The Venus Fix

by M. J. Rose

  His eyes blinked three times in succession.

  “I am not doing this to Kira.”

  “No. You’re not, are you? You’re doing this to protect her.”

  He looked surprised that I’d guessed.

  “Alan, is that what you’re doing?”

  He smiled just a little and then it disappeared. “What do you mean protect her? I don’t understand, Dr. Snow. What do I have to protect her from?”

  “Alan, please. Tell me what is going on.”

  “I wish I could have completed my therapy with you, Morgan. I think you would have gotten me to a better place.”

  It was the first time he’d ever called me by my first name.

  He stood.

  I wanted to lock him in my office and make him talk to me, explain why he was taking this drastic step. “If you need me, I’ll come. Wherever you are. Do you understand? In prison, you’ll be allowed to see your therapist. They’ll let me see you.”

  He nodded, reached out and shook my hand. His skin was dry and cold but the handshake was strong.

  Judge Alan Leightman could not have killed anyone. I was right about that. But I was wrong about him being able to commit suicide. Because he was doing that, in front of my eyes. And there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  He turned, walked to the door, opened it and left my office. I watched him march down the sweeping staircase. It was the first time he’d left the Butterfield Institute through the front door.

  Fifty-Eight

  Noah Jordain and Mark Perez were in the interrogation room, questioning a Hispanic boy who was far too young to have been picked up on rape charges, though that’s why he was there.

  “So, who were you there with, Juan?” Perez asked.

  Neither detective thought this kid was the one they wanted, but so far they couldn’t get Juan to crack.

  “Nobody. I told you that already, man.”

  “Hey!” Perez shouted. “No attitude. It doesn’t matter if you told us twenty times. You tell us again. You understand?”

  Butler opened the door and stuck her head in. Jordain looked over. “I need you both for a few minutes,” she said.

  Jordain got down on his knees in front of the kid. Where Perez had been tough, he was almost gentle. “Listen, Juan, you’re only twelve. If you tell us what really happened last night and the name of the friend you’re protecting, you won’t get into trouble. But if you don’t, you’re going to grow up in jail.” His voice got cold as ice now. “And when it comes to girls? Hell, you won’t see one for years. Think about that for a while. By yourself.”

  The two detectives walked out of the room. Butler was waiting for them.

  “What have you got?”

  “Better to show you than tell you,” she said, and led them down the hall.

  “Tease,” quipped Perez.

  Butler didn’t take the bait. She didn’t turn around. She just kept walking.

  “Have you got something on the Web-cam case?” Jordain asked.

  “Maybe.”

  He was frustrated that they still were nowhere. Sure they suspected Leightman, but they still didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him. They all knew they couldn’t hang a case on the e-mail. It was too easy. It had to be a setup. If the judge was going to ask the girls via e-mail to use poisoned lubricants, massage oils and Band-Aids, would he use an e-mail address so easily traceable? Okay. So who was setting him up? Why wasn’t he screaming bloody murder and pointing fingers? Was it blackmail? Skeletons in his closet? How were they going to find out?

  Butler watched their faces when she opened the door.

  “I’m willing to tell you what you want to know, who killed those three women,” Leightman said once everyone was seated. “But I need your word of honor that you won’t ask me to explain anything or discuss any details with you now.”

  “We don’t bargain for information,” Jordain said.

  “Bullshit, Detective. You bargain all the time. I’ll tell you what I have to tell you. And then I’ll just shut up. Like it or not. My lawyer will handle the rest.”

  Jordain hated games. “You’re here. We didn’t call you. Talk or don’t talk.”

  “I’m turning myself in voluntarily. I’m responsible for all three deaths. That’s all I have to say until my lawyer gets here.”

  Fifty-Nine

  Nina came by my office to say good-night, took one look at me and asked what was wrong. I told her about Alan Leightman and the confession he had probably already made to the police. We sat and talked for a few minutes, and then she suggested we leave the office and have drinks.

  Usually we went to Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle. It was a twelve-block walk that we normally enjoyed, but the narrow pathways carved out of packed snow were uninviting, so Nina and I pulled up our coat collars and walked to the small French bistro four doors down.

  It was about fifteen degrees out but felt even colder because of the brutal wind that whipped around us. We were all getting tired of the weather. Everyone was talking about it constantly. Every night now, news shows did special segments on coping with it. More of my patients were depressed than usual. There was an epidemic of SAD—Seasonal Affective Disorder.

  The waiter came and took our order—a vodka and tonic with lime for her, a dirty martini on the rocks for me—after which we continued talking about Alan. I explained how ludicrous it was and why I was so certain he wasn’t the killer that he claimed to be.

  “He’s going to need help, but it can’t be you. You know that. You can’t treat him anymore,” Nina said.

  “Why?”

  “You need to ask?”

  “You mean because of Noah?”

  “Of course.”

  The waiter brought our drinks. Nina was watching me. I knew what she was thinking. “I’m not seeing Noah anymore.”

