Beauty vs. the Beast

by M. J. Rodgers

  “My investigators have discovered that a week ago, Croghan met with the executive producer at a local Seattle television station. Croghan promised the producer exclusive rights to Mrs. Nye’s story for a future made-for-TV movie. In exchange, the producer is gearing up to make the trial an ongoing fifteen-minute special every night, to be discussed by a four-member legal panel on their local news segment.”

  Kay slowly and stiffly circled her desk and reclaimed her chair. She sat on its edge, that small characteristic frown drawing her eyebrows together again.

  “And with Croghan making the deal, you can bet he’ll do everything he can to slant the coverage in favor of Mrs. Nye.”

  “And knowing human nature, you can also just bet one or more of the jurors is going to have to peek at the coverage of a trial they’re sitting on,” Damian said. “What can we do about it?”

  AJ shrugged her limber dancer’s shoulders. “It’s in your bailiwick now, Kay.”

  She nodded. “The logical thing to do is to try to sequester the jury, but even in his sane days, Ingle would never sequester a jury. Refers to it as locking up the good citizens like they were the criminals.”

  She exhaled as though coming to an unsatisfactory decision. “We’ll just have to persuade the judge to admonish the jury so strongly that he makes them afraid to watch. Only, with Judge Ingle’s own current fascination with this circus, I doubt any admonition coming from him will sound all that genuine. Good heavens, AJ, if that’s only the bad news, what’s the worst?”

  “You ready?”

  “Probably not, but you’d better go ahead, anyway.”

  “Croghan got the TV producer to approach Judge Ingle this morning and ask him to write the script for the made-for-TV movie.”

  Kay lunged forward. “You can’t be serious. But that’s clearly a conflict of interest!”

  AJ shook her long, dark mane. “You’d never get it to stick. Ingle is playing it smart. He says he won’t talk a deal until the case is over. And there’s no evidence he even knows that Croghan put the producer up to it. Just like there’s no proof that Croghan deliberately finagled the case into Ingle’s courtroom by delaying several documents and making sure they arrived at the precise moment the clerk was ready to assign the next case to Ingle.”

  “Croghan did that? But how?”

  “Same way Marc Truesdale has gotten his cases before a particular judge—by knowing the clerk’s procedures, the percentages and playing them both.”

  “Marc does that? Why, that scoundrel. No wonder he’s always winning those hopeless cases.”

  “Playing the percentages and throwing in a little legal finesse goes a long way sometimes,” AJ agreed.

  Kay’s fingers tapped on her desktop to a rapid mental march. “So Croghan knew all about Ingle’s book and its critical reviews. He finagled the case into the judge’s court, guessing that Ingle would be delighted to have a juicy case to preside over and, subsequently, write about. And he guessed right. Damn. So far, Croghan’s every step has been carefully calculated.”

  “So it would seem,” AJ said as she glided to her feet.

  “Why did he leave Olympia to practice up here in Seattle?” Kay asked.

  AJ paused at the door and turned. “He’s done some moonlighting over the last few years in the courts up here. Word is, he finally left the big firm he was with in Olympia to open his own Seattle office where he could be his own boss. He’s obviously out to make a name for himself. Be careful of him, Kay. He’s slippery and he’s sharp. There’s no telling what else he’s going to pull. Don’t hold anything back.”

  * * *

  “AJ’s RIGHT. I can’t hold anything back, Damian.”

  Kay tapped her fingers on her desk as her mind raced. The fallout from AJ’s two bombs still mushroomed in her thoughts, despite the fact that the private investigator had left several minutes ago.

  Damian draped a long leg over the edge of her desk as he rested against its side. “I still think you should put me on the stand and then Lee. If the jury just understands—”

  “You, I’ll consider, but never Lee,” Kay interrupted. “I don’t know what a jury would make of him, but I suspect they’d decide you’d extinguished the wrong personality.”

  “They wouldn’t if they had met Roy.”

  Damian’s words struck like a bolt of bright lightning through all the gray fallout clouds in Kay’s mind. She shot to her feet and faced him, feeling newly charged.

