by Lowe, Sheila
It was a tremendous breach of ethics for Dr. Pollard to make the file available; it almost certainly held something of vital importance for the psychologist to take that kind of legal risk. Claudia opened it and began to riffle through pages upon pages of densely written notes. There would never be enough time to read through the thick sheaf of papers before Pollard returned with tea.
She stuffed the papers into her briefcase, fumbled it closed, her heart racing. Replaced the empty folder in the drawer and locked it, leaving the keys dangling.
Claudia tiptoed into the hallway and listened. The sounds of tea-making could be heard coming from what she presumed must be the kitchen. Thanking the file-stealing gods that Dorothy French was nowhere in sight, Claudia slipped through the back door and made a headlong dash for the elevator.
Before Dr. Pollard could change her mind, Claudia raced out of the building and stepped off the sidewalk, looking for a taxi. Luck seemed to favor her as a vacant yellow cab appeared almost immediately. She raised an arm and waved. The cabbie stopped a few feet ahead of her.
As she started toward the vehicle, a tall figure in a long overcoat stepped in front of her, smooth as glass, and opened the taxi door.
“Hey!” Claudia objected, ready to launch into a diatribe about its being “her” taxi. She bit back the angry words in surprise. “Dr. McAllister?”
The doctor turned to her, extending a hand, and invited her to get in. “Ian,” he reminded her. “Where may I drop you?”
Claudia scooted to the far side of the backseat, leaving room for Ian McAllister to slide in beside her. She gave the driver the name of her hotel and angled to face her accidental companion. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I do have an office in the building, if you recall,” he said in that deadpan way he had. He clasped his hands, which were encased in black kid gloves, and let them rest on his lap. “I just came off the elevator and saw you running out of the building as if it were on fire. Is everything all right?”
She thought of what she had just learned from Dr. Pollard about Jessica McAllister, and of the file in her briefcase. How could she approach him to discuss his dead daughter without revealing where she’d gotten the information? The words refused to come out. Instead, she said simply, “I was visiting Donna Pollard. Did you know she’d had a break-in yesterday?”
“No, I wasn’t privy to that information.” Ian unbuttoned the gorgeous alpaca coat and removed his gloves. “The building needs to improve its security.”IT
Claudia darted a quick look at him, but he was looking straight ahead and she couldn’t tell whether he was being serious. She said, “She was attacked, hit over the head. I wonder whether it had anything to do with the reason Grusha brought me to New York.”IT
Ian inclined his head toward the cabbie, who had left the partition separating them partway open. “Perhaps we shouldn’t discuss this just now. How about this evening? Dinner?”
“Oh, I don’t—” She was thinking about the fact that he hadn’t asked whether Dr. Pollard was okay. It seemed an interesting omission.
“Don’t you like me, Claudia?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is the second time I’ve asked you out and both times, your first instinct has been to refuse me.”
“I told you, I’m—I’m seeing someone.”
“Do you find me repulsive?”
“Of course not. In fact, you’re quite attractive, but—”
“Then have dinner with me. Just dinner. I’ll pick you up at your hotel. I have my car garaged in the city. We’ll take a run up the Hudson.”
“If you have a car here, why are you taking a cab?”
He gave her the odd smile that seemed to stop just short of a sneer. “I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to see you.”
Jessica McAllister’s file was thick with Dr. Pollard’s handwritten notes. The psychologist wrote in a flowery hand that matched her appearance: a trifle overblown.
A good therapist needs objectivity, Claudia thought, viewing a page crowded with hard-to-read handwriting. That kind of dense spatial arrangement indicated difficulty in stepping back and maintaining professional distance. Many of the o’s and a’s were open at the top, the loops right-slanted: talkative, emotional, quick to become overinvolved.
Was that what had happened during therapy sessions with Ian McAllister’s daughter? Had Pollard become emotionally overinvolved with Jessica?
Once Claudia had familiarized herself with the flow of Donna Pollard’s handwriting, reading it was a little easier. But the picture of Jessica McAllister that began to emerge set her teeth on edge.
On the intake form, Pollard had written that Jessica had joined Elite Introductions at the behest of her father. Despite Grusha’s insistence that, having turned eighteen a couple of months earlier, the young woman didn’t have enough life experience to date the kind of men who joined the club, she had allowed herself to be persuaded. Claudia was cynical enough to think that payment of a hefty fee might have had some influence on Grusha Olinetsky’s acceptance of the young woman as a member.
Dr. Pollard and Jessica had immediately hit it off at the initial psychological screening appointment. Pollard learned that the girl’s mother had deserted her husband and child when Jessica was just four years old and had never contacted them again.
Jessica, or Jessie, as Pollard tended to refer to her, seemed to be looking for a surrogate mother, and the psychologist was drawn to her. Although most Elite Introductions members saw Pollard only once in the screening process, she and the girl had decided between them that Jessie should enter therapy. As an adult, she did not need her father’s permission, nor did she have to inform him of her activities. Pollard decided to see her pro bono, so there would be no audit trail that her father could follow.
