Tight Lines (15 page)

“Like Dave Finn.”

He nodded. “Finn was just the current one. A crude, uncomplicated man, if I have inferred accurately from all that Mary Ellen said to me. Another doomed relationship for her.” He ran his fingers through his thatch of white hair. “You understand why I couldn’t tell these things to the police.”

“You think Finn could have murdered her?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t know the man. I only know Mary Ellen’s perceptions of him. She saw him as quick-tempered, possessive, lonely, professionally unsuccessful. A murderer?” He shrugged again.

“What do you mean, unsuccessful?”

“According to Mary Ellen, he was suspended from the Boston police force. I’m not sure what the charges were, or if his case has been resolved. But when Mary Ellen heard about it, it burst Dave Finn’s balloon as far as Mary Ellen was concerned. No father figure would fail so dramatically at his work. Any Charles Ames substitute would be successful and respected, as she believed Charles himself was. She expressed fear of Finn, however. Whether her fear was appropriate or not, I couldn’t tell you. She wanted to break from him, but she felt she could not predict his reaction. So when you told me she had disappeared, I simply assumed that disappearing for a while was the way she had chosen to separate herself from Finn. It would have been consistent with the Mary Ellen I knew. She was an avoider, not a confronter.”

“Christ,” I said. “I think the cops should know this.”

Warren nodded. “I agree. But I can’t tell them. And now, neither can you.”

I lit a cigarette. “I met Finn. He didn’t strike me as a murderer. I mean, when I met him, Mary Ellen was already dead. He just struck me as a man in love who was looking for his girl. He seemed too ingenuous to play-act that whole scene while knowing she was already dead.”

“He was a cop,” said Warren. “Anyway, there’s more.”

“I still don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

“I’ve got to tell somebody,” he said simply.

I nodded.

“Mary Ellen also had another lover. A woman.” He peered at me with his eyebrows arched.

“That doesn’t shock me nowadays,” I said.

“I suppose not. This was a new thing for her, though. Recent. Within the past few months. She was very excited by it, but very confused, too. We hadn’t done much work on this issue when she stopped showing up for appointments, so I don’t know how—or if—it fits in.” Warren ran the palms of his hands over his face as if he was very weary. “I mean, I suppose she simply drowned accidentally, and none of this has any relevance whatsoever. But it’s her life, and it’s hard for me not to continue to ponder it and analyze it and try to figure out how to help her with it.”

I nodded. “Who was her woman lover?”

He shrugged. “She didn’t tell me. She told me very little about her. When she talked about it, she talked about herself. How it felt to her, how she responded to this other person, what it was like to her, being, um, involved with a woman in this new way. Emotionally. Sexually.”

Warren stood up, walked over to his desk, looked at some papers on it, came back and stood in front of me. “There’s more,” he said.

I looked up at him. “More?”

“Me,” he said.

“You?”

“I was her lover, too.”

I STARED AT WARREN
McAllister. “You were Mary Ellen’s lover?”

He shrugged.

I blew out a short laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

“Look,” he said. “You don’t understand.”

I nodded. “I think I do.”

“No you don’t. You’re making judgments.”

“A psychiatrist screwing his patient? I shouldn’t judge that?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Look,” I said. “You told me, okay? You got it off your chest. You want me to comfort you?”

“No,” he said, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d try to understand it.”

“Why? Why me?”

He smiled. “Who else?”

“Okay.” I sighed. “What am I supposed to understand? That fucking Mary Ellen Ames was part of her treatment? Sex therapy?”

“No, of course not. It’s ethically indefensible. There is no justification for it. I’m ashamed. I’m guilt ridden. What we did wasn’t calculated or planned. It’s much simpler.”

“Lust,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s about it.”

“This is odious.”

“Thank you for your objectivity, Brady.”

“We have this girl,” I said. “She comes to you for therapy. She could’ve been your daughter. She becomes dependent on you. She opens her soul to you. Classical transference. She is vulnerable. You are weak. So you seduce her. And you toss it off as simple lust.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t toss it off. And lust isn’t simple. But never mind any of that. It happened, it was wrong. But it wasn’t bad for Mary Ellen. And, in fact, now it has nothing to do with anything. She is dead.”

