“We can’t talk about this! Anything you or I say now might become part of the investigation. In fact, you may end up being called in as a witness to what happened in my office that day. The only reason why I’m telling you now is so that you understand why I have to step aside as your supervisor. Not only is it inappropriate for me to mentor you while I’m under investigation, but there is a substantial conflict of interest. This is the last time we can talk about this. Do you understand?”
Eyes wide, she made a tick-a-lock gesture over her mouth, throwing the “key” over her shoulder.
“So you’ll make an appointment with Hannah and keep it?” I pushed.
“I will. I’ll do it right now. I’m just so relieved that it wasn’t anything I did that made you want to transfer me.”
“No. Definitely not. I’ve enjoyed working with you very much.”
After another five minutes of reassurances, Mary Kate trotted up to the front to have Lisa fit her into Hannah’s schedule. I clunked my head on the desk and tried to channel acetaminophen psychically. Had to give up and root around in my purse for the real stuff. Mary Kate could be exhausting.
Before leaving the office, I forced myself to follow my own advice, reluctantly asking Lisa to set me up for supervision with Regina. While I was at it, I also had her schedule me in with Marshall. He needed to review my written response to Wayne’s complaint and be updated on the recent events. Lisa hummed “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” under her breath as she scanned his calendar.
I ignored her. If I didn’t hurry I’d be late for the AA meeting. Sue was my designated escort, and patience was a vastly overrated virtue in her book. Nonexistent, actually. I risked a speeding ticket, getting there with two minutes to spare.
“You’re late,” Sue said.
“I am not. You’re early.”
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“Had the police over Friday night. Somebody stabbed a doll and left it on my doorstep.”
“But you called the police? About time,” she said.
“Actually, one of the cops was really nice. He’s in recovery, too, or was. I don’t think he comes anymore. Anyway, he and his partner went and talked to Wayne.”
“Nice-schmice. The important thing is: Is he cute?” Sue asked as we went through the big double doors of the club.
“Judge for yourself. He’s sitting right there.” I smiled and waved.
Durrant, in jeans and T-shirt, grinned back. He sat at a table with Harry, big hand wrapped around a Styrofoam cup of coffee, looking entirely at home. Which, I supposed, he was. A famous poet once said that “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Summed up AA pretty well.
Sue and I joined them, and I felt a wave of comfort wash over me. Apparently my aversion to police was limited to the abstract. Big, sturdy, stand-between-me-and-a-lunatic cops were just peachy.
“Any new contact?” Durrant asked.
“None at all. It’s great.”
He nodded. “Hopefully, he got the message.”
That was all that was said, although I noticed Sue look at his butt appreciatively as we headed into the meeting. She made a point of sitting next to him, too. Cheered her up immensely.
When I got into work the next morning, I stopped as usual at the front desk to check my schedule. Marshall had changed our meeting to the hour I normally blocked out for lunch.
“Was I supposed to brown bag it today?” I asked Lisa.
“No way. He had me make a reservation at Oscars.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Really?” Nerves closed my throat.
“You don’t sound pleased.”
Lisa, ever alert for dirt, picked up on my anxiety. I needed to toss her a bone. “I don’t know. Eating lunch with the boss is always weird. What do you order? What if I get food stuck in my teeth? Or burp? I hate that.”
“I guess you’ll have to suffer through it. Do you want to take the you-know-what back to your office to get in the mood?” She patted the bottom drawer of her desk where the pirate porno resided in isolated glory.
“You really need to get rid of that thing,” I warned.
“I’ll die first.”
By lunchtime, word had gotten around that Marshall was taking me to lunch. Even though he’d made a point of telling Lisa to pencil in lunch dates with alternating employees at the first of every month, the rumor mill churned. I hadn’t felt so awkward since freshman year when Jimmy Podenka tried to kiss me in the back seat of my dad’s old Buick. With my dad driving.
As Marshall and I crossed the parking lot, I felt my co-workers’ eyes crawling over us like sleepy flies. I climbed into his car certain that, if I looked, I’d be able to count a half-dozen, newly made, smushed nose prints on the clinic windows. I pictured lots of ducking and giggling going on inside. Marshall played the whole thing off.
He had chosen the restaurant well. The atmosphere of Oscars was designed along the Baby Bear-scale of dining—not too loud and not too quiet, not too slow and not too fast. It accommodated the professional working crowd, getting you served and fed in under an hour without making you feel rushed.
After navigating the dining area and the menu, I settled down some. Having successfully avoided spinach, expensive dishes, and red sauce, I hoped I could manage the soup-and-sandwich special without making a fool of myself. That remained to be seen, however. The soup worried me a little.
While waiting for our food, I gave Marshall a copy of my time line and the FU-sonnet, explaining about the doll. I hoped he wouldn’t ask about the “club” and mentally prepared a cover story, but he focused on the sonnet. As he read, I watched his face. He had gorgeous, feathery eye lashes. His eyes lifted, catching me practically drooling, and he smiled, slow and warm.
I nearly dumped my water glass over, then made a big show of scanning the restaurant, looking for the waitress. The wench must have been hiding in the back, because she was clearly unavailable for providing distractions. No tip for her.
