A Fatal Debt (16 page)

I
might be vulnerable? That didn’t sound like an expression of solidarity. What was it Duncan had said about Episcopal being behind me, just before she’d threatened my career? If they were behind me, they were a long way back.

“She’s very professional,” I said carefully.

“There is one thing that concerns me. I’ve reviewed the case with everyone else who was involved—as well as myself, of course. I talked with Dr. Knox and the nurses in the ER, and Mr. O’Meara too. He told me that Mr. Shapiro arrived with a gun. Is that right?”

That jolted me, and I made a show of folding up
The New York Times
and putting it to one side of the bed before I answered.

“Mrs. Shapiro brought one in for safety. She’d found her husband with it.”

“Was it the murder weapon?”

I looked out of the window, examining the pattern of steel and glass on the building opposite and conscious of not wanting to face Jim. I thought of Pagonis showing me Harry’s gun in the interview room at Yaphank. It hadn’t been the Beretta that Nora had brought to the ER, but it no longer felt as though that made a difference. I’d let him walk out of there without knowing what he might do, despite being handed a gigantic clue.

“It wasn’t, no. He had another one,” I said.

Jim glanced at his clipboard as if longing to pick it up and make a
note of what I’d said. Then he gazed directly at me, his eyes boring into mine with the expression of a teacher whose promising pupil has let him down.

“You didn’t tell me about that and neither did Mr. Shapiro, since he wanted you to treat him. That worries me. I think it would have changed how I approached the case if I’d known. I wouldn’t have been happy handing over responsibility to you like that.”

My head started to throb as I grasped the purpose of Jim’s visit. He hadn’t been worried about my health. He’d come to make sure that I wouldn’t drag him into the affair by deflecting the blame to him. It angered me that he had rushed to my side so blatantly to shield himself, just as he’d nipped into the hospital on that Saturday to recruit Harry. He acted deliberately, but he could move fast enough when it suited him.

“Mr. Shapiro is my responsibility, not yours. You don’t have to worry about that,” I said curtly.

“I want to be clear, that’s all. I’ll do everything I can to support you through this, Ben,” he said.

Jim was the one who glanced away in embarrassment this time: unlike Duncan, he had the decency to look ashamed. As gestures of support went, his ranked pretty low on the scale, however. Even Harry’s wife had offered more than that.

It was four p.m. by the time they let me out, and I treated myself to a cab ride home down York Avenue, under the Queensboro Bridge, clutching a paper bag of drugs. I’d taken a shower to wash off most of the blood and mess from having been rolled around in the Central Park gravel, but dirt was still clinging to my hair near the gash on my forehead and the driver had given me a suspicious look when I’d climbed in the back.

I walked into my building warily, prepared to be accosted by one of the neighbors or by Bob, but the lobby was empty. I made it to the elevator and along the hallway without having to explain my appearance
to anyone. My luck didn’t last. As I neared my apartment, I reached into my pocket for my keys and realized they weren’t there. I couldn’t believe it at first—nothing else was missing—and I poked my pockets in case I’d stowed them somewhere. But they were gone. There was nothing for it: I had to retrace my steps wearily along the hallway, into the elevator, and down to the lobby. Bob had returned from wherever he’d been, and I walked up to him resignedly.

He looked up and his eyes widened. “My God.”

“I got attacked in the park, but it’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “Can I have the key to my apartment? Mine’s missing.”

I went back the way I’d come and got to my front door again, not expecting anything else to be awry. I lived in an apartment building, so the security was good, and I didn’t believe the man had taken my keys. It didn’t seem likely given that he hadn’t been interested in my wallet. They’d probably fallen out as we’d rolled down the slope or had scuffled in the dirt by the pond. Maybe I’d find them if I went back tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter much if I didn’t. So I opened my apartment door and switched on the lights without concern.

My mistake was obvious from where I stood. Someone had been through the place like a whirlwind, pulling books from shelves and papers from the desk. Cushions had been tossed to the floor, and a mess of stuff was strewn chaotically on the rug. I stood there in shock for a minute, trying to take it in. It looked like a room in Twelve South after a schizophrenic or a manic patient had lost control, with objects flung around. The walls and the furniture seemed to be intact; only light things had been cast aside. I shivered, knowing for certain that my assault hadn’t been a random act. Someone had been after me.

