by Nancy Geary
He ran his fingers through his hair and jutted out his jaw. “She tried to cut me off. Guess my health insurance ran out. Eighteen months. That was all the coverage I could get after I left my job. How’s that for ironic? I leave because I’m sick and I can’t do my job, and then I can’t get better because I’ve got no insurance. Doctors are all about wanting to help, but when the dollars aren’t there, the altruism disappears. I let her know that terminating my treatment was unacceptable. I relied on her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she wasn’t just going to walk away. I wasn’t going to let her.” His eyes opened wider, and Lucy could see a prominent vein in his forehead. “She was the only person who made me feel that I had a fighting chance here. And I was doing what she said. I was taking my meds. She couldn’t just shut her door and say good-bye.” He banged his fist on the table. “I needed her.”
She had an image of crazy people as something else entirely: nonlinear, unresponsive, and dirty. They were people who drooled. She’d seen his house, seen the state of his bathroom. She’d had multiple reminders that something about him was more than a little off. But listening to his answers, hearing his frustration, she thought he seemed coherent, even rational. “So what did you do?”
“I told the bitch she couldn’t turn me away. Period. That was when she said I was frightening her.”
“Did you threaten her?”
“I told her she was keeping me alive. That if she stopped helping me, I couldn’t be responsible. If that’s a threat, then yes, I threatened her.”
“Did you ever tell her you would hurt her or kill her?”
“That’s what she said in court. I remember. She gave some pathetic speech about how I was stalking her. All I wanted was help! All I wanted was for her not to walk away! Everyone else had. The judge appointed some scumbag to represent me, some guy who treated me like I was nuts. Wouldn’t shake my hand. Like my problems were contagious.” He laughed. “And my asshole attorney never even asked me that question, what you’ve just asked, what I’d done or not done. Nobody wanted to know my version of events. Who would believe my story anyway? Not over a doctor.”
“What happened?”
“I was told to stay away, that I could be arrested if I showed up at either her office or her home. But she agreed to have telephone sessions. At least we could talk.”
“How was that?”
“Hard. Try confessing to a telephone receiver. Try getting an ounce of compassion from a dial tone. But then she got me started on ECT.” He scraped his fingernails along the top of the table, making a scratching sound. “You ever tried it?”
Lucy shook her head. She knew nothing of electroconvulsive therapy, except what she’d seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but it had to be the treatment of last resort. She couldn’t imagine subjecting herself or anyone she cared about to that procedure if there were alternatives.
“Well, let me tell you. Electrodes strapped to your skull sending electromagnetic waves into your brain. Being anesthetized again and again and again so that you lie perfectly still. Waking up with a dry mouth and pain at your temples wondering where the hell you are and what’s happening. Realizing that days have passed and you have no idea what you’ve done, what you’ve eaten, whether you’ve taken a shit. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?”
Again Lucy thought of Aidan. He’d received no professional care for his problems. By and large he’d suffered in silence. The O’Malleys had neither the propensity nor the financial resources to explore alternatives or seek second opinions. The Somerville community’s remedy was a good night’s rest, a proper breakfast, and a little exercise—or confession. Her neighbors placed their problems in Father MacGregor’s hands, turning to the Church as the ultimate cure-all. Might Aidan have survived with the proper medical help?
“No, it doesn’t,” she replied. “I’m sorry you had to go through it.” Then, remembering her line of questions, she asked, “So when did Dr. Reese begin seeing you in person again?”
“Couple of months ago. Maybe more. This past winter. I’m bad with dates.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask her. She told me I could come back. I didn’t question the invitation. So I just showed up when she told me, and she welcomed me back with a hug. Held me so fucking tight I thought she was going to break my ribs. Said she missed me. Told me she was really concerned, that she worried about my safety, not her own, that she’d made a mistake to cut me off. That she’d learned from her mistake.”
“Did she elaborate?”
“No.”
“What about payment?”
