‘Too soon to say.’ Mattie’s focus never left Barry. ‘What I don’t understand is why they were even at the cemetery.’
‘I don’t know,’ Barry said. ‘Maybe this is where they’re planning to bury her. Although the way Rachel was talking, it was like she wanted to purge the house of everything connected with Lenore and start over. I’m not saying this right. It’s speculation, but it was like she wanted to set up house. She said something about raising a family here. Honestly, I don’t know the girl and, by all accounts, she’s pretty crazy.’
Mattie switched topics. ‘Can you walk me through your whereabouts yesterday through till today?’
‘Great … my alibi.’ He gave a nervous smile and proceeded to recreate his every moment.
As she listened, she realized a few things. First, if Barry was to be believed, his entire afternoon through early a.m. was accounted for in a series of interconnected meetings and work sessions, all related to this show. Were there gaps in time long enough for him to drive out to Lenore’s estate, cut the fence, creepy crawl through the woods and shoot Richard? Possible, but unlikely with the tightly packed contents of his day.
‘You’ve been to Lenore’s mansion,’ said Mattie.
‘Sure, a bunch of times. We’d shoot episodes of Lenore Says, and she’d do company parties at least twice a year. Attendance was mandatory.’
‘Altogether how many times have you been there?’
‘Couple dozen, I guess.’
‘And these parties, how many people are we talking about?’
‘Usually it was the execs, producers and assorted wives and partners. In the summer she’d invite entire families and the kids could use the pool.’
As Mattie did the math, there was a knock at the door.
A woman’s musical voice, ‘Barry?’
Barry smiled. ‘My wife,’ he said, and got up and walked to the door.
A little girl with blond curls shot through. ‘Daddy!’
Mattie watched as Barry scooped up his daughter, the joy on his face evident, and she couldn’t help but smile and think about her own son, Oscar, when he’d been that age. The woman who came in behind the little girl made Mattie’s breath catch. Mattie had long ago made peace with her looks; she was short, struggled with an extra ten to fifteen pounds around her middle and had hair like a poodle. As a teen she’d been horribly insecure, always feeling judged by others and always judging herself. She stared at Barry’s wife. Without doubt, she was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, tall and willowy with massive waves of reddish blond hair that framed her delicate face and fanned out around her shoulders. She brushed a stray lock back as she hugged her husband and daughter. Her lips on his, her long fingers twined in his hair. Mattie heard Barry moan.
The little girl laughed and complained, ‘Mommy, it tickles.’
Barry’s wife pulled back and playfully brushed her hair across her daughter’s face.
The child’s laughter was free and infectious.
Mattie felt her own smile and looked at Kevin. She felt like telling him to pick his jaw off the ground. ‘You have a beautiful family,’ she said.
The woman looked up, seeing Mattie and Kevin. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were in a meeting.’
‘More of an interrogation,’ he said. ‘Jeanine, this is Detective Perez and Police Chief Simpson. They were asking me about Richard and Rachel.’
‘Oh.’ The smile left her face. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Fine.’ Still holding his little girl on his arm, he touched the side of his wife’s cheek gently with his fingers.
‘We’re about done,’ Mattie said, finding it hard to look away from Jeanine Stromstein, now struck by the intense green of her eyes. ‘Mr Stromstein, we may have some more questions, and I’ll want to interview everyone associated with Final Reckoning, at least everyone who was here yesterday. Were you here?’ she asked Jeanine.
‘No,’ Jeanine said. ‘We just drove down from the city. Is Barry a suspect?’
Her bluntness made Mattie pause. ‘No, not at the moment.’ She felt awkward in front of this woman who looked like she’d stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece. But awkward wasn’t enough to let her forget who she was, or what she was here to do. And between Barry and Clarence’s statements she now knew that many hundreds, possibly thousands, of people – including Barry’s gorgeous wife – would have had enough familiarity with Lenore’s estate to plot out Richard’s murder. ‘Ms Stromstein, seeing that you’re here, would you mind running through your whereabouts from yesterday afternoon until now?’
