I stuck my key in the lock and felt a brief shock of panic at the sharp screaming sound that greeted me. It took me a minute to realize that the alarm was sounding.
That’s why we have an alarm system, I scolded myself. To keep people like me from breaking into the clinic. I shut the door behind me and lunged for the alarm panel, somehow retrieving the code from the scrambled neurons in my brain.
The alarm stopped, leaving a sudden throbbing hum of silence. I listened, half expecting someone to storm around the corner and arrest me. But no one did, so I steadied myself against the wall for a second, walking myself through relaxation exercises. Breathe, I told myself. Breathe deeply, slowly. I tried to feel the air come into my lungs and fill my body all the way down into my toes. Just like I coached my clients.
It didn’t work. I was lucky I didn’t hyperventilate and faint right there. If nothing else, this horrible experience was opening my eyes to the lame inadequacy of my now chirpy-sounding interventions. I resolved firmly to get myself some new skills.
What did work, believe it or not, was praying. I closed my eyes and begged once again for help. And felt a surreal sense of calm settle into me as I finished the prayer. God, I felt, would not hang me out to dry Even though I was breaking and entering. Well, not technically breaking and entering, since I have a key But I’d been told in no uncertain terms to stay away from the clinic, and I was afraid I’d get in trouble with the brass for being here. Plus, I intended to pilfer any evidence that could and would be used against me. At least until I had time to take a look at it. So add stealing to my list of crimes. But somehow I felt there was an exception allowed for this circumstance.
With my newfound serenity, I walked, more slowly now—mindful of the necessity for quiet and trying not to crash into anything in the dim light—through the kitchen and into the hallway. I flipped on the light and checked my key ring, inserting the file room key into the lock. The door clicked open and I turned off the hallway light, stepping into the file room and shutting the door behind me.
Helene had the paper copy of the case file, of course, but there should be notes and demographic information in the computer system. I sat down in front of the screen and typed in my user name and password. The system thought for a second and then let me in.
I tapped keys for a while, poking around the file system, looking for Erik Zocci’s information. I found him logged under “inactive patients” from the previous calendar year. So far so good.
I opened the intake page.
At first, scanning the little boxes of information yielded nothing. It was just a repeat of the details Helene had quoted me.
He was from Chicago. Age nineteen when he came into the clinic. Freshman going on sophomore. Engineering major. Catholic. I checked his campus address. Morrison dorm, room 105. The room Gavin was living in now.
He listed his parents’ names: Joseph and Mariann. That was biblical. And this was interesting. I’d forgotten that he had seven siblings. He was number six. The oldest was only nine years older than he. Wow. Old Joseph and Mariann had been busy folks.
I wondered how the parents of eight children had managed to send one of their youngest to an expensive school like SMU. I paged down.
Erik had listed his father’s occupation as “business.” Mariann’s occupation was listed as “charity work.” What was that supposed to mean? I went back to the intake page. He had left the family income line blank.
We used that information to calculate fees, since the clinic has a sliding scale. I checked his fee. He had paid the full $110 an hour. I checked the line for scholarships—Erik had written “none.”
My guess was, with an SAT score in the high 1400 range, he had turned down a number of scholarships. Perhaps, it seemed, because he didn’t need one. Which meant the Zoccis had money. Probably serious money.
Despite what I’d read in his journal, Eric hadn’t mentioned any family issues to me. Nor did I remember that his family was wealthy. Usually this sort of thing came out in therapy sessions. I’d have to check my notes when I got a look at the file.
I paged down to his Mental Status Exam, which was a standard observation-based intake procedure we did for every new client. Usually an intern did the intake, then reported the results to the therapist before the first session. I checked the box at the bottom of the page to see who had done the intake. It had been left blank. I’d have to check the hard copy to see if I could identify the handwriting. It was possible I’d done the MSE myself.
Paging back up, I scanned the form. Under almost every category, the standard answer “unremarkable” was listed. His appearance was normal, though he was very thin for his height. His clothing was age-appropriate and relatively neat, his affect tense. He was oriented as to time, place, and person. Which basically meant he knew what day it was, where he was, and who he was. His intelligence level was listed as “well above average.” That sounded like my wording.
He was listed as having “anxious affect, but consistent with the content of the conversation.” The interviewer had noted that Zocci bounced his leg and fiddled with a key chain throughout the interview. Common manifestations of anxiety.
I paged down to “delusions and hallucinations.” Now it got a little more revealing. He had answered yes to several questions. Zocci reported that he’d recently experienced intense worry that something bad would happen to him. To the question “Have you ever felt someone was reading your mind or making you think things?” he had answered “sometimes, lately.” When asked. “Have you ever had a dream that was so intense or real that you weren’t sure whether you were asleep or awake?” he had answered yes. The interviewer had highlighted it for intensity.
When asked if he felt suicidal, he had answered “not really.”
I checked the notes. The interviewer had written “when pressed, patient claims no suicidal ideation.”
I felt a surge of guilt. I should have gotten to the bottom of that “not really.” It sounded profoundly unconvincing in hindsight.
