by Leslie Glass
Mike stroked his mustache, doubtful. “His boyfriend, Tom White, swears Cowles was euphoric when he left Sunday night. Said they were making plans to live together.” He raised a crooked eyebrow. “Come out of the closet.”
“Maybe he couldn’t handle that.” April tapped her foot, eager to get away.
Mike shrugged.
“What about the wife?”
“There’s no evidence she was involved in any way. No witness to say she was ever in his apartment,” April said. “There’s nothing on her.” She went over it again, reviewing Lorna’s behavior in the light of her husband’s homosexuality, wondering as she did so how it must feel to be married to someone who preferred his physical life with a person of his own sex. She thought of the scarring and infection in Cowles’s anus, the stains on the sheets. The second was the giveaway of two men engaged in mutual masturbation. He clearly had done it before. Why end it this time? Shame? Had White been threatening to expose him if he didn’t come out of the closet? Did it matter?
She turned to Sanchez. He was gazing at her with the familiar pirate’s smile that said “I’ve got what you want and I’m waiting to give it to you.” Her stomach lurched and the blood rose to her cheeks. Sometimes Mike’s eyes became liquid smoke. Inside was an evil spirit that distracted her, made her wonder about things like her parents all those years ago in China. How did they choose each other and how did they feel, those two skinny people, modest as monks?
The Chinese were prudish, no doubt about that. They were too busy trying to survive to have much tolerance for the concept of love or romance. Marriage was business. For women, anyway. In old China men got to marry as many women as they could afford, do whatever they wanted to them. And the great reformer Chairman Mao had had no qualms about carrying on the tradition. He had hundreds of girls, liked them young, tired of them quickly, and needed new ones all the time. American Presidents seemed to be like that, too. Nobody bothered about love, and nobody ever died of shame. Why had Raymond Cowles done so in this day and age? And why did she have to be so tough?
Sergeant Joyce had caught her blush and was smirking. She enjoyed watching April squirm. Joyce returned to the question at hand. “So, Raymond dies around ten P.M. What time did the boyfriend leave?”
“He told me he left around nine. He had work to do.”
“So Raymond places a call to his shrink, either to tell her he’s getting married to a guy or to say he’s checking out. Did he speak to her?” Joyce demanded.
Mike and April exchanged glances. They hadn’t told Treadwell that her number was the last one Cowles had dialed. They purposely held back everything but the news he was dead.
“It doesn’t change the case for us, does it?” April asked.
Mike shook his head. “No, Forensics says he definitely prepared the bag by himself. His prints were on the inside and the outside, and there were some partials on the tape. He was really cool when he did it. He knew what he was doing, pleated it up all nice and tight, made it airtight. Then he must have taken the Kaminex. After a while he put the bag on his head, lay down on the bed, and went to sleep.”
Sergeant Joyce pursed her lips. “Anything we might have missed that could come back and bite us on the tail later?”
Mike shook his head again.
Joyce sighed. “Fine, that about ties it up on Cowles, then. Get the report in by tomorrow.”
April waited until Sanchez was out of the room before she pushed herself off the windowsill. Sergeant Joyce bent her head over her mountain of paperwork. April could see the Sergeant had moved on to something else. As far as she was concerned, the Raymond Cowles case was closed.
twenty-six
At eight-forty-five on Friday morning, Clara Treadwell entered the executive conference room next door to her office. She was as prepared as she would ever be for the meeting Ben Hartley had called to discuss the Raymond Cowles death. She set her leather folder with its datebook and notepad at her place at the head of the table. As she sat, she curled the tips of her fingers into a half-fist to test the cut in her palm.
The point of the sharp surgical knife had dug deep, and the wound still ached, but the real damage of the incident had gone much deeper. Clara was sure the scalpel and the condom—those profoundly symbolic objects, one slashed through the other—related directly to her intimate relationship years ago with Harold Dickey. Like most men of his generation, Harold had hated condoms, couldn’t stand having his manhood sheathed and had said so often. As for the scalpel, Harold liked to tell his students their most sacred duty was to scrape away the patient’s carefully built-up defenses with the lightest possible touch of the scalpel.
