Shrink Rap

by Robert B. Parker

  “So, I’m seeing another shrink,” I said. “Dr. Copeland, to help me understand the other shrink.”

  “Good shrink, bad shrink,” Richie said.

  “Exactly,” I said, “and the ploy with the bad shrink is to tell him as much truth about my problems as I can so it’ll ring true.”

  Richie drank some coffee.

  “And the good shrink asked me about us, and I said we were a democracy, not a kingdom. And he asked me how that made me feel and I cried.”

  Richie looked at me over the half-raised coffee cup.

  “That sounds suspiciously like therapy,” Richie said.

  “I know. He keeps doing that to me.”

  “Why did you cry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does the good shrink have any thoughts?”

  “We haven’t talked about it,” I said. “But it came up in Dr. Melvin’s office and he suggested that I wanted you to be like my father, but I didn’t want to be like my mother.”

  “You sure he hasn’t penetrated your disguise?” Richie said.

  Rosie sniffed at Richie’s coffee and snapped her head away. Hot.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “About why you cried?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you mean about it not being a kingdom,” Richie said.

  “I meant you weren’t in charge,” I said. “That we shared responsibility equally.”

  “And then you cried?”

  “Yes.”

  “I assume you were crying because I wasn’t in charge and we shared responsibility equally.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why would I cry about that?”

  “I’m not licensed in this area,” Richie said. “I just figure you say something, then you cry, it’s probably what you said that’s making you cry.”

  “You think I didn’t want responsibility?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think, I want to be like my mother?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Richie said.

  “I’m not like my mother,” I said.

  “I know,” Richie said. “I never thought I was like your father.”

  “You weren’t,” I said.

  I felt my eyes begin to fill up.

  “Goddamn it,” I said. “Goddamn it.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Richie said.

  I nodded.

  “You asked,” Richie said.

  “I know,” I said. “I know I fucking asked.”

  Richie put his coffee cup down and carefully put Rosie on the floor and stood.

  “I think Rosie and I will be going now,” he said.

  I was dabbing at my eyes with a paper napkin. Richie got Rosie’s leash from the hook on the back of the door and put it on. Rosie jumped around with excitement. She was going out.

  “I’m sorry you feel bad,” Richie said.

  “Don’t let that goddamned Carrie LeCluck order my dog around,” I said.

  “LeClair,” Richie said. “She doesn’t order Rosie.”

  My voice was too shaky. I shook my head.

  “Call me if you need to,” Richie said.

  I was struggling not to cry a loud “boo hoo” cry. I shook my head again.

  “Or not,” Richie said and left with Rosie.

  Chapter 45

  When Rosie was gone I missed her. I also usually had a nag of guilty pleasure that I was for a short time responsible for no one but myself. This time I wasn’t so sure being entirely alone with myself was something I wanted. It gave me time to think. And thinking led me to wondering about myself and my life and the history of my marriage and whether there might be something wrong with me. Was I unable to love anyone enough to keep them?

  To be doing something, I called Brian Kelly. He said the black Saab driven by Dirk Beals’s friend was registered to Barry Clay, M.D., with an address in the Back Bay. He also said the lab had not yet processed the pictures, but that he had studied the nude one.

  “Am I invited to the wedding?” I said.

  “Of course, unless you plan to talk a lot about our sex life.”

  “Yours and mine? Only to the bride.”

  “Well, at least speak well of it.”

  “It’s been so long, I forgot,” I said.

  “You were thrilled,” Brian said.

  We hung up and I added Barry Clay’s name to my list. I wasn’t really quite sure what it was a list of. Possibilities, maybe. I put the list away and got another cup of coffee and took it with me to my easel. I worked for a while on the Weeks Footbridge painting. I wanted very much to get the sense of arching tranquillity that I always saw when I looked at the bridge live. I tried changing the perspective of the river’s edge looking below the bridge toward Cambridge.

  Ever since the marriage had stopped working, I had tried to figure out what was wrong with Richie. Now I was forced, even when I was keeping busy, during momentary lapses when I couldn’t avoid it, to wonder what, perhaps, was wrong with me. It was unpleasant to think about. It interfered with my concentration.

  At ten o’clock Los Angeles time I put my brushes away and called Tony Gault again. He had just stepped out of the office. She’d give him my message as soon as he came back. I hung up and walked the bright length of my loft a couple of times. It was perfectly silent. I was the only life in the place.

  The phone rang. I started to pick it up, stopped myself, and held back until it had rung twice more.

  I picked it up and said hello. It was Spike.

  “I took Melanie Joan over to the David Brudnoy show last night. Melvin was watching us from across the street.”

  “Did you do anything?”

  “I started across the street but Melanie Joan screamed at me not to leave her alone, and Melvin got in somebody’s car and they drove off.”

  “What car?”

  “Black Saab sedan, Mass plates,” Spike said. He gave me the plate numbers.

  “Barry Clay,” I said.

  “You know already,” Spike said.

  “I’m a detective.”

