The Clinic (13 page)

“Crosstown.” She smiled. “The enemy?”

“I got my doctorate here so it’s more of a case of split allegiance.”

“How do you cope at football games?”

“I ignore them.”

She laughed. “Me, too. Gerry—my husband—has become a football fanatic since we arrived.

We used to be at the University of Chicago, which believe me is no great seat of athletic achievement. Anyway, I’m glad the police are still looking into Hope’s murder. I’d assumed they’d given up.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because after the first week or so there was nothing in the news. Isn’t it true that the longer a case goes unsolved the less chance there is of success?”

“Generally.”

“What’s the name of the new detective?”

I told her and she wrote it down.

“Does the fact that he’s chosen not to come himself mean anything?”

“It’s a combination of time pressure and strategy,” I said. “He’s working the case alone and he hasn’t fared well with the faculty people he’s interviewed so far.”

“In what way?”

“They treat him as if he’s a Neanderthal.”

“Is he?”

“Not at all.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose as a group, we tend to be intolerant—not that we’re really a group.

Most of us have nothing in common beyond the patience to endure twenty-plus years of schooling. Hope and I are prime examples of that, so I don’t think I’ll be of much help.”

“She knew you well enough to ask you to be on the Interpersonal Conduct Committee.”

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She placed her pen on the desk. “The committee. I figured it had to be that. In terms of our relationship, we’d spoken a few times before she asked me to serve but we were far from friends. How much do the police know about the committee?”

“They know its history and the fact that it was disbanded. There are also transcripts of the three cases that were heard. I noticed you didn’t participate in the third.”

“That’s because I resigned,” she said. “It’s obvious now that the whole thing was a mistake but it took me a while to realize it.”

“Mistake in what way?”

“I think Hope’s motives were pure but they led her somewhat . . . far afield. I thought it would be an attempt to heal, not create more conflict.”

“Did you voice your concerns to her?”

She tightened her lips and gazed up at the ceiling. “No. Hope was a complex person.”

“She wouldn’t have listened?”

“I don’t really know. It was just . . . I don’t want to demean the dead. Let’s just say she was strong-willed.”

“Obsessive?”

“About the mistreatment of women, definitely. Which is fine with me.”

Lifting the pen, she tapped one knee. “Sometimes passion blocks out contradictory information. So much so—and this is more your area than mine—that I found myself wondering if she had a personal history of abuse that directed her scholarship.”

The quiet one.

“Because of the extent of her passion?” I said.

She shifted in her chair, bit her lip, and nodded. Placed an index finger alongside one smooth cheek.

“I must say I feel uncomfortable suggesting that, because I don’t want to trivialize Hope’s commitment—to bring it down to the level of personal vindication. I’m a physical chemist, which is about as far as you get from psychoanalysis.”

She wheeled back, so her head was inches from the bookshelves. A brownish rag doll’s legs extended past her right ear. She pulled it down, sat it in her lap, and played with its black string hair.

“I want you to know that I thought highly of her. She was brilliant, and committed to her ideals.

Which is rarer than it should be—maybe I should explain how I got involved with the committee. Because clearly it’s not going to just go away.”

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“Please,” I said. “I’d appreciate that.”

Taking a deep breath, she stroked the doll. “I began college as a premed and in my sophomore year I volunteered at a battered-women’s shelter on the South Side of Chicago. To get brownie points for med school and because both my parents are physicians and old-style liberals and they taught me it was noble to help people. I thought I’d heard everything around the dinner table, but the shelter opened my eyes to a whole new, terrible world. Putting it simply, I was terrified.

It was one of the reasons I changed my mind about medicine.”

Her fingers parted the doll’s hair. “The women I worked with—the ones who’d gotten past the fear and the denial and were in touch with what was being done to them—had the same look I sometimes saw in Hope’s eyes. Part injury, part rage—I can only call it ferocious. In Hope’s case it was strikingly discrepant from her usual manner.”

“Which was?”

“Cool and collected. Very cool and collected.”

“In control.”

