The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  “I own two. One belonged to my grandfather.”

  “Was he an outdoorsy type?” I asked.

  “Who ever heard of a Jewish outdoorsy type? He was an accountant.”

  “Why do you have his ax?”

  “Why not? The point is, I know whether or not I own an ax.”

  “You live in a high-rise. When do you chop wood?”

  She took a sip of coffee and gave me a withering look. “Why would anyone leave a bloody ax on your doorstep?”

  “How would I know, Helene?”

  “Was this the ax that killed the girl in the paper? The one they found in the car?”

  “I think so.”

  “And your fingerprints are all over it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they think you did it?”

  “I don’t think so. They said they have a suspect. Someone besides me. Jackson came by with a bunch of mug shots yesterday. He said they’d have an arrest by the end of the day. He didn’t mention that to you?”

  “He didn’t say anything about arresting anyone else. He just asked questions about you.”

  “That must have been disquieting.”

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  “I think he believes I know who did it.”

  “Well, do you?” She folded her hands and looked squarely at me.

  “Of course not. I do not personally know any ax murderers. And if I did, I would have said so by now. Do you really think I’m going to keep something like that to myself? Come on, Helene.”

  “Well,” she waved her hand dismissively “I had to ask. I thought maybe it was a patient of yours or something.”

  Hey. That hadn’t dawned on me.

  “Your luck hasn’t been too good lately,” she was saying. “You seem to have a knack for attracting problem cases.”

  I smiled a sardonic thanks.

  “Did you know the girl? What was her name?”

  “Drew,” I said. “Drew Sturdivant. I didn’t know her.”

  “Wasn’t she a student?”

  I nodded. “But not here. She goes to El Centro. Went to El Centro.”

  I drank some tea.

  “Did you tell them anything about last year?” I asked, hoping she hadn’t. “Jackson and…what was the other guy’s name?”

  “McKnight. Of course not. I’m on your side, remember?”

  “I forget sometimes.”

  “Oh, don’t be absurd. What are you going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “About the girl? And the ax? Aren’t you going to try to find out how that ax ended up on your front porch?”

  I stirred my tea. “I was hoping the police would do that.”

  “They probably will. But unlike me, they’re not on your side. And they don’t share your motivation. If it was one of your patients, you’re liable.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe they’ve already arrested the guy.”

  “Have you called Jackson today?” she asked.

  “I’m avoiding Jackson. Why would I call him?”

  “He’s got your fate in his hands. I wouldn’t make an enemy out of him if I were you. I’d become the man’s best friend.”

  She had a point.

  “Or try McKnight,” she said. “He seemed nice.”

  “Nice? A DPD detective?”

  “They’re just doing their jobs, Dylan.”

  I nodded, conceding the point.

  “His first name is Mike. He left me his number.”

  She wrote it down for me.

  “Mike McKnight,” I said. “Okay. I’ll call him after class.”

  “And look through your client files,” she said as I left. “That would make the most sense.”

  She was right. The first thing I’d learned from Helene, years ago in our first clinical supervision session, had become a slogan, almost, over the years. “Never forget,” she’d said, “that you’re working with unstable people. Unstable people do unpredictable things.”

  I put in a message for Mike McKnight and left to teach my class.

  Unstable people do unpredictable things. Indeed.

  9

  In the SMU counseling clinic, the catalog of unstable people runs the gamut. And I’m not talking about the patients. Aside from me—with my obsessive-compulsive inclinations and possible auditory and visual hallucinations—there is Marci, the office manager, whose savage mood swings hold us all in quaking fear of committing even the tiniest paperwork transgression; John Mulvaney, whose profound personality limitations finally disqualified him from seeing patients at all; and Kay-Ann, our eating disorder specialist, who lives on bagels and cream cheese and never, ever goes anywhere without a bag of peanut M&Ms, a pack of cigarettes, and a generous supply of chewing gum. Sugarless, of course.

  I could go on. Suffice it to say, we are not an impressive bunch.

  Our patient diagnoses are typical of a college population. Boyfriend problems, girlfriend problems, loads of anxiety, panic disorder, bipolar disorder, depression ranging from mild to severe to psychotic, the full list of eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating, purging, laxative abuse, and any other noxious way to disrupt the simple act of dining), abuse of and addiction to a wild variety of substances—everything from beer to prescription drugs to Elmer’s glue. And good old-fashioned homesickness. Lots to choose from.

  I started with my active files. There were about thirty of them in my drawer at the moment.

  A close inspection, word by word, of every single one of my files yielded exactly zippo. I had no patients with homicidal ideation, no patients who were experiencing angry outbursts or violent fantasies. No patients who had mentioned Drew Sturdivant or anyone like her, or who had any known connections to El Centro College. I’d have to find out the name of her hometown. Maybe someone went to high school with her or something. In my previous year’s trouble, I’d run across two students who were having recurrent Peter Terry dreams. But he had apparently stayed away from this group of kids so far. I saw no hint of him in the files.

