Crazy Dead (A Cordi O'Callaghan Mystery)

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  “The way I see it,” he said, “you have two problems. The first is depression. There is a lot of stigma out there that depression can be fixed if you just suck it up and pull up your socks. As you know everybody has experienced depression in its mild form — sadness — and so everyone feels they are experts, when, in fact, they have no idea what depression is in the clinical sense.”

  He reached forward and slid the folder onto the coffee table in front of him. “Clinical depression really needs a new term to distinguish it from the depression most people have felt at one time or other, saying they’re having a down day, a bummer day, or feel blue or in the dumps or are in a funk.” He pressed his fingertips together and touched them to his mouth.

  “Desolation would be a better term,” he said. “Most people would never describe their depression as desolation, except those who are truly desolate. You’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about.”

  I nodded.

  “To be desolate is to be clinically depressed,” he said.

  “So you’re saying the word ‘depression’ is like the word ‘awesome’? It’s been watered down?”

  “Exactly. A person can be a little bit depressed or blue, or a lot depressed and suicidal. It’s a huge range. ‘Desolate’ is an absolute. You are in a cold dark place if you are desolate, unable to be cheered up by others.”

  I was wondering where he was going with this when he suddenly said, “You aren’t depressed anymore, but your delusions are taking over your life.”

  “I am not delusional!” I said angrily. “I saw Mavis and she was dead and someone is trying to kill me because of that information. I am just protecting myself.”

  “Delusions are not your fault,” he said, maddeningly calm. “But if you really believe, say, that someone is after you, everything you do to stop that from happening might be logical, but the premise is false. No one is after you. And people don’t understand.”

  Curious choice of words, I thought. Certainly not very subtle. And I’d gone over the whole premise in my mind many times before, but always as it related to others. Was Osborn suggesting this to me to cover his own back? Had he killed Mavis?

  “I’m concerned about you,” he said. “I think you might have some kind of delusional disorder.”

  I felt another surge of anger rip through me. How dared this man tell me my world was not real. But then, it was just what he might say if he’d murdered Mavis and was trying to cover it up.

  “I don’t believe aliens control my brain!” I snapped. “Or that my watch speaks to me!”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “That’s not what I mean. Your delusions are not bizarre the way they are in schizophrenia. They could actually happen in the real world. Mavis could have died.”

  “She did die, though, and you and the cops and the hospital are covering it up for some reason.”

  I knew he was lying to me. I knew what I had seen, and it was as real as the air I was breathing.

  “Have there been other episodes in your past where people haven’t believed you?”

  I was so astounded that I couldn’t answer. I thought back to my trip to the Arctic on the Susannah Moodie when Martha, Duncan, and I had solved a murder. Martha and Duncan hadn’t believed me when I told them someone was out to get me. But I had been right. And it was depression that gripped me from time to time, not something more sinister. Not that depression wasn’t awful all by itself.

  “If not,” Osborn went on, “then it could just be manifesting itself for the first time. We need to talk about your delusions, Cordi.”

  He might have needed to talk about them, but I could see right through him. He really just wanted to know how much I knew about Mavis’s death and the cover-up. And I wasn’t talking. Someone must have been watching over me, though, because we were interrupted by a knock on the door and I didn’t have to answer him. Dr. Osborn went to the door, opened it, and then looked swiftly at me, said he’d be back in a minute and left, leaving the door ajar.

  I looked at the file folder on the table. I wanted to pick it up, but I was worried Osborn would come back. I got up and went over to a bookshelf behind the sofa. There was a picture of a younger-looking Osborn posing with what I presumed were his wife and son and daughter.

  I went back to the coffee table, took a chance, and picked up the folder. The patient’s name was Minnie Addison. She was an Alzheimer’s patient, but not Osborn’s. She had died in hospital several years ago under the care of a Dr. David Ellison, whose name rang a bell. Ah, yes. Osborn’s co-author on research papers regarding cognitive behavioural therapy, Alzheimer’s, and memory loss. I dropped the folder back onto the table, worried that Osborn would catch me snooping again, and wondered why he was interested in someone with memory loss who had died several years ago.

  Osborn returned a few minutes later and sat opposite me.

  “Cordi, as I said, I’m concerned that your medication —” He was interrupted yet again, this time by the phone, and apologized profusely, but when he went to check who it was, he said he had to take the call. Of course, I couldn’t help but overhear. He was talking to someone he knew well, because the warmth and concern in his voice was apparent.

  “Look, we’ve been through this a thousand times before. There’s nothing I can do. It’s been stopped. It’s out of my hands.” He paused and then said, “You know I’ve done everything possible and I’ll keep doing everything possible. You know that, don’t you?”

  I glanced at Osborn’s face. He was frowning as he hung up and said nothing for a while, and then he started, looked at me, and said, “Where were we? Oh, yes, we may need to change your medication in light of your new symptoms.”

  “I think my medication’s working,” I said. “I’m not in a really dark space anymore.”

