A Fatal Debt (17 page)

“But privilege no longer applies here, given this defense. It’s been waived,” Baer said mildly.

“Well, two points,” Joe said, sitting up. “First, we haven’t been notified by the defense that it is waiving privilege, and we’d need that in writing. But second, even if we were, Dr. Cowper wouldn’t want to discuss it on ethical grounds.”

“That’s right,” I confirmed obediently, although ethics didn’t have
much to do with it. I wanted to keep as far away from the limelight as possible.

“That’s his privilege, so to speak. As I said, we’re only having a conversation. But when I call him to give evidence, he’ll be under oath and he’ll have to talk to the jury no matter what he thinks. I plan to do that,” Baer said.

“That’s
your
privilege. But until then, we can’t help you,” Joe said.

“This is a shame,” Baer said. “A great shame. It’s a long way for you gentlemen to come to tell me that. I’d hoped we could find a way for Dr. Cowper to avoid getting into any more trouble than he’s already in.”

“Very kind, but Ben’s not in any trouble since he didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Joe said, standing up to bring the interview to a close.

Baer watched us for a few seconds before he rose himself. He looked thoughtful but less friendly, as if moving me from one category—“potential ally”—to that of “hostile witness.” Then he emerged from behind his desk to guide us to the door, where Pagonis gave me a disgusted glare.

“What did you make of that?” I asked Joe as we escaped Baer’s inquisition and left the building only half an hour after we’d arrived.

“Smarter than he looks.”

“He said he’s going to call me as a witness.”

He shook his head. “It’s a bluff. He’s not going to do that unless he knows what you’d say. Too risky. The defense will find a forensic psych to testify that Shapiro was unbalanced and he should have stayed in the hospital. Baer’s going to get a psych of his own to say the opposite. The guy’s as sane as you and I and he cooked the whole thing up.”

It sounded pretty cynical, but I had colleagues who worked as forensic psychs and they usually found a way to give the diagnosis that whoever had hired them wanted. Nothing is cut-and-dried about the human psyche, which leaves room to improvise.

“What do
you
think?” Joe said, halting with one foot on the bottom
step and another on the parking lot and swinging around to face me. He wore his usual amiable expression, but he scanned my face attentively.

“I really don’t know,” I said.

In the psych ER, I’d been sure that Harry was, at worst, suicidal—he’d seemed like a classic case of midlife depression. But our meeting in jail had left me wondering whether he’d deceived me all of that time. We walked past a woman dragging two children toward the court, no doubt going to see their father getting jailed.
Not much of a start in life
, I thought.

“Is that it, then?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Joe said, and he clambered back into his Lexus.

He waved cheerfully as he cruised out of the lot and turned left back toward the highway. I waited until he’d driven out of sight before walking to my car, keys in hand, but just before I reached it I heard a shout and saw Pagonis approaching. She’d timed her arrival so that my lawyer wasn’t by my side.

“Who attacked you?” she said as she got to me.

“I’ve no idea.”

“You know a lot about Shapiro you’re not telling us, don’t you?” she said, hardly pausing after getting me off my guard before moving to the next question. “We’re going to find out what you’re hiding.”

I felt my face redden with embarrassment, and I turned toward my car door to hide it from her, pulling out my keys.
I can’t tell my lawyer and I’m sure as hell not telling you
, I thought.

“You’re wasting your time, Detective,” I said.

“I don’t think so,
Doctor
.”

She spat out the last word as if she didn’t believe in the notion of medical expertise and walked away. I climbed into my car and sat for a couple of minutes to calm down, then drove steadily out of the parking lot and turned south.

Mist was blowing off the sea when I reached the Shapiros’ house, half covering the houses lined up on the dune. In the far distance, the
fields and ponds beyond the house looked flat and bleak. It was my first visit alone—the last time I’d been chauffeured along the lane by Anna. As I came to the willow trees and the entrance to the gravel path, I tried to imitate the way she’d smoothly driven up, but I didn’t get the speed right and the wheels spun in the gravel near the top.

Nora was in the garden behind the house, crouching by the flower beds in a gardening smock and clipping some blooms, and as I climbed out of my car, she looked over her shoulder. She walked toward me but halted a few feet away rather than embracing me again.

