A Breath After Drowning

by Alice Blanchard

  “No, no. Don’t feel that way. I wanted your unbiased opinion. Everything you said makes perfect sense. It validates what I’ve been working on.”

  “You could’ve told me from the beginning and saved us both a lot of time.”

  “Are you sure you don’t remember him?”

  She shook her head angrily. “Why should I remember him?”

  “He’s a sociology professor in his late fifties. Over two decades ago, he did a residency at the asylum where your mother was confined. Like I said, I thought you knew. He was doing a postdoctoral thesis on family dynamics and mental illness. He asked for volunteers. Your mother was one of those volunteers. They grew… close.”

  “What?”

  “Then you probably don’t know about this either,” he said bluntly. “But your mother and Stigler moved in together shortly after she was released from the hospital.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  He sat back. “Maybe it’s time for me to stop.”

  She stared at him with ferocious intensity. “What the hell, Palmer?”

  “You should talk to your father about this.”

  “I remember visiting her at the hospital,” Kate said numbly. “She seemed so lost. When she finally came home six months later, she looked like a different person. She had this glow about her. We all figured she was better. But then, my parents started bickering again, and after a few weeks, she packed her bags and took off. Savannah and I had no idea where she’d gone, but Dad told us she went back to the asylum for more treatment.”

  “He never told you the truth?”

  Kate shook her head. “I had no idea she was having an affair. What did you say his name was? Seegler?”

  “William Stigler. I’m sorry, Kate.”

  “And you think he’s a suspect?”

  “He’s my prime suspect.”

  “How do you know? What’s your evidence?”

  “It happened last year, during the Makayla Brayden investigation,” Palmer explained. “Stigler approached us out of the blue and offered to help with the case, which is highly suspicious in my book.” He leaned forward. “This is strictly confidential, Kate. You can’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”

  “I’m a psychiatrist. I know how to keep a secret.”

  “Not even James,” he warned.

  She gave a grim nod.

  He cleared his throat. “Stigler came to us uninvited, claiming he wanted to help. He did a few other things, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t get into that right now. You have to trust me.”

  Her temper flared. “Maybe I don’t trust you anymore, Palmer? Maybe if you’d told me sooner—?”

  “Kate,” he interrupted, “the last thing I want to do is lose your trust.”

  Kate relented. She remembered visiting Julia at Godwin Valley Asylum, that bizarre Gothic fortress across town. A dumping ground for crazy people. She recalled her mother’s pale dissociated countenance during those rare visits. Julia drifted through the halls like a ghost, looking straight through her frightened daughters. “I’m here for my nerves,” she told them vaguely. “My nerves need rewiring.”

  Palmer steepled his hands together. “Any crime you’re investigating, you develop a list of suspects. Mental patients, excons, rapists, relatives, neighbors… whoever matches the profile. You gradually build your list, and one by one, you cross them off. My list is very short now. And Stigler’s name is at the very top.”

  “Why haven’t you arrested him?”

  “For one thing I’m retired. I can’t arrest anyone.”

  “But he’s your prime suspect, right? Can’t you get one of your pals down at the police station to arrest him?”

  “My pals?” Palmer cracked a smile. “Believe it or not, Kate, I don’t have that kind of influence.”

  “Okay, so last year, he offered to help you with the case. How does that make him a suspect?”

  “You were right about the differences between the victims. They come in all sizes and shapes. But they do have another thing in common: they all come from broken homes. Divorce, domestic abuse, alcoholism, drugs. These weren’t the happiest of families.”

  “So what’s that got to do with Stigler?”

  “He’s a sociology professor. One of the classes he teaches is called ‘Victimhood Among Children From Broken Homes.’ Over the past couple of decades, he and his team of postdocs and research associates sent out thousands of questionnaires to at-risk families. His underlings weeded through the responses and conducted the initial interviews, but Stigler himself conducted select follow-up interviews. And guess which families he’s interviewed personally?”

  She took a stab. “All of them?”