EIGHTEEN
As psychiatric hospitals went, Rachel ranked Silver Glen at the top. From the bucolic surroundings with walking trails and stone benches to the quaint bridges over rushing streams. Even the rooms looked almost normal. If you could get around the breakaway hardware, designed to fall off the wall if more than ten pounds’ pressure was applied, and the furniture bolted to the floor. From the brochures she knew that the windows, if broken, would turn into a fine powder. Still, as a teen she’d found ways to hurt herself here. One time she’d gouged her arm with a stick, not realizing that all the bacteria would enter her bloodstream and necessitate a two week hospitalization hooked to intravenous antibiotics. The only other psych place that was OK was Betty Ford. That had been a giggle. Not that she really had a drug and alcohol problem, at least not that she saw. That stay had been Lenore’s idea, and for once mother and daughter had been kind of in agreement. Now, free from all drugs, legal or otherwise, she felt more out of it than after a romp at her favorite club.
She tried to focus. ‘No,’ she breathed, when a thought too painful to bring to memory whispered at the edges of her consciousness. She felt trapped and helpless. She curled her arms tightly around her legs and thought of techniques she’d been taught to pull herself back into reality. ‘No.’ Because what would happen to her if she could feel any of those things? ‘Richard.’ Her heart raced, and frantic thoughts whirred like a band saw.
‘Rachel,’ a man’s voice called to her. She heard it, but it wasn’t close.
‘Rachel.’ The voice was persistent, and she sensed movement in the room.
She curled her arms tighter, her chin tucked to her chest, her hair like a blanket over her eyes. Rachel isn’t here, she thought. Rachel is on vacation. She flashed on one therapist, a group leader, who was big into visualizations. But not ones that would bring you to reality, ones where you’d imagine beautiful places and put yourself there. She pictured turquoise waters and warm sun, how it would feel on her face, her chest. She heard gulls and the gentle rush and retreat of the waves on soft white sand. She smelled salt and the hint of clams and mussels dropped from above by gulls and black-headed cormorants.
‘Rachel.’
He wasn’t giving up. But the beach was real, and maybe she wasn’t alone. She gasped as the visual formed, a man rising from the surf in her private cove. His skin dripping with water, his dark hair slicked back, his blue eyes. Richard. His blood, and the warp and weave of her visualization began to unravel. Frantic, she tried to piece the cloth back together. That therapist’s words ran through her head. The brain doesn’t know the difference between real and imaginary if you do it well enough. Richard was staring at her, the hole in his chest, like a third eye, watching her. ‘Richard.’
‘Rachel, I need you to pull out of it,’ the man’s voice said.
His words snuck beneath the waves and the gulls. She felt numb and paralyzed; the warm sand and gentle waters did nothing as she froze in her brother’s gaze. ‘Help me,’ she called to him. He seemed caught, unmoving, his lower limbs below the surf, while blood pulsed from his chest. ‘Help me.’
‘I will,’ the man said. ‘I need you to focus, Rachel. I want you to think of your breath and follow it in and out. Just the breath, nothing else. You don’t see or hear anything other than your breath. Follow it in and follow it out.’
The man’s voice was familiar − Dr Ebe
rt. She felt a juvenile surge of rebellion but, caught between Richard’s blood and the frightening emotions that tore at her like harpies, she surrendered to the voice’s magnetic pull. My breath, yes, I can do that. Nothing else, just the breath in and the breath out.
‘Good,’ Dr Ebert encouraged. ‘Keep riding the breath, and when you’re ready I’d like you to feel your weight against the mattress, see how it molds and sinks in. See how the breath going in and out changes that. Observe the subtleties.’
The cove and Richard retreated. Her fears were held at bay by her focus.
‘Perfect. Well done. Now listen to my voice, and when I tell you to open your eyes, I’d like you to do that. Is that OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good, now Rachel open your eyes. We’re going to get through this. You are going to get through this.’
She cracked her eyes open, and through the curtain of her hair saw Dr Amos Ebert’s broad dark face.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. His voice was soft and deep.