I scanned the rest of the file. Nothing else stood out to me. I printed it out, closed the program, and shut down the computer.
A few minutes later, I’d armed the alarm system and locked up the office, breathing a sigh of relief that I hadn’t gotten caught. Jesus, it seemed, was cutting me a little break.
My next stop was the library. I seated myself at a research computer and started with a quick Internet search for Joseph Zocci of Chicago. Erik’s father, it turned out, was indeed a businessman. He was the founder, president, and CEO of a sizable regional airline in the Midwest. Eagle Wing Air.
I went to the airline’s website. Eagle Wing Air offered multiple daily flights to a number of Midwest locations. It was obviously a formidable regional airline. Not some rinky-dink start-up. I’d heard of it, but never taken an Eagle Wing flight. I was pretty sure it was mainly a commuter airline. I clicked on the company history page.
Eagle Wing Air had been founded in 1983 by Joseph Zocci, U.S. Navy, retired. He had started with a couple of small planes, ferrying local businessmen to their destinations. It sounded like it had started out as more of a charter airline than anything.
Utilizing small airports, Zocci had found a niche that was largely ignored by major carriers, and the airline, over the past twenty-odd years, had grown from a small two-plane operation into a large and enormously successful publicly-traded company. Eagle Wing now offered service to almost every major city in the U.S. And, I suspected, was the only airline in the country currently operating in the black.
Well. Bad news for me. Erik Zocci’s dad was driven, ambitious, and had enormous amounts of money. He could easily obliterate little me in a lawsuit. This was one of those times when that whole omnipotence thing would really come in handy. I promptly began begging God to end this thing quickly and quietly. In my favor.
I clicked back to the search page and opened articles about Joseph Zocci. Most of them were business-related news stories. They didn’t reveal m
uch about him personally. I got the impression he was a man who guarded his private life.
I glanced through the articles quickly, building up to the one I didn’t really want to read. Finally, I opened the most recent news item about Joseph Zocci. It was from the Chicago Tribune. “Airline Founder’s Son Found Dead—Suicide Suspected.”
I opened the article and was greeted with a grainy, black and white photo of the Zocci clan, staged to look like they were having a picnic. Erik stood behind his father’s right shoulder. I recognized him immediately. I leaned in toward the screen, squinting.
He looked perfectly normal to me. Smiling, unaffected. Typical rich-kid-getting-his-photo-taken-with-the-family smile. He looked elegant, confident, and at ease, which was not at all how I remembered him. I checked the caption on the picture. It was taken the fall of his senior year in high school.
This was a kid who had been well loved. Not a kid haunted by self-doubt and delusional fears. Something had clearly changed for this young man between the time this photo was taken and the time he showed up in my office.
The article started out with the brutal details of the suicide. I read them with an anxious, morbid fascination.
Zocci had checked into the Vendome the night before he’d killed himself. The hotel staff was well acquainted with the family, various members of whom often checked in for an overnight stay. Apparently the family’s primary residence was in the country. An estate on Lake Michigan.
Zocci had checked into a room on the twelfth floor. The following morning, witnesses reported seeing him on the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness facility around 9:15. No one remembered seeing him leave the fitness center.
At 12:10 p.m. Zocci’s body was found on the roof of the atrium facing Delaware Street. He had not left a suicide note.
Wait a minute. Helene had said the suicide note specifically mentioned me. I checked the date on the article. It was written the day after his death. Maybe the note had been found later. I’d have to ask Helene when it had been discovered.
The rest of the article was background on the Zocci family, particularly Joseph Zocci’s success. Mariann Zocci was hardly mentioned.
I paged back up to the family photograph and studied her face. Mariann Zocci looked expensively groomed, but in an understated way. No big jewelry. No designer outfit. Her face was plain, drawn, and humorless. She was a tiny woman, dwarfed by her grown children. I wondered how such a fragile little person had given birth eight times.
I scanned the rest of the faces in the photo. The girls, a matched set of five, were lovely, graceful, taller versions of their mother. And the two boys were strapping. Erik particularly had the look of an athlete. I remembered him as thin and wiry. This photo showed a healthy muscular boy. He had his father’s strong jaw line.
Something was bothering me about the photo. I studied it again, moving from face to face. They all looked so happy. So perfect.
But something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it dawned on me. There weren’t enough kids. I counted. Five girls and two boys. Someone was missing.
I scanned the article again until I found the list of the children’s names. There it was at the bottom of the final paragraph. Joseph Michael Zocci Jr., deceased.
Erik had specifically mentioned that he had seven siblings. Which meant he was including his dead brother in the count.
I had worked with families over the years who did that. When asked how many children she had, a mother might say, “We have four, including one child who died several years ago.” I usually took that to mean that the family still had some mourning to do, or that they had an extremely strong sense of afterlife. Strong enough to refer to a deceased child in the present tense.
There was no mention in the article about what had happened to Joseph Zocci’s namesake.
I printed it out and moved to the periodicals section of the library and found the microfiche of the Tribune’s archives.
I figured that, as the namesake son, Joseph Jr. had been the oldest boy. Erik’s oldest living sibling was nine years older than he, which would put that child at about age thirty now. I started my search with obituaries from thirty-five years ago.