  “No. Seven out of nine of the cases I think are linked. Not your family, not Emera Mason’s, but all the rest. I believe he selected them because they fit the criteria: troubled homes with abusive relationships or mental illness or alcohol and drug problems. He chose girls who were vulnerable to predation. What better way to find your next victim?”

  She fell silent.

  “Look,” he told her gently. “I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to stop. Sometimes the truth can get ugly.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “What I mean is… it’s okay to quit.”

  She bit her lower lip. “After my sister died, I begged them not to cremate her. I didn’t want her to end up in a box like our mother. My father agreed, so we picked out the casket together. I went to her room and found her favorite dress—it was lilac with an empire waist. I found her favorite doll, too. She’d given it a makeover—Magic Marker lipstick and a choppy punk haircut. I remember sitting there for the longest time with that ugly doll in my lap, sobbing.”

  Palmer nodded.

  “Anyway, the doll’s shoe fell off and rolled under the bed. And when I went to pick it up, I saw the biggest wad of bubblegum I’ve ever seen in my life—it must’ve weighed two pounds. Savannah would chew gum until it lost its flavor, and then stick it under her bed, where nobody could see. She must’ve stuck hundreds of pieces of gum there. I’ve never laughed so hard. That was my sister. She was the funniest kid in the world. She was my best friend. So when you tell me the truth can get ugly… it can also be beautiful.”

  A feathery silence landed between them. She stood up. “I have to go talk to my father.”

  He escorted her to the door. They paused on the threshold, while she dug her keys out of her bag. “Do you really think they’re dead?” she asked. “The missing girls?”

  He nodded.

  “Every last one of them.”

  34

  KATE DROVE ACROSS TOWN feeling nauseous and disoriented. Her father wasn’t home. His Ford Ranger was gone from the driveway. She checked her watch: 10:30 AM. Being semi-retired, he had Tuesdays and Thursdays off. So where was he?

  She decided to wait for him. He kept a spare key hidden under a flowerpot in the garden. She let herself in and started a fresh pot of coffee brewing. She took a seat at the round table in the kitchen and listened to the coffee maker as it gurgled, while morning sunlight spilled across the linoleum floor. The house had once been full of people. Now it was full of creaks and groans.

  The washing machine in the basement was making a weird chugga-chugga noise, so she went downstairs to investigate. Cobwebs dangled from the ceiling and the water heater rumbled in a far corner. Bram’s handyman tools were arranged by size and function on a large wooden pegboard: wrenches, hacksaws, band saws, hammers, screwdrivers. His workbench was cluttered with paint cans and plastic organizer caddies—nails, bolts, and screws segregated into little drawers. Duplicate keys dangled from hooks on a smaller pegboard— the spare house keys, the garage-door opener, extra keys to his downtown doctor’s office, the storage unit on Carriage Road, and finally, keys to the old farmhouse in Four Oaks, Maine, where Kate’s grandparents used to live. Her father couldn’t seem to part with the rundown farmstead.r />
  The washing machine’s balance-indicator light was blinking. She lifted the lid and struggled to free the twisted clothing inside the agitator basket, until the light blinked off. She dropped the lid and the clothes began to spin around again. No more chugga-chugga. No more banging and bumping, like angry ghosts.

  She went upstairs and felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. The revelation that her mother had had an affair was still hitting her. And what if Palmer was right? Had Julia fallen in love with a serial killer? Do we really know the people we love?

  She went into the living room and took a seat in the wingback chair, then powered up her iPad and googled Professor Stigler. His university profile popped up. He was handsome in a George Clooney sort of way, and had an impressive CV.

  She heard a noise and jumped. She went over to the window, but didn’t see her father’s car. Where did he go on his days off and what did he do? She couldn’t just ring him up and ask, because he didn’t own a cell phone, the Luddite. He refused to buy into smartphones, let alone Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Skype. He only had the landline and an old-fashioned pager that was off-limits. The pager was for patients and emergencies only.

