the Double Bind (2008)

by Chris Bohjalian

  This was the devil who had frightened Bobbie Crocker: One of the very men who had tried to rape her. And then driven a van in reverse to try to kill her.

  SHE WAS WEAK when she finished up in the darkroom, but unless she went downtown into Burlington the only places that were going to be open this late on a Sunday night were the fast-food restaurants and the doughnut shops on the neon-lit strip just east of the campus. It was after eleven.

  She hadn't been home since early that morning. It hadn't even crossed her mind to stop by her apartment after she had left Serena because she'd wanted to go straight to the darkroom.

  Now she drove to the old Victorian and found a parking spot she could have taken right in front of the building, but--almost reflexively--she continued past it. She had noticed there were lights on both in her apartment and in Whit's, and it was evident that her housemates were awake. This was unfortunate: She didn't want Talia or Whit to hear her arrive because she didn't want to have to speak to either of them. And so she parked instead at the far end of the block, near the corner. Her plan was to wait an hour or two, until they had both gone to sleep. Then she would find the keys to the house's entrance and her own apartment, and have them ready in her fingers well before she reached the front walkway. She would take off her clogs and hold them in her hands, too, so she wouldn't make any noise as she approached the door or tiptoed up the stairway to Talia's and her corner of the house.

  And, just in case, she told herself that she would undress and climb into bed in the dark. Wouldn't even turn on the living room light. And did she really need to eat a couple of crackers? Probably not.

  None of this meticulous planning would end up mattering, however, because she fell asleep in the front seat of her car. She awoke once, a little before 3 a.m., her back and neck throbbing--was this what some of her clients experienced, she wondered, or did they have the common sense, at least, to crawl into the backseat to doze?--and considered going inside. She had just seen in a dream an Underhill forest alive with flying things: birds and insects and swirling leaves. The birds had the heads of small devils--devil skulls, really, the devil from the tattoo--and she was their prey. She believed that she was trying to walk her bicycle through the tumult, though she didn't recall if there had been a path on which she might ever have been riding. Eventually, she thought, she had been swamped by the swirling creatures. They had attacked her in all the places where she had been hurt by Bobbie Crocker's son and his partner seven years earlier, and when she awoke there was an ache--and this, she concluded, was a phantom pain, because why would she experience any discomfort there from a nap in the night in her car?--on the left side of her chest.

  Still, she could not bring herself to open the car door and return to her apartment. The dream had frightened her almost to the point of immobility, brought her to the verge of paralysis. And there was so much she wanted to do--so much she had to do--that she was too agitated to move. Emily Young was finally back from the Caribbean and she needed to meet with her, and then she needed to visit the prison in Saint Albans. And that would demand complex arrangements with the superintendent at the correctional facility, the inmate's therapist, and the state's Department of Crime Victim Services. But at the same time she was tired, more tired than she could ever recall being in her life. Suddenly, much to her own surprise, her eyes were watering. She was crying. She heard small sobs and hiccups and a choking little whistle inside her head that reminded her of the shrill sound the brakes had made on her bike years ago, and she didn't stop crying until she had fallen back to sleep behind the wheel.

  When she opened her eyes next, the sun was starting to rise, and she felt a twinge and roll in her stomach. For a moment, she couldn't recall when she had last eaten. She turned around to make sure the portfolio case was still in the backseat of the car, where she had placed it the night before when she had finished up in the darkroom. It was. On the sidewalk she heard the brooding scuff of heavy work boots. She looked to her left as a man passed within two or three feet of the glass, a great bearded hulk in a parka. It was a heavier jacket than was really necessary this time of the year, unless it was the only jacket you owned. She noticed the man's pants were tattered at the cuffs and sliced open at the knees. She decided the fellow wasn't homeless, not yet, but there was something about him--his clothes, his posture, his pace--that made her fear that if he didn't get help he might be soon.

  She wondered what it would really be like when she ventured north to the prison and saw one of her assailants. She thought she could find the will at the very least to visit Saint Albans, because there she would be meeting with an inmate who had merely--and as the word formed in her mind she winced and felt another sharp pain ripple across her breast--attempted to rape her. He was a horrible man, but at least he had never murdered anyone himself. But what if Bobbie's son had been the one who had slashed open the veins of that woman out West, using a length of barbed wire to leave her tied to a fence as her blood drained into the earth from her wrists? Would she be able to see him again in the flesh? Sit across a table from him? What would she say? Would it even be worth the long trip to Butte?

  And then, as she began to envision the confrontation--she knew the technical term for what she was proposing was a clarification hearing--she started to doubt the accuracy of her own memories: What really had occurred on that dirt road in Underhill? She told herself to take this a step at a time--as she had for a week now. To move quickly but carefully. And her next step at this point was Emily Young. And then the prisoner in Vermont. That was all. A tattoo of barbed wire or a tattoo of a devil: Did it really matter? With any luck, she would never have to travel to Montana, anyway.

