Enter by the Narrow Gate

by David Carlson

  A college-aged orderly escorted Worthy through a series of locked doors and down thickly carpeted hallways. At yet another locked door, the orderly glanced through the small pane of reinforced glass before unlocking the entrance to the adolescent unit. On the left, halfway down the hallway, Worthy was shown the office of Dr. Jane Cartwright.

  A middle-aged woman with a stern gaze, gray hair pulled tightly to her head, admitted him into the room. The place seemed made entirely of metal: filing cabinets and a large desk, its top bare and shiny, along with the two heavy steel chairs.

  As soon as the psychiatrist had closed the door behind them, she asked, “First, Lieutenant, can you tell me if you think Ellie is all right?”

  Worthy remained standing as he explained that Ellie was proving harder to find than anyone had first thought. “She could be in a great deal of trouble, or she could be simply hiding out somewhere,” he said.

  “Which is why I called, Lieutenant. Please sit down.”

  As he did so, Worthy wondered if Ellie VanBruskman had sat in his chair, telling this doctor all her secrets. On the chance that she was still alive, Worthy hoped so.

  “I appreciate your contacting me, doctor. Ellie is proving a difficult person for us to understand,” he began.

  Still standing, Dr. Cartwright took off her glasses and let them dangle from a chain around her neck. “In the end, the VanBruskmans and I couldn’t work together, so I knew you wouldn’t get my name from them. I apologize for disturbing your ex-wife. The whole thing seemed a bit awkward for her.”

  “It’s okay. We still speak.”

  “Always best for the children when you do,” she said. She sat down behind her desk and stared at him for a moment. “I have some information that might help you.”

  Worthy didn’t get his hopes up. He’d heard that promise too many times before.

  “But,” she added, “for legal reasons I’ll explain later, it would be better if you told me what you already know before I comment.”

  “What we know? That won’t take long. We know that Ellie went to New Mexico to find a young man named Victor Martinez.” Worthy watched the doctor’s face but saw no reaction to the name. “We haven’t been able to find him, either, so we don’t know if they’re together or not. And we know that Mr. Martinez left here last November over some problem at the college. The last thing we’ve learned is that Ellie was aware of Victor’s problem and blamed Allgemein.”

  Dr. Cartwright jotted down a few notes as he spoke. “Are you at liberty to tell me what you’ve learned from the college?” she asked.

  “People there either don’t know anything or they won’t tell me.”

  The psychiatrist sat back and glanced toward the room’s only window. “And Ellen? What did you think of her?”

  Worthy looked puzzled. “But I said we haven’t found Ellie.”

  “No, no, Lieutenant. Ellen is the mother’s name. I see you didn’t know that.”

  Ellen and Ellie—was that supposed to mean something? He scratched his chin. “Mothers don’t usually give daughters their own names, do they?”

  “It’s very rare. Not like men.”

  “I’m sure that’s not the only thing the VanBruskmans have kept from me. Something the father said led me to believe they’re angry at her for maybe getting away.”

  “That’s something worth pondering, Lieutenant.” Dr. Cartwright opened a drawer, withdrew a folder and laid it on the desk, her hands, palms down, on top of it. “Let’s put the parents aside for a while. Are you willing to toy with perjury to learn more about Ellie and Victor Martinez, Lieutenant?”

  “Perjury? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, Lieutenant. If you’re asked in court if we discussed details from this file, are you willing to deny that under oath?”

  Worthy pondered the question. “I’d say you’re taking more of a risk than me. But yes, if it helps me find the girl, I will.”

  Dr. Cartwright nodded firmly, put her glasses back on, and began turning pages. “Excellent. Ellie was a patient here from March through May of last year. She then became an outpatient, again under my care, until late December. So you can see that I treated Ellie during the period when Victor Martinez came into her life.” She paused on one page. “It looks like I didn’t hear the boy’s name until September, so I assume that’s when they met.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Here’s the way that I’d describe their relationship, Lieutenant,” she said, looking over her glasses at him. “In September, Victor was like a third parent to Ellie, but by November he was more like a younger brother.”

