by E. G. Scott
She looks confused. “How could I what, honey?”
“You put me back in here?! How could you?!” I yell. I feel like I’m strapped down and start to feel panicked. I realize I’m able to lift my arms and legs.
It dawns on her quickly. My distress must be unique to that period of time. The one time she visited me, my unhappiness at seeing her was profound.
“Charlotte. Honey. You are not in Bellevue. You were brought to Stony Brook Memorial Hospital after you found your friend. You told the detectives that you were in cardiac arrest and asked them to bring you here.”
I shut my eyes tight and moan. The Holter monitor starts to chirp. I expect the rotational nurse will reveal herself in the next five minutes. I try to remember who works in cardiology from my days in the halls of this hospital, barely conscious but going through the motions like a ghost after I came home from New York.
“How do you feel?” she asks gently. I’m a ticking time bomb that needs to be handled with care. The feeling of déjà vu right now is overwhelming.
“Logy.” My eyes roll to the IV drip hanging above.
“They gave you Ativan to calm you down. I didn’t get here until after; otherwise, I would have told them not to. I know how much you hate being sedated. Me, on the other hand, I would kill for some of what they have you on.” I can see that she is trying hard to be maternal in spite of herself. I know it is as uncomfortable for her to assume that role as it is for me to be daughterly.
“How much do you remember?” She’s negotiating how bad I am this time around.
“Rachel.” I choke out her name and start crying.
“Well, I don’t know much. The detectives wouldn’t give me any details. But your friend is dead. I’m so sorry.” Compassion is an underdeveloped muscle for her, but she’s flexing it hard.
“I know.” I’m numb as I say this. Fat tears roll down my face, and my nose begins to run. I couldn’t wipe my own face if I wanted to, though.
“Let me go find some tissues for you!” She jumps up and runs straight past a box of Kleenex on the windowsill and out of the room.
I have less than a minute alone before the familiar voices outside the door reveal themselves. Wolcott leads the way, determined. Silvestri trails him more tentatively and meets my eyes before I look away.
“Ms. Knopfler. How are you feeling?” I’m too tired for the niceties or to ask Wolcott to call me by my first name for what feels like the fiftieth time. I feel a rush of irritation toward both of them, as misdirected as it might be.
“I feel awful.” The drugs have rendered me into complete emotional putty. “I’m devastated.”
“Totally understandable. It’s been a traumatic few hours,” Silvestri says.
“Rachel,” I moan.
The two men look at each other. I gather they haven’t fully decided who is going to break more bad news to me. Silvestri moves closer and clears his throat.
“Do you feel up to talking, Charlotte? Can you walk us through the time leading up to when you called 911 about Rachel?”
“I remember going to Rachel’s house. We were in a fight.” My voice cracks. “She wasn’t answering her door or her phone.”
“Around what time would you say this was?” Wolcott has a pad and pen poised.
“I went after Lucy . . . my patient appointment. It would have been around six P.M.”
“Okay, so it’s early evening, yesterday, and you get to Rachel’s house. Then what?” Wolcott puts the end of his pen in his mouth.
“I went around to the back door because she wasn’t coming to the front door and I couldn’t find my keys. I thought she was meditating—” I choke hard.
Silvestri pats my hand lightly. “Take your time.” He pours some water from the plastic pitcher on my bedside table into a tall cup with a straw sticking out of it.
I accept the cup, and the plastic IV tether tugs at my hand. I immediately want to take it out. I push ahead. “I thought she was meditating in her chair. I let myself in and I could tell when I got inside that she was . . . dead.” I hear the sentence out loud but I don’t believe it. “She and I had a fight,” I repeat and choke back a sob. “I let her leave. Oh my God. I shouldn’t have let her leave.” I put my face in my hands. “How did this happen?”
“We’re waiting on the toxicology report,” says Wolcott. “It looks like she may have overdosed.”
I gasp. “No,” I say weakly. “She wouldn’t do that. She’s been clean for a very long time.”
They both look at me sympathetically. Wolcott speaks. “We won’t know anything for sure for another day or two at least. But as soon as we do, we’ll let you know. We’ll need your help, if you don’t mind, determining who we should contact. Family members, close friends, et cetera. We have her cell phone, so if you tell us any names, we should be able to take it from there.
I think about this for a minute and break down. I look at Detective Silvestri. “She doesn’t have any family. I was her only family. I was her ‘in case of emergency’ person.” This makes me cry hard. The detectives stand awkwardly, both searching the room. They overlap each other’s uncomfortable voices—“We’ll go find tissues” and “Nurse”—and make a quick escape. Leaving me alone to dissolve into a puddle of hopelessness. An unfamiliar and terrifying urge overtakes me. I want my mother.
* * *
After everyone, including my mother, returned with Kleenex, the detectives confirmed that I would come into the station tomorrow morning to talk to them further. I am desperate for some alone time to process everything, so I send my mother on a field trip for a smoothie, something I know she won’t be able to get inside the hospital. I haven’t been able to convince the nurses to take my IV out, and they’ve added another line of vitamins since I’m not able to stomach any food right now. I’m beginning to feel like an insect pinned to a foam board for everyone to examine.
