Twice: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  “Could she be faking it?” asked Jeffrey.

  “If she is, she’s a very convincing actress,” said Dr. Barnes. “Generally, Mr. Mark, people don’t try to fake their way into a place like this.”

  “It’s better than prison.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” answered Lydia.

  An elderly woman in a pink smock holding on to a walker with one hand pounded on a door at the end of the hall. “Let me in!” she yelled, frantically looking around her with eyes wild and red-rimmed at her invisible pursuers. “Let me in!” An attendant in green scrubs ran over to her and gently ushered her down the hall, whispering to her. A crowd of patients, all wearing the same pink smocks, crowded around a window where a nurse was handing out tiny paper cups filled with pills.

  Looking around her, Lydia felt some combination of pity and dread. She couldn’t imagine a more grim place in which to find yourself. She felt the fear and suffering radiating off the walls and wondered what it would be like to wake up and go to sleep in this place haunted by the delusions of your own mind, searching for the road back to sanity.

  “How long have you been Julian’s doctor?” asked Lydia.

  “I’ve seen Julian on and off for about the last eight years,” she said. “Until about a year ago.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She came to her appointment and told me she would no longer be continuing our sessions.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She said something very odd. That she’d realized that ninety percent of her problems were due to the fact that she hadn’t been true to herself. That she’d decided to surrender.”

  “Surrender?”

  “That was the word she used. She wouldn’t expound. Just thanked me, wrote me a check, and left. I didn’t see her again until she was admitted here.”

  Lydia turned the connotations of the word over in her mind. Surrender … to give up, to admit defeat. What within herself had she been fighting?

  “Her mother told us that she’s suffered with depression. Any indication that there might be something more seriously wrong with her? Did she ever discuss with you the murder of her first husband?”

  This time Dr. Barnes didn’t bother to hide her annoyance.

  “Naturally,” she said officiously, “I am not at liberty to discuss my patient’s condition or the things we discussed with you. But if you’re asking me if I had any indication that she might be a threat to herself or to others, the answer is no.”

  “Did she mention to you at any time that she was afraid of someone, that she had any enemies who might wish to harm her or her family?”

  The doctor didn’t answer Lydia. She pulled her mouth into a tight grimace as if she were physically trying to prevent words from flying out.

  Lydia stopped walking and the doctor turned to face her. “Look, Doctor. I’m not trying to infringe upon your professional ethics. But a man is dead and your patient is the prime suspect—the only suspect. We’re trying to help her. Maybe you can do the same.”

  “I can’t help you. And the only way I can help Julian is by treating her illness and protecting her patient-doctor privilege.”

  Case closed. Dr. Barnes was a tough nut and Lydia could see that they’d gotten as far with her as they would today.

  After a number of twists and turns down long gray hallways, they reached another metal door and were buzzed through into yet another hallway that had six closed doors on each side and ended in a large, barred window. Sunlight streamed in through the grating and a uniformed police officer sat in a green metal chair reading a copy of the New York Post outside the last door.

  “This is the wing for patients who are not stable enough to mix with the others. Ms. Ross is being kept here for obvious reasons,” said Dr. Barnes.

  The cop at the door checked his list for Lydia and Jeffrey’s names and found them. He stood up and stepped aside as the three of them entered Julian Ross’s room.

  Julian Ross was a ghost of the woman Lydia had seen in the photograph back at the gallery. She sat on the small twin bed in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest. She was pale, her eyes glassy and wet. All the light had drained from her. Lydia imagined that she could be picked up and tossed to the floor like a rag doll.

  Lydia tried to reconcile the frail woman before them with the gruesome images in the crime scene photographs Ford had given them. She tried to imagine Julian’s tiny, delicate hands wielding a serrated knife and committing the carnage that had been wrought in her Park Avenue duplex. It didn’t work for her. Physically it didn’t seem possible. But more than that, Lydia just couldn’t envision it, though she couldn’t say why. Lydia pulled up a metal chair beside Julian’s bed and tried to look into her eyes. But they were like the eyes of a cat, flat and without depth. It was as if her soul, the essence of who she was, had floated away, leaving only a breathing human shell.

