The Venus Fix

by M. J. Rose

  Fisher nodded.

  “Can you find out which computer at NYU the e-mail came from?”

  “Sure, we can do that. Let me get back to you.” He turned and almost walked into Perez.

  “Butler just grabbed me in the hall. It’s all over the news— Kira Rushkoff was just taken to Bellevue. Sounds like a nervous breakdown.”

  Sixty-Three

  Officers Davis and Lynds escorted Alan Leightman Uptown to Bellevue Hospital and took him upstairs to his wife’s room. They were about to take him in when he asked if he could go in alone.

  Not much could happen in a hospital room, Davis figured. There was only one entrance. A nurse was there. Leightman was wearing handcuffs. They could watch Leightman through the glass in the door. Afterward, he or Lynds could ask the nurse what the judge had said.

  “Sure, but we’ll be right here.”

  Inside, Alan stood and stared at Kira, who was lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. She looked ravaged, as if she’d been deathly ill. As if most of the life force had left her. Was she sleeping? Awake? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes were open, but she hadn’t looked at him or said a word. There’d been no response when he’d said her name. He felt his knees go weak and held on to the foot of the bed. He waited until he felt a little stronger, and then asked the nurse if she would step outside for just a moment so he could speak to his wife alone.

  She didn’t mind, shrugged and got up, stretching her legs and walking slowly. He watched her leave. When the door was closed behind her, he watched one of the cops walk up to the door, station himself in front of the glass window, and look in. Alan didn’t care about being watched. It was being listened to that mattered to him.

  Sitting beside Kira, Alan took her left hand, the one that wasn’t hooked up to the IV, dipped his head down and kissed her palm. How was it possible that this woman, his wife, had committed such twisted crimes?

  “Kira?” he whispered.

  Nothing.

  It was possible because he had driven her to it with his addictions. With his lack of empathy for what she had suffered when he turned away from her and turned on the computer every night.

  Reaching out, he smoothed down his wife’s hair as he whispered her name again, but there was still no response.

  Who do you blame when a child commits a crime? Only the child? Or the parent also? No, he wasn’t her parent, but he was just as responsible. How many cases had he heard in his career? How many pleas? He knew how to weight both sides of every issue.

  Even, and especially, this one.

  His whole life was a matter of justice. And if there was going to be any justice here, it was going to have to be his to mete out. Here, now, he was sitting on the bench at their trial and while there was no question hers was the more heinous crime, his was the instigating crime. There was no way he’d ever right the wrongs he’d done to her or the wrongs she’d done to those poor women, but he could pay the penalty that he deserved.

  He felt tears prick his eyes but blinked them away. What good would any of that do now?

  “Kira, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “Kira, please.” His voice was on the verge of breaking.

  Finally, she turned her head and looked at him through a drug-induced haze.

  “You’re in the hospital but you are going to be all right. Can you hear me?”

  She had to be able to hear him. She had to be able to understand what he needed to tell her.

  “Kira, you can hear me, right?”

  She nodded.

  “You don’t have to worry. I’ll never tell anyone. I love you too much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Nothing you did will ever be discovered. I did do it, really, didn’t I? It was my fault. You only reacted. You shouldn’t be punished for reacting.”

  Her eyes opened wider, in alarm. There were deep hollows under her cheekbones. Without the deep red lipstick that had been her trademark, her lips looked thin and dry.

  “You can’t…” she said in a feeble voice.

  He bent down, awkwardly because of the handcuffs, and kissed her forehead.

  “You have to get better. And when you go home, you have to remember to destroy anything you have on paper, anything on your computer, anything at all that’s left. You have to make sure there’s nothing to tie you to all this. They won’t come looking for you. They won’t have any reason to. But you have to take care of every shred of evidence. Do you understand?”

  Kira opened her mouth to say something but only a sob came out.

