O’Shea hesitated, the first time in our whole conversation. “No, Ned and Eric had a falling out quite some time ago.”
He dipped his head in a butler’s bow. “Good night, Doctor Henderson.” The door closed so fast I was barely able to step out of the way.
ELEVEN
I sat for a while in my car, thinking about Russo. So much of him seemed right there on the surface, but nobody got as far as he did in Washington without a lot of guile. I could bet his first instinct would be to protect himself. That’s why the phone bill was important. Hard evidence like that would be difficult to explain away. Being connected, no matter how remotely, to a twenty-five-year-old multiple-murder/suicide could turn into a real problem. Russo might decide to let Scottie off the hook just so the whole thing would go away.
I started the engine and pulled away. The neighborhood had the overpolished feel of Disneyland after the lights went out. My plan was to drive to Felix’s place and pick up Scottie, but in a few blocks I found myself lost on another winding cul-de-sac. I pulled over and brought up a map on my phone. After I got started again, I made a left on Macomb Street, and I saw lights in my mirror. At the next turn, they stayed with me. That was odd given the zigzag route I was taking. I pulled over again, expecting the car to pass, but it stopped. It was a low-slung Acura, brand new from what I could see. The muffler was tuned to make a throaty rumble.
I shut down the engine and waited. The driver doused his lights. Two minutes passed, then four. I couldn’t sit there all night. Then the other car’s lights popped back on. It backed up smoothly to the closest intersection and turned away.
Shaking my head, I pulled back onto the street. Two blocks later, lights flashed up again in my mirror, this time farther behind. I wasn’t sure it was the same car. The whole thing might be my imagination, brought on by the weird feel of Palisades at night. Still, it was enough to make me worried. I didn’t want to lead somebody to Scottie.
I turned and came out on MacArthur Boulevard. Half a mile on, I pulled into the parking lot of a bank. I rolled down my window and thought I could hear the rumble of that engine. Then I changed my mind: nothing there. Anyway, I’d already decided.
I took out my phone and dialed Felix’s number. “How’s it going with Scottie?” I said after he picked up.
“Pretty good. He’s quite a character.”
“Right.”
“You don’t sound too happy,” Felix said.
“No. I’ve got a—” Problem wasn’t quite the right word. “I’ve got to take a detour. I know it’s an imposition, but can he spend the night with you?”
“Might as well. He’s already asleep. About an hour ago he opened all the windows in the sunroom and sacked out on the sofa in there.”
“He didn’t sleep well at my place last night. He’s just catching up.”
“I offered him the guest room, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he wanted to sleep somewhere ‘better ventilated.’”
The couch in Felix’s sunroom was a lot more comfortable than a sling chair on my balcony. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
“How are you doing?” Felix asked.
“I just came from talking to someone. I think things may start to turn around. Maybe the FBI’s going to call off the dogs on Scottie.”
“That sounds like good news, but I asked how you were doing.”
“Better than you figured. Do you remember that conference we went to on Gestalt? There was a woman on the last panel who said some patients are gifts and therapists just need to learn how to receive.”
“Sure,” Felix said. “And I remember what I said—horse crap.”
“Loud enough for the whole room to hear. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe Scottie’s just that for me, a gift. All day I’ve been going back, remembering, and it didn’t bother me. I learned a few things from the people I talked to tonight. Not anything major, just a few details. The point is, I could cope. More than cope. I was interested, tuned in. No side effects.”
“Well, you know what my feeling is.”
“Forward, not back,” I recited. And now I wanted to change the subject. “What did you two get up to today?”
“This and that. I never did beat him at chess. He wouldn’t watch television or read, so we talked quite a bit. It’s amazing the things he knows. He says he can’t cook, but he told me exactly what I did wrong making lasagna for dinner. It was so bad I chucked it in the trash. We walked all the way to the McDonald’s on Van Ness to get something.”
“Sounds like you enjoyed having him around,” I said.
“I did, to tell you the truth. He’s halfway between a guest and patient. Maybe that makes him a puzzle. Anyway, this story is like the oyster and the grain of sand. Long term, he’s an irritant, and I’m too old to be making any pearls.”
“I hear you. And Scottie may not have the manners to say it, but thanks for everything you’re doing for him.”
“He thinks a lot of you, Cal. The things he told me about when you were kids together were priceless.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like going into the field down the road from your house and trying to get the bull and cow to mate.”
“He remembered that?” I said.
“He said it was the most arousing thing he’s ever seen.”
“He should date more.”
“That he should. Good night, buckaroo.”
I was still smiling when I turned off MacArthur Boulevard, heading for Dupont Circle and home. If that Acura was following me, it didn’t much matter now. Scottie was safely tucked in for the night, and I would be soon.
I parked in my usual spot behind my building. A car passed on the street, but there was no low rumble. I waited a few minutes, then made a circuit around the block. If the Acura was out there, I didn’t spot it.
