by Linda Ladd
Tee was pleased. She was taking it better than he thought she would. Maybe she hadn’t hated the whole thing so much after all. It was good to have a willing participant for his newly discovered sexual needs. She wasn’t gonna be nearly as assertive and hateful now that they’d had sex. Maybe she’d learned already who’d be boss between the two of them. And now he was a man who’d had sex with a pretty woman. Nope, this place wasn’t gonna be so bad. He was fitting in pretty damn well.
NINE
Sitting down outside in the fresh air and sunshine filtering through the spreading limbs of a couple of big oak trees, a hot, sultry breeze lifted hair off my neck and made me long for the cool dark corridor I’d just left. I could see Bud way off on the lawn, leaning up against a tree trunk and talking on his phone. I kept getting whiffs of roses, maybe because about a hundred of them were hanging off a trellis about two yards away. There were lots of flower beds and hanging baskets and urns around the picnic tables so therefore lots of spicy and plain flowery scents. Hope I wasn’t allergic.
It was seriously hot, even in the shade, and I was glad to see Happy Pete tripping out toward me with a frosty bottle of Ozarka in one hand and Boyce Collins’s book in the other.
“Here you go, Detective Morgan. Anything else I can get for you?”
“No. This’ll hit the spot.”
“Okay then, I gotta run. I’m late for a session.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
As he trotted off, I breathed in all the heavy, airborne floral perfumes, twisted off the cap, and gulped down some of the ice-cold water, as I thumbed through Collins’s book and read some stuff about light boxes, and sound waves, and hypnotism, all of which was pretty technical and boring, so I took out my cell and hit speed dial for Black, who could probably explain it all to me in two minutes flat, thus ending the tedious factor.
Okay, now the natural colognes bombarding me were becoming cloying, if not downright stomach turning. I wondered then if I might be subjecting myself to some special, maybe even experimental aroma therapy for the poor disturbed kiddies wandering hereabouts, and probably without their knowledge, too. Hoped I wasn’t inhaling any therapies, or even worse, allergens. I glanced around the grassy lawn as the phone continued to chirp at the other end, on the lookout for hidden bugs and security cameras zeroed in on me. This place had more cameras than a CBS reality show, except for maybe Big Brother, and I was beginning to wonder about the privacy rights for patients around this place.
Black finally picked up and said, “Hello, sweetheart. You get tied up or what? And I mean that literally, knowing you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You were going to try to meet me for a late breakfast at the Lodge, before I flew out. Remember?”
Uh oh. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I got distracted.”
“I tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up.”
“I was in Jeff City breaking the bad news so I couldn’t answer. I was going to call you back as soon as I got a sec.”
“Dare I ask where you are?”
“Oak Haven Clinic, smelling all million of their zinnias.”
“Seriously?”
“About the clinic or the flowers?”
“C’mon, Claire.”
“We interviewed Dr. Young this morning, and now we’re moving on to some of the patients. Where are you?”
“Somewhere over Ohio.”
“Oh. Hey, by the way, what do you know about light box/ sound waves, all that hypnotherapy kinda stuff that Boyce Collins plays with?”
“Not much. It’s highly experimental. I’ve read some articles about it in the psychiatric journals. He’s got a book out about it.”
“Yeah, I’m holding it in my hand. What do you think? Does his stuff work?”
“Maybe. Sometimes he’s gotten some pretty good results. He’s young and bright and on the cutting edge. Truth, though? I think it sounds like a gimmick he uses to sell books and make a name for himself. Young’s involved with the procedures, too, from what I understand. They both swear by the techniques they use.”
“Hey, maybe I’ll let Young try it out on me. Just to see what happens?”
Silence. One beat, two. Alas, I began to sense disapproval. “You ought to be careful suggesting things like that, Claire.”
Actually it had been a joke, one of my rare and puny attempts at levity, but I hadn’t expected him to wax all serious and stuff. “Why? He gonna turn my mind into a marshmallow?”