Still, she had made clinical notes, from which it became apparent that the process of transference had been completed early on—the client had literally transferred her feelings from her mother to the therapist. The unfortunate truth was, it also appeared from the notes that countertransference—the feelings of the therapist becoming inappropriately intertwined with the client’s, and possibly interfering with therapy—had occurred.
Claudia stopped reading for a moment and thought of her own relationship with Annabelle Giordano. She couldn’t fault Pollard for caring about Jessie McAllister. Lord knew it was easy to become involved with a vulnerable girl who needed a confidant. But although she had degrees in psychology, Claudia had chosen not to become a therapist because she knew that she would be unable to maintain the needed level of detachment to be helpful to clients.
When she’d hit thirty it seemed the right time to look back and examine her life. In her self-exploration, she’d recognized that something was amiss, so she’d found a therapist for herself.
In the first session, she had begun to get an inkling that her inability to trust had interfered with intimate relationships and contributed to the failure of her marriage. Yet confronting the demons of the past had been too painful for her. She’d dropped out after only a couple of visits. Now, ten years later, she was struggling to deal with the issues on her own, but she found that she didn’t want to look back and deal with the pain of the past.
She’d discovered that Jovanic had trouble trusting, too. But over the months they’d been together, they had both started to learn how to lower their barriers, little by little. At least, they had until Alex began to show up without warning, phoning him at all hours. Jovanic insisted it was strictly business, but Claudia’s intuition was zinging, and she didn’t like what it was telling her. And as she had withdrawn, so had Jovanic.
What a pair we are, she thought as she came back around to the problem of Jessica McAllister. No time for her own problems when there was work to be done. There was something to be said for filling her time with work.
“Feels uncomfortable with F,” Pollard had written in notes dated half a year earlier. The next few lines pointed to “F” as referencing
Jessie’s father, Ian McAllister.
F wants to know specifics of her sexual activities. Quizzes her constantly about her body. Claims he’s concerned as a physician. J feels uncomfortable with these discussions. I do not believe interest is prurient, but more driven by a need for control.
Later, Pollard wrote, “F jealous of J’s boyfriends. Drives them away with superior attitude and controlling behavior.”
Claudia read on and learned that Ian had requested that Grusha find Jessie a match with an older man. The notes said that he had judged every introduction she made as unworthy of his daughter. Not wealthy enough. Not powerful enough.
Jessie confided to her therapist that she believed no man would ever attain her father’s standards. And, understandably, she didn’t want a “made match” anyway.
J perceives F as a control freak. Any man he approves for her will have to further his status, and also be someone he can control.
It struck Claudia that Ryan Turner might have filled the bill on all counts, except, perhaps the requirement for an “older” man. Ryan had been a twenty-seven-year-old second-year resident, at the outer reaches of a reasonable age for eighteen-year-old Jessie. He was a medical man. He came from a wealthy family. He was drop-dead gorgeous. And his career choice gave him the potential for achieving status and power.
The notes indicated that Jessie had dated Ryan twice and was infatuated with him, but her father had denigrated Ryan’s choice of plastic surgery as a specialty and put the kibosh on the relationship before it had a chance to blossom.
After her father nixed her short-lived romantic attachment to Ryan, Jessie had gone on a couple of dates with “AC,” whom Claudia deduced must be Avram Cohen.
“Says she’s afraid of him,” Pollard had written.
He hasn’t acted out physically, but J complains that he gets angry easily and blows up. Nothing showed up in his assessment. She may be overly sensitive.
Jessie had been introduced to Marcus Bernard, but indicated that she thought he was way too old and he turned her off. Late thirties would be ancient to a girl of eighteen. Still, at her father’s insistence, she had seen him several times before digging in her heels—with Donna Pollard’s secret encouragement—and refusing to see him again.
Flipping through the pages, Claudia came upon a handwritten note from Jessica herself.
Dear Dr. P, what am I going to do? He wants to keep me under his thumb forever. He thinks I’m one of his possessions, not a real person with needs of my own. I’m freaking out. I’m about to break into tiny pieces and no one will ever be able to put them back together again. Not even you, Dr. P. Please help me! Love Jessie
As Claudia read the words and looked at the handwriting, she felt an aching sadness for the young woman. Why hadn’t she broken away from her father after she’d reached her majority?
Jessica’s handwriting held the answer: the “good girl” syndrome. The need for her father’s affection and approval was plain in the round letter forms and crowded words, not so different from Dr. Pollard’s own. Jessica had missed the nurturing of a mother and Ian had not been equipped to give her what she needed in terms of emotional support. The lack of a comma between Love and Jessie made the words into a plea.
Love Jessie.
Many letters thrust up against each other, a feature of people who were unsure of their boundaries and had no real sense of their own space or power. Claudia’s mind flipped over to Annabelle, who had once attempted to kill herself. Thank god she had been rescued in time.
But Jessica had managed to complete the act. Judging by this handwriting, it would not be surprising to learn that her actions were, in reality, a plea for help, rather than a sincere desire to end her life. When she slit her wrists, had she intended for someone to find her before it was too late?
Or was there a possibility that Jessie hadn’t acted alone in her suicide?
