by Diane Lawson
“Admirable.” His tone was grudging. Analysts keep score by how many patients they have in a full four-to-five-time-per-week analysis. It occurred to me that he might be thinking I was lying, upping my numbers to make an impression.
“In the past eight days,” I said, “two of my patients have died. The first death is considered accidental. The police are calling the other a suicide. My intuition tells me there’s some connection.”
“Your analysis is coming back to me more clearly. I’ll be direct. I’m too close to death to beat around the bush. I suspect your old Oedipal problem is the culprit.” He sounded bored. “You must believe that only you can save your insane father. To be Daddy’s special girl, little Nora must be the all-powerful rescuer, ignoring all of Daddy’s nasty faults to keep his love.”
I’d forgotten about the condescending singsong he used when he said something he considered obvious.
“You carry this maladaptive character defense everywhere you go,” he went on. “Even into your work as an analyst. You fear hurting your patients’ feelings. You try to save them with your sweet love and neglect to confront the repressed aggression—yours and theirs—that will, of necessity, if not brought to consciousness by interpretation, lead to destruction. Voila—the bad marriage, the accident, the suicide.”
In about sixty seconds, he’d managed to dredge up the message of my entire analysis with him: You, Nora Goodman, are to blame. I in turn was thrown right back into the struck-dumb state of my years on his couch.
“You see why I opposed your interrupting your treatment. Perhaps Freud’s idea of the death instinct is truer than I’d like to think.” His signature sigh indicated our time was up. “I recommend you do some further analysis. We could work by phone.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do.
“When could we start?” I said.
“I expect to have time available in a few weeks. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you,” I said, grateful at that moment for the reprieve.
I was in bad enough shape already without Bernstein’s help.
Chapter Seven
SAPD headquarters sits in the middle of the 200 block of West Nueva, a shadeless stretch of street perpetually lined with squad cars and beat-up American-made vehicles. I parked at the corner in the elevated garage that also serves the historic red brick Bexar County Courthouse. I made my way through the people on the sidewalk—law enforcers, undesirables and what I suspected were law enforcers dressed as undesirables, the percentages teetering in precarious balance.
I stood just inside the lobby, letting my eyes adjust from the sun, which was already glaring like a floodlight at that early hour. An ATM occupying prime floor space came into focus first. A sign above it read, Sex Offenders Report to the Security Desk. Detective Slaughter had told me to bypass this station, but in that moment I couldn’t bring myself to ignore the armed youngster eyeing me from behind the glass.
“I have an appointment with Detective Slaughter,” I said.
He sat straight, neck floating in the collar of his over-starched blue shirt, the look on his face more quizzical than accusing. I imagined him grown into his uniform someday, morphed into one of the oversized guys that climb out of most squad cars.
“Homicide,” I added, grateful for the urgent legitimacy it conveyed.
He pointed down the hall to my right. “Have a good day.”
My heels echoed off the green and white marble floor, turning heads in open doorways as I passed. The tiny hairs on my forearms stood at attention under the scrutiny. Have a good day? I wondered if sex offenders were given the same consideration. And I wondered if a day that included an appointment with a homicide detective even held that potential.
The hallway ended at another glass booth. A sign resembling a menu hung on a metal door to my left:
HOMICIDE
ROBBERY
SEX CRIMES
NIGHT CID
Another sign, this one hand-lettered, warned that parking would be validated only for those having appointments with detectives. I’d left my ticket under the visor, the possibility of such amenities not having occurred to me.
A tiny woman with a humped back sat at the reception desk, staring over her glasses into a computer screen. I stood with my belly to the window ledge. My presence failed to evoke interest.
“I’m Dr. Nora Goodman,” I said, when the silence went on past decency.
“Teresa Rodriguez.” She pointed to her nameplate without turning toward me.
“I’m here to see Detective Slaughter.” She gave me a blank look. “I have an appointment.”
“An appointment.” She let the word roll around in her mouth and then yawned.
For a moment, I thought I might have dreamt it all. Howard’s death. Allison’s suicide. This was followed by a sensation that I might still be dreaming. I cleared my throat. Felt the dryness there. No. It was real. The receptionist’s brown eyes stared. I searched my memory for another bit of necessary information. A password I should know? The word for appointment in Spanish? Appointemiento? No. Fecha? No. Cita. Maybe.
Teresa stretched her arms up over her head. On the downswing, she brought her hand to rest on a clipboard to her right, studying it as if it had just materialized.
There were only a few names on the list and even from where I was standing, I could see mine was first. I reached through the window and pointed. “That’s me,” I said.
Teresa pulled back with a tic-like motion, like my move held a threat. I knew that look from my work in mental hospitals. The look that comes over the face of the nurse on the locked unit when that particular patient approaches. The look that accompanies her jamming keys deep in her pocket with one hand and poising the index finger of the other to punch in the number for Code Red.
Teresa kept her eyes on me while she picked up her phone receiver. “George,” she said. “Your doctor is here.” Reinforcement on the way, she seemed to relax. “What kind of a doctor are you anyway?”
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said.
“Psychiatrist!” She pointed her finger at me. “Ha!”
