by Glenn Smith
Chapter 3
Central Texas. Saturday morning, January 1. Flint was up and having coffee by 8:00 A.M. He felt sore from hanging in the seat belt. When his phone rang, he thought the insurance company was calling. He got a surprise.
“Mr. Rock?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Ava Milan.”
“Hello Dr. Milan. I'm glad to meet you. I intended to get in touch this morning.”
“Please call me Ava. I am embarrassed. My behavior last night at the Menger was a little unconventional. Just yesterday I acquired a few cards that . . . well, I gave one to you. The only one I have given out in fact. You see I am a psychiatrist. When I meet people, they often assume that I will know things about them they don’t want anyone to know. That makes getting acquainted difficult. So I decided to try the cards. But last night someone nearly killed me. A little south of Austin a big construction truck ran me off the road and my car crashed. I feel lucky to be alive.”
“Well now, Ava, that makes two of us. I was also in an accident with a truck which rolled my car. I assumed it was due to bad visibility and wet road conditions. What kind of truck caused you a problem?"
"I barely got a look at it. Tall, yellow colored, hauling gravel I think."
"Your description sounds like it was the same kind of truck that hit me.”
They continued comparing notes. Ava had not fared as well as Flint. She had a hurt elbow and a sore left knee. She did not yet have a rental car, so a few minutes after 9:00 Flint was outside of 200 Congress Avenue, a new condo building called the Austonian, which at fifty-six floors advertised itself as the tallest residential building in Texas.
Ava had arranged for Flint to park in her building's garage. She was waiting in the lobby of the gleaming new glass and steel high rise when Flint walked in. She extended her hand. “I have tea ready to make upstairs, but I want to look in on my office across the street before taking you up. I have a studio space in 100 Congress where I see patients,” she said looking across Willie Nelson Boulevard which separated her residential and office buildings. She led Flint across what had been called Second Street before it was renamed for the famous country singer. They were soon in a rose colored, polished granite, twenty-two story building.
Ava had carefully laid out the ninth floor suite where she practiced psychiatry. One entered through a door from the hallway into a medium sized room with comfortable chairs. Clients waited there for their appointed times. Dominating one wall was a tall, narrow photo of the Japanese bridge over part of Monet's lily pond in Giverny, France. On another wall showed a framed photo of Gustave Caillebotte's pre impressionistic1877 painting titled Paris Street, Rainy Day. Flint looked more closely, saw that it was a clever photograph of the intersection of streets that Caillebotte had painted. The top half was a contemporary black and white photo. The bottom half was a scan of the oil painting owned by the Chicago Art Institute. The two parts had been combined into a single image using Photoshop. Ava's signature was in the bottom left corner of each beautifully framed art work.
The artistic photography made Flint smile, and he told Ava so. Architectural Digest and Condé Nast Traveler were on a coffee table and the room had Wifi. A small refrigerator stored free bottled water.
Through the only other door in the waiting room, one entered the larger main space where sessions took place. That room was longer than wide, extending twenty-nine feet from the door to the opposite wall of darkly tinted glass overlooking the hill country. Taking advantage of that view was a desk with a straight chair looking west from Austin.
As one entered the session room from the waiting area, Ava’s chair was backed up to the right hand long wall. Directly across from her chair was a leather sofa. At the right-hand end of the sofa was a chair identical to hers. It and the chair in which Ava sat were angled to face each other directly.
Flint walked over to the client's chair, sat in it. "A person feels a great distance from you sitting here," he observed.
"Yes. The belief is that some clients will feel intimidated if I am looking straight at them up close."
"Interesting," Flint rejoined. "You would rather have the client see you as a distant authority than an intimate friend?"
"At first, yes. Transference occurs and they then don't see me as distant."
To the right of Ava’s chair as Flint sat looking at it was an antique wood cabinet with a tasteful lamp. On the other side of her chair was a long credenza. In the center above it was a framed sketch. At first Flint thought it was realistic but then he realized he did not know what it represented. Hung directly across from the client’s chair, it served as a Rorschach, a kind of inkblot pattern for when the client stared away from Ava in thought.
Everything about the physical setting was low key and calm, muted warm colors, rounded corners, gentle curves in the furnishings.
Flint approved. There was no receptionist. Ava answered the phone, made all appointments herself, and sent out bills personally.
Ava’s reason for looking at her office space was to show Flint the front door. It had a key pad which appeared to be working, but the door would not lock.
“It functioned last night, but this morning I found it this way. I have called the lock service that installed this unit. They sent a fellow who looked at it an hour ago and is coming back this afternoon to replace it. The computer chip appears to have been programmed to keep it unlocked and he could not get it to reprogram.
Flint thought for a moment. “Where do you keep your patient records?” he asked.