  “Does that mean Ellie was getting better, or had Victor changed?” Worthy asked.

  “A fair question, but one I can’t fully answer. You see, I was treating only Ellie. Trying to be objective, I’d say that Ellie made good progress on some serious underlying issues during the fall. Her mother thought just the opposite, by the way. I guess we can’t talk about Ellie without talking about the mother.”

  “Ellie and Ellen,” Worthy repeated.

  “There you are, Lieutenant. Keep thinking about that. But if we’re talking about Victor, I’d say that he became needier as she grew stronger. It’s a common reaction.”

  “Were they lovers?” Worthy asked.

  Dr. Cartwright looked past Worthy before speaking. “If Ellie had romantic feelings for Victor in September, they would have been infantile and unstable. That’s simply another way of saying that I wondered the same thing and worried a bit. Gradually I realized that Victor wasn’t that kind of threat. Ellie described him as very religious. Are we still talking about the same boy?”

  “All of what you say matches,” Worthy replied. “Did she ever mention Victor feeling obsessively guilty about something, perhaps the accidental death of another boy?”

  The psychiatrist sat back in her chair and removed her glasses. “In early November, Ellie came in one day and said that she was very upset. It seems that Victor had had several meltdowns, crying fits, in her room when they were supposed to be studying. Now, remember that Victor was her only real friend in college. He’d just told her that he was quitting school and going back home. I remember that afternoon vividly, because I was relieved to see how Ellie handled it. She was sad, which is appropriate under the circumstances, but she wasn’t panicky. I also noted in her file that her capacity for empathy was clearly increasing. She truly felt bad for Victor. But she didn’t say anything about a boy dying.”

  “Which means that she didn’t tell you why he wanted to leave,” Worthy said.

  “No, but I remember advising her to encourage Victor to talk to someone at the college.”

  “I’m pretty sure he did that,” Worthy interjected, “but I think it backfired.”

  The psychiatrist nodded as she returned to her notes. “That seems borne out by something I’ve written here from two weeks later. That would be about the end of November. Ellie told me that Victor had in fact confided in two persons from the college, but it seems they only made things worse.”

  Two people? Beside Father Veneri, who was the second? Stott hardly described his meeting with Victor as the boy confiding in him.

  A new thought made Worthy stir in his chair. “Did Ellie ever tell you that Victor thought he was being followed?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “From the way Ellie talked about Victor, I can imagine that he was disintegrating psychologically, maybe already hallucinating. He could have thought he was seeing the dead boy.”

  Worthy sat in silence for a moment. Dr. Cartwright and Father Veneri both agreed that Victor had just imagined being followed.

  “How else can I help you, Lieutenant?”

  There’s more, he thought. She knows more. But what? He consulted his notes before looking up. “Did Ellie ever talk about running away from home?” Dr. Cartwright looked at him pensively. “People verbalize a lot of things in therapy, but
most never become serious plans. My job is to sift through what I’m hearing and find the patterns. When Ellie stopped coming to me, I had a clear sense of her plan. I knew that the parents were about to terminate treatment, so I asked her to dream out loud, to tell me what she wanted for herself. First on her list was finishing college, which in light of what you’re reporting may be important. She verbalized that goal after Victor had left Allgemein.”

  Worthy’s concentration was broken by the sound of running, then shouting, in the hallway outside the door.

  The psychiatrist didn’t even glance over toward the noise. “That’s not unusual, Lieutenant. They’ll buzz me if they need my help.”

  Worthy tried to make sense of what the psychiatrist had said. “What you’re telling me only makes things more confusing. You’re saying that in December Ellie sounded healthy enough to imagine finishing college without Victor. Yet in the spring she runs away.”

  “Then perhaps I am at fault,” Dr. Cartwright said, looking at Worthy intently. “Ellie may not have talked about running away, but then again she’s nineteen. Another part of her plan was to move out of their house.”