I’m ashamed at my relief last week when the body I was called to identify wasn’t Peter, and I wonder if Rachel’s death is a terrible twist of instant karma. I allow the unbelievably painful wave of grief to take me down deep, where I can’t breathe or see straight for a few eternal-feeling minutes. I will never see my sweet friend again. I don’t understand how things got so horrible that she relapsed. This can’t be because of our fight. But even with that, I can’t accept that this is something she would do to herself.
Agent Silvestri sweeps back into my room. “Sorry to barge in again. I forgot my—” We both eye the charcoal wool coat that he’s left on the back of the chair. He puts his hand on the collar but doesn’t immediately retrieve it. I’m not in the headspace to have a conversation with anyone right now. Even him.
“I bet you’re looking forward to getting home. I hate hospitals.”
“I don’t hate them normally, and I know this hospital well. I used to work here, after I left Manhattan and moved back. But, yes, I’m desperate to go home. I’m trying to shake my mother, who appears to have developed late-onset maternal instincts. She is insisting on coming home with me.” I roll my eyes to punctuate my exasperation.
“Nothing like being trapped with your mom with no place to run,” he says. “At least this way you have the drug button to take the edge off.” He taps lightly on the IV line.
“It’s just saline for hydration. I had them stop the drugs.”
“I’m so sorry about Rachel. I know how difficult this is.”
I nod through my tears and shut my eyes.
“We’ll need your help figuring out what happened to her,” he says seriously.
“I’m sorry I don’t know more,” I reply.
“You know more about the way the brain operates under trauma than any of us.” He continues to stand. “You may have something else in your memory that hasn’t come to the surface yet. There is a lot of grief and shock to wade through right now.” He looks at the chair. �
�Do you mind if I sit for a minute?”
“Okay.” I’m too tired to tell him I’d rather he go.
“Did Rachel have a significant other?”
“She broke up with someone a few months ago. It was mutual, though.”
He takes out a pad of paper and makes a note. “We may need to contact him. We’ll discuss more tomorrow. And aside from the fight last night, was there anything Rachel was upset about? Any money troubles or a history of depression? You mentioned she was sober.”
“Money problems, yes. Our business has been suffering. But not depression. She is one of the happiest people I know.” I can’t bring myself to switch to the past tense. Not yet.
I think about how all of Rachel’s pain recently was directly caused by me. Our practice having problems getting and keeping clients. Our fighting over Peter. I’m just realizing now how much our friendship has revolved around my problems. I haven’t been a good friend to her at all. I wrap my arms around myself to create a straitjacket against my emerging grief. I really want Silvestri to leave now so that I can wail into my pillow unobserved. But he doesn’t show any signs of moving from his spot.
“Charlotte, I wanted to talk a little more about the work you were doing leading up to Michelle Harmon’s death. Would that be okay?”
“I don’t know. My brain is so preoccupied with Rachel right now . . .”
“We are still working as fast as we can to solve Brooke’s murder, and now that we know your connection to each other, any info you can give us could be crucial.”
I feel too tired to collect any more coherent thoughts, but I don’t think I actually have a choice in the matter. “Okay,” I say weakly.
“Great, thank you. Can you walk me through what exactly your area of study and surgical practice was leading up to Michelle’s death?” I’m surprised he cares about the minutiae, but I humor him, if nothing else, than for the relief from thinking about Rachel’s body in that chair, cold and empty.
I absently fiddle with the plastic tube coming out of my hand and mentally switch into a monologue I’ve delivered many times before. “My postdoctoral work was studying the effects of violent trauma on the brains of people before a certain age, and then again after. Looking at people who had been physically attacked before their frontal lobes had completely developed, and those who’d experienced similar traumas after development. My focus was postulating the possibility of surgically steering the brain in people who’d been injured early enough in development to repair the damage. Essentially, curing PTSD by manipulating the brain centers that trauma resides in before it fully takes root.”
“What about nonsurgical trauma therapy? EMDR, neurofeedback, psychedelics, and the like?”
“This was for extreme cases. The nonsurgical routes don’t always work. Some people are resistant to the other modes of treatment. I wanted to find another option and create hope for the hopeless.”
“Sounds fascinating. And then you parlayed that into your clinical work?” He’s been doing his homework on me, which makes me uncomfortable. “I understand you were quite a cowboy, or cowgirl rather, in the field? Largest grant to the youngest psychosurgical resident in the history of the Greater New York Medical Center. That’s impressive.”
His voice has taken on a hypnotic quality, which may be the influence of the remnant Ativan in my system. “I don’t know about all that. But I was working on a very controversial but groundbreaking surgery with my mentor, Dr. Henry Thornton. He was the reason I got so much support and attention so early in my career.” My voice catches at the mention of Henry.
“He sounds like a real mensch,” he says drily. “Please, continue.”
