Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  Glash continued, displaying a detailed knowledge of Jane’s case, her arrest, the psychiatric evaluations, her failed attempt at a not-guilty-by-reason-of-mental-defect plea. He then discussed the recent bestseller written by her husband, John J. Saunders. ‘Have you read it?’ he asked Barrett.

  His question surprised her. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me what you thought of it.’

  For the first time Barrett caught a sense of emotion in his voice, an urgency, a desire to know. She was torn; her critique of a tell-all book did not belong in this taped interview. But this was the first time there’d been anything like a normally paced conversation with Glash. She couldn’t risk losing this sliver of an opportunity. ‘I thought it was sad and exploitative.’

  ‘It sold over a million copies in hardcover,’ Glash replied. ‘The paperback is coming out September first. I think he’ll use his wife’s transfer and court case to generate publicity. Don’t you agree, Dr Conyors?’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Barrett said.

  ‘That’s what I thought; we sometimes think alike, Dr Conyors,’ Glash said. ‘Now let’s move on to the case of Dr Albert …’

  For the next thirty minutes Richard Glash displayed an encyclopedic knowledge of Dr Clarence Albert – the PhD microbiologist who five years prior had mailed powdered anthrax to the executives of Bioforward, a Jersey-based biotech corporation where he’d been employed for over twenty years. From there Glash shifted seamlessly to a retelling of Allison Tessavian’s erotomanic fixation on the pop idol Justin Green. Allison believed Justin was in love with her; she’d stalked him and killed his then girlfriend, singer Melinda Coo.

  Suddenly, Glash stopped talking.

  The silence was eerie, just the low-pitched hum from the camera. Barrett found herself staring at the orange-clad man. He smiled. ‘I’ve killed five people,’ Richard Glash said. ‘That’s not a lot, is it, Dr Conyors?’

  ‘It is,’ she said, wondering where he was going, and knowing that everything he said or did had its own logic. But how to figure it out?

  ‘No, it’s not. How many people have you killed?’

  Barrett felt the air getting sucked from the room. Of course Glash would know about her, and the recent high-profile case in which she had shot and killed Ellen Martin, and come close to putting a bullet between the eyes of Ellen’s twin brother, Jimmy. She felt sick, and wanted to get this over with. Her heart raced; she didn’t want to have to think about Jimmy Martin, a man who’d stalked her, and murdered her husband, Ralph.

  ‘Do you think that you killed Charles Rohr?’ Glash asked, bringing up another one of her cases that had gone tragically wrong.

  ‘He shot himself,’ she replied.

  ‘I know that,’ Glash said, dismissively, ‘but you were the reason, weren’t you?’

  ‘I can’t discuss these cases.’

  ‘I know that too. There are rules of confidentiality. But those people are dead, so it doesn’t apply. I think, Dr Conyors, you’ve killed more people than me. And I’m in prison. That doesn’t seem right. They call me a serial killer. You’re one as well.’ He shifted in his chair, the shackles jangled.

  She felt him studying her. Just as he knew all about the other prisoners, Glash had done his homework on her. She wondered how much he knew about her, about her family. She pictured her younger sister Justine, who like her had been traumatized by Jimmy Martin. Justine finally was back at work in the hospital, seeing patients. Only yesterday they’d argued, Justine pleading with Barrett to have an abortion.

  ‘How many people have you killed, Dr Conyors?’ Glash repeated. ‘What about when you were an intern at Yale and a medical student at Tulane? Did you kill any patients? They say doctors do it all the time, but they call it accidents and natural causes.’ A pressure built in his voice. ‘How many people have you killed?’

  Barrett struggled to format a question, as she watched Glash’s breathing grow more rapid.

  ‘How many?’

  Carla spoke. ‘Richard, try to calm down.’

  ‘Shut up!’ he shouted at her, twisting in the chair.

  ‘Answer the question, Dr Conyors. How many people have you killed?’ He was straining, the muscles bulged and corded in his arms.

