A Night at the Operation

by JEFFREY COHEN

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be that she hadn’t known, that she’d missed every conversation. Could Sophie have buried her nose so deep into her books that she didn’t know what was going on?

  My voice calmed, and descended in volume. “Sophie, please pay attention. For the past few days, I haven’t been acting like myself; I know you’ve noticed that.”

  “Sure,” she said. “You were mad because I was studying during the movie.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m very emotional right now—and so is everyone else here—because Sharon has been missing since Thursday night.”

  Sophie’s eyes doubled in size. “Really?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And there’s a really good chance that none of us might ever see her again.”

  “Don’t you think you’d better check with me on that?” asked a voice to my left, and my head turned ninety degrees in one frame of film (that’s one twenty-fourth of a second).

  Sharon, hand on her hip, was standing at the front door to the theatre, with a look on her face that can only be described as bemused.

  “Did I miss something?” she asked.

  23

  THE avalanche of humanity that launched itself toward the front doors of Comedy Tonight would probably have frightened most people. Sharon, not being most people, seemed to find it amusing and, in a way I couldn’t figure, gratifying.

  All eight of us (minus the plumber, and Anthony, who remained blissfully asleep on the balcony stairs) began launching questions at the same time. Okay: Jonathan didn’t say anything, only because he deferred to Sophie. I arrived first (not that I’m at all competitive) and kissed my ex-wife with a passion I would leave to a more private audience on virtually any other occasion.

  “Well, it’s good to see you, too,” she said when we finally came up for air. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gregory looking peevish. I felt better than I had in days.

  “Where have you been?” Mom shouted at Sharon. “We’ve been frantic.”

  “Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?” Gregory asked. “I tried you every hour until the voice mail was filled.” The needy wimp. I’d only called every two hours. I kept my arm around Sharon’s shoulders. That would show him.

  Gwen Chapman walked back into the theatre, but stood to the side, just watching the group. I was thinking only about Sharon.

  “The practice has been looking for you,” I told her. “Nobody’s known where you were since Thursday night.”

  “Why didn’t you . . . ?”

  “When did you . . . ?”

  “Who was with you . . . ?”

  “Have you eaten anything?” My father. A man of basic concerns.

  Dutton raised an arm and whistled loudly. “If everyone would please give the doctor some breathing room, I have some concerns that I want to address privately with her before anyone else has a chance to influence her answers,” he said. “Elliot, can we use your office?”

  “Sure,” I answered, and the crowd did its best Red Sea imitation to let me lead Sharon through toward the door. I reached into my pocket with my right hand for the office key, but kept the left on Sharon’s arm. I was formulating a plan that included never actually losing physical contact with her again.

  The door opened, and I ushered Dutton inside. Sharon followed him, a quizzical look on her face. I started into the office behind Sharon, and Dutton raised a hand, telling me to stop.

  “Just the doctor and me,” he said.

  “But, I . . .” The plan about physical contact, like most of my plans, had not lasted long.

  “It’s okay, Elliot,” Sharon said. My face fell. I picked it up and left the office, closing the door behind me.

  The gathered assemblage was facing me when I turned around. “All right, people,” I said, motioning like a traffic cop. “Show’s over. Nothing to see here.”

  We moved, in a pack, toward the snack bar. Sophie took up her usual post, on the barstool I’ve installed there for her, and Jonathan took up his, perched on an inflatable chair he installed there himself so he could look at Sophie as much as possible. Jonathan’s approach to women was taking on an eerily familiar look; I shuddered, thinking of high school.

  Dad shrugged and went back to instructing the plumber, who surely must have finished reeling in his hose by now. I got Mom a folding chair from behind the snack bar and set it out to one side, so she could sit and memorize how everyone there was in some way failing her at that moment. She liked to savor such memories at a later date.

  That left Meg, Gregory, Gwen, and me. We all stood around, watching the office door, trying to look inconspicuous. And failing miserably.

  I walked over to Gwen. “Something I can help you with?” I asked. It was the first chance I had to find out why she’d returned.

  “No, no,” she answered. “I saw the doctor walking into the theatre when I was getting into my car, and I just wanted to see the relief on your face. Right now, that’s a real treat for me, to see other people feeling better.”

  “You must be having a very rough time,” I said. “I’m sorry if I didn’t seem sympathetic enough, but . . .”

  “Believe me, I understand,” Gwen said. “But I would like to ask the doctor something when she comes out.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  And that pretty much exhausted our supply of conversation. We all watched the office door for a while longer.

  “Barry just doesn’t want her answers to be practiced, or corrupted by anything one of us could tell her,” Meg said after a few minutes. “It’s standard procedure. It’s what I’d do. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I answered. “Dutton already told me he didn’t suspect Sharon in Chapman’s death. He’s just going through the motions, taking care of formalities.”

  “I don’t think Sharon killed anyone,” Gregory said, presumably because he thought it was his turn. Nobody even glanced at him; we were doing our best to pretend he wasn’t there.