  Dr. Cartwright’s emphasis on the word “their” struck Worthy like a brick. A flood of images came to his mind—the angry face of Arrol VanBruskman lurching toward him, the cool wariness in his wife’s eyes, the unicorns imprisoned in Ellie’s desk, and the empty glass of Scotch on the floor. Last to surface was a memory of the odd line in Ellie’s final letter to Victor, “those old people pretending to be parents.”

  He sat silently, aware that the psychiatrist was studying him.

  “My God, Ellie’s adopted,” he whispered slowly.

  Dr. Cartwright put her glasses back on and nodded slowly.

  “That’s why they fired you, isn’t it? You helped Ellie figure that out.”

  Again, the psychiatrist nodded. The whole world seemed eerily quiet as Worthy sat with his thoughts.

  “Maybe there’s yet another question you want to ask me?” Dr. Cartwright asked.

  Without waiting for a response, she passed two photos across the desk. One showed Ellie on the day of her admission to Mercy Center, and the other was of Ellie on the day of her release. In the first, the girl looked no more than thirteen, hair in pigtails, eyes dull, her face pudgy with acne eruptions. In the second, Ellie seemed older, more alert, even smiling faintly. In the second, she looked less like the VanBruskmans.

  He flipped back to the first, sensing he was missing something. He studied the dead eyes of the first one before being drawn to the hair. It was light, not unlike the color of Mrs. VanBruskman’s. In the later photo, her hair was black as Sera’s.

  His heart raced. “Were Ellie’s real parents Hispanic?”

  The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Lieutenant. I’m quite sure she didn’t run away to find her mother.”

  “Why not? It all makes sense.”

  “First of all, you seem pretty certain that she ran away to find Victor. What would he have to do with a search for her mother? But there’s something else. When Ellie told her parents that she knew the big dark secret, they insisted on coming personally with her the next time. That was when they terminated our sessions. Mrs. VanBruskman was livid, claiming they would sue me for ruining their family.”

  Dr. Cartwright paused to recover her composure. “I was very proud of Ellie, Lieutenant. Mrs. VanBruskman was raging, telling Ellie that she was sicker than when she’d first been hospitalized. Ellie just smiled and then asked to know the name of her true mother. Mr. VanBruskman laughed in her face. ‘What? Are you planning on going down to South Miami?’ he asked. I didn’t get the feeling that he was lying.”

  Dr. Cartwright closed the folder, took off the half glasses, and looked up. Her eyes were full of pain.

  “May I ask you a question, Lieutenant?”

  Worthy nodded.

  “How did Ellie sound in her letters to Victor? Was her thinking disoriented or loose in any way?”

  Worthy looked out the small, wire-reinforced window. To help the Ellies of this city, this woman locked herself up with them. Some got better, and no doubt some didn’t. And then some, like Ellie VanBruskman, got too healthy—so healthy that those who signed them in didn’t like it.

  “Everything Ellie wrote,” he told the doctor, “sounded focused. I think she clearly expected to find Victor.”

  “ ‘Focused,’ ” Dr. Cartwright repeated, gazing down at her desk. “God, how I hope you’re right. Whenever a client is ripped out of treatment like she was,” she snapped her fingers, “we never know for sure if she’ll make it. And no one ever tells us.”

  Worthy stood, but Dr. Cartwright continued to sit at her desk and stare down at the folder.

  “Tell me the truth, Lieutenant. Do you think she’s alive?”

  Worthy thought of the odd note that the VanBruskmans had just received from Santa Fe. “You might know better about that than I. How long can she last without her pills?”

  Dr. Cartwright closed her eyes. “Ellie’s depression is the type that requires medication, sometimes for the rest of a person’s life. The other thing I should tell you is that her medication is maintenance only. She can’t possibly improve without regular therapy.”

  She led Worthy to the door and unlocked it. “This is one of those times, Lieutenant, when I hope I’m wrong. I’m doing my best to picture her doing just fine, wherever she is.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Father Fortis knew that every modern monastery had a Father Bernard on staff, someone with clinical training in pastoral psychology. These counselors, often serving as spiritual directors, administered the personality tests to novices. They also conducted the sensitive interviews regarding the sexual orientation of the young men seeking admission and were called upon when serious emotional and spiritual ills manifested themselves. In Father Fortis’s experience, spiritual directors were rarely promoted to being abbots, perhaps because they knew too many secrets.