“We’d had some success in reversing the effects of trauma on some patients . . . until Michelle’s death.” My throat tightens and I feel the words getting strangled. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling pretty emotional right now. Do you think it’s okay if we take a break from this topic?”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m fascinated by your work. I have some personal experience with trauma on the job as well.”
I can’t help but raise my eyebrows. “Really?” It is hard to picture us having much in common.
“Before I was with the NYPD, I was a rookie in Baltimore. We were raiding a drug den, and one of the perps had a knife to my partner’s throat. We needed the perp alive for a number of reasons, but I misfired and hit him in the temple instead of the shoulder. He bled out before we could get him to talk. First dead guy I ever saw, and I was the one who killed him.” His face is surprisingly composed for the flood of painful memories pouring out. My empathy for him is strong.
“I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”
“It was. Even though he was a bad guy by all accounts, he was still someone’s son and brother. People loved him. And it was a careless accident; I was trained better than that. But for some reason, that day, I screwed up really badly.”
“How long ago did it happen?”
“Oh, it was back when I was a young pup. Going on twenty years. But it’s a rare day that I don’t think about it first thing when I wake up. You have to be a real sociopath if the death of someone by your hand doesn’t eat away at you.” There is deep pain lining his eyes that I recognize. The spark of recognition reverberates in me.
“Traumatic memories can feel new, even after decades. And new traumas can trigger old ones.” I could say so much more on the topic, from both personal and professional experience. This used to be my favorite topic of conversation. But I’m too sad and exhausted now and only thinking about how I’ll never see my friend again. I wipe the fresh tears from my cheeks.
“I can’t believe that Rachel would hurt herself. It doesn’t make any sense.” I’m reeling, realizing for the first time that I’m connected to two dead women.
“As a suspect in Brooke’s and Rachel’s cases, you are the most important person to help solve these.”
The statement is a punch in the gut. “Suspect?”
He’s unmoved by my incredulity, which makes me think his word choice was not accidental. “My apologies, I should have said ‘witness.’” He watches me process.
“You think I’m a suspect?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Charlotte. And the more you can tell us about your relationship with both of these women, the better.”
I am speechless, and he doesn’t wait for my response.
“See you tomorrow, bright and early at the station house. Rest up, now.”
I let the sting of the encounter burn for a few seconds and take in what is really happening here. They think I am capable of murder.
FORTY-ONE
SILVESTRI
“There he is.”
I’ve just walked into the diner down the road from the station house to coordinate with Wolcott ahead of our interview with Charlotte Knopfler in the morning. My partner’s seated at our usual booth near the front door. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No sweat,” he says. “Got your text. Went ahead and put in the order.”
“Oh great. I could eat the wallpaper right now.”
“Would you settle for a turkey club?” he asks.
“That’ll do.” I shrug.
“Then we’re in business.” He claps his hands together. “Oh, I got ahold of Thornton’s girlfriend. She alibis him.”
“Do you buy it?” I ask.
“She sounded nervous. But she was also copping to an affair with a married man. Either way, she emailed me a hotel receipt from a place in midtown, so he’s covered.”
“He’s got her paying for the hotel?”
“It’s so the wife doesn’t find out. That’s what the girlfriend told me. She sounded young, too.”
“This guy’s a real prince.”
“You surprised?”
“Not one bit.”
“Any word back from the nurse?” he asks.
“Not yet. I need to follow up with her.”
“Okay, cool. I reached out to Clarence to set up a meeting. Sounds like he’s going to have a full rundown on Brooke Harmon’s laptop soon.”
“Great. Thanks, brother.”
“No thing,” he says. “So, how’d the old ‘forgot my jacket’ trick go for you? Get anything fresh out of her?”
“We talked a bit.”
“Whoa,” he cracks. “Don’t bombard me with everything at once.”
“Right. Well, remember me telling you about that stash house we raided in Baltimore when I was first on the job down there?”
“Yeah,” says Wolcott. “You plugged a perp in the shoulder.”
“Bingo. So, I shared the story with Charlotte, but exaggerated a bit.”
“Exaggerated how?”
“Less ‘flesh wound,’ more ‘pine box,’” I explain.
“Sneaky.” He snickers.
“It was important to ingratiate myself. Create a common experience in her mind, with her losing a patient on the table. Seemed to do the trick. Needed her guard down so I could gauge her reaction when I flipped things.”
“How’d you do that?” he asks.
“I let the word ‘suspect’ drop, to see how she’d react.”
“What’d you pick up on?”
“She seemed genuinely startled. Taken aback. You know how it goes, with a guilty party. The guilt betrays them. You pick up on that flash of relief when they know they’ve been caught. But I didn’t get that with her.”
Wolcott leans in. “What’s your take on her being hazy with the details?”
“She seems convincing. I don’t know. That level of trauma can certainly do it.”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding his head.
Phyllis approaches the table with both plates artfully balanced along her left arm. “The turkey club for you,” she says in her pack-a-day rasp, and sets it down in front of me.