by Lisa Gardner
D.D. nodded. The longest-serving employee at twenty-five years, Charlie had indeed remained loyal to Mr. LaToile to the bitter end and genuinely mourned the man’s death. Which is why she mentally removed him from her suspect list and turned to Dr. Anil.
“Ostensibly, it was during Mr. LaToile’s time in France that he met you. You started treating him for his depression, then eventually followed him back to the US. Which you lied about, Dr. Anil. Now, why would you lie about such a thing?”
“I already told you, I had a drinking problem. It wasn’t a good time in my life. I have a right to keep my private life private.”
“Except when your private life leads to the death of”—her gaze flickered to Charlie—“a great man.
“Ernesto.” D.D. turned abruptly toward the gardener. “You were hired eleven years ago. Mr. LaToile liked you enough to help you get your green card. And pays you handsomely enough that you send money home each month to your family.”
Ernesto appeared anxious again.
“Except you don’t have a family,” D.D. stated gently. “They died twelve years ago in a terrible traffic accident. As well as five other people. When you fell asleep at the wheel.”
Neil had unburied this piece of the puzzle.
“Mr. LaToile knew, didn’t he?”
Ernesto nodded slowly.
“Guilt and sadness. He understood your pain. And why you still send most of your earnings to the families of the other five victims. Adam LaToile wasn’t just a great man. He was a haunted one. You and he shared a like pain, didn’t you, Ernesto? Which is why you never would have harmed him. And why you are the third suspect I can now cross off the list.”
She turned to Manuel. “Twelve years you have been in Mr. LaToile’s life. You entered just before he started his upward swing. Maybe as a result of his work with Dr. Anil?” She shrugged. “Or maybe because depression is cyclical, and he was simply due for improvement. You’re steady, Manuel. Reliable. Always there for your employer and his new wife. You take your job seriously. And no matter how much I had my detectives dig, we couldn’t find a single skeleton in your closet. If Mr. LaToile was a great man, then you are a good man, Manuel. And the fourth suspect I can cross off my list. I hope you stay with Mrs. LaToile,” D.D. added softly. “I think she’s going to need you.”
Manuel nodded solemnly.
Which brought D.D. to the wife. Phil appeared in the doorway behind Carol. He waved a piece of paper. D.D. raised her chin in acknowledgment.
“Mrs. LaToile.”
“Martha,” the woman said dully.
“Martha. You met Adam at a bridge game ten years ago. Fell in love, got married. By all accounts, you have been excellent with him. So good he got to release his full-time nurse. You even found new staff members to keep the household running and ease his stress. Did you love him?” D.D. asked with genuine curiosity. “Because I know you didn’t in the beginning. But maybe, watching you today, you loved him in the end?”
Mrs. LaToile didn’t question D.D.’s assertion about the beginning, or ask how D.D. knew. She answered simply, “I did.”
“Dr. Anil set it up. He told you all about Adam. His likes, dislikes. Did you already know how to play bridge, or did you have to learn for that afternoon?”
“I had to learn. It took me two years. It’s not an easy game for beginners.”
D.D. returned her stare to Dr. Anil. “Your fifth and final DUI. You hit another car. You didn’t kill anyone; that would’ve earned you vehicular manslaughter. But the driver of the vehicle was injured. Seriously.”
D.D. switched to Mrs. LaToile. “It took you years of physical therapy to fully recover. But you didn’t press charges, did you, Martha? Because Dr. Anil struck a deal in return for your silence. He had a patient. An extremely wealthy patient with a huge mansion in downtown Boston, a property of unimaginable value.”
D.D. had entered the land of conjecture at this point. Parts she knew to be true—Neil had learned that Martha LaToile was the same Martha who’d been listed as part of Dr. Anil’s fifth DUI charge. As for the private dealings between Dr. Anil and Martha, D.D. considered that an educated guess. And further proof that a detective’s suspicious mind was generally a correct one.
