The Silenced Women

by Frederick Weisel

  “Where I’m from? I live here.”

  “I mean originally. Where’d you grow up?”

  For the first time, Albright smiled. “Oh, my family’s from Fresno. That’s where I used to live. My mom and grandma are still there, on Arden Drive. They grew up in Oklahoma, so that’s why I talk like this, I guess. I go over to Fresno when I can. Holidays, things like that.”

  “Fresno? That’s in the Central Valley, isn’t it?” Eden stepped to the doorway and crossed under the threshold. Suddenly she remembered Tom Woodhouse’s advice to follow where Partridge had gone. She struggled to calm herself. She smiled at Albright. “That sounds nice. Does Mr. Partridge go with you?”

  “Win? Oh, sure. He loves it. Sometimes we go for a whole week.”

  “Really? When was the last time you and Mr. Partridge were there?”

  Albright’s smile disappeared. “I’m not saying anything else.” She stepped back and slammed the door.

  (ii)

  (WEDNESDAY, 6:12 P.M.)

  “My client would like to clarify his earlier statements,” the lawyer said, addressing Mahler and ignoring Frames. A business card, slid halfway across the table, identified the lawyer as Thomas P. Stricker. Under Stricker’s name, the card read “All Felonies and Misdemeanors. Over 20 Years of Aggressive Criminal Defense.”

  Mahler read the card without picking it up. He looked across the table. Christopher Bennett straightened his posture and ran his open palms down the front of a wool suit jacket. He imagined the man at the end of each day exchanging his starched white lab coat for a jacket. The two sides to Bennett’s life: the clean, exacting efficiency of his practice and the indulgent leisure it afforded him.

  Mahler had faced dozens of men like Bennett, and he could see in the man’s eyes that the dentist’s ordinary life had been flipped upside down. The confidence with which he spoke to his patients, advising of them of crowns and implants, was shaken. The picture of himself as husband and father had been readjusted. But Mahler saw something else, too. Unlike other men, who by now were recalibrating how to break the fall to the bottom, Bennett had something about him that looked frayed and lost.

  Mahler turned on the recorder, identified everyone present, and noted the time. He opened a file folder in front of him with a transcript of Bennett’s earlier interview. “What clarifications would your client like to make?”

  Bennett took a deep breath and let it out. “I was in a relationship with Elise Durand. For the last six months, I saw her several times a week. Sometimes in my car and sometimes in a room at the Hyatt. We were…intimate. We had sex.”

  “How was that going?”

  “How was it going?” Bennett shook his head in disbelief. “I was in love with her. Flat out. Like a kid. I told her. I told her I’d leave Lynn and marry her.”

  “But you didn’t do that.”

  “I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where to begin.”

  “How did Ms. Durand respond?”

  “She was all over the place. Up one day, down the next. She wanted to get married, then she didn’t. She started asking for things. First a car. Lately, it was a house. Jesus, I offered to cosign a note for a condo.”

  Frames understood the flatness in Mahler’s tone. If Rivas had been the teacher in the interrogation four hours before, Mahler was the Zen master. Mahler’s questions were so plain and quiet they left all the air in the room for Bennett to fill. Each word was like a gentle hand at the suspect’s back, urging him forward. Frames now pitched his voice in imitation. “But you didn’t, right? What happened?”

  “Last week she said she wanted to end it. Stop seeing each other. I think she had another guy. Some man younger, richer. She didn’t say that, but I could—”

  “When last week did she tell you this?” Frames couldn’t believe how much he sounded like Mahler.

  “I don’t know. Tuesday?”

  “So it wasn’t this Monday, two days ago?”

  “No. I didn’t see her Monday. I told you before.” Bennett’s shoulders fell. “Why do you people keep asking the same questions? You have the answers in front of you.”

  “What happened in your car?”

  “I told you. We met there sometimes.”

  Mahler turned a page in the file. “We found blood on the front seat.”

  “Blood? That’s not possible.”

