by Tom Saric
"Oh boy," she said, jokingly pulling at her collar. "You're laying it on thick."
"Is it working?"
I was half done with my club and deep into my third double bourbon when I saw Joe Barrington walk into the diner. His white dress shirt collar was open wide, a thick gold chain visible across the top of his chest. He swung his arms and took long, confident strides. He stopped at a few tables to shake the hands of some townsfolk, giving others a pat on the back and a wink.
He was with three other men. I recognized one as Chris Forbes, Joe's brother-in-law and Lorna's brother. He was a portly man, and his skinny legs and the red plaid shirt stretched over his round belly made him look like a walking candy apple. Chris owned three of the car dealerships that hugged the highway into Bridgetown. I didn't recognize the other two men.
Renee was midway into a story about summers she spent at her cottage during her childhood. But I drifted off as Joe and his companions sat down at a booth on the other side of the diner.
Renee kept talking as I tried to discreetly look past her, over her shoulder. Joe sat laughing, drinking, leaning back in the booth with his arm draped over the top of the backrest. Like nothing happened.
The woman he had an affair with for years was dead. The woman he was going to leave his wife for was lying face down on cold pavement, shot in the head.
And yet he was here, carrying on with the boys.
The booze had me feeling pretty good.
"Renee, you'll have to excuse me."
I got up, wiped my mouth with the napkin, and headed over to Joe's table. He sat against the window, wedged in the booth beside Chris Forbes. He was telling some story about the last time he was at the driving range and pinged one off the ball picker. The bastard was so enthralled by his story, he didn't notice me until the others turned their heads to stare. Joe looked up. His mouth dropped open half an inch.
"Mr. Mayor." I put my hand on the table to keep from swaying. "I need to talk to you."
"Sorry, but I'm busy-"
"It can't wait."
"Look, maybe we can set something up for tomorrow." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card.
"Right fucking now."
"Whoa, whoa," Chris Forbes said, raising his meaty hands, motioning for me to take things down a notch. His face turned red, and his neck veins popped up. I wondered if Chris knew that Joe was nailing Wanda behind his sister's back.
"It's okay, Chris." Joe flicked at his mustache a few times. "It’s okay."
Chris shimmied out of the booth to let Joe out, then stood two inches from my face. I didn't step back and kept eye contact. I wasn't about to let him intimidate me.
Joe motioned to an empty booth in the corner of the diner. As I followed him there, he glared at me over his shoulder.
"What the hell?" Joe whispered as he slid into the booth.
"I could say the same to you."
"Doc, you're drunk. I can smell it on you."
"Wanda Flynn was found murdered today."
I stared at Joe. He looked out the window and rolled his necklace between his fingers.
"What do you want me to do, Doc?"
"Maybe show some respect?"
"I'm sad, okay? Really sad. But my relationship with her was a secret. And it has to stay that way."
He hung his head and looked up at me with reddened eyes. I gave little back.
"It has to stay that way." His voice rose. "Right? Your little spiel about confidentiality and all that?"
"You had reason to." The bourbon was full force now. I realized I was walking a fine line between confronting Joe and breaching my oath.
"Listen, you fucking piece of shit." Joe leaned over the table but lowered his voice. "You've already crossed the line. You push it further and I out you."
"Go ahead, tell the licensing body that I confronted you in a diner." My words were slurred, slipping out of my mouth. "You bring it out and you become a suspect in a murder investigation."
"I didn't do anything. I loved her. Let's make that clear. But I can go to your college and have them look into why you're meeting Buddy Getson in parking lots."
My mouth went dry.
"That's right. I know about that. So keep your promises, asshole."
After Joe returned to his table, I staggered toward my booth, but stopped at the counter and asked the waitress for one last bourbon. I pulled out my credit card to pay for my tab, but it slipped out of my hand and fell between the bar stools. As I knelt to clumsily search for it, I caught an elderly couple looking at me, their faces crinkled, slowly shaking their heads.
By the time I found the credit card and slid onto the stool, the waitress had already poured some Jim Beam over two big ice cubes. I had just put the glass to my mouth when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I turned. Renee was already wearing her coat. I lifted my arms, moving in for a hug. She jerked out of the way and put a firm hand on my chest.
"You're going to need a drive home."
I raised the glass, but she touched my wrist and guided my hand down.
"Okay."
I signed for my tab and stuffed the receipt in my pocket. Renee walked behind me as I swayed back and forth, bumping into an empty booth and nearly losing my balance. She guided me forward, and I spilled out the door and fell onto the pavement. She grabbed my elbow and yanked me to my feet.
"You can drive my car." I fumbled the keys out of my pocket.
"No, we can take mine."
We got to her blue Golf, and I collapsed onto the passenger seat. I dropped the backrest so that I was leaning back, and everything started to spin slowly. Renee turned the ignition and we hit the road.
I was aware of what an ass I was making of myself on our first date. But she didn't leave me in the diner like I deserved either. That might have meant something. She was a decent person.