There was a message on my answering machine from Tori telling me she’d be late getting to work tomorrow—no explanation given. There was also a call from Tim Regis. He’d finished his meeting in New York and was on the train back to DC. He sounded as if he’d had a long day, and maybe a few glasses of wine, so I decided I’d wait until morning to bother him with a return call.
I made my promised call to Jamie Weston. It switched over to voice mail. “Jamie, this is Cal Henderson. Thanks for setting up the meeting with Eric Russo. He didn’t commit to anything, but I think our talk was helpful. Give me a call if you want the details.”
I should have signed off then, kept it all business. Instead, I scrambled for a pithy way to end. “A funny thing happened. I thought somebody was following me when I left Russo’s house. It turned out not to be anything, but it made me think of you.” Where was I going with this? “They probably teach you people evasive driving. Maybe you can give me some pointers sometime.”
I hung up before I made a bigger fool of myself. You people? Where did that come from?
I paced around the apartment for a few minutes. One thing about being a therapist: it’s not an exact science. I say something out of bounds three or four times a day. I’ve learned to get past it quickly. Still, what I’d said was true. When it first dawned on me that someone might be following me, I’d thought of Weston. A picture of her actually came into my mind. Why was that?
I went to the window and stared down at the street. If somebody had been tailing me, they must have known I’d be at Russo’s. As far as I was aware, the only people who knew were O’Shea and Russo—and Jamie Weston. Could she have been waiting for me, hoping I’d take her to Scottie? At the same instant I thought of that, the picture of her came back to me, giving that bright, careless laugh of hers. It was like thinking in stereo, dark and light.
I shook my head and put it all out of my mind.
I’d only had a quick bite to eat for dinner, so I went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. I brought it back to the living room. Before we headed for Felix’s place in the morning, I convinced Scottie to leave his things here. I didn’t want that gun anywher
e near Felix’s house. There were a lot of things he couldn’t tolerate, and guns were near the top of the list.
The gun wasn’t what was on my mind now, though. From time to time throughout the day, I’d thought about Scottie’s stack of papers. I fished them out of his backpack and settled in on the sofa.
I wasn’t interested in any big picture—just the flavor of our life back then. Right on the top sheet was something. It was one of the bank account statements, and the first entry was a fifteen-dollar check to Cub Scout Pack 481. Ron had been in the scouts; Alan and I opted for sports. Down the sheet there were four checks to Karl Hildebrandt. Dr. Hildebrandt had been our family doctor. I wondered who’d been sick.
An hour passed as I pored over the bank statements. I spent another twenty minutes looking at the receipt for the gun. Back then, I would have had no idea where Sterling was. Now I imagined my mother going to Virginia to pick it up from her friend. Down I-270 and around the Beltway. What would she have been thinking?
I set the receipt aside. Next in the pile were the four autopsy reports. These wouldn’t tell me anything important about my family, just the end. I suppose though, I wanted to test myself.
First up was my father’s. I paged through it. Mostly it was technical jargon. The photographs of his body had been copied so many times they were just a gray wash. When I reached the end, I was struck by how little I remembered of him. He wasn’t one of those absentee dads. When I was little, he ran his business out of our house and was usually there when I got home from school, asking me how my day had been. He was a political consultant. I remembered a lot of talk about a mayor’s election in Rockville. He was proud his man won. A year before he died, he joined up with another man, and they opened an office somewhere in Bethesda. I didn’t see as much of him after that.
Now, twenty-five years on, I couldn’t think of a personal detail about him. Except for my Aunt Renee, he didn’t have any family living. What did he like to do? Fishing? Gardening? Golf? I could barely picture him, couldn’t remember his voice at all. I realized how odd that was, given how much I remembered about my mother. Maybe it all traced back to her. She’d taken a lot of my memories—along with their lives.
I looked down at the stack of papers. My mother’s autopsy report was next.
“Cal? Cal! What in God’s name are you doing!”
“What?” There was glass in front of me. A face on the other side—floating. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? What the hell are you making all the noise for?”
The glass swung back, and the face loomed close to me. “Are you all right?”
“Sure, I . . .” Whoosh. Everything pulled back into focus.
The glass was the front door of my apartment building. I was standing on the stoop. The face was Lucinda, from 1B. Her roommate, Chelsea, was behind her. They were wearing matching Mother Hubbards, and from the looks on their faces, they were damned angry.
“Sorry. I went for a walk. I, uh . . .” I tapped my pockets. “Forgot my keys.”
“You don’t have to wake up the whole neighborhood,” Chelsea said.
“You’re right. I . . .” I moved past Lucinda and up the stairs. “I’ll let you two get back to bed. Thanks for letting me in.”
By the time I reached the second floor, the threads were coming together in my mind. I remembered meeting with Russo and O’Shea, driving home and stopping to phone Felix. I remembered leaving a message for Jamie Weston. What happened after that was fuzzier. Scottie’s pile of papers. Cub Scouts. Guns. Thinking about my father.
I got to my door and cursed. How was I going to get in without my keys? No, I did have them, in my back pocket where I never carried them.