  “Hold on, Chris,” Stricker said.

  Mahler closed the file and let twenty seconds go by. He could see the thing about the blood had surprised Bennett. The guy probably put some effort into cleaning the car seat, figured he had it whipped. Mahler saw no reason to tell Bennett forensics hadn’t confirmed the blood was the victim’s. Bennett just needed a few seconds to realize he wasn’t getting out of this room like he thought he was. Mahler felt a weariness at the testimony he knew was to come.

  “Dr. Bennett,” Mahler said, “Elise Durand was murdered. We’re investigating a homicide. Whatever you’re trying to spare yourself you can forget. It’s too late. The lies you’ve told your wife and yourself for the past six months are in the past. All I care about now is what happened. Your attorney here—”

  “I hit her.” Bennett blinked, surprised at his own words.

  “Chris, listen to me,” Stricker said.

  “You hit Ms. Durand?” Mahler asked.

  “Yeah. I didn’t mean to. We were arguing, and she slapped me. Hard. I wasn’t expecting it, and before I knew it, I slapped her back. A slap, not a punch, but I hit her nose and it started bleeding. The blood got all over both of us. It was a mess.” He looked at Mahler and, seeing no sympathy, turned to Frames. “I mean, my God, I’ve never struck anyone in my life.”

  Frames held his look. In the dynamic of the moment, he was the good guy, Bennett’s friend. “It happens. What’d you do after that?”

  “We stopped the bleeding, and we both calmed down. But she said she wouldn’t see me anymore. She said it was over, done.”

  “Did you see her again?”

  “No, I—”

  “From last Tuesday to this Monday, you didn’t see her?”

  “I tried. I called. I went to Lerner’s office, but she wouldn’t see me.”

  Mahler leaned back in his chair. “Until Monday night.”

  “Until Monday night? No, Jesus, how many times—” Bennett closed his eyes.

  “Dr. Bennett, we checked your phone. You called Elise Durand seven times Monday night.” Mahler opened the file in front of him. “You also gave us a statement earlier. Concerning your whereabouts on Monday evening, you said, quote, ‘I went out later for something. I was gone for maybe an hour. I went about ten and was back by eleven.’ Your wife’s confirmed this.”

  Stricker put his arm in front of Bennett. “I need to advise you, Chris. This is—”

  “My wife? What’d Lynn say?” Bennett waved away the lawyer’s arm. “What’d she say about Monday?” His voice was breathless.

  “Lieutenant Mahler,” Stricker said, “I’d like to request a moment alone with my client.”

  Mahler ignored the lawyer and addressed Bennett. “Did you see Elise Durand Monday night?”

  “I repeat,” Stricker said. “For the recording, Thomas Stricker, representing Christopher Bennett, requests—”

  “I went to her house,” Bennett said quickly. “I parked out front. I don’t think she was there. Her car wasn’t on the street where it usually is. I just sat there.”

  Frames waited a beat. “You didn’t see her?”

  Bennett looked down at the tabletop. “No. The lights were on, but I never went to the door.”

  “You were in your car the whole time?”

  “All kinds of things went through my head. I was out of my mind. You can’t imagine.” He ran his fingertips over the table’s surface, as if searching for something. Then he looked up. “Have any of you bee
n in love with a woman? I mean, so, so in love? I thought about the color of her eyes, the way her hair smelled after a shower. And I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand her leaving me. I thought…I wanted to make her stop, to do something so she’d never go away. I wanted…I wanted—”

  Mahler waited for Bennett’s eyes to focus on him. “To kill her?”

  “Yes…No. I don’t know. But I didn’t. I swear to God, I didn’t. I did not kill her. You can give me a lie detector test. I left. I drove home.” Bennett licked his dry lips. “It was late. Lynn can tell you. She was in bed, and I woke her up. I made love to her. I guess I was rough. Is that what she said? She yelled at me to stop, and I didn’t. Suddenly, I heard her screaming…as loud as if—”

  This time, Stricker reached out and held his client’s forearm.