Now, this insane act of his seemed to be a direct accusation that Clara had wielded her doctor’s scalpel like a dagger and was personally responsible for a patient’s death. After all the opposition and difficulty Clara had experienced over the years as a chief executive, and as a beautiful and desirable woman endlessly bothered by lovers and husbands who wanted too much, never had anyone physically hurt her. And never had anyone made her so deeply furious. She could hardly bear to be in the same room with him.
And just on this Friday morning, when Clara was scheduled to get out of there, to leave for a Commission meeting in Washington and then have a quiet weekend in Sarasota with the Senator, Ben Hartley had to call this idiotic meeting. Clara pulled her tiny tape recorder out of her purse and fiddled with it. She carried it with her everywhere and always took it out at the beginning of meetings. It amused her that no one knew when the recorder was on and when it was off, and no one ever dared to ask.
Ready, she glanced around the table at the three useless men whose jobs were to advise her. Max Goodrich, Vice Chairman of the Centre, who had been lurking outside her office when the police called on her and who now seemed dazed and unsure which way to blow in the wind; Ben Hartley, General Counsel, an inflated, elegantly dressed, silver-haired gentleman who looked as if he belonged in the State Department; and Harold Dickey, extravagantly pompous in his lack of importance, who had somehow invited himself. The fourth man at the table was the only one she had invited. Jason Frank had something to gain, so Clara felt he was the one she could count on.
Seething, Hartley stared at her, waiting for her nod to begin. She smiled at him.
“Calm down, Ben. Whatever’s bugging you can be dealt with,” she said soothingly.
“I don’t like surprises, Clara. You’ve thrown me some curves before, but this is a doozy.”
“Oh, come now, Ben. When has life at the Centre ever been anything but fat sizzling in the fire?”
“Clara, when a man I went to Harvard with thirty years ago calls me to tell me the chief administrator of my organization is being hounded by the police for a possible suicide in which she seems to be implicated—and this old friend’s company is about to sue the Centre, and you, for malpractice—and I don’t know a single thing about it … Well, I’d say that’s more than fat in the fire.”
“Now just a minute, Ben. I wasn’t hounded. The police came here to inform me of a death, and there’s absolutely no evidence at this time it was a suicide. It could have been accidental, it could have been a homicide. But whatever it was, I’m not in any way implicated. So let’s get the facts straight.”
“If you’re not implicated, what was your number doing in the memory of the dead man’s telephone?”
Clara frowned. “What are you talking about, Ben?”
“Didn’t the police tell you the last call made from Raymond Cowles’s apartment was to your home number?”
No, they hadn’t told her that. She didn’t know that, so how could he? Clara felt Harold’s accusing eyes burn her cheeks. She felt Ben was bluffing about the telephone thing and refused to let it intimidate her. “No. No one told me that. But there’s another false note right there. I never heard any such thing. It’s just not true.”
Max Goodrich looked appalled. “Let’s fix an agenda here. What are we here to talk—”
Clara stared at him. “We’re aware of that, Ben. What’s your point?”
“Well, let’s put it this way. First scenario: The director of a hospital, driving a hospital-owned car on hospital business, hits a pedestrian. Second scenario: Clara Treadwell, who is the director of the hospital, drives her own car to the country for a weekend tryst with her lover and hits a pedestrian. In scenario one, the pedestrian may sue and recover from the hospital. In scenario two, the director is on her own.”
Clara touched her nails to her top lip. It was amazing how no matter how high a person climbed, and how big the support system for her seemed, none of it counted when there was a problem. She dropped her hand.
“I take your point, Counselor,” she said coldly.
“Now let me make this very plain. This is not a meeting of the Quality Assurance Committee.”
