Until Death

by Alicia Rasley

  There was a sunshine law in our state. No, rain wasn’t against the law. Rather, most governmental agencies had to open their processes to the public. I figured I’d have no trouble getting the police report and autopsy with a couple of quick calls.

  It must have been a partly cloudy day, because sunshine wasn’t what I got. I was supposed to come down and file for the police report, no doubt running into Detective Martelli, who would groan, “You again?”, and then wait six weeks. Seven weeks was the autopsy report estimate from the guy at the coroner’s office. When I demanded to speak to the top dog himself, he said, “He’s got his hands in someone’s stomach right now. Someone’s former stomach, that is.”

  The image assaulted me: hands, guts. I’d spent too much of my dateless adolescence actually watching the drive-in movie. “How can I get a copy of the autopsy quick?” I was hoping he’d name a sum, but wouldn’t you know, I’d happened upon an honest county worker.

  “You can’t. Unless you’re the insurance company. Or the physician of record.”

  Physician of record. I hung up to face a moral dilemma. Or maybe just a matter of pride. Could I ask Mike Warren for this favor? And if I humbled myself to do it, would he turn me down flat, citing my paranoia and projection and all that garbage?

  I tried five other directions first. I tried the mayor’s office. I tried to hack in through the city’s website “Concord Communications!” I tried . . .

  Well, I tried. And in the end, I am proud to say, I did not call Mike Warren.

  Instead I went to see him.

  I figured if I went to his office, he couldn’t hang up on me.

  His receptionist recognized me from my last visit. In fact, I probably still haunt her nightmares. She glanced at me nervously, as if gauging my current state of mind. Eventually, a light clinked on her console, and she said gratefully, “You can go in now.”

  Another clever feature of this office, presumably of benefit mostly to psychiatrists and specialists in sexually transmitted diseases, was the back exit. After a session was over, the outgoing client would be ushered out the back way so as not to have to face the incoming client. I recall my gratitude for that privacy when I’d stumble out of Mike’s office, my eyes swollen and my nose clogged with tears, and my husband sullen and silent behind me.

  It all came back to me when I entered his office, all the desperation, all the despair. And Mike rising to greet me, remote and reserved, didn’t help make me more comfortable.

  He’d obviously figured out right away that I wasn’t there for therapy to cure my paranoia. “What is it you want now?”

  “I want information about Don’s death. The autopsy, the crime scene—”

  “The death scene.”

  “Whatever. Can you do it for me?”

  He took a moment to consider this. “I can get the autopsy report. I’m not sure about the police report. Maybe. But I don’t know that I want to fuel your obsession.”

  I did my best to look unobsessed. When it didn’t work, I said, “I just want to know what they didn’t say in the news accounts. Like where he went to dinner. Who saw him there. How he got to the building.” I smiled disarmingly. At least, I hoped I looked disarming. “Maybe I’ll decide you’re right, that he left in a blue mood and went to the new building and jumped out.” I was glad to realize it still sounded beyond unlikely. But I was also willing to use it to get what I wanted.

  “I don’t think you’re open at all to that possibility. But maybe this isn’t necessarily unhealthy. Maybe it’s the way someone like you comes to terms with the unexplainable. Maybe if you read through all this, you can let it go. Get some closure.”

  “Yeah, Maybe,” I smiled brightly, as if anticipating an imminent return to mental health.

  “Just one condition.”

  Naturally. “What’s that?”

  “Before you do anything irremediable, like go to the police or hit the widow with your

  accusations, you let me know.”

  I mulled that over. I thought I could live with it. I’d call in the middle of the night and get

  his office voice mail. “Sure.”

  “You have to come here personally.”

  Damn. The only man I’d ever met who could read a woman’s thoughts, and these were the

  thoughts he looked for—the deceptions and manipulations. “Sure. No problem.”

  “Good. Why don’t you wait outside and let me make some calls.”

  A few minutes later, he called me back into his office. “It’ll be an hour or so. Can you wait?”

  “Sure. I’ll just get a magazine and you can see your clients until then,”

  “I’m done for the day. And anyway, I wanted to talk to you.”

  Oh, no. Lecture time. But I guessed it was a small price to pay. “I’m listening.”

  “I want you to think this investigation thing through. If you’re right that this is murder, and not suicide or accident, then there’s a murderer out there.”

  “Exactly. And I need to find out who it is.”

  “Except that this is someone who, if you’re right, and I think you’re wrong, has already killed someone. So what’s to keep him—”

  “Or her.”

  “So what’s to keep him or her from killing you too?”

  That went like an icicle up my spine. I’d sort of thought of that before, but never so bluntly. “I won’t let anyone else know I’m investigating.”

  “You’ve told me.”

  That stopped me. “Well, maybe, but I don’t suspect you.”

  “That’s gratifying. But if you think someone murdered Don, you should suspect everyone.”

  “I think I can eliminate some people. A total stranger wouldn’t have been able to get close to him. Other people were elsewhere at the crucial moment.”