  Bennett looked up, pleading with Mahler. “Can I see Elise? I never got to see her. Just for a minute? Ten seconds. I promise I won’t touch her.”

  Mahler met Bennett’s eyes without answering. Then he announced for the recording that the interview had ended. He nodded at Frames, and as the two men left the room, Mahler looked back. Stricker had his arm around Bennett’s shoulder and was leaning close to whisper.

  Chapter Twenty

  (i)

  (WEDNESDAY, 8:05 P.M.)

  Mahler sat in a leather chair and watched Dr. Jeffrey Bittner slowly roll a black pen between his fingers. The doctor’s office was a dark, high-ceilinged room on the second floor of a downtown Victorian.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” Bittner said, “other than to confirm that Elise Durand was a patient in my psychiatric practice for some time.”

  Bittner was middle-aged, with gray hair and a weighed-down look. The bags under his eyes and the paunch falling over his waistline suggested that he was subject to more than the usual gravity.

  Mahler shrugged. “I understand, but since we’re in the middle of a homicide investigation, I’d appreciate anything you can tell me.”

  Bittner looked at his pen. “You know, of course, that by California state law, patient confidentiality extends post-mortem. Besides, I’m not sure how information about the victim is going to help you identify the person responsible for her death.”

  “We’re following a number of lines of investigation, and there’s a chance she wasn’t just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that her murder was…more deliberate. Anything you can tell me about her state of mind or who she might have spent time with would be useful.”

  Bittner looked thoughtful. “Of all my patients, Elise worked the hardest to heal herself. For her sake, I’d like to help you. Maybe I can talk in a general way. Are you familiar with bipolar spectrum disorder, or BSD?”

  Mahler nodded. “Is that what used to be called manic depression?”

  “It’s now thought that the disorder involves more than two alternating conditions. Patients may suffer more symptoms of mania than depression, or vice versa, or may experience other psychotic behaviors between episodes. One subset of BSD is called Bipolar I, which involves one or more episodes of mania and one or more episodes of depression. Let’s imagine an individual with this condition.”

  Bittner waited to see Mahler’s look of assent. “The condition typically arises in adolescence. The manic episodes usually start just as feeling pumped up or having racing thoughts, then develop into all-out mania with impulsive behaviors and frenetic activity. Sometimes hallucinations. These periods are replaced by depressive intervals in which the individual loses appetite, is unable to sleep, and has thoughts of suicide. But it’s not a simple back-and-forth. Manic episodes can last for two minutes or a week, and the individual can experience a dozen different types of mania.”

  Mahler made notes in a small pad on his lap. “How do you treat it?”

  “Psychotherapy in combination with medication. The tricky part is finding which medication works for each patient. One individual might take mood-stabilizers like lithium or Depakote, in combination with antidepressants such as Elavil or Prozac. It usually takes a while to find the right mix.”

  “How does the condition change as the individual gets older, say, in the twenties?”

  “Often it’s worse. At that age, they’re considered adults. Now they live on their own and set their own schedules. Some have substance abuse problems, which exacerbate their symptoms.”

  “So, if they were to take OxyContin or Ecstasy—”

  Bittner shook his head. “It could have terrible consequences. Increase the highs and lows. Push them over the edge.”

  “So it might be difficult for someone with this condition to be in a relationship.”

  “A big threat for people with Bipolar I is high-risk behaviors, which can mean multiple partners, excessive sexual activity, or relationships with abusive partners.”

  “So apart from seeing a therapist and taking medications, how does someone with BSD deal with it?”

  Bittner puffed his cheeks and let the air out. “Deal? It’s more like a battle. A daily, even hourly, battle. You can’t believe how hard this thing is. Sometimes it helps if they have something to focus all that manic energy on. Some consistent thing they can come back to, that can ride the ups and downs, and be an anchor for them.”

  “A thing? Like a hobby or interest?”