  “No, but as I said, it’s not just the depression we have to worry about. I want to add a new medication. See if it helps. Have you thought some more about another ECT if things should worsen?”

  One look at my face and he sighed.

  “An ECT could help you, Cordi. It did once already, so don’t reject it out of hand.” He was being very persistent.

  “But it could destroy my memory again.” I paused and then asked, “Is there any drug out there that could help memory loss from ECT?”

  He hesitated and pursed his lips. “Nothing on the market that really works,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer, and then rather abruptly, “All right, then. We’ll start you on a low dose of a new medication and hopefully that will help.”

  And that was the end of the interview.

  I was curious about Osborn and went to the closet of a computer room to see what I could find out about him. I googled his name and came up with some really prolific real-estate agent, so I tunnelled down until I found entries for a Dr. Richard Osborn, psychiatrist. He’d written two papers on Alzheimer’s and a couple on CBT, as well as one on ECT, which confirmed what I’d seen on his desk. I couldn’t get abstracts for any of the papers, so I wrote down their titles with the intention of looking them up at Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. I was just finishing when the door opened and I looked up to see Austin standing there.

  “Sorry,” he said, and started backing away.

  “It’s okay. I’m just finishing.”

  He stood in the doorway and watched as I gathered together my stuff.

  “You know,” he said, “I didn’t really kill her.”

  I looked up. “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “No police came to arrest you. That, and because you didn’t mention the scarf.”

  “The scarf,” he said, as if it was an afterthought and not a surprise. I waited for him to explain, which he did. “Everybody knew about the scarf. Everybody but the doctors and nurses. Lucy kept it as a talisman and as a finger to the staff that she could hide a da
ngerous object from them. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep and I was passing Mavis’s room when I heard a sound. The door was open and I looked in.”

  Pretty much what he had said before and I marvelled again at how easy it was to walk the halls without a nurse accosting him. So much for our safety, but then, I had done it myself. The fact that our door was open was not unusual. The room was so stuffy we often left the door open once the nurses had checked on us in the night. Just creepy that someone was watching us as we slept.

  I waited.

  “So I went inside and stood over Mavis. She was lying on her back and she was wide awake, her mouth shaping up for a scream, so I pressed the pillow to her face and held it there.” He hadn’t mentioned the business about her mouth being open before and I wondered where he was going with it. Was Mavis already dead when he tried to smother her?

  “But you just said you didn’t kill her,” I said.

  “It was just a delusion. That’s what Dr. Osborn says.”

  “So you never saw the scarf?”

  “That’s not what I said. I went back to my room, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that maybe I hadn’t killed her. I needed to check. I mean, she hadn’t resisted, so maybe I’d dreamt it all. And the voices were so insistent that I check. When I went back I did the same thing. I looked in through the crack of the door. At first I couldn’t see, but then my eyes adjusted and I saw Kit — you can’t miss her wild red hair — holding a scarf in her hands as she knelt by Mavis’s bed. She took the scarf and wrapped it gently and lovingly around Mavis’s neck and then gave her a hug.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked.

  “Beats me,” said Austin.

  “Was she blackmailing you?” I asked on impulse.

  Austin jerked his head away from me. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Was Mavis blackmailing you?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she knew about your drug habit.”

  Austin backed out through the doorway to the hall. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “I saw you in Kensington Market,” I said.

  He turned to walk down the hall, but not before I saw the anger on his face. Why the hell would he be angry? The emotion I expected was fear, not anger, unless he was angry at me for being so nosy. Even so, fear should have been his first emotion. It was interesting that it was not. Maybe he was getting drugs from Bradley and what I saw in Kensington Market was something else. But how was I supposed to ask him that?

  “You don’t know anything,” he said.

  He was absolutely right.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I was really restive and decided to go to Robarts Library to look up Osborn’s papers. I signed myself out and took the seven flights of stairs down to the ground floor, figuring anybody who was following me would have to follow me down the stairs. Once on the ground level I waited just outside the stairwell door to see if anyone emerged, but no one did, so I headed outside. Nothing had happened to me for some days and I was thinking that whoever it was had changed their mind for some reason and struck me off their kill list. It had snowed in the night and the sidewalk up Huron Street had not yet been cleared by the little snowploughs. I made the little jog at Russell Street and headed on up past the Ramsay Wright Zoological Laboratories.

  I came out at Harbord Street and there, in all its strangeness, was the monolith that was Robarts. It was like some giant piece of concrete plunked down beside single-family dwellings and a little corner store that used to sell fantastic spiced chicken legs. The wide stone diagonal stairway up to the main entrance was daunting, even to an athlete. As I walked up the stairs I had the unnerving feeling of wanting to walk on the diagonal to conform with the stairs. The building soared fourteen stories, looking periscopic and standing on an unusual footprint that weaved and turned like a sidewinder. It was reminiscent of a Lego set, with mere slits of windows on the higher levels, and on the lower levels chunky, blocky windows snapped onto the face seemingly at random.