I found it after only a few moments of searching. Joseph Jr. had died in 1972 at the age of three. The obit said only that he’d died in a tragic accident. Survivors were listed as Lieutenant Joseph Michael Zocci, naval fighter pilot, serving in Vietnam, and Mariann Zocci, homemaker. No other children were listed.
I searched the rest of the paper from the previous week, thinking maybe the accident had made the local news. I found it in the Tuesday Metro section.
Joseph Michael Zocci Jr. had fallen from the twelfth-floor balcony of the Vendome.
13
THE LIBRARY SUDDENLY seemed menacing to me. Bumps raised on my arms as I became aware, for the first time in the hour or so I’d been there, of the chill of the air-conditioning pouring out of the vent over my head. I felt bare, exposed, conspicuous. As though somehow the people around me were watching me. As if they were aware of my connection to these bizarre events.
I looked around and saw five or six people sitting at tables, mostly students bowed over thick reference books. No one even glanced back.
I wrote the sensation off as paranoia, but couldn’t shake it. I could feel eyes on me.
I turned my attention back to the article. I wondered if Joseph had been in Vietnam when his son died. Or perhaps he’d been home on leave and the couple had celebrated by booking a weekend at the Vendome. I did the math. This would have been almost ten years before Joseph Sr. had started Eagle Wing Air. The airline had been founded in 1983, the same year Erik had been born. If Zocci was still in the Navy, I doubted they would have been able to afford such a luxury.
What a grim twist on an already unthinkable tragedy. I didn’t know what to make of it. Had Erik chosen the Vendome for his suicide in order to echo, in some sick way, his brother’s death? It was not an unreasonable conclusion. He and his brother shared a middle name. Probably he felt some special kinship with the boy. And suicides sometimes choose methods reminiscent of some tragedy in the past. Something that reflects the legacy that had driven them to the edge in the first place.
I reached in my bag and retrieved the article about Erik’s suicide, spreading it out on the desk in front of me. I studied the family photo again, focusing in on Mariann’s face. I couldn’t imagine her grief.
Curiously, I felt nothing for Erik’s father. I peered at his picture again, wondering why I felt such a profound lack of empathy for the man. Something about his face put me off. He oozed power, authority. He didn’t seem like a man given to softness of any kind. Or was this knee-jerk self-protectiveness on my part? Trying to steel myself against the enemy? He was, after all, the man who held my career in his very powerful hands.
The cold was starting to get to me. I made a quick copy of Joseph Jr.’s obituary and stuffed it in my bag with the rest of the articles, gathered my things, and got ready to leave.
I felt burgeoning paranoia as I stood up. I was certain someone was watching me. I’d read studies in graduate school in which subjects were blindfolded and then asked to guess whether or not they were being stared at. In a startling percentage of cases, the subjects had been accurate. Even blindfolded, they could sense when they were being watched.
I heeded the research and looked around again. Same students. Bent over the same books. No one seemed the least bit interested in me.
Finally I turned to leave, only to feel a surge of clammy fear as I caught a glimpse of Peter Terry out of the corner of my eye.
I saw his face distinctly, staring at me from between the stacks at the other end of the room.
By the time I whipped around toward the image, though, he was gone. I shuddered, but vowed to myself that I would not back away out of fear. I remembered Tony DeStefano’s words, something about children of the King having protection.
I squared my shoulders, reminded myself tha
t my Dad could beat up his dad, and stalked over toward the shelves.
I plowed the rows of books, one by one, passing a few students plucking tomes from the shelves. They looked up curiously at me as I whipped past them.
I realized for the second time that day that I was moving at a suspicious clip. To even a casual observer, my anxiety must have been obvious. I might as well have been setting off bottle rockets.
I slowed myself down and continued my search with ruthless, businesslike efficiency. Row after row. One by one.
About halfway through, I realized the futility of my effort. All he had to do was stay a few rows ahead or behind me, and I would never find him. The library had four floors, dozens of study carrels, and who knew how many closets, elevators, and bathrooms.
I went back to the reference section and stood in front of the microfiche desk, glancing again toward the shelves, hoping to convince myself I’d imagined the entire thing.
I walked slowly back to the spot where I’d seen his face and checked the label at the end of the aisle. Religions, Mythology, Rationalism.
I stepped into the aisle, studied the titles, and found myself in the comparative religion section. The selection was sparse. Most of SMU’s religion and theology books would be across campus in the Bridwell Library at Perkins, SMU’s theology school.
My seminary education included exactly zero courses in comparative religion. I didn’t even recognize the authors’ names. I pulled a few titles off the shelves, but stuck them back in their slots after looking them over. This wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
I walked the aisles in the rest of the religion section until I reached the study area at the end. The large study table was unoccupied, except for one pile of books, a backpack, and a notepad with a pen sitting on it. The chair was empty.
I yanked a book off the shelf nearest me and sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table, opening my book and pretending to read. Keeping my head as still as I could, I strained to see the titles in the pile of books.
When the Day of Evil Comes Page 9