  Lydia was not uncomfortable with mentally ill people. She’d interviewed more than one in the past. In fact, she was more comfortable with them than she was with most “sane” people. There was often a logic to their thoughts that made a kind of sense if you listened carefully. There was no artifice to their personalities, nothing put on. It was crazy but it was real.

  “Julian,” said the doctor as if she were talking to a child. “This is Lydia Strong and Jeffrey Mark. They are here to see you at your mother’s request.”

  There was no sign that she had heard.

  “Julian,” said Lydia, “we want to help you.”

  She turned bright green eyes on Lydia. Lydia felt a little jolt of shock inside as she saw clearly the eyes from the portrait in Orlando DiMarco’s gallery. She wondered if, as in the painting, there was another side to the wispy woman before her, another side that only Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton had seen. Someone that she had hidden from others and maybe even from herself. In the hard fluorescent light of the room, Lydia could see that Julian’s pupils were dilated. Her long dark hair was highlighted with strands of red and was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Several strands had escaped and hung listlessly around her frail shoulders and in front of her eyes.

  “You can’t help me,” she said softly, her voice thick and slow. “No one can.”

  “Is she heavily medicated?” asked Lydia, looking at the doctor.

  “Oh, yes,” answered the doctor. “She was hysterical, a danger to herself.”

  “We can help you, Julian,” said Lydia softly, leaning in slightly. “If you can tell us what you remember.”

  The doctor sighed, agitated suddenly behind Lydia. “I don’t think you’re going to have much luck, Ms. Strong. She’s not going to be able to remember anything at this point.”

  Jeffrey held up his hand. “Just give her a minute.”

  Julian held Lydia’s eyes. “My children,” she said, her tone not quite a question, more a musing.

  “They’re fine,” answered Lydia. “They’re with your mother.”

  Julian gave a little laugh and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh, well then … they’ll be fine,” she said, her voice suddenly tight with sarcasm and anger. “Look how well I turned out.”

  She scribbled something in the air with an invisible pen and looked at Lydia with a wink, as if she thought Lydia were in on some private joke. “My mother, the queen. The queen of the damned. Evil bitch.”

  “She’s ranting,” said the doctor.

  “I can see that,” said Lydia, turning to look at her with annoyance.

  “Why are you so angry at your mother?” asked Lydia. Julian didn’t answer. She just kept writing in the air furiously.

  The room was so silent, Lydia could hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights above their heads and Julian’s quick and shallow breathing. A moth fluttered above them, knocking itself into the light with a succession of soft taps.

  “Julian, do you know where you are?”

  “Do you know where you are?” Julian answered with a chil
dish giggle. “Does anyone?”

  “Some of us have a pretty good idea,” Lydia answered gently.

  “I’m hiding,” she said with a vigorous nod, as if this answered everyone’s questions.

  “Who are you hiding from?” asked Lydia.

  Julian slid down on the bed suddenly, as if invisible strings that had been holding her upright had snapped. She curled up into a ball facing Lydia, holding herself tight. She was so thin that Lydia could see her shoulder bones poking through her pale skin.

  “From my other half,” she said, closing her eyes. Lydia thought of the painting again, the man’s face divided into two parts, the two women.

  “What do you mean, Julian?”

  But Julian turned her back on them. She lay facing the wall, her breathing becoming slow and heavy. Lydia asked her question again but got no response.

  “I’m going to have to cut you off, Ms. Strong,” said the doctor. “You can see how exhausted she’s become. You can try again in a couple of days.”

  Lydia looked reluctantly at the small form of Julian Ross. From behind she looked like a child. She got up to leave, pushing the chair back to the place where she’d found it. She’d seen something dancing in Julian’s eyes, something reachable. Lydia thought if she could only come up with the right trigger, she could rescue Julian from her own mind. The three of them walked toward the door.

