Blind Rage

by Terri Persons

  She’d spent part of the afternoon on her home laptop, trying to research the accomplishments of the younger VonHader. There weren’t many. The older sibling was the overachiever. She’d found scant background, good or bad, on Matthew. Unless hanging out at his brother’s office qualified as a career, he seemed to have no job. He was unmarried and had an appetite for expensive cars and a thirst for expensive booze. She got a glimpse of the Cabernet Sauvignon he’d pointed out to the waiter, and the wine list priced it at two hundred dollars a bottle.

  Their twenty-something server—a skinny kid with spiked hair who’d earlier introduced himself as Clive—came up to their table with pad and pen in hand. “Have we decided yet, or would we like a few more minutes?”

  Bernadette flipped the pages of the menu. She’d initially intended to stick with a quick salad but decided to stretch out the meeting to increase her chances of getting dirt on the doc. “I’m debating between the pineapple teriyaki salmon and the Moroccan chicken with chickpeas,” she said, glancing up at Clive for guidance.

  “Are you in a stew mood?” he asked.

  “Not particularly,” she said.

  “The Moroccan dish is a tagine of sorts, a stew,” said Clive. “So if you’re not in a stew mood, I’d suggest the salmon.”

  She closed her menu and handed it to him. “The salmon it is.”

  Clive turned to Matthew. “For the gentleman?”

  “I’m not in a stew mood either, but Moroccan sounds good.” Matthew pointed to his menu. “The Moroccan swordfish with yogurt sauce.”

  “Excellent choice,” said the waiter, scribbling. He nodded toward the half-empty wine bottle. “If you would like something with your fish, I could recommend—”

  “The Cab is fine,” interrupted Matthew.

  “Very well, sir.” Clive took their menus and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Matthew looked across the table at Bernadette. “The wine police are going to slam me for pairing red with fish, but screw ’em. I’m sick of all whites, especially the Pinot Grigios everybody’s drinking. They’ve been so overproduced and rushed, they’re practically tasteless. The light beer of white wine.”

  “What I know about wine you could fit on the back of a postage stamp,” she said, taking a sip of water.

  “Are you sure you won’t have a glass with me?” he asked, refilling his own.

  Bernadette didn’t want him getting plastered. So to keep him from guzzling it all, she pushed her glass toward him. “I’ll have one.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said, filling hers to the top.

  “That’s more than enough. Thank you.” She’d have to pick up her own tab and tried to calculate the cost of a single glass of two-hundred-dollar wine. Garcia was going to have a fit when he saw her expense account.

  He took a sip of wine. “Were you surprised that I called you?”

  “I was curious,” she said, fingering the stem of her wineglass. “How’d you get my number? Did you steal my card off your brother’s desk?”

  “I rescued it from Chaz,” he said. “He was about to deposit it in the circular file.”

  “Chaz?”

  “Charles, my brother’s manservant.” He took a sip of wine.

  “Chaz…yeah—he hustled you out of there before we could talk at the office,” said Bernadette. “Did Luke tell him to do that? What was your brother afraid of? What didn’t he want you to say to me?”

  Matthew dodged her questions by rambling on and on about Charles. “Luke was going to hire a woman after Rosemary retired, but then Chaz called for a job. One of the old neighborhood gang. He’s more my brother’s friend than mine. I don’t like him. He’s so—I don’t know—smarmy. Don’t you think it’s odd to have a male receptionist? He makes shit coffee. A pretty young woman would be so much more—”

  “What are you intending to tell me or give me?”

  “My brother said you were interested in lithium.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “Lithium is one of the oldest and most frequently prescribed drugs for the treatment of bipolar disorder. There’s nothing criminal in the fact that a bottle of lithium was found in Kyra Klein’s home.”

  “What if I told you Klein could have been murdered with the help of those meds? Would you classify that as criminal?”

  He polished off his glass of wine. “You may not be privy to the fact that Miss Klein’s own mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and committed suicide when Kyra was a child.”

  “How would I know that? Your brother is sitting on her file.”

  “You should also be made aware that Miss Klein attempted to kill herself a couple of years ago.”

  Big brother had no qualms about sharing with his younger sibling. So much for patient privacy, thought Bernadette. “Sounds like Luke was having trouble helping his patient manage her illness.”

  Matthew emptied the remainder of the bottle into his glass. “Her suicide attempt was while she was under the care of another physician. She’d been improperly diagnosed as having depression and was on medication that made her bipolar disorder worse.”

  “So your brother rescued her.”

  “My brother made the correct diagnosis and got her going on the proper medication.”

  “And she died anyway.”

  He shrugged. “It happens.”

  “Is that going to be your brother’s defense if Kyra Klein’s family drags him into court? Death happens?”

  “I really doubt her family is going to sue,” he said.

  “Your brother is worried about it,” she said. “That’s why he won’t talk to me.”

  He took a long drink of wine. “He’s protective of his patients and their privacy, as he should be.”

  “I’ll tell you what I told him: Kyra Klein is dead!”