“She told me to forget it. She said that I shouldn’t be penalized because of some corporate insurance decision.”
“And the restraining order?”
“She promised not to call the cops. She told me no one needed to know. Frankly, I don’t think she wanted Ellery and what’s-her-face, the fat lady shrink, to know I was a patient. She asked me to wait downstairs until just before my appointments so that I wouldn’t loiter in the reception area. I got the feeling she was kind of trying to sneak me in.”
“Did you ask why?”
“I wanted to see her. I needed her help. I didn’t give a shit what her issues were.”
So, after posing a “significant threat,” he’d been literally embraced with no real explanation shortly before Dr. Ellery’s gun was stolen, and while a restraining order was still in effect. Something clearly didn’t make sense. Dr. Reese’s motivation was the missing link. What had been her mistake, and what had she learned? “Where were you on Saturday night?”
His eyes grew larger, and his mouth drooped. In a series of awkward jolts his chin tilted side to side, back and forth. The movement reminded Lucy of a bird at a feeder, the quick, reflexive manner in which its head cocked at the slightest sound. She repeated her question.
“NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!” he screamed suddenly.
The change in volume was alarming, and she was relieved to have been standing against the wall. She wanted as much distance as possible in the tiny room. Work with his anger, she reminded herself. “I didn’t mean to upset you. But I need to know.” She spoke in almost a whisper to heighten the contrast.
“You couldn’t care less how I feel. You and your pals wouldn’t have come stalking me if you cared. Do you know how fucking scary it is to be trapped? What it feels like to be surrounded by hostile fire? Did the police academy make you go through that exercise so you’d know how it felt?” He collapsed back into his chair. “I’d guess not. You’re all the same. Take, plunder, destroy, with nothing to give back. That’s why Dr. Reese was so special.” He got up, turned his back to her, and proceeded to try to pace the length of the room, but it was too small; in one stride, he’d crossed to the other side. Turning back around, he had a confused expression, as if he weren’t sure what to do in such minuscule dimensions. “I don’t remember anything about that night.” He slumped back into the chair.
“Nothing at all?”
He glared at her. “No.”
“That must be scary. I mean, not remembering a whole evening.”
“What would you know?”
Was he working her over, playing her? Was her empathy—her memories of Aidan—getting in the way of productive detective work? Maybe she needed to take a different approach. “Where I come from, people don’t ‘forget’ huge stretches of time. But whether you’re scared to tell me what you know, or whether you’re simply lying as long as you can, I haven’t determined.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t remember. I had ECT and I don’t remember.”
“You’re not honestly going to try that one again, now are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, it worked once with the gun stolen from Dr. Reese’s office suite. So why not use it again, especially since the stakes are a lot higher this time.”
“You want me to tell you I killed her? You’re fuck
ing crazy.”
She leaned over him. Her face was just inches from him. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.”
He slouched forward and hung his head between his knees. Wanting to send a clear signal that she wasn’t buying his act, she turned toward the door, dismissing him. Maybe she’d give him a chance to reflect a bit more. She’d get a drink of water and check in with Jack to see what progress he’d made.
Suddenly she felt a stabbing pain between her shoulder blades. She stumbled, falling forward and banging her face into the corner of the wall. Her vision blurred as stars filled her sight. What had happened? She tried to turn her head, but couldn’t. Calvin had his hand around the back of her neck. He tightened his grip, squeezing his thumb into her artery. With one knee, he repeatedly jabbed her lower back. Each thrust sent a shooting pain up her spine.
Stay calm, she told herself. Don’t do anything rash. Don’t cry out. She immediately thought of her gun, but her arms were pinned, wedged between the walls under the monitor, out of sight. And then she remembered. She’d turned it off, anyway. Until Jack returned, she was on her own, trapped in a soundproof room.
“Just let me go, Calvin,” she heard herself say, although the voice sounded strange, high-pitched and unfamiliar.