“I don’t keep many paper files. People who come to me as referrals sometimes bring paperwork with them. I keep those files in a cabinet in a locked closet. I have electronic records on the server of Cloud Medical Records, a company that specializes in such things.”
Ava paused, then continued. “I make audio and video recordings of my interactions with clients. Those go wirelessly to the computer tower there next to the desk by the windows." Ava pointed to a small lens on the wall near the Rorschach sketch and to a small statue on an end table next to the client’s chair. “The small sculpture has a wireless microphone,” she said gesturing toward the statue. "Electronic voice and image files are auto saved to a solid state flash drive in the USB port. The tower saves to the external server every forty-five minutes. I tell patients in the initial session that all actions and conversations are recorded.”
“Anyone ever object?”
“Not yet. I don’t accept a person as a client if they refuse to be recorded.”
“Are we being recorded now?” he asked.
“No. I activate the system each day at the beginning of the first session and turn it off at the end of the last session. Ava walked to the desk and pulled a small oblong item from a USB port. She showed it to Flint as she said, “this is a thirty-two gig solid state storage device. I insert a fresh drive at the beginning of each month and store the used ones in my residence.”
“Do you keep any notes?”
“Not extensive. I have trained myself to remember whatever I need to know for the sessions themselves. Insurance companies all require standardized codes." She glanced at a two inch thick volume lying on top of the credenza. "That book is the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Experts refer to it as the DSM Four. It elaborates several hundred codes and twenty-seven decision trees derived from the symptoms, syndromes, and disease descriptions contained in it."
Ava paused and Flint said, "Yes, I know the DSM Four."
"Really!" Ava rejoined. "How'd that happen? It's not exactly bedtime reading."
"I got bored between flights, so I took a lot of graduate psych classes offered by the University of Texas in Arlington. I was flying out of DFW for a number of years."
Ava looked at Flint, then refocused on their discussion. "I keep each client's codes and brief notes in a spreadsheet on the computer. I do that after sessions or at the end of the day.”
Flint glan
ced around. “Anyone other than you with access to this space?”
“A cleaning service dusts, sweeps, and sanitizes everything six nights a week. They know the door lock combination. Restrooms are public, located part way down the hall, shared by tenants on each floor.”
“Anything else I should see?” Flint asked.
“No, that’s it. Let’s have some tea.”
They again stepped across Willie Nelson Boulevard. Ava spoke cordially to a young woman who provided information and security at the desk on the ground floor of the Austonian. They took the elevator up to the forty-seventh floor where Flint hung his coat and brown pinch front narrow brim Stetson hat on a rack at the front door. Ava boiled water, made tea as they sat looking south toward the Colorado River.
Chapter 4
Flint sipped tea. “You know Ava,” he said. “You are a beautiful woman and I’m glad to know you; however, I’m not sure I can be much help.” He looked at her sitting not far away in an expressively curved art deco chair. It and she suited each other.
She looked back with unbroken attention. “Not even if the person who crashed your car is trying to kill me? Likely trying to kill you?" She paused. "Before you decide, let me tell you more about myself.”
Flint sipped tea, unusually good tea. His relaxed look said that he was agreeable to hearing more about Ava.
“I was born in Milan. You know—the city in Italy. I remember my father fondly, though he died when I was five. My mother moved herself and me to Naples. My dad was Italian, but his father was Icelandic and my last name was long and hard to pronounce in Italian. It was Jónsdóttir." She spelled it for Flint. "School officials had trouble with it. One teacher called me “Milan” because of where I had come from, and it stuck. I eventually changed it legally.”
“Milan has a nice sound to it,” Flint noted.
"My mother was very attractive and was able to make good money as a prostitute—not an ordinary street walker, more of a call girl. She made sure that I attended a school that was all in English.”
“You knew English?”
“Not much at first. My father had taught me a few words, and I had a good ear for language. I picked it up quickly. There were quite a number of United States military people in Naples. My mother became close with an officer who helped me have access to the schools used by dependents of military personnel.” Ava poured more tea for Flint.
“When I was sixteen, my mother died from cancer. She missed my father so much. They were star crossed lovers. I think she did not really want to live longer. I needed to earn money because she did not have much life insurance. I became a call girl just like her, and it was not so bad because she had made sure I was well connected and that I knew who to trust. Like her, I was lucky to be attractive.”
Flint saw Ava’s face framed by what appeared to be naturally brunette hair of more than shoulder length. Her blue eyes had no fear or anger. Her voice sounded completely at ease. “How did you get to the States?” he asked.
“I met a navy doctor who was stationed in Naples. He wanted to marry me. I was only seventeen, but I liked him a lot. He happened to be from a rather well to do Texas family. His father was a physician too.”