A compact man, pink scalp showing through his red buzz cut, appeared in the doorway. I took him for mid-thirties. He had on a crisp white shirt with sleeves turned up and a banker-red tie. A slick straight scar ran the length of his right forearm.
Teresa smiled at me and cocked her head. “Hey, do you know Dr. Richard Kleinberg? He’s our consultant. Muy guapo, este hombre.” She fanned herself with outstretched fingers.
“I know him,” I said. He’s not that good looking.
“I’m glad you’re getting psychiatric help, George,” Teresa said, noticing him behind her. She leaned toward me. “He needs to see you, Doc. And then the rest of them back there. And if you can’t do nothing with them, have me sent away. This place is driving me seriously crazy.” She laughed, lips held tight, her uneven shoulders bouncing up and down.
Detective Slaughter shook his head, popped open the metal door and led the way down a gray linoleum passage.
“So you work with Dr. Kleinberg?”
“No,” I said.
“But you know him?”
“He’s my husband.”
“Really?” he said. “Smart guy.”
“We’re separated.”
A scoreboard, touting the number of traffic fatalities for the year on one side (seventy-two) and the number of homicides (one hundred thirty-seven) on the other, provided the only break in the long empty wall.
“Men will have their mid-life crises,” he said. “No immunity for you mental health types, I guess.”
I saw myself as he must have seen me. Aging female. The usual lineup of sagging spots—eyelids, jowls, breasts, belly, butt, knees. “You assume it’s his decision,” I said. “Do you make use of intuitive leaps like that in all your investigations?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just playing the numbers.” He ushered me into a glassed-in office, cleared papers off the v
isitor’s chair, then asked if I’d like some coffee as if he wanted to make up.
I hesitated.
“It’s not the usual police brew,” he said. “I get here early so I can make it myself.”
He was right. It was decent and in a real mug embossed with Wile E. Coyote chasing Roadrunner. I sipped and took in the scene. Through the internal windows, I saw carrels occupied by other well-dressed men and a few equally decked-out women, all on the phone or hunched over paperwork. I fought down the urge to say something about his name. “I thought you’d be older,” I said instead.
“You don’t much fit my picture of a psychiatrist either, but you all can’t look like Kleinberg. Guess we’re even.” He sat down behind his desk, his demeanor now sober. “But we’re here to talk about the Forsyth case.” He positioned a manila file in front of him and looked at me expectantly. A wave of goose bumps shot up my back. The folder looked new and didn’t seem to have much in it.
“I have a patient scheduled at ten,” I said.
“Got some things to take care of today myself.” He glanced at the piles on his desk and the open cardboard file boxes that lined the walls. “Let’s jump right in.” He tipped his desk chair back and stuck the eraser end of a pencil into his mouth like he wanted a cigarette. “What can you tell me about Allison Forsyth?”
A psychoanalyst knows better than to just start talking. “Could you tell me what happened?” I said. “Her suicide doesn’t make sense.”
Slaughter glanced out toward his colleagues, as if he might be looking for assistance or sympathy. Then he opened the folder, leafed through a few notes, furrowed his pink brow and gave a big sniff.
“We know from her divorce lawyer’s receptionist that Mrs. Forsyth met with him for an hour that morning. The attorney himself has so far been unavailable for questioning. Shortly after their meeting, she gained access to the terrace of the Tower Life Building. Not yet clear how that happened. Twenty-two stories later, she was fairly unrecognizable. We’re hoping you can fill in some of the blank space.”
My brain flickered like a light bulb threatening to burn out. My Allison, who always kept both feet on the ground—literally. I couldn’t fathom her choice. Pills maybe—although I never prescribed enough of her antidepressant at any one time for a lethal dose, even if she added a bottle of Scotch. Carbon monoxide? A hose out the exhaust of her Range Rover? More like it. Even a rope from a ceiling fan. But Allison climbing out on a ledge, balancing for a moment before stepping off into thin air? I made myself imagine her baggy dress forming a futile parachute before inverting over her head. Her blonde hair, for once defying its limpness, lifting straight to heaven. Would she have landed feet first, the metatarsals and those small anklebones shattering in warp-speed domino sequence? Or would she have turned mid-air, assumed the hands-on-chest repose of the analytic couch, landing in one grand splatter?
Did she have time for regret?
Did she even think of me?
“She left a message Sunday canceling her appointment the next day,” I said. “She had been depressed in the past. Seriously depressed. Lately though she was better. More than better. Happy, actually. Moving ahead on her divorce was real psychological progress.”
Slaughter looked at me. “I’ve heard that the time to worry about suicide is when people start to get better,” he said. “They get the energy to do it. It’s called rollback or something.” His eyes narrowed and his pupils dilated slightly.
He was right, and the possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I remembered Allison’s words: Killing myself isn’t an option. Freud said there is no negative in the Unconscious. Killing myself is not an option translates as Killing myself is an option. I knew this. Why didn’t I think of it at the time? Why didn’t I think of it later? Why did I need a detective to remind me of what any competent psychiatrist should know? I saw Freud’s critical face. I thought of what Richard would say when he heard. Shame filled my chest. In trouble. Big trouble. The words floated around in my head. I remembered the day my father caught me peeking into the slaughterhouse. He jerked me up by my arm and threatened to hang my carcass alongside the cows.