He leaned into her, and she could feel his heartbeat on her back. It was racing. Then she felt the cylindrical barrel against her spine. Her gun. Her Glock. She hadn’t even realized he had it. Tears welled in her eyes, and she bit her lip. She’d let down her guard, turned her back on him, and violated the cardinal rule of law enforcement by underestimating her suspect.
He pressed harder.
“Don’t make this worse for yourself. Just let me go. It’ll be all right,” Lucy said, struggling to keep the panic out of her voice.
“No, Detective. It won’t. You hear people talk about a battle with cancer. The war on AIDS. All this false macho military talk. But this is real, like Iraq or Afghanistan. Even Vietnam eventually had a fucking end. Well, I went to fight and lost. You think anyone wants to feel like I do? But depression always wins! So now I get to be a loser as well as a mental case.” He laughed, and she could feel the heat of his breath on her neck. “She’s gone, and there’s no help left. Despite what you might think, even I’m not crazy enough to slaughter the only person who helped me get through the day, who made my situation bearable. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”
“I do.”
“Mine is outside any realm of experience you’ve ever had,” he continued, ignoring her. “You get up every day. You get dressed, eat breakfast, drive your fucking car to your fucking job, go flash your badge and catch some son of a bitch who hacked up some lowlife as part of a bad drug deal. You go home, throw a hot dog in the microwave, watch TV, maybe even get laid. That’s called functioning. That’s what people do. Try living where any one of those tasks becomes a monumental challenge, let alone getting through all of them in a twenty-four-hour period. Just try.”
“There are other doctors, other professionals. She wasn’t the only one.”
“I’ve tried. Dr. Reese was different. She was there any time of the day or night when I was alone, when I got scared, when I couldn’t make my mind be still. She never disappeared. No one has ever been like that to me, you know, stuck around. Especially the last couple of months, we got even closer.”
Keep him engaged, Lucy thought. “Why? What changed recently?”
“Dr. Reese reached out to me,” he replied with what she thought were tears in his voice. Still she couldn’t turn her head. “She reached out to me, wanting to talk. She said she’d realized something, that I was helping her, too. Now she’s dead, and I’m supposed to live with my nightmares. Maybe you do know about that? Everyone’s got those, the voices in your head, the devil torturing your thoughts. If not, maybe I could give you some of mine because I sure as hell can’t handle them all. No, I can’t.”
She heard the click as he unlatched the safety. Oddly, an image of Cyclops flashed in her mind, his wiggling nose, droopy ears, and velvety fur. Who would ever understand the rabbit’s idiosyncrasies, that he liked his carrots peeled and his water mixed with fruit punch- flavored Gatorade? She’d envisioned her own end and had never expected it to be particularly dramatic. No life history flashing before her. She wouldn’t call out to a higher being, or her parents, or someone else she loved. Now apparently she’d been a good futurist. If anyone knew that her last thoughts were of her pet rabbit they wouldn’t even bother to show up for her funeral.
She heard a grinding noise, followed by a deafening explosion and the sound of breaking glass. The building seemed to tremble as the noise reverberated. She felt something wet and warm on her skin, a thick, viscous fluid behind her ears and on one cheek. Opening her eyes, she saw that the walls were covered with blood. Bits of skull. Pieces of brain. And they weren’t hers.
Calvin lay in a heap with his arms crossed underneath his body and her government-issued 9 mm by his side. What remained of his face was awash in red.
“O’Malley . . .” She heard a familiar voice, but from what direction the sound came she couldn’t discern. She tried to focus. Someone stood in the doorway, and now that someone was making his way toward her. “O’Malley,” she heard again. It was Jack.
She let herself collapse to the floor. She had no energy. She couldn’t speak. All she knew was that as she lay on her side hugging her knees to her chest, she was alive.
20
11:15 p.m.
