Every Fifteen Minutes

by Lisa Scottoline

  “No, no, no no, he should be here, but he’s nowhere to be found. Do you think he cares about me? It’s my mother who died, not his. His mother is alive and sitting here by herself, all by my lonesome. Zack had to go out of town, and Max knows that, but does he care? Is he here to take care of me in my hour of need? I ask you, what about me? Why doesn’t anybody worry about me? Why doesn’t my own mother worry about me? They don’t show me any respect, they kick me when I’m down, they don’t know what it’s like, they don’t know my pain, they have no idea.” Marie seemed to pause, focusing on Eric anew, with a deep frown. “I want to know who the hell you think you are, Doctor. Where you get off seeing my son without my permission, without me even knowing. He’s not eighteen yet, do you know that? How is that legal? You tell me.”

  “It is legal,” Eric answered, calmly. “Even though Max is a minor, he can seek counseling without parental consent.”

  “I don’t believe that for a single minute, that can’t be legal, that’s definitely not legal!”

  “It is, but I have an obligation to speak with you if he becomes suicidal, and that’s why I came tonight. I’m concerned that—”

  “What does he talk about when he sees you, huh?” Marie sniffed, arching a thin eyebrow. “He probably tells you all about me, they always blame everything on the mother, don’t they? What does he say about me?”

  “I’m not permitted to tell you what we talk about—”

  “What do you mean you’re not permitted to tell me? He’s my son, my only child. I’m his mother. I have every right to know.” Marie folded her arms, bouncing on the balls of her barefeet but almost tripping on her hem. “I want to know what he said about me, or I’m not telling you a damn thing.”

  “Marie, if we can cooperate we can help him—”

  “How’m I gonna live now? What am I gonna live on? My salary, it sucks! Max knows where her money is, like three different accounts, plus she gets Social Security. I looked through his room and his desk but I couldn’t find it. I tried to get into his laptop, too, but he has it under a password. Did he talk to you about the money? Did he tell you where the money is?”

  “I can’t answer what he did or didn’t talk about in therapy,” Eric answered, but he was starting to form a plan.

  “Then how did they pay you, by check? I want to know that account number. I have every right to know where that money is, every penny of it. I’m going to get what’s coming to me and I’m not going to let that kid, or her, do me out of what’s mine.” Marie gritted her teeth in anger. “God knows where they hid her checks, you’d think there would be one around, but that kid is such a sneak.”

  “You know, if I could see his room, I might be able to find the accounts, or something that can lead to the accounts.” Eric thought that if he could look around in Max’s bedroom, maybe he could find something that would tell him where the boy had gone. His professional instincts told him that it might be a boundary violation, but he wasn’t going to stand on technicalities if it could save Max’s life.

  “Why the hell not? Follow me.” Marie walked away, somewhat unsteadily, lifting her bathrobe so she didn’t trip.

  Eric followed her to the left, where there was a short stairwell.

  “Let there be light.” Marie clawed the wall, hitting a light switch on the second try. A frosted glass fixture went on overhead, illuminating a brown carpet in a stairwell in need of vacuuming. Scuffmarks marred the off-white walls, and nothing was hung on the wall going up the stairs.

  “Here let me help.” Eric worried Marie would fall even though she put a hand on the banister, so he guided her by the elbow, climbing the stairs.

  “Aren’t you such a gentleman?” Marie chuckled under her breath, and they reached the second-floor landing together, where she flipped on the other overhead light. There was a short hallway with three closed doors, but only one had a large black poster of a robot/camera, which read Portal. It looked like it had come from a video game, and Eric didn’t know if it was a pun, but he followed Marie as she opened the door and went inside.

  Eric crossed the threshold, though red flags started waving. He had never been in the bedroom of a patient and sensed that his colleagues, and maybe even Arthur, would have disapproved, but a life was at stake. The air smelled fresh, the white walls unscuffed, and Eric sensed that Max’s bedroom was probably the neatest, cleanest room in the house, an oasis amid the clutter, chaos, and grime.