  She decided that if she had any chance of changing her clothes before work, this was it. A shower would be out of the question because that would surely wake Talia. Breakfast, too. She'd have to stop by the bakery on the way into BEDS. But she could, if nothing else, wipe a cotton ball with Clinique over her face and run a brush through her hair. Rudimentary hygiene was one of the first things to go when you lived on the street, and she had to remind herself that--even if the people around her thought otherwise--it wasn't she who was the delusional paranoid in this case.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SHE MET WITH Emily Young before eight o'clock Monday morning, as the woman who had been Bobbie Crocker's caseworker was beginning to dig through the small avalanche of paperwork that had smothered a sizable part of her desk while she had been on vacation. Laurel thought she had never seen the woman look so good. So healthy. Emily had once been a vigorous spinner and Nautilus junkie, but a bad back had dramatically curtailed her time at the gym. The result was a woman nearing forty with a round, pert face and wide eyes atop a body that in the last half decade had gone a little soft. The Caribbean cruise, however, had worked wonders. Emily looked like she'd lost weight, she was tan, and she was wearing a cheerful print dress covered with neon-blue irises, the likes of which seldom was seen around BEDS.

  "Most of the people on the boat were eating like there was no tomorrow," she said to Laurel, as she thumbed through a manila folder with paperwork on Bobbie Crocker. For a moment, Laurel feared it was the folder from the filing cabinet she'd perused the other day and that there wouldn't be any information in it that she hadn't already seen, but then she saw papers she didn't recognize. "But my whole outlook changed on our first day out. I got a massage. And the masseuse was this young guy from Argentina who was extremely hot. Before I knew it, I wasn't eating--for him!--and he was working on me each afternoon. And so that was my vacation. I lived on fresh fruit and vegetables, swam and lay in the sun, and I had a handsome--no, he was way beyond handsome, he was beautiful--masseuse working on my back and my legs for two hours a day. You do the math."

  "How do you feel now that you're back on dry land?"

  Emily shrugged. "I have to get back on that boat." Then: "Let's see, when our Mr. Crocker was in the hospital he was on risperidone. And Celexa. It looks like there was also som
e discussion of clozapine, but then they decided he was too old. They were probably worried about the side effects: screwing up his white blood cell count."

  Laurel nodded. She knew that Celexa was an antidepressant and risperidone was an antipsychotic.

  "Clearly, Bobbie wound up in the hospital in the first place because he had some sort of event," Emily continued. "He had to have done something that suggested he was either dangerous to himself or to others."

  "You knew Bobbie," Laurel said, surprised by the defensive, protective tone in her voice. "I've talked to a lot of his friends. One person said there may have been an incident of some kind in Burlington. But, other than that, I haven't heard anything that would make me think he was violent."

  "Not violent. But delusional. Off his meds, he had episodes. We both know that. Now, my sense with Bobbie is that he was much more likely to be a danger to himself than to someone around him. Thank God he was homeless in August. Can you imagine if he'd had to fend for himself on the streets in December or January? Guy that old? He would have frozen to death. And we both know that happens." She flipped a piece of paper and then surprised Laurel by leaning forward and exclaiming, "Ah-ha! He was arrested for theft of services. A restaurant where he ate--and ate--and then didn't pay. It wasn't a big deal. We're talking fifteen dollars and change. But there were also complaints against him for panhandling and unlawful trespass. The trespasses may have gotten a little nasty: Bobbie was pretty agitated at some camera store, where he thought they had stolen some pictures of his he couldn't find. Sounds like he and the owner got into a screaming match. And, let's see, here's another complaint. This one's from a grocery store: He was hanging out in the produce section, eating, and wouldn't leave. Now, this is all petty stuff. The actual point was to get him a psychiatric evaluation."

  "But he was never violent, right--other than yelling at the owner of a camera store?"

  "Yup. And the owner seems to have yelled back," said Emily. "So, have you spoken to the crowd at the Hotel New England?"

  "Pete and his pals? Yes. But I also spent part of yesterday in Bartlett. There I met Jordie Baker. I met a schoolteacher and a minister who knew Bobbie. And right here in Burlington, I met Shem Wolfe. And, of course, I've spoken to Serena Sargent. You might remember Serena. She brought Bobbie to us. Five years ago she was a client herself."

  "You're good. Even I don't know who some of those people are. Who's Jordie? Who's Shem?"

  Laurel told her how Jordie's aunt had known Bobbie's mother, and how Shem had been friends with Bobbie and his editor. She explained how Bobbie's devil might actually have been a tattoo--though she did not reveal on whose neck the devil resided. Nonetheless, she had the sense that Emily was impressed with her detective work.

  "Well, then, what do you need to know from me?" Emily asked when she had finished. Then, almost abruptly, she added, "God, and you think I've lost weight? What the heck is going on with you? Have you been sick?"

  Laurel was taken aback: She thought she looked fine after brushing her hair and applying a coat of lipstick. "No," she said simply. "I've just been busy."

  "Don't be offended. We're friends, and I was just...just wondering. Katherine told me last night on the phone that you had jumped into Bobbie's pictures with real gusto, and--"

  "You and Katherine were talking about me?"

