"How do you feel about that?" Dr. Lusk asked.

"I don't feel much of anything about it," I answered, dodging the question.

"Detective Scully, I won't be able to help you if you keep putting up barriers, shielding me from your feelings and emotions."

"It's her car, okay? What happens to it is kinda her business, not mine. I was just saying it seemed odd."

"So you booked an appointment through the psychiatric support group and drove all the way over here from Parker Center on your lunch hour, but you don't have any feelings about the accident? It just seems odd to you and that's it?"

"I'm concerned, okay?"

"Concern is an intellectual response. Your wife crashes her car, doesn't tell you about it, drains your bank account to get it fixed on the sly instead of putting it through the insurance, then rents a duplicate car to hide it from you. But despite all this, you have no anger, no sense of frustration or betrayal. You have concern."

"Yeah."

I was thirty minutes into the forty-minute "hour." Dr. Eric

Lusk leaned back in a beige, leather wing chair, peering over tiny half-glasses, his huge Buddha belly, and ten feet of tan Berber. I was in a matching chair opposite him, trapped in a colorless cocoon, trying to affect nonchalance. My body wouldn't cooperate. Angst smoldered. Telltale emotional exhaust leaked out of me. I crossed my legs, and then uncrossed them while nondescript music oozed from ceiling speakers at subhuman volume.

"Let's talk about the meds you found yesterday."

"I found them in her purse. She'd peeled the label off the bottle so I wouldn't know the doctor or what they were for. I had the police lab identify them. The results came back this morning. Carbamazepine and Sodium valproate."