At that, Black got huffy. “Because last time I looked, I am your doctor, and I don’t want anybody else messing with your head. Or your body, for that matter.”
I’m telling you this guy has a one-track mind. “You don’t have to worry. Trust me, nobody’s going to mess with my head except you. In fact, nobody in their right mind wants to take on a challenge of that immensity.” Joke two. I must be in a helluva jolly mood.
“I guess you didn’t leave out the reference to messing with your body for any particular reason?”
“You are so possessive with my bod.”
“Damn straight.”
We both laughed, softly but with lots of welcome-home promises woven in.
I said, “Don’t worry, my body’s intact and untouched.”
Black said, “Just get done over there and drive carefully. I may wrap up my sessions in New York early, and that’ll mean I’ll get back tomorrow, and I’ll need some serious distraction.”
“Okay. It’s a date. I can be a terrible distraction, when I set my mind to it. Count on it.”
“Oh, I will.”
A minute later, we disconnected when I observed patient numero uno walking out the door of the nearest dormitory and heading straight toward me. Young and cute and smiley, she had jet-black hair cut in bangs straight across her forehead and curved under at shoulder length. She looked to be about fifteen as she quick stepped across the grass. She had on long khaki walking shorts and a terra-cotta-colored baby doll top with tan beads in the shape of a diamond on the front. She had on black flip-flops, the kind affixed with lots of vibrant colored stones and sequins, and she wore about three toe rings on each foot that glittered in the sun as she walked. She was so thin that her bones showed. I had a feeling I knew what she was in for. Anorexia or bulimia, trust me.
“You a real detective?” she asked, sliding in at the bench across the table from me, where she looked like a hungry waif. Made me wish I had a Snickers bar or some animal crackers in my pocket to give to her. She had lots of freckles dusting her cheeks and neon pink lipstick.
“Yes, that I am. I’m with the Canton County Sheriff’s department down at Lake of the Ozarks. My name’s Claire Morgan.”
“Yeah? I’m Cleo. That’s cool, you bein’ a cop, and stuff. I watch TV a lot.” She kept nodding then, like that was supposed to mean something significant.
I thought about it a moment then gave up on making any kind of intelligent connection. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. I like that wicked cool girl on that NCIS show, the one that does all that computer stuff. I forget her name, but she’s awesome. She’s got style I like, you know her boots and hair in piggies, stuff like that. She wears her hair sometimes like Cleopatra. She was a Queen of Egypt. I saw her picture in my Ancient Civ book. That’s why I have them call me Cleo while I’m in here.” Cleo’s pixie-ish face sobered big time, as if Cleo’s coiffure was a very serious subject.
I looked suitably impressed by her Egyptian tresses, then I said, “So you go by different names while you’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why is that?”
“The doctors just say it’s up to us. That we can use our real names, if we want to, but if we want to maintain privacy, we can choose a nickname. But it’s kinda fun getting to have a cool name like Cleo. I really like the way that girl looks in NCIS. Don’t you?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that show. I don’t have time to watch much TV. Busy fighting crime and all that.” I grinned
. Ms. Cool and With It Detective.
“There’s not a whole lot to do around here but watch the big-screen TV in the lounge, unless you wanna play Ping-Pong or checkers over in the rec room.”
“Didn’t I see a tennis court and swimming pool when I drove in?”
“Sure, but I don’t know how to swim or play tennis.”
Okay, aimless chatter now acomin’ to a close. “I appreciate your willingness to talk to me about Michael Murphy.”
Her face crumpled into a free-falling, anxiety-ridden angst. “Oh, God, I hate it that he’s dead. He shouldn’t be dead. That sucks so bad.”
I nodded. It did suck so bad. He shouldn’t be dead. He should be tossing pizza dough and the roasted girl should be sitting in a booth watching him. They were way too young to die, especially at their own hands. And I wasn’t at all sure they did. Something niggled my mind and made me think something was definitely rotten in the state of Oak Haven. “Did you know him well?”
“A little. I thought he was cute for an older guy. He liked the girls from overseas, you know, the Japanese and Chinese ones.”