“Did you marry him?”
“Yes. In Italy. Joe—my husband’s name was Joe—thought it would make the immigration process easier. We lived in Austin. I thought I would get pregnant, you know be a soccer mom, but that didn’t happen. I took the GED test and passed it, enrolled in Austin Community College, got a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Texas in Austin. Joe encouraged me to study medicine and become a psychiatrist. He paid my tuition at the medical school of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, and I got an M.D. degree from there when I was twenty five. Joe died in a car accident a few weeks before I graduated.”
“That must have been a shock.”
“It was! Joe was a careful driver. A drunk veered across the road and head on crashed into him. Only Joe was killed.”
“How long ago was this?” Flint could not tell how old Ava was. He thought maybe thirty.
Ava thought for a second. “I am thirty-seven—so it was twelve years ago. I needed to get away from all the reminders of Joe. I went to Houston for an internship and residency in psychiatry and, while I was at it, did the certification program at the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute. I also earned a Ph.D. in medical leadership offered jointly by Baylor Medical College and Rice University on the campus at Rice. All of that took five years. I then spent a year in Hyderabad, India studying hypnosis. After that I returned to Austin and opened a private psychoanalytic practice.”
“Quite impressive,” Flint observed. “Are you close to your husband’s family?”
“I was. Both of his parents have recently passed on. He had no siblings. I contented myself with working long hours. I tried dating, but I seem to scare most men. You aren’t afraid of me are you?”
Flint looked at her straight. “No, not afraid. I am impressed." He started to tell her more about why he was not scared of her when his phone sounded. It was a Texas Ranger friend.
“Flint. Harry here. The Austin police think your accident was not an accident. They found a Ford L8000 dump truck abandoned near downtown Austin. Yellow. Registered to a San Antonio address. Reported stolen. It had paint from your car and one other on its front bumper. The other belongs to a local shrink who was run off the road last night.”
“Yes. I am talking to Dr. Milan right at this moment.”
“Want to enlighten me?”
“Don’t know enough yet to enlighten you. Any evidence in the truck?”
“Nothing in the truck but something in a different vehicle. A new cheap cell phone was in your car. Know anything about it?"
"No."
"I thought not. It was on, broadcasting location information through the GPS software. Someone must have planted it to keep track of you."
Flint remembered Shana in the parking lot, stumbling into him, retrieving the dropped card from his floorboard. He told Harry about the incident. "I don't suppose you found a strange mobile phone in Dr. Milan's car?" Flint wondered aloud.
"No, but her car hasn't been gone through in detail. Her accident happened about twenty minutes after yours, a mile closer to Austin. The wreckage got taken to a different garage. How are you by the way. I should have asked first. Are you hurt?”
“Not enough to talk about. What makes the Texas Rangers interested?”
“The chief of Austin police asked us to do some forensic work. Of course I recognized your name on the title in the glove box of your car. How long have you known Dr. Milan?”
“About fifty-five minutes. Saw her at the Menger in San Antonio last night; talked to her on the phone this morning and met her in person less than an hour ago.”
“Well! A stolen truck causing wrecks near each other only twenty minutes apart. I have to assume this was not a coincidence. What is the connection?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“I have your friend Zeta Chu working on it.”
Flint had recently met Zeta in Uruguay where he and she had been part of a gunfight between Chinese and Mexican mafia. Flint had introduced her to Harry and had sponsored a phone conference that led to the Rangers taking Zeta as a consultant. She was a martial artist and a world class computer expert.
Flint hung up with Harry and turned back to Ava. His phone sounded again. “Zeta. How good to hear your voice! Harry says that he has taken you away from what you were doing so you can help me out.”
“Yes. It is good to hear your voice too. Are you ready for my questions?”
“Soon. I am seeing what I can learn myself. Can I call you in an hour?”
“For sure you can, yes. Talk to you shortly.”
Flint looked at Ava. “I have a couple of friends at the Texas Rangers. Harry Johnson and Zeta Chu. That was Zeta.”
“Zeta is a woman? I didn’t know that Texas Rangers are ever f
emale.”
“Only a few of the one hundred forty-four rangers are women—and those few are recent. Zeta is technically on loan from the Chinese army. She has a blue passport, having been born in the United States to a Korean mother and a Chinese father. She can hack through any level of security, even the most effectively encrypted bank accounts. But back to your situation . . . and mine. Harry says that we were attacked by the same truck last night. About two hours after we saw each other in the Menger. Harry insists on knowing the connection between you and me. I can see why, but I know of no connection. Do you know something that I don’t?”
Ava paused, looking sheepish. ”Flint, no—no I don’t. As I told you, last night's encounter with you was unexpected. I had not heard of you at all despite the flirtatious statement on the card."