Meg wouldn't have stuck around through this sort of public embarrassment. At my last holiday party at the institute, while my personal and professional lives were unraveling, I decided to get systematically drunk. Halfway through my third double scotch, I realized she had left without saying a word, taking the car with her. I had to hitch an uncomfortable ride home with Alistair. When he dropped me off and I stumbled inside, I realized she wasn't there. She had inadvertently synced her phone with the computer, and when I sat down I saw the messages. Perhaps if I hadn’t gotten drunk that night our relationship could have been salvaged. I still wondered if she meant for me to see those texts. Like little cuts in our emotional razor fight.
"I'm sorry about this."
"I can't blame you. Your house burns down, your patient gets killed," she said. "Just don't puke. I hate the smell."
"I'll try." I turned toward the window and rolled it down. The cold air hit my face. "Almost. My house almost burned down."
It took twenty minutes through dark roads to reach my place. During the drive I told her about seeing Wanda's body, the gunshots, and the casing. Even in my half-drunk stupor, I left out any clinical information. Renee didn't seem interested in knowing anything about Wanda anyway.
She parked in front of my cabin and then helped me to the patio door. The door was locked, so I asked her to go around the side and get the spare key from underneath a paving stone. We went inside, and she grabbed the lantern. I stopped in the kitchen and threw back three glasses of water along with the pills for my back.
Then I took off my shoes, flopped down on the bed, and crawled underneath the covers.
"I guess this was one way to get you into my bedroom," I said.
"Sorry, Gus, I'm just getting you home safe," Renee said. "This isn't how I envision this going."
I was stunned. Renee seemed so distant. Normally she would have made some sort of witty comment.
"I embarrassed you."
"No." She winced. "I think you embarrassed yourself. And pissed off the town mayor."
"I thought I was being discreet."
She shook her head. "The wh
ole diner was looking at you."
I slid my leg over the edge of the bed and put my foot on the ground, an old trick I learned to help stop the spins.
"For what it's worth, Gus, he does seem like a jerk."
"Yeah."
Renee sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the window.
"Have I ruined my chance at a second date?"
She hesitated.
"My ex. He had a drinking problem. He was more dangerous, though."
"I don't normally do this."
"I gather that. Six drinks don’t normally incapacitate people."
I smiled.
"Sorry to put you through that."
"I lost a lot because of it. Just brings up bad memories."
Even though I was almost unconscious, I felt guilty.
"But I understand how given your circumstances this would happen today."
"You know what is bothering me most about it?"
"What?"
"I have this feeling that somehow, whoever did this, is doing it to hurt me."
"What do you mean?"
"That Wanda was a casualty. That someone wanted to get at me, so they killed her. That-"
"That's drunk talk."
"Maybe I could have stopped it."
She touched my leg. "You feel guilty, Gus. You blame yourself. The truth is, there was nothing you could do to save her. You don't always have control."
She stood up to leave, running her hand against the door as she looked back at me.
"Can I see you again?” I asked. “I won't drink."
"Sure."
"Tomorrow evening?"
"Consider it a date."
12
"She had this hair, thick and beautiful. But if you ever tried to brush it"—Doug smiled longingly—"there was hell to pay. That little girl, hair all knotted and twisted. She had spirit. She had spunk."
Doug rubbed his hand over his heart as he reminisced about his daughter, Maddie. With his other hand he ran his fingers up and down the brass chain of the antique floor lamp beside him. It cast a dancing shadow against the wall. I offered an occasional grunt or nod, but my mind was elsewhere.
Maybe because I was hungover, my head woody and throbbing.
Renee didn't want to stay the night, probably because she was disgusted by my drunkenness. When I woke up and went to the kitchen to boil water for my morning coffee, part of me wished that Renee would be there. That she decided to stay the night to make sure I was safe. I hoped that she would see me again. Instead of calling her for a ride, I had to ask Sheila to pick me up.
As Doug continued to talk, I ran through my confrontation with Joe. I shouldn't have done that, especially in public. After my stunt in the diner, the whole town would soon know that I accused Joe of killing Wanda. But Joe wasn't a killer. He was simply a narcissist. I came close to breaking my oath, though, and that wasn't okay.
The first time Wanda came to a session, she was made up with cherry-red lipstick, foundation thick like it was painted on with a roller, tight jeans, and a low-cut T-shirt. She tested me, wanting to see if she could trust me or if I would see her as a sexual object, the way she saw herself.
It's true that I found her physically attractive. That was just a fact. But below that exterior existed a beautiful woman, one who was waiting to bloom. That's who I saw.
I loved Wanda. Not in a sexual way, but in the way a father loves his daughter. I cared about her growth as a person, and I was able to witness it happen.
And now it was all over. Before she ever had a chance to really live.
On my way to work, Debbie Parks had called to say that Wanda's brother Randy was no longer a suspect. He was at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Liverpool and went for a late coffee with one of the members afterward. He was dropped off at his apartment in Bridgetown at 1:30 a.m. Wanda's house was at least an hour walk from his place and he had no vehicle. He'd met with Wanda earlier that day at her place and she had dropped him off.
