Cold Case

by Stephen White

  Poor girl's murder sure was unfortunate, though. Obscene."

  "I've recently spoken with Mariko's father and-"

  "You have? Well, you talk to Taro again you give him my best wishes. I still pray for him and Eri at least once a week. Sometimes more than that. And that little girl of theirs, what was her name?"

  I assumed he meant Mariko's little sister.

  "Satoshi."

  "That's right. Satoshi. The whole thing broke her in two. The disappearance.

  The murders. She was a real sweetheart."

  I suspected I was watching the process by which a natural politician transfers a forgotten name into permanent storage. He wouldn't forget Satoshi Hamamoto's identity again.

  I reached into my jacket pocket and took out a photocopy of the release-of-information form that Taro had signed in Vancouver.

  "I'll be sure to pass along your regards. This is for your records, by the way.

  Its a photocopy of an authorization signed by Taro Hamamoto permitting you to release information about his daughters psychotherapy to me and to Locard."

  Phil Barrett reached for the sheet of paper. I retrieved it from his reach and handed it instead to Welle. To Phil Barrett, I said, "I'm afraid you'll have to excuse us at this point, Mr. Barrett. You don't have permission to hear any confidential information about Mariko Hamamoto's psychotherapy from Dr. Welle.

  The consent that Mr. Hamamoto signed applies only to me and to the professional members of Locard. You… are not covered."

  Welle and Barrett again exchanged something non verbally While Welle glanced at the document I'd handed to him, he said, "I'm sure Taro wouldn't mind at all Phil's hearing what I have to say about his daughter. Phil was sheriff in Routt County back then. He knows all this anyway."

  I thought he was waiting to see if I would react to the news about Phil Barrett's involvement in the earlier investigation. I didn't. I said, "But Taros not here to give his assent. And I have no doubt that someone in your position would not want to risk violating patient confidentiality. Even on a technicality. Ray." The

  "Ray" rolled right off my tongue. I smiled. My pulse was getting back to normal.

  Welle wet his lips and said, "I'm afraid the man's right, Phillip. He has both ethics and law on his side. Tough combination to fight, even in Washington. So you'll have to excuse us for a few minutes. If we move onto unrelated subjects you can come right on back in."

  I tried not to watch Barrett's embarrassing efforts at extricating himself from the wing chair. I failed. The weave of the material of his suit seemed to have a magnetic attraction for the velvet fabric of the upholstery.

  Barrett finally departed. Welle said, "So what can I tell you? Mariko's treatment, to my memory, was a total success. Adjustment problems. A little acting out. Basically a good, good kid having trouble being an adolescent and being an American. She worked it out. I helped. Case closed."

  I smiled.

  "That's nice to hear. Taro Hamamoto told me basically the same thing.

  My dilemma about Mariko is that I'm not sure exactly what I need to know about her. Ray. Would you mind if I take a moment to explain my role with Locard and then perhaps you can help me decide what it is I might need to know about the treatment you did?" I proceeded to give my I-needtogettoknowmarikoto-trytoknowher-killer speech.

  He listened patiently. When I concluded, he said, "So the thinking now is that it wasn't a stranger who killed those girls."

  "I'm not privy to Locard's current hypothesis, Ray. All I know is that this is a base they've asked me to cover."

  "I think Phil and his boys investigated this whole thing pretty thoroughly.

  Back then, of course. Better computers, more technology, better science now, sure.

  That may help your group with its work. But my memory is that they ruled out that the killer was someone who knew the girls. FBI concurred."

  "Locard seems to like to proceed from a point of view where the assumptions are wiped clean."

  He nodded.

  "Like to reinvent the wheel, do they? Can't argue with it. They've had their successes, haven't they? That Texas thing? Wow. Have to admit that was impressive."

  "Yes, they have been successful. Why don't we start with the presenting problem?

  What were the issues that you were helping Mariko with?"

  "Let me see" He tightened his eyes as though he was trying to appear pensive. I wasn't convinced by his act when he said, "I think I got it. She'd been caught with some dope. Just enough to smoke, mind you, not to sell. That's my memory.

