She gave me a quick smile, and I started wondering what side of that divide my WITSEC head-examiners had been on. There had been two of them, and I saw one or the other weekly, but had never paid much attention to their official credentials. As far as I’d been concerned, they were just part of the machinery keeping the Brotherhood out of my hair, so I answered their questions and did what they told me.
“Unfortunately,” the doctor was saying, “there aren’t a lot of treatment options for PTSD. Medication is typically aimed at symptom relief, but we don’t have a pill that will stop dissociation.”
“So you’re going to stick with PTSD as my diagnosis?”
“It fits your symptoms,” she said. “The next closest things are dissociative identity disorder or schizophrenia, but those typically present much earlier in life, and have much more severe effects.”
I gave an annoyed sigh.
“The highest success rate for PTSD is with cognitive behavioral therapy,” the doctor said, reaching for a small pad on the desk behind her. “I’ll give you some names of therapists in the area who work in that modality.”
“What’s cognitive behavioral therapy?”
“Basically, you figure out what triggers your symptoms, and then learn techniques to keep you grounded when you know you’re going to encounter your triggers. Over time, as you use the techniques, you become desensitized to your triggers.”
“So what you’re saying is that I just have to learn to live with it.”
Her blue eyes sharpened, but she smiled. “I guess you could put it that way.”
“Great,” I said.
“If you’ve seen people killed before and didn’t develop the disorder, I’d suggest you look at the difference in the situations. That might tell you where your major trigger is.”
“I can tell you the difference right now,” I said. “I was married to Joe. I loved him. I wasn’t close to the others.”
Conroy sat back. “Well, there you go.”
But I hadn’t been close to Orson Greenlaw or Salt-and-Pepper. Nor, really, to Maines.
“I can prescribe you a sedative if you have trouble sleeping,” the doctor said. “I don’t think you need a mood stabilizer, but that’s an option, too, if you find yourself really getting your head twisted around.” She closed the folder and put it on the desk. “I’ll have a look at your blood when it comes back, to rule out any organic causes, but I’d say at this point your best bet is to start some kind of therapy. You might also consider meditation, which is something you can start on your own.”
“Meditation?” I frowned.
“Yeah. There’s research that shows it helps, and it has no side effects.” The doctor smiled again. “Well, except for good ones.”
She was making end-of-session motions, so I got up and took the slip of paper she held out. “What do I owe you?”
“No charge for the initial consultation,” she said.
“Kind of like a drug dealer, huh? First one is free.”
Her expression told me she didn’t much care for my sense of humor, but I wasn’t here to make friends. I stuck the slip of paper in my wallet and left.
CHAPTER 48
My brain spent the short drive back to the square trying to figure out the contradiction between my reaction to Joe’s death and my “spells.” If my “trigger” was seeing something horrible happen to someone I cared about, how come it happened with people I barely knew?
I thought back to before I’d found Orson, calling up past situations where I’d floated off. It had happened upon receiving the first payroll check from Hector; one afternoon when I’d overheard some local gossip in the cafe; arguing with Tova about an item on the Ranch title; and talking to some guy at the gym just after New Year’s. I replayed each event in my head, trying to determine what these things had in common, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. Especially when I added in the most recent examples.
Luigi was giving himself a bath on the table when I came into the apartment. I gave him some kibble and set about making dinner, still working on the trigger problem in the back of my head. It was too hot to cook, so I made a sandwich and some iced tea, scarfed them, and lay down to watch a little TV.
The phone woke me after dark. I got up and went to the kitchen to get it. It was Audra Maines.
“I hope you don’t mind me calling,” she said. “And, even more, I hope you don’t mind me asking what I’m about to ask you.”
“I won’t know until you do it,” I said.
“Would you consider taking this dog?”
It took a second to penetrate my only recently awakened consciousness. “You mean Steve?”
Audra sighed. “I just don’t see how I’m going to manage him, with the kids and Dad, and I don’t want to take him to the shelter. They’ll just gas him.”
“Are you sure? He’s pretty well-behaved.”
“You ever been down there?” she asked. “It’s like Dachau.”
I looked over at Luigi, his white patches glowing under the dining-table light. Over the phone, I could hear Steve’s tags jingling and the voice of Audra’s daughter. My feet began to tingle. I tightened my grip on the phone, feeling something coming up from underneath something, inside my head.
“Are you there?” Audra said.
“Shhh!” I hissed.
“I beg your pardon?”
I wanted to click the phone off, but something made me hold on to it, listening to the background noise. That sound, that jingling. A cool thrill of expectation was rising up my legs. I shut my eyes.
“Lady, I don’t know what you’re shushing me for. If you can’t take the dog, then just—”
Audra’s voice faded away. The only thing I could hear was those tags jingling. I waited, gripping the phone, my hand going sweaty.
Walking the canyon from the hot springs to Ruidoso. Something there, a jingling sound—what had it been?
The cartridges in the box, when I’d loaded the little Glock. That unique hollow rattle they made against the stiff pasteboard. I’d heard it again later. Where?
“I’m sorry,” I said to Audra. “I’ll have to call you back.”
