Owl Dreams

by John T. Biggs

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “How hard could it be to track down a world-famous psychiatrist?” Sarah was a true believer in the gods of the Internet. With Google and a few well-chosen descriptors, she could find out anything about anybody.

  “I’ll start with an easy one.” Her fingers clattered across the keyboard.

  Famous Dr. Moon got her a Civil War physician (losing side), a Korean religious fanatic, and a cookie recipe.

  “First try doesn’t count.” She added Oklahoma to the search line and clicked the mouse on I’m feeling lucky.

  “How the hell does that lead to a real estate company in Claremore?”

  “Can’t find real Indians like that.” She could barely hear Robert’s voice over the sound of Pella windows being pushed open and screens snapping into place. Soon, the wind was blowing through in every room of Victoria and Albert’s guesthouse.

  Robert told her, “Indians are hard to track. Especially if they don’t want to be found.”

  “Damn!” Sarah liked dual-purpose expletives. Half aimed at Google, and half at the annoying man who still believed he could glean information from moving columns of air.

  “It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity,” Robert said, as if that explained everything.

  Good heart. Bad brain. She had to admit he was better now that the voices were gone, but he hadn’t given up being crazy.

  “I suppose the wind told you all about tracking Indians?” Sarah immediately regretted the snide remark, but, as usual, Robert was oblivious.

  He unpacked the three electric fans he’d persuaded her to buy and proceeded to create a mini-cyclone in the living room.

  “Not natural, but adequate,” he said.

  She supposed his fixation on wind was better than the fascination most men had with breasts. They didn’t mind if those were natural either.

 

  “Hashilli’s no ordinary Indian.” Robert raised his voice loud enough to be heard above the breeze and the drone of Chinese-manufactured electric motors. “An Indian witch is way hard to find.”

  “Way hard?” Crazy talk was bad enough without the pop culture adverbs. Sarah made several athletic sweeps of her mouse.

  “Ah ha!” She couldn’t resist gloating when she got a dozen hits with her new entry. “No one can hide from Sarah Bible, internationally renowned search-Injun scout.”

  But it didn’t take her long to see that all her Google trails led nowhere. She found a number of newspaper articles in the Tulsa World and the Oklahoman, even a couple of human interest stories in the Norman Transcript, but nothing in any other newspapers, not even in the six surrounding states.

  The famous Dr. Moon had been a guest lecturer at the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa University and the University of Central Oklahoma on topics ranging from criminal profiling to late onset autism.

  Dr. Moon received a collection of honorary degrees from public and private colleges, featuring a variable first initial instead of a first name. H. Moon, Ph.D. (hon.), L. Moon, Ed.D. (hon.), and S. Moon, D.P.H. (hon.). All Internet dead ends.

  He’d been given public accolades for organizing fundraisers and humanitarian enterprises by numerous state societies and religious organizations, but none of his endeavors withstood the scrutiny of the most cursory examination. He was on boards of charities that did not exist and attended meetings that never took place.

  Feeding the imaginary poor with pretend food, like a little girl’s tea party. Dr. Moon’s fraudulent activities should have been transparent to anyone who cared to investigate, but apparently no one ever did. Newspapers printed stories based on information that must have been provided by Dr. Moon himself. Even that was inconsistent.

  Journalists characterized his nationality as Asian, with oblique references to India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but no place of birth was ever specified.

  His press-resume listed several foreign universities with exotic names, but when Sarah refined her search, she found that many of those institutions did not exist. Of those that did exist, most did not offer degrees in psychology or psychiatry, and those that trained mental health professionals did not list Doctor Moon as a degree recipient.

  As I was going up the stair

  I saw a man who wasn’t there.

  The good doctor was not a member of the American Medical Association, or the Oklahoma Medical Association (which Sarah learned were merely political organizations), but he had a valid license issued by the Oklahoma Board of Medicine and a permit from the Drug Enforcement Agency allowing him to dispense and prescribe controlled substances. Neither of these organizations listed a first name for the famous Dr. Moon—that had to be illegal—and according to both, he lived and practiced at Flanders Mental Hospital.

  By the end of her search, Sarah had not found so much as a telephone number, a street address, or an associate who might give her a viable lead.

