by G. H. Ephron
“In my professional opinion, he’s in shock. He’s not making rational judgments.” I waited for that to sink in. “If he hasn’t asked for a lawyer, then he’s not acting in his own best interest. Anything you get from him now will get thrown out in court.”
A look of annoyance passed over Boley’s face. He glanced toward the back. The room they had Teitlebaum in must have been back there somewhere. “I’m sure Dr. Teitlebaum appreciates your concern.”
Just then, an officer came through carrying a box. Boley pulled him over. They talked, heads bent together.
“They found something?” I asked, when Boley turned back to me.
“Shoes,” he said. His face gave me nothing. “Just like you told us.”
“He should have an attorney present.”
“You already said that.” Boley turned and marched away.
If Teitlebaum’s state of mind hadn’t miraculously improved over the last thirty minutes, then he was undoubtedly satisfying his interrogators’ craving for raw meat. Short of storming the examining room, there wasn’t much I could do. At least I could try to get him an attorney.
I went into the hall, got out my cell phone and called Chip. Yes, he could recommend an attorney. But Teitlebaum was going to have to ask for it. No attorney was going to show up without knowing he had a client who wanted to be represented and who was good for the bill. For free, Teitlebaum would have to ask for a public defender. But he’d have to ask.
I hung up, discouraged. I stuck my head back in the homicide unit. The woman officer at the desk looked up and glared at me, her look saying, Go home! I went back out into the hall and sat on a bench.
Suppose Teitlebaum did have an affair with Lisa Babikian? Suppose he killed her? As a psychiatrist, he’d know just how to create a crime scene that pointed to Nick Babikian. But then, after all the careful planning and flawless execution, why wear such distinctive shoes? And then how colossally stupid of him to leave those shoes outside his office door.
I wondered what Annie would say. When she’d met Stuart Jackson, an innocent man accused of shooting his ex-wife in the head and killing her boyfriend, she’d said, “If he’s a killer, then I’m the Easter Bunny.”
I contemplated what seemed like zero options. At least I could hang around and give Teitlebaum a ride home if the cops grilled him and then let him go.
It was after midnight when Teitlebaum emerged. He looked as if they’d leached bodily fluids out of him.
“Can I drive you back to your car?” I asked.
“My car?”
“You left it at my house.”
He gave a dull nod. Then he seemed to come to. “Why are you here?”
I started to say, My mother shamed me into it, but thought better of it. “Thought you could use a friend.”
“Huh?” He seemed stunned. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
We started out to my car. “You should know better than to talk to the police without your lawyer. I work with a criminal defense attorney. I called him. He said he could refer you to one of his colleagues.”
He didn’t respond. We got into my car.
“They found traces of blood on my shoes,” he said in a monotone.
The street was quiet. I pulled out. A car pulled out behind me.
“Took my fingerprints,” he said.
“They ask you a lot of questions?”
“Mostly where was I at one in the morning the night of the murder. And what was my relationship with Lisa Babikian.”
“And you told them?”
“Home asleep. Therapist.”
I turned on my blinker and turned onto First Street. We passed the Galleria—the mall was deserted, shuttered for the night. The car behind me followed. Once on Mem Drive, I stayed in the right lane and cruised at thirty-five. Cars whizzed past. The car behind me fell back. I didn’t doubt that Boley was having us followed.
Teitlebaum rested his head back and closed his eyes. “You ever lose a patient?” he asked.
“We all have,” I said. I remembered the BU undergrad, the first patient I’d “lost.” The first time I saw him, the police had just fished him out of the Charles. He’d dropped some LSD, then settled back to read Welcome to the Monkey House. Maybe it was Vonnegut’s despairing view of the future that got to him. Whatever it was, he’d taken off his clothes, walked outside to the parking lot, and tried to bury the book in the asphalt. When that didn’t work, he went down to the river to throw the book in but forgot to let go.
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t help him. When I told his parents that he might be schizophrenic, they bundled him home. A few months later, I heard that he’d thrown himself off a bridge.
“Some people think that just because we’re paid to listen, we don’t care,” Teitlebaum said. “With Lisa, I thought I could make a difference, she was just like—” He broke off.
“Like what?”
He shook off the question. “I fucked that one up. I told myself I was getting a second chance. This time I could make it come out right.” His voice turned angry. “Idiot! I can’t believe this is happening.”
Anger is a vast improvement over despair. “We all have our ghosts, the ones that got away,” I said.
As we drove up Mass Ave and passed through Central Square, I realized I’d lost track of the car that had been following us.
Teitlebaum said, “It’s what I tell my patients. You can’t run away from your problems. They have a way of reappearing with new faces.”
When I pulled into my driveway, a car trailing behind me pulled into a parking spot a half block back. “I think we’ve been followed,” I told Teitlebaum. He twisted around in his seat. “Back about a dozen houses.”
“Oh, God.” He groaned and collapsed in the deep bucket seat, his chin sunk into his chest, despair once again taking control. Finally, he roused himself and opened the door.
“It feels as if you’re giving up,” I said.
“And I suppose you’d be doing better in my place?”
