Denial (2 page)
There was another reason I feared Kathy would take the news especially hard: She had lost her baby sister in a house fire. The memory of that childhood tragedy had never really left her and seemed to intensify with any loss she suffered as an adult.
I pressed the car phone's
AUTODIAL
button.
"Hello," Kathy answered.
"It's me."
"Too bad you aren't here. I just jumped out of the shower."
I pictured her all wet, sitting on the side of the bed. "Kathy, I have bad news. Very bad news."
"You're going to try to make dinner again tonight."
"I'm serious." I took a deep breath. "It's about the murder."
"Isn't murder always bad news?"
I didn't respond.
"Are you there?"
I pulled the car over to the side of the road. "It's worse when you know the victim," I said.
Silence. "You know the victim?"
"We both do." I didn't know how else to play it. "The woman who was killed was Sarah Johnston," I said.
"No... No, that can't be."
Denial, even fleeting denial, is a remarkable thing. "It was Sarah," I assured her. "I saw her. Sarah's gone."
"My God," she gasped. "What happened?"
"We don't know exactly. I'm on my way to the station now to find out more." I could hear her sobbing. "Will you be OK?"
"I just can't believe it."
"There are bound to be rumors at work. I wanted to tell you first."
"When will I see you?"
"I'll stop by the hospital after the station."
"Promise."
"I promise."
I hung up and watched the cars speeding by. What would it be like, I wondered, to get a call that Kathy had been murdered? I closed my eyes and pictured her with her breasts hacked out of her. But I shook that image quickly out of my mind and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
* * *
By the time I got to the police station around 10
A.M.
, Emma Hancock had phoned Sarah's father in San Francisco. "I'll never get used to telling the family, no matter how many times I do it," she said. She was sitting at her metal desk, clicking the long red nails of her thumb and forefinger against one another. "Here's a man who lost his wife two years ago and now his only child's dead. He's crying to me how he was about to come visit because they hadn't seen each other for a year and how maybe she'd still be alive if he'd come sooner. What do you say to someone who's lost most of what he cares about in the world? What do I know about that?"
That was a tough question. Hancock had dedicated herself wholly to her job, becoming the first female police captain in the state. Rumor had it she was about to be named commissioner. Past fifty, her short brown hair going gray, she had no husband, no children and no apparent interests other than fund-raising for her church. "You know that you don't know," I said. "It's hard to go wrong from there."
"Yes, well... you're a big help, Dr. Freud. I feel so much better now." She shook her head. "Here's something else I can't figure: The monster locked up back there is all set to confess to murder any time we're ready, but he won't indulge me with his real name. He's still General William C. Westmoreland."
"Maybe he'd rather be known for genocide than be known for who he is," I said.
"Profound. You've got a one-liner for everything." Hancock stood up and started to walk toward the cell block, then turned and looked me directly in the eyes. She is a meaty, powerful woman who stands six feet six, but seems to occupy more than her physical space. When she grabbed my shoulder, it hurt. "Nobody around here has forgotten the Prescott case. I keep calling you in because I don't think you were entirely to blame. And because you’ve been reasonable since then. But I'm out on a limb every single time I use you."
Marcus Prescott was one of my first forensic cases, a thirty-two-year-old attorney who raped a Lynn Classical High cheerleader. When Prescott had pled insanity, claiming he had no memory of the attack, I had testified that his symptoms were consistent with multiple personality disorder. He had been found innocent and committed to Bridgewater State Hospital. After four years of treatment the Bridgewater team released him, and he tracked the girl down at Brown University, raped her again and strangled her.
"That was a long time ago," I said.
"A young woman died."
My jaws tightened. "So what's the real reason you keep calling me in, Emma? You enjoy having me on the hook?"
"I think everyone deserves a second chance. We're all sinners, after all."