She’d been in the middle of a sentence. She made an affronted noise and hung up. I stood there with the phone still to my ear, afraid to move lest I disturb the process taking place between my ears.
Shapes and sensations finally began to solidify in my head. I opened my eyes. I remembered.
CHAPTER 49
It was just after nine, but most of the houses on the block were dark and quiet, including the one I was interested in. There was no car parked in front, and I sat in my truck for a few minutes after turning off the motor, making sure that I was willing to commit breaking and entering to confirm what the brain had just told me. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult. I’d had a look at the locks when I’d been here earlier.
Reason said I should just call Benny and tell him what I suspected, but all I had to give him was a remembered sound. I doubted he could get a search warrant on that. My plan hardly qualified as a crime anyway, I told myself. I wasn’t going to take anything, and getting in was almost certainly a simple matter of using the skeleton key I had for my own house. Little-known fact: Old mortise locks will almost always open with any skeleton key.
I shut the truck door as quietly as I could, then nipped across the street and up onto the porch. My luck was good; the key worked. I stepped quickly through Liz Harman’s office and into the exam room where she’d looked me over the previous day. I didn’t dare turn on a light, lest the neighbors be awake, so I paused to let my eyes adjust for a minute before going over to the chest in the corner where she kept her lab forms.
I pulled the drawer open and heard that telltale rattle, but I couldn’t see inside it, in the dark. I didn’t want to just feel around and get my DNA on possible evidence, so I held my breath and switched on the exam light. I pulled the drawer out as far as it would go, and there they were, at the very back: five sp
ent cartridges and their bullets, rolling around in a shallow cardboard box. There were brown stains on the box, and one side had soaked through, transferring to the edge of the lab pad. The blood on my form hadn’t been from a paper cut, and it hadn’t been Liz Harman’s.
I quickly pushed the drawer closed and turned off the exam light, pausing again to let my eyes readjust to the city-lit darkness. While I was doing this, headlights turned into the driveway.
My immediate instinct was to leg it or hide, but then I thought: What’s the point? She’d probably seen the light, driving up, and my pale yellow truck, parked at the curb directly across the street, was as unique as a fingerprint. I went out to the office, turned on the desk lamp, and sat down in the leather desk chair.
“Julia?” I heard, as the house door swung open. Footsteps to the connecting door, and then Liz stepped into the office, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong? You OK?”
It’s funny how people change when you know they’ve killed someone. I don’t mean that they actually change, but you suddenly notice that their mouth is cruel, or that the set of their shoulders is arrogant. Liz’s round, pink face didn’t look friendly to me anymore.
She dropped her bag into the patient chair, and made as if to come around the desk. I got up and kept it between us. She stopped moving.
I took out my phone, keeping my eyes on Liz, and dialed Benny. When he answered, I asked him to come over to the house. He must have heard something in my voice because he didn’t argue.
Liz’s face had relaxed. She glanced at the exam room door with a sigh. “I knew I shoulda put those somewhere else.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I dunno. I guess I just didn’t want to touch them again. They feel like they have bad voodoo on them or something. Or maybe I’ve been punishing myself. Or wanting to get caught.” She sat down in the desk chair, saying again, “I dunno.”
“Just please tell me you have some hard evidence somewhere of what Baxter is up to.”
Liz looked up at me like I was from outer space.
“Jim Baxter,” I said. “The pedophile running for president. The guy Orson was going to work for.”
She frowned at me. “Are you having one of your episodes?”
“Why don’t you just tell me why you killed Orson?” I suggested.
“It was him or Rachael,” she said with a shrug.
Puzzled, I sat down in the patient chair, which seemed to relax her. She folded her hands on the blotter and leaned forward.
“I see a lot of people at their worst, but that guy deserved a category all his own. The things he did and said to Rachael—” The doctor shook her head, looking away from me. “I could almost excuse it if he was sick or something, had some kind of mental problem. But Jean didn’t think he did. He was just mean. He was purposely trying to break Rachael down.”
“Why?”
Liz lifted her plump shoulders. “Why does anyone do a thing like that? Entertainment? Don’t ask me. All I know is I watched that girl turn from a nice, normal human being into a suicidal wreck because of him. Her blood pressure went up. She developed tachycardia and a skin rash. Had stomach ulcers, was losing her hair, and couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night.” Liz looked at me across the desk. “It was just a matter of time before she developed a life-threatening health condition. That’s murder, in my book.”
“You might get some argument on that,” I said.
Liz sat back and slammed her palms down on the armrests of the leather chair. “I don’t care! People come in here, fighting for their lives, every damned day. Good people who shouldn’t have to be doing that. And nine times out of ten, there’s some son of a bitch in the background, grinding them down, making it worse. It’s just cruelty, plain and simple.”
“I find it hard to believe that Orson is the only person in Azula who drove his wife nuts.”
“Way to trivialize Rachael Pestozo’s experience,” Liz snorted.
I held up one hand. “I’m not trying to trivialize it, I’m trying to figure out why you decided that he was the one who deserved to die when there are surely other people around who were as bad as him, or worse.”