  “Probably the world’s cutest,” Spike said.

  “If I’m so fucking cute,” I said, “why can’t I hang onto a man?”

  “You’re hanging onto me,” Spike said.

  “I was thinking more of the heterosexual persuasion.”

  “You can’t have everything,” Spike said.

  “Well, okay, will you marry me?” I said.

  “God, no,” Spike said. “But I’ll be your walker, if you’d like.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I said. “What was your plan if Melanie Joan hadn’t screamed at you, and Melvin hadn’t driven away.”

  “I was going to clean his clock,” Spike said.

  “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “If you, as her agent, assault somebody,” I said, “it makes Melanie Joan liable. Dr. Melvin is just the sort of creepy crawly that would sue her.”

  “But I can assault someone to protect her,” Spike said.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But only that.”

  “Well,” Spike said, “you certainly aren’t any fun.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We hung up. I got out my phone book and looked up Barry Clay, M.D. He was an allergist with offices in Brookline. So what? I looked at my list of possibilities again. I could go see the woman who drove the car registered to Augustus J. Walsh, or the woman driving the Acura, who lived in Groveland, and whose name was Sally Millwood. Or I could hang around the empty loft and think about what was wrong with me. I decided I’d rather drive to Winchester than Groveland, so I put my gun in my purse and went.

  Chapter 46

  No one was home at the Augustus J. Walsh home, which was on a small cul-de-sac called Raleigh Terrace, off of Route 3. A neighbor told me they were in Florida for the winter but she didn’t know where. So it was Groveland after all.

  The town is located west of Newburyport and south of Haver
hill, and fifteen miles from nowhere. I got directions at Jerry’s Convenience store in downtown Groveland. Actually, Jerry’s Convenience appeared to be downtown Groveland.

  Sally Millwood’s house was small and gray-shingled. There was no garage. The driveway was two-wheel ruts in the lawn, and the Acura I’d seen at Dr. Melvin’s was parked there. Parked behind it was a black Ford pickup.

  A young man in work boots, blue jeans, and a white tee shirt opened the door for me. He had Semper Fi tattooed in blue script on his left forearm, and his long hair was pulled back into a pony-tail. The hair was held in place by a twisted rubber band. He stared at me without speaking.

  “Is Sally Millwood here?” I said.

  He stared at me for another long moment.

  “Sally’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Are you Mr. Millwood?”

  He shook his head.

  “Robert Benedetto,” he said. “We lived here together.”

  “Mr. Benedetto, I’m sorry, but can you talk with me for a minute?”

  “About what?”

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “I need to know a little about Sally’s death.”

  He looked at me some more. There was no expression in his eyes. Then he stepped out of the house and closed the door.

  “House is a mess,” he said. “Whaddya want to know.”

  “How did she die?” I said.

  “Drug overdose, they said.”

  “Who said?”

  “Ambulance people.”

  “Was there an autopsy?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who found her?”

  He paused, took a packet of Marlboros out of his back pocket, lit one, and put the pack away. Without taking the cigarette from his mouth, he inhaled a lot of smoke and let it out.

  “I did,” he said.

  “And you called?”

  “Cops.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Cops came and took a look at her and right away called the ambulance. Ambulance guys said she had no pulse and it looked like she’d OD’d.”

  “Did they take her to a hospital?”

  “Haverhill,” he said. “Mary Murphy.”

  “Did she use drugs?”

  He shook his head.

  “None?”

  He shook his head again, squinting a little as the cigarette smoke drifted up past his eyes.

  “So how do you explain the overdose.”

  “She didn’t have no overdose,” he said.

  “Then what did she die of?”

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked the ashes off it, and put it back in his mouth and took a long drag on it. The smoke came out with his words.

  “I don’t know. I just know she never used no drugs. I was thinking maybe it might be like one of those kids they find dead in bed.”

  “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,” I said.

  “Yeah, that. I figure maybe it can happen to grown-ups.”

  “Did you tell people this?”

  “I ain’t her husband. They don’t want to hear me. I said they should cut her open, find out what killed her. But her old lady said no. Nobody’s gonna cut up her baby. So they said it was a drug OD and buried her.”

  “Did she see a doctor at the hospital?”

  “Figueredo,” Benedetto said. “Puerto Rican guy. Dr. Figueredo.”

  All of this was recited to me like someone doing rote memory exercises.

  “And she’s been a patient of Dr. Melvin’s in Boston.”

  “She was seeing some guy down there. Dr. Worthy sent her to him. She was kinda depressed.”

  “And Dr. Worthy is?”

  “Her gyno.”

  “Is he here in town?”

  “Haverhill,” Benedetto said.

  “At Mary Murphy Hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “It was Thursday,” Benedetto said. “Two Thursdays ago. I remember because she always seen the shrink in Boston on Thursdays so she’d be home late.”

  “And was she late that night?”

  “I don’t know. We had a softball banquet. When I come home I found her in bed.”

  “Can you tell me what made you call the police?” I said.