  The videographer pressed back to the corner of the room, still filming, but terror on his face.

  Barrett stayed rooted in her chair as Glash screamed his question. She was scared to death, but thrilled that she’d gotten him to show his true colors, and all caught on film. What would the judge make of this? Or a jury?

  ‘How many people have you killed, Dr Conyors?’

  The interview was over. Once Richard Glash’s rage was triggered nothing would stop him from lashing out at anything and anyone in his path. At a forensic hospital, maintaining him would be a nightmare. People would get hurt … or worse.

  ‘How many people have you killed, Dr Conyors?’

  And then the unthinkable. The steel chain that rooted him to the floor snapped.

  Barrett was out of her chair as Glash lunged for her. A decade of martial arts training had not prepared her for the fury of his assault. He barreled into her chest and knocked her back, as guards swarmed the small room. They attacked with both pepper spray and a TASER gun. Glash twisted and screamed, his hands and legs still shackled. ‘How many people have you killed, Dr Conyors?’

  Barrett’s eyes welled up, her heart pounded, and the nausea returned as she cowered, watching the guards attempt to subdue Glash.

  ‘Stop it!’ Carla screamed, having removed herself to the corner by the door. ‘You’re hurting him!’

  ‘How many people have you killed, Dr Conyors?’

  He screamed and struggled, as they zapped him repeatedly with the high-voltage TASER.

  Pressed back against the wall, Barrett knew that the best course would be to get the hell out. She could see the guards getting hurt, one’s face cut open from the steel chain; another got caught in the side of the head by Glash’s flailing elbow. She tried to think back through the interview; nothing there would help, not even this. Carla would spin it and make this all a part of his mental illness. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, loud enough to be heard.

  The sound of her voice – or maybe the cumulative effects of the pepper spray and TASER – seemed to calm him. ‘How many people have you killed, Dr Conyors?’ he asked again, his body pressed down to the ground by five bleeding and winded guards.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘Why is it so important to you?’ she asked, bracing her hands against the wall and trying to stand.

  ‘Don’t answer, Richard,’ Carla shouted.

  He ignored her. ‘You’ve killed more people than me. It’s not right. They should lock you up, and set me free.’

  Carla looked across at the videographer, and saw that the red light was still on the camera. ‘Too fabulous,’ she whispered under her breath, and turning straight to the camera: ‘For the record, the interview ended in Dr Conyors causing the prisoner, Richard Glash, a man suffering with paranoid schizophrenia, to become agitated. He was subsequently assaulted by five facility personnel and brutally attacked with both pepper spray and a TASER gun. This is a clear and graphic representation of how my client, a man with a serious and persistent mental illness, has consistently and violently been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. I will, on his behalf, pursue this matter in the most aggressive manner.’

  Two

  Three days after the disastrous interview with Glash, Barrett gripped the cool surface of her desk and struggled to catch her breath. Rationally, she knew that she wasn’t dying, but the surges of adrenalin that pulsed through her sent a different message. Her thoughts skittered from the fetus growing in her belly to Friday’s terrifying evaluation. When he’d come after her, it had brought back terrifying memories of when Charlie Rohr had shot himself dead with a Marshals Service revolver not three feet from her. The image of Rohr’s head jerking back as the bullet hit home … ‘Stop it!’ she
said, wondering if her voice carried outside the closed door of her new office. If it had, her secretary, Marla, would either ignore or timidly knock to see if Barrett needed anything.

  ‘Calm down,’ she told herself, trying to take slow, measured breaths. She used a technique her Wing Chung Sifu, Henry, had taught her: the good breath goes in; the jangled breath goes out. Just observe, don’t think. She let random thoughts and images enter and leave: the pale blue of her button-down shirt against the navy of her blazer, the feel of her belly expanding against the waistband of her khakis, her feet firmly on the floor, sensing their weight through the rubber soles of her walking shoes. She felt the air flow through her body, she kept her thoughts focused, and tried not to think about the child growing inside of her, the one that …

  A red light flashed twice on her phone, and then Marla’s voice said, ‘Dr Conyors, Dr Houssman is on line two.’