“Were there a lot of Asians here?”
“Yeah, more than you’d think in a place like this. They’re all real little and short. That’s why I think he went for them. I’m too tall for him. I’m five foot seven. You’re even taller than that, aren’t you? How did he do it, ma’am? Kill himself, I mean. Can you tell me?”
“I’m afraid not.” Her interest in cause of death was worrisome. Her eyes were latched on me, real intense and focused, and maybe just a little bit afraid. They resembled the color of wet Miami Beach sand. She hungered after the gory details. That was troubling, too. “Okay, Cleo. Can you tell me any of Mikey’s girlfriend’s names, where they lived, stuff like that?”
“Yeah, but they’re hard to pronounce. You’ll probably spell them wrong.”
Cleo was a stickler for details, all right. “That’s okay. I’ll spell them phonetically.”
“Phonetically?” She forgot her anxiety long enough to laugh like all get-out. “Well, one girl they called Khur-Vay, K H U R hypen V A Y, and she was real pitiful ’cause she lost custody of her kid. She cried all the time she was here. I could hear her sometimes in the middle of the night, crying in her room when I got up to go to the bathroom. They had a suicide watch on her.”
Zach’s little face welled up, smiling and happy, in his little red swimsuit, blond and summer tanned. Struggling to remain professional, I thrust the mental image out of my head, furious at myself for thinking about him. I had to lock him up again, somewhere deep inside where the pain went away. “Anybody else you can think of?”
“Li was the one that Mikey seemed to like the most. They held hands and went off together. You know, out there in the trees so they could make out. Before that, there was a girl named Sing. He paid a lot of attention to her, too, but she was hard to get to know. She tried to commit suicide twice while she was here, once she cut her wrists and then the other time she tried to hang herself off this very tree.”
Following her pointed finger upward to a sturdy branch of our very own spreading oak tree, I decided they obviously needed more supervision here than they were getting.
Cleo went on. “I tried it, too, but I didn’t cut deep enough.” Almost proudly, she held out both her wrists for me to look appalled at. There were faint scars running horizontally across both her wrists.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Cleo.”
She smiled and donned an expression that made her look like she was about ten years old. “That’s okay. I’m better now. The docs have helped me lots. My mom committed suicide. That’s why I tried it, too. She and me were real close. My dad was a druggie, he’s in jail now, thank God. Yeah, she got in the car in the garage and did the carbon monoxide thing. She did it right. Didn’t hurt and didn’t suffer, just went to sleep.”
Okay, I’m depressed out of my mind. Stop, already. “I’m glad you’re better, Cleo. Seems to me that you’re a good kid with a lot to live for.”
“Oh, yeah, I know all that now. Pete, you met him yet? He’s been real helpful to me. You know, he builds me up and tells me I can do anything, tells me to stay on my meds and do what the docs say and I’ll get outta here in no time at all. He’s totally awesome.”
Happy Pete rides to the rescue. Well, thank God, this girl needed somebody in her stable. “Good. I’m glad to hear you’re on the right track. Did Michael ever try to commit suicide while he was here?”
She shook her head. “He was in here because his parents thought he was getting suicidal. He hated his mom. Told me he hated her so bad he could kill her.”
Well, that was understandable, if what Bud and I had heard her say was any indication of his treatment at her hands. “What about Pete? I understand he was a patient here for a while.”
“Yes, everybody knows that. But that was before I got here. I heard somebody say he had lots of family problems, too, and freaked out and blamed himself. All that, you know. But he’s great now.” Her eyes glowed hot with admiration.
Uh oh, I thought. Not good, this little crush. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Michael that you think might help me?”
She shook her head and twisted a tan jade ring on her right forefinger. “He was superstitious, though. He wore lots of evil-eye bracelets and had people cleanse his room by burning sage, like the Indians used to do. Pete’s part Apache, did you know that? His grandfather was a reallive shaman.”
“No.” Didn’t believe it, either. “Did you know the girl named Li very well?”