  “Where was I?”

  “How would I know?”

  “That’s what I mean. I wasn’t a total stranger. As far as you know, I was available.”

  “But you have no motive.”

  “You only know what I’ve told you, and you don’t have any reason to believe me.”

  That’s true, considering how much he’d already withheld from me. But . . . well, I just couldn’t imagine Mike Warren pushing someone over a ledge. “You’re a healer, not a killer.”

  “Neil Crippen. Jeffrey McDonald. Jack the Ripper.”

  “What?”

  “Physicians and murderers. Physicians are, in fact, the professionals most likely to commit murder.”

  “I can imagine physicians being the most common victims of murder,” I said with a tinge of irony. “And you don’t know that Jack the Ripper was a physician.”

  “Either that or a butcher, and in those days there wasn’t all that much difference.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that you’ve decided to trust me. That was probably a good decision, but I don’t think it’s one you made rationally.”

  Men use that word “rationally” as if rationality trumped everything else, including good sense, intuition, and gut feelings. “I don’t think you’d be warning me if you were the murderer.”

  “If I felt guilty, or wanted to warn you off . . .”

  “Hmmm. You’re right. So where were you that night?”

  He made a show of bringing out his appointment book, leafed through it, and finally looked up in disappointment. “The state medical society annual dinner. In Indianapolis.”

  “So you didn’t do it.”

  “No, but that’s not the point. The point is, if you’re right, you don’t know whom to trust. You could be putting yourself in danger skulking around.”

  “I don’t skulk. I lurk.”

  He regarded me grimly. “I know you thin
k this is funny. But if you’re right, and I’m rational enough to allow for the possibility, then you’re in danger too. And I don’t know if that’s fair to your son, who has already lost one parent.”

  Okay, maybe he was right. But I didn’t see an alternative. “I already did my good-citizen thing and went to the police. They didn’t believe me. But I promise. I’ll be careful.”

  “And you’ll let me know if you’re going to do anything dangerous.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I realized I must sound like Tommy, or maybe John Lennon. “I have no desire to get myself killed. But I’m not going to give up now.”

  “Yes, I recall that you identified tenacity as your strongest trait.”

  “Why do you remember everything?”

  “I don’t. Just the interesting things.” He closed his appointment book. “I like tenacity as a character trait. It indicates a willingness to take stands and act on them.”

  “You probably also remember that Don said that’s what I had instead of passion.” I don’t know why I was picking at that particular scab. At least I found it didn’t much hurt anymore.

  Mike Warren regarded me with that look somewhere between interest and gentleness. “I suspect he had a limited definition of passion. You’d hardly be tenacious without caring deeply.”

  “I just pick my battles. I only make a fuss when it really matters to me. And this does.”

  “Look,” he said, glancing at his watch, “it’s going to be a while before those faxes come, and I haven’t had lunch. Let’s head over to Trier’s and pick up a couple of sandwiches, and you can tell me more about your theory.”

  So it was that I found myself beneath an umbrella on the patio of a nearby coffeehouse, listening to the cello-like tones of the semis passing on the highway, the sun warm on my bare arm. I nursed a skim-latte while Mike skillfully dissected both a steak and my case. “Do you really think he would have married someone who would turn around and murder him?”

  “Well, heck, yes. Look at the statistics. We’re more likely to murder our spouses than anyone else in the world. In fact, I’d say marriage is like a murder factory.”

  He regarded me with that detached gaze, as if I was always interesting, if seldom sane. “Since when have you gotten so cynical about marriage?”

  “Sour grapes, you mean?” I gave this due consideration. “Maybe I’m devaluing what I no longer have. But I no longer want it either. I mean, if someone would ask for my hand, I’d say no. No way.” I thought of Will and his absurd passion for me and his multi-millions, and even then I still meant it. “Nope. Not for me. Not anymore.” It was a real relief to say that, and to mean it. The last thing I wanted was to . . . want that.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to Tommy, anyway. I mean, he’s had to cope with one new step-parent already. And now his dad’s death. He’s had enough disruption. So no, I don’t intend to marry again. Not until he’s grown. And maybe not even then.”

  “You don’t see any use for marriage?”

  “Sure. Raising kids. But even that doesn’t work out much of the time, and women find out that being a single parent isn’t the worst fate in the world. And that we can support children ourselves, which is good considering—” for an instant I let bitterness color my bantering tone, “—considering how many divorced fathers manage to get out of paying child support. And once you don’t have children and finances to justify a marriage, the value to women goes way down. And the burdens go way up, like losing yourself trying to please a man.”

  “You’re extrapolating from your own experience.”

  “From lots of my friends’ experience, too. Even the happily married ones feel that who they really are, and what they really want, gets shoved into a small part of a marriage.” He started to say something, but I wasn’t about to give up my momentum. “It’s weird. Women are the ones who pursue marriage, who scheme to get the guy, who plan the weddings. And then they do all the little wifely domestic things meant to keep the marriage going. But if it doesn’t work, and they get divorced, well, they find out what they’ve been missing.”