Lucy sat cross-legged in front of the cast-iron stove. She’d lit a fire and, with the door left open, she now stared at the blue flame of the Duraflame log, the only firewood the 7-Eleven sold in May. Beside her, Cyclops nibbled on the piece of kale that she dangled in front of him. Despite the warm evening and the heat generated by the flame, she shivered beneath a bundle of clothes—Venezuelan knit toe-socks, flannel pajamas, and an oversize sweater with worn leather patches on the elbows.
The CD of Andrea Bocelli’s arias concluded, and she glanced at the clock. It was nearly eleven. Archer wouldn’t be back for more than an hour. She’d appreciated that he’d been unable to come to the phone when she’d called. There was something about a dispute with a beer distributor, although she hadn’t asked for details. Leaving a message with Sapphire that she was on her way home was infinitely easier than hearing his voice, facing his question—“How are things going?”—and being unable to bring herself to answer. Fortunately, after their awkward exchange the day before, Sapphire was even more eager to end the conversation than she was, and so had promised to relay the message as soon as he was available.
The telephone rang. She wanted to disregard it, but it might be Jack, or Lieutenant Sage, or someone else from the squad, and she didn’t want to make the situation any worse than it was. She needed to be fine. The last thing she wanted was to be placed on paid leave for post-traumatic stress disorder. She shuddered, thinking again of what might have happened.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded flat, disengaged.
“Lucy, this is your dad.”
For an instant she wanted to hang up. Then, if he called back, she could pretend she wasn’t home. He might think the first responder had been a wrong number. Why had he called tonight, of all nights, when she knew she wouldn’t be able to make pleasantries and small talk to get him off the phone fast enough? He was the master of investigation. She couldn’t fool him. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to confess the truth, how stupid she’d been, how close he’d come to losing a second child.
“Your partner called me. He seems like a good man. Told me what happened today. I understand I’m a very lucky father.”
She wondered how Jack had found him and how he’d then characterized the afternoon’s debacle. He was far from an alarmist, but even the barest of recitations would be shocking.
“Look, we don’t need to rehash what happened in that interrogation today. I’m thankful it was that man’s life and not yours.” His voi
ce cracked. “Perhaps I don’t say as much as I should, or tell you as often as I think it, but I love you very much. And I’m extremely proud of you.”
She felt a burning in the back of her throat. Don’t be, she wanted to say. Her father had been a decorated captain, and then Commissioner, a legend in the Somerville Police Department. “I was an idiot.”
“No, Lucy,” he replied matter-of-factly. “You were human. And you know as well as I do that to be human is to have faults. Some are costlier than others, I’ll grant you that. But the important thing is that you learn from your mistakes and that you press on. Sounds trite, I know, but the best of us have had to follow that advice. Saying a couple of Hail Marys along the way wouldn’t hurt either, although don’t tell a soul I suggested that.” He chuckled.
“I don’t know how the squad can trust me or trust my judgment.”
“Harper dismissed any second-guessing of your conduct. He told me that you’d done a great job apprehending the guy, and that you’ve done nothing but a stellar job since you signed on with the Homicide Unit. Apparently your superiors agree.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“These guys have been around a long time. Your partner’s a seasoned pro. What happened today is a fluke, maybe partly due to inexperience, maybe partly due to näiveté or even carelessness, but a fluke nonetheless.”
She struggled to think of something to say. They were silent on the line, and she could hear the television set in the background. Several Christmases ago, her father had given her mother an enormous satellite dish, expanding exponentially the possibilities for home viewing. In order for them to get their money’s worth, the television seemed to hum constantly. Judging from the clapping noise, she guessed that it was a rerun of Wheel of Fortune, and wondered whether her mother was part of this conversation, too. Mrs. O’Malley loved game shows.
“I haven’t regretted a single day I served on the force. It has employed the best people I know—men and women both—and it’s one of the finest callings anyone can have. The danger comes with doing a noble job and doing it well. When you enrolled in the police academy after college, your mother and I were both scared as hell and proud as any two parents could possibly be. You’re our baby. We want you to be safe. We want you to be smart.”