  “It’s obviously different for different individuals.”

  “So it could be something like reading? Say, poetry?”

  “Reading’s not so common because it requires concentration.”

  “But for the sake of an example, let’s say it’s reading. And let’s say it’s the poetry of Keats.”

  The two men looked at each other. “I told you, Lieutenant,” Bittner said. “I can’t talk about Elise.”

  “And I told you I’m investigating a young woman’s murder.”

  Bittner pulled himself upright. “All right, look. I’ll tell you something if it’ll help. But none of this is simple. It’s not like putting together a puzzle and finding a single answer. People with BSD like Elise often have trouble with boundaries, distinguishing between their thoughts and reality. Her father abandoned his family when Elise was three and rarely communicated with her. But he sent her a book of Keats poetry. Sometimes Elise believed her father was Keats and he was writing to her. What she thought or said about the poetry was not always connected to the real world.”

  Mahler waited. He was beginning to think the doctor had been right from the start—that he really couldn’t say anything useful in identifying a suspect. He decided to give it a few more minutes. “Can you tell me anything she said about poetry?”

  “Not specifically. But in our sessions, Elise was drawn to Keats because his poetry often articulates two conflicting ideas. For someone like Elise, whose life was trying to find balance between two behavioral poles, the poems had a profound personal message.”

  Mahler looked down at his notebook. “Does the phrase ‘to take into the air my quiet breath’ have a special meaning? We found it written on her leg.”

  Bittner sighed. “Elise often wrote messages to herself on her arms and legs. Because her world was spinning, she felt the need to remind herself of thoughts or ideas. In our sessions, she spoke about that particular line often. It’s from a poem where Keats talks about yearning for death. Elise was definitely drawn to suicidal thoughts. But she resisted them, through therapy and medications.”

  Mahler could see sadness in the doctor’s eyes. He wondered how success was measured in a world where the patients didn’t have much of a chance. “Can you think why she would have written it now? Was she afraid of someone, or something?”

  Bittner hesitated. “She was more fearful in recent sessions.”

  “Fearful of what?”

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  “We have evidence indicating that, at the time of her death, the victim was in the presence of three
adult males and participated in a street drug buy. Did she talk to you about her male friends or a boyfriend?”

  “She talked about a lot of men in her sessions, but it wasn’t always clear if they were in her life now or in the past. I don’t feel comfortable with this subject. Anything I say could be misleading.”

  Bittner looked at the forgotten pen in his hand. “Let me tell you what I do know. Lately, Elise talked about one thing over and over. It was something Keats wrote. Great artists, according to him, have a quality called negative capability, which allows them to live in uncertainties and doubt without searching for fact or reason. The purpose of poetry is not to work out the paradoxes but to accept the mystery. Elise’s fear was that, in coping with her BSD, she’d lose that artistic quality, which was the only thing about herself she really liked.”

  “So, if she got better, she’d lose her art?”

  “More or less. I’m not saying it was true. It’s just what Elise believed. Something or someone was definitely pushing her to the edge these last few weeks.”

  “With all due respect, isn’t it a long way from pushing her to the edge to taking her life?”

  “It’s not for me to say, Lieutenant,” Bittner said. “If she was abusing drugs, as you’ve implied, she might act out in a way that could be threatening to those around her—and at the same time make her more vulnerable.”

  “But what’s that got to do with a murder investigation?”

  Bittner tossed the pen onto his desk. “That’s your job, isn’t it? But since you’re asking me, I’d say she was afraid of someone who was smarter than her other boyfriends, someone who was trying to exert his will over her.”

  (ii)

  (WEDNESDAY, 8:30 P.M.)

  They sat on matching Adirondack chairs on the deck behind Thackrey’s house facing the lawn. Light from the windows behind them shone across the lawn all the way to the meadow. The dogs slept together at the end of the deck.

  “‘Night,’” Thackrey said, “‘making all things dimly beautiful.’ Elise taught me that line.”