  ‘Thanks, Marla.’ She picked up.

  ‘Barrett, how are you?’ The older man’s voice worked better than any of her Zen techniques.

  ‘Honestly?’ she asked, picturing George with his thick glasses, sitting in the middle of his sun-drenched apartment, probably wearing one of several identical gray raincoats, about which as trainees she and her colleagues had speculated as to their purpose, wondering if he was either a flasher or had watched one too many Columbo specials.

  ‘No, lie to me, I’m having a tough day,’ he quipped.

  ‘You? You’re retired – at least, I thought you were.’ Both of them were aware that Houssman, the eighty-four-year-old legend in forensic psychiatry, was busier now than he’d ever been, between working as a consultant, presenting at conferences and continuing to supervise trainees, who eagerly sought him out.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ he said, ‘about the …’

  ‘Abortion?’ she said bluntly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s all set,’ she said dully. ‘A couple more hours, and it’s over.’

  ‘It’s for the best,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what everyone tells me. I just keep thinking about Ralph,’ she said. Just mentioning the name of her dead husband Ralph Best – the talented musician whose last name she never took – filled her with a dull ache, like a piece of her was missing. Sometimes she’d imagine him playing trombone, hearing the fiery passages, as he’d shoot up and down the scales. ‘Why couldn’t it have been his?’

  ‘I know,’ George said.

  ‘Let’s talk about something else, I’ve got to just keep my mind off it.’

  ‘I heard about what happened with Glash,’ he said.

  ‘It was horrible. I felt totally unskilled,’ Barrett admitted. ‘He was toying with me. I’ll send you a copy of the tapes. It was four hours of … I’m worried, George.’

  ‘You’re not alone.’

  ‘If he gets transferred to Croton, he’ll wreak havoc. He’s incredibly smart and time holds no meaning for him. I can see him playing the good patient for as long as it takes.’

  ‘Exactly right,’ Houssman agreed. ‘He knows the rules, and figures angles to make them work. He’ll be perfectly well behaved and take all his medications. Then, his sham symptoms will disappear, and come the time of his six-month review he’ll have his patient rights attorney argue for his release, demanding a less restrictive setting under the Olmsted Act.’

  ‘I’ve been going through his old records,’ Barrett said, ‘looking for anything that can be used to keep this from happening.’

  ‘What did you find?’ Houssman asked, his voice more tentative than usual.

  ‘Nothing with your name on it, and it kind of surprised me,’ she said, keeping her tone light. ‘He would have been high profile at the time of his arrest. I would have thought you’d have been the evaluating psychiatrist.’

  ‘He was, and I wasn’t,’ Houssman said abruptly.

  Barrett was struck by something in his voice. Since Barrett’s fellowship in forensic psychiatry, he had played a big role in her life. Somewhere between mentor and the father she never knew – or rather, chose to forget. George wasn’t saying something. ‘And?’ she prompted.

  ‘I had someone else do the evaluation,’ he answered simply.

  If she hadn’t had so much else on her mind, like that in less than two hours she’d be terminating her pregnancy, she would have pushed. George was leaving something out and she knew it. Glash’s case was too fascinating for him to have given it away without good reason. As she looked across her Danish modern desk and through the large windows that gave her an expansive view of downtown Manhattan and the steel-gray East River, she thought back. Twenty years ago George would have sat where she was now. He’d been the founder and director of the forensic center, a job she’d held for the past two and a half months, and one she wasn’t certain that she wanted. The furniture was all new, an expense Barrett had insisted upon, wanting to eliminate every trace of her past boss, supposed friend and clinic director Dr Anton Fielding, now under investigation by the university, the state and the feds for misappropriation of grant funds, and a serious ethical violation that involved the release of a homicidal patient – a man whose child Barrett currently carried. Thinking of Anton filled her with rage and a horrible feeling of being tricked, lied to and placed in danger.