I shook my head. "Let’s not bullshit one another. Prescott has nothing to do with this case. The truth is, you don't need a bleeding-heart liberal shrink like me getting you the wrong headlines. Not when you're a few months from the commissioner's job."
"Your mouth to God's ears."
"You know, for my part, I'd like to see you get that promotion. I really would. I think it could be good for both of us. Even the city. But I don't think God gives a flying fuck either way."
Hancock tightened her grip. "Do not curse." She paused for emphasis, then smiled. "One hand washes the other," she said. "I've always made sure your invoices are paid right on time. And nobody watches the clock."
"I watch the clock."
"Time flies." She winked and let go of my shoulder. "I'll have Zangota let you in to visit the general."
Angel Zangota, a Lynn cop new to the job, took me to Westmoreland's cell. I smelled him before I saw him. He was sitting cross-legged in front of his cot, wearing too many layers of soiled clothing. When the door was unlocked, he struggled to his feet and shuffled to the back wall. He looked about forty-five, starvation thin, with matted salt-and-pepper hair and deeply set steel blue eyes.
Zangota put his hand on his gun as he opened the door. "You want me in there with you?" he asked.
I doubted I'd get anything out of Westmoreland in front of a uniformed officer. "Down the hall is alright," I said. Zangota left, and I walked in and stood against one of the side walls; my first rule is to never be the barrier between a prisoner and an exit. Westmoreland glanced at me, then muttered something. I noticed his eyes dart to an empty corner of the room a few times. "You see something over there that bothers you?" I asked.
He looked me over head to toe.
I crouched down and sat against the wall to let him know I intended to stay a while. "The police tell me your name is Westmoreland."
"William C. Westmoreland, born 1914," he announced.
"You were in Vietnam?"
He stayed silent for a while, then chuckled to himself. "I killed there."
I nodded.
"Priest?"
I was wearing a black turtleneck jersey. "No. Psychiatrist."
"Same thing," he said evenly. He sat down. His eyes flicked back to the corner of the room and lingered there. "I confess, father. I failed."
"Failed?"
"God's test. I violated his design."
"How?"
"By design."
Schizophrenics use words as shields against meaning. I wanted to get past the defense. "What did you do that violated God's design?"
"I violated her."
"In what way?"
He picked at his sleeve as if something was stuck to it. "In way. Out way. Every way."
I decided to try another approach. "Where is the knife?" I asked.
Westmoreland looked me directly in the eyes for the first time. "There is no knife," he said. "Yet there is no life."
Rhyming is another way schizophrenics block communication. "Did you hide the knife?" I persisted.
His eyes darted away, this time to the ceiling over my head, then focused on mine again. He struggled to his feet and took a few halting steps toward me. I was ready to get up myself when he stopped. "She could have been my wife!" he screamed. "But I took her life with this knife!" He started to unbutton his military-style pants.
I jumped up, worried the police hadn't searched him thoroughly for weapons.
Westmoreland dropped his pants and grabbed his penis. "I killed her with my cock!" he yelled. "My cock is a rock!" Then he threw himself at me, his hands outstretched toward my neck.
I took the full impact of his body with one shoulder, managed to get hold of his hair, and brought him down face first into the concrete floor. Blood poured from his nose and lip. I heard Zangota running down the hall. I put my mouth close to Westmoreland's ear. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "You scared me." Seconds later Zangota had cuffed him, and I was on my way to Emma Hancock's office.
She was cleaning her revolver when I walked in the door. "Tell me you and I aren't going to have a problem," she said without looking up. "He's rational enough to confess, right?"
"You know I won't disagree just to disagree," I said.
"Then don't."
"He exposed himself and attacked me."
She squinted into one chamber, then blew into it. "Well, you aren't exactly my cup of tea, but I can see why he might take a liking to you."
"He's hallucinating."
Hancock looked up from the gun and shook her head slowly. "Come now, Francis. We're talking open-and-shut. He was covered with her blood." She snapped the barrel shut and tossed the gun in her desk drawer. "Give me a break."