“I didn’t set out to marry him,” Martha murmured now. “Just meet him. I was honest up front. I was in real estate; I’d heard stories of his family home. He invited me to visit. And I went from assessing the property to . . . seeing the man. I fell in love. Honestly, truly.” Mrs. LaToile gazed at not just D.D. but the entire staff. “I didn’t harm Adam. I would never harm Adam.”
“Even when he strangled you?”
“He didn’t mean it!”
“Even when he begged you to let him die?”
“No!”
“Even when he declared himself, no matter how much you loved him, already dead?”
“He just needed time. He’d get better. He always did. It’s what I loved about him. For all his sadness, he tried so hard. You have no idea. He tried so hard!”
“I believe you, Mrs. LaToile. I believe you genuinely came to love your husband. Which is why you’re the fifth suspect I’m now crossing off my list. Which leaves us with . . .” She turned again to Dr. Anil, then Paulette.
“Dr. Anil, why don’t you tell everyone where you worked before opening up your practice in Paris.”
Dr. Anil glared at her.
D.D. shrugged. “I already know the answer. You can tell them or I will.”
Carol’s piece of the puzzle, and well done at that.
“At a hospital in Brussels,” the doctor announced sullenly.
“Which specializes in the treatment of Cotard’s. You mentioned it earlier. One of the few places where sufferers can be helped, through electric shock therapy, or something like that.”
Dr. Anil didn’t say anything.
“That’s where you first met Adam LaToile, isn’t it? Not in Paris. But in Brussels, at the private treatment facility.”
Mrs. LaToile glanced at Dr. Anil in confusion. “Adam suffered from Cotard’s before? I thought this was his first episode . . .”
“It was,” D.D. supplied. “Adam wasn’t there for himself. He’d brought his daughter, Leticia.”
“What?” Mrs. LaToile, even more bewildered now.
While for the first time, Paulette stirred from her place in the room.
Phil took that to be his cue to enter. He handed D.D. the paper he’d spent the last hour unearthing, then had had messengered to their location.
“I have here the death certificate for one Leticia LaToile,” D.D. explained to everyone. “Except her death didn’t take place in Boston. According to this, she died in Brussels. And the doctor who signed off on her death was none other than you, Dr. Anil. A psychiatrist, signing a death certificate? That wouldn’t be legal in the US. I have a feeling it wasn’t exactly kosher in Brussels either. Just a means to an end. The beginning of a lie. Which brings us to”—D.D. whirled abruptly on the maid—“Paulette. Or should I say, Leticia LaToile. The girl who is not dead.
“When I first met you, I pegged your age at around forty-five. It’s the hair and makeup. Which you purposefully wrench back and slather on, all the better to disguise yourself, yes? Who did you fear recognizing you the most? Charlie, Dr. Anil, your own father? The rest you didn’t have to worry about, but those three . . .”
Paulette merely stared at D.D. And the flatness in her gaze chilled D.D. more than any murderous glare ever had.
“You had Cotard’s,” D.D. said quietly. “At fifteen. It would make you one of the youngest sufferers, I’m told. But given the family history . . . Your father brought you to the institute in Brussels. Where Dr. Anil took over your care.”
Dr. Anil was regarding Paulette with open horror. Clearly, he’d never connected the dots before, and he was truly sorry to be con
necting them now. “You went catatonic,” he whispered. “The first few days, you merely thought you were dead. But you talked. You walked. I told your father there was hope. Then day five . . . You didn’t wake up. You became . . . catatonic. A state even more severe than Cotard’s. Alive, yes, but only in that your heart still beat, your lungs still filled with air. But beyond that . . . You had no response to external stimuli. Even the sound of your father’s voice, the touch of his hand on your hair . . . I told your father it was most likely hopeless. Coming back from Cotard’s is difficult but possible. From a catatonic state . . .” Dr. Anil shook his head.
Paulette didn’t say anything.
“Guilt and sadness,” D.D. murmured. “Guilt and sadness.” She addressed the room. “Adam came up with the plan—yes, Doctor? You would declare Leticia dead. Which surely would be kinder to his wife than the burden of a daughter who, at fifteen, was already depressed to the point of a vegetative state. Did you agree with him, Doctor? Did you think declaring a child dead was an act of kindness?”