  “Lydia?” said Julian, without turning around.

  “Yes, Julian.”

  “He’s come for me, again. No one can stop him now.”

  Lydia stood staring at Julian, remembering again the canvas, that monster’s face. As the doctor put her hand on Lydia’s arm and led her from the room, she felt a chill move down her spine. She felt an odd connection to the artist. Maybe it was because Lydia felt hunted, too.

  From above his copy of the New York Times, he saw them leave the Payne Whitney Clinic on West Sixty-eighth Street. He could smell the honey-roasted cashews from the vending cart on the corner and it made his stomach rumble. Lydia hadn’t eaten yet and neither had he.

  She was radiant today, truly glorious, and it filled his heart with love just to be near her. There was something so flushed and creamy about her skin. He would do anything to reach out and touch it. But she was surrounded, always. If it wasn’t Jeffrey Mark, it was that other monkey, the burly Australian. Just the thought of him made his blood pressure rise, caused a tightness in his throat. He wouldn’t forget the way he had been treated by Dax Chicago.

  Jed McIntyre wiped the newsprint from his fingers onto the long black wool coat he’d picked up for ten dollars at a thrift store in the East Village and adjusted the plaid golfer’s cap.

  Today he was an old man reading a paper at a bus stop. Yesterday he had been a homeless woman pushing a cart down her block. Tomorrow … well, who knew? Every day was a creative challenge. The world was looking for him. He was hiding in plain sight. People never really saw what was right in front of them; you could always count on that.

  Luckily for him, before Dax Chicago had put a major kink in his plans, he’d stowed the duffel bag given to him by Alexander Harriman, Esq., in a locker in Grand Central Station. The key hung on a chain around his neck. So he was flush. No money worries, though he had lost his vehicle. Anyway, in the city, a car was more a pain in the ass than it was worth.

  He watched her, through the round gold rims of his glasses that had no lenses, as she stood on the corner with Jeffrey. He watched the way she draped a hand casually on his arm as she talked. She was animated, leaning into him, her eyes bright. Jeffrey Mark hailed a cab and then opened the door for Lydia. He slid in behind her and then they took off.

  Jed stood and watched until the cab was out of sight. The crosstown bus hissed to a stop in front of him and he got on, slid his card through the slot, and took a seat at the back. He saw a white van pull from its spot on the street, though he was sure there hadn’t been a driver in there a minute ago. It headed downtown after the yellow cab. Those FBI guys were everywhere. Yet they saw nothing. He laughed a little too loudly and the elderly woman sitting next to him glanced at him warily. He gave her a bright smile.

  “It just doesn’t work for me,” said Lydia, flipping through the photos Ford had given them. The cabdriver wove between and around cars, racing up the West Side Highway as if the cops were chasing him.

  “Can you slow down, please?” Jeffrey said to the bulletproof glass that separated them from the driver. But the driver seemed not to hear … or maybe more likely not to give a shit.

  “I admit the logistics are a bit hard to put together,” he said, finally giving up on trying to get through to the maniac cabdriver. “But right now it doesn’t look like there was anyone else there.”

  “More evidence is going to turn up,” she said. She had a way of sounding so sure of herself and her intuition that Jeffrey was always inclined to nod in response to what she said, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with her.

  “You know, there have been cases where a person is so pumped full of adrenaline that he takes on superhuman strength.”

  “Usually brought on by fear,” said Lydia, thinking of the painting again.

  “Or narcotics.”

  “Ford’s notes say that her blood alcohol level was only slightly elevated and that there were no narcotics present at all.”

  “Or rage,” suggested Jeffrey, bracing himself as the cab made a sharp fast exit from the highway at Ninety-sixth Street and headed across town. It was the street that divided the city. Ninety-sixth separated the richest people in Manhattan from the poorest, the safest neighborhoods from the most dangerous. The city was segregated like that all over, but nowhere more starkly than here. If you followed Madison Avenue or Park Avenue from midtown up to the Bronx River Expressway, you saw the city change before your eyes. Luxury high-rises, trendy cafés, exclusive shops morphed into stark projects and dark doorways, abandoned buildings with boarded-up windows and marred by graffiti, empty lots filled with garbage.