  I reached the top of the twenty-eight stairs and went inside. As weird as the outside was, the inside was utilitarian except for the three-foot-long candle-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling of the tiled lobby. It had been a long time since I’d used the library, but I knew the drill and took the elevator up to the stacks to retrieve the research papers. It took awhile but finally I had the four journals I was after in hand and spent the next fifteen minutes photocopying Osborn’s articles.

  After that I got a coffee in the cafeteria and sat there gazing into space for a while, thinking about Mavis. I began to pull out the papers I’d photocopied from my bag where I’d stashed them.

  And suddenly something jumped into my space and bit me.

  I’d glanced out through the cafeteria’s interior windows at a set of escalators and seen two women in a passionate kiss. I looked away, not wanting them to catch me staring. When I glanced back, they had parted from each other and were talking animatedly. I could see their faces clearly, and I suppose I shouldn’t have been so startled because there had been lots of clues: Kit and Lucy.

  I recalled that day in the bathroom when Kit had said, “Why are you doing this?” I’d thought it was about the toilet paper, but it must have been a lovers’ quarrel.

  Now Kit said something that made Lucy turn to look at me. I smiled thinly. I watched as they conferred with one another and then headed toward the cafeteria, Kit avoiding the golden lines on the tiled floor. When they reached me Kit sat down, but Lucy stayed standing.

  “So you know,” said Lucy.

  I shrugged as I looked up at her.

  “It won’t go well for us if they find out at the hospital,” she said, her face impassive. Kit was flicking some non-existent lint off her coat.

  “They can’t know,” said Kit. “They won’t let us be together. No romances allowed on the floor.”

  “They’ll transfer one of us off the floor,” said Lucy.

  “Is that so bad?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it is. We’ve done the rounds and this is the best place in town.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve ‘done the rounds’?”

  “When you’re in and out of hospital a lot you get sent to different places, but you see a lot of the same people, and this place is the best.”

  “You can’t tell,” pleaded Kit.

  “Is that what Mavis did? Threatened to tell? So you killed her?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Lucy. “Are we back to Mavis again?” She looked at me and then at Kit. “Mavis got sick,” said Lucy. “Period.”

  “Is that what you think, Kit?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Then why did you put the scarf around her neck?”

  Kit froze, then asked, her face a picture of fear and surprise, “How did you know that?” She looked at Lucy, who was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Was she dead?” I asked.

  Kit looked at me, obviously struggling to find a way to answer. Finally she said, “I thought maybe she was. So I had to tidy her up. Make her look peaceful and nice.”

  “Did you tell anyone?” I asked.

  Kit looked at Lucy, who looked startled. “No,” said Kit in a tiny voice. “How did you know?”

  Suddenly Lucy made a chopping motion with her hand. “Forget the fucking scarf,” she said harshly. “What’s it to anyone, anyway?” She glared at me. “Will you keep our secret?”

  “What will you do if I don’t?” I asked.

  “Oh, shit. You are unbelievable. Would it help if I say I’ll cut you into little bits and dump you down the sewer?”

  “Lucy, that’s no way to get her to keep our secret,” said Kit in a plaintive voice.

  “Would you please not tell?” said Lucy in a sugary voice.

  I looked at Kit. “As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”
r />   “Little Miss Righteous,” said Lucy as Kit got up and pulled her away. They were an odd pair, with Kit not even reaching Lucy’s shoulder in height.

  I watched them walk out of the lobby together, slowing down so Kit could avoid the lines, and thought about happiness and how elusive it was.

  No one followed me back to the hospital. I was too late for lunch, so I stopped at the first-floor cafeteria, where I bought a sandwich and some juice and sat by the window and watched the people walk by. My mind was a jumble of facts, thoughts, theories, and suppositions. There were so many possibilities that I felt scattered and unsure of myself. I finished my lunch and went up to the seventh floor, signed myself in, and went to bed, hoping a nap might help. But I couldn’t doze off.

  My mind was racing and I couldn’t slow it down. I couldn’t even concentrate enough to read Osborn’s articles. I needed to do something. Anything. And that was when I remembered that I needed more clothes and decided to go home for a quick visit.

  I signed myself out and took the subway, spending a lot of anxious moments looking over my shoulder, but I made it home in one piece and gathered some clothes, more shampoo, and another towel. I had brought laundry home with me, laundry I hadn’t wanted to wash in the machines on the floor because I was afraid they would chew up my clothes. It had happened to me before with a strange machine, so I was taking no chances.

  I threw the laundry in the machine in the room next to the bathroom and went to check the fridge. It was full of spoiled food, so I began checking the cupboards. Then the doorbell rang. I went to red alert. Should I answer it? What if my killer was there? Who else could it be? I crept up to the front door and listened, hoping for a clue. Instead the doorbell rang again and a man’s voice said, “Cordi, are you there?” I put the chain on the door and opened it a crack. And there stood Jacques, his finger poised over the bell.

  He smiled at me and said, “I followed you home.”