by Lisa Gardner
He remained unflappable, blue eyes direct, white beard neatly trimmed, light gray suit dignified, so I finally bit out, “Two.”
“Two days,” he repeated. “And thus far, your coping strategy involves overworking, undersleeping, overdrinking, and undereating. Does that about cover it?”
“Don’t forget the annual pilgrimage to the graves with Aunt Helen. Can’t forget that.”
“Do you want to go, Danielle?”
I didn’t answer, so he pressed button number two: “Do you want to get better? Do you wonder about your own capabilities, or does it remain easier to focus on one of your charges, such as Lucy?”
I refused to answer, so he went for the trifecta, lever number three: “Let’s talk about your love life.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
So he did. It was my session after all. I called the shots. I could lie as much as I wanted. I could deny as much as I wanted. I could hide as much as I wanted. Both of my knees were bouncing again and I wondered why I came. I should’ve stayed home. I should never leave my apartment again.
Because as of Monday it would be exactly twenty-five years. Twenty-five years to the day since my mother died, my siblings died, my father died, and I lived to tell the tale.
Except I had nothing to say. A quarter of a century later, I was not magically wiser. I didn’t know why my mom and Natalie and Johnny had to die. I didn’t know why my first life had to end, and I didn’t know why this second life was still so hard for me.
“Did you read about that case in the paper?” I heard myself ask. “The family killed Thursday night in Dorchester?”
Dr. Frank nodded.
“Yesterday, two detectives came to our unit to ask questions about it. One of our kids was involved. His parents discharged him last year against our advice. Turns out we might have been right about that one.”
Dr. Frank was accustomed to my sarcasm.
I couldn’t sit anymore. I was too edgy, agitated. I’d dreamed again last night. My fucking father standing outside my fucking room with a fucking handgun pointed at his fucking head. Fucking coward.
“This morning, they were talking about another family, too. In Jamaica Plains. Though maybe that was a drug deal gone bad. Nobody seems to know. Four kids, baby through teenager. Gone, just like that. If it was a rival drug dealer, why the infant? A baby can’t be a witness, a baby can’t rat anyone out. You’d think the shooter could’ve left the baby alone.
“Then again,” I heard myself ramble, “maybe the baby didn’t want to be left alone. Maybe the baby heard the shots and started to cry. Maybe the baby knew already that her mother and siblings were dead. Maybe the baby wanted to go with them.”
“What about the baby’s father?”
“Fuck him.”
“The baby didn’t miss her father?”
“Nope,” I answered, though his attempt to turn the baby into me is so Psych 101 I should laugh at Dr. Frank instead.
“There are no survivors,” I said. “Do you think they’re happier that way? Maybe there’s a Heaven. Maybe the mother and her children get to be together there. And maybe, in Heaven, children don’t have to listen to voices in their heads and parents don’t have to scream to make themselves heard. Maybe, in Heaven, they can finally enjoy one another. I don’t think it was fair of my father to deny me that.”
“Do you want to join your family?” Dr. Frank asked me steadily.
I couldn’t look at him. “No. I don’t. And that sucks even more, because I hate my father for killing my family, then I have to turn around and be grateful to him for sparing me.”
“You don’t have to be grateful,” Dr. Frank said.
“Yes I do.”
“You have a right to live, Danielle. You have a right to be happy and to fall in love and to find enjoyment in life. Your father didn’t grant this to you and you don’t owe him anything for it.”
“But he did.”
“Maybe your mother did,” Dr. Frank offered.
I scowled at him. “My mother? What does she have to do with this?”
“Or maybe it was your brother,” Dr. Frank said.
I stared at him in confusion.
“Or maybe your sister, Natalie, or Sheriff Wayne, or your Aunt Helen.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying, there are many key people in your life, yet you hand all the power to your father. Why do you think you do that?”
“He took life. He granted life. He acted God-like, so I guess I make him God.”