  “What is that?”

  “Freedom. To be themselves. They can take care of their kids without some man telling them they’re too permissive, and take a long bath without some man saying they use too much hot water, and talk on the phone to their mother for an hour without some man saying if she irritates you so much, why do you bother to call her at all?”

  I looked over at him and saw something like laughter in his eyes. I guessed he’d heard some of this in countless sessions, maybe even from me and Don.

  “You see no use for men?”

  “Oh, yeah, for men. Just not for marriage. Not for most women, anyway. Now men, well, men get a lot out of marriage. Usually, they get someone to take care of the family and relationships, someone to give emotional support. They even live longer than single men. Strange how they try so hard to avoid it, and then refuse to admit that they like it when they’ve got it.”

  Judiciously, he broke off a piece of Texas toast and put it onto my saucer. “I’ll admit it. I liked being married.”

  I tore a tiny bit of the crust off the toast and slipped it into the corner of my mouth, trying to conceal my surprise. It was, perhaps, the first personal revelation he’d ever shared with me. He was back to looking as cool as ever, but underneath that composed expression must be an awful lot of feeling. I didn’t want to spook him by showing too much interest, so I merely observed, “If you’ve got kids in college, you must have married very young.”

  “Sophomore year in college. We met in the fourth grade.”

  Childhood sweethearts. I wondered if they’d ever dated anyone else. His life must seem blasted, and my cynical anti-marriage talk must seem offensive. I softened my tone. “So you were married all through med school?”

  “As far as I remember.” He pushed his plate away. “All those years are a blur. The girls were babies then, and there were all the classes, and the clinicals, and the internship. One long round of exhaustion. But—” he added thoughtfully, “it wasn’t so bad. I had a life, at least. No one else at the school did. They didn’t go home to anything but their books, and I had Laura, and the girls were starting to walk and talk.”

  “See, you do remember something.”

  He smiled slightly. “Only the good things. It’s my policy.” After a moment, he said, “It required adjustments. I was thinking of going into surgery, but Laura went back to law school, and we just couldn’t manage that long of a residency program. Psychiatry is day work and easy on the family. And,” he added in afterthought, “it interested me. That was before it was mostly just a medication-conveyance position.”

  I wanted to hear more about his family, not his work. Why, I couldn’t say, only that he knew so much about me, and I knew so little about him, and here he was, accidentally perhaps, redressing that imbalance. Taking a casual sip of my coffee, I said, “You must have been very happy.”

  “Not really,” he said, and I couldn’t help but be startled at the admission. “We were happy some of the time and unhappy the rest. This was a marriage, not a movie.”

  “I guess I thought a marriage counselor would know how to do it right.”

  “Right doesn’t mean happiness all the time, does it? Just sticking with it even when it’s not happy.” He shrugged. “I have to admit, it wasn’t always a great marriage. And I wasn’t the best of husbands. We fought a lot, in the early days, when the girls were babies. Once she left me and went home to her mom’s, and I was so preoccupied with work I didn’t even notice.”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “Well, she left a note that said she was taking the girls and going home to her mother. I assumed it was just a visit. Her mom had to call and tell me what was going on, and that I better come quick and start with a dozen roses, and chocolate might be in
order too.”

  I could almost picture him, younger, less confident, more harassed. “Did you obey?”

  “Sure. Only, after the roses, I didn’t have much money left—that was while I was an intern—and so I just got one fancy piece of chocolate and wrapped it up. And I gave it to her and said I only got one because I knew she was on a diet.”

  “And she promptly filed for divorce. And there’s not a woman alive who would blame her.”

  He smiled. “We worked it out. She knew how much a whole box cost. And we just stayed together. Never really considered anything else.”

  “That last year must have been hard. But at least you had the time with her.”

  Again he surprised me with his honesty. “Sure. And watched her get sicker and sicker, and the girls cry every time they saw her, and only me knowing the end. She didn’t know—I mean, she knew the odds, she just never believed them—but I knew.” He glanced up and signaled for the check. “It was all I could do to keep from showing it. Had to pretend I wanted her to keep fighting.”

  I regarded him covertly as I finished my drink. We were like two battered veterans of the wars, exchanging what we had left of memories. And such memories. All I remembered of love was desperation; all he remembered was duty. “I don’t know how you managed it.”

  He pulled out his wallet and gave the waitress his credit card. “I probably should have done this second residency in oncology, because for sure I did enough research.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because if a patient’s going to die on me, I want it quick. None of this year-long torture.”

  I thought it best to change the subject. “I guess you’re getting to do surgery now, with this ER residency?” I hoped he didn’t guess that all I knew about emergency medicine, I learned from Grey’s Anatomy.

  “Surgery is a fancy term for it. We just patch the problem, and send ’em upstairs. Always an adventure.”