  The waiter returned with a terra-cotta pot of black and green olives, glistening with oil, and I took one.

  “Since when?”

  I told her what had happened with Dulcie, how I’d reacted, what Mitch had said, and ended with the fight I’d had with Noah. I went through it all, trying to be as objective as I could and not be defensive, but it was difficult since Nina’s facial expressions were speaking volumes: There wasn’t much she liked about what she heard.

  “You’re so good at denial, Morgan. But you can’t expect me to believe that you think this whole plan will solve anything, can you?”

  She sat back and refolded the cuffs on her camel-colored cashmere sweater.

  “Why not? I loved Mitch. I never wanted the marriage to end.”

  “Nope, you didn’t. But it did end. And you met someone else.” She reached out and took my hand. “What’s really going on?”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you even know what you’re afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid.” My voice was only slightly above a whisper.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You’re going to make me do this the hard way.”

  “I don’t ever make you do anything.”

  I laughed. “No. But you never let up if you think I’m taking the easy way out of something.” I drank some more of the martini, noticing for the first time that it was cold and good.

  “Morgan, do you know why you are considering going back to Mitch?”

  “Because he was my husband and I was happy with him, and our daughter would be better off if we were together.”

  She shook her head.

  “What then?” I asked.

  “You’re smarter than that.”

  “I want to give Mitch a chance. I want my daughter home.”

  “Of course you want Dulcie home. But you are also damn afraid of getting involved—no, let’s call this as it really is— so damn afraid of getting intimate with Noah and having him disappoint you that you would rather run away from him than face up to it and work on it.”

  I took another sip of my drink. And then another. I tried to keep quiet until the moment
had passed and I felt able to carry on a civilized conversation without shouting.

  “Why the hell can’t you just get mad at me?” Nina was leaning over the table, whispering.

  “Why can’t you let me do what I have to do to get my daughter back? This is about Dulcie.”

  “Okay, let’s talk about Dulcie. This is what’s supposed to happen to her at this age. Rebelling is healthy for her. You know that.”

  “I know it intellectually.”

  “Good. At least we can start there. And you know being a teenager is rough. By the very nature of what she is going through developmentally, she is supposed to fight you for what she wants. It’s the last stage in her self-individuation, and it’s not only important but critical that she go through it. Without a mother to fight…you know how not rebelling hurt you. You need to allow her to fight you now. Nothing that you do or don’t do with Mitch will prevent that process. And you don’t want to. It’s not healthy to.”

  I looked at my watch. Nina frowned. “Sure, tell me it’s late and that you have to go. Good response to confrontation.” Nina glared at me. “Don’t bother. I’ll get the check.”

  She waved the waiter over, and while she waited for him she pulled out her wallet and opened it to get a credit card. I saw the picture of Dulcie and me that she kept there.

  My father had known me longer than Nina, but no one knew me better than she did, and she was right. I hadn’t rebelled. I’d been too timid as a teenager, followed the rules, emulated the adults. I emulated Nina by going to both her undergrad and grad alma maters. I’d married relatively early— someone my father knew and liked. All that time, I’d never stopped to examine why it was all so effortless for me and so difficult for all my friends.

  The result of my not rebelling was that I didn’t always connect to my self—to my innermost thoughts or to my physical self. I had worked on that in therapy when I got out of college and during grad school, but I’d never quite resolved it. My feelings were there but buried deep down and I didn’t always have the energy to dig for them.

  Only with Dulcie had love come to the surface with ease. I held my baby in my arms and did not have to search for emotional connections. And yet, even with Dulcie, the problem manifested itself in its own way. Maybe because she was one of the very few people I did connect to, my feelings for her were magnified. The way I felt pain that she experienced. The way I woke even before I heard her stirring. It was not psychic so much as it was inevitable, with all of my attention focused on her.

  Together Nina and I walked out the door and into the street. The wind blew our coats around our legs and pushed at us. Tiny pinpricks of snow hit my face. It had started up again. Not lush, fat flakes that landed gently and made the world into a soft winter scene. This was an icy attack of pellets of snow mixed with freezing water. We walked the half block to Madison Avenue, and by the time we reached the corner, my cheeks were already stinging. I took Nina’s arm to help her across the street, knowing that there were patches of ice hidden under this fresh layer of snow, the argument forgotten for the moment.

  We turned north and went another half block and then I spotted a taxi discharging a woman. At the same time, across the street under the light of the street lamp, a man was watching us. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Terry Meziac. Alan’s bodyguard.

  What was he doing here?

  I shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold. Noah had warned me that what I knew about Leightman could put me in danger, and I’d shrugged it off.

  The snow was falling. It was dark. The taxi was going to pull away.

  Maybe it wasn’t Meziac.

  I forced myself to look away from the man, to focus on catching the cab. I called out “Taxi!” and quickened my step, and that’s when I slid.

  Letting go of Nina’s arm—somehow knowing better than to drag her down with me—I fell forward, fast, put out my right hand, felt the cold ice on my palm, felt my legs fold, felt the cold all around me. Hard, stinging cold.

