The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

Leander on an autopsy table. The viscera of medicine had always been too much for her. She stood.
    "I wish I could help you more, but to be honest Bess Leander never gave me any indication that she was suicidal." At least that was true.
    Theo took her cue and stood. "Well, thank you. I'm sorry to have bothered you. If you think of anything, youknow, anything that I can tell Joseph that might make it easier on him…"
    "I'm sorry. That's all I know."Fifteen percent.Fifteen percent.Fifteen percent.
    She led him to the door.
    He turned before leaving."One more thing. Molly Michon is one of your patients, isn't she?"
    "Yes. Actually, she's a county patient but I agreed to treat her at a reduced rate because all the county facilities are so far away."
    "You might want to check on her. She attacked a guy at the Head of the Slug this morning."
    "Is she in County?"
    "No, I took her home. She calmed down."
    "Thank you, Constable. I'll call her."
    "Well, then. I'll be going."
    "Constable," she called after him. "Those pills you have – Zoloft isn't a recreational drug."
    Theo stumbled on the steps,then composed himself. "Right, Doctor, I figured that out when I saw the body hanging in the dining room. I'll try not to eat the evidence."
    "Good-bye," Val said. She closed the door behind him and burst into tears.Fifteen percent. She had fifteen hundred patients in Pine Cove on some form of antidepressant or another. Fifteen percent would be more than two hundred people dead. She couldn't do that. She wouldn't let another of her patients die because of her noninvolvement. If antidepressants wouldn't save them, then maybe she could. three Theo Theophilus Crowe wrote bad free-verse poetry and played a jembe drum while sitting on a rock by the ocean. He could play sixteen chords on the guitar and knew five Bob Dylan songs all the way through, allowing for a dampening buzz any time he had to play a bar chord. He had tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and pottery and had even played a minor part in the Pine Cove Little Theater's revival of Arsenic and Old Lace. In all these endeavors he had experienced a meteoric rise to mediocrity and quit before total embarrassment and self-loathing set in. Theo was cursed with an artist's soul but no talent. He possessed the angst and the inspiration, but not the means to create.
    If there was any single thing at which Theo excelled, it was empathy. He always seemed to be able to understand someone's point of view, no matter how singular or far-fetched, and in turn could convey it to others with a succinctness and clarity that he seldom found in expressing his own thoughts. He was a born mediator, a peacemaker, and it was this talent, after breaking up numerous fights at the Head of the Slug Saloon, that got Theo elected constable. That and heavy-handed endorsement of Sheriff John Burton.
    Burton was a hard-line right-wing politico who could spout law and order (accent on order) over brunch with the Rotarians, lunch with the NRA, and dinner with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and wolf down dry banquet chicken like it was manna from the gods every time. He wore expensive suits,a gold Rolex, and drove a pearl-black Eldorado that shone like a starry night on wheels (rapt attention and copious coats of carnuba from the grunts in the county motor pool). He had been sheriff of San Junipero
    County for sixteen years, and in that time the crime rate had dropped steadily until it was the lowest per capita, of any county inCalifornia. His endorsement of Theophilus Crowe, someone with no law enforcement experience, had come as more than somewhat of a surprise to the people of Pine Cove, especially since Theo's opponent was a retired Los Angeles policeman who'd put in a highly decorated five and twenty. What the people of Fine Cove did not know was that Sheriff Burton not only endorsed Theo, he had forced him to run in the first place.
    Theophilus Crowe was a quiet man, and Sheriff John Burton had his reasons for not wanting to hear a peep out of the little North County burg of Pine Cove, so when Theo walked into his little two-room cabin, he wasn't surprised to see a red seven blinking on his answering machine. He punched the button and listened toBurton 's assistant insisting that he call right away – seven times.Burton never called the cell phone.
    Theo had come home to shower and ponder his meeting with Val Riordan. The fact that she had treated at least three of his ex-girlfriends bothered him. He