  It wasn’t difficult for Kate to understand why Julia had left him. His daily schedule was rigidly timed. Every clock in the house had to be accurate. He washed his hands methodically— typical for a doctor. He followed an elaborate grooming routine that couldn’t be interrupted. He was controlling and didn’t like to be challenged. Everything had to be perfectly aligned, perpendicular or parallel. His worldview required order and control.

  When you lived with a doctor, you got used to the daily lectures on hand-washing and tooth-brushing. Kate had grown up without breaking a single bone. She’d never been seriously ill. Her father had managed to protect her from the hazards of everyday life, but what good were clean hands when your mother was dead? What good were straight As when your sister was gone?

  Kate had seen pictures of Bram as a young boy, a skinny beanpole who towered over his classmates. Her mother once told her that Bram had grown up in a village full of rowdy farm boys who’d picked on him mercilessly, calling him Ichabod, Mantis, Lurch, and Chewbacca. No wonder he was so uncomfortable in his own skin. Grandpa Wolfe had been demanding and controlling of his son, although not of his grandchildren. The girls used to visit their grandparents’ farm, and by then Gramps had been like a scary schoolmaster with a gooey center. All bark, no bite.

  Kate drank her coffee and waited for her father’s return, determined to confront him. She would bring up William Stigler and ask Bram why he’d lied about Julia going back to the asylum. She checked her watch and grew restless. She got up and wandered around the house, pausing in the living room to study the old gifts she and Savannah had given their father: smooth river stones painted orange and green; ceramic ashtrays they’d impressed with their fingertips; papier-mâché puppets that looked like mangled rats.

  She circled the first floor, and finally entered his dark-paneled study—a forbidden place. She really shouldn’t be in here, but her curiosity got the better of her. Maybe it was time to ignore his million little rules.

  Sturdy oak bookshelves held her father’s cherished medical textbooks, and the cracked-leather chair was older than Kate. A chrome light from the desk lamp fanned across his paperwork. Six steel cabinets bulged with decades’ worth of medical files. Her father wasn’t required to retain the medical records of all his patients, but he had a fear of malpractice suits. Once a patient’s record was destroyed, it would be difficult—if not impossible—to mount a defense.

  The urge to snoop became overwhelming.

  She walked over to a file cabinet labeled A–F, opened the top drawer, and scanned the little plastic tabs, until her gaze landed on Blackwood.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She pulled out Penny Blackwood’s patient file from its hanging folder and rifled through the pages. She read her father’s meticulous handwritten notes. Bram had been Penny’s general physician from birth, right up until her senior year in high school. He’d stopped seeing her around the time Savannah was murdered.

  Throughout the years, he’d carefully documented all of Penny’s illnesses and injuries. Starting at around age eleven, Penny began to complain about a lack of energy. She started having bad dreams and insomnia. In her early teens, she was treated for several yeast infections and vaginal soreness. There were unexplained bruises on her upper thighs and other possible signs of sexual abuse. What amazed Kate was her father’s response to all these red flags. He dutifully recorded the details without drawing any conclusions or confronting the parents about the possibility of abuse in the home.

  The front door was slammed open and shut by a determined hand. She heard footsteps in the living room. Dread settled in Kate’s stomach. She wasn’t fast enough. She froze with the file in her hands.

  Her father appeared in the doorway. “Kate? What are you doing here?”

  Her face flamed. She knew how wrong this looked. Her father was a private person, and it was such an invasion. But the medical file was splayed open in her hands—no sense denying it. “Penny Blackwood was a patient of yours?”

  Bram snatched the file away from her. “You have no right. What’re you doing here?”

  Kate stood her ground. “Vaginal soreness? At age thirteen? Come on, Dad! You had to know what was going on. There was a pattern of possible abuse, and yet you ignored it.”