‘It’s not,’ she said, too frightened to move, knowing that the minute reality found her, it would hurl her into an emotional free fall.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘And even so, you’re going to survive this.’
‘He’s dead. Richard is dead.’ She heard the words through her lips. It didn’t sound like her. They seemed far away, some other woman speaking them. She saw him standing in the cove, and then more real. He was banging on her door, and then stumbling through. At first she thought it was some horrible joke, but Richard never played pranks − that was her.
‘Tell me everything that you’re thinking,’ Dr Ebert urged. ‘You’re in a safe place; nothing and no one can hurt you here.’
‘He was shot,’ she said. She felt air rush through her lips. ‘He came into my room. There was blood on his chest, his hands.’
‘Yes, and what did you do?’
‘I went to him.’ Her words like steps on wafer-thin ice. ‘There was too much blood. I put my hand on the wound.’ She felt the blood, warm and sticky. She felt his pulse as his life bled out. ‘He died there. I held him as he died.’ She knew he was gone, she cradled him, feeling the softness of his hair against her arms. ‘He was dead when I called nine one one. But I wouldn’t leave him, because what if he’d died when I wasn’t there?’
‘That was the kind thing to do. To comfort him.’
‘I knew. He was leaving me. I wouldn’t leave him.’ A tear formed, and then another. ‘I wouldn’t ever leave him. Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dr Ebert said, his eyes fixed on Rachel.
‘Why would someone do that to Richard?’ From beneath the curtain of her hair she looked at Ebert. ‘I’m the bitch. It should have been me.’
Ebert felt relief that she’d come back from her dissociative state. There’d been times − especially when she was in her early teens − when she’d zone out for days. He knew to tread carefully. The girl was exquisitely sensitive to rejection. Her brother’s death, while tragic, could easily be the thing that made her follow through on her frequent impulses and threats to end her life. He also knew that if she ignored the pain and the grief, they would emerge in twisted and dangerous ways. ‘Tell me about Richard.’
Her tears fell. ‘He was perfect. Lenore should have stopped with him. He could handle her … he could handle me.’ She made eye contact with her psychiatrist. ‘You know I’m pregnant.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Richard’s baby.’
In his early fifties, with over twenty years under his belt as a psychiatrist, little shocked Amos Ebert. He schooled his expression while searching for an appropriate response, discarding the ones that came first to mind, such as What the fuck? Are you insane? or the obvious How the hell did that happen? He settled on ‘Is this something you want?’
‘Yeah. No one’s going to talk me out of it.’
‘Rachel, it’s your body and your decision.’
‘People will judge me.’
‘If you tell them your brother was the father, that’s true.’ He’d worked with Rachel for nearly ten years. Had sessions with both her and Lenore − those had taxed his considerable talents. He’d met Richard on numerous occasions. Sitting here now with Rachel he realized that this very intelligent girl had deliberately, and until recently successfully, concealed at least one important aspect of her life. ‘How long had you and Richard been intimate?’
‘What makes you assume that?’ she said, her green eyes wide, the hint of a smile on her lips. ‘I could be more like Lenore than you think. You know, the turkey baster method.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, remembering her staid brother. Probably the only person in the world who genuinely cared for Rachel.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t his fault. I’m the bad one. He never wanted to do it. He would have stopped if I’d let him.’
Dr Ebert listened to classic Rachel, self-hating and vulnerable. This made sense. On more than one occasion − the first time when she was twelve − Rachel had attempted to seduce him. Her efforts had been clumsy and motivated by an intense need to feel wanted, to fill an aching void and stem her emotional free fall. Resisting and redirecting her urges without leaving her feeling rejected took skill, which her young brother would not have had. Now, in the setting of Richard’s murder, and her pregnancy, this material needed to be explored. ‘When did you and Richard start—’
‘Fucking?’
He gave her the hint of a smile. ‘I was going for something softer.’
‘I was twelve and he was fifteen.’
Ebert held his breath. Had she revealed any of this when she was still a minor, he would have been bound to report it to youth services. She was now nineteen and that wouldn’t be necessary. ‘So all this time?’