  Sixty-Four

  At four-thirty, instead of going to her favorite art class, Amanda left school early and got on the Fifth Avenue bus. No one cared if she skipped art. Hell, no one really cared what she skipped anymore. She was a senior and she’d already applied to colleges. This last semester was a joke.

  She was nervous during the ride and almost got off twice. What if Dr. Snow broke her promise and went to her parents? What if she went to the principal? What if this fucked up her chances at getting into the school she wanted? Would the guidance counselor write to Brown and Cornell and tell them?

  Anything was possible.

  There was no way to know.

  First she’d get Dr. Snow to promise not to tell anyone. But could she take her word for it? She didn’t know. Timothy had told her that some of the guys had told Dr. Snow some pretty heavy shit over the past few months and she hadn’t blabbed to anyone.

  She should have called. She shouldn’t just show up. But she didn’t want the doctor to ask her anything over the phone.

  The bus finally stopped at Sixty-fifth Street and Amanda walked quickly from Fifth to Madison, then continued down the block until she found the wrought-iron doors and the small bronze plaque identifying the building as the Butterfield Institute.

  She tried the door but it didn’t open.

  Then she found the buzzer and pressed it.

  What was she going to say if anyone asked who she was? Should she give them her real name? Her whole name? Or just her first name? Would Dr. Snow know who she was if she only used her first name?

  She was starting to panic. Then she heard a click and a woman’s voice asking for her name.

  “Amanda. I’m here to see Dr. Snow.”

  “Come in.”

  Inside, Amanda looked around at the high ceiling, the crystal chandelier sending soft light down on the peach walls and bronze leather chairs. Surprised, she kept searching for something that would identify the place as a sex therapy institute.

  She was in the right place, wasn’t she?

  “Can I help you?”

  She walked over to the receptionist, holding on to her backpack so tightly the strap was biting into the flesh of her palm.

  “I wanted to see Dr. Snow.”

  “I don’t see you down for an appointment?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t have one.”

  “Dr. Snow isn’t here today. She had an accident.”

  Amanda hadn’t really heard anything after “isn’t here today.” It had taken so much to decide to come. She didn’t know if she could do it again. Tears started to fill her eyes. Fuck, she was not going to cry in front of this preppie chick.

  “She’ll be back tomorrow. Do you want to make an appointment?”

  Maybe she should just give her the damn CD and ask her to give it to Dr. Snow. But what if she looked at it? What if she figured it out?

  “When?”

  “She has an hour free on Thursday at five-thirty. Would that work for you?”

  Amanda nodded her head quickly. Yes.

  But could she really wait? Should she say something? She was afraid—afraid to give herself a chance to say no, to chicken out, to screw up. She’d done enough of that already. Delivering this CD to Dr. Snow was something she had to do. Dr. Snow would know what to do. She had to. Enough people had died already. Nothing would happen between now and then. Nothing would.

  Amanda shuddered.

&nb
sp; “You okay?” the blonde asked.

  “Not really,” Amanda said, but before the girl could ask her anything else, she ran out.

  Sixty-Five

  I left Nina’s late that afternoon and took a cab home. Everything was slightly difficult to manage. And everything exhausted me. I dropped my bag on the floor and my coat on the back of a chair, then sat down on the couch.

  The room was still and quiet and smelled slightly of the heated air coming up through the pipes. I went to light one of the many scented candles that I keep handy—not as an affectation or an aid to romance, but because they were necessary to get rid of the odor—but couldn’t manage the matches with only one hand.

  When Mitch rang the doorbell forty minutes later, I was still sitting in the den, trying to ignore the throbbing in my wrist. It was strange to open the door with my left hand.

  He kissed me, gently and softly, on the lips. I smelled the cold that he brought with him and shivered a little, surprised that the freezing temperatures would follow him upstairs and linger so long.

  “Does it still hurt?” he asked, looking at the cast in the sling.

  “Yeah, but I’m okay.”

  “I bet you’re being stoic beyond logic and not taking anything stronger than aspirin.”