  It was a small room, with two windows on either side of a queen bed with a gray-and-white striped comforter, neatly tucked in around the sides. On the left was a wall-mounted metal bookshelf that held school books, lined up, and underneath that, a black computer desk with two large monitors, a keyboard with a plastic cover, and an array of video game joysticks and controllers, one shaped like a gun. The floors were hardwood, uncovered except for a blue rag rug beside the bed. Eric didn’t see anything that would lead him to know more about where Max could be or who he had been on the phone with.

  Eric walked to the desk. “Marie, would you mind if I looked in his drawers, just to see if there’s anything that can help?”

  “Suit yourself,” Marie answered, seeming to have forgotten Eric’s pretense for searching the room, that he was looking for bank accounts. Maybe she’d realized that he’d wanted to snoop or maybe she didn’t care.

  “Thanks.” Eric opened the desk drawers, one by one, and inside them were school supplies, Bubblicious, Skittles, comic books, manga books, and old boxes of Magic cards. Eric drew the line at going into the computer and he didn’t know the password anyway.

  “You see he keeps everything neat, he always did, even put his toys away when he was little, stacked up all the blocks, the crayons in the right holes in the box, he dried off all his own paintbrushes, all by himself. He never gave me any trouble, not really.”

  “He painted?” Eric straightened up, remembering the waterpaints that Max had described and his ritual of saying the colors.

  “Loved to paint, painted all the time, I stuck the pictures somewhere, I saved a lot of them.”

  “I’d love to see them.” Eric eyed the video game posters that lined the far walls, neatly tacked up in a row like an alternative art gallery of robots, zombies, transformers, and paramilitary types, with anonymous masks for faces, above Sine Mora, Assura’s Wrath, The Walking Dead, World of Warcraft, Game of Thrones, Diablo III, Tomb Raider, Dark Souls 2, Wolfenstein: The New Order.

  “Video games, right? We get it.” Marie snorted. “I’ll tell you, once that boy latches onto something, he latches onto something. He’s obsessed with these games, I tell you that. He used to try to explain it to me, what the plots were like, when he was a little boy. He used to talk to me, we got along good then, just him and me.”

  Eric heard the tone of her voice changing, softening, and her gaze had strayed from the posters to a single photograph, on the night table. It was of Marie herself as a lovely young mother holding a giggling baby boy, who must’ve been Max. Mother and son were looking into each other’s eyes, and Marie was smiling at her baby boy, who reached his pudgy hand toward her face.

  “He was so cute then, so smart, even then, he was a good baby, really good baby, he never cried or fussed, wherever you put him, there he stayed, looking at books or DVDs, he would watch anything, even then.”

  “How old was he, in that photo?”

  “There, he was one, just cut his teeth, had a full set, that’s a sign of intelligence, you know.” Marie’s eyes filmed. “We were close then, even ’til he was five or six or seven. When he first started school, I used to read to him at night, and he loved that.”

  Eric thought of Hannah, roughly the same age.

  “I gave this to him for his birthday.” Marie walked over to the bookshelf, and next to the trig textbook sat a small plush rabbit of threadbare yellow, folded over on itself, collapsed. She picked it up.

  “Which birthday, do you remember?” Eric asked, to get her talking.

  “Sure
, his third, we lived in Delaware then and we rented a nice place, a studio apartment near Lewes. That was our bes’ time, our best time together, just him and me.”

  “When did you move from there?”

  “When he was four, almos’ right after, I remember this bunny was all he wanted for his birthday, he saw it in the Kmart and he had to have it, and he loved it.” Marie returned the toy to the bookshelf and tried to make it sit up, but it doubled over again, his ears flopping forward. “Right after then, I met Bob, and he drank, and I started drinking with him, and I moved to Aston with him, then we broke up, but in the meantime, we los’ our way together, Max and me, we los’ each other. I didn’t know you can lose people but you can, you lose your way and you lose the people on that way, and I think I became a bad mother.” Marie turned to Eric suddenly, her eyes brimming. “I know you think I’m a bad mother. I am, I know it too.”