“God doesn’t drink a fifth of whiskey, Danielle. Least I hope not.”
I didn’t have anything to add to that, so for a moment, we both fell silent. Dr. Frank sipped more tea. I prowled in front of his second-story window overlooking Beacon Street. It was busy outside. The streets swarmed with happy tourists buzzing about. Maybe they’d go for a walk through the gardens, indulge in a Swan Boat ride or a duck tour. So many things to do on a sunny August morning.
These families always seemed cheerful to me. I wondered if, twenty-five years ago, the neighbors thought the same about us.
“Do you think that if you’re joyful, your father wins?” Dr. Frank asked now. “You’ll be indebted toward him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Which meant, of course, that I did.
“You want to know why your father didn’t shoot you,” Dr. Frank said, steadily. “Twenty-five years later, it still comes down to that. Why didn’t your father kill you, too?”
“Yes.” I turned, less certain now, and stared at Dr. Frank. It wasn’t like him to cut so quickly to the heart of my mixed-up, fucked-up life. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Maybe your mother called to him,” Dr. Frank stated. “Maybe she called out his name and that distracted him. Maybe she begged for your life.”
“Couldn’t. She died instantly, single gunshot to the head.”
“Your sister, then; she was closer. Maybe she told him not to.”
“He shot her in the face, in the doorway of her bedroom. I don’t think she could say much after that.”
“Your brother lived long enough to be rushed to the hospital.”
“Yeah, Johnny lived a good twenty minutes. Johnny also made like Superman and tried to fly down the stairs. His spine was shattered by a bullet, his neck fractured from the fall. Only thing he probably begged for was a second shot, for my father to finally get it right.”
“I see you’ve been reading the police reports again.”
I had them laminated in a scrapbook. Something Dr. Frank and Aunt Helen discovered years ago.
“Did your family love you?” Dr. Frank continued to press. He was relentless today. I was less certain of this Dr. Frank, and I started pacing again.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to know?”
“I … I don’t know.”
“Did you love them?”
“My mother and siblings,” I said instantly.
“Really?” He cocked his head to the side. The shrink’s quintessential pose. “Danielle, you have spent so much time and energy on their deaths. If you truly love them, why not invest a little time and energy on their lives? That’s what they’d want you to remember, don’t you think?”
“But I loved him, too,” I heard myself whisper.
“I know.”
“I tried so hard to make him happy.”
“I know.”
“I thought, that night, if I did what he wanted, if I just made him happy, it would be okay.”
“What did he want you to do, Danielle? You are a grown woman now, a nurse with professional expertise. Don’t you think you can finally say it out loud?”
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. There were things no child knew how to put in words. They didn’t have the vocabulary to match the experience. A dime if you’ll touch Daddy’s penis. A quarter if you’ll suck. What could a little girl say about that?
I worked
now with two- and three-year olds who stuffed and regurgitated food in a desperate attempt to share. They didn’t know the term “oral sex”; they could only demonstrate the terrible violation, filling their cheeks with applesauce, then spitting it out while their mothers yelled at them for making such a mess. The children were honest in their desire to communicate. It was the adults who screwed everything up.
“She didn’t save me,” I said tonelessly. “But then, she didn’t even save herself.”
“Who, Danielle?”
“My mother. She told me to go to my room. She told me it would be okay. She told me she would take care of everything.”
“What would she take care of, Danielle?”
“They started fighting. I could hear them yelling from my bedroom. He was drunk. You could tell he was drunk. He was always drunk.”
“And then?”
“I don’t want to go to the cemetery this year. I don’t see the point.”
“What happened that night, Danielle? You went to your bedroom. What happened next? Tell me what happened next.”
“He killed them,” I said bluntly. “I tried to make him happy, but he killed them. Then he sang to me, so I would know it was all my fault.”
“You didn’t kill your family, Danielle. A nine-year-old girl cannot stop a grown man. Surely at this stage of your life you realize that.”