  Instead of the comment sounding endearing, it was as if he’d flung an insult at me.

  “I’m okay.”

  He shrugged as if he’d heard this before. And he had. I took a big breath. Of course it would be like this at first. We had to work back into knowing each other. We had to find a new way to be together.

  “Do you want a drink?” I asked.

  “I’ll get it. You sit.”

  I let Mitch make us both drinks—Scotch neat for him, a club soda for me. I was concerned about mixing alcohol with the residue of painkillers in my system. He brought them over to the couch, handed me mine and took a swallow of his.

  “How is Dulcie?” I asked.

  “Resolute.”

  “So am I.”

  “I know.” He smiled ruefully.

  “You won’t try to get in the middle and convince me to give in, right? I won’t.”

  Mitch was handsome in a way that should have been more attractive to me. But sitting in the den that used to be our den, watching him, it wasn’t. When he’d kissed me, I hadn’t felt anything. Of course not; I was in pain. I’d broken my wrist twenty-four hours earlier. What was I supposed to feel? But there had been no startled acceleration of my blood, no heat in my cheeks. I’d smelled his cologne and had stepped back, finding it slightly unpleasant, the way a memory can be.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Mitch, she doesn’t have the tools yet to deflect the dangers out there.”

  “You’re lecturing me, Morgan. I already told you I wasn’t going to try to change your mind.”

  “Right. Sorry. I really am sorry. I just hate not having her here. I hate being the one to say no, being the bad guy again.”

  “It’s going to be fine.” He smiled. “Do you want to go out and get something to eat?”

  I didn’t. I wanted to see Noah. I wanted to talk to him and tell him how I was feeling and sit in the kitchen with him and have him make us something to eat. Damn. I needed to stop thinking about Noah. I had told Nina I could do this and that I needed to do this and it was what I wanted.

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter, wherever you want.”

  “Morgan, just pick someplace.” He sounded irritated. This was all too familiar. A pressure was holding me down, a tightness wound around my chest. I recognized the signs. I’d forgotten how we had been together.

  My marriage to Mitch hadn’t ended because he wanted it to. I hadn’t been happy, either, even if I chose not to think about it, even if I chose to hide behind my daughter and my work.

  “Mitch,” I said, “my hand hurts and I’m tired from all the painkillers. I think I need to stay here. I need to go to sleep.”

  I got up and walked him to the front door, where he leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Call me tomorrow. And please, Morgan, stop being so stubborn. Take something to help with the pain.”

  But once he had left, once the door had shut behind him and I was alone again in my home, my wrist wasn’t that bad and I wasn’t so tired anymore.

  Sixty-Six

  I struggled out of my clothes. Everything took so much time and effort with only one hand. Finally in my robe, I went into the kitchen and tried to get a glass of water from the dispenser, but I couldn’t push down the lever and hold the glass with the same hand. I gave up and used tap water.

  Holding the glass in my left hand—which still felt odd— I walked down the hall toward my bedroom, but stopped first at Dulcie’s door.

  I missed her. Not the willful teenager who looked at me with determined cold blue eyes and pinched her lips together, but the little girl who curled herself up in my arms, put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep in my lap.

  There was something comforting about the small bed. I put the water down on the nightstand, lay back, turned on her television and channel-surfed until I found the news. I wanted to see if anything new had happened with Alan since I’d been hurt.

  First up was an international story, about a bombing in the Middle East. Then a national story about a missing corporate jet over the Rockies. Then what I expected: a photograph of Alan Leightman filled the screen. It shouldn’t have surprised me at all, since I was prepared for it, but as I sat in my daughter’s bedroom, my wrist aching, listening to a reporter I didn’t know read the news that would ruin my client, I felt the sting of tears. A man’s whole reputation, after a life dedicated to the law, to doing the just thing, was being destroyed. Nothing, no matter what happened after this, would ever restore his stature, or probably his spirit.