“Nope. She was sweet but not very friendly. She spent all her time hanging out with Mikey. And Pete sometimes.”
“Did she have a romantic relationship with Pete?”
“You mean, did they hook up?”
I nodded.
She said, “I doubt it. I think he was just counseling her, you know. Letting her talk to him when she got all upset.”
“Do you know what troubled her?”
“She didn’t like it that she was gonna have to go back to China. Said they didn’t get to do anything fun there, and everybody tried to run their lives.”
“So you did have personal conversations with her?”
“No, uh uh, she gave us all the scoop in our group sessions. We’re supposed to tell personal stuff when we sit around in therapy circle. It’s pretty hard at first to admit things, private things, I mean, but then after a while, we just began to talk to each other. When one person started it off, everybody else began to spill their guts. It was sorta cool, really, the way it worked.”
“I understand.” Unfortunately, I did. I’d suffered through a couple of group sessions after my son died in LA, but not for long, because I quit the force and came to Missouri. Can’t say I ever spilled my guts, though, not there, or anywhere else, not even to Black when he plays shrink.
“All right, Cleo. Thanks a lot. I’m going to leave you one of my cards with my cell phone number on it. You call me, if you think of anything, or ever just need some help.”
Cleo took the card, read it, then looked up at me. “Thanks. That’s real neat. You’re cool.”
Watching her stroll away, I wondered what it was like to live out here at this place, and if the doctors really did help these kids get their heads on straight. Once the girl disappeared inside, the next kid joined me, a boy named Roy Sutter, fourteen, pimply, and shy, and not afraid to use his real name. He wore his mousy brown hair long and straight, and parted in the middle. Earrings in both ears, thin gold hoops, but he was very sweet and nervous, told me he liked model airplanes and got into big trouble huffing glue and spray paint.
“That’s bad stuff,” I said.
“Yes ma’am. The doctor said it could’ve killed me or burned out my brain cells. They showed us a film once with a guy who lived in a cardboard box on the streets in St. Louis. He sniffed spray paint until he destroyed most of his brain. When they talked to him on camera, he had a big ring of si
lver paint around his mouth and nose. That’s when I decided I wasn’t gonna do that stuff anymore, no way.”
This kid was politeness with a capital P. “That’s good, Roy.”
We exchanged smiles. I liked this kid. He seemed harmless and endearing. Made me want to take him to a Cardinals game and buy him a ball cap and ballpark hot dog, or something equally tasty.
“Maybe I’ll be a cop, like you,” he said then lowered his eyes like he was embarrassed.
“That’d be good. Keep up your grades. Keep your nose clean. You can go to the academy some day.”
Grinning, he nodded.
“Do you like it out here, Roy?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s nice and quiet.”
“Do you like the doctors?”
“Yes ma’am. I work with Dr. Young and Dr. Collins both. And Pete, too, now.”
“Have you tried out any of those therapies with light boxes and sound waves?”
“Yeah, they’re way cool. Just like a kaleidoscope.”
“Have they hypnotized you?”
“Yes ma’am. They said I was a good candidate, real easy to put under. They said some of us are real naturals. Mikey was. Poor Mikey. I was real surprised to hear about him. They said he was all cured when he left here, but I guess he fooled them somehow.”
“Mikey used all these lights and whistles, too?”
“Yes ma’am. And the headphones, too.”
I did some jotting in my notes. Mainly that I wanted Boyce Collins to show me this stuff and tell me exactly how it worked. “Did this treatment help you?”
“Yes ma’am. I felt like a different person after I did it four or five times. I quit wanting to sniff that glue, quit wanting to drink, too. I started studyin’ and listenin’ in class and in group. It’s great. I’m real proud of Dr. Collins for thinkin’ it all up.”
I asked him some more questions, found out that Li and Sing and most of the other kids in his group had been treated with the same experimental techniques. Oh, yeah, that question had bumped up to number one in my repertoire, because somehow, it was connected. I just didn’t know how yet. One thing I do know, nothing about this case is sitting well with me.