I simply nodded, because even all these years later, I didn’t feel like mentioning that at the start of that final evening, I was the one with my father’s handgun.
Dr. Frank asked me more questions. I stuck with basic answers and we continued our dance. It occurred to me that, given the timeline, he and I were approaching our silver anniversary. I wondered if I should get him something. An engraved plate, maybe an heirloom-quality picture frame. Dr. Frank was one of the longest relationships I’d ever had. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
At the end of the hour, he surprised me again, reverting to the direct probing from the beginning of our session. “Do you feel your life is a success?” he asked me.
“Excuse me?”
“Do you feel your life is a success? Come, now, Danielle. You’re a grown woman, well educated, with an admirable career. Do you feel your life is a success?”
I had to think about it. “I think I’ve made a difference in many children’s lives,” I said finally. “I’m happy about that.”
“And these sessions? Our relationship? Has that made a difference in your life?”
“I am not sure I would’ve made it otherwise,” I said, which is probably true. At least close enough.
He nodded his head, seemed content. He shuffled some paper. “You should know I’ll be retiring at the end of the year.”
“Really?”
He smiled now, gesturing to his silver hair. “I’ve long been driven by my profession. It’s time to be driven by my hobbies instead. At least according to my wife.”
I tried to picture some Mrs. Dr. Frank, ordering him to hang up his hat, and that made me smile back. “Well, congratulations.”
“You are always welcome to call,” he said gravely.
“Thank you.” We both knew I wouldn’t. This relationship needed an end. His retirement provided a graceful exit for both of us.
“Danielle,” he said as I start to rise, “I worry about you.”
The admission astonished me, and for an instant, I could tell it had shocked him. He recovered quickly. “I believe we can agree there are aspects of your history you have yet to adequately acknowledge.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I have a colleague I’d be happy to recommend. A woman. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable with a female doctor—”
“No, thank you.”
“These next few days will be hard.”
“I’ll get through. I always do.”
“Have you considered staying with your aunt?”
“She has her own mourning to do.”
“You give each other strength.”
“Not this time of year.”
He sighed, appeared defeated. “Please watch the drinking.”
“I will.” Tomorrow afternoon, I’d watch my arm come up, I’d watch the drink go down.
“And, Danielle, as I’m sure you must have already considered, perhaps this week is not the time to be watching the news. These other cases of family tragedy will only exacerbate what is already a difficult period for you. The Dorchester case in particular, which involves a child you once knew, is needless salt on the wound. Their tragedy is not your tragedy. That case has nothing to do with you.”
I took my leave without bothering to correct him. For every word spoken, so many more were left unsaid.
The story of my life.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The drug taskforce was good. D.D. returned to her desk to find an entire case file on Hermes Laraquette, aka The Rastaman. She thought any white guy who referred to himself as The Rastaman was probably doing something, and Hermes didn’t disappoint. He had a long rap sheet of minor infractions, including burglary, theft, and possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell.
Fortunately for Hermes, the criminal justice system was overwhelmed, allowing his public defender to plead down half the charges, while getting the other half dismissed. Then Hermes made good on his vanishing act before Immigration caught up with him.
According to local intel, Hermes had hooked up with Audi Solis, a welfare mom already supporting three children by three different fathers. Nine months later, with Hermes’s help, she was able to make that four kids by four fathers. Hermes was listed on the birth certificate of ViVi Bellasara Laraquette, born March 19.
At which time Audi applied for state aid for her youngest, while Hermes went back to doing what he did best, dealing pot.
The BPD drug taskforce believed Hermes was tapping Boston’s growing immigrant population to help him import and export product. He moved bales at a time, but that still made him only a small fish in Boston’s raging drug ocean. Given that he appeared to be using as well as dealing, Hermes wasn’t likely to get ahead anytime soon.
So they had one petty drug dealer, shot on the sofa. One welfare mom stabbed in the kitchen. And four dead kids scattered across two bedrooms.