  “She was all sweaty and her skin was pale and she felt cold and I couldn’t hear her breathing.”

  “Did you tell the police she didn’t do drugs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “They sort of shrugged. I figure they thought she did but I didn’t know it.”

  “And nobody followed up?”

  “Small-town cops,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I am very sorry you had to talk about it all again,” I said. “It must be awful for you.”

  “It is,” he said in his expressionless voice.

  Chapter 47

  Dr. Figueredo was dark-haired and pale-skinned with the shadow of a close-shaved dark beard. He spoke with no accent.

  “Figueredo is not a Puerto Rican name,” I said.

  “I am Brazilian,” he said. “Why do you say that?”

  “I was told you were Puerto Rican.”

  Dr. Figueredo smiled.

  “We all look alike,” he said. “What would you like to know about Sally Millwood?”

  “You saw her when she arrived in the emergency room?”

  “I did.”

  “Was she alive?”

  “No.”

  “I know there was no autopsy, but could you speculate on what killed her?”

  “My guess would be drug overdose.”

  “Because?” I said.

  “Because I’ve seen a lot of them and you develop a feel. She was young, in good health, untraumatized, and died suddenly.”

  “But you have no hard medical evidence.”

  “Not without an autopsy.”

  “Could it have been suicide?”

  “Of course it could, but usually there’s a note or something. Most suicides don’t really wish to go quietly into that good night,” Dr. Figueredo said.

  “Did you know she was seeing a psychiatrist?”

  “No.”

  “Her gynecologist was a doctor named Worthy. Do you know him?”

  “I know he’s on staff here.”

  “And you didn’t talk with him.”

  “Ms. Randall,” Dr. Figueredo said. “We get people brought in here dead every day. We probably have ten drug ODs a week.” He wasn’t angry. His voice sounded a little sad. “We don’t have much money and the administration is on our collective asses to keep costs down. What resources we have we devote mostly to the living.”

  “Seems the right choice,” I said. “Do you know where Dr. Worthy has his office?”

  “I’m sorry I don’t,” Dr. Figueredo said. “Check with the information desk in the lobby.”

  Dr. Worthy was a slight man in full country-doctor getup. White hair, gold-rimmed glasses, three-piece tweed suit, dark wing-tip shoes. He even had a gold watch chain across the middle of his vest.

  “Thanks for squeezing me in,” I said.

  He smiled at me as he had smiled at a thousand women. There there, dear, nothing to worry about. But not a man to waste time.

  “What can I help you with,” he said.

  “You were Sally Millwood’s gynecologist,” I said.

  He nodded, smiling.

  “You know she’s dead.”

  He nodded again, looking sad.

  “Did you send her to a see a psychiatrist?” I said.

  “I guess confidentiality is not a serious issue here,” he said.

  “I know she was seeing him. Why did you send her?”

  “She was depressed,” Dr. Worthy said. “I tried her on Prozac for a while…”

  He shook his head and shrugged a little. What’s a doctor to do?

  “And was it you who chose Dr. Melvin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why him?
”

  “I knew him,” Worthy said. “We interned together at Mt. Auburn.”

  “Have you remained in touch?”

  “No. It was just a name I knew. I looked him up in the phone book.”

  “So you don’t really know him?” I said.

  “Not really, just a man I knew casually twenty-five years ago.”

  “How’d you know he was good?”

  “Well. He went to Harvard Med. He’s licensed. Why wouldn’t he be good?”

  That road led me nowhere so I turned off it.

  “Did you know a doctor named Barry Clay?” I said.

  “No, did he go to Harvard?”

  “Just a thought,” I said. “Do you have any idea why she might have been depressed.”

  “She said she was having trouble with her boyfriend.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I said.

  “She didn’t really specify, just that they weren’t getting along and it was making her unhappy.”

  “Did you see her after she started seeing Dr. Melvin?”

  “I don’t really recall,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but…”

  He stood.

  “I do have an office full of patients,” he said.

  I thanked him and left. As I passed through his waiting room I saw that it was in fact full of patients. I was very glad I wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 48

  Kim Crawford and I took Sam for a walk through West Concord. It was cold and rainy with a spatter of snow mixed in with the rain.

  “I’m sorry, Kim, but I’m going to have to be a little more aggressive about you and Dr. Melvin.”

  “What?”

  “Were you and he ever intimate?” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Were you and he ever intimate?”

  “Of course not.”

  The Akita paused to sniff at the base of a bush. We waited while he did so. Given the size of the Akita and the size of Kim Crawford, I’m not sure we had a choice.

  “It would hardly be the first time it happened,” I said. “Psychotherapy is an intimate undertaking. It happens a lot.”

  She shook her head. The Akita finished sniffing and we moved on.

  “Dr. Melvin has been intimate with other patients,” I said.

  I didn’t actually know that, though obviously he had been intimate with a former patient, Melanie Joan, and besides, detection is a lying business.

  “He wouldn’t,” Kim said.