  Father Bernard opened the door to Father Fortis’s knock with a generous smile. “I’d almost given up on you, Father,” he said in his West Texas accent. A shock of gray hair made the monk seem even taller than his large frame. The obvious strength of the man gave credence to the rumor that he’d come straight into monastic life from service as a Navy Seal.

  Father Fortis remembered the type from his high school wrestling days. As the only heavyweight, he’d been paired with the one guy capable of wrestling him in practice. The guy wrestled two weight classes down but was muscular like Father Bernard. For three years, the two seemed to wrestle one long match, Father Fortis forever trying to use his massive weight to tire his opponent, the other guy countering with his speed and strength. Real opponents in competitions were comparatively easy to defeat for both of them.

  “Father Bernard, I apologize for not stopping by sooner,” Father Fortis said. “I meant to come by yesterday, but Father Linus and I were off on … research.”

  Father Bernard ushered him into what looked like a private library. Bookshelves groaned under the weight of heavy tomes, periodicals, and folders. A coffee table was covered with mugs and magazines.

  “Let’s make a deal,” the monk said as he poured two cups of coffee. “You call me Bernard, and I’ll call you Nicholas. This ‘Father this, Father that’ stuff tires me out. And thank you, by the way, for getting Linus away from here yesterday. We’re all distraught about Sister Anna, but he’s taking matters very personally. And that’s not good for his heart.”

  A similar thought had crossed Father Fortis’s mind the night before. When the two of them had been at the morada, the old monk had been as calm as Father Fortis had ever seen him. But the closer the Jeep got to the monastery, the more agitated Father Linus became. By the time they pulled into the parking lot, Father Linus’s diatribe against Brother Elias left him gasping for breath.

  “Any word on Brother Andrew?” Father Fortis asked his host. “What a terrible time
for St. Mary’s to deal with an extra strain.”

  Father Bernard drew up a chair and sat facing his visitor. “We can talk about Andrew in a moment. But as to the community, yes, you’re absolutely right. We’re fraying a bit, Nicholas. No doubt about that.”

  “I don’t know anything harder on a monastery than the hint of sexual misconduct,” Father Fortis offered.

  Father Bernard took a sip of coffee. “Ah, yes. Sex. You can’t even use the word in a monastery without misconduct being assumed. Yet the truth is all of us, not just Andrew and Sister Anna, are sexual beings.”

  “I suspect the rules at my monastery are quite similar to St. Mary’s,” Father Fortis added. “Our sexual energies don’t disappear when we become monks, but are to be turned toward God. That’s very easy to say, but harder to do. Especially when someone as beautiful as Sister Anna is living in your midst.”

  Father Bernard knotted his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “I’m not so sure. Once a month here at St. Mary’s, we allow female guests to stay with us. So, we’ve seen beautiful women before.”

  “But Sister Anna was here every day for two months.”

  “And as the police find so interesting, she worked closely with Andrew on a daily basis,” Father Bernard added. He sat forward and picked a notebook up off the coffee table. “Abbot Timothy and I would like you to read Sister Anna’s journal. I think it answers every question you might have about Andrew.” He handed the copy to Father Fortis. “But the journal has a much greater importance. I’d say its chief value is being such an honest record of her feelings.”

  Father Fortis opened the folder and gazed down at the first page. Large exclamation points and question marks dotted the text. “I will be happy to read through this, but you knew the person behind the words. What should I be looking for?”

  Father Bernard paused a moment. “The journal wasn’t her idea, but mine. I told her what I tell everyone, that if I was to serve as her spiritual director, she’d have to write in it every day. Anna agreed … reluctantly, I might add. The police, of course, were hoping she’d point a finger toward whoever killed her. But in the big scheme of things, what she wrote covers something far more important.”