“I know one thing. I wouldn’t be talking to the police without an attorney.” I was beginning to sound like a broken record. “If they can’t make the charges stick to Nick Babikian, they’re going to be looking for someone they can make them stick to.” Sometimes a little paranoia is a good defense.
That seemed to wake him up.
“At least call,” I said. I slid a card out of my wallet and wrote Chip’s number on the back. “Call, tell him you’re the one I told him about. And don’t forget, if they stick it to you and you didn’t do it, then Lisa’s murderer is going to get away with it.”
First thing the next morning, I walked over to the main branch of the Cambridge Public Library, determined to find out about Teitlebaum’s role in the Ely case.
The library was tucked into a park on this side of Harvard Square. The outside was all rich ochers and reddish-browns, brownstone walls and arches, turrets with multipaned windows. I stepped under the dark, cool archway to the entrance, eager to get some answers. The library had just opened.
I took the passageway from the nondescript, bureaucratic front desk to the back area with rows of computers. The brilliant architect who’d gutted and reworked this interior—it now resembled the inside of a cardboard box—deserved to roast in hell.
I got into the on-line newspaper archives and did a search on “Ely” and “Teitlebaum.” I got six hits. The first one told me what I wanted to know. It was from a front-page article during the trial. “The defense claim that Ely is mentally ill and therefore not criminally responsible for his wife’s death picked up momentum yesterday with testimony from psychiatrist Richard Teitlebaum …” I scanned the paragraphs. Then reread them to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood.
Teitlebaum hadn’t been a forensic witness for either the defense or the prosecution. He’d been Angela Ely’s therapist.
No wonder Teitlebaum was so upset over Lisa Babikian’s death. For a second time, it looked as if his patient had died at the hands of a delusio
nal husband whose grip on reality had slipped.
Teitlebaum had testified that Henry Ely telephoned him after the murder. Ely had sounded confused and disoriented, claimed his wife was an alien, intent on murdering him. Ely believed aliens, like vampires, drank blood. He told Teitlebaum that he’d cut his wife open and driven a stake into her heart to prevent her from chasing him.
In his opinion, Teitlebaum said, “Ely was in the throes of a psychotic episode. His progressive preoccupation with his own health and the loosening links between his thoughts and reality foreshadowed his breakdown.”
Loosening links between his thoughts and reality—the words Teitlebaum had used about Nick Babikian.
The trial had ended six weeks later. Ely was found guilty and went to jail for life. A year after that, Teitlebaum moved to Newton. Six months later, the Babikians showed up.
As I walked home, I wondered once again: What were the odds of a therapist having two patients in two years killed and mutilated by their husbands? Like Uncle Sigmund, I wasn’t a fan of coincidence.
18
IT WAS nice to have an uneventful week. The new home security system minded its own business. And Annie reported that her late-night phone calls had stopped.
Patients came and went on the unit. I was covering for Kwan while he was in Geneva lecturing on psychopharmacology and aging. Mrs. Smetz was becoming a whole lot more rational, but she still had her moments of Mother Mary-ness. It would be at least another week before she was completely grounded in reality.
The papers were running stories every other day about the Babikian case. A feature article focused on the “leads” that were being developed. According to “unnamed sources,” a “prominent Newton psychiatrist” was under investigation.
Then Friday, I got beeped in the middle of the afternoon. It was a number I didn’t recognize. I called back.
“Hello?” It was a man’s voice.
“This is Dr. Peter Zak, returning—”
“They’re digging,” he said. It was Richard Teitlebaum.
“Who? Where?”
“The police. They’re back. Now they’re digging up my yard.” Then, in a whisper, “I’m afraid of what they’re going to find. Jesus, I’m afraid.”
His voice had a kind of ragged quality, a sound that sets off alarm bells when you hear it in the voice of a profoundly depressed patient.
“Are you there by yourself?” I asked.
“You think I have any patients still willing to see me?” Teitlebaum gave a hollow laugh. “They read the paper. Not too hard to figure out. They’ve all canceled.”
“Any friends you can call? You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Have you contacted a lawyer?”
No answer.
I was already looking at my schedule. I had a patient who’d be arriving any minute. Then a meeting I could probably skip. And I’d hoped finally to finish editing a research article that I’d promised to deliver to The Journal of Neuropsychology more than a week ago. That could wait.
“Oh, God,” he said. His voice sounded far from the phone.
“What? What is it?”
“I think they found something.”
There was a knock at my door. “Hang on.” I stuck my head out and told Matt Ciampi, a patient I’d been working with for several months, that I’d be a minute more.
I checked my watch. “I can be there by four, but I’ve got to see a patient first.”
I heard him breathing.
“Richard,” I said sharply.
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you call Chip Ferguson? Have you talked to a lawyer?”
“Jesus Christ, they’re bringing something up. I can’t see …”
Matt was waiting for me. With any other patient, I’d have canceled the appointment. But Matt’s world was fractured and fragmented, his weeks disorganized and chaotic. If I canceled our weekly appointment, it could topple what little fragile order he’d managed to erect, removing one of the steady things he could count on as he began to recover from depression.
“Richard, will you be okay until I get there? I should be there by four.”
“Four?”