  “Then let’s let the jury meet Roy.”

  “Meet Roy? Kay, you know Roy’s gone. You’re not making sense.”

  “The videotapes, Damian. Let’s show them the videotapes of Roy.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Patient confidentiality prohibits it.”

  “What patient confidentiality? Roy wasn’t your patient.”

  “The mind that contained him was.”

  “Are you saying you don’t have Lee’s approval to share those tapes?”

  “I have Lee’s approval to share the tapes. He signed a release at the beginning of our sessions together.”

  “Well, then, I don’t understand—”

  “I asked him to sign the release so that I could show the tapes to other psychologists with years of training in treating multiple personality disorder. Kay, there are very sensitive issues at stake here. I’ll continue to discuss the case with you in general terms, but the specifics must remain protected under the confidentiality oath between doctor and patient.”

  “All right, I’ll look at the tapes first and see what—”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “The confidentiality oath between doctor and patient—”

  “Is no less than that between lawyer and client,” Kay interrupted. “Were I to repeat any privileged communication between us, I would be disbarred and lose my license to practice. What’s more, nothing I divulged could ever be used in court. By law, it would be inadmissible evidence.”

  “There are other considerations. Without psychological training, it would be difficult for you to understand—”

  “View the tapes with me then. Explain what I don’t understand.”

  She watched as Damian swept his broad, strong hand to the back of his neck and rubbed it as though trying to ease a pain there. “It’s more than just understanding.”

  She went to his side, put a hand on his forearm and felt the instant tightening of the steel muscles beneath.

  “Damian, help me out on this. You heard what AJ said. Croghan is devious and he is determined. I have to have something concrete to show the jury—”

  “I repeat, the jury can never see those tapes, Kay.”

  “But I have to see them.”

  “Why? I’ve told you everything that is germane to the two personalities.”

  “From a psychological standpoint, I have no doubt. But how can you know what’s germane from a legal standpoint? There may be something I can use that you would never have thought of. I can’t go into court on Monday with any blinders on. I must fully understand who Roy Nye was in order to properly defend your decision to extinguish him. To do that, I must see those tapes.”

  “You don’t know what’s on those tapes, Kay.”

  “That’s why I have to see them.”

  “I strongly advise against this.”

  Kay increased the pressure on his forearm. “Damian, it’s the only way. Unless I can see this personality—Roy—for myself, how can I adequately describe him to a jury?”

  Damian exhaled a weary breath. “I’ll probably regret this.”

  “I’ve given you my word that I will not repeat what’s on those tapes without your approval. What else is causing you concern?”

  “That you aren’t prepared for what you’re about to see.”

  There was something about the hard look in Damian’s eyes and the hard edge in his voice that gave Kay a small shiver. For the first time since the brilliant thought had o
ccurred to her, Kay wondered whether it was so brilliant, after all.

  Chapter Five

  Kay parked her new blue Camry behind Damian’s vintage green Jaguar and wondered what they were doing in this residential section of Seattle. She followed Damian around a riotous growth of fifty-foot Douglas firs, only to be almost immediately confronted by a huge, towering, gray Gothic house, encased in broad and batten wood cladding, gable dormers, thorny pinnacles and even a castellated tower.

  It looked like something out of Grimm’s fairy tales. Very grim.

  “I thought we were going to your office to view those videotapes?”

  “My home is also my office these days.”

  Kay gazed up at the Gothic monstrosity before her. His home? This outwardly well-balanced, charming psychologist? It seemed rather incongruous. Still, in a strange way, it also seemed to fit something in him—something Kay had sensed from the first, something dark that dwelt behind those secretive eyes. Or was she just being fanciful?

  A blue envelope had been taped to the heavy paneled front door. Kay didn’t get a chance to see if anything was written on it. As soon as Damian spied it, he snatched it and shoved it into his pocket. He fitted his key into the massive door and turned the lock. It swung open to the accompaniment of a loud, squeaky-hinged protest.