“Any idea why Wayne is sending you Shakespearean love sonnets? I have to say, that doesn’t really fit my picture of him.”
I had a choice of pretending that I knew the sonnet was Shakespearean or throwing myself on the mercy of a better-educated peer. My natural inclinations would’ve had me lie, but I just didn’t think I could pull it off.
“Not a lot of people read Shakespeare these days,” Marshall said. “I majored in English for my undergrad.”
“English? Not a lot of call for that in the mental health field.”
“You’d be surprised how edifying Shakespeare is regarding human nature. But, actually, my girlfriend at the time was an English major. She decided we would be teachers. I—mistakenly—thought it would be an easy program, and was more interested in her other attributes.”
“Shame on you,” I said.
“Hey, I was twenty. What can I say? Anyway, I recognize this. I couldn’t tell you what number it is, but I’m fairly sure it’s from the Fair Youth half, which is another strange choice. Shakespeare’s sonnets are roughly divided into two sections: those addressed to a young man, presumably handsome, and either a patron, a lover, or his son—depending on which expert you talk to—and then the Dark Lady sonnets. The Dark Lady’s identity is also a mystery, but the sonnets seem to indicate she was promiscuous and fickle. There may have been some sort of love-triangle among her, Shakespeare, and the Youth.
“As I said, this one would have been addressed to the Youth, not the Dark Lady,” his long-lashed eyes gazed at my own dark hair. “On the other hand, it is about rejection and rivalry, and its tone is primarily bitter, sarcastic. That would fit. The thing that really worries me is that it’s also about losing the ability to think rationally.”
“Not good,” I agreed. “But there hasn’t been any further trouble since the police talked to him.”
Marshall nodded thoughtfully, still eying the sonnet. With a sigh, he set it aside and picked up the response I’d wr
itten refuting Wayne’s complaint. “Hopefully there won’t be anymore run-ins with him. I would say the danger would be greatest if he gets drunk.
“The good news,” he continued, “is that with the two police reports and this rebuttal, I don’t think there will be any problem dismissing the case.”
The arrival of our food covered my sigh of relief. After that news, the soup was hardly any threat at all. Unfortunately, in addition to chicken wild rice, I got a taste of my own medicine when Marshall checked on whether I’d met with Regina for supervision. Hopefully I could dissemble better than Mary Kate had.
“We’re meeting Thursday,” I said, avoiding his eyes.
“Thursday? Couldn’t you fit in anything sooner?”
“Well, she’s carrying a full caseload and she’s going away for the weekend.” I winced. I’d made a tactical mistake.
“Oh, that’s right. Wait a minute…” Marshall’s face scrunched. “Regina’s gone Thursday and Friday. She’s using vacation days for a long weekend.”
“Right,” I said, concentrating on my soup.
He leaned back and spread his hands wide, gesturing me to go on.
“Well, she had a lot going on, so we’re meeting Thursday.” I cleared my throat. “Next week. When she’s all nice and relaxed after her vacation.”
“Not gonna happen. Regina doesn’t do ‘nice and relaxed,’ but edgy seems to work for her. She’s good at what she does, and she could be very helpful to you in your situation. Moreover, I don’t want you going so long without supervision. Besides,” he continued, “you don’t want to work with someone after their vacation. They’re all depressed, nothing to look forward to, and lots of work piled up that they’re behind on. Get with her before she heads out, when she’s still got something to look forward to. When we get back, see what she’s got open for this week.”
“You mean what’s left of this week—today or tomorrow.”
“So be it,” he declared.
“So be it? Isn’t that a little Pharaoh-esque? ‘So let it be written; so let it be done!’” I thumped my chest.
He laughed. “Have you always been a smart-ass?”
“Always. Ever since I can remember.”
“I’ve always thought of smart alecks as conflict magicians. Instead of making an elephant disappear into thin air, they use jokes to make the problem disappear.” Although a slight smile played on his lips, he’d turned serious, voice softening. I avoided his searching eyes, focusing instead on the waitress as she approached and plopped down the check.
“Abracadabra,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was time to return to normal. I needed it. I function best in a rut, head down, chugging along the familiar groove of my life. Yet despite the apparent Wayne-lessness of my existence, I continued to be jittery and on edge. When Mary Kate walked up behind me in the file room, I nearly pulled the shelving unit over on top of me. Scared her, too. Apparently she wasn’t prepared for co-workers literally climbing the walls. This was a mental health clinic, after all.
Regina fit me in for a supervision meeting first thing Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, Regina had no sense of humor, knew it, and didn’t care. We grated on each other.
The first thing we did was review the time line I’d worked up, discussing each of the attacks chronologically. Then, she threw a supervisory curve ball.
“How are your feelings about being victimized affecting your work?”
I gritted my teeth. I usually avoided her name, but today I took a grim pleasure in bearing down on the syllables. “Well, I don’t really see myself as a ‘victim,’ Regina.”
Raising bushy, I-am-okay-with-my-body eyebrows, she said, “What does that word, ‘victim,’ say to you?”