  The number of “casual” glances toward the office door increased. I even caught Sophie stealing a look in that direction as she restocked the nonpareils, which only led me to wonder why no one ever ate pareils. My mind tends to travel in strange directions when my ex-wife is being questioned by the police. I wasn’t sure if that was useful information, but I noted it and saved the analysis for later.

  “So where do you think she’s been for the past three days?” Sophie, the eternal fount of tact, asked.

  “She’ll tell us when she’s done in there,” Meg assured her. “I’m sure there’s a very simple explanation.”

  “The important thing is that she’s safe,” said my mother, for once echoing what I would have been thinking if I weren’t such a petty, self-centered . . . Damn! She could do it even without trying!

  Dad wandered out of the ladies’ room and approached me with a look that spelled no good for my theatre and its vital systems. He motioned me aside, and spoke quietly, to preserve confidentiality. “The guy thinks there’s a good chance your sewer is backing up,” he said. “It could possibly affect other systems, like air-conditioning.”

  “That’s not a very big deal in this weather,” I said.

  “Eventually, the backup could reach the heating system,” Dad warned.

  “Eventually? I’ll worry about that eventually, then.”

  “There’s also the possibility that any water in the basement could interfere with—”

  The lights in the lobby chose that very moment to go out. They flickered, went completely dark, and stayed that way.

  “—the electrical system,” Dad continued.

  I wouldn’t have been able to see my hand in front of my face if it had been there for some obscure reason I wasn’t able to conjure at the moment. “Swell,” I said. “The flashlight is in the office.”

  The plumber’s voice came from somewhere in the distance. “Just a minute,” he shouted.

  The lights came back on.

  “Th
at’s going to be a problem,” Dad suggested.

  “Yeah. Do you know an electrician?” I asked.

  “Several.”

  “Call one.”

  “Which one?” Dad asked.

  “The cheapest one.”

  The office door, which we’d momentarily forgotten about, swung open, and Barry Dutton walked out into the lobby. “What’s the problem with the lights?” he asked.

  “It’s being taken care of,” I told him.

  Then I saw Sharon walk out of the office behind Dutton. She walked slowly, as if she were afraid she’d fall, hands behind her back. For a moment, she looked like an attractive, female version of Ed Sullivan.

  In handcuffs.

  Meg Vidal seemed to focus on the cuffs. Gregory’s mouth dropped open. My stomach, recently returned to its normal place in my abdomen, fell, rose, and fell again. It would take an MRI machine to accurately locate it, but that wasn’t my most pressing problem at the moment.

  “Chief,” I started, and he held up a hand. Jonathan stood up to get a better look at Sharon. Then, as fit his attention span, he looked back at Sophie.

  “For the time being,” Dutton said, “I’m asking for your patience. I’m taking the doctor back to headquarters to question her on suspicion of murder in the first degree.”

  Anthony began to snore.

  24

  We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of

  the road. They get run over.

  —ANEURIN BEVAN

  Anything that begins “I don’t know how to tell you this” is

  never good news.

  —RUTH GORDON

  MONDAY

  THE Midland Heights police station doesn’t really have a jail; there’s a holding cell they use occasionally, and most of the more serious criminals are sent to county lockup for any extended stay.

  But today, Chief Barry Dutton wouldn’t even let me near the holding cell while Sharon’s release was being arranged. I’d tried to call Grace at Sharon’s practice for information, but she was out sick, and Betty said Dutton hadn’t called them, anyway. He had not informed me about her arraignment, and I hadn’t been notified as to the attorney she’d hired to defend her.

  I was starting to think Dutton didn’t love me anymore.

  “This isn’t like you,” I said to him, sitting in the same waiting room I’d inhabited the night Sharon had vanished. I had slept (a little), showered, and shaved for the first time in days, and was wearing clothes that didn’t make me look like I should be carrying a cardboard sign asking for donations for a Gulf War veteran down on his luck. “You’re a cop, but most of the time, you’re human.”

  “This is murder,” he answered, reading something on a clipboard. His half-glasses didn’t seem as charming as they once had. “This is not something where rules can be bent. I have to play it by the book.”

  “You told me yourself that you didn’t suspect Sharon in Chapman’s murder. And it took place in East Brunswick, not Midland Heights, but you’re holding her here. Something’s not kosher about this whole business, Dutton.”

  He didn’t look up. “You usually call me Chief,” he said.

  “You usually deserve respect,” I answered.

  Dutton’s mouth twitched; it was the only sign that I’d struck a nerve. “Don’t cross the line, Elliot. Wait for things to play out.”

  “Are we speaking in haiku today? Say what you mean.”

  “That is what I mean. Show some patience. The truth will come out, and you’ll see that you don’t know everything you think you know.” Dutton stood up and left the room. It must have been his day to be vague.

  I sat there for a few more eternities, not knowing exactly how long Sharon would be held. She’d been in custody since leaving Comedy Tonight the previous afternoon, and now, at nine thirty in the morning, more than fifteen hours since she’d been back, I had answers to exactly none of my lingering questions. That was not acceptable.