  “It seems that Dr. Moon is only world famous in Oklahoma.”

  Robert didn’t say, “I told you so.” He didn’t even punish her with a smug expression. Bad brain. Very good heart.

  “Well, there are more ways to the woods than one.” Years of doing stealth background checks on her mother’s boyfriends had sharpened Sarah’s skills as a social engineer. Her prepaid cell phone would give her all the anonymity she would need to tap the only resource she was certain would have information on the elusive Dr. Moon. She placed a call to Flanders Hospital pretending to be a reporter assigned to do a humanities piece on the good doctor.

  After a few minutes schmoozing she broached secretarial defenses and was connected with a mid-level administrator responsible for public relations. Sarah suggested that her call had been solicited by someone very high on the bureaucratic food chain.

  “Wise men from the east, bearing gifts,” she said. East coast or west, it didn’t really matter. People with money always lived near the water. “I’m sure you know who I mean.” Mid-level administrators often show their ignorance, but they never acknowledge it. Sarah knew the species well.

  “Soft money is so hard to find these days.” She tempted him with the attention of the National Institutes of Mental Health who seemed, of late, to have an open checkbook policy for institutions with a positive public image.

  “Unsullied by scandal. Favored in the public eye. Blessed with a crisp exciting mission statement.” Sentence fragments were good enough—large print sentiments suitable for a bumper sticker. Sarah sought cooperation, not action. Verbs were superfluous.

  She dropped names of grant application reviewers like a breadcrumb trail for her Flanders administrator to follow. Made up names, but who’s to know?

  Before long, the man was throwing information like confetti at a New Year’s celebration. He opened the doctor’s file and found answers to every question Sarah asked.

  The problem was none of the information in Dr. Moon’s personnel file was any use at all. The home address was fictitious, his telephone number was no longer in service, and the person to contact in case of emergency resided in Istanbul, Texas, a city that existed only in the doctor’s imagination.

  “Damn, that’s what I get for talking to a public relations officer in a mental hospital.” According to Sarah, anyone with that job description had to be a loser.

  “Probably the first cousin of the governor’s bastard son. Maybe just the second cousin.” Someone in Flanders was bound to know where she could find Dr. Moon, but she’d have to climb a bit higher on the administrative ladder.

  Doing voices was not one of Sarah’s strengths, but with the aid of a generic European accent, she easily reached deep into the inner circle of personnel management. She presented herself as a full professor of humanities at the University of Oklahoma. When the personnel director picked up the phone, she added the ragged timber of a smoker to her voice. She spoke in smooth confluent tones that conveyed flawless skin, voluptuous curves and the moral standards of a goat. She’d spent hours listening to her mother work a phone se
x job during the love recession that followed 9/11.

  “We are preparing a stipend check for your Dr. Moon, but we need some information for our records.” Sarah kept a close eye on Robert and adjusted the strength of her improvisation based on his reaction. He was her sexual barometer, and a high pressure zone was moving through the area.

  Sorry, partner.

  Robert’s pupils expanded to the size of Arkansas blueberries. He leaned forward and fixed his attention on Sarah like a coyote appreciating a full moon.

  “The doctor was a dear to speak to our little group. He had such an effect on me.” Time to pause a moment. Exhale suggestively. Not a pant exactly, but close.

  Sarah snapped her fingers. She pointed at a chair across the room and motioned for Robert to take a seat. A third grader would have understood her perfectly, but Robert was thinking at a sixth grade level. A nasty little sixth grader with early onset puberty.

  “I let him slip away without getting his address,” she told the administrator. “Or even so much as his first name.” The nervous laughter following Sarah’s confession conveyed a sense of vulnerability men are seldom able to resist.

  Kryptonite. Take that, Superman.

  Sarah had learned this skill at her mother’s knee, the way some girls learned to bake a pie or prepare chicken and dumplings. Marie enjoyed manipulating men, but Sarah never did. Sexual politics could have devastating results even on unintended targets; she could see the look on Robert’s face—not love, but infatuation.

  Which is worse?

  “I would be ever so grateful for anything you could tell me,” she said, “The good Doctor Moon will never have to know what a naughty girl I’ve been.”