“Very much so. She was a leader, had tremendous force of personality. But when we discussed abuse, I saw that look in her eyes. Not always, but frequently enough to remind me of the women at the shelter.”

She gave a shy smile. “No doubt I’m overinterpreting.”

“Did she ask you to serve because of your experience at the shelter?”

She nodded. “We first met at a faculty tea, one of those dreadful things at the beginning of the academic year where everyone pretends to get acquainted? Gerry had gone off to talk sports with some guys and Hope came up to me. She was also alone.”

“Her husband wasn’t there?”

“No. She said he never came to parties. She certainly didn’t know me, I’d just arrived. I didn’t know who she was but I had noticed her. Because of her clothes. Expensive designer suit, good jewelry, great makeup. Like some of the girls I’d known from Lake Forest—heiresses. You don’t see much of that on campus. We got to talking and I told her about the shelter.”

She moved in a way that pinched the doll’s soft torso and caused its head to pitch forward.

“The funny thing is, all those years I hadn’t talked about it. Even to my husband.” Smile. “And as you can tell, I have no problem talking. But there I was at a party, with a virtual stranger, getting into things I’d forgotten about—horrendous things. I actually had to go into a corner to dry my eyes. Looking back, I think Hope drew the memories out of me.”

“How?”

“By listening the right way. Don’t you people call it active listening?” She smiled again. “Just what you’re doing right now. I learned about that, too, at the shelter. I suppose anyone can grasp
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the rudiments but there are few virtuosos.”

“Like Hope.”

She laughed. “There, just what you’re doing: bouncing things back. It works even when you know what’s going on, doesn’t it?”

I smiled and stroked my chin and said, “Sounds like you think it’s effective,” in a stagy voice.

She laughed again, got up, and closed the door. She was shapely, and taller than I’d thought: five-eight or -nine, a good deal of it legs.

“Yes,” she said, sitting down again and crossing them. “She was a brilliant listener. Had a way of . . . moving in. Not just emotionally, actually getting close physically—inching toward you.

But without seeming intrusive. Because she made you feel as if you were the most important person in the world.”

“Charisma and passion.”

“Yes. Like a good evangelist.”

The legs uncrossed. “This must sound so strange. First I tell you I didn’t know her, and then I go on as if I did. But everything I’ve said is just an impression. She and I never got close, though at first I thought shewanted a friend.”

“Why’s that?”

“The day after the tea she called me saying she’d really enjoyed meeting me, would I like to have coffee in the Faculty Club. I was ambivalent. I liked her but Ididn’t want to talk about the shelter again. Even so, I accepted. Determined to keep my mouth shut.” The doll bounced.

“Unbelievably, I ended up talking again. About theworst cases I’d seen: women who’d been brutalized beyond comprehension. That was the first time I saw the ferociousness in her eyes.”

She looked at the doll, put it back on the shelf. “All this can’t possibly help you.”

“It might.”

“How?”

“By illuminating her personality,” I said. “Right now, there’s little else to go on.”

“That assumes her personality had something to do with her being murdered.”

“You don’t think it did?”

“I have no idea. When I found out she’d been killed, my first assumption was that her politics had angered some psychotic.”

“A stranger?”

She stared at me. “You’re not actually saying it had anything to do with the committee?”

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“We don’t have enough information to say anything, but is it impossible?”

“Highly improbable, I’d say. They were just kids.”

“Things got pretty rough. Especially with the Storm boy.”

“Yes, that one did have a temper. And a foul mouth. But the transcripts may be misleading—make him out worse than he was.”

“In what way?”

She thought. “He was . . . he seemed to me more bark than bite. One of those blustery kids who throws tantrums and then gets it off his chest? And the accounts of the murder made it sound like a stalking. I just can’t see a kid doing that. Then again, I don’t have kids, so what do I know?”

“When Hope asked you to serve, what specifics did she give you?”

