Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 06 - Private Eyes

by Private Eyes(Lit)

  Melissa touched the boy's sleeve and said, "Let's get out of here."

  Ramp said, "Where are you going?"

  Melissa said, "Out. To look for her."

  Ramp said, "Do you really think "Yes, I do. C'mon, Noel." Tugging at the red fabric.

  The boy looked at Ramp.

  Ramp turned to me. I played sphim. Ramp said, "Okay, Noel, consider yourself off for the rest of the night. But be careful Before he finished the sentence the two of them were out the door. It slammed shut and echoed.

  Ramp stared at it for a few moments, then turned to me, weary.

  "Would you care for a drink, Doctor?"

  "No, thanks. I'm expected at the Gabney Clinic."

  "Yes, of course.

  He walked me to the door. "Have kids of your own, Doctor?"

  "No."

  That seemed to disappoint him.

  I said, "It can be tough."

  He said, "She's really bright sometimes I think that makes it rougher, for all of us, her included. Gina told me you treated her years ago, when she was just a little kid."

  "Seven through nine.

  "Seven through nine," he said. "Two years. So you've spent more time with her than I have. Probably know her a hell of a lot better than I do."

  "It was a long time ago," I said. "I saw a different side of her."

  He smoothed his mustache and played with his collar. "She's never accepted me probably never will. Right?"

  "Things can change," I said.

  "Can they?"

  He opened the door on Disney lights and cool breeze. I realized I hadn't gotten directions to the clinic from Melissa and told him so.

  He said, "No problem. I know the way by heart. Gone there plenty.

  When Gina needed me to.

  "I On the way to Pasadena I found myself peering up driveways, checking foliage, scanning the streets for a misplaced shadow, a flash of chrome. The crumpled outline of a woman down.

  Irrational. Because the pros had been there already: I spotted three San Labrador police cruisers within a ten-block radius, one of which tailed me for half a block before resuming its prowl.

  Irrational because the streets were naked a stray tricycle could be spotted a block away.

  A neighborhood that kept its secrets off the street.

  Where had Gina Ramp taken hers?

  Or had they been taken from her?

  Despite my words of encouragement to Melissa, I hadn't convinced myself the whole thing was an impromptu vacation from phobia.

  From what I'd seen, Gina had been vulnerable. Fragile. Just arguing with her daughter had set off an attack.

  How could she possibly handle the real world whatever that meant.

  So I kept searching as I drove. Spitting in the face of reason and feeling a little better for it.

  The Gabney Clinic occupied a generous corner lot in a good residential neighborhood that had begun yielding reluctantly to apartments and shops. The building had once been a house. A big two-storied, shingle-sided, brown craftsman-style bungalow set back behind a flat, wide lawn. Three giant pines shadowed the grass. A front porch spanned the width of the structure, darkened by massive eaves. Shake roof, lots of wood-relief, stingy windows in oversized casements.

  Ungainly and dimly lit some architectural hack's sendup of Greene and Greene. No sign advertising what went on inside.

  A low wall rock chips in cement fronted the property. A gateless gap in the center provided access to a cement walkway. On the left, a wood-plank gate had been propped open, exposing a long, narrow driveway. A white Saab Turbo 9000 was parked at the mouth of the drive, blocking further motor access. I left the Seville parked on the street Pasadena was more tolerant than San Labrador and made my way up the walk.

  A white porcelain sign the size and shape of an hour cigar was nailed to the front door; GABNEY was painted on it in black block letters.

  The knocker was a snarling lion chewing on a brass ring, toplit by a yellow bug bulb. I lifted it and let it fall. The door vibrated C-sharp, I was pretty sure.

  A second porch light went on. A moment later the door opened.

  Ursula Cunningham-Gabney stood in the doorway wearing a burgundy-colored scallop-necked knit dress that ended two inches above her knees and accentuated her height. Vertical ribs ran through the fabric, accentuating further. High-heeled pumps were the topper.

  The perm she'd worn in the newspaper photo had been replaced by a glossy fudge-colored wedge. John Lennon eyeglasses hung from a chain around her neck, competing for chest-space with a string of pearls.

  The chest itself was convex and concave exactly where it should have been. Her waist was small, her legs sleek and very, very long. Her face was squarish, finely molded, much prettier than in the picture.

  Younger, too. She didn't appear to be much older than thirty. Smooth neck, tight jawline, big hazel eyes, clean features that didn't need camouflage. But she was wearing plenty: pale foundation, artfully applied blush, mauve eye shadow, deep-red lipstick. Aiming for severe and hitting the target.

  "Dr. Delaware? Come in."

  "Alex," I said. "Fair is fair."

  That confused her for a moment; then she said, "Yes, of course.

  Alex." And smiled. And turned it off.