“Your face,” she said worriedly, as if she couldn’t take any more bad news.

“Just an accident. Nothing serious.”

We were standing by the conservatory at the rear of the house, and I could see white sheets covering the sofas in the living room. The floor was bare, with the geometric rug that had covered it—on which Greene’s bloody corpse had lain—removed. Lines were still marked on the wooden boards, along with some dark stains, the last traces of murder.

Nora had called me the day after my attack, as I was resting at home—I had a feeling that the hospital liked having me out of the way. She’d just talked to Duncan, she’d said, and had something to discuss.

“I’m trying to get the garden under control,” she said. “It grows so fast and the men haven’t been for a while. The police shut the house for a long time. Anna’s coming down here to redecorate soon. I don’t know if we’ll stay.”

“Take your time. Don’t make any big decisions.”

That was what we always advised people who were depressed—don’t do anything while they were unstable that they might regret later. I wasn’t sure how much sense that made, though. Not doing something is an act in itself.

The ocean breeze was blowing her hair over her eyes, and she brushed the strands away to look at me. “You’re a good man, Dr. Cowper. I’m so sorry about this. Let’s go and talk, shall we?”

She guided me away from the conservatory along the rear of the house and we went into the building through a door by the bedrooms, then along a hallway into what seemed to be her study. There was an ornate French desk by one window, with a vase of flowers resting on it. She sat in an antique chair near four miniature oil portraits.

“I talked to Sarah, as you asked me last time,” she said. “It made me realize how hard this has been for you.”

Thank God someone does
, I thought. I gave her the professional answer, hoping that she wouldn’t take it too literally.

“You must do whatever’s right for your husband. That’s all you should be concerned about.”

“I want to say something about Harry, Doctor. He’s a good man and he went through an awful experience. He lost his bearings and did something terrible, but I can’t let him spend the rest of his life in prison. He doesn’t deserve that.”

Nora took off her gardening gloves and rested them on her knee, smoothing them out with one hand. Then she lowered her head and a tear dripped from the end of her nose, leaving a dark spot where it landed on her glove. Her face had turned pale and her mascara was running. I got up and walked over to her desk to retrieve some tissues from a box for her. She blew her nose, then walked to a window that overlooked the drive, through the trees to the guesthouse.

“Sarah’s worried about Margaret suing the hospital, but I’m sure I can stop her from doing it,” she said. “We’ll settle with her over the damages. We’ve got the money. Our lawyer says we’ll be first in line to be sued anyway.”

“That’s very generous of you, Mrs. Shapiro, but I don’t know how much it will help. I could still be accused of misconduct.”

“Sarah thinks she can protect you,” Nora said, her eyes shining with the residue of tears. “I’ve told her she must, for the hospital’s sake. I don’t want your life ruined the way Harry’s has been.”

It was surreal to hear of this negotiation over my fate, and I wondered briefly about Nora treating my problems as equivalent to
Harry’s. But her demeanor distracted me. She was smiling brightly and her hands shook slightly. I worried that she might be on the verge of hysteria, so rapid had been her mood swing.

“Have you eaten anything today?” I asked.

“I haven’t, no. The kitchen’s that way.”

She pointed at the wall and I realized she’d been afraid to go there because she would have to pass the crime scene.

“You should sit down. Is there any food in the house?” I said.

“Anna said there would be,” Nora said, obeying.

I walked along the corridor and glanced around as I got to the living room. It felt eerily quiet, with furniture pushed in corners, covered in sheets, and a sharp smell of chemicals in the air. In the kitchen, the cupboards and fridge were full of food and there was milk in the fridge. Anna had kept the place stocked.

I scrambled eggs on toast for both of us and brought them back on a tray. It felt good to be able to help her. Without Anna there and with Harry in jail, she had no one else. She’d regained some color in her face by the time she finished the food.

“I do appreciate your kindness,” I said eventually. “I’ll have to talk to Mrs. Duncan and see what she has in mind.”

“Of course. I just don’t want any more suffering, that’s all. There’s been too much of that already.”

She walked me out to my car, skirting the house across the lawn, and stood there as I got in. She was on the exact spot where I’d stood behind Anna three weeks earlier, watching her as she gazed out to sea.