  Diners a table away stopped talking and looked over at them. “You’re scaring the children,” Matthew said with a smirk.

  She leaned forward and said in a lower voice, “He needs to give me those files.”

  “The police didn’t ask for them.”

  “We’re approaching this case from different angles.”

  “Can we please get off the subject of Miss Klein?”

  “Fine.” She took a drink of water. “What can you tell me about Zoe Cameron?”

  He sipped his wine. “Never heard of her.”

  She didn’t believe him. “You seem to know a lot about your brother’s business. Have you got one of your own? What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m in between jobs.” He eyed her untouched wineglass. “Is there something wrong with the Cab?”

  She picked up her glass and took a small sip. “No. It’s fine.”

  He grinned. “Oh, I get it. The wily FBI agent gets the dummy drunk so he spills his proverbial guts.”

  “Now, Matt, if I did that, I couldn’t trust or use what you gave me.” She took another sip of wine to appease him. “Besides, I’m not the one who called this meeting. In fact, I’m a little mystified as to why you even bothered. This is your brother’s problem.”

  “Problem? Is he in trouble for declining to answer your questions?”

  His concern for his brother sounded genuine, and she played off it. “His lack of cooperation doesn’t look good. He seems more interested in covering his backside than in getting to the bottom of what happened.”

  “He’s following federal patient privacy guidelines.”

  “Baloney,” she said. “He’s got a lot of wiggle room when it comes to those regs. He could help us more.”

  “Has he done anything illegal?”

  “Maybe not illegal, but certainly unethical.”

  “My brother is not only one of the top psychiatrists in the country but also an honorable and generous man. On his own time and at his own expense, he developed a school-based program that screens teens for mental illness. He’s worked hard to increase the public’s understanding of brain disorders through free educational seminars. He goes to bat
for patients who are discriminated against on the job. He started a suicide help line that is still up and running and saving lives today.” He took a deep drink, nearly finishing his wine, and pointed a finger at her. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a more ethical and giving man than Luke.”

  “He needs to give to me. When a patient dies—”

  “It’s tragic, but it happens.” He drained his glass. “People with mental illness are at great risk for—”

  She held up her hand to stop him. “I already heard the company line.”

  “It’s not a line,” he shot back. He ran his eyes around the restaurant. Catching the waiter’s attention, he pointed to the empty bottle.

  She took a sip of water and checked her watch. She regretted ordering dinner. The conversation was moving in circles, and he was getting drunk. “Why am I here?”

  “You’re here because you’re hoping I’ll say something inflammatory that you can use against my brother. Get him to turn over those patient files.”

  Staring at him, she wondered if he was one of those rare individuals who actually got smarter as they got drunker. “Fair enough. Why are you here?”

  He grinned. “I wanted to have dinner with a beautiful, interesting woman.”

  “Spare me.”

  His smile flattened. “I wanted to see why you were focusing on my brother. He doesn’t make a very good first impression, and I wanted to…”

  “Do a little PR work for him?”

  He shifted in his seat. “Don’t you have any siblings, Bernadette? Someone you feel protective of?”

  She noticed a catch in his voice. Had he somehow found out that she’d lost a sister years ago? Rather than answer his question, she said evenly, “Your brother is a smart man. He doesn’t need your help.” She took a sip of wine. “He went to Harvard, I noticed. Saw the degree on his office wall. Did you go there, too?”

  Matthew barked a laugh.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” she said with a small smile.

  “It’s a difficult school to get into,” said Matthew, trying to recover a little dignity. “I don’t know any other people in our circle who went there.”

  “I just met a professor at the U. Wakefielder. He went to Harvard. He’s about Luke’s age.”

  “Don’t know him,” said Matthew. “Is he at the medical school?”

  “Literature professor,” she said.

  “The liberal arts,” he said somberly. “Good stuff.”

  “You’re sure you don’t know him? Luke wouldn’t know him?”

  “Sorry.” He perked up as he saw Clive approach. The waiter showed Matthew the label, uncorked the bottle, and poured a small amount. Matthew tasted it and nodded. “Very good.”

  “Matt, I’m only good for the one glass,” she interjected.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I’m good for more than one.”

  A lot more, thought Bernadette. Watching Clive refill Matthew’s wineglass, she hoped she wouldn’t have to give her dining companion a ride home. As far as she was concerned, she’d wasted enough time with this man. “Will our food be much longer?” she asked as the waiter set down the bottle.

  “I’ll check,” said Clive.

  Matthew took a drink of wine. “What’s the rush? It’s a Saturday night.”

  “Believe it or not, I still have work to do,” she said.

  “Now you sound like my brother.”

  “He’s a taskmaster?”

  “Taskmaster. Perfectionist. Always on the job.”

  “What do his patients think of him?”

  “They like him.” He took another drink. “No. Wait. Like isn’t the correct word. They respect him. I doubt any of them actually like him. For all his good works, he’s not a likable man. I don’t think his own wife likes him. She loves him, I’m sure. But she doesn’t like him.”

  If not enlightening, the conversation was at least getting interesting. She wondered what a third bottle would do for him. “Why is Luke unlikable? Does he have a temper?”