  He couldn’t hide his fury and embarrassment. He jammed the file back in its sleeve, slammed the metal drawer shut and said, “You have no right to go rummaging through my stuff, Kate. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Didn’t you see the abuse?” she pleaded, wanting him to defend himself. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation? Information she wasn’t privy to?

  “It was a complicated situation.”

  “Complicated? She was clearly being raped.”

  “I had my suspicions,” Bram said, red-faced. “But if I’d lodged a formal complaint, then social services would’ve taken the child away permanently. I had to be sure about my facts. When I asked Penny about her symptoms, she denied anything was wrong. She refused to talk about it. Some girls mature early and start experimenting with their friends. I didn’t know anything for sure.”

  “Yeast infections? The bruises on her upper thighs?”

  “Don’t you think I discussed those things with her mother, Kate? More than once? Several times, I separated Penny from her parents and asked her if everything was okay at home. But she insisted nothing was wrong. Her mother thought it might be the new laundry detergent or perhaps an allergy. Penny had sensitive skin. I’d treated her for contact dermatitis as a child. I also thought maybe she had a boyfriend and was covering for him. Her father seemed like a decent guy, not some animal who’d hurt his own daughter.”

  “That’s because it wasn’t her father,” Kate practically shouted. “It was her uncle, Henry Blackwood.”

  Bram looked like she’d slapped him.

  “He was molesting her. I just found out about it myself. But maybe if you’d done something about this years ago, maybe if you’d dug a little deeper instead of sweeping it under the rug… then maybe…” She stopped herself. “I have to go.”

  “What exactly are you blaming me for?”

  “Dad… I’m leaving.”

  He let her pass. She was afraid to touch him. She refused to look at him. She could feel the sorrow and fury emanating from his body in waves.

  Out in the foyer, she stepped into her damp winter boots, grabbed her coat and gloves, and left without saying goodbye.

  35

  BACK IN THE CAR, a feeling of tightness engulfed Kate. Troubled families were never easy, she knew from her own experience. And Bram was right—a long time ago, things were different. Nobody wore bike helmets. People rarely fastened their seatbelts. Kids went out to play for hours and didn’t get home until dinnertime. Her father had probably tried to do the right thing, just as Kate was st
ruggling to do the right thing for Maddie Ward.

  She drove around aimlessly, following the glistening river, going under an old railroad bridge before meandering into the wilderness south of town, where the long-abandoned mental institution was located. Ten minutes later, the woods gave way to a residential area of grid-like streets full of 1960s ranch houses painted pastel colors; her friend Jeanette Lamont had grown up in the mint-green one, and stinky Shannon Maguire grew up in the pale peach one. During the Christmas season, the colored lights gave these identical prefabs a magical glow.

  She pulled into the abandoned parking lot of the Godwin Valley Asylum and killed the engine. The austere stone buildings had weathered a thousand storms, but the hospital had closed its doors for good in 1996, and everything had been left to rot. Now the weeds had taken over, dead brittle stalks pushing out of the snow.

  Kate got out of her car and listened to the crazed chatter of the blackbirds that had overtaken the grounds. Twenty-two years ago, Julia Wolfe had been confined to this institution for six long months, and the girls had missed her terribly.

  She trudged through the snow, stepping over a collapsed barbed-wire fence that wasn’t much of a deterrent, and headed for the Female Convalescent Building, constructed in 1878. The looming stone edifice looked truly haunted, with its boarded-up windows and peeling gabled roof. She made it up the icy granite steps without falling on her ass, but the big front doors were padlocked shut. Fortunately for her, somebody had broken into the building through one of the first-floor windows, prying off the boards and pushing the broken glass inside, and then covering the whole thing with trashbags and duct tape.

  She found a cement block to give her a boost. She peeled off the trashbags, clambered over the windowsill and dropped inelegantly to the floor. It was as cold as a tomb inside. She brushed the dust off her hands and assessed the grand, high-ceilinged lobby, the sound of her labored breathing echoing back at her. Every inch of wall was decorated with graffiti and the floor was littered with beer cans, cigarette butts and used condoms.