What if he’s still in there?
I thought. We were taught to retreat from danger if we were in doubt—to find a security guard and use superior force. Many psychs and nurses got attacked, and it was drilled into us not to take chances. But I wanted to find out what was going on without the need to involve Bob—or even worse, Pagonis—immediately. So I halted, breathing silently and listening for human
activity. After two minutes, having heard nothing, I walked slowly down the hallway toward my bedroom, leaving the front door ajar behind me. I needed to be able to get out of there fast if I was wrong about the place being empty. My bedroom door was half-open. I pushed it all the way, my heart thudding, and peered inside.

It was in the same state as the living room. The duvet, sheets, and pillows had been ripped from the bed and thrown around, together with clothes from my cupboard. He’d swept all the objects off the counter in the bathroom—even Rebecca’s vacation seashells. A couple of them had smashed, and I crouched to pick them up. I was upset by it, as if the family jewels had been trashed. They were the only material things I had left of our relationship.

Kneeling there, I looked to one side and saw one of Rebecca’s dresses, which she’d left behind by mistake in my closet. It was bundled in a heap in the corner of the room. I held it up and saw it was slashed from top to bottom with a knife or a pair of scissors. There were deep rips running through the material, from the neck down to the waist. It disturbed me more than the rest of the mess, and I went back out into the bedroom to examine my own clothes, which he’d also pulled from their hangers. They were rumpled but intact. He’d singled out Rebecca’s dress to be cut in half, as if he’d had a reason to resent it. It gave me the nasty sensation of seeing into the mind of someone with a sadistic grudge.

Back in the living room, I piled a few cushions on the sofa and sat down to collect my thoughts. I supposed I should call the cops who’d been called to the scene in the park, to whom I’d described the assault before I’d checked out of Episcopal. Perhaps I ought to call Pagonis and fill her in, too. Yet I knew that I wasn’t going to do either. That would be the end of whatever privacy I had left, and I’d be dragged straight into an investigation that would make things worse. I didn’t even want to call Bob to inquire how the guy had got past him, although he had a lot to explain. What was the point of a uniformed presence in the lobby if a maniac could just walk past? But if I told him, he’d be up here in a minute trying to explain, and everyone in the building would know within a day.

I walked round putting my things back and finished by checking on the bottles of pills my intruder had pulled from the bathroom cabinet. In the back of my mind, I still hoped it might have been an addict’s burglary—the last reassuring possibility—but they were all accounted for. My head screamed and I felt overwhelmed. I undressed, swallowed a Vicodin, and fell into the bed he’d torn apart.

S
ometimes I think I chose to be a psych to avoid having to answer questions. It’s one of the craft’s comforts that you can bounce back inquiries from patients about what you think or feel and hide behind a wall of detachment. The trouble is, I’m not sure I could answer the questions even if it were allowed. Whenever I was in therapy myself—which we were encouraged to be, but which I’d lately let slip—I would note all my patients’ feelings for me and mine for them, every bit of transference and countertransference. Yet I’d mislaid my feelings about myself somewhere.

There was a rap on the window of my car, making me jump. It was Joe, peering through the glass from a few inches away and gesturing for me to let him in. I had parked in the lot near the Suffolk County
DA’s Office, on the side of the Riverhead court complex by the jail where Harry now resided.

“What the hell happened to you?” he said, climbing into the front passenger seat and staring at my battered face.

It had been three days since my walk in Central Park, and the worst of the swelling on my forehead had subsided; but purple bruises had formed around it, making my face look even more alarming. I hadn’t told anyone about the apartment break-in, and I still didn’t feel like doing so: there were too many unanswered questions. If he had been after me, if I hadn’t been picked at random from the park’s passersby and dog walkers, why had he been so frenzied and what had he wanted?

“They told me Central Park was safe after dark these days. Looks like it isn’t true. I went out walking,” I said as lightly as I could.

“Shit. You were mugged?”

