by G. H. Ephron
“I was just writing up my notes on Maria Whitson.”
“How’d it go after I left?” Gloria asked as she massaged her temple.
“Reasonably well. She started out flat, depersonalized, and then she became surprisingly self-reflective about what’s going on with her. In fact, we had quite a coherent conversation. She seemed to make a good connection until she fell asleep in the middle of a thought. Either she shut herself down because it was too much, or else she’s still getting the meds out of her system. She’s an odd one. Not quite the textbook case she appears to be at first glance.”
Gloria stopped rubbing her head. “Which reminds me, something odd I didn’t mention. When I looked in on her the day after we admitted her, she was still out of it, but somehow she’d managed to fold her underwear. And her own comb and toothbrush found their way into the bathroom.”
“That is odd,” I said. Maria Whitson’s hair hadn’t looked like she’d run a comb through it in days. “Habit?” Sometimes lifelong habits kick in, even through the most debilitating mental illness. “Or maybe she’s having occasionally lucid moments, tucked in among the hours of delirium. She told me it all started with a car accident two years ago.”
“Two years ago? I’d have thought it started before that.”
“No doubt. But it wasn’t until she hurt her head in a car accident two years ago that she realized she’d been sexually abused.”
“Poor thing. Did she say who did it?”
I shook my head. “Blames her family. Refuses to see any of them.”
We sat quietly for a few minutes. I finished my notes and Gloria rested her head back and shut her eyes.
“That’s good,” Gloria said. “She’s following the protocol. Experts say it’s best to cut off contact until you’re strong enough to confront your abuser.”
“So you assume it’s a family member.”
Gloria opened her eyes and sat forward. “Usually is. Someone close. But right now she’s dealing with a lot more pressing business — delirium, depression.”
“Possibly related to brain damage she sustained in the car accident, not to mention all the medication she’s been on.”
“I’m concerned she might try to harm herself again. I’ve got the other nurses on alert.” Gloria stifled a yawn. “I know what she’s going through.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to pry. This wasn’t something Gloria and I had ever talked about. Or if we had, it hadn’t been quite so head-on and personal. I knew Gloria would tell me, if and when she felt like sharing whatever the bond was that she shared with Maria Whitson.
15
I’D HOPED to have an hour on the river before sunset, but by the time I got home, it was too late. The days were getting shorter and soon the river would ice up and put an end to the season. My mother was walking home when I pulled in.
“You’re home kind of early,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously.
I checked my watch. It wasn’t quite six. “And you’re home kind of late, aren’t you?” I noticed the plastic bag she was carrying said VIDEOSMITH on it. “Aha! Movies?”
She turned a little pink. “Yes. Mr. Kuppel recommends,” she said and drew a videotape from the bag and held it aloft, “Ta dah!”
She had The Lady Vanishes, a thriller in which Hitchcock takes the classic amnesia plot device and twists it. I looked at my mother suspiciously, wondering if this was a coincidence. Sheepishly, she admitted, “I showed him the article about the case you’re working on.”
“Well, he does have good taste — in movies.” The Lady Vanishes is one of my all-time favorites, though I wondered what kind of message Mr. Kuppel was sending. Wasn’t there a perfectly unctuous doctor in it? And doesn’t he try to convince the sweet young heroine that she’s only imagined the kindly old woman on the train who disappeared into thin air? His diagnosis, false memory caused by a bump on the head. The heroine, of course, spends the rest of the movie proving him wrong. Not only wrong — actually, I can’t remember much else about the movie except no one on this whole entire train will admit to ever having seen the old woman whose name is Miss Froy. Such a wonderful name. Funny, isn’t it, how little details get snagged in the brain, remaining crystal clear like sparkling bits of glass while the picture around it fades to black?
“And what have you got?” my mother asked, pointing to my bag.
“I bought a pot,” I said, and left it at that. I fished out my keys and opened my front door.
I set the bag on the kitchen counter and took out a wineglass. I sniffed it, then rinsed to get rid of the cabinet smell. Then I uncorked the cabernet and poured myself a glass. I swirled the wine, inhaled, took a sip, and exhaled with pleasure. It had been an interesting day.
I carried the wine and my little bundle up to the second floor, crossed the landing, and stood looking up the stairway to the third floor. The door at the top led to Kate’s studio. I hadn’t been up there since the cleaners finished their grim work. I remembered the nauseating smell of cleaning fluid that permeated the house for weeks after, even though I’d closed the door. No amount of open windows, cigar smoke, and whiskey could make me stop smelling it. Even when I left the house, it seemed as if the stench clung to my clothes, to my skin, to my hair, so that for months it hung about me like a shroud wherever I went.
I trudged up the stairs, first one step, then the next, pausing midway, pushing myself up the rest of the way. A pink glow seemed to emanate from underneath the door. I took hold of the knob, twisted, and pushed. The door squeaked in protest before swinging open. The room, surrounded by windows on three sides, was flooded with rose-colored light from the setting sun. I stepped inside and inhaled cautiously. It smelled musty, close, but that was all. I crossed to one side and then to the other to open windows. A breeze immediately swept through the room, ruffling some papers Kate had left on her desk in the corner.