  My next step was to move to my archived files, which were stored electronically as well as warehoused in boxes somewhere. State regulations require that counseling records be kept for seven years. Which is a lot of files in a clinic the size of ours.

  To get to my archived files I had to get past Marci. I crossed my fingers and prayed for a depressed phase. She was much easier to deal with in that incarnation. Downright limp, in point of fact. Her manic swing was the dangerous one.

  One glimpse of Marci and I knew I was in luck. She wore no makeup, and her hair was pulled back in a messy, greasy bun. Her sweater was wrong-side out, and she wore tube socks and Birkenstocks with her dress instead of her regulation L’eggs panty hose and navy, round-toed pumps.

  She was sitting at her desk staring into space.

  “Morning, Marci,” I said brightly.

  She looked up, her eyes vague. “Is it still morning?”

  “Actually, no. My mistake. It’s twelve thirty.” I plunged ahead. “Listen, I need to take a look at my archived files. Mind if I squeeze past you and log in?”

  The archive computer was kept under lock and key in a tiny office behind Marci’s. Officially, she was the only one with the password. Which was Sinatra, by the way, the name of her choleric gray cat. I had cracked that code with about fifteen seconds of thought a few years ago.

  “Did you talk to John?” she asked.

  “John who?”

  “Dr. Mulvaney. He asked about you today.”

  “Terrific. What did he want?”

  “Whether you were in today. He wanted to know if you had patients today.”

  “I don’t work in the clinic on Mondays.”

  “What is today? I thought it was Tuesday.”

  “No, Marci. It’s Monday. All day long. So how about it? Can I take a look?”

  “You should stop in and say hello to him. I think he’s lonely.” She began to cry, long drippy tears sliding down her face. Someone nee
ded to medicate the woman.

  “I’ll do that on my way out,” I said. “Now how about logging me in back there?”

  She blew her nose and turned wordlessly, slumping her way into the back office and typing in the super-secret password.

  I squeezed past her and scooted into the chair, turning my back as quickly as possible to let her know our dynamic little conversation was over.

  There were about two hundred archived files logged under my name. I’d never get through them all today. But I was hoping a name, at least, would jog my memory. They were sorted by name and by date, so I started with the most recent ones first.

  I was a few files into my scan when my cell phone rang.

  “Dylan Foster,” I said.

  “Dr. Foster. Mike McKnight. Returning your call.”

  I shut the door and tried to speak quietly. “Detective. Thanks so much for calling me back.”

  “No sweat. What can I do for you?”

  He sounded like a pretty regular guy. Not too hostile.

  “I’m wondering if you’ve made an arrest in the Sturdivant case. Detective Jackson said yesterday you had a suspect.”

  “We do have a suspect. But we have not yet apprehended him.”

  “Can you tell me his name?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Can you tell me why not?” I was trying to muster some reasonable facsimile of politeness, but I was coming at this with no sleep and a terrible attitude. So it was a stretch.

  “We’re trying to preserve the chain of evidence, Dr. Foster.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, we’re working to establish connections in this case.”

  “As in, connections to me.”

  “Among others, yes.”

  “Can you tell me why he hasn’t been arrested yet?”

  “His location is yet to be ascertained.”

  I wondered if they taught classes at the police academy about answering questions while conveying essentially no information. Obtuse Conversation 101.

  “You mean, you don’t know where he is,” I said.

  “That is correct.”

  “So this nut job is still on the loose.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Listen, Detective, I understand your situation. I really do. But I am a little worried about my own safety here. I really feel I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Tell you what.” I heard him tapping on his desk. “I can do this for you. Let me speak with Detective Jackson. If he’s cool we’ll meet with you and explain the status of the case. Maybe that will jar your memory. How’s two thirty sound?”

  “I’m in class until five. How about five thirty?”

  “Your office?” he asked.

  Absolutely not. “How about I come to you?”

  He gave me directions. We hung up and I returned to my files.

  Another hour of looking turned up little. I culled a few names of patients with anger problems. One boy had talked about violent dreams involving bludgeoning his girlfriend to death. That could be something. I checked his intake sheet again. He was a sophomore now. A psych major, naturally.

  I called the registrar’s office and asked about his schedule. He’d been in John Mulvaney’s lab this morning.

  The stars were aligning against me. Like it or not, I was going to have to have a conversation with Mulvaney.

  When dealing with a socially inappropriate misfit, it’s very important to project an air of thorough unavailability. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was encourage any weird little fantasy John Mulvaney might be having about the two of us. I’d cut him off a year ago, effectively shutting that problem down before it took root. Last weekend’s conversation at the mall, though, seemed way off to me, like something had watered that weed and it had somehow sprung back to life.

  I’d rather have set my face on fire than seek the man out, especially if he’d been sniffing around about me already today, but there it was.

  I checked my watch. It was a quarter to two. I had time to stop by his office on my way to class.

  John’s office is in the clinic rather than in Hyer Hall with most of the rest of the faculty, which was one reason we rarely ran into one another. His office days tended to coincide with my teaching days.