“She reassured me it wouldn’t take much time. She said it was provisional but certain to be made permanent and that it had strong backing from the administration. Which, of course, wasn’t true. In fact, she made it sound as if the administration hadasked her to set it up. She told me we’d be focusing on offenses that didn’t qualify for criminal prosecution and that our goal would be early detection—what she called primary prevention.”

“Catching problems early.”

“Catching problems early in order to avoid the kinds of things I’d seen at the shelter.” Shaking her head. “She knew what button to push.”

“So she misled you.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, sadly. “I suppose she felt a straightforward approach wouldn’t have worked. And maybe it wouldn’t have. I certainly don’t enjoy sitting in judgment of people.”

“From the transcripts, the other member, Casey Locking, didn’t mind judging.”

“Yes, he was quite . . . enthusiastic. Doctrinaire, really. Not that I fault him. How sincere can any student be when collaborating with his faculty supervisor? Power is power.”

“Did Hope say why she appointed him?”

“No. She did tell me one member would have to be a man. To avoid the appearance of a war between the

sexes.”

“How did she react when you resigned?”

“She didn’t.”

“Not at all?”

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“Not at all. I called her office and left a message on her machine, explaining that I just didn’t feel comfortable continuing, and thanking her for thinking of me. She never returned the call. We never spoke again. I assumed she was angry . . . and now we’re judging her. That bothers me.

Because no matter what she did I believe she had good intentions and what happened to her is an atrocity.”

She got up and showed me the door.

“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about this anymore.” Her hand twisted the knob and the door opened.

The gray eyes had narrowed with strain.

“Thanks for your time,” I said, “and sorry to dredge up unpleasantness.”

“Maybe it needed dredging. . . . The whole thing issickening. Such a loss. Not that one person’s life is worth more than another’s. But Hope was impressive—she had spine. Especially impressive if I’m right that she had been abused, because that would mean she’d made it. Had summoned the strength to help others.”

She bit her lip again. “Shewas strong. Thelast person you’d think of as a victim.”

It was 2:00P.M. when I stepped outside.

I thought of the way Hope had elicited Julia Steinberger’s tears at the faculty tea by stoking old memories.

A good listener—Cindy Vespucci said the same thing.

But she hadn’t handled Kenny Storm—or the other two male students—very skillfully.

Able to deal with women but not with men?

Most probably a man had executed her—I realized that’s how I thought of the murder. An execution.

Which man?

Long-suffering husband pushed to the brink? A deranged stranger?

Or someone midway between those two extremes on the intimacy scale?

Crossing the quad, I sat down at a stone table and checked the class schedules Milo had given me.

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Unless they were playing hooky, Patrick Huang was in the middle of a thermodynamics class, Deborah Brittain was contending with Math for Humanities Majors, and Reed Muscadine, the theater-arts grad student, was participating in something called Performance Seminar 201B a half-mile away in MacManus Hall on the north end of the campus. But Tessa Bowlby’s Psychology of Perception class would be letting out in fifteen minutes in the Psych Tower.

I studied the picture of the young woman who had accused Reed Muscadine of date rape. Very short dark hair and a thin, slightly weak-jawed face. Even allowing for the poor photocopy, she looked discouraged.

The drooping eyes of someone much older.

But not because of the encounter with Muscadine. The picture had been taken at the beginning of the school year, months prior. I had a quick cup of vending-machine coffee and returned to the Psychology Tower to see if life had knocked her even lower.

Her class let out five minutes early and students gushed into the hall like dam water. She wasn’t hard to spot, heading for the exit alone, hauling a denim bag bulging with books. She stopped short when I said, “Ms. Bowlby?”

Her arm dropped and the bag’s weight yanked down her shoulder. Despite the tentative chin and a few pimples, she was waifishly attractive with very white skin and enormous blue eyes. Her hair was dyed absolute black, cut unevenly—either carelessly or with great intention. Her nose was pink at the tip and nostrils—a cold or allergies. She wore a baggy black raglan sweater with one sleeve starting to unravel, old black pipestem jeans torn at the knees, and lace-up leather boots with thick soles and toes scuffed fuzzy.