“Why not?” Max asked. “I thought that’s what we’re here for.”
“Because if there are complaints concerning the members of this committee or officers of the Centre, we have to consider very carefully questions of conflict of interest as well as the rule, which I believe even psychiatrists accept, that investigators may not investigate themselves.”
“Look, there’s nothing here that deserves any attention out of the ordinary,” Clara interjected smoothly. “Raymond Cowles was a patient of mine when I was a resident here eighteen years ago. Harold Dickey was my supervisor. The patient’s treatment lasted for a period of nearly four years, was terminated in the normal way, and was successful in every respect.”
“Except the patient died.” Hartley said it coldly.
“That was uncalled for,” Dickey snapped angrily.
“Harold’s right,” Max chimed in. “Let’s keep our cool.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben Hartley said softly. “But I’m concerned.”
“We don’t know what happened to Raymond,” Clara said firmly. “We probably never will. Several months ago, he called me and said he was having trouble sleeping. I spoke with him once or twice. I prescribed a mild tranquilizer and told him I would refer him to another psychiatrist if he wanted to return to treatment. That’s all there is to it.”
Harold Dickey shifted in his seat, coughing for attention. Clara ignored him. “I would be happy to investigate,” he said suddenly.
Hartley jammed his fists into his eyes. “Harold, you amaze me. If you are being investigated, you cannot be the investigator. If we are sued—and I sincerely hope we aren’t—you and Clara will be the subjects of more than one investigation. It’s that simple. Now that leaves this committee with only two functional members.”
“Hold on, Ben,” Clara broke in. “Of course the subject of an investigation cannot be the investigator. That’s precisely why I’ve asked Dr. Frank to become involved and to review the matter for us. I’ve already turned the file in this matter over to him.” She did not glance in Harold Dickey’s direction, but the heat of his rage spread around the room. Only Hartley seemed unaware of it.
Hartley turned to Jason for the first time. Clara bent toward him, smiling encouragingly. Jason said nothing.
“Dr. Frank, what is your connection to the Centre?” Hartley asked.
“I did my training here. I’m an attending. My teaching title is lecturer at the medical school. I supervise residents. My other associations include—”
“Thank you. You seem to be sufficiently well qualified, and unconnected to the administration of the Centre, to review the case and make inquiries where necessary. I suggest we set up an ad hoc Quality Assurance Committee headed by you to oversee our internal handling of this matter.” Hartley rubbed his hands together as if relieved to find a solution.
“You’ll write a report, of course, and keep us informed of your progress,” he added, almost smiling.
“Good work, Ben. Then we’ll be relying on Jason to give us a preliminary take on the case.” Clara glanced at her watch. Done and done, and she was free to go.
“All that leaves us is to agree on a date and time to meet again. Dr. Frank, what day and time next week would be good for you?”
For the first time that day, Clara flipped open the expensive burgundy leather folder with her name embossed in gold. Inside, a used and leaking condom was stuck to her datebook. She slapped the folder closed, but not before everyone around the table had a chance to see what was inside it.
For several seconds there was shocked silence. Clara felt the public humiliation as violently as if she had taken a direct hit from a heat-seeking missile. Her vision blurred with the impact, and she was afraid she was losing consciousness.
Just then, Hartley snickered, and her vision cleared. Her eyes locked ferociously on Dickey. “Harold, I need to see you before I leave,” Clara said. “Gentlemen—this meeting is adjourned.”
harold
twenty-seven
Harold Dickey left Clara’s office with a pain in his chest. If he hadn’t been a doctor, he might have believed he was having a heart attack. The blood had drained from his face, robbing his cheeks of their healthy pink appearance. His skin was clammy and cold, gray as a filleted sole. He could feel the soft jowls under his chin jiggling with the slight tremor of his head that moved from side to side just the tiniest bit, out of his control. His eyes, sunk deep in pouchy purplish bags, burned with humiliation and distress. It hurt to be alive, to breathe, to think. The worst was it hurt to think.
