Multiple Wounds

by Alan Russell

“How about we have a face-to-face this afternoon to remedy that?”

  “Sound good to me.”

  “The art gallery at five?”

  “You got it.”

  Cheever hung up the phone and returned to his thinking. He did a lot of looking off into space and remembering, tried to feel around for what was bothering him about the case or not answered to his satisfaction. There was no shortage of either. In no particular order, Cheever continued with what he called his copping list, writing down inquiries that he wanted to pursue.

  His pen had considerably slowed when Mary Beth Carey joined him. “Just the person I was looking for,” Cheever said, leaning back in his chair.

  “And looking very hard, I can see.”

  “Got time to do some checking for me?”

  “What kind of checking?”

  “I’d like you to run a history on any children who turned up missing, or were murdered, or just plain died in San Diego County from 1992 to 2002.”

  “Age parameters?”

  “One year to ten years.”

  She nodded, observed him through her thick glasses, and saw his expression of wanting more. “What else?”

  “Anything you can find on Delores Holly Troy. She would have died in the nineties. And yes, she was Helen Troy’s mother.”

  “It’s going to take a while,” she warned, “especially digging up the case histories.

  “That is if there are any,” Mary Beth added under her breath.

  “I’d appreciate a printout of names,” Cheever said. “I’m interested in newspaper articles, obits, anything.”

  “It’ll take time,” Mary Beth warned.

  “Time is but the stream we all go fishing in,” Cheever said, remembering Thoreau.

  “What are you fishing for?” she asked.

  Answers, he thought. Truth. Clues. History. A hydra. No, before the hydra.

  “The sum equaling up to the parts.”

  Mary Beth nodded, as if what he said made sense, then walked away humming some tune. Cheever directed his attention back to his copping list. Several of the items on it could best be answered by Rachel. Cheever had been thinking about her on and off all morning. Last night he had almost called her back, certain there was something wrong. She had sounded disjointed and almost giddy, this from a woman who always appeared so self-contained.

  Call her.

  He heard the voice in his head. Maybe hearing things was contagious. He tried to ignore it.

  Call her.

  Cheever picked up the phone and dialed Rachel’s office number. He expected to hear that the doctor was with a client, but instead was told, “Dr. Stern is not in today. Would you care to leave a message?”

  He identified himself, then asked, “Where is she?”

  “Dr. Stern is ill.”

  “The flu?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Whatever it is must have come on all of a sudden. She seemed fine yesterday.”

  The receptionist didn’t answer. She either didn’t know anything or she was well trained.

  “Will she be in tomorrow?” Cheever asked.

  “As far as I know, yes. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “No message, thank you.”

  Could her illness explain everything? Not really. It would have been a hell of a lot easier for Rachel to have just told him she was sick rather than announcing, “Tomorrow’s not going to be good for me.”

  Cheever dialed her home number. After five rings her service picked up. Cheever didn’t leave a message there either. Follow her advice, he told himself. Try her tomorrow. But the voice in his head wasn’t as logical. Like an uninvited guest, it kept pushing Rachel’s name at him.

  He called Helen’s number, didn’t expect her to be home, but she surprised him by answering. “This is Cheever,” he said. “I’m having trouble getting a hold of Dr. Stern.”

  “She’s sick.”

  “Did you talk with her?”

  “No. Her receptionist woke me up this morning and canceled our appointment.”

  “Maybe she took a mental health day,” Cheever said, fishing for more. “That would be sort of ironic.”

  Helen didn’t respond.

  “I have some more questions for you,” he said.

  “Surprise, surprise,” she said.

  “How about I ask them over lunch?” Cheever asked.

  “Lunch?”

  “Is that a question or a yes?”

  “I guess it was both. I was just trying to remember the last time I had eaten. Lunch would be good.”

  “How about Croce’s at one o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She could have just as easily said, Cheever thought, “We’ll be there.”

  The rest of the team started drifting in. By nine o’clock everyone was working, most on four hours’ sleep. Falconi, being the crime scene guy, was using both ears to listen to what everyone was doing. Mary Beth entered the suddenly busy work area and dropped a piece of paper on Cheever’s desk. “You were lucky I could even dig that much up,” she said.

  Cheever examined the document. It dealt with the death of Delores Troy. The information was scant, but Mary Beth was right: it was as much as you could expect on a suicide pushing twenty years. Cheever decided it was time for an update.

  EVEN BEFORE GETTING out of his car, Cheever had the feeling he was being watched. His antennae were apparently working. As he stepped on the walkway, Professor Jason Troy opened his front door and called a greeting. Cheever walked up the path, his strides purposeful. The professor appeared amused by that.

  “All you would need is a lantern, Detective,” he called, “and you would look like Diogenes on his quest for an honest man.”

  Cheever saved his answer until he reached the door. “I wouldn’t waste my time,” he said, “on such an elusive and ultimately fruitless search.”

  Troy laughed. “I fear Diogenes was not so quick on the uptake as you. Please come in, Detective. May I get you something to drink? Some coffee perhaps?”