Dr. Anil regarded her stubbornly. “I worried about Adam’s mental state. Could he handle the burden of such ongoing uncertainty? With death comes grief, then closure. A child who is little more than a living corpse . . .”
“She was alive, Doctor. And she was just a child.”
Paulette still didn’t say anything.
“You wrote the death certificate,” D.D. continued bluntly. “Mr. LaToile paid you handsomely. Most likely paid you even more to look after his only daughter while he returned to the States to break the news to his wife. At which point, he delivered another final bribe to a doctor here to exchange your rather dubious death notice for a real one that would pass muster. Except you didn’t want to hang out in Brussels forever, looking after a girl you’d already declared dead. You had bigger dreams, loftier ambitions. So you waited, what—one, two years, then contacted Mr. LaToile to tell him the inevitable had happened? His daughter really had passed? He is devastated, of course, but the news it not unexpected. And having already declared his daughter dead, he can’t exactly fly over and claim her corpse. Instead, he pays you again, one last liar’s bonus, which you use to depart Brussels and open up the private practice you always wanted in Paris. Except, as Adam knew, guilt is a powerful thing. Which first led you to drinking, Doctor? Writing a fake death certificate for a fifteen-year-old girl, or abandoning that still-living child in Brussels? Because she couldn’t remain at the institute. That would raise too many questions. So you got her fake papers as a Jane Doe, a poor, lost, unidentified child with no family, and checked the ‘living corpse’ into a local hospital. Then you never looked back.”
Dr. Anil had gone pale. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.
“Except she didn’t die.” D.D. turned to Paulette. “Acute depression cycles. And one day, without warning, despite the odds, you woke up.”
“Yes.” Paulette’s voice sounded hoarse. She glanced at D.D., then regarded Dr. Anil with open hatred. “I woke up alone. With a name that wasn’t mine. In a country that wasn’t mine. With everyone speaking a language that wasn’t mine. It took me many months to understand everything that had happened. And once I did . . . I was not tired anymore. The world was not gray anymore. It had color. Red. Pure, vengeful red.”
“Did you try to contact your father?” D.D. asked curiously.
“I was told I didn’t have one. And I didn’t, did I? It isn’t easy, coming back from being a . . . a vegetable. Muscles atrophy. There’s loss of development. I spent years in therapy. Physical, mental. Everyone called me Paulette. I became Paulette. And I began to plan as Paulette. How to get back to the States. How to find my father again.”
“Except you didn’t tell him your real name.”
“Paulette is my real name. Leticia is dead.”
“As his daughter, you would stand to inherit all this,” D.D. pointed out.
“This place is cursed,” Paulette practically spat.
“You didn’t even look up your mother?”
“She let him kill me.”
“Were you going to get her next?”
The woman didn’t answer, but the expression on her face D.D. took to be a yes.
“And Dr. Anil?” D.D. pressed, because certainly he would’ve been victim number three.
“I didn’t remember him . . . know all of what he did to me. Till today, listening to him talk to Mrs. LaToile in the sunroom. I started to understand. I started to see clearly all of what must be done.”
In other words, Dr. Anil had definitely made her kill list.
“Three years is a long time to live under the same roof and plot revenge,” D.D. commented.
“I had to watch, to learn. I wanted to know . . . was my father happy? Was he better off without me?”
D.D. already knew the answer without having to hear it.
“Yes,” Paulette hissed. “Yes, he was. Which is when I knew he had to die. But first . . .”
“You tampered with his food, his clothes, his soap. It was easy for you—you handle everything that goes to your father. And you know Cotard’s better than anyone. First symptom, losing a sense of the world. So you dimmed lights, replaced his food with unseasoned portions, substituted soap and hygiene products. Don’t worry, I already had one of my detectives search your room.” D.D. nodded at Carol. “She found all the fragrance-free, dye-free, product-free products in your room. Trust me, they’d certainly be enough to drive me insane.”