I let myself in. The lights were on, and my half eaten sandwich was on the coffee table. The autopsy report was there. I took a step toward it and froze. It was open to a page of photographs—not gray blotches, but pictures of my mother, clear as day on the grass in our backyard. I didn’t even recall picking up her report.
Keeping my head turned away, I flipped it closed. That’s when I noticed I wasn’t wearing any shoes. Behind me, I’d left a trail of bloody footprints.
I sat on the floor to check out the damage. There was a gash in each heel and a few bad scuffs and bruises. A fat drop of blood hit my finger, and I nearly lost it again—the rushing sound in my head, the floating feeling. I grabbed the edge of the coffee table and drove my feet into the floor, making the cuts scream with pain. Hang on. Hang on.
TWELVE
I went to sleep the moment I lay down, and in the morning the alarm buzzed for fifteen minutes before I heard it. With a shower and coffee and fresh bandages on my feet, I felt better. I packed my briefcase and stood staring at Scottie’s backpack. I’d put the papers in there before I went to bed, but something was bothering me about them. I even dreamed about it. Thinking it might come to me later, I grabbed the backpack and headed to work.
Wednesdays I kept my appointments calendar clear until eleven o’clock. I used the time to catch up on correspondence and the never-ending stream of journal articles that therapists have to read to keep current. Usually it was a quiet time around the office, so I was surprised to hear the phone ringing when I got to the door.
I checked the caller ID before I answered. “Felix, is everything all right?”
“Oh . . . I thought she’d answer.”
“Scottie, is that you?”
“Yes. I thought your secretary . . .”
“Tori’s coming in late today. Did you want to speak to her?”
“No. Well, sort of. You know, the other day when I was there—does she always look like that?”
“Every day of the week.”
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. I’ll tell her you asked for her.”
“No! Don’t do that.”
“All right—if you say so. So how’s it going over there? Felix told me you guys had a few games of chess yesterday.”
“He shouldn’t play chess.” Scottie laughed and lowered his voice. “He shouldn’t cook either.”
“Yeah, but let’s keep that between the two of us.”
“I wanted to ask you . . . am I still in trouble?” I recognized the pleading tone and could imagine the pouty look on his face.
“I saw Eric Russo last night. We had a good talk. Maybe he’s going to forget the whole thing.”
“Did he admit he knew your mom?”
“We talked about that some. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”
“What did he say about the phone calls? You asked him, didn’t you? And showed him the phone bill?”
“Scottie, calm down. I’ll fill you in on everything later. I should be able to get there right after I finish work, around six o’clock.”
“OK,” he said grumpily. “I’ve got to fix Felix’s computer today.”
I was on the phone at Tori’s desk, and the cord was long enough so I could lean against the wall by the window. “What’s wrong with his computer?”
“If I knew that it’d be fixed already.”
“No need to get snippy,” I shot back at him. “Is Felix there?”
“No. He’s walking Coop. He told me I couldn’t go.”
I could see into the parking lot behind the building. Somebody was sitting on the concrete barrier by my car. I couldn’t make out much except that it was a female, dark hair.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “Every morning, Felix chats up this widow who lives around the corner. He didn’t want you messing up his action.”
“Oh,” Scottie said. “That’s great.” He sounded so much happier, I smiled.
The figure in the parking lot moved, brushing her hair back. I caught a flash of her face. Dead-pale skin, blue around the eyes.
“Scottie I’ve got to go. See you at six—and good luck with that computer.”
I went out the front door and around the building so she wouldn’t see me coming. “Hi there,” I called.
&
nbsp; Her head jerked up, and I thought she might try to bolt past me. Instead she took the mature approach, pointing her nose in the air. “Yes, good morning.”
“You’re Cass Russo, right? I’m Dr. Henderson.” I put out my hand, and, as she reached for it, she dropped the clutch purse she was carrying. A pack of cigarettes fell out. I acted as if I didn’t notice. “So what brings you around here?”
She shrugged. “Just hanging out.”
I looked around the parking lot. “You like cars?”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I don’t know why else you’d want to hang out here.” I turned and slouched against my car, relaxing as a way of getting her to do the same. “Unless you came to see me.”
She picked at her shoelaces. She was wearing Converse All Stars, pink, and the same ragged jeans as yesterday. At least the punk rockers were gone, replaced by a baggy white dress shirt. One of her father’s? I wondered.
“How did you get my address?” I said.
She shrugged again. “You left a business card in my dad’s study.”
I’d forgotten that. “OK. What can I do for you?”
Ask her a question, get a shrug. “My dad said you noticed my bracelet.” She jingled it on her wrist. “I’ve told him and told him about my name, but he never listened until last night.” Yet another shrug. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Names can be important to people. That’s normal enough.” I knew that from personal experience. I also knew I couldn’t just say, well, thanks for stopping by, and leave her sitting there.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you come in to my office. It’s better than this smelly parking lot.”
Cass flopped down on the couch and propped her feet on the coffee table. If Tori had seen her do that she would have screeched. I had less attachment to the furniture.
“Can I have some coffee?” Cass said.
The Survivors Page 9