Outside the executive suite, he stood leaning against the wall waiting for an elevator for a long time, for many minutes. No one passed by to ask him if he was all right. He wasn’t all right. He could feel the icy perspiration on his forehead, on his chest, under his arms. The tightness in his chest was an iron grip that wouldn’t let up. He punched the button for the elevator but nothing happened, punched it again. He was not having a heart attack, would not accept a heart attack. He’d always been careful about what he ate, walked four miles a day, and still played tennis with a few chosen residents. He could still beat many of them.
This was simply an attack of impotent rage to which the unfortunate reaction was a somatical imitation of a heart losing its rhythm, failing to pump oxygen into his lungs and brain and creating an unbearable pressure, a drop in body temperature. Cold sweats. It was not a heart attack. He was sure it was not. It was anger blocked at its source, white-hot and inexpressible, with nowhere to go but deeper inside.
How dare Clara blame him for humiliating her by putting a used condom in her appointment book? It was appalling, paranoid. Where would she get such a crazy idea? Why would he want to humiliate her—he loved her. All Harold wanted was to be loved by Clara Treadwell as he should be loved by her. That was all he wanted. He’d never humiliate her, never hurt her.
How could she jump to such an appalling conclusion and tell him he was through at the Centre? He’d been at the Centre all his adult life, had been the lifeblood and inspiration of the place for over thirty years. He was not only her teacher, but her mentor. He was everybody’s mentor. But most particularly he was hers. Clara Treadwell would have been a nobody without him. She was him; even her hopes had sprung from his ambitions for her. He had taught her everything he knew. Harold felt sick. But it was betrayal, not a heart attack.
He couldn’t get the image of her standing behind her desk in her office out of his mind. Now he would always see her like that, palms on the polished surface, leaning forward slightly, a look of utter conviction on her face. That expression of self-righteous hostility must be what judges, prosecutors, executioners wore. People who ended lives for the “public good.”
“Harold, you’ve gone too far. It’s over” was how she had started on him.
He was struck dumb. He didn’t get it. “What, my dear? What’s over?” They’d had a pleasant evening together Monday night They’d had several amicable communi
cations since. Until the meeting this morning, Harold had thought things were improving between them. He was the one who should be hurt and angry. He’d been advising Clara on the Cowles matter. And today she had publicly cut him out and replaced him with Jason Frank without even telling him first. It was outrageous.
Clara flipped open the folder. The condom still lay inside.
In the sudden movement he saw for the first time the bandage on her hand. “What happened to your hand?”
She didn’t answer.
“What’s the meaning of this? What’s going on, Clara?” he demanded.
She glared at him, the friendly old tic from her childhood leaping around in her cheek, signaling him that something was very wrong and that she blamed him for whatever it was.
“Where did this come from? What’s it about?” Harold was confused, couldn’t guess the meaning of her stance, of the expression on her face. Frigid rage.
“Don’t play the innocent with me, Harold.” Suddenly she began jabbing the air with her finger. “I know you too well.”
He could smell her perfume, Paris. The odor exuded from the scarf around her neck, from the deep purple wool of her suit The pain began in his chest Clara seemed disturbed, out of control. He’d never seen her like this.
“Don’t fuck around with me, Harold. I’ve been patient with you so far, extremely patient But I’ve had it. I can’t tolerate this anymore. You’ll have to leave, retire. You decide how you want to do it. You can’t stay any longer.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’ve been harassing me. You won’t let go.” She slapped shut the folder with its obscene contents. “You’re through, Harold.”
“Clara, I can’t even begin to imagine what—”
“I’m talking about what’s been going on up here. The vandalism, the thefts. The mysterious little things going wrong, things that only someone who knew this place very well could pull off. The threats on my life. The cut on my hand. And now—this! This is sick. What do you want to happen? Don’t you understand how dreadful this is? You’ll have to leave. That’s all there is to it.”