“Earlier, if I can.”
He hung up.
Quickly I called Annie and left her a message, asking if she could, to get over to Teitlebaum’s before me. Then I sat and tried to stem the flow of adrenaline that had me snapping static.
When I was feeling grounded, I opened the door. “How you doing?” I said amiably and ushered Matt in.
“Fine, I just …” he started to answer and froze. “You all right?”
People say a horse can sense a rider’s anxiety. Some patients are the same way. I reassured Matt and we sat down to our hour.
As soon as he left, I called Teitlebaum. The phone rang once and I got his voice mail. I left a message that I was on my way. Then I hurriedly locked my office and went down the hall. I punched the elevator button. It responded with a faraway groan. I took the stairs instead, flying down as fast as I could. I knew Teitlebaum shouldn’t be alone.
Even though I hit the road just after three-thirty, rush hour was in full swing. My cell phone went off while I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic, everyone crawling, halting, and creeping homeward. I fished it out. It was Annie.
“Sorry, I just picked up your message,” she told me. “I’m up in Manchester, heading out now.” It would take her at least an hour to get back. I told her I was going over to Teitlebaum’s and I’d call her later.
If anxiety could levitate a car, I’d have leapfrogged my way into West Newton. Finally, I found myself in the maze of streets near Teitlebaum’s. The yellow clapboard house looked pristine and tidy.
Today the garage was closed, and the silver Volvo had been backed into the driveway and parked parallel to the house. I parked on the street and hurried to the office door. The whole area along the side of the house was a mess, the ground dug up. Someone had knocked over the PARKING sign. Three of the recently planted bushes, the ones nearest to the office entrance, had been uprooted. Pieces of yellow crime-scene tape had been trampled into the earth.
I knocked. “Richard!” I yelled.
I waited, then knocked again.
Clumps of pink and white petunias were wilting in the pile of dirt that was crisscrossed with footprints. I banged on the door. “Richard! It’s me, Peter. Let me in.”
Still nothing.
I peered in through the window. I could see Teitlebaum’s office. The phone on the desk was off the hook. I banged my knuckles on the window and shouted some more.
I glanced across the street. Next door. The corner of a curtain in the window of the neighboring house dropped into place.
“Hey!” I called out. I hurried across the two driveways and knocked at the side door. A pale, dark-eyed woman opened the door. She held one hand out flat in front of her, fingers splayed, and blew on the nails. There was tinny, raucous laughter in the kitchen—sounded like the portable TV on the kitchen counter behind her was tuned to an afternoon talk show.
“I’m looking for Dr. Teitlebaum,” I said, jerking my thumb back toward Teitlebaum’s house.
“I already told the police,” she said. “I don’t know anything.” She blew on the nails of the other hand. “But he never was very friendly. Kind of a loner. Very peculiar.” She must have thought I was a reporter. I’ve always been amazed by the awful things people are willing to say about their neighbors the moment there’s a whiff of scandal.
I cut her off. “Did you see him go with the police?”
She peered out into the driveway, back at me. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m a friend of his.”
“Oh. A friend,” she said, pursing her lips in distaste.
Police had badges to give themselves legitimacy. I gave her my business card. It was what I had. “I’m a psychologist. Do you know where he is?”
“I … I’m not sure. I’ve been really
busy. I didn’t notice.” She waggled her fingers.
“How long ago did the police leave?”
She waved one of her hands, vaguely. “An hour ago, maybe more. Oprah wasn’t on yet.” She squinted across the driveways. “Who’s going to clean up that mess?”
I returned to Teitlebaum’s house and attacked the front door. It was locked. Then I circled around to the back. The back door was standing open.
I put my head in and called out. I entered the kitchen. There was dirt tracked all over the white ceramic tile floor. Three coffee cups sat on the table. I touched one of them. Cold. The light on the coffeemaker was on, warming the inch and a half remaining in the pot.
“Richard,” I bellowed. He’d been distraught, despairing, unable even to summon a lawyer to defend himself. If he’d been my patient, I’d have made him sign a contract, agreeing not to harm himself.
I quickly checked the first floor. Where the hell was he? I took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor. I checked the bedrooms, the closets, the bathroom. The rest of the house was Better Homes and Gardens spotless, and no one was anywhere.
I returned to the kitchen. I looked out the window. White paint was peeling off the clapboards of the garage, and the structure listed slightly to one side. Apparently Teitlebaum hadn’t gotten around to renovating it.
I raced out the back door and tried to pull open the garage door. It was either locked or stuck. A window in the side was already broken. I got a stick and broke away the remaining bits of glass and climbed through.
Inside was gloomy, and it smelled of dry leaves and loam. I waited as my eyes adjusted. Despite its falling-down exterior, the interior of the garage was as orderly as the interior of the house. I could make out a twin mattress leaning up against the wall, an old hot water heater shoved into a corner. I walked across the concrete floor. Bags and boxes of gardening supplies were neatly stacked in shelves alongside a lawn mower and wheelbarrow. Other tools hung from hooks on the wall.
I continued around. In the back was an old closet with a number painted on it, 31. It was taller than me. I unlatched it and pulled the door open. Empty.