This was the room that had sold Kate on the house. Her studio. We thought the original owner must have been an artist — how else to explain the cement floor, paint-splattered even before Kate took it over? Kate called it her sanctuary. There would to be no distractions — no telephone, no radio, no TV. In a concession to the visitors, the writers and collectors who came and wanted to see where she worked, she’d bought a small settee and shoved it off into one corner.
I had thought coming up there would make me unbearably sad, but it didn’t. The beauty of the room, the last of the late afternoon sun, the fresh breeze that pushed the stale air from the room gave me a sense of peace.
Silhouetted on glass shelves against the windows were Kate’s pots. Some of them were her own, some of them the Arts and Crafts pottery she collected. In one of the spaces where there should have been a pot, there were the pieces of a broken one. I hadn’t been able to throw them away.
Bridges must have watched, learned our schedule, known Kate would be alone in the studio at work. She wouldn’t have heard him break the glass in the back door so he could reach around and let himself in. She’d have been unaware as he crept from the kitchen to the foot of the stairs. When they removed her body, they’d found this pot broken beneath her. She must have been holding it when he attacked her. I picked up one of the pottery shards and turned it over and over. It was as I’d remembered it, the glaze very much like the pot I’d just bought.
I took the new pot from the bag and unwrapped it. It was perfect. No hairline cracks. No chips. No signature, but undoubtedly Grueby. Kate would have been dancing around, hugging me with glee.
I brushed the broken pieces from the shelf and caught them in the empty plastic bag. I got a rag from the sink, dampened it, and wiped down the spot on the shelf. Then I set the new pot in place.
I stood back to admire the effect, but I knew immediately that it was wrong. The new pot was nice, but not in that spot. I moved it to the end of one of the shelves. And then I poured the broken pieces from the bag back in their place on the shelf.
I walked slowly around the room, run
ning my fingers lightly over each of Kate’s own pots. On one she’d tooled a figure of a woman in outline, generous breasts, swollen belly. It was an early work, one she wouldn’t sell. It was one of my favorites.
The earthy, slightly sour smell of clay hung in the air. Unfinished pieces still sat on her workbench, waiting to be glazed. Her kiln was cold and shut. The potter’s wheel had bits of dried clay adhering to it. She’d never have left it that way. The cabinet door hung open and inside, glazes, tools, and supplies were stored neatly on shelves.
I crouched to touch the floor where I knew the reddish tint was not paint but the blood that had refused to come clean, where my Kate had died while I stood two floors down, oblivious. The cement was cold and hard. I squeezed my eyes shut, my mouth opened as a vise tightened around my chest. I gasped for breath. If only I’d come up sooner that day. We were so close, so connected, why didn’t I know what was going on?
Later, I stood at the window and drank my wine as the clouds became edged with charcoal and cooled from pink to purple. The evening star had just appeared at the horizon when I closed the windows and left the room, this time leaving the door open behind me.
16
“THEY TOLD me you were coming back but I didn’t believe it,” Stuart Jackson told me two days later when he appeared in the vile yellow cubicle at Bridgewater. “You must bill by the hour.”
I didn’t respond. The words were offensive but the body language was not. Everything about him drooped. His shoulders sagged. Under bloodshot eyes, the flesh was pouched in flabby bags. The bantam rooster was now a shuffling old man.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
He gave a bitter laugh that sent a wave of mildewy odor in my direction. “You want the truth? I’m doing shitty. What’s the use?”
“You getting any sleep?”
He shrugged. “How is she?”
“Syl? She’s getting better. Day by day. By the way, did you know this guy, Angelo?”
“The Italian Ken doll?”
“That’s the one.”
“He showed up around the time she came out of the coma.”
“Was that when they told you that you couldn’t visit her anymore?”
“She traded one guardian angel for another.”
“That’s what she calls him, you know. Her guardian angel. Had you seen or heard of him before that?”
Stuart shook his head. “The day he shows up the first time, she acts like she’s never seen him before. But then, that’s how she reacted when she first saw me. He still hanging around?”
“Very much so.”
“Sylvia,” he said. “Think she’ll ever be the same?”
“As you say yourself, in a lot of ways, she is the same.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Problem is, Mr. Jackson, I don’t know exactly what she was like to start with. So it’s hard for me to judge. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you. You’re probably the number one expert on the subject of Sylvia Jackson.”
“She’s not on trial for murder.”
“No, she’s not. You are.” I waited. The second hand on the wall clock ticked. Far off, I could hear a muffled shout, a door slamming. “I came to talk to you about your ex-wife’s account of what happened that night. What I want to get at is whether there’s any detail, something that we might corroborate from another witness, that might actually have occurred in her past.”
Stuart Jackson sat forward. “Detail? Like what?”
“Like, did she ever carry anything live, a person or an animal perhaps, in the trunk of her car?”
Jackson thought a moment and shook his head.
“Did she let other people drive her car?”
“Drive her car? You gotta be kidding. That car was her baby. No one, and I mean no one, could drive it but her.”