  ‘Barrett, I don’t have to tell you this and yet … if Richard Glash is ever released, he will kill at the first opportunity.’

  ‘I know, this whole case isn’t making any sense. Jane Saunders, and even Allison Tessavian, I can understand. Those women should never have been sent to prison. Their crimes were perpetrated while floridly psychotic, under the sway of their voices and delusions. I actually agree with the attorney – and the judge – on those two. At the time of their killings neither one thought their actions were wrong. Jane thought she was saving her kids from the devil, and Allison believed that Melanie Coo was having an affair with a man she believed was her husband. The fact that it was all delusion could have made a decent case, but for whatever reason their attorneys didn’t go there. But Clarence Albert and Richard Glash … I’m scared, George. I’m at the point where I no longer know how the system works.’

  ‘Or doesn’t work.’

  ‘The inmates are running the asylum …’ she hedged.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, immediately catching that she’d held something back.

  ‘Do you know Carla Phelps?’

  ‘The Legal Protection Project? I know of her, and I’ve read her articles. A smart cookie.’

  ‘This comes under the heading of “I will have to kill you if you ever tell anyone what I’m about to say”.’

  ‘Barrett, you know that’s a two-way street with us. You trust me and I trust you.’

  ‘But this is a hands-down breaking of confidentiality … she was my patient about seven years ago. I was chief resident on the inpatient unit and she got admitted from OB with a postpartum psychosis.’

  ‘She’s bipolar?’

  ‘Very much so, and everything went bad for her. She’d never told her husband about her manic depression. He didn’t take it well, and while she was still hearing voices and believing that devils were attempting to kidnap her baby, he filed for divorce and full custody of their daughter. She stayed on the inpatient unit for two months. We couldn’t get her symptoms under control. By the time we finally did, she had almost no life to return to. When she finally left the hospital she was furious. She accused me of conspiring with her husband. At one point she believed I was having an affair with him.’

  ‘I told you not to do that,’ Houssman quipped.

  ‘Cute, George.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘No idea.’ She paused.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s not entirely true. I just remembered something. Did you ever notice how paranoid people sometimes get the thing they most fear? That people really will conspire against them … hurt them, take away everything, especially when they come into contact with mental health p
rofessionals?’

  ‘Yes … so what happened with Carla Phelps?’

  ‘As she was getting better and stabilizing on meds, her husband went forward with the divorce. He used her mental illness to get full custody of their daughter – claimed she was unfit and had put their child in harm’s way as a result of her bipolar disorder – on some level that was true. Her hospital records were subpoenaed. Things I’d written were used to support his case, many taken out of context. My evaluation from the night she was admitted was pretty strong – something horrible could have happened to that baby. A couple months after she’d been discharged, I was approached by her husband’s attorney. He wanted me to be an expert witness in another case … they’d been so impressed with my workup on Carla. I asked what had happened. That’s when I found out she’d lost nearly all her parental rights. They left her with weekly supervised visits. So let’s just say that I’m not one of her favorite people. I’d love to not have anything to do with her.’

  ‘Barrett, if this were any other case I’d say recuse yourself. The problem is, as director of the clinic, you’re the buck-stops-here woman. This case is too big, too important to risk with someone else. If this goes south, it’ll open the floodgates for thousands of copycat suits.’

  ‘I know,’ Barrett said. ‘Every violent criminal will try their damnedest to become mentally ill.’

  ‘You know, in principle I agree with a lot of what Phelps is trying to do. I just wish she wouldn’t try to make her point with Glash. There was one phrase in an article of hers that jarred the hell out of me. Something like “no advance in civil rights comes without a price”. She was making comparisons to the suffragettes and then to the civil rights movement of the Sixties. I think the quote was “there are always casualties in the fight for freedom; freedom is never free”.’