45
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when Susan called. She had been out to dinner.
“Magnolia Grill,” she said, “in Durham, very nice.”
“Anybody there I need to be jealous of?” I said.
“Lovenik,” she said. “These are all highly educated mental-health professionals.”
“Anyone there I need to be jealous of?”
“Several,” she said. “Thank God.”
“You still got it, kid.”
“I hope so,” she said.
We were quiet for a moment. Then we talked about how we wished we were together and what we would be doing if we were together.
“Is this phone sex?” I said at one point in the conversation.
“I think so,” Susan said. “I hope the baby can’t hear you.”
“At this hour?” I said. “She’s zonkered under the covers.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s been crime-busting with me.”
“And brilliantly, too, I’ll wager,” Susan said.
“Think Rin Tin Tin,” I said.
“Are you still on that school shooting?” Susan said.
“Yep.”
“Is it hard going?”
“Yes.”
“Did that boy really do it?” Susan said.
“I’m sure he did.”
“So . . . ?”
“I want to know why,” I said.
“There’s always a why,” Susan said.
“But there’s not always somebody who knows what it is,” I said.
“Not even the perpetrator sometimes,” Susan said. “Why is hard.”
“I need a shrink,” I said.
“I’ve told you that for years,” she said.
“I have you,” I said. “But you’re not here.”
“We both regret that,” Susan said.
“I want somebody to evaluate the kid for me,” I said.
Susan was quiet for a moment. Under the covers, Pearl made a soft lip-smacking noise, and shifted so that her head stuck out. The process took most of the covers from me.
“There’s a man named Dix,” Susan said. “He’s in private practice, works a lot with cops.”
“Alcohol and depression,” I said.
“Of course,” Susan said. “He also consults forensically. I don’t know from here how to get him. But he’s probably in the book. Or you can find him through the Boston Psychiatric Institute.”
“He a psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
“He got a first name?”
“Of course, but I don’t know it. I met him last year during a seminar at Brandeis. He calls himself Dix. He’s quite handsome.”
“Handsomer than anyone?” I said.
“Sure,” Susan said.
I waited. She didn’t say anything. I waited some more.
Then she said, “Except, of course, you, Hunko.”
“Thank you,” I said.
46
I WAS DRIVING a dark green Mustang this year, with a tan top, which, when I drove it with the top down, wearing my Oakley shades, did in fact suggest the designation Hunko. While Susan was away and I had Pearl, I parked the Mustang in Susan’s driveway and used Susan’s white Explorer so that Pearl would have sufficient room to jump around and annoy me.
But now I was at the last desperate fallback position, where, under Spenser’s rule #113, you find someone to follow, and follow them. So I rented a tannish-grayish Toyota Camry sedan, which looked like 40 percent of the other cars on the road, and, with Pearl looking a little disgruntled in the backseat, I parked outside Channing Hospital and watched for Beth Ann Blair.
Like everyone else who had come and gone while I sat there, she paid me no heed as she came down the front walk of the hospital and turned left toward the parking lot. The Toyota was working. It was so effective that I could still wear my Oakleys and be overlooked. I admired her stride as she went into the lot. Susan had explained to me that the amount of hip sway was usually dependent on the kinds of shoes you were wearing, but I was pretty sure that in Beth Ann’s case, it also suggested a kind of pelvic awareness that might be prideful.
She had one of those little boxy Audi sports cars that reminded me of German sports cars from the 1930s. It was silver. She turned left out of the parking lot, and I fell in a ways behind and followed. Tailing somebody in the country is easy in the sense that you won’t lose them, but hard in the sense that you’re easy to spot. Beth Ann wasn’t expecting to be followed, which was an advantage. My car was not noticeable. And, of course, city or country, it helped that I could track better than Natty Bumppo.