  Too bad Phil's not here. He'd remember for sure about the dope part.

  Mother was overprotective. Father was more reasonable but was kind of absent, you know, very busy at work. He was a big shot at the resort. Mariko was trying to find her way around a new culture, with new friends, new temptations.

  Adolescent stuff."

  "You mentioned her friends. Would you say she was especially susceptible to influence from her friends?"

  "Especially? I wouldn't say especially. Had a good friend… yes, Tami-Tami Franklin, who was a very strong personality, a natural leader. I must say Tami didn't always lead kids in the direction that their parents wanted them to go.

  But she was a natural leader. She certainly influenced Mariko."

  "Tami was the girl she was murdered with."

  He waved his left hand at me.

  "Of course, of course. I know that. But lots of kids in town were susceptible to Tami's influences, not just Mariko. Tami was that kind of kid. She caused a lot of sleepless nights for a lot of Steamboat Springs parents, that girl did."

  "Boyfriend?"

  "Tami? Always. Mariko?" He shook his head and made a clicking sound with his tongue.

  "You know, not that I recall. It's possible, I suppose, but I don't remember her talking about anyone special."

  I was immediately curious why Welle knew and recalled so much about Tami Franklin. Had Mariko talked about her friend in therapy that much?

  "What about other friends besides Tami?"

  "Mariko talked about some other kids, I'm sure. But I couldn't remember their names. We're going back a lot of years. I bet the Franklins could be of some help on that. The kids all hung out in a group."

  "School problems?"

  "Again, not that I recall. Just being picked up that once with the dope and the oh yeah-the… I almost forgot. Her parents were mortified that when she was picked up by the police she was skinny-dipping in the hot springs out at Strawberry Park with some boys. And there was the lying, of course."

  "The lying?"

  "Mariko wasn't truthful to her parents about where she was going and who she was going with. That sort of thing. Her parents made a big deal out of it. May have been a cultural thing. Me? I didn't consider it too unusual for a teenager. Certainly didn't see it as pathologic. Tried to get Taro and Eri to put it in context."

  "Did you do any testing?"

  "You mean psychological testing? Nope. Wasn't my thing. When necessary, I referred for that."

  "Did you refer Mariko for testing?"

  He didn't hesitate.

  "No. There was no need. I told you. This was an adjustment issue, a maturation thing. Pure and simple." I softened my voice as I asked, "What was she like, Ray? As a person, I mean.

  Mariko?"

  He smiled, it seemed, involuntarily.

  "She was vibrant. Had a little accent still, sort of a mix of Japanese and British. Pronounced her words, every one of them, as though she'd been practicing. She was a smidgen shy, but she had this brilliance inside her that… just shined. Bright as a spotlight. Mariko was a little self-deprecating. Maybe a bit too much. But she was… witty… caring. And pretty. Oh my, pretty, pretty." I thought I saw his eyes moisten.

  "You've seen pictures, right? She was a little treasure of a kid. Her death, her murder…" His fists clenched; his eyes tightened.

  "My wife's death, my wife's murder… they are profane, bloody in
dications of what's so sick about this country. It's why I decided to go on the radio to try to do some healing.

  It's why I went to Congress to try to force some change. It's why I want to be in the Senate. Its why I put up with these silly fund-raising luncheons." He waved his arm around the library as though the books were to blame.

  I was moved, but at the same time, I knew I was being manipulated. I was too aware that Raymond Welle wanted me to be moved. It troubled me; I felt as though I'd been leashed and was being taken for a walk. I also wondered why Ray was so eager to alter his own personal history. He had decided to run for Congress for the first time-and had lost the primary-long before his wife was killed. Why was he arguing that her murder was a motivation for him to run for office?

  Somewhere about here I lost control of the conversation. Raymond edged me, ever so cleverly, into small talk about Mariko, eventually concluding with

  "I think it's time to get Phil back in here. See what he can add." He tapped his watch.

  Before I could object, Welle was on his way to the door.