“Which must be a vast relief to you.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “I have been completely candid with you, Brady. So listen, and I will be candid some more. I am shattered by Mary Ellen’s death. Not because I was unforgivably indiscreet and unprofessional with her, but because she is a human being whom I knew better than anyone else on earth knew her, and about whom I cared as I care for all my patients. I am not relieved. I am bereaved.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m no one to judge anybody else. But I’m having these thoughts.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, if you screwed her then spurned her, she might want to kill herself.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know what eventually would’ve happened. But I never spurned her. My inability to spurn her is what led us into that—that situation in the first place. I feel guilty for many reasons. But I can tell you right now, Mary Ellen Ames did not kill herself, for me or for anybody else.”

“Or,” I said, “you panicked. She threatened to go public. Or tell Robin. Or sue you. So…”

“So
what
?”

“Obvious,” I said. “So you killed her.”

“Jesus Christ, Brady. What kind of man do you think I am?”

“I don’t know you that well, Warren,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, well I’m no murderer, I can tell you that. She never threatened anything. I didn’t kill her. My God.”

“You didn’t get me over here for your interview with Horowitz to protect your right against self-incrimination, then?”

“Of course not.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

“No. Listen. If I did, I know I could tell you. It would be privileged, right?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m positive she didn’t kill herself, either.”

“Positive?”

“Yes.”

I sighed. “Does this happen a lot?”

“What?”

“Shrinks screwing their patients?”

He shrugged. “It happens. Some justify it. It takes some convoluted reasoning, but they rationalize it for themselves. Some end up marrying their patients. Some get sued. They almost always settle quietly, out of court. Mostly, I guess they just—I don’t know—break up. Like lovers do. Some psychiatric patients suffer more than other people might from it. Some probably suffer less. The psychiatrists suffer, too. Everybody’s human. I suppose it happens more than people think. It’s not something the profession is eager to make public.”

“Does your wife know?”

“Robin? God, no. Nobody knows. Only you.”

“I just hope your conscience is clear, Warren.”

“Of course it’s not. But I feel no responsibility for Mary Ellen’s death, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“And now if the cops come back and start asking questions about your relationship with her, you’ve got me, fully informed, to help protect your rights. That’s why you’re telling me this, right?”

“Partly, I guess. Mainly, I felt I had to get it off my chest.”

I nodded. “Anything else while we’re on the subject?”

“No. That’s all of it.”

“Well,” I said after a minute, “she was quite the young lady. If I’ve got it right, she was simultaneously sleeping with a policeman named Dave Finn, who was convinced she was going to marry him, seducing her shrink, or vice versa, and exploring the joys of Lesbos with a mysterious woman.”

“It sounds worse when you say it than it actually was for her.”

“But not exactly a conventional love life.”

“No,” he said. “But not exactly an unhealthy one, either.”

“Well, I don’t sit at the head of a couch for ten hours a day, so I probably have a poor handle on what’s healthy.”

He smiled. “And I do sit there. So my idea of healthy is probably distorted, too.” Warren looked at me. “Can we still be friends, Brady?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Sure, I guess so.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m in no position to judge anybody. Especially when it comes to matters of lust. I suppose in one way or another, we all take advantage of situations.”

“Don’t say that,” he said. “What I did was wrong, and it should be judged. So go ahead and judge me.”

“Okay. Consider yourself judged.”

He held out his hand to me. I took it.

“Thanks,” he said.

“This couldn’t have been easy for you.”

“No,” he said. “But not telling somebody hasn’t been easy, either.” He rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. “Listen. What about a drink? I think we could both use one.”

“Will Robin be there?”

“Probably.”

“Jeez, I don’t know.”

“Please?”

I shrugged. “I guess so. Why not.”