  Sixty

  Five hours later, Nina and I left Lenox Hill Hospital. I’d dislocated and broken a bone in my right wrist. The doctors had reset it and put my arm, just below the elbow to the knuckles, in a cast.

  “Morgan? C’mon, sweetie. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we?” I was groggy from the painkillers. Where was I? I looked around. In a taxi. In front of Nina’s brownstone on East Fifty-sixth Street, across from the East River.

  “You’re spending the night with me,” she said, and she helped me traverse the sidewalk and get into the building safely.

  Inside, she put me in the bedroom where I’d spent so many nights as a kid, and brought in a cup of hot milky tea laced with honey—a concoction that she never drank herself but foisted on anyone who was hurt or sick. I loved it.

  More than that, the milk and the honey with the slight bite of the tea was what comfort and caring tasted like to me. I made the same drink for my daughter when she didn’t feel well, and she always drank it slowly, the same way I did, making it last, the way I was doing now.

  Tuesday

  Three days remaining

  Sixty-One

  There wasn’t a moment when I was asleep and then awake. There was only the slow emergence from a complicated dream of a giant checkerboard, Noah standing in the middle of it, holding out both a red and a black checker to me, asking me if I was ready to play.

  I had a hangover from the painkillers, a headache, and my wrist was throbbing.

  Sitting up, I looked down at the pajamas I was wearing. I didn’t remember getting undressed. Nina must have helped me. I stood up, felt woozy and slowly made my way to the bathroom.

  Navigating with one hand proved more complicated than I had imagined. It was difficult to pull the pajama bottoms down and then up with only my left hand.

  It was going to be a long six weeks.

  I found Nina sitting in the kitchen at a small table by the window that looked out into a winter garden.

  “You must be in a lot of pain,” she said when she saw me. “Come, sit down. I’ll get you some juice and some pills.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, maneuvering the chair.

  “You’re not going to play martyr, are you?” She put a crystal glass of orange juice down on the table, along with a plate that had two white pills on it. Without thinking, I reached with my right hand for the juice, felt the stab of pain, grimaced, put my hurt arm back in my lap and took a deep breath.

  “Where’s your sling?”

  “I forgot.”

  “I’ll be right back. In the meantime, take the pills.”

  When Nina returned, she was holding a lovely silk Hermès scarf. It was black with large copper poppies on it. She draped it over my chest and tied it around my neck.

  “I have a sling from the hospital.”

  “It’s hideous.”

  “Nina, you’re crazy.” I couldn’t imagine using something so expensive to hold my arm in place.

  “You’re worth it.” She smiled.

  After I’d finished the juice, Nina looked down at the plate, where the two pills still sat, untouched.

  “Am I going to have to sneak these into your food?”

  “I don’t need them.”

  “Of course you do.”

  I shook my head.

  “You are the most stubborn creature. Aren’t you in pain?”

  “I’ll get over it.”

  “Morgan, you are not going to get addicted to pain pills if you take them for two or three days.”

  “If you have two extra-strength over-the-counter painkillers, I’ll take those.”

  We’d been over it before. About me. About what kind of medication I’d give Dulcie. I was afraid that we might have inherited my mother’s tendency toward substance abuse. She’d been on uppers and downers and muscle relaxants and pain pills, all washed down with vodka, during my short life with her.

  Nina left for the institute at eight and it didn’t take much urging
on her part for me to agree to let her cancel my appointments and stay in bed. I slept most of the morning, woke up about noon, ate some of the soup and sandwich she’d made for me before she left, and then spent the afternoon watching old movies on television, avoiding the relentless news coverage of the confession from Judge Alan Leightman.

  There was a lot I had to work out, but the pain, as gripping as it was, had given me a short reprieve.

  Sixty-Two

  With Alan Leightman in jail, Jordain and Perez spent the morning catching up on paperwork. At lunchtime, Perez kept a long-overdue dentist appointment while Jordain stayed at his desk, and that’s where he was when Ken Fisher, one of the computer geeks, stopped by to tell him he finally had some new information.

  “All the e-mail the women received from bob205 originated from a computer at NYU,” Fisher said.

  “Makes sense. Leightman teaches at NYU. So now we know why there was nothing on his home computer.”

  “Listen, Noah, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but there are some things that don’t match up now.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Okay, but you are not going to like it. Remember we said that at the same time the letter was sent to Debra Kamel, there was e-mail sent from Leightman’s computer that definitely went out through his own DSL line?”

  “Humor me and explain what that means.”

  “It means that if Alan Leightman was at NYU sending that mail, then he couldn’t also have been at home sending mail. I’m sorry, boss.”

  “Don’t be. Not yet. Maybe his wife was using his computer at home and sending mail from her husband’s e-mail account. Isn’t that possible?”

  “Sure.”

  “So then it’s also possible that he was home and someone else—say, his wife—was at NYU using his e-mail account.”