  He retrieved his goblet and used it to motion toward her. “You’re trying to get me to say something incriminating about Luke, and I refuse to do it. As I said, he’s a saint.”

  “An unlikable saint.”

  “Like our father,” he said, and downed his glass of wine. “Strict. Disciplined. Very moral. Very Catholic.”

  “Hence Matthew and Luke,” she said.

  “Exactly. My parents were very fond of biblical names.” He tipped his empty wineglass toward her. “Not that Bernadette is a slouch name when it comes to holiness.”

  “What do your parents do for a living?”

  “Mother was a homemaker. That’s the politically correct term, isn’t it? Father was a psychiatrist.”

  “Was. He’s retired?”

  He shook his head. “Deceased. Both my parents are deceased. And you?”

  “My parents are dead, too,” she said. “Heart stuff.”

  “That’s what did my mother in,” he said sympathetically. “Bad ticker.”

  “Your father?”

  “He had a lot of health problems. He was older. They were both older parents. At least they never had to be in a nursing home.” He sighed and asked wearily, “So…no husband? No Mr. Saint Clare?”

  This conversation was depressing her. She held up her barren left hand. “What about you?”

  “Unattached,” he said, sighing again.

  Mercifully, the waiter materialized with their dinners, setting a steaming plate down in front of each of them. Clive noticed Matthew’s wineglass was nearly empty and refilled it. “Is there anything else I can get for the two of you?”

  “I’m good,” said Bernadette, her hands folded in her lap.

  “I’ll check back in a few minutes,” said Clive, moving on to the next table.

  “This looks divine,” Matthew said, picking up his fork.

  She waited for him to resume the melancholy Q and A, but he’d put his head down and was poking at his fish. She tried to keep her voice light. “How large of a family did you come from, Matt?”

  Rather than answer he took a drink of water. “Would you please pass the bread?”

  She handed him the basket. His eyes were down as he fiddled with a pat of butter. He’d gone from a painfully personal discussion to a quiet fascination with hard-crust rolls. The wine must have loosened his tongue too much and now he was reining it back in. Maybe if she gave him an opening, he’d resume the proverbial gut-spillage. “I came from a small family, especially by farm standards.”

  “Came?”

  She pushed a cube of pineapple around with her fork. “I had a twin sister. She died when we were in high school.”

  He looked up from his food. “I’m sorry. An illness or…an accident?”

  “Drunk driver.”

  He nodded. “It must have been hard. Did they get the fiend?”

  “Slap on the wrist,” she said.

  “Do you have any others in your family?”

  “Cousins,” she said. “Otherwise—”

  “You’re all alone.”

  “Yes,” she said, although she didn’t like hearing someone say it out loud.

  “How does that make you feel?” he asked somberly.

  “I’m okay with it,” she said hesitantly.

  “I suppose your work helps.”

  She popped a wedge of fish into her mouth and waited for him to say something, but he returned to his meal in silence. She washed the salmon down with a drink of water. “Your turn to share.”

  He glanced up. “My turn?”

  “What about your family? Besides your parents, anyone else? Any other siblings?”

  “There’s just the two of us.”

  “You and Luke and that’s it?”

  He nodded and looked away.

  Something is wrong there, she thought.

  AS THEY STOOD under a streetlamp outside the restaurant, the October wind buffeted their backs and sent crumpled McDonald’s bags flying p
ast their ankles. Urban tumbleweeds. She waited patiently while the swaying man searched for his buttonholes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a man in St. Paul wearing fur. It wasn’t something moderately rustic, like a raccoon jacket or a beaver bomber. It was a full-length black mink coat with wide lapels.

  “I wish you had let me pay,” he said, finally unearthing the holes and buttoning up. “Going Dutch with a woman is so junior high.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said, pulling on her leather gloves. “Let me hail you a cab and you can pay for that.”

  “I don’t need a ride,” he said, pulling on his gloves.

  “You can leave your car in the ramp,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

  They both stepped to one side. A Wild hockey game had just let out, and a wave of green jerseys was rolling down the sidewalks. A couple of the female fans eyed the mink as they passed Matthew.

  “I walked here and I can walk back,” he said.

  “Where do you live?”

  He thumbed over his shoulder, toward the Mississippi River. “Across the bridge. I’ll be home before your car warms up.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  He buried his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the gale. “Are you in the ramp? I can at least walk you to your car.”

  She didn’t want him to know she lived downtown and had walked to the restaurant. “Don’t worry about it. I’m close. Parked on the street.”

  “You sure? I don’t mind a little walk.”

  “I’m good.” She held out her hand. “Thank you. It was interesting.”

  “Interesting,” he repeated as he shook her hand.

  “No. Seriously. It was…nice.”

  He stood staring at her for a moment, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. A teenage boy trying to put closure on a disastrous first date. “Well, good night,” he said with a tip of his head, and turned his back to leave.

  “Matt?”

  He pivoted around, a pained expression on his face. His escape had been delayed. “Yes?”