  She motioned me into what would have seemed like a generous entry hall if I hadn't just done time at Dickinson Manor. Parquet floors, architecturally paneled oak walls stained shoe-polish brown, plain-wrap craftsman benches and coat trees, a clock that said SANTA FE below the 12 and RAILROAD above the 6. On the walls was a scattering of muddy California plein-air landscapes the kind of stuff the galleries in Carmel had been trying to palm off as masterpieces for years.

  The living room was to the left, visible through half-open sliding wooden doors. More oak walls, more landscapes Yosemite, Death Valley, the Monterey coast. Black-upholstered straight-backed chairs arranged in a circle. Heavy drapes hid the windows. What would have been the dining room was to the right, set up as a waiting area with mismatched couches and magazine tables.

  She stayed a couple of steps in front of me, heading for the rear of the first floor. Quick, deliberate steps. Tight dress. Fluid glutei.

  No chitchat.

  She stopped, opened a door, and held it.

  I stepped into what had probably been a maid's room. Small and dim and gray-walled, with a low ceiling. Furnished with simple contemporary pieces: a low-backed pine and gray-leather stenographer's chair behind a pine table-desk. Two side chairs. Three bracketed shelves full of textbooks on the wall behind the desk. Diplomas filling the wall to the left. A single window on a side wall was covered by a gray pleated shade.

  A single piece of art, next to the shelves. Cassatt drypoint etching.

  Soft color. Mother and child.

  Yesterday I'd seen another piece by the same artist. Another simple gray room.

  Therapeutic rapport taken to the nth?

  Chicken-egg riddles jumped into my head.

  Ursula Cunningham-Gabney went behind the desk, sat, and crossed her legs. The dress rode up. She left it that way. Put on her glasses and stared at me.

  She said, "No sign of her yet?"

  I shook my head.

  She frowned, pushed the glasses higher on her thin, straight nose.

  "You're younger than I expected."

  "Ditto. And you squeezed in two doctorates."

  "It really wasn't that remarkable," she said. "I skipped two grades in elementary school, started Tufts at fifteen, went to Harvard for grad school at nineteen. Leo Gabney was my major professor and he guided me through helped me avoid some of the nonsense that can trip a person up.

  I did a double major in clinical and psychobiology had taken all the premed courses as an undergrad.

  So Leo suggested I go to med school. I did my dissertation research during the first two years, combined my psych internship with my psychiatric residency, and ended up with licensure in both fields."

  "Sounds pretty hectic."r />
  "It was wonderful," she said, without a trace of smile. "Those were wonderful years."

  She removed her glasses, set her hands flat on the desk.

  "So," she said. "What are we to make of Mrs. Ramp's disappearance?"

  "I thought you could cue me in.

  "I'd like to take advantage of the fact that you saw her more recently than I did."

  "I thought you saw her every day."

  She shook her head. "Not for some time. We've cut our individual sessions to two to four times a week, depending upon her needs.

  The last time I saw her was Tuesday the day you called. She was doing quite well. That's why I felt it was acceptable for you to speak with her. What happened with Melissa that upset her so?"

  "She was trying to let Melissa know she was fine, that it was perfectly okay for her to go away to Harvard. Melissa got angry, ran out of the room, and her mother had an anxiety attack. But she handled it inhaled a drug she described as a muscle relaxant and worked on her breathing until she'd recovered."

  She nodded. "Tranquizone. It shows great promise. My husband and I are among the first to use it clinically. The major advantage is that it's very focused works directly on the sympathetic nervous system and doesn't appear to impact the thatamus or the limbic system. In fact, so far no one's found any CNS impact at all. Which means the addictive potential is lower none of the problems you get with Valium or Xanax.

  And respiratory administration means you get improved breathing quickly, which generalizes to the entire anxiety syndrome. The only drawback is that the effects are very short-lived."

  "It worked for her. She calmed down pretty quickly, felt good about handling the attack."

  "That's what we work on," she said. "Self-esteem. Using the drug as a springboard for cognitive restructuring. We give them a success experience, then train them to see themselves in a power role see the attack as a challenge, not a tragedy. To zero in on small victories and build from there."

  "It was definitely a victory for her. After she calmed down, she realized the issue with Melissa was still unresolved. That upset her, but the anxiety didn't recur."

  "How did she react to being upset?"

  "She went looking for Melissa."

  "Good, good," she said. "Action-orientation."

  "Unfortunately, Melissa was gone had left the house with a friend of hers. I sat with Mrs. Ramp for about half an hour, waiting for her to come back. That's the last I saw of her."

  "What was Mrs. Ramp's demeanor while you waited?"

  "Subdued. Worried about how she'd work things out with Melissa. But no panic actually, she seemed quite calm."