O
n Wednesday afternoons, when my ward rounds were done, I had a three-hour block of therapy in my office. My final session was Arthur Logue, a patient who’d come to see me after a spell of panic attacks. I knew his life well—his scratchy relationship with his wife, his various neuroses. It was difficult to interrupt his steady narrative of trivia, and I’d almost stopped trying. He was light relief from patients in acute distress.

Mr. Logue left my door half-open when he left, and while I was up writing a few notes on our session, Sarah Duncan arrived.

“Can I come in?” she said, looking around. “This is nice.”

That was a stretch, but it was better than some other offices along therapy row. I had two windows, which was two more than a couple of the other psychs, and I’d refused to move when building services
had hatched a conspiracy to shift me. Duncan walked over to the wall on which I’d hung an old poster for Fellini’s
8½
, with Marcello Mastroianni in a hat and thick spectacles, surrounded by Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, and Sandra Milo. It was at the outer limit of office acceptability, but I claimed it was a reference to Jung.

“My husband loves Fellini,” she said unexpectedly. “We rented
Juliet of the Spirits
the other night.”

“I haven’t seen that one.”

“Oh, you should. It’s wonderful,” she said, looking over at the books on my shelves as if she had a right to examine my possessions. Then she sat in my patients’ chair, crossing her legs at the ankle and adjusting her skirt. She looked happier than before.

“I’ve spoken to Nora Shapiro and she told me she’s talked with you. I think she could save us from a nasty predicament. I’ve told her how grateful I am to her.”

“I wasn’t sure what it would involve,” I said cautiously.

“Don’t worry about the details. The point is that we wouldn’t face any liability over Mr. Shapiro’s discharge.” Duncan held out her arms and widened her eyes with astonishment, like a preacher describing a miracle. “Wouldn’t that be a relief?”

“Mrs. Shapiro’s being very generous by the sound of it,” I said, trying to mimic her enthusiasm. “But what about me?”

Duncan sighed and looked at me as if I were a child who had sorely tried her patience but whom she was prepared to forgive.

“We may have got off on the wrong foot, but that shouldn’t get in our way. We must stick together if we’re going to get through this. I’ve reviewed the files and there are things that worry me about how you handled Mr. Shapiro’s case. I’ve discussed them with Dr. Whitehead. You made no mention of Mr. Shapiro bringing a gun, and I’d have taken a different view if I’d known that.”

You too?
I thought. It was plain enough what Jim and Duncan had talked about when they’d met. They’d assembled their excuse—that I’d been negligent in not telling either of them about the weapon, even though it hadn’t been used for murder. My anger was laced with contempt for them both. Here was I, faithfully hiding the news about
Harry’s lover from my lawyer and Pagonis, while they scurried to cover themselves.

“Anyway, the point is that I’m sure you can learn lessons from this case. I wouldn’t want it to bring your promising career to a premature end. Nora will take care of the civil suit and I shall try to prevent any misconduct complaint. Meanwhile, I think it would be best if you said nothing, don’t you?”

She didn’t wait for my answer but rose and walked to the door, where she turned and nodded to me as if I’d already agreed.

After she’d gone, I stood at a window looking at the hospital’s exterior walls, which the architect had tiled in white, shaping the windows in Gothic arches like a cathedral. He had a point, I thought: plenty of East Side matrons treated it as a place of worship. The list of people wanting me to keep quiet was growing—Anna, Jim, and now Duncan. Harry didn’t deserve my silence, though. He was a narcissist who didn’t care about others, not Nora and probably not his mistress. If I’d got him into therapy and delved beneath his hard-nosed ascent on Wall Street, his two marriages, and his affair, I might have found a shy boy with an unfeeling father who hadn’t been able to cope with humiliation.
So what?
I thought.
He’s a murderer
.

I thought of Anna’s words about her own shrink:
I could have been a terrible person. He wouldn’t have known
. Harry was a terrible person, and I didn’t want to be his vassal. If I refused to talk, I’d have Pagonis and Baer on my trail, pushing me to tell them everything. The only way I could get them off my back was by letting Joe cut me a deal.