  Finally, the dispatcher behind the desk pushed a button and a buzzer sounded. The inside door swung open into the waiting room, and Sharon walked through it.

  Escorted by Gregory.

  That wasn’t acceptable, either. But there was a grand total of nothing I could do about it. I stood.

  “Are you okay?” I asked first.

  Sharon nodded. “We need to talk,” she said.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I answered. It was the very sentence she’d used to tell me she wanted a divorce. Come to think of it, Gregory had been involved in that one, too.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gregory offered. He put his hands on Sharon’s shoulders to guide her out the door, but she patted his hand and stepped away from him.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  We walked outside and were immediately overcome by a cold wind. Gregory had parked his Lexus directly in front of the building, in a no-parking zone. There’s never a cop around when you need one. He opened the door for Sharon, and then hesitated, turned to me, and said, “Do you need a ride?”

  I didn’t actually know where we were going, but I said, “Yes, thanks,” and got in the back seat. Okay, so it was silly and juvenile. But Sharon had been out of my sight far too much in the past four days. I was determined not to let it happen again.

  Gregory got in and started the car, and cold air started blasting through the heating ducts. “Jeez, Greg,” I said, “I’d think a big fancy car like this one would come with heat as a standard feature.”

  “It does,” he blustered. “It’s just been sitting here for . . .”

  “He’s teasing you, Gregory,” Sharon said. “He’s just teasing.”

  “So, kids,” I said, “where shall we go?”

  “Since Sharon hasn’t been home in a while,” Gregory said, “we thought we’d go back to our house.”

  I didn’t care for the way he said “we” or “our house,” but I kept it to myself. Nothing makes you feel more like you’re back in junior high school than riding in the back seat of a luxury car.

  My first impulse, of course, was to ask Sharon to explain everything that had happened since Thursday, but something inside me that was petty and small wanted that conversation to happen without Gregory present. To be fair, I didn’t want anyone else present, either, but Gregory topped the list of people I didn’t want around. Some things don’t change no matter what the circumstances.

  But I couldn’t wait for everything. “Where have you been all this time?” I asked Sharon.

  “Mostly, I was up at my aunt Margie’s cabin at Lake Carey,” she said. “You know how I go up there when I need to clear my head.”

  “But I was there,” I told her. “I went there. I looked for you.” I was going to prove to her that she hadn’t been where she knew she’d been.

  “Was that you who broke the window?” Sharon asked.

  I stayed silent.

  “You broke a window?” Gregory said. I could hear him smile, the rat.

  I didn’t respond, but my eyes were boring holes into the back of Gregory’s head. Luckily, the lack of hair made it easy to aim.

  “I understand,” I said to Sharon, completely ignoring both Gregory and the fact that I’d broken a window at her aunt’s house. “You needed to get up there to sort out what had happened with Russell Chapman.”

  Sharon turned around to face me. “Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t know Mr. Chapman was dead until Chief Dutton told me yesterday afternoon. The poor man.”

  “Chief Dutton?” Gregory asked.

  “No, Russell Chapman.” Sharon shook her head. “I can’t believe someone killed him.”

  “I’m just glad you’re back,” I told her. “But if you didn’t go up there to get over the Chapman thing, what did you need to get away from?”

  She turned back to face the windshield again, and I got the impression it was so she wouldn’t have to meet my eyes. “Just doctor stress, I suppose.”

  “You didn’t need to cut yourself off like that,” I
kept on. “You never get out of touch with your practice. Why didn’t you at least check your voice mail?”

  “I forgot to bring the charger with me, and besides, you know how I am at those times. I wanted to be completely alone to sort through . . .”

  “Your doctor stress?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You could have at least left a message,” I told her. “You could have called someone before you left.”

  “Elliot,” Sharon said with a reproach in her voice.

  “What, ‘Elliot’?” I asked. “It’s unreasonable for me to ask why you didn’t call someone to let them know you were disappearing? So we wouldn’t be pulling our hair out—sorry, Gregory—and trying to remember what your last words to us were? That’s unreasonable? Why didn’t you call someone?”

  I guess she was over the no-eye-contact phase, because Sharon looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I did call someone, Elliot. I called you.”

  Well, that took the wind out of my sails. At the very least, if Sharon had called me, I should have known it. And after all the excitement about her disappearance, all that had happened . . .

  “When?” I managed to get from my dry throat.

  “Before I left Thursday night. I called right before I left the practice.”

  “I was at the theatre,” I said.

  “That’s right, so I left you a message on your machine at home.”

  Of course. “The machine was disconnected. I never got the message.”

  “Why’d you turn off your answering machine?” Sharon asked.

  “I didn’t. Someone else did.”

  “Who?”

  I thought of the machine, its cord ripped from the wall, lying on the floor among the futon stuffing and the mountain of discarded videos. “We haven’t found out yet,” I said.

  Sharon looked at me with a question in her eyes, but let it go.

  Gregory coughed. “You didn’t call me,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, don’t start,” Sharon said.

  I squirmed in the back seat. “Mom, are you and Dad fighting?” I asked. Sharon gave me a distressed look, and I shut up.