  “I guess the most pressing question at this point,” said Jeffrey, “is whether there was another way into the building.”

  “There are a lot of questions,” said Lydia, feeling the buzz tingling in her fingertips. “Like who does Julian believe has come for her? Is it someone real? Or is she delusional?”

  “Well, she’s definitely delusional.”

  “Something’s not right,” she said, looking out the window.

  “If I had a nickel for every time you’ve said that …”

  “You do,” she said with a smile.

  “True enough.”

  Jeffrey and his partners Jacob Hanley and Christian Striker had started their private investigation firm nearly seven years ago, now. All former FBI men, they’d grown tired of the politics of the bureau, tired of the paranoia about public perception of the organization, and they’d decided they’d be more effective investigators on their own.

  They’d started out with small cases—insurance fraud, husbands checking up on wives, some employee screening. Then they’d started working with the FBI and NYPD on cold cases, or cases where the police felt their hands were tied … in those cases, the firm’s involvement was strictly confidential. But it was Lydia and Jeffrey’s first case together, the infamous Cheerleader Murders, that put them on the map. Now the firm that started out of Jeffrey’s one-bedroom East Village apartment employed over a hundred people and filled a suite of offices in the West Fifty-seventh Street high-rise. They’d been hugely successful, in large part due to Lydia, her contributions as a consultant, and the publicity that surrounded the books she wrote on some of the cases they’d worked. When Jacob died last year, Jeffrey and Christian Striker had asked Lydia to come on as partner.

  “True enough,” he repeated, taking her hand.

  The cab came to a halt in front of an attractive brownstone off of Central Park West. Jeffrey paid the cabdriver through the small flip tray in the glass and tipped, even though the guy had practically killed them al
l. But they had made good time, and he couldn’t complain about that. He did make a mental note of his name and ID number—Abdul Abdullah, number 689GHT2—for what purpose he didn’t know. The driver never acknowledged them at all except to take the money.

  Lydia slid out of the cab behind Jeffrey and looked at the door to the ob/gyn office with trepidation.

  “Maybe that test was wrong,” she said, hesitating at the sidewalk.

  “Maybe,” answered Jeffrey, reaching out his hand. “That’s why we’re here.”

  But he hoped that it wasn’t wrong. He wanted this and he knew in his heart that she did, too. She was just afraid. But he was sure that everything was just as it should be and that they were going to be fine … all three of them.

  chapter six

  The past was immortal. Maybe it slept, but it never died. It had been creeping up upon them all this time. Without sound and without odor, like the most skilled predator, it had stalked them and suddenly it was upon them. In her two-bedroom suite at the Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue, Eleanor Ross poured hot water from a hand-painted porcelain pot into a matching teacup. The scent of oolong tea rose potent and savory as she put the lid in place with a delicate clink, and replaced the pot on the tray. She sat on the plush sofa and drummed her long fingernails on the dark oak surface of the coffee table.

  She regarded her hands for a moment with their long manicured fingers, their loose white skin and veins like ropes beneath the nearly translucent surface. They were the hands of an old woman. She brought a hand to her hair and touched the rough, brittle strands that were pulled back tightly into a bun. The hair of an old woman. It was funny how the external changed so dramatically but the internal remained much the same. Her perceptions, her concept of herself had not changed all that much since she was a young mother. Even though the shell of her was virtually unrecognizable. She’d been beautiful once, so beautiful. Tall and voluptuous, with long, thick red hair, almond-shaped eyes that blazed green, perfect breasts, magnificent white unblemished skin. But that was all in the past now … the only part of the past that was dead and gone. Beauty had faded, but the horror lived and breathed.