If this was true, I hadn't sent Wanda to her death. When Debbie told me that, I felt temporarily relieved. But there was still a possibility he made his way to her home. He had motive. And he'd killed before.
Doug stopped talking and was staring at me.
"She was yours, wasn’t she?"
"Excuse me?"
"The murdered lady? She was your patient."
I sighed. Doug had noticed that I wasn't paying attention.
"Doug, as you know, I can't-"
"Yeah, I got it. You can't tell me nothing about others."
"Right."
Doug crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. "What's it like for you, losing someone?"
"Doug, we're here for-"
"Yeah, but you're here, I'm talking about Maddie, and you're dealing with your shit. So let's sort that out. How do you do it?"
I was initially annoyed that Doug was calling me out on my lack of attention to him. But he was right, so I considered his question. He was a man feeling alone in his grief. Maybe it would help him to know that I get affected by loss too. That he's not the only one.
"It hurts. It hurts a lot when I lose people. I wonder if I could have done anything differently."
"Amen, brother. And ’cause of your job you must have to keep all of those regrets inside. You’ve just gotta hold it in."
People always wanted to know what secrets I kept, but even more about how I managed to keep them to myself. They thought I was a balloon full of confidential information just waiting to burst. But in truth, I was never as interested in the secrets as much as the person's reason for having them.
Your son was fathered by a seventy-year-old priest and your husband doesn't know? I want to know who you're protecting with your silence. Had an affair, the woman became pregnant, and you forced her to abort the fetus? I'd want to know who you envision judging you if it ever got out. That's the material we work on in therapy. It's not the action, it’s the reasons behind the action that matter.
"It's not hard."
"It's not?"
I shook my head.
"Well, you've been wrestling with something for the past forty-five minutes."
Doug was angry with me. While I knew he was partly justified in his annoyance, I sensed that this was hitting a deeper nerve. Someone in his past must not have listened to him. I decided I had to turn things back around on Doug to find out. "You feel like I've wasted your time today."
"Nah, I'm good. I'm good."
Doug stood up and made for the door.
"You don't feel like you can explore that with me."
"What?"
"Doug, on the one hand you're right. I wasn't paying full attention to you. But on the other hand, I'd like to work through it and see if we can move past it, figure out what it all means for you. And then you run for the door."
Doug crossed his arms. "You take care of yourself, Doc. I'll see you next time."
"Doug, please."
"Just one thing. Hopefully the police are looking at her brother. I wouldn't trust the guy."
He walked past me, knocking into my forearm as he left. Before I could ask Doug what he meant, he was already gone. I tried to rub the throbbing out of my temples. One thing Doug said was certainly correct: I had to take care of myself and was in no shape to be seeing clients today.
There was a soft knock at the door. Sheila poked her head in. Before she could speak, I cut her off.
"Sheila, I'm sorry to do this to you, but I've got to cancel the day. My head's not in it."
Her face tightened.
"What is it?"
"Well, Ned's here. And he's all over the map. He really wants to talk to you."
I had wondered if Wanda's murder would discombobulate Ned. He grew up in a backwoods compound with his father. From a young age, Ned had been digging out bunkers with his dad and setting up booby traps on the trails that crossed their land. They had weekly drills to prepare for a nuclear war.
When he was seven, Ned discovered his fath
er dead of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. He cleaned up the mess himself, didn't call the cops. His father had taught him not to trust authorities. It wasn't until a neighbor caught the smell weeks later that anyone knew what was going on.
Ned never shared that with me. Sheila told me. It was part of town lore.
"Sure. Send him in, but cancel the rest."
Ned opened the door a crack and slid in, his back to the wall. The smell of cigarettes wafted in with him. I took one look at him and knew things weren't going well. He had a ball cap pulled low, partly covering his eyes, and a hood tight over his head. He wore wraparound sunglasses even though the room was dim. His sweater covered his arms, and he wore gloves. Aside from his mouth and nose, no skin was exposed.
Ned made his way over to the chair, sat on the edge, and leaned forward. He pulled the hood back and took off his hat, revealing a shaved head. Ned had been proud of his long white mullet. He considered it his distinctive look.
"Ned, your hair."
He got up and dragged the floor fan between us, then turned it up to the maximum setting before speaking.
"I've gotta hide," he whispered. His eyebrows knitted together over his sunglasses. "They might be listening."
"Who?"
"They're following me."
"Who, Ned?"
He shook his head. "Can't tell you. I haven't figured it all out yet. But I'm getting close. And they know."
"Close to what?"
"That whore of yours. And who killed her."
Ned's entire body was vibrating. Sheer terror was coursing through him. I assumed this was his paranoia. This was the manifestation of his feelings toward his father. Wanda's death would have reactivated these emotions. Ned would then project them outwardly onto the nondescript “them.”
"Who killed her?"
"I can't tell you," Ned said. "For your protection. But to stop me, they have to kill me."
Ned’s jaw trembled. I could tell he could barely contain the thoughts racing through his head.
"Have you gone to the police?"
Ned removed his sunglasses and raised his eyebrows. "You expect me to trust Ernie Weagle? That sumbitch-"
"Ned, you're getting yourself worked up."