Liz shifted in the chair, looking away. “I didn’t really decide it. He did.”
I raised my eyebrows. “He asked you to shoot him?”
There was a short pause, then Liz said in a low voice, “He got personal.”
My eyebrows stayed where they were.
“Came in here, started telling me I had no business being anybody’s doctor with my ‘fat ass.’ That I was disgusting, an embarrassment to my profession.”
I’ve had people make fun of my weight often enough to understand how she must have felt. I’ve even sincerely wished that one or two of them would drop dead. But I’d never seriously considered becoming directly involved in the process.
“Then he started in about Rachael,” Liz went on. “How I was killing her, not letting her get a bypass, not giving her enough shit about her weight, not putting her on some diet. The woman was perfectly healthy before he got hold of her. Nice, normal blood chemistry, strong heart, clear lungs—everything.”
She stopped talking and bowed her head. I thought she might be crying, but I didn’t move toward her. After a minute she reached forward and pulled the middle drawer of the desk open, and took out an old .38 revolver.
Seeing the look of alarm on my face, she said quickly, “It’s not loaded.” She set it down on the desk and closed the drawer.
“You shot him in here?” I said, glancing at the papered walls and pine floor with its patterned wool rug.
“No, we were in the exam room,” she said, nodding toward the gun. “I kept that in there. I had a thing a few years ago where I was working on a rancher and he came at me.”
A car door slammed, and I got up and took hold of the .38, watching Liz carefully while I did it. She didn’t move. Benny’s step sounded on the porch; I walked over to the connecting door and greeted him as he came into the office, holding the gun toward him by the muzzle. He took it with a quizzical look.
“That’s the gun that killed Orson Greenlaw,” I told him, leaning my head toward the exam-room door. “The bullets are in there.”
Benny’s dark eyes jumped toward Liz. “I’ll be damned.”
She didn’t say anything, and he did his belt-hitching thing, muttering. “It never occurred to me that the bullets being dug out of him pointed at someone with medical training.”
“Me, neither,” I admitted.
He looked back at Liz. “And finding blood traces in a doctor’s exam room would not be weird.”
She shrugged, giving him a rueful smile. “All of that was just luck, really. It’s not like I’ve done this before.”
Benny was looking at me with an I-told-you-so expression.
“Fine,” I said. “You were right. There’s no connection to all that other stuff. Happy?”
“Not really,” he said, motioning to Liz and reaching for his cuffs.
CHAPTER 50
“The feds are going to want your testimony in Mikela’s case,” Benny said. We were sitting in his office after getting Liz booked, and I’d just told him I was going to pack up and head back to Mexico.
“I’ll come back when they want me,” I said. “It’s going to be months before they get to that point. Federal cases take forever.”
“I’ll need you for this one, too.”
“Damn it, Benny.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, raising his open hands. “That’s how this shit works.”
“The last time you told me not to leave town, that didn’t stop anything from going to hell. If it’s going to go to hell either way, I’d just as soon be in Mexico while it does.”
“This is a nice little town,” Benny said. “Why you in such a hurry to get out of it?”
I gave him a look. “Seriously. Your memory. Have it checked.”
“All right,” he said, setting his jaw. “Go ahead and lea
ve, but think about this: If you blow me off, one or both of these cases will go to hell, and all the shit you’ve been through will have been for nothing.”
He was hitting me where it hurt, but that rarely slows me down. “You don’t need my testimony for Liz. She’s pleading guilty.”
“What if her lawyers change her mind?”
“Then you call me,” I said. “It’s not like I’ll be on Mars.”
“Fine,” Benny said, putting his hands up. “I can’t stop you. But God help me, I’ll probably keep trying.”
“Every man needs a hobby,” I told him as I left.
I went back to the apartment and packed up my clothes and other necessities. It was getting on toward ten, but I was full of nervous energy, and I’d gotten several extra hours of sleep the night before. If I got tired on the road, I could stop. I wasn’t trying to beat the clock anywhere.
I filled up Luigi’s food and water bowls and wrote a note for Mike to find when he opened up the next afternoon, explaining that I’d be out of the apartment for a while but that I’d be back when the trials got started, and that I’d be in touch after I got settled. I felt bad not telling him I’d be with Hector but decided it was better he not have any information that could be gotten out of him.
Shouldering my duffel, I took a quick look around. I’d spent a lot of time in this place over the last year, some of it enjoyable. It felt like I was closing a chapter, even though I’d be back for the trials and to take care of business with the Ranch. It wasn’t going to be the happy homestead I’d share with Hector ’til death did us part. That was a fantasy I hadn’t even been aware I had until that moment. It made me kind of misty.
Crossing through the dark bar, I spotted something bigger than a bread box lying in the recess of the storefront, against the door. We didn’t usually get street people, right across from the courthouse and police station, but there’s a first time for everything.
I pulled the door open gingerly so as not to wake him, but when I saw who it was, I couldn’t suppress a whispered, “God damn it.”
Steve’s ears pricked and he lifted his head to look at me. Audra had tied his lead to the door handle, and there was a note under his collar. I pulled it out and read:
South of Nowhere: A Mystery Page 22