  His door was closed. I was tempted to take this as a sign from the Lord Himself that I was off the hook. But I knew it was just wishful thinking. I knocked before giving myself a chance to slip away.

  I heard the violent slide of a chair against linoleum as he pushed away from his desk. The noise came almost immediately after my knock, as if I’d startled him or something, and was followed by a hasty shuffling. A few seconds later, John opened his door a crack and looked out at me. His face was flushed and he was sucking wind like he’d just lugged a block of concrete across the floor.

  “Hi, John. Sorry to interrupt you.”

  As usual, he looked at my chin and said, “Okay.”

  “Can I come in for a minute?”

  He turned and looked back into his office, then back at my chin. “Okay.” He opened the door.

  I walked in and was reminded immediately of the other reason I never come near this office.

  In John’s lab space were a dozen or so open-top aquariums housing a variety of rodents—rats, mice, and guinea pigs, mainly—nesting in mounded bedding. Bags of Purina Mouse Chow, sacks of cedar shavings, bottles of distilled water—all the necessary provisions—were stacked on dusty Formica shelving.

  John is a research psychologist, part of that mutant strain of humans who are interested enough in human behavior to study psychology but who do not know how to interact with their own kind. John has all the social skills of a sack of potatoes. (And the physique to match, by the way. Twenty pounds of potatoes in a ten-pound sack.)

  Which was why he’d been such an abject failure in his early forays into clinical work. I can’t remember who it was that decided that the entire psychology faculty needed to rotate through the clinic—probably Helene—but this optimistic little experiment had not worked out in John’s case. He hadn’t gotten past the first session with any patient in an entire semester of clinical work. He’d run them off, one by one, with his colossal ineptitude.

  John was sweating through his shirt. His office was freezing, though. I guess the rats liked it that way.

  He paced the room for a second, finally stopping to stand uncomfortably behind his desk, a nice safe stretch of desk between us.

  “I just wanted to ask a quick question,” I said. “Was Lance Richardson in class this morning?”

  “Lance,” he repeated. “Richardson? I don’t know.”

  “He’s in your eight o’clock lab, John. There can’t be more than six people in there.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I don’t know their names.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glanced at his computer screen, and then looked down at his desk. “He could have been there.”

  I looked around the room. Each glass enclosure had a laminated label on it with the rodents’ names. The one next to me housed Ozzie and Harriet.

  “Don’t you take roll?” I asked.

  “Usually.”

  “Did you take roll this morning?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Jesus provides patience for His followers during moments like these. I, of course, was too irritated to wait for mine to arrive.

  “Well, if you remember one way or another, could you send me an e-mail and let me know? And if he was there, I’d like to know how he seemed to you.”

  “How he seemed?”

  “You know, his manner. Did he seem normal? Anything out of the ordinary? Were his clothes neat? Did he look rested or tired? Things like that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Right.” I turned to leave, smiling a fake, hostile smile I reserve for such occasions. “Thanks, John. I’ll let myself out.”

  I was alm
ost out the door when he did another last-minute verbal tackle.

  “How was your weekend?” he asked.

  I turned and stared at him.

  “Mine was pretty good,” he said.

  I watched his face get red. He’d panicked himself by starting an ordinary conversation.

  “Normal. Just like any normal weekend.”

  “How was the movie?” I asked.

  I didn’t really care, of course, but the poor guy was just so pitiful. Watching him try to participate in a simple dialogue was like watching an insect impaled by a pin. You just want to stomp the poor thing and put it out of its misery.

  “Movie?”

  “You said you were going to see an art film, right? At the Inwood?”

  “Oh. The movie. Yeah, it was good. Very artistic.”

  “That’s great, John.” I turned to leave again. “Okay. Thanks again.”

  I shut the door and put some yardage between myself and John. Between the rodents and John Mulvaney, I was completely creeped out.

  I made it to class on time, taught a reasonably coherent seminar on differential diagnosis, and then beat it for DPD headquarters to meet with Jackson and McKnight.

  10

  Detective Jackson met me in the huge, sparkling lobby of the new DPD headquarters downtown. He seemed almost lifelike in his natural setting. He walked me past the metal detectors and down the hall to the elevators, greeting cops by name as we passed them, using actual facial expressions and conversing in normal inflections with multi-syllable words.

  The baseboard was stripped away from the wall in the corridor. I pointed at it. “What happened?”

  “Flooding.” He pushed the button for the fifth floor. “Water main. Flooded the whole first floor. Place smelled like mold for a week.” We took a right out of the elevator and walked into a door marked “CAPERS, Homicide.”

  “CAPERS?”

  “Crimes Against Persons.” He opened the squad-room door for me, led me to his desk, and found me a chair, which I took to mean I’d graduated from suspect to normal human being. I looked at the pictures on his desk. Three kids. All girls.

  “Dr. Foster, Detective McKnight.” He nodded toward a tow-headed man in an expensive the whose skin looked as though it had recently been sandblasted. McKnight looked to be about thirty. Jackson was clearly senior to him.