She stopped at the village market. I lingered up the street. She came out with a bag of something and got back in her car. Off we went. She stopped for gasoline on Route 20. I lingered around a turn. She pumped it herself, which was impressive. Susan would run out of gas and leave the car and walk home before she’d use a self-service pump. Then, with a full tank, she got back in the car, started up, and drove past me, and I followed. We got all the way to Framingham before she turned off into the parking lot of a large brick condominium complex that overlooked a lake. She parked and got out with her groceries and went in.
Pearl and I sat. Beth Ann didn’t come out. After a time, I took Pearl out for a short, necessary stroll to a small patch of grass under a single tree. I could still see the door of Beth Ann’s building while Pearl occupied herself. Then we got back in the car. And sat. It got dark. I broke out a bag of sandwiches, which I had hidden in the trunk to keep Pearl from ravaging them, and a couple of bottles of spring water. I ate a ham and cheese on light rye, and gave Pearl a roast beef on whole wheat. She finished first. There were two sandwiches left. I put them back in the trunk. Back in the car, I drank some water and gave some to Pearl. Drinking from the bottle, she slobbered a lot onto the backseat but managed to swallow enough to alleviate thirst and prevent dehydration.
At about 9:30, I gave it up. Beth Ann had made no further appearance. She might slip out later and perform some criminal act, but it was more likely that she was in bed in her jammies, reading Civilization and Its Discontents, and I was tired. Pearl and I gave it up and went home.
47
DIX HAD A PERFECTLY bald head, and big square hands, and a strong neck. I would not have called him handsome myself, but maybe I was just holding him unfairly to the Hunko standard. He looked like he had just shaved before I came in. His head glistened. His nails were manicured. His white shirt gleamed. He had on a blue blazer with bright brass buttons, and the crease in his gray slacks looked like it would cut paper.
“Captain Healy called me about you,” Dix said.
“And you still agreed to see me,” I said.
Dix smiled and didn’t answer. Shrinks don’t banter.
“You recall the school shootup in Dowling,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I would like you to talk to one of the participants, kid named Jared Clark.”
Dix nodded. He sat erect in his chair, elbows resting on the arms, thick fingers laced across his flat stomach. Eyes resting steadily on my face. Entirely motionless. I wondered what Susan was like in session.
“There’s something wrong with him,” I said. “I want to know what.”
“Are you asking me to judge him legally sane or insane?” Dix said.
“No.”
“Does he wish to talk with me?”
“I doubt it.”
“Do you have any predisposed theory on what might be wrong?”
“No. He’s . . . He’s off. . . . All the pieces don’t quite fit.”
“Do you want a diagnosis on the basis of a single interview?”
“Up to you,” I said. “You give me a diagnosis as soon as you think you have one.”
“Unless I have him willingly for a considerable time, it’s more likely to be a guess.”
“But an informed one,” I said. “It’s not something that you’ll hav
e to swear to under oath. I’m just looking for help.”
“Do you think he is innocent?”
“No. I think he did it.”
Dix raised his eyebrows and looked his question at me.
“His grandmother and I want to know why,” I said. “Maybe if we know, there’ll be a way to mitigate his sentence.”
“An apostle of the possible,” Dix said.
“Yes.”
“You’re with Susan Silverman,” Dix said.
“Yes.”
“So you have some understanding of our business.”
“Yes.”
“What is his attorney’s position on this?” Dix said.
“His attorney,” I said, “like everyone else, as far as I can see, except his grandmother and me, including the kid, wants him to disappear quickly into the prison system and never reappear.”
“Would his attorney object?” Dix said.
“He might,” I said.
“Would access be a problem?”
I shook my head.
“The Bethel County DA will get us in,” I said.
Dix raised his eyebrows.
“Really?” he said.
“My deal with Cleary is that he lets us in, and anything we learn will be between us, and not be used in court.”
Dix was silent for a time. Entirely motionless, looking at me.
“What if I determine that he’s legally insane and unfit to stand trial.”