"If it was close, I would. You know that. But this guy isn't making any sense."
"You're really gonna soak me?" She threw up her hands. "Why should I care? Put in for five hours." She shrugged. "I don't really mind if you bill for ten, provided you remember the favor come fund-raising time."
I thought about taking her up on the ten hours. I'd had a run of bad luck at the track and that, combined with coke at a hundred a gram, had me scrambling for my mortgage payment. But something Levitsky said at the morgue had stuck in my mind. "I can't do it," I said. "Not yet."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I did want to use you for this case. But I see that I can't."
"You wouldn’t change your expert after one interview with the accused. The defense will have a field day with it in court."
"Listen to me. This savage may see visions or hear voices or both. I don't deny that. But he knew he was doing wrong when he sliced that girl up. He knew he was breaking the law. He even knew enough to call the authorities afterwards. He felt guilty because he
is
guilty."
"Some people feel guilty because of what they think, not what they do. You should know that; the Catholic Church is full of them."
She stiffened. "I've warned you before: Do not denigrate the Lord in this office." Then she relaxed. "Malloy tells me you knew the victim."
"She was a friend of Kathy's."
"So I have the right to remove you. You're personally involved."
"Look, all I'm asking is that you let me put him back on some Thorazine and interview him again tomorrow. Maybe he'll be more rational."
"No thank you."
"Who you gonna get, Chuck Sloan? He's slightly to the left of Lenin. George Schwartz would send this guy to the hospital because he's dressed funny."
"I can only keep him seventy-two hours on suspected murder without either a confession or the court's permission. And you know Judge Katzenstein will just direct-deposit our hacker to Bridgewater State Hospital. I'm not going to let that happen."
"Give me two days."
"Why should I?"
"Because," I said, "you know there are things you don't know."
The furrows in Hancock's brow deepened. She started clicking her nails again. I imagined her struggling in vain to turn back the moral residue of the twelve years she'd spent at Lynn's Sacred Heart School for Girls. She shook her head, then finally looked at me. "You've got thirty-six hours."
I made it to the hospital just after 1
P.M.
I took the stairs to Kathy's office in the Ob-Gyn Department, but she had left to start a delivery. That gave me about an hour free, and I wanted to use it. I headed for medical records.
The whole department was really a long room that looked like an overstuffed filing-cabinet drawer. Ray, a tiny black man who had run the place for thirty years or so, was sorting through the mound of loose papers that always covered his desk. I interrupted to ask if he would check for any record of Westmoreland being treated at Stonehill.
He inspected me over half-glasses. "What did that man do?"
"Who said he did anything?"
"An Officer Malloy called so I'd hold that chart for him. He's coming here with a subpoena."
"So Westmoreland
was
treated here."
"It would be mighty unusual to have a chart without ever being a patient, even with me doing the filing," he said dryly.
"Can I have it?"
He went back to searching through his papers. "Tell me why he's so special."
"He may have killed somebody."
He peeked over his glasses again. "That's not special. Not these days. Not in Lynn."
I felt like blurting out that he had cut Sarah Johnston's breasts off. But I settled myself down. "Ray," I said, "I need that chart."
"I already told you: The police are coming for it."
"Well they haven't picked it up yet, have they?"
"No, but..."
"I only need fifteen minutes with it."
He looked at me doubtfully. "You've got a reputation with me, Doc. Late records. Lost records. Coffee spilled all over records. Cigarette burns through records."
"I'll read it right here. You can watch me."
"You really think I got nothing more important to do? Those nurses chasing after you finally gone straight to your head. I hear ‘em in the cafeteria. ‘Hair like a rock star.’ ‘Shoulders like a football player,’ To listen to them, ain’t no part of you looks like a psychiatrist." He pulled the chart out from under his desk and handed it over. "Don't go far with it," he warned.
"You're a ray of sunshine."
"Don't press your luck."