  "Whoa, it wasn't like that. I knew she had her monthly breakfast with the development committee this morning and so she wouldn't be here when I got in. And so I called her to find out what was going on back at the ranch. I figured I should get a sense of what chaos awaited me on my triumphant return. That's all. Anyway, she happened to mention--and, truly, it was an aside to everything else we were talking about--that you were a little preoccupied--"

  "Preoccupied?"

  "My word, I'm sure--not hers. She said you were working really hard on Bobbie's photos, that's all. She said you were trying to put together a few bits and pieces about his life."

  Laurel could tell that Katherine had told her more. Implied more. Katherine had probably said that her brittle young protegee was obsessed--yes, obsessed--with the old photographer and his real identity.

  "You don't need to worry about me," she told Emily. "I'm fine."

  "Okay, then. No offense intended. Ask away: What don't you know about Bobbie Crocker that I could possibly tell you? I have a feeling you know considerably more about the Hotel New England's favorite eccentric than I do, but fire away."

  "What do you know about his son?"

  "His son? I didn't even know he had a son!"

  "How about his parents?"

  "Next to nothing," said Emily.

  "Next to nothing? Or nothing?"

  "Nothing."

  "His sister?"

  "He never said a word to me about her."

  "Did he ever say anything about his childhood?"

  "I'm sure he did. And I'm sure I can't remember."

  "I understand you took a peek at the photos before you passed them on to Katherine. Did you notice anything interesting?"

  "The ones Bobbie took? I looked at them briefly. I flipped through them. I thought they were pretty good. But, honestly, you'd know better than I. Were they?"

  "Yes. Bobbie was talented."

  "And so you'll put together a show?"

  "Eventually," Laurel answered. "Did he mention any friends? Any extended family? Any surprising people in his life?"

  "Other than the people whose pictures he took?"

  "That's right."

  Emily sat back in her chair and wrapped her fingers together across her tummy. Irises peeked out from behind her thumbs. "Okay, I'm thinking." After a long moment, she said, "Once, when we were downstairs at the day station together, just hanging around for a few minutes, a man came in. Bobbie didn't need the day station by then, he was all set at the New England. But, you know, we quickly became like his alma mater. Anyway, a guy comes into the day station, and while Bobbie is getting out the Wonder Bread and making him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it comes out that the guy had done jail time."

  "Where?"

  "Vermont."

  "Which facility?"

  "Saint Albans, I think. But it might have been Chittenden County."

  "How long had he been out?"

  "Six months. Maybe eight. He didn't want to make a mistake and go back. And Bobbie asked him if he knew someone there. In prison."

  "What was the inmate's name?"

  "I don't remember. But that doesn't matter; that's not the interesting part. What is, is this: Whatever the guy's name was, this new client at the shelter had known him. He had real contempt for him because this other prisoner had been a sex offender. But he was also scared of him. Really scared. And so was Bobbie. And so I asked Bobbie how he'd met this character, the one who was still in jail. After all, Bobbie had never done any time, at least none that I knew of. And so it had to have been on the outside. But Bobbie wouldn't tell me. Once he had been assured that the man was still behind bars, he wouldn't hear another word about him."

  Laurel knew the names of the men who had tried to rape her. How could she forget? The bodybuilder from Montana was Russell Richard Hagen. The drifter was Dan Corbett. No middle initial. Wouldn't abide the name Daniel.

  "Was the inmate named Russell?" she asked Emily.

  "No."

  "Richard?"

  "Nope."

  "Dan?"

  "You know, that rings a bell," Emily answered. "What, did Bobbie ever tell you something about this person?"

  "He did," Laurel lied. "It's just one of those sad coincidences. I think this Dan fellow may have tried to bully him once. On Church Street." She didn't want her associate to know that her search was leading her back to the assault up in Underhill. Emily would worry. They all would. And so Laurel thanked her, told her she understood how much paperwork she had to pile through after her lengthy vacation, and returned to her office. She was supposed to meet with a fellow from the Veterans Affairs group who worked with h
omeless veterans about new VA services, and she wanted to have a list of clients handy who might benefit. And then she needed to craft a memo for Katherine telling her that--and this lie came to her instantly, too--her mother was hospitalized and she'd have to go home to Long Island for a couple of days. She would tell Katherine that she'd call her from the road with the details and her boss needn't worry. Her mother would be fine. And she would be fine.

  And if Katherine should try to reach her at her mother's? She'd get only an answering machine, because her mother was now at a cooking school near Siena. She was, literally, on the other side of the world.

  But she wanted the memo to be on Katherine's desk when the woman returned from her meeting. She didn't want to have to explain her sudden departure in person.

  SHE WAS NOT GOING to Long Island, of course. At least not yet. First, she was going to see the Crime Victim Services department in another part of the state and then meet with the superintendent of the prison in Saint Albans. She was going to set up her clarification hearing with inmate Dan Corbett. And she wanted to meet with him as soon as possible.

  She left BEDS through the back entrance, rather than through the front door. Her meeting with the VA staffer had lasted till nine-thirty, and by the time she had written a memo to Katherine that struck the right chord--one that would not panic the director, yet would suggest there had been a need for a certain urgency--it was nearly ten. Katherine would be back any moment, and Laurel didn't want to run into her in the lobby or on the main stairway.