  The first words from Barrett's mouth were, "We're way off schedule, Ray. People are waiting next door at the tennis house." He turned his head to face me.

  "Doctor, I'm sorry, but we need to wrap this up."

  I'd just looked at my watch. The time period I had been promised for the meeting had not been used up. But I didn't protest; I expected the congressman and I would be speaking again and I didn't want to poison the well. I also suspected the final request I planned to make was going to cause him some trouble and I didn't want to antagonize him before I antagonized him.

  I needed to get a copy of his case file for the treatment of Mariko. The case materials should have been collected for the initial investigation by Phil Barrett's department at the time of the murders. But I'd searched the materials twice already and they contained no written records from Raymond Welle.

  "I understand you have a busy day. I appreciate your time, Congressman. And your candor. One last thing, though. I'll need a copy of your case file. Notes, treatment plan, ancillary contacts. You know what I mean. Locard insists on the written records. It's part of the protocol." I made that part up.

  With only a heartbeats hesitation, Raymond said, "I'm sure I don't have that anymore. I think those old clinical files were all shredded. Years ago. When I moved on in my career."

  I didn't hesitate any longer than he had.

  "I hope not. Ray. State board regulations require that you keep those records available for fifteen years after therapy termination. I wouldn't like to see you reprimanded for violating that kind of thing." I wasn't certain what interval the regs actually specified but I suspected Ray would be more ignorant than I about the regulations of the State Board of Psychologist Examiners.

  Ray's cheeks scrunched up and I could hear him force an exhale through his nostrils.

  "Really? Didn't know that." His face immediately transformed into something more conciliatory.

  "I'll tell you, the fool laws that legislators pass sometimes…" He made a comical face.

  "I'll have someone look into the record thing, then. Phil, can you have someone show Dr. Gregory to the door? I promised to make a couple more of those damn phone calls." He smiled and waved goodbye.

  Barrett escorted me back to the entry hall. A large table in the center was now nearly covered with a neatly arranged pyramid of Dr. Raymond Welle's two-year-old hardcover book. Toward Healing America: America's Therapist's Prescription/or a Better Future.

  Rather snidely, I thought, Barrett said, "Want one? Go ahead. Take one. They're all signed."

  I did.

  He walked me all the way to the door. He said, "You people at Lo-card are wasting your time. You won't solve this case. Those girls are going to stay dead. And the killers going to stay gone. You, my friend, are on a fool's errand."

  Before I could come up with a response, he had turned and walked away and the door was being closed against my back.

  One of the men in gray suits was blocking the shortcut that led back to my car through the formal gardens. I waved in his direction as I circled down the long driveway. He didn't wave back.

  Since my arrival an hour earlier the streets of the quiet residential neighborhood around the mansion appeared to have been transformed into the parking lot for a convention of limousine drivers. A sound system blared music from the direction of the tennis house. I thought I was hearing a Barbra Streisand ballad. Barbra, I assumed, would not be pleased. I loitered for a while and the music changed to a Garth Brooks number that stopped abruptly as a shrill voice screamed, "I give you the next United States senator from the great state of Colorado…," but clapping and cheers drowned out the final words.

  I assumed they were "Representative Raymond Welle." The music resumed. Garth had been replaced by some patriotic march that I couldn't name, but that I assumed was by John Philip Sousa.

  I reflected on the introducer's comments-"I give you the next United States senator…"-and decided that allowing for the prices that were being charged for admission to Raymond Welle's fund-raising reception, there might be a whole lot of buying and selling, or at the very least, renting, going on.

  But giving7 Certainly not from Welle's side of the ledger.

  I haven't met too many national politicians in my life. Seeing them on the news, especially when they are engaging in their four most public activities-raising campaign funds, making laws, and either accusing their opponents of impropriety or defending themselves against charges of impropriety-does not leave me inclined to socialize with them. But the point of my disinclination is moot: the fact that I'm not prone to donate money to their campaigns seems, somehow, to interfere with their desire to pencil me into their social calendars.

  Nevertheless, my meeting with Raymond Welle had not left me running for a disinfectant shower, as I feared it would.