What finally came out of my dry mouth was one of Richard’s courtroom lines. “I don’t see that operating here.”
Saying the words sent an electric current though me, gave me a feeling of power, a feeling unwarranted in someone facing the high probability of a malpractice suit.
The skin covering Slaughter’s head turned pinker. “What do you see operating here, Doctor?”
A pleasant tension came over me then, the same feeling I get in a therapy session when things start coming together in my mind, that sense of pressure and possibility, the awareness of the need for something to be said before the something to be said has become exactly clear—the psychic equivalent of the exquisite moment an orgasm becomes inevitable, on the way but not yet arrived.
“I’m concerned,” I said, my words beginning to give substance to suspicions that had been skulking around my mind, “that Allison’s death might be part of something bigger.”
Slaughter didn’t blink, though he elevated his brows a good half-inch, making the same facial gesture I use to encourage a patient to think again.
“Bigger?” he said.
“This is confidential?”
He nodded once, curious or wary, and moved his chair closer to his desk.
“Do you remember the Trinity University professor who died last week?” I asked. “The explosion?”
“I heard about it,” he said. “Arson is in charge of that one.” He put his forearms on the desk as if to show off his scar and began tapping his fingers in military sequence.
“The professor, Dr. Westerman, was also my patient. He was far too compulsive to have made an error in his lab.” My words picked up speed. “And Allison Forsyth wouldn’t have killed herself given where she was psychologically. And even if she’d wanted to kill herself, jumping off a building was the last thing she would have done.” I paused for a breath, then said aloud what I’d until that moment not quite permitted myself to think. “I think they might have been murdered.”
Murdered. The word left my mouth tingling.
Slaughter jerked back slightly like a light had flashed in his face.
“I’m talking about foul play,” I said.
Slaughter picked up a pencil and doodled on a piece of paper, avoiding eye contact. “Let me get this straight. Both of these people were coming to you for psychiatric help.”
“Psychoanalysis actually.”
“Whatever. They were sad or weird enough to pay money to come see you. And you’d seen them how often? Approximately.”
“I do true psychoanalysis which means I saw them five times a week. Professor Westerman was in his fourth year of treatment. Allison, I’d seen for just over three years.”
“These people were coming to see you on a daily basis and they weren’t disturbed enough to make a little scientific miscalculation or fling themselves off a highrise?”
I wasn’t upset with him. Out of context, classical psychoanalysis always sounds like a crazy enterprise. Who would need or want to see an analyst daily, week after week, year after year? Who would want to spend the money, even if they had it to spend? The fact is that psychoanalysis is the only way people like my patients change. My patients aren’t lunatics. You wouldn’t cut them wide berth on the street. They’re the people you can’t get close to, the coworkers that wear on your nerves, the acquaintances you hope don’t sit down at your table when you look up from the newspaper and see them standing in the Starbucks line, the spouses you divorce after seven years of banging your head against the wall.
“The treatment is a standard procedure,” I said. “I can tell you more about that some other time. The point is that two innocent people are dead who shouldn’t be. The only thing they have in common is that they are, they were, my patients.”
The were seemed to make real that I’d never see Howard or Allison again. Finally, I
could cry. The belated tears made my nose run. Slaughter pulled a Kleenex box out of a drawer and pushed it at me. It was the fancy aloe-laced variety. This unexpected consideration undid me all the more.
“Detective Slaughter,” I said, my voice unsteady, “I think someone could be targeting my practice. My other patients could be in danger.”
“Okay,” he said, moving the tissue box closer to me. “I owe your husband a lot of favors. I can use one up on you. I’ll look into the Westerman thing—talk to the arson investigator. I’ll see what the medical examiner has to say about Forsyth and follow up with her attorney. Then I can get back to you.”
“When will you get back to me?”
“Investigations take time—interviews, chemical analysis, toxicology. Six weeks on average.”
“Six weeks? Two of my patients are dead in eight days,” I said. “I don’t have six weeks.”
“Look. Dr. Goodman. Nina?”
“Nora.”
“Nora, I can see you’re upset,” he said, resorting to a comfort comment I suspected he’d picked up from Richard in some in-service session.
“I don’t need a cop to tell me I’m upset,” I said. “I need some detective work.”
He ground his teeth for a second or two. “Dr. Goodman, I’d say over fifty percent of families of a suicide come to me talking homicide. The idea sits better on the mind. You aren’t related, but you were close to these people. There is such a thing as coincidence.”
“Not as often as you think. Freud figured that out a hundred years ago. The odds of this would be like hitting the lottery.”
“Doc, there’s a winner every week.”
He stood up.
I didn’t.
We stared at each other for a while. Thanks to my patient Lance and his unblinking, post-traumatic vigilance, I can hold my own at that.
Finally, he said, “I’ll call you this afternoon, first thing tomorrow at the latest. Here’s my card.”
I didn’t budge.
“Look,” he said, like he was addressing a two-year-old. “I’m writing my cell phone number on it.”