“I watched him suffer. As he watched me suffer. Soon they would take him to Brussels.” Paulette nodded toward Dr. Anil and Mrs. LaToile. “Where he could have his skull wired up, his brain shocked, just like I did.”
“Except it wasn’t enough.”
“She kept helping him! She kept loving him. And forgiving him! He even tried to kill her and she still forgave him! How could you, how can you . . . He was an evil man! He had killed me. And still, you loved him!” Paulette had risen to standing now. Hands fisted at her sides, tears streaking white lines into her pancaked face. “How could you love him so much?” she screamed at Mrs. LaToile. “When no one, not even my own father, has ever loved me that much?”
Then she broke. Collapsed to the ground, a heaving, sobbing mess.
“You killed him,” D.D. stated quietly. “While he slept. You crept into the room and drove a knife into his back. Because making him crazy still didn’t ease your pain, did it, Paulette? No matter what, he was loved. He had everything he took from you. And you just couldn’t bear it anymore.”
“I am not dead,” the woman wept, moaned. “I am not dead, I am not dead. I AM NOT DEAD.”
But some days, D.D. knew, the woman still wished she was.
Dr. Anil got up slowly. He wobbled slightly on his feet, clearly still reeling from the revelations. He knelt beside Paulette, placed one hand on her back. “I will help you,” he whispered. “I will do everything in my power. For the rest of my life.”
Then Mrs. LaToile was moving forward. She knelt on the other side. “I will help you, too. You are my husband’s daughter. And I know he loved you. He was a sad man who did imperfect things. But he never stopped missing you. He never stopped loving you.”
Keening now. Loud and high-pitched.
D.D. eyed her detectives. Phil, Neil, and Carol looked uneasily back. Now would be the time they arrested their suspect. But the strangest cases apparently came with the strangest endings, as they watched Mrs. LaToile comfort the woman who’d murdered her husband. While Paulette sobbed and sobbed.
D.D. and her detectives waited. Then waited some more.
Eventually, Paulette cried herself out. The huddle eased. Manuel helped Mrs. LaToile to her feet, and then Paulette.
Phil did the honors, stepping forward, gently positioning Paulette’s arms behind her back.
“I will meet you at the station,” Dr. Anil said.
Paulette made no further protests as Phil led her out of the house, Carol and Neil following in their wake. D.D. had some final words for Dr. Anil. Forging a death certificate, abandoning a child, certainly carried some kind of criminal charge. But given that the actions took place in a foreign country, they were also beyond her pay grade.
No worries, she assured him. She’d be contacting the proper authorities, who’d find him soon enough. The doctor didn’t fight it. Just nodded dully. Maybe all these years later, consequences were exactly what he needed. He did the crime, he’d serve his time, and then who knew, maybe he’d make good on his promise to Paulette, and help the girl he’d once harmed so terribly.
By the time D.D. was done, the house smelled of cumin and scallops. The dinner Chef Dennis had spent all day on, and apparently could not abandon, even in the wake of tragedy.
D.D. didn’t mind. She was still in time to catch dinner with her own family. Where she could listen to her son, Jack, chatter about his day while “accidentally” dropping food for Kiko. And afterward, she would curl up on the sofa with Alex and tell him all about this sure winner for the world’s strangest case.
Author’s Note
For readers who are interested, Cotard’s syndrome is a real neurological disorder. I first learned of it from an absolutely fascinating work of nonfiction, The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self, by Anil Ananthaswamy. Being a thriller writer, I have taken some fictional license, but I did my best to capture the basics of this severe form of depression. This is the second short story I’ve written based on a syndrome from Ananthaswamy’s book. An earlier D. D. Warren short story, 3 Truths and a Lie, was inspired by the chapter on body integrity identity disorder (BIID). As Ananthaswamy elegantly captures, the human mind is vast and complicated. Meaning that novelists such as myself will always have plenty to write about.
#1 bestselling author Lisa Gardner returns with a stunning new novel