  I was not surprised that Welle was as a smooth and polished as a river stone. I was surprised that I also found him to be affable, gracious, and personable. He was slippery enough to survive in the treacherous waters of Congress, but he wasn't, well, slimy-and the fact that he could actually talk intelligently about the profession we shared pleased me. The platitude-rich national radio program that had carried him to national prominence on a tide of poorly considered quasi-psychological advice and narrow-minded polemics had not prepared me for the possibility that the man might actually have known what he was doing as a clinician.

  This new appraisal gave me caution. If I was viewing him accurately, Welle was an effective chameleon, which made him a more dangerous adversary. And despite the tacit cooperation he had offered during our meeting, Welle and his right-hand man, Phil Barrett, felt like adversaries to me.

  I was walking down the road from the manse, skirting a Mercedes limousine that was sporting an American flag from each fender, when I heard my name. Loudly, a female voice called, "Dr. Gregory? Hello-o."

  I turned to see a thin woman who appeared to be on the northern side of thirty approaching me from the entrance to the tennis house. I stopped and waited for her. She pulled sunglasses from her eyes and perched them on top of her head.

  I decided immediately that she wasn't a native. She was dressed in a chocolate brown gabardine suit that was way too warm for a typical June day at the base of the Rockies. Her skin was so pale it seemed to glow from within her like a pearl. The purse she carried screamed "carry-on luggage" and was so large and heavy it caused her left shoulder to sag a good three inches lower than the right.

  I guessed Seattle or Portland.

  The wind shifted to the west and a noxious blend of good perfume and stale tobacco wafted my way. The combination smelled like an industrial-strength room deodorizer.

  The woman was tall and composed, and as she got closer to me I couldn't steal my attention from her eyes. They were large and the color was the deep green hue of shallow water in the Caribbean. From ten feet away she again said, "Dr. Gregory?

  I
t's you, right?"

  Damn. I knew that voice. I'd guessed wrong about the Pacific Northwest. This lady was from Washington, D.C.

  "I'm Dorothy Levin. We've talked? I'm a reporter with the Washington Post. Ring any bells?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Good. Niceties are covered. I know you're a doctor. You know I'm a reporter.

  And you know the story I'm working on." She stretched the collar of her blouse away from her neck with her fingers.

  "Is it always this hot here? I thought I was going to be in the mountains."

  "Common misconception. Summers tend to be quite warm along the Front Range."

  "And dry? Shit, I swear the inside of my nose is cracking into a miniature mud flat and my contacts feel like they're made of Saran Wrap."

  I was going to go into a relatively lengthy explanation about the value of good hydration in high-desert climes, but decided against it.

  "Someplace we can sit and talk? Preferably someplace air-conditioned. I have maybe forty-five minutes till the fund-raiser lets out. They instituted a no-press rule. Pisses me off. Leaves me standing out here in this convection oven."

  "I'm afraid I still don't have anything to tell you."

  She smiled in a way that clearly communicated "Don't patronize me." Her smile was pleasant enough but I was still having difficulty getting past her brilliant eyes and the tobacco fumes.

  "You were just with him, weren't you?" "Him?" I asked, feeling caught and feeling stupid.

  She laughed at my lame attempt at being disingenuous, caught herself, and swallowed.

  "You know whom I'm talking about. Colorado's next senator Raymond Welle? Six two. Handsome enough. Bad five o'clock shadow. Body mass index just this side of obese. You were just meeting with him, I think?"

  "I don't… I don't have anything to say."

  She licked her lips.

  "I already know about the meeting, Doctor. I'm just trying to be polite, here, generate a little discussion. Tomorrow's editions of the Post will report the meeting you just had with Welle. My story won't say what you two discussed because I don't know yet. But the fact that you just had a private tete-a-tete with Ray Welle prior to a major fund-raising luncheon will soon be national news. The local papers here in this thriving metropolis will pick it up off the wires and then-I promise this on my mama's grave-then you'll get lots of calls from reporters who are nowhere near as pleasant to deal with as I am."