I followed Warren McAllister down the two flights of stairs and through the door into the kitchen. I was greeted by the melodramatic strains of Wagner over the speakers and the unbearably nostalgic aroma of apple pie in the oven. Robin was at the sink loading the dishwasher and humming to the music. Her long dark hair was pulled into two pigtails which hung in front of each shoulder. She was wearing yellow rubber gloves that came nearly to her elbows.

She looked up when we entered. “Hi, fellas.”

Warren went to her and kissed the back of her neck. “Hi, babe.”

“You guys have impeccable timing. The pie’ll be out of the oven in about two minutes. What say a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, huh?”

“Perfect,” I said.

She frowned at Warren. “How’d it go?”

He shrugged. “Okay. I don’t think I was of much help.”

“Was he mean to you?”

“The policeman? No. It looks like a drowning accident. I guess they have to rule out suicide.”

“It was nice of you to help out, Brady,” she said to me.

I shrugged. “No problem.”

A little bell dinged.

“There,” said Robin. “The pie’s done. We’ll let it cool for a few minutes. Why don’t you boys sit at the table.”

“I’m getting drinks,” said Warren. “Want one, hon?”

“Sure.”

I sat at the table. Warren rummaged in the cabinets while Robin finished at the sink. Then they sat down, too, and we sipped Jack Daniel’s while the pie cooled. Robin talked about her day in the emergency room. There was only one automobile accident, no fatalities. Two cardiac arrests, one saved. A high school soccer player with a compound leg fracture, a toddler who had swallowed a marble, a couple of nursing home admittances, one drug overdose, several lacerations requiring stitches. A quiet day, she said. The night shift, she said, was usually worse. More bad accidents, more gunshot and knife wounds, more strokes and heart attacks. She liked night shift work better. More exciting, more demand on her expertise. But since her marriage she preferred working normal hours. Otherwise she’d never see Warren.

She had reached over and put her hand on top of his as she talked. I found myself feeling envious. Warren McAllister, who had been screwing one of his patients, had a beautiful and obviously adoring wife who had great enthusiasm for her work and baked aromatic apple pies. He didn’t deserve her.

Once the phone rang. Neither of them got up to answer it. I heard Warren’s recorded voice answer it in another room.

I stopped at one drink. I allowed Robin to talk me into a second helping of pie, however. Afterward we had coffee.

It was nearly midnight when I left, balancing a wedge of pie on a paper plate. Warren and Robin McAllister stood in the doorway to watch me leave. They had their arms around each other’s waist. Robin’s head was tilted against her husband’s shoulder.

I
SLEPT LATE THE
next morning. I generally sleep late on Saturdays and Sundays, unless I’ve got a fishing plan, in which case I have no problem arising before the sun. I spent what was left of the morning sorting old newspapers and magazines and catalogs and bottles and cans into recyclable groups. It took longer than it should have, since I couldn’t resist flipping through the magazines and catalogs, and I kept finding things I hadn’t read and pictures I hadn’t seen.

But while the top part of my mind was attending to these activities, the bottom part chewed on the questions raised by Mary Ellen Ames’s death. She had drowned. No evidence that it had been anything else. Yet Susan said she was a strong swimmer, unlikely to drown by accident in a small pond. She could’ve killed herself, but Warren McAllister vowed she was not suicidal, and I thought I believed him.

Somebody could have killed her. There seemed to be plenty of candidates with possible motives. But the New Hampshire medical examiner’s conclusions seemed to rule out murder.

On one level, it didn’t matter. Like most people, Mary Ellen undoubtedly had allies and enemies, some people whose lives would be diminished by her death and others who would not mourn—and might secretly celebrate—her death. They would continue, diminished or enhanced by the fact that Mary Ellen Ames was no longer part of their lives. For better or worse, though, her death was irreversible.

But on another level, I found not knowing intolerable. I had tried too hard to find her to let it go now. I had agonized with Susan. I had wanted to be the one to bring her and her daughter together for one final hug before Susan died. Now it wouldn’t happen. I needed to know why.

But what could I do? The medical examiner would submit his finding and Mary Ellen would be buried. And soon enough, so would Susan.

I could do some checking around. Playing detective, as Julie called it. A weakness of mine.