The Shadow Hunter

easily than most.

6
    In the evening, after a light supper, Abby went downstairs to the small gym adjacent to the lobby. She used the Stairmaster for a half hour, then left the building and walked into Westwood Village, where she browsed in a bookstore and bought a book on criminal psychopathology and a collection of old
Calvin and Hobbes
comics. She had never quite forgiven Bill Watterson for discontinuing that strip.
    Burnout, he’d claimed. She wondered how long he would last at her job.
    Mostly her visit to the Village was an excuse to do some people-watching. This was not only her job, it was her hobby. In college she had majored in psychology because the field suited her temperament. She wanted to observe people and make assessments without being required or even permitted to get close.
    Had she continued with her training, she would have been a licensed psychologist by now. But in the summer after her second year of postgraduate studies, everything had changed. She had met Travis.
    He was giving a lecture in Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore. His topic: warning signs of violent psychopathology. He was not apsychologist, but as the head of a leading security firm he had the kind of hands-on experience that trumped book learning. She had read a profile of Travis in the
Arizona Republic
, which was still delivered to her father’s ranch, though her father was no longer there to read it. He had died that June, a week after she earned her master’s degree, and had been buried beside her mother in a family plot. Abby had returned to sell the ranch, a job that took longer than expected. Grief and the relentless summer sun had worn her down, and she looked for any excuse to get away. Travis’s lecture, open to the public, was the lifeline she seized.
    Even without a license, she was enough of a psychologist to know what Dr. Freud would have said about the developments that followed. She had lost her father. She was looking for another. Travis was older, an authority figure, and he came along at the right time.
    Whatever her motive, she went to the lecture. Travis was charming. It was not a quality he exhibited with great frequency, but that night he roused himself to eloquence. He told intriguing stories culled from the cases he had handled, mixing humor and suspense, while never allowing his audience to forget that the stakes in his work were life and death.
    Afterward she lingered with a group of attendees chatting with Travis. As the ballroom was clearing out, she asked her only question.
You evaluate your subjects on the basis of their letters or phone calls
, she said.
I couldn’t do therapy that way. A therapeutic diagnosis requires one-on-one contact, usually over an extended series of sessions
.
    The more extended, the better—at least as far as the therapist’s bank account is concerned
, Travis said with a smile, and several people laughed.
    Abby pressed ahead.
So even though your methods seem statistically sound, you can’t achieve the same degree of certainty in your evaluation as a working therapist, can you?
    She hadn’t meant to sound combative, but Travis took the question as a challenge and proceeded to defend his approach. Hespoke for a long time. When he was done, the group broke up, and Abby headed for the lobby, feeling she had failed somehow or missed an opportunity.
    She was unlocking her car in the parking area near one of the city’s canals when Travis caught up with her. He came out of the darkness, striding fast, and she thought he was a mugger until the glow of a street-lamp highlighted his face.
    That was a good question
, he said in a quieter tone than the one he’d used in a public setting.
Truth is, I didn’t have a good answer
. She told him he had covered himself well. He laughed, then asked if they could have a cup of coffee together.
    They lingered at a coffee bar on Camelback Road until after midnight, and when he said he was staying in town a few more days, she invited him to visit her at the ranch.
It’s the real Arizona
, she said.
The Arizona we’re losing now
.
    I wonder why things always seem most real to us when we lose them
, he said softly. He could not have known about her father. Still, it was the uncannily perfect thing to say.
    His visit to the ranch the next day lengthened into an overnight stay. She had not had many lovers. There had been Greg Daly and one other young man—no one else, until Travis. And no one like him, ever. He was no college student.