  Cheever shook his head. He followed Troy into the living room, but didn’t immediately take a chair. Instead he examined the paintings that lined the walls, saw nymphs gamboling in the woods, Vulcan at work at his smith, and bare-breasted young muses surrounding Venus and Cupid. There was a print of a classical unicorn and one of the waiting sphinx. And, of course, there was Leda and her swan.

  The professor waited for Cheever to finish his inspection. “I’m curious,” Cheever said, “as to where that painting is that Helen liked so much.”

  “Which...?”

  “Saturn eating his kids.”

  “Oh, yes. Goya. I’m afraid I don’t have a print of that.”

  “Didn’t you say it was in one of your books?”

  “I suppose it must be. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll try and remember which one.”

  “Saturn is the Roman name for Cronos, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It sounds like you’ve come here for another stroll through Elysian fields, Detective.”

  “Not there, no,” Cheever said. “I’d like to talk about the past, but without the mythology.”

  Both men seated themselves, taking up the same positions they had during his first visit. “We discussed your wife the other day,” Cheever said. “I’m wondering if I could trouble you to see a photo of her.”

  “Certainly.”

  The professor left the room for half a minute and returned with a picture, which he handed to Cheever. Delores Troy was holding a baby in her arms.

  “Is that Helen?”

  “Yes.”

  “It hardly seems possible. Your wife looks like a child herself.”

  “She was twenty.”

  “Most middle school students look older.”

  “Delores was very youthful. Even when she started drinking, and having her psychotic episodes, she remained the picture of Dorian Gray young.”

  “Tiny hips? Very sm
all bust? Thin legs?”

  “All of the above. But why your anatomical interest?”

  Cheever answered the question with one of his own. “Is that what attracted you to her in the first place?”

  “I don’t understand...”

  “It was your pun. The last time we talked you said that your getting together with Delores was a ‘minor scandal.’ That’s what she looked like, didn’t she? A girl, a young woman who didn’t even appear to have entered puberty.”

  “Your point still eludes me.”

  “You were over twenty years her senior. You were an associate professor and she was a freshman. It seems an odd match.”

  “Obviously you don’t know much about academia,” he said. “Those kinds of pairings are much more common than you would think.”

  “You still haven’t said what drew you to her.”

  “Her mind, Detective.”

  “You sure it wasn’t your mind?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The last time we talked I knew virtually nothing about dissociative identity disorder. Since then I’ve learned that almost all multiples were sexually abused as children. I thought that was something we should talk about.”

  The professor appeared perplexed. “I’m afraid that is a subject I know nothing about, Detective.”

  Cheever put on his concerned face, a face that had made so many want to confess, and need to confess. His voice changed, becoming avuncular, and concerned, and troubled. “People feel a lot better when they open up,” he said.

  “No one has ever accused me of being a clam. Quite the opposite—”

  “You can help your daughter. This might be your one chance. She’s not well now. By telling me about things, you could help make up for the past. This is your opportunity for redemption.”

  “Are you suggesting I abused her?”

  “I think you want to talk to me. I think you want to let go of some bad memories inside of you. I think you should help Helen.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “No. What is ridiculous is what Helen had to become just to survive. And now she wants to go on, but there are these mountains she has to get through. She can’t tunnel under them. She’s tried. And she can’t find the path over them. You can help her with that.”

  The professor didn’t look quite so unflappable. His face was flushed and there was some evidence of perspiration around his lip. “I’m afraid I am not the right guide for your mountain metaphor. It would be the blind leading the blind. I am not to blame for Helen’s mental illness. Her psychoses have an organic basis. Like mother, like daughter.”

  Cheever’s expression changed, then his voice. He became harder, an adversary instead of a redeemer. “You seem to blame a lot of things on your wife. It’s convenient that she’s dead, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t like your implication.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I had implied anything.”

  But he was. Though Cheever’s look dared the professor to pursue the topic, Troy chose not to.

  “How long have you lived in this house?” Cheever asked.

  “A long time. Going on twenty years.”

  “And where did you live before that?”

  “In Pacific Beach.”

  “Where?”

  “On Chalcedony. The number escapes me.”

  “You live anywhere else in San Diego?”

  “Before I was married I lived in Allied Gardens.”

  “Why did you move here?”

  “It was time to buy a house.”

  “Your wife committed suicide in this house, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Things like that sometimes make people move.”

  “In some ways her death was a blessing.”

  “How so?”

  “The last few years of her life were not pleasant. She had degenerated quite a bit.”

  “In what way?”

  “She was almost never sober. And she was psychotic. She saw things, pink elephants and the like.”

  “I suppose she created fantastic tales?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stories no one believed?”

  “They were, as you said, fantastic.”

  “Did she try committing suicide more than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “Two other times of which I am aware.”

  “What were her methods?”

  “She liked cutting herself. And she finally learned how to do it right.”

  “Where did she cut herself?”