“So if someone else drove it, that would have been unusual.”
“Very. You’d have to hold a gun to her head.” He stopped.
“Did you ever walk in on her when she was in bed with someone else?”
Stuart Jackson flinched and then steeled himself. “Shit. All the time.” He reddened. “If only I’d walked in on her that night, I wouldn’t be here now.” He stopped and looked at the palms of his hands, then turned the left hand over and fingered the gold band on his ring finger. “I still love her,” he said, looking at me, his eyes glazing over. He sniffed and ran the back of his hand across his nose. “I never wanted to split up. Even when I walked in on her with her … friends,” he spat the final word.
“Did that happen a lot?” I asked.
“She’d give the damned boyfriends house keys! When he walked in on us, that was the last straw.”
“He?”
“Tony — Tony what’s-his-name. The guy I’m supposed to have killed. Must have thought he was Rambo or something.”
“Rambo?”
“We’re in bed and he bursts in. And he’s got on this getup. You know, like they wore in Vietnam. Like it was Halloween or something.”
“Camouflage fatigues?”
“Yeah. Camouflage fatigues.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“With that outfit, he needed an Uzi. No, he didn’t have a gun.”
“Did you have words?”
“No. I invited him in for a cup of tea. What do you think? Of course we had words!”
I laughed. Anger is a good antidote to depression. “Where were you when you had words?”
“Downstairs.”
“She go down with you?”
“No, she didn’t go down with us. I don’t know what she did.”
“Did you call the police?”
“And tell them what? She gave the guy the key, for God’s sake.”
“Have you told the police about this encounter?”
Jackson stared at the table and shook his head.
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s too fucking humiliating,” he whispered, “and besides …” His voice trailed off.
“Besides what?”
“She likes men in uniform.”
It took a minute for the significance of this to sink in. “Some of the men you walked in on in bed with your wife were —”
“Cops.”
“Lots of cops? Or one in particular?”
“More than one. A few. But those are only the ones I saw. Who knows what was going on that I didn’t know about.”
“Could you identify any of them?”
“It was awhile ago. I doubt it. Maybe if they got undressed.”
I had a thought. “Any redheads?”
“None that I remember.”
“The police found a camouflage hat in your closet,” I said.
“Maybe the police put a camouflage hat in my closet so they could find it there.” It didn’t sound that far-fetched. “It’s not mine. Honest to God. Do I look like the sort of person who’d own something like that?”
I had to admit, he had a point.
17
THE NEXT morning, I called Annie and told her about my conversation with Stuart Jackson.
“She brought cops home to her bed,” Annie said thoughtfully. Then she asked the obvious question. “You think one of them could have been Mac?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I’m not exactly unbiased, you know.”
“I gathered as much. I thought you two had some unfinished business.”
It sounded like Annie took a long drag on a cigarette, but I knew she didn’t smoke. “Our families were real close, you know. His mom and mine, best friends when I was little. His dad was a police officer. But when my dad was beat up, his father kept his mouth shut, even though rumor was he knew who did it. Protecting other cops mattered more than bringing them to justice, even when one of his friends was the victim. After Dad recovered, they never came by the house again. I don’t suppose it’s fair to saddle the son with the sins of the father. Still, I’ve always kept my distance. Never did tru
st the guy.”
“Even if he didn’t know Sylvia Jackson before the murder, he’d know if she had relationships with other police officers, wouldn’t he?”
“Definitely,” Annie agreed. “But that conspiracy of silence … I don’t remember any police officer boyfriends being interviewed during the investigation.”
“MacRae could be protecting someone.”
“Or he could be protecting himself. Men.” Annie gave a disgusted snort. “I’ll ask around. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which police officers were banging Sylvia Jackson. And whether Mac was one of them.”
Then I told Annie about Stuart’s account of Tony Ruggiero bursting in while Stuart and Syl were in bed together. “Trade the players,” I said, “and the story’s the same as Syl’s version of what happened the night of the murder.”
“Earlier memories,” Annie murmured. “So you really think she could have taken the image of Tony walking in on her with Stuart … .”
“Switched the roles and now she remembers Stuart walking in on her in bed with Tony. It’s a logical way to plug the hole in her memory for what happened the night Tony was killed,” I said.
“Do you think the earlier incident really happened?”
“It could have happened just the way Stuart says it did. Or he could have made it up. Stuart Jackson’s been reading up on brain damage. He knows the significance of an earlier incident like this one. He might invent a parallel scenario because he knows I’d buy it.”
“If someone walked in on me like that, I might not report it to the police,” Annie commented, “but you better believe I’d talk about it. Maybe Stuart or Sylvia Jackson told someone — a friend, a colleague, someone. And maybe that person remembers. I’ll check it out.”
After we hung up, I called Maria Whitson’s therapist. Of course, the good Dr. Baldridge wasn’t available. His secretary took down the times I suggested for a call-back. I’d hoped to be in my office when the call came but I was on the unit when my beeper went off. I called him from there.
“This is Peter Zak from the Neuropsychiatric Unit,” I told him. “I wanted to talk to you about a patient you referred to us. Maria Whitson.”
