy, weak and useless. I kept the phone off the hook and never left the house except to shove the junk mail inside the door and retreat to solitude.

On the eighth day of this funereal existence Milo appeared at the door wanting to ask me questions. He held a notepad in his hands, just like an analyst. Only he didn't look like an analyst: a big, droopy, shaggy haired fellow in slept - in clothes.

"Dr. Alex Delaware?" He held up his badge.

"Yes."

He introduced himself and stared at me. I was dressed in a ratty yellow bathrobe. My untrimmed beard had reached rabbinic proportions and my hair looked like electrified Brillo. Despite thirteen hours of sleep I looked and felt drowsy.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Doctor. Your office referred me to your home number, which was out of order."

I let him in and he sat down, scanning the place. Foot - high stacks of unopened mail littered the dining room table. The house was dark, drapes drawn, and smelled stale. "Days of Our Lives" flickered on the tube.

He rested his notepad on one knee and told me the interview was a formality for the coroner's inquest. Then he had me rehash the night I'd found the body, interrupting to clarify a point, scratching and jotting and staring. It was tediously procedural and my mind wandered often, so that he had to repeat his questions. Sometimes I talked so softly he asked me to repeat my answers.

After twenty minutes he asked:

"Doctor, are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Unconvincingly.

"Oka - ay." He shook his head, asked a few more questions, then put his pencil down and laughed nervously.

"You know I feel kind of funny asking a doctor how he feels."

"Don't worry about it."

He resumed questioning me and, even through the haze, I could see he had a curious technique. He'd skip from topic to topic with no apparent line of inquiry. It threw me off balance and made me more alert.

"You're an assistant professor at the medical school?"

"Associate."

"Pretty young to be an associate professor, aren't you."

"I'm thirty - two. I started young."

"Uh - huh. How many kids in the treatment program?"

"About thirty."

"Parents?"

"Maybe ten, eleven couples, half a dozen single parents."

"Any talk about Mr. Hickle in treatment?"

"That's confidential."

"Of course, sir.

"You ran the treatment as part of your job at - " he consulted his notes - "Western Pediatric Hospital."

"It was volunteer work associated with the hospital."

"You didn't get paid for it?"

"I continued to receive my salary and the hospital relieved me of other duties."

"There were fathers in the treatment groups, too."

"Yes." I thought I'd mentioned couples.

"Some of those guys were pretty mad at Mr. Hickle, I guess."

Mr. Hickle. Only a policeman could be so artificially polite as to call a dead pervert sir. Between themselves they used other terms, I supposed. Insufferable etiquette was a way of keeping the barrier between cop and civilian.

"That's confidential, Detective."

He grinned as if to say Can't blame a fella for trying, and scribbled in his notepad.

"Why so many questions about a suicide?"

"Just routine." He answered automatically without looking up. "I like to be thorough."

He stared at me absently, then asked:

"Did you have any help running the groups?"

"I encouraged the families to participate - to help themselves. I was the only professional."

"Peer counseling?"

"Exactly."

"We've got it in the department now." Noncommittal. "So they kind of took over."

"Gradually. I was always there."

"Did any of them have a key to your office?"

Aha.

"Absolutely not. You're thinking one of those people killed Hickle and faked it to look like suicide?" Of course he was. The same suspicion had occurred to me.

"I'm not drawing conclusions. Just investigating." This guy was elusive enough to be an analyst.

"I see."

Abruptly he stood, closed his pad and put his pencil away.

I rose to walk him to the door, teetered and blacked out.

The first thing I saw when things came back into focus was his big ugly face looming over me. I felt damp and cold. He was holding a washcloth that dripped water on to my face.

"You fainted. How do you feel?"

"Fine." The last thing I felt was fine.

"You don't look wonderful. Maybe I should call a doctor, Doctor."

"No."