It was time for the truth. But if I confessed, his first question would be what I’d been doing there in the first place; then why I’d been with Harry’s housekeeper; then what she’d told me. I couldn’t admit to any of that because I’d pledged not to—she’d made me give my word as we’d stood together. I knew it was foolish to put my loyalty to her, or perhaps just my weakness for her, ahead of my own defense, that I’d been hunted down and attacked and my apartment ransacked, but I kept my promise.

“I was lucky. Someone chased him off.”

“As long as you’re okay,” he said, not appearing to notice my hesitation. “So, what are you going to say in there?”

“Only what you told me.”

“Great. In we go,” he said, swinging his legs out of the vehicle. I followed him up the steps of the Suffolk County Court, a piece of 1970s brutalism that looked as if it had been built from square white blocks by a giant toddler. At the top of the steps, by the double doors to the DA’s offices, was a vista of the back of Harry’s prison that was even more unpleasant than the view from the front. The razor wire was extravagantly piled around bleak exercise yards.

I spotted a familiar figure in the long corridor on the second floor. She was talking to a balding man in a three-piece suit who was carrying a stack of files under his left arm.

“Detective Pagonis,” I said.

Pagonis looked at me as if she were sorry she’d let me out of the interrogation room and would like to rectify her mistake as soon as possible. It was a stony glare that had no sympathy in it—the sort of expression detectives must practice to intimidate suspects. She narrowed her eyes as she saw my face, making me raise a hand to my head self-consciously.

Joe saw the silent interplay and stepped forward to interrupt. “I’m Joe Solomon, Ben’s attorney. He met the wrong guy in Central Park,” he said cheerfully.

Pagonis shook Joe’s hand warily, a cat greeting a dog. “This is Steven Baer, the assistant district attorney,” she said.

“I think I’ve seen you on television,” I told him. I’d watched him once, standing silently on the court steps as Harry’s gray-haired, ponderous lawyer had talked to reporters after one bail hearing. The attorney was impervious to the sound-bite demands of the evening news, but Baer had stood patiently as he’d rumbled away.

“Thanks for coming,” Baer said, leaning toward me as he spoke and gazing mildly at us. His face was pale and oval, and he was bald on top, with two panels of hair above each ear. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said to Joe. “You must be from New York.”

He led us down the corridor at a stately pace, like someone who did not like to be rushed. I could sense Joe struggling to hold himself back from his natural urge to push ahead. When we arrived, Baer’s office had a musty smell from his wooden desk, which was piled high with files, and his stuffed bookshelves. He sat behind the desk, and Joe and I arranged ourselves on the creaky chairs around it. Pagonis stood in the corner, behind my field of vision as I looked at Baer, with a notebook poised.

“This isn’t an interview, more like a getting-to-know-you session, but the detective will take notes if that’s okay,” Baer said.

I looked inquiringly at Joe, who was studying the nails on his right hand. “Absolutely fine,” he said, still looking down.

“All right, we’re in the preliminary stages of the case, as Mr. Solomon will have told you, Doctor. It will be several months before we get to court. Mr. Shapiro’s attorney has indicated that he will plead guilty to the killing but offer a defense of mitigation, that Shapiro was emotionally disturbed.”

“I’m familiar with it,” I said.

“Very good. So you’ll know this involves evidence as to the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the killing. We take a look at the medical records, and we appoint a forensic psychiatrist to examine Mr. Shapiro. We’d usually expect you to be called by the defense since you treated him.”

“Often doesn’t happen,” Joe interjected.

“Well, there are exceptions. Anyway, it’s not happening in this case. In fact, seems the defense are hiring a forensic psychiatrist to examine Shapiro rather than you. That makes me wonder what it is they don’t want you to say on the stand. I guess the most likely is that you think Mr. Shapiro knew what he was doing, isn’t it?”

Baer’s expression was mild and inquisitive, and the way he phrased it made it sound as if he were interested in untangling a mystery, but he had homed in on the awkward truth without pause—he moved faster verbally than in the flesh.

“I believe I can save some time here by making clear Dr. Cowper’s position,” Joe interjected. “He feels bound by doctor-patient privilege and does not want to disclose details of his treatment of Mr. Shapiro.”