  “I don’t judge,” Eric said, though he had been. He tried to tap into his professional self. “I know it’s hard to be a parent, and we all make mistakes.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “Yes, a seven-year-old girl.”

  “Nice, what’s her name?”

  Eric realized he’d never had a patient ask his child’s name, then he reminded himself that Marie wasn’t a patient. “Hannah.”

  “You get along, spend time with her?”

  “Yes.” Eric felt his throat catch. He didn’t want to lose his way with Hannah, ever.

  “That’s good, don’ make the mistakes I did, you gotta hold him close, you gotta always stay in touch with him.” Marie blinked tears from her eyes, and though she seemed to be sobering up, Eric wasn’t sure she was addressing him anymore, but her former self.

  “Tell me what happened with Max.”

  “I tried to be a good mother, and I was for a long time, but then I turned bad, and okay, so maybe I drink, I admit it, and I’m not proud of it, I’m not, I went to rehab once but it didn’ work.” Marie smoothed her hair back into its ponytail, then tugged her bathrobe closed in front. “But that’s normal, everybody says it, relapse is a part of recovery and all that, everybody has trouble now and then, that’s when we moved up here with my mother, and she did such a good job with him, and he loves her so much, he does, more than me, I know it.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she sank onto the bed, hanging her head. “Now it’s too late to change it, to get it back, he’s grown up, it’s over.”

  “It’s not too late, it’s never too late.” Eric crossed to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to find him, and if we find him, I promise you I can help him. I can get you some help, too.”

  “No you can’t, it’s not possible.” Marie shook her head, wiping her eyes with the cuffs of her overlong sleeves.

  “Yes, it is possible. All you have to do is want it, Marie. I’ve seen people turn their lives around, people in a lot worse shape than you.”

  “For real?” Marie looked up, her eyebrows lifting, her aspect newly hopeful, and Eric heard Max’s voice in hers, remembering he had said the same phrase, during session.

  “Yes, for real.” Eric told her, but first he had to find Max.

  And he had only one move left.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Eric left Max’s street, driving with the phone to his ear, leaving yet another message for Max, who hadn’t answered the call: “Max, it’s Dr. Parrish calling you again. Please call me, no matter how late. I can help, so please call.” He hung up as he drove, then dialed 911.

  “What is the nature of your emergency?” asked the female dispatcher, and Eric recognized her voice from before. Radnor was a small township, so it wasn’t completely unexpected.

  “This is Dr. Parrish calling. You remember, I called you about my minor patient, the suicide risk. Max Jakubowski. I still can’t locate him. Have there been any calls from him or in reference to him?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “You would know if somebody was going out on a call regarding him, wouldn’t you? It’s not that large a police force, and you can’t get that many calls.”

  “Dr. Parrish, it isn’t procedure to discuss the calls that come in.”

  “Just tell me this, you’re the only dispatcher, aren’t you?”

  “No, there is one other. May I put you through to the squad room so you can ask them your questions? This line is for emergencies only.”

  “Thank you, please do.” Eric sped through the darkened streets, planning his next move, driven by an urgency that was more than professional. Partly he felt responsible for Max, and partly he knew that the boy had no one else to rely on. Eric pressed the gas and accelerated forward into the darkness.

  “This is Officer Melanie Nathan. How can I help you?”

  “Officer Nathan, I am Chief of Psychiatry at Havemeyer General and I’m trying to locate a minor patient named Max Jakubowski, who I believe is a suicide risk. His grandmother died tonight and he disappeared. Officer Gambia went to look for him at the house, but he wasn’t there, only his mother.”

  “What is the location of the residence?”

  Eric told her. “He lives there with his mother and grandmother but his mother doesn’t know where he is, either.”

  “What is her name?”

  Eric told her that too. “I spoke with his mother and she’s not much help.”

  “When was he first reported missing?”

  “I called at around six thirty but I don’t know if he’s been officially reported missing yet. I’d like to do that right now, if I could.”

  “When was he expected home?”