“Cleary’s a decent guy,” I said. “We tell him what we learn. If he’s convinced, he’ll have his own people take a look. He wants to win the case, and he’s under a lot of pressure to do so, but he doesn’t want to put a seventeen-year-old kid away for life if there’s, ah, mitigation.”
Dix was silent some more.
“Why not ask Dr. Silverman,” Dix said.
“She’s in North Carolina,” I said.
“Ah, the conference at Duke,” Dix said.
I nodded.
“I’ve met her several times,” Dix said. “Very impressive woman.”
“Impresses the hell out of me,” I said.
Dix smiled. A breakthrough!
“You have said we in talking about the interview,” Dix said. “If I do this, I’ll talk to the boy alone.”
“I’ll wait outside the room,” I said.
Dix nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I can do this. Who will be paying the charges?”
“I will.”
“Then you’ll need to know my fee.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But I think it’s part of your deal to tell me.”
“It is,” Dix said.
And he told me.
48
I WAS GETTING pretty bored following Beth Ann Blair around. Pearl seemed to mind less. On the other hand, if she weren’t sleeping in the backseat of the Camry, she would have been sleeping on the couch in my office, or the bed in my home. The arc of the experience was fairly tight. It was Friday night. Pearl and I had just finished visiting the patch of grass under the single tree, and were sharing a bottle of water in the car, when Royce Garner, the president of the Dowling School, his very self, pulled up in a Buick sedan and parked near the front door and got out and went in carrying a small suitcase.
“Ho, ho!” I said to Pearl.
We sat that night until 1:30 A.M. without any reappearance by Garner. And at 9:12 the next morning when I got there, with a large coffee, the Buick was still where it had been.
“Highly suspicious,” I said.
But Pearl wasn’t with me. She was with Susan’s dog runner this morning, in the woods, somewhere west of Cambridge. Probably wasn’t much sillier talking to myself than it would have been talking to a dog. The morning crept past. Lunchtime came and crept on by. Fortunately, when I bought the coffee, I’d also purchased half a dozen doughnuts for just such an emergency. I ate a couple. At about three-thirty in the afternoon, Garner came out alone and got in his car and drove away. I followed him uneventfully to a comfortable-looking white colonial house next to the Dowling School. He parked in the driveway, took out his small suitcase, and walked to the front door. Someone opened it, I couldn’t see who, and Garner went in.
My doughnuts were gone. I knew what I knew, and there was no reason to keep reknowing it. The next step was to figure out what to do about what I knew. So I went home.
Actually, I went to Susan’s house. The dog runner had left Pearl there, so I went and let Pearl out and fed her and sat at the counter in Susan’s silent, immaculate kitchen and drank some Johnnie Walker Blue with a lot of ice and soda.
After she finished eating, Pearl snuffled rapidly through every room in the house once more to make absolutely sure Susan was in fact not there. Then Pearl came back in the kitchen and settled onto the couch provided for her.
“I know,” I said. “If I had a better nose, that’s what I would have done, too.”
Pearl raised her head and wagged her tail at me from the couch.
“She’ll be back,” I said. “Couple of weeks.”
Pearl settled onto the couch and put her head on her paws and watched me, moving her eyes only, in case I should suddenly try to eat something. I drank some scotch. Susan’s place sounded like an empty house, the hush of the air-conditioning, the barely audible hum of the refrigerator, the hint of street sound. Occasionally, the creak of floor joists settling half a millimeter. I could smell her perfume. The house was rich with colors: gold and green and burgundy and brown and tan and cream. There were rugs and drapes and throws, and paintings and lamps and trays, and stuff that had no other function than to be stunning.