  Kay stiffened. Last time she’d heard that kind of ominous sound, the actors on-screen had just walked into a haunted house where they were suddenly attacked with a hatchet. Not a comforting memory to spring up at this moment.

  Kay hesitantly followed Damian inside. She trod carefully across the stone-floor coldness of the age-darkened entry hall. A hollow-eyed, enormous old suit of armor, anchored by a heavy metal chain to the stone wall, held a battle-ax clutched in its iron hand like a sentry ready to split open the head of any intruder.

  Kay shivered involuntarily as she gave the old armor a wide berth.

  Her detour took her to Damian’s side and for the first time she saw what lay ahead. She stopped in her tracks. She simply could not believe her eyes.

  “My office is this way,” Damian said as he veered right down a narrow and equally dark hallway.

  Kay did not follow this time. She proceeded straight ahead, her attention totally captured and drawn to the vision she was certain would vanish any moment.

  Because it was a lovely, impossible vision.

  Sunlight poured down on glistening blue fountains. Fuchia foxgloves towered amidst purple-leafed hazelnut, white catmint, yellow euphorbia, and blue iris with the fragrance of lavender springing out of the heart-shaped leaflets of an epimedium evergreen ground cover. The tops of tall, golden-black locust trees swayed in a gentle breeze.

  She exited the dark hallway and stepped down the three stone stairs that opened into the lovely inner courtyard and garden. Immediately, the warm afternoon sun caressed her hands and face and hair, as bees hummed past on their way to the fragrant flowers. The song of birds flitted through the tallest of the trees, the babble of the water laughed as it danced over a crystal rock wall.

  Dear heavens, it was real. Who would have guessed that such a sinister-looking, forbidding house could have such a beautiful enclosed garden. Kay wondered if this was how Alice had felt when she fell down the dark rabbit hole and got her first sight of Wonderland.

  She scurried across a bridge that spanned a bubbling pond full of fat, foot-long goldfish, and then she ducked into the cool shade of a grotto on the other side. She circled it to find yet another fountain and the prodigious exotic blossoms of a late-flowering magnolia tree, bending gently toward a carpet of emerald green clover.

  She picked one of the globular flowers and inhaled its rich fragrance. She rubbed its soft petals against her cheek.

  Suddenly, she sensed movement behind her. She whirled, finding herself face-to-face with the master of this horrible house and gorgeous garden, a man of massive, beast like muscles, his rugged features transformed by a sizzling, sunlit smile.

  “Be careful,” his deep voice warned. “A beauty who insists on stealing a flower from the beast’s garden must also accept his penalty.”

  Kay smiled. She had obviously been dwelling on the wrong fairy tale.

  She tossed the flower to him. Lightning fast, his hand flew up and caught it. He held it out to her again, a light of daring in his eyes. She allowed herself to be swept along on this mood of mild enchantment.

  “Not so fast. What penalty will you impose for this one flower, Mr. Beast?”

  He pretended to be weighing the matter. The bright sunlight disappeared in his dark brown hair, his green eyes glowed just a shade darker than the lush clover at their feet.

  “What else but to forever be captured in my garden?”

  Kay inhaled deeply of the warmth and the scent of sweet flowers as she accepted the magnolia blossom from his hand.

  “Not a bad sentence. This is absolutely lovely. And so unexpected.”

  “Grandmother’s doing. Grandfather insisted on building a replica of the Gothic home his grandfather had owned back in the old country. To counteract the severity of its architecture, grandmother began this garden. But the deer kept jumping the fence and eating the plants, and the neighbors’ dogs kept burrowing under the fence to dig up grandmother’s prize posies. So she finally convinced my grandfather to have a giant rock wall built to enclose and protect her garden.”

  Kay twirled around, trying to get a feel for the garden’s size. She was surprised to see the huge thistle climbing the rock wall on its perimeter, until she saw the bright yellow finches flittering above its purple flowers. Yes, she’d let thistle grow, too, to attract those lovely birds.

  “I’d like to meet your grandparents.”

  “They’re both gone.”

  Kay turned back to Damian. “I’m sorry.”