Claudia turned to the next page of Dr. Pollard’s notes. In a frantic act of rebellion, Jessica reported to her therapist that she had been sneaking out to rave parties when she knew that her father would not find out. Pollard’s notes described dangerous drug use and indiscriminate sex. Unprotected sex.
An AIDS test, positive for the HIV virus. Claudia read on, her heart sinking lower with each line.
She wants to throw it in F’s face that she has found an area of her life where he has no control. Her diagnosis is something he cannot change. J is euphoric. Delusional that somehow this fixes things.
Pollard wrote that she had tried to talk Jessie out of making this revelation to her father. Her concern was that McAllister, having lost the object of his sociopathic /narcissistic rage—his daughter—would need to deflect it onto someone else.
A month passed between that note and the last one in the file, which indicated that Pollard didn’t know whether Jessie had confronted her father or not. Nor did it matter further. The girl had ended her life.
Claudia turned the last page and sat there for a while, just looking at the bundle of papers. What did it all mean in terms of Grusha Olinetsky and Elite Introductions, if anything?
There was a reason why Donna Pollard had directed her to this file, and it wasn’t just because Claudia had asked about McAllister’s daughter. The manifest answer was that Pollard suspected Ian McAllister of being Grusha’s saboteur. But what did that have to do with his daughter?
Okay, what are the facts?
McAllister signed Jessie up with Elite Introductions.
He was dissatisfied with the men she met: Avram Cohen, Marcus Bernard, Ryan Turner.
Jessie slept around with random guys who would never have been accepted into Elite Introductions.
She injected drugs.
She contracted AIDS.
Then came the questions: Did Jessie tell her father that she had the disease? If she did tell him, how had he reacted?
Did she really kill herself?
Chapter 16
Zebediah Gold answered the phone as he often did, in a rather brusque way that made Claudia wonder what she was interrupting and whether she should just hang up. But when he heard it was she, asking him for a few minutes of his time, his voice brightened.
“Sweetheart! I always have time for you; you know that. What shall we talk about? You and me on a desert island with a pitcher of martinis and—”
She interrupted. “If you don’t mind, let’s talk about OCPD and narcissistic rage.”
“I like my idea better. Yours has made my brain go flaccid. Exactly whose obsessive compulsive personality and rage has you concerned?”
Zebediah was a semiretired criminal psychologist and her long-ago lover. She could always count on him to make himself available when she had a knotty problem to gnaw on.
Claudia summarized her meeting with Ian McAllister and told Zebediah what she’d learned about Jessica McAllister ’s suicide from Dr. Pollard’s clinical notes.
Zebediah listened quietly as she spoke. When she was finished, he said, “She slit her wrists?”
“That’s what Dr. Pollard said. She took pills, too.”
“Cutting oneself is supposed to be one of the most painful ways to end it all.”
“That’s what Annabelle told me. When she tried it, she cut herself with a broken bottle. She told me that her hands started shaking so badly she couldn’t control them. They cramped up like claws. It sounded excruciating.”IT
“God, she’s lucky someone came along and found her in time.”
“Unlike poor Jessica, who bled out in the bathtub.”
“And you think her father might have had something to do with it?”
Claudia faltered, having second thoughts as she faced the enormity of what she was suggesting. “What do you think, Zeb? With the level of controlling behavior Donna Pollard described in her notes, do you think it’s possible that he could have killed her and made it look like suicide?”
“The ultimate control,” Zebediah mused. “The power over life and death.”
“He would have to be crazy, wouldn’t he, to do something like that?”
“Not necessarily. Narcissistic rage is a reaction to something—or someone—that injures the person’s ego. When that happens, some people will act out their rage, yelling and screaming, or through violence. But others turn it on themselves and become depressed. It all depends on the type of person. What you’re suggesting is extreme, but it’s within the realm of the possible. You say he’s a physician?”
“Yes, which means he might know how to fix it to look like suicide. He’s smart enough to stage things convincingly.” Claudia paused and thought about it, visualizing how it might have happened. “I’m not suggesting he would have done it intentionally, but what I’m thinking is, maybe Jessie confronts him with her AIDS diagnosis, throws it in his face. He flies into a rage, completely loses control, and accidentally kills her. When he realizes what he’s done, he sets up the suicide scene to avoid getting caught.”
“Except your scenario presupposes that whatever actually killed her didn’t show up in the autopsy.” Zebediah sounded dubious. “You would expect there to have been defensive wounds if he came at her in a threatening way. If he hit her, there would be bruises. I don’t know, sweetie. It just doesn’t wash. I mean, what did he do, bash her over the head and carry her to the tub? The medical examiner would certainly have caught something like that.”
A theory was forming in Claudia’s head and she was starting to warm to it. “It could fit in with the other deaths in the dating service. What if Jessie told Ian that she had AIDS, but didn’t tell him how she got it? If he didn’t know about the drugs and rave parties, he could be taking revenge on Grusha, thinking Jessie had been infected by one of the men she’d dated through Elite Introductions. He would be furious to think of her sleeping with someone and him not knowing about it, too.”
“Except that you said his job is to screen all the applicants for that very reason—to avoid taking on someone who has a medical condition that might harm another member.”