‘No. Like I said, it was me. He did it for me. I was always the instigator. It would make me feel better, at least for a little. I’m such a piece of shit. What sort of person makes her brother do that?’
‘One in a lot of pain,’ he offered. ‘I am curious as to why this is the first time you’ve brought this up.’
‘Yeah.’ She pushed back against the wall and ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it off her face. ‘Dr Ebert, you’ve been good to me, and I know I’ve pulled a lot of stunts. Like even now, I’m sure you had appointments and stuff, and here you are in the middle of the day … and yes, I know Mom had you on a retainer. And when all of this is figured out, I still want you to be my psychiatrist.’
He felt a question in her words. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Rachel.’
‘Good. I couldn’t tell you before.’
‘Because of your ages?’
‘Yeah. I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.’
He laughed. ‘No, you are definitely not stupid. So, going with that, let’s talk about what comes next.’
Her mouth gaped. She saw Richard, the blood. She felt him in her arms, his soft hair.
‘Rachel,’ Ebert said. His voice direct. ‘Stay in the present. Tell me what’s going on.’
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
He shouted back, ‘We’re in session.’
The door opened. ‘I’m sorry.’ A male nurse in Silver Glen navy scrubs poked his head in the door. ‘There’s a detective who wants to talk to Rachel.’
Rachel blinked. She saw Dr Ebert and the nurse. She also saw Richard’s blue eyes staring into hers, as if it were happening again.
‘Not a good time,’ Ebert said. ‘She’s not ready for that.’
‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘Is it that woman?’
‘It’s a Detective Perez.’
‘Short, dark poodle hair, kind of stocky?’ Rachel asked.
‘Yeah.’
She looked at Ebert. ‘I’ll talk to her.’
‘You’re certain?’ Ebert asked.
‘Yeah.’ As the nurse left, she added, ‘But I’m not going to tell her about Richard and me, and I don’t want you to either.’
‘You got it.’
‘Don’t write it down anywhere. This has got to stay secret … God.’
‘What?’
‘I’m turning into my mother. You’ll stay?’
‘I think it’s a good idea.’
The door opened and the nurse returned with Detective Perez. She looked at Dr Ebert seated in front of the platform bed and then at Rachel, pressed back against the wall.
‘I want Dr Ebert here,’ Rachel said, looking at Mattie.
Mattie nodded and extended her hand. She and the doctor shook. ‘Do you have a card?’ she asked, offering him one of hers.
‘Yes.’
She tucked his away and looked around the sparsely furnished room for a place to sit.
‘I’ll get a chair,’ the nurse said from the door.
‘They don’t let you have things that aren’t bolted down,’ Rachel offered. ‘Or maybe it’s just me. I’ve been here before … my reputation precedes me.’ She smiled at Ebert.
‘How are you doing?’ Mattie asked.
‘Honestly, I don’t know.’ She glanced at Ebert. ‘I’m not suicidal, not now.’
‘Good,’ he said, as the nurse returned with a chunky wooden chair.
‘Let me know when you’re done,’ the nurse said. ‘I’ll come and take it away.’
‘Thanks.’ Mattie waited for the nurse to leave. She glanced around the room, noting the dome camera in the ceiling. ‘They tape the patients?’ she asked the psychiatrist.
‘Sometimes. If they’re particularly concerned that someone might try to hurt themselves, but it’s not routine.’
‘Are they taping now?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but just video, not audio.’
‘I see.’ She wondered if a subpoena for the tapes of Rachel would bear fruit. The hospital would push back with patient confidentiality. ‘Rachel, I need to ask you about last night and I’d like to tape this interview. Will you be OK with that?’
‘We’ll see,’ Rachel said.
‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘Sure, go ahead. Yes.’
Mattie pulled out a tiny digital recorder and clicked it on. ‘This is Detective Mattie Perez.’ She stated the time and date, who was present and where they were. ‘Rachel, I’d like you to tell me everything you remember about last night.’
Done to Death Page 15