“This isn’t therapy, Regina. I’m more than willing to discuss how the recent events have been playing out in my work, but I don’t want to get into word games.” Nothing irritates a therapist more than being analyzed. That’s why most of us went into the field to begin with.
She did the silent, do-you-hear-yourself? Therapist thing. Big deal. I liked silence. Bring it on.
After several minutes, she cleared her throat, shifting in her seat. I smiled inwardly at my petty victory and tossed her a bone. Anyway, I didn’t want her telling Marshall I wasn’t cooperating; she seemed like the type to snitch.
“The biggest issue has been distraction,” I conceded. “There are sessions where I’m not focused on my clients. Instead, I’m worrying about the complaint he made.”
She bludgeoned that topic to death, wrapping up with the ethics complaint. “I understand from Marshall that it’s likely to be a non-issue,” Regina observed. “Aside from reassigning Mary Kate, have there been any other repercussions from it?”
“No. Like what?”
“This is your first complaint?” she asked. Without waiting for my nod, she continued, “They could have done an internal review of your clients. That’s a huge pain in the ass. Maybe even suspended you during the process. They could have asked you to hire your own lawyer. By the way, have you contacted one?”
“No, I figured I would wait to see what happens after my rebuttal is received. Do you think I should?”
“At this point, no. It wouldn’t have hurt, though, to have an attorney go over the initial complaint. Too late now.”
She picked the time line up, studied it, and frowned.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know. This seems off somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m not trying to be obscure, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. He certainly has been very active, hasn’t he? Hardly a day’s gone by that he hasn’t pulled some kind of crap.”
“Not lately though,” I pointed out. “Not since the police talked to him. Do you think he’s stopped?”
Regina continued to frown. “I wish I could say yes. The truth is, only he could tell you. He might. He might not. He could go for months without contacting you—especially if he finds a new target for his anger and, unfortunately for her, Carrie might be that target—or he might resume today. Since his motivation seems to be revenge, perhaps with Carrie back under his thumb, it will have burned itself out.
“I’ve known some stalkers to continue their behaviors for years. This one certainly seems creative and persistent. He’s all over the board with the types of attacks he’s using. On the other hand, he might have just enough self-preservation to back off now that you’ve involved the cops. Time will tell.
“My question for you,” she continued, “is how are you going to handle living with the uncertainty? In my experience, that sensation of always waiting for the other shoe to drop is one of the most draining aspects of the ordeal.”
“It is. I hate it. I find myself hoping that Durrant has scared Wayne off, but I’m nervous as hell. Jumpy.”
“Are you sleeping well? Eating well?”
I smiled as Regina segued into a depression checklist. We finished up about ten minutes later, after convincing her I wasn’t clinically depressed, suicidal, or homicidal, and we went our separate ways.
As I passed Marshall in the hall, he asked, “So, how’d it go?”
“Just peachy, thanks.”
“Learn anything?”
“Yeah. This could go on forever. Or not.”
He laughed and ducked into his office. Coward. As I headed toward my own, I had to admit that my gruffness was mostly a sham. Marshall was right. Regina was good at what she did. She definitely knew her stuff. We wouldn’t ever be best buddies, but she had good insights into how my situation might interfere with my work and, for that, I was grateful. I wondered, idly, what had bothered her so much when she’d looked at the time line.
The illusion of peace shattered the next morning when, for the first time ever, Lisa interrupted me in a session. Closing the door behind me, I joined her in the hall.
“It’s Edna Torgensen,”
she said. “Carrie’s mother. She’s on line three, and she’s way hysterical.”
“I still have twenty minutes left with Judith,” I said, pointing to my office door. “Will you see if she wants to reschedule or how she wants to work it out? Tell her I’m very sorry.”
“Not a problem. Regina’s office is open; you can take it in there.”
The first two minutes of the call was a torrent of squealing oh my god’s, punctuated by gasps and wild sobbing. I tried stemming the flow but ultimately let her wind down on her own. The whole time my mind whirled, conjuring up violent images of Carrie, hurt or dead, and Wayne smirking at his conquest.
Edna finally regained control, and I asked, “Is it Carrie? What’s happened?”
“No. I mean, yes, the bastard beat her bad, put her in the ER yesterday, but that’s not it. It’s him.”
“Him?” My gut dropped and, instinctively, I stood, ready to run but stalled by the lack of information. “What? Is he coming here? What’s going on?”
“No. Oh my god, no! He ain’t going anywhere. He’s dead.”
“Dead? What? Are you sure?”
At that, she burst into a toxic fusion of horror and revulsion that disguised itself in hysterical laughter. I waited.
“Dead. Very, very dead. Head-blown-clear-off kind o’ dead. I came over here this morning to see Carrie and found him layin’ there in the drive. Somebody unloaded a lot of shot into that boy, that’s for sure. He was just layin’ there, on his back, blood and guts all over.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Yeah, they’re coming.”
“Who could have…?” I swallowed the question, afraid to hear that Carrie was responsible.
“I don’t know. I found him, so I s’pose the cops are going to think it was me, but it wasn’t. Not that I ain’t happy he’s dead but… Anyway, I didn’t do it. And Carrie didn’t do it either!”
The Enemy We Know (Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery) Page 15