  I picked up the phone. I wasn’t going to call Noah to tell him that I missed him, or that I’d fallen, or that I was having second thoughts about Mitch, but to tell him that they had it all wrong: Alan couldn’t have killed anyone. I knew he couldn’t have. And that meant someone else was still out there. Someone dangerous. Someone they had to keep looking for.

  I’d already dialed; I heard the first ring.

  But what if I did tell Noah all that and he asked me how I knew—what could I say? I still didn’t have Alan’s permission to speak to the police about him.

  I heard the second ring.

  No, Alan had been insistent that I not tell anyone. Almost to the point of being threatening. And then, for the first time since the accident, I remembered the man in the shadows under the street lamp in the snow. The man who looked like Alan’s bodyguard, Terry Meziac.

  “Hello?”

  So instead of telling Noah what I called to tell him, I told him how I’d fallen and broken my wrist.

  “Are you crying?” he asked.

  I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me, and was about to say something when he said, “You shouldn’t have to cry by yourself. I’m on my way out. Would you like me to bring you something? Did you eat?”

  I cried harder.

  Sixty-Seven

  Most men would have brought chicken noodle soup from one of the ubiquitous coffee shops on New York’s Upper East Side. Not Noah. He showed up with a quart of chicken gumbo with big chunks of tender white meat and tiny round slices of okra in a spicy tomato base that brought different tears to my eyes.

  While we sat at the kitchen table and ate bowls of the thick Creole stew, I answered all his questions and told him everything but the one thing I wanted to talk to him about the most—how I’d seen Terry Meziac on the street, how I thought he was following me. About the threat Alan Leightman had almost made in my office. About how hard it was to reconcile the Alan who I had been treating for so long with the one who panicked at the thought of me telling anyone that he was in therapy with me, even if it helped him with the police.

  Noah had warned me once that if Alan wasn’
t guilty, then I was in danger. He’d meant that whoever was guilty might want to keep me quiet.

  It had never occurred to him that Alan might have other reasons for wanting me kept quiet.

  “Are you in much pain?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Really, no. It was worse before. I took some painkillers.”

  “The prescription kind?”

  “No. But they helped.”

  “Okay. But if you need something stronger, do you have it?”

  I nodded.

  We were both quiet for a few seconds.

  “I need to tell you something about Alan Leightman. I can’t talk about it. I can’t tell you why I know. Or anything. Is that all right?”

  “It will have to be all right.”

  “There is no way that Alan Leightman killed those girls.”

  “I know you believe that, but he confessed. We have evidence proving he watched them online.”

  “That’s not evidence that he killed them, is it?”

  He looked at me with a sympathetic smile. “No therapist wants to believe that she could have misread her patient. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Damn you. Damn you for patronizing me. First of all, I never said he was my patient.”

  “I am not patronizing you. I’m telling you something you know is right. You don’t want him to be guilty. You don’t want to have missed the signs. I know how you feel. I understand.”

  I stared down at the empty bowl. I’d never be able to make food that good.

  How could I tell Noah that Alan didn’t have any of the personality traits of a person capable of carrying out those four macabre murders without revealing that he was my patient—and without breaking my promise that I would protect Alan’s privacy.

  Was that the real reason I didn’t want to tell Noah? Or had Alan scared me? Had seeing Terry Meziac, or someone who I thought was Terry, scared me?

  No, Alan wasn’t capable of harming me, even to keep whatever secret he was keeping. I’d worked with him long enough to know that. He’d been excited by risking his reputation and visiting those women online. And at the same time, he was shamed by it. But he had no interest in any of the women he watched. No need to reach out and try to get to know them, help them or hurt them. He didn’t see them as his tormentors. He’d been viewing Internet porn long enough to know that even if he got rid of three or four or five Web-cam girls, there would always be more just a few key strokes away. Yes, he needed the Web-cam girls the same way a coke addict needs a fix, but there was nothing violent about his obsession.