My drink was gone. I went to the refrigerator and got more ice. There were a couple of Lean Cuisines in the freezer. In the main part of the refrigerator, there was half a bottle of Kendall-Jackson Riesling, and a navel orange. There was no cork in the half-empty bottle; it was covered with a small Baggie fastened with a blue elastic band. I smiled. Everything spoke of her. I added scotch and some soda to my drink and sat back at the counter. Around the kitchen were pictures of me and Susan and Pearl. There were seven pictures of Pearl. Three of me and Susan. If I weren’t such a Hunko, it might have given me pause. The house was her: elegant, flamboyant, beautiful. A thing worth doing, Susan always said, was worth overdoing. I stood and took my drink and walked into the living room. Everything you could sit on in there had so many pillows on it that you’d have to move them to make room for your tush. There were more pictures of Pearl and me. Same ratio. There was a picture of her mother and father, dark-haired and European-looking, though I knew her father ran a drugstore in Swampscott. There were pictures of Susan with people I didn’t know. There was no sign of her ex-husband.
I went into the bedroom. The Spenser/Pearl ratio improved. There was one large picture, of me with Pearl beside me. The picture, in a big, clear acrylic frame, sat on her night table. There were no other pictures. There were so many decorative pillows on the bed that you couldn’t sit on it, either, let alone sleep. I looked at the bed for a time and smelled her perfume more insistently. I felt my stomach tighten.
“Couple of weeks,” I said. “Couple of weeks.”
I went to the kitchen for a refill. Pearl had lost all interest in me, and was asleep now on her couch. I sat back on my stool at the counter and felt the scotch move through me happily.
So, Beth Ann and Royce were spending nights together. So what? What Beth Ann was telling me about Jared didn’t jibe with what everyone else was telling me about Jared. So what?
I wondered if the romance with Garner was surreptitious. I wondered if Garner were married. Someone had greeted him at the door when he went home. I wondered what it all had to do with Jared, if anything. I sipped my scotch. Susan’s home was built in the nineteenth century. It had high ceilings and wide hallways. Her office was downstairs. Her self was everywhere. If I weren’t so autonomous and self-reliant, I would have missed her like a bastard.
“Being a seasoned investigator,” I said to
Pearl, “I have found that when there’s stuff you don’t know in a case, it’s best to find it out.”
Pearl was on her back, her head lolled off the couch, and she looked at me upside down. I finished my drink.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
I got up and went to Susan’s bedroom and cleared space among the pillows and went to bed. Pearl joined me later in the night.
49
I HAD RETURNED my Camry. Pearl was off to the woods with the woman Susan insisted on calling Pearl’s personal trainer. I sat in my office with coffee, going through the scrapbook of press clippings that Lily Ellsworth had given me when I first met her. I thought I remembered something, and I was right. There was a picture of Royce Garner with Mrs. Garner beside him, talking to a group of parents during the crisis. She looked like an answer to the question Why does Mr. Garner fool around? Of course, she might be a wonderful human being. But unless the camera lied flagrantly, no one would mistake her for pretty.
So it was surreptitious. Garner was cheating on his wife with Beth Ann. Why Beth Ann would wish to cheat on anyone with Royce Garner was imponderable. So I didn’t ponder it. Instead, I pondered what I could do with what I had learned. After a while, I decided on B&E, with blackmail a fallback position, and took my coffee, got my gym bag of tools, went to my car, and headed out to Beth Ann’s condo to implement my plan.
It was mid-morning when I got there. The sun was bright. The weather was cool. The condo parking lot was half empty. A guy in a white sleeveless undershirt was rolling a big blue trash barrel across the lot. He set it down at the far edge of the lot, beside another one, and turned and went back around the building. After he disappeared, I drove around behind the building and down a slight grade. At the basement level, a big door stood open. The guy in the undershirt came out with another big blue barrel. He had a wreath tattooed around the biceps of his left arm. I parked in a guest overflow slot near the basement door. The guy in the undershirt ignored me, and when he was out of sight, I left my car, took my small gym bag with me, and walked into the basement. I was in an open area where there were at least ten more of the big blue barrels. Ahead of me was a corridor. I went down it. There was a boiler room to the left, and at the far end, two elevators. I got in one. I punched the button for the lobby and went up.
School Days Page 14