D.D. set down the drug taskforce’s files and moved on to the rest of the reports, including interviews with the children’s teachers and school administrators.
“Ishy or Rochelle?” she asked Alex, who’d taken the seat in the corner and was currently studying a sketch of the Laraquette crime scene as if reading tea leaves.
He set down the sketch. “Ishy.”
D.D. handed him the preliminary victim report on seventeen-year-old Ishy Rivers, the oldest son, shot twice in the hallway. She took the report on eleven-year-old Rochelle LeBryant, who D.D. already knew liked pink paint and paperback novels. That left two pages on four-year-old Tika, who’d been shot on a dog bed, and one paragraph on five-month-old ViVi, who’d been suffocated in her crib. A life so brief the victim report didn’t even fill a page.
They read in silence, sipping coffees, flipping pages. Alex finished first, then waited for D.D. to wrap up. When she set down the officer’s report and picked up her coffee, he started talking.
“Ishy Rivers. No warrants, no arrests,” Alex rattled off crisply. “Not in the juvy database and not in the DMV database, so a quiet life for a teenager. Two officers interviewed the neighbors, who ‘don’t know nothin’ ’bout no one.’ ”
“Funny, neighbors had the same thing to say about Ishy’s younger sister.”
“Fortunately, the guidance counselor at the high school was more helpful—though, for the record, Ishy didn’t spend much time at school.”
“Truant?”
“He attended a hundred and three days of his sophomore year, which is roughly half of the days he should’ve. They signed him up for summer school to make up the lost time, but he never showed.”
“They report
him?” D.D. asked with a frown.
Alex shook his head. “Sounds like the system gave up on Ishy about the same time Ishy gave up on the system. According to the guidance counselor, Ishy was coded early on with multiple learning disabilities. She described him as sweet, though his obsessive-compulsive behaviors made it difficult for him to integrate with his peers. He was fixated on credit cards, asking everyone he met what cards they had, what were the numbers on the front and back, and would frequently launch into a recitation of every known credit card ever made, including black, platinum, gold, and silver editions.”
“Identity theft?” D.D. spoke up.
“She was guessing Asperger’s, which is often accompanied by OCD. Ishy was also deeply superstitious about stepping on cracks and could not enter the cafeteria or gym, as he was terrified the rafters would fall on him. A sweet kid, though.” Alex held up the report. “The woman states it about eight or nine times. Sweet kid, struggling with school, and not getting the support on the home front to pull it all together. Guidance counselor’s official opinion: She can’t imagine Ishy committing murder, but does admit his obsessive behaviors could drive someone else to violence.”
“Interesting,” D.D. said. She held up her report, adding to the mix: “Rochelle LeBryant. Eleven years old, due to start sixth grade next month. No arrests or warrants. Also not in the juvy or DMV database. If older brother, Ishy, couldn’t wait to leave school, apparently younger sister Rochelle couldn’t wait to get there. Her fifth-grade teacher reported that Rochelle had perfect attendance the previous year, and often arrived at school an hour before class started. The girl had sat quietly in the hall reading, until her teacher took pity on her and let her enter the classroom.
“Teacher describes Rochelle as quiet, serious, and very bright. The girl was anxious to help out, and couldn’t stand making mistakes. Fortunately, she was smart enough—easily reading at a high school level, the teacher raved—that mistakes didn’t happen often.
“Rochelle never spoke of her home life, but the girl’s limited wardrobe, gaunt appearance, and lack of hygiene spoke for itself. In a fit of inspiration, Mrs. Groves stocked the bathroom with shampoos and Rochelle started washing her hair in the sink each morning before school started. Sometimes, Mrs. Groves would leave behind a few clean items of clothing, but Rochelle wouldn’t take them. Rochelle seemed very prideful. Similar efforts to share food also failed, though the girl would accept books. She always returned them, but she couldn’t say no to borrowing a novel.”