  “He wasn’t expected at any time. He was home. His grandmother died and he was home with her alone, then he left abruptly and no one knows where he went.”

  “And what time was that, Dr. Parrish?”

  “Around six o’clock,” Eric repeated, tense.

  “This evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s too soon for him to be considered a missing person, as you probably know.”

  “I understand that, but time is of the essence with a patient under this kind of stress. I need to know if he called or if any of the other officers got an emergency call involving him.”

  “I have no knowledge of that, Doctor.”

  “But you would know if Max called or a call came in about him, wouldn’t you? He’s a teenage boy. How many calls about a teenage boy can you get on a weeknight in Radnor?”

  “I will ask around the squad room and get back to you. May I have your number?”

  “Thanks.” Eric gave her the number, they both said their good-byes, and he hung up, then dialed Laurie’s cell phone and waited for her to pick up.

  “Eric?” Laurie asked, concerned. “What’s happening?”

  “Max still hasn’t shown up, and I need your help.”

  “You want me to see if he’s in any of the other EDs?”

  “Yes, please.” It was just what Eric had been thinking. “I’m assuming he didn’t come into ours?”

  “No, he didn’t. I would’ve called you. I checked in twice and told them to call me if they had any word of him. Did you try the police?”

  “Yes, in Radnor Township, but so far, no word.”

  “I know a lot of uniforms in Chester County and Delaware County. Let me see what I can find out.”

  “Thank God for you,” Eric said, meaning it. It felt good to have help.

  “Where are you? What are you doing?”

  “Looking for him.”

  “How? Where? Do you want company?”

  “No thanks,” Eric said, touched. “You’re helping me more by making those calls. I have one last move.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tell you later, if it pans out. Got to go.”

  “Sure thing, call me later. I’m up watching Jimmy Fallon. He’s my new television crush. That’s how pathetic my life is lately.”

  “Bye.” Eric smiled as he hung and turned into the parking lot and pulled into the
first available space. SWIRLED PEACE, read the multicolored sign; it was where Renée Bevilacqua worked. Eric was following a hunch that the only lifeline Max had was Renée, and it was possible that the boy would find his way here. Max could be sitting here in his car this very moment—crying, grieving, and every fifteen minutes, tapping his forehead.

  Eric cut the ignition, knowing that being here was a boundary violation. Still, he couldn’t not come, given that he’d tried everything else and the downside risk could be Max’s suicide. He twisted around, grabbed his old blue ball cap from the backseat, and popped it on, an improvised disguise. He didn’t want Max to recognize him or he might take off.

  He looked over at the frozen yogurt stop, which was a free-standing box in the middle of the asphalt lot. Cars parked in an upside-down U-shape around its sides and back, leaving both the right and left aisles for entrance and exit. Most of the parking spaces in the front lot were full, and a crowd of teenagers hung in front of the shop, which had a concrete patio with picnic tables and rainbow-striped umbrellas.

  Eric kicked himself for not asking Marie what type of car Max drove, but he looked around to see if there was anybody sitting in a car, in the driver’s seat. He looked to his right, and there was no one in the line of cars next to him, but he couldn’t see the farthest car clearly, probably eight away. There were two shadows in the front seat in the seventh car, a couple.

  He adjusted his outside mirror and used it to see the single line of cars parked down the middle aisle, but nobody was in them. He swiveled his rearview mirror and aimed it at the cars on the rightmost side of the lot, but it was too dark to see inside them. He realized that if Max had come here to follow Renée home, he could be parked behind the shop, in order to wait without drawing suspicion.

  Eric could wait until closing time to see if Max would flush himself out, but the closing time was eleven. He’d never forgive himself if Max hurt himself between now and then, in a car parked only yards away. He slipped the keys from the ignition, unclipped his seatbelt, and got out of the car, closing the door behind him. He double-checked the parking lot out front, but didn’t see anybody sitting in the cars on the rightmost row. He kept his head down and walked past the cars and teenagers, then kept going beyond the shop. Cars were parked against the back fence, rear-bumper side out, and they ended in a blue Dumpster on the right.