  He was looking at the garden, his expression even, his gaze lost in a distance of memories.

  “Me, too,” he said simply. “But they went together and that’s what they wanted.”

  Kay didn’t know why a small lump formed in her throat. Maybe because the casual way Damian had said the words had conveyed a feeling that was not casual at all.

  She waved a hand back at the Gothic structure behind them. “The house seems huge.”

  He looked at her. “It’s uninspired and unwieldy and, for the most part, cold and uncomfortable. In other words, a typical beast’s lair. Come on. I’ll show you around.”

  He hadn’t exaggerated about the house. In contrast to the light, warmth and lushness of the garden, it was dark and cold and pedestrian-plain—stone floors, dingy gray walls. At least the walls facing the inner courtyard and garden were dressed with slim, pointed-arch windows that let in the light and the view.

  The corner room that Damian had converted into his office opened on two sides to the garden and sported an enormous skylight that flooded the room with more of the outdoors.

  Kay noted that the room’s bamboo-and-wicker desk, divan and chairs blended beautifully to promote a light, tropical casualness quite at odds with the heavy architecture and ponderous furniture throughout the rest of the house.

  Dozens of unusual objects sat on wicker and glass shelving units. One piece stood out in a special place of honor. Kay studied the foot-long, canoe-shaped craft.

  “Is this a kayak?”

  “Yes. This particular replica is an ancient and genuine piece of art. When the earliest peoples of Alaska and Greenland made the kayak to navigate the icy waters, they fashioned it out of animal skins like this one.”

  “So this is like a model they made for the larger craft?”

  He nodded. “I brought it back from a trip to Alaska a few years ago. All the stuff in this room are souvenirs from one trip or another to places where I can paddle. Seeing the world by kayak is one of my favorite ways to relax. Gives you a good workout, too. The tapes are over here.”

  Kay turned around to see Damian approaching a light teak-paneled wall on which hung dozens of primitive masks and a sin
gle shield. When he touched something in the center of the shield, the wall opened to reveal a very large filing room. One wall was filled with videotapes.

  “You tape all your sessions?” Kay asked.

  “A multiple-personality case is the only type I have reason to videotape.”

  “These are all Lee’s tapes?”

  “No. I’ve been treating another multiple personality over this last year. Or at least I was. She’s decided to see another analyst. I’ll be boxing up her videotapes tomorrow morning and dropping them off at the analyst’s office. These fifteen tapes are Lee’s. Each contains six, sequential, one-hour sessions, except the last tape, which contains only the final one-hour session I saw Lee. Roy was no longer present at that time.”

  Kay quickly did the math. “That’s eighty-five hours.”

  “I treated Lee for a year and a half. I believe I mentioned that.”

  She sighed. “So you did. Well, we’d best get started. Where’s your TV and VCR?”

  “Next room. It’s a dark cubbyhole I call a den, but it has a comfortable sofa. Just give me a minute to check my messages.”

  He handed her the tapes, closed the hidden file room and made for his bamboo-and-wicker desk. He had two answering machines on it. He pressed the message key for the first one, and, as Kay meandered toward the den, she heard a message from a male patient who wanted to change his appointment time.

  Kay then glanced over her shoulder and saw Damian press the message key for the second answering machine. This message sounded far different. Kay couldn’t tell if it was a man’s or woman’s voice, young or old. It was low, breathy, almost inhuman.

  “I know you’re not there. I know exactly where you are. I always do. I always will.”

  A dial tone followed this strange message. Kay looked back at Damian to see his reaction. His rugged face was a stone mask. Only the chilling glint in his eyes betrayed him. He must have felt her scrutiny, because he suddenly looked over at her. His voice was uncharacteristically distant, cool.

  “You go ahead. I’ll be with you shortly.”

  Whatever the cryptic message meant, he obviously didn’t mean to share his interpretation with her. Kay slipped into the next room. The den was as described—a dark hole with dingy walls. A television stood against one wall, a makeshift cabinet next to it, which contained the VCR and more tapes.