  Men loved naughty girls, even Robert. He’d resorted to mouth breathing. Not a pretty sight, but the only way to take in enough oxygen to fuel the metabolism of lust. Too late to make him leave the room. Sarah hoped her deception had a similar effect on the Flanders’s administrator.

  The personnel manager clearly wanted to be helpful, especially after Sarah told him she would bring the check to him in person, “If only I can get some information for my records, you see.”

  She promised to be, “Ever so grateful,” for the second time in less than a minute, and would find a way to “Demonstrate my gratitude.”

  “We could go for coffee or for dinner or for something else. We can think of something else, I’m sure.”

  “Eager to please,” was how the personnel manager described himself. “Very, very eager to please,” he said, loud enough to clear up any ambiguity about his willingness to accommodate the unknown temptress on the phone. But his information was in an unfortunate state of completion. He promised to update it and fill in the blanks as soon as Dr. Moon returned to Flanders.

  The personnel manager couldn’t say exactly when that would be. “He’s on indefinite leave, you see, training psychiatric outreach workers somewhere in Africa.”

  Sarah decided then and there hospital administrators were idiot-school rejects in addition to being time-wasting SOBs. She was overwhelmed with the fierce urge to punish. Pinching was out of the question. Verbal abuse would have to do.

  “Unusual project for a psychiatrist.” Not all of the sexual innuendo had disappeared from Sarah’s voice, but her tone changed enough to put the administrator on the defensive.

  “How so?”

  “First of all,” Sarah said. “Africa is a continent. If I wanted to tell someone where I would be working for the next several weeks, I wouldn’t provide the North American Continent as my forwarding address.”

  “And there are only two countries on our continent,” she continued, “While there are nearly sixty in Africa.” Sarah knew how to suck all the warmth out of a telephone conversation.

  She pictured the administrator on the other end. Midriff bulge pushing over his belt buckle. Clip-on necktie askew. His smile already turned into a grimace. His comb-over had come unstuck. His ego was shrinking so fast it might fall into the telephone receiver any second.

  Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can leave a nasty bruise on the self-esteem. Sarah knew this administrator would take out his frustrations on someone else once the quiver left his voice and he selected an adequately defenseless target. Secretaries were too dangerous. Maybe a custodian. A non-minority would be best.

  “I’m certain Dr. Moon has gone to the country with the greatest need,” he said. “Where he can help the most unfortunate people.”

  “Those pesky Africans. I suppose psychiatry is a pressing issue,” Sarah said, “On a continent where twenty percent of the population is at war at any given time, a continent where AIDS is an epidemic, where obtaining therapeutic drugs is practically impossible, where children are unvaccinated, and starvation is a way of life.”

  She went on to tell the administrator that Africa was the spiritual home of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so “It’s no wonder, people who live there are in such dire need of counseling.”

  The personnel manager assured her that psychiatry was much more than simple counseling.

  “Ah yes,” Sarah said, “Dr. Moon must be kept quite busy teaching tribesmen with no training to administer drugs they can’t obtain for illnesses they can’t diagnose. If all else fails, he’ll learn hundreds of tribal languages and teach talk therapy to his crew of barefoot analysts. The average bushman could pick up neurolinguistic skills in a matter of weeks since he isn’t burdened with the unnecessary refinements of education.”

  “Madam, I hardly think—”

  Sarah interrupted him with the three favorite words of nondirectional therapists. “Please go on.” She drew an exasperated breath and exhaled loudly into the telephone.

  “That’s all they really need,” she said. “Those three words are the heart and soul of talk therapy, just those words and a meaningful pause—that’s a thirty second pause in layman’s terms.” She gave him one of those meaningful pauses so he could see just how effective it could be, but before it became really meaningful, she heard a dial tone.

  “Looks like our hour’s up, you simpering bastard.”

  Robert’s eyes lost their adoring look. He mumbled something that sounded to Sarah like an apology for the crime of being male.

  She summoned up her most indulgent smile. It felt contrived. Probably looked that way too.

  “I suppose I was a little hard on the poor guy, but once I got started, I couldn’t seem to stop.” Was that why parents beat their children?

  Well, judge, when a little shake didn’t shut him up, I shook him harder. Guess it worked. He’s been quiet for a long time now. Sarah felt something nibbling at the edges of her conscience. It wasn’t guilt. It was more like satisfaction.