  “Her wrists.”

  “Each time?”

  He nodded.

  “What did she use to cut herself with?”

  “Each occasion was different.”

  “Specifically?”

  “Broken glass one time. A knife another. And a razor on the last occasion.”

  “She never plunged a knife into her chest? Or suffered any wounds in the area of her heart?”

  “No.” The professor’s answer was high-pitched, annoyed. He didn’t meet Cheever’s gaze.

  “I’m still curious about that Goya picture,” Cheever said.

  “Why, yes.” Troy sounded happy to have something to do other than answer questions. He walked over to a wall of books, selected one, flipped through it, and then put the book back. The process was repeated a second time, but Cheever had the feeling it was all for show. He suspected Troy knew just where to find a picture of the painting.

  The professor’s third choice was an oversized book, one of those coffee table art books offering paeans to classical themes. After a brief search, Troy said, “Ah, here it is.”

  He handed Cheever the book and started prattling. “Did you know that khronos was the Greek word for time? Goya used Cronos as his allegory for time. He wanted to show how time devours us all.”

  That wasn’t all he wanted to show, Cheever thought. The intellectual explanation was well and fine, but the horror was visceral. A monster was depicted in an unthinkable act of ruination. Goya defined a flesh and blood relationship in a horrible way. Cronos had wide, unfeeling eyes that were opened in an unseeing stare. In his gigantic hands the god held one of his naked children aloft. His maw was huge and distended. Cronos had chewed off the head and right arm of his own child.

  There was much to see, and ponder, and be sickened by, in young Helen Troy’s favorite painting. Cheever stared at the painting, then, pointedly, made the same study of Jason Troy. His scrutiny unnerved the man.

  “What are you looking at?” the professor finally asked.

  “Just trying to see,” Cheever said, “if there’s any resemblance.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Croce’s had been a popular downtown restaurant and lounge for decades, which made it an institution in Southern California time. Jim Croce’s widow, Ingrid, had opened and still operated the restaurant. There were some Croce memorabilia to be found in the restaurant, pictures and statements that marked the singer’s life, but the reminders were subdued and in good taste. The restaurant wasn’t selling memories, wasn’t doing a Graceland thing, and knew that tributes were well and good, but the here and now of their business was serving good food.

  Cheever was glad he had arrived early. All the tables were taken and he had to put his name on a waiting list. He was told a table would be available shortly and that he was welcome to take a seat in the lounge. Cheever decided just to stand. It was mostly a business crowd, men and women wearing the suited vestments of lawyers and bankers and commercial real estate brokers. Cheever had on his worn blue blazer. He brushed it, but that didn’t get out the wrinkles.

  He tried to remember how Croce had died, and then second-guessed himself for even having the thought. Was he that preoccupied with death? But recriminations didn’t get in the way of his remembering. Croce had died in an airplane crash, he recalled, just when the singer’s career was taking off. His music was the kind Cheever liked. There was
a passion to many of his songs—a caring and wistfulness. He made his pain public, like Helen’s Hygeia. His songs were operatic in that they didn’t try to hide much, even if they weren’t shouted and waved at you; like opera, the listeners were invited to experience some vicarious emotion-letting. You empathized as he tried to tell his anguish to an operator, or lamented about not being able to put time in a bottle.

  “Hi.”

  Helen was underdressed too, but in an artistic way that made it acceptable. She was wearing her costume jewelry, a ten-gallon black hat that in the old days only the villains were supposed to wear, a colorfully embroidered vest over a white peasant blouse, and a black skirt. While he was nodding his approval there was an announcement for “Cheever, party of two.”

  “Good timing,” he said.

  They were seated at a small table that forced a closeness upon them and even had their knees touching. Helen didn’t seem to notice. She reached for one of the two menus that had been left and said, “I’m starving.”

  Cheever opened his own menu. It didn’t take him long to decide on the angel-hair pasta salad with wild mushrooms, mixed greens, and strips of seasoned chicken.

  “Everything looks good,” Helen said. Instead of sounding pleased, there was a certain desperation to her tone.

  “Good afternoon.” A college-aged blond woman positioned herself next to their table. She had a pleasant smile and an expectant pen she liked to click. Her name tag read Danni. Cheever suspected she probably still drew hearts over the “i” in her name. She looked like a Danni—young and athletic and Southern Californian to the bone. Stating the obvious, she said, “My name’s Danni,” but at least she didn’t need to look at her name tag before making the pronouncement. “I’ll be your server this afternoon. Is there anything I can get you from the lounge?”

  Cheever looked at Helen, saw that she wasn’t ready to answer, and said, “Just water.”

  Helen turned her head away from Danni and mumbled some words. Cheever could see she wasn’t talking to herself; she was talking with her selves.

  The puzzled server said, “I didn’t hear you, ma’am.”

  Helen turned around and faced her, then said, “Wine, wine.” Her answer was offered from both sides of her mouth.

  “What kind of wine—”

  Cheever interjected: “A glass of the house red.”