  "When did Melissa finally show up?"

  I realized I didn't know and said so.

  "Well," she said, "the whole thing must have affected Gina more than she let on. Even to me. She called me this morning and said there'd been a confrontation. Sounded tense but insisted she was all right.

  The ability to perceive herself as masterful is so essential to the treatment that I didn't argue with her. But I knew we had to talk.

  I offered her the choice of an individual session or discussing it in group. She said she'd try group the next one was today and if that didn't resolve things for her, maybe she would stay late and talk oneon-one. That's why I was especially surprised when she didn't show up I'd expected it to be an important session for her. When the group took its midsession break at four, I called her at home, spoke to her husband, and found out she'd left for group at two-thirty. I didn't want to alarm him but I did suggest he call the police. Before the sentence was out of my mouth, I heard screaming in the background."

  She paused, pressed forward so that her breasts rested atop the desk.

  "Apparently Melissa had come into the room hovering asked her stepfather what was going on, found out, and gone hysterical."

  Another pause. The breasts remained there, like an offering.

  I said, "You don't seem to like Melissa very much."

  She lifted her shoulders, moved back against the chair. "That's hardly the issue, is it?"

  "Guess not.

  Tugging, now, at her hemline. Pulling harder when it didn't yield.

  "All right," she said. "You're her advocate. I know child people get into that kind of thing all the time perhaps sometimes it's necessary.

  But that's totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. We've got a crisis situation here. A severely phobic woman one of the most impaired patients I've ever treated, and I've treated lots. We've got her out on her own, dealing with stimuli she's totally unprepared for, having broken her treatment regimen taken steps she wasn't ready for, due to pressure exerted by her relationship with an extremely neurotic teenage girl. And that's where my advocacy comes in. I have to think about my patient. Surely you can see that the relationship between the two of them is pathological."

  Blinking hard several times. Real color deepening the rouge on her cheeks.

  I said, "Maybe. But Melissa didn't invent the relationship. She was made, not born, so why blame the victim?"

  "I assure you "I also don't see why you feel the need to pin the disappearance on mother-daughter conflict. Gina Ramp never let Melissa get in the way of her pathology before."

  She wheeled her chair back several inches, never breaking eye contact.

  Now who's blaming the victim?"

  "All right," I said. "This isn't productive."

  "No, it isn't. Have you any other information for me?"

  "I assume you're familiar with the circumstances leading up to her phobia the acid attack?"

  Barely moving her lips, she said, "You assume correctly."

  "The man who did it Joel McCloskey is back in town."

  Her mouth formed an 0. No sound came out. She uncrossed her legs, pressed her knees together.

  "Oh, shit," she said. "When did this happen?"

  "Six months ago, but he hasn't called or harassed the family.

  There's no evidence he has anything to do with this. The police questioned him and he had an alibi, so they released him. And if he wanted to cause trouble, he's had plenty of time been out of prison for six years. Never contacted her or anyone else in the family."

  "Six years!"

  "Six years since his release from prison. He spent most of it out of state.

  "She never said a thing."

  "She didn't know."

  "Then how do you know?"

  "Melissa found out recently and told me."

  Her nostrils widened. "And she didn't tell her mother?"

  "She didn't want to alarm her. Planned to hire a private investigator to check McCloskey out."

  "Brilliant. Just brilliant." Shaking her head. "In light of what's happened, do you concur with that judgment?"

  "At the time it seemed reasonable not to traumatize Mrs. Ramp.

  If the detective learned McCloskey was a threat, it would have been communicated."

  "How did Melissa find out McCloskey was back?"

  I repeated what I'd been told.

  She said, "Unbelievable. Well, the child has initiative, I'll grant her that. But her meddling is "It was a judgment call and it's still far from clear that it was wrong. Can you say for sure you would have told Mrs. Ramp?"

  "It would have been nice to have had the choice."

  She looked more hurt than angry.

  Part of me wanted to apologize. The other wanted to lecture her about proper communication with the patient's family.

  She said, "All this time I've been working on showing her the world's a safe place, and he's been out there."

  I said, "Look, there really is no reason to believe anything ominous has happened. She could have had car trouble. Or just decided to stretch her wings a bit the fact that she chose to drive over here by herself may indicate she was yearning to stretch."

  "This man's being back doesn't bother you at all? The possibility that he might have been stalking her for six months?"

  "You were at that house frequent
ly. When you walked around the block with her did you ever notice him or anyone else?"

  "No, but I wouldn't have. I was focusing on her."

  "Even so," I said. "San Labrador's the last place you could stalk anybody and get away with it. No people, no cars-making intruders conspicuous is exactly why they do it. And the police function as private guards. Keeping an eye out for strangers is their specialty."