Devil's Waltz

by Jonathan Kellerman

  His hands were still linked together, two stubby, fleshy grapples. He separated them, fanned them on the table. Closed the fingers. Scratched the Formica.

  “Sounds like you’re pretty proud of him,” I said.

  “I most certainly am. Cindy too. Lovely girl, no pretensions. They’ve created something solid— proof of the pudding is Cassie. I know I’m not objective but that little girl is adorable and beautiful and smart. Great disposition to boot.”

  “No mean feat,” I said. “Considering.”

  His eyes wandered. Closed and opened.

  “You know we lost one before her, don’t you? Beautiful little boy— crib death. They still don’t know why that happens, do they?”

  I shook my head.

  “That was hell on earth, Doctor. Clear out of the blue— one day he’s here; the next . . . I just can’t understand why no one can tell me what’s wrong with this one.”

  “No one really knows, Chuck.”

  He waved that off. “I still don’t understand why you’re involved. Don’t take that personally. I know you’ve heard all sorts of horror stories about why we abolished the Psychiatry division. But the truth is, that had nothing to do with approving or disapproving of mental health treatment. I certainly do approve— what’s not to approve? Some people need help. But the fact is that the weak sisters running Psychiatry had no idea how to construct a budget and stick to it, let alone do their own jobs competently. The clear picture I got from the other doctors was that they were inept. Of course, to hear it now, they were all geniuses— we destroyed a center of psychiatric brilliance.”

  He rolled his eyes. “No matter. Hopefully, one day we’ll be able to establish a good, solid department. Bring in some top people. You used to work here, didn’t you?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Would you ever consider returning?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “Various reasons.”

  “The freedom of the private sector? Be your own boss?”

  “That was part of it.”

  “So maybe if you step back you can be objective and understand what I mean. About the need for efficiency. Being realistic. In general, I’m finding doctors out in the private sector do understand. Because running a practice is running a business. It’s only the ones who live off the— But no matter. Getting back to what I was saying, about your involvement with my granddaughter. No one’s got the gall to say her problems are in her head, do they?”

  “I really can’t talk about details, Chuck.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Confidentiality.”

  “Chip and Cindy don’t keep secrets from me.”

  “I need to hear that from them. It’s the law.”

  “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?”

  “Not particularly.” I smiled.

  He smiled back. Linked his hands again. Drank hot water.

  “All right. This is your business and you have to stick to your own rules. Guess I’ve got to get some kind of permission note from them.”

  “Guess so.”

  He smiled wide. His teeth were severely misaligned and brown.

  “In the meantime,” he said, “am I allowed to talk to you?”

  “Sure.”

  He locked in on my face, studying it, with a mixture of interest and skepticism, as if it were a quarterly report. “I’ll just assume no one seriously thinks Cassie’s problems are mental, because that’s just too ridiculous.”

  Pause. Assess. Hoping for a nonverbal clue?

  I made sure not to move.

  He said, “So, the only other thing I can come up with to explain your getting involved is that someone thinks something’s wrong with Cindy or Chip. Which is ridiculous.”

  He sat back. Kept studying. A triumphant look came on his face. I was sure I hadn’t even blinked. Wondered if he’d seen something or was just finessing.

  I said, “Psychologists aren’t called in only to analyze, Chuck. We also give support to people under stress.”

  “Being a hired friend, huh?” He jiggled his nose again, stood, smiled. “Well, then, be a good friend. They’re good kids. All three of them.”

  22

  I drove away trying to figure out what he’d been after and whether I’d given it to him.

  Wanting me to see him as a concerned grandfather?

  Chip and Cindy don’t keep secrets from me.

  Yet Chip and Cindy hadn’t taken the trouble to inform him Cassie was being discharged. I realized that during all the contacts I’d had with both of them, his name hadn’t come up once.

  A tightly wound little man who was all business— even during our few minutes together, he’d mixed family matters with hospital affairs.

  He hadn’t wasted a moment on debate, had never tried to change my opinion.

  Choosing, instead, to shape the conversation.

  Even the choice of meeting place had been calculated. The dining room he closed and now treated as his personal galley. Getting refreshments for himself, but not me.

  Brandishing a ring of keys to let me know he could open any door in the hospital. Bragging about it, but letting me know he had too much integrity to grab office space.

  Bringing my presumed hostility toward the despoiler of the Psychiatry department out in the open, then trying to neutralize me by appending a bribe just subtle enough to be taken as casual conversation:

  Hopefully, one day we’ll be able to establish a good, solid department. Bring in some top people . . . Would you ever consider returning?

  When I’d demurred, he’d backed off immediately. Empathized with my good sense, then used it to support his point of view.

  If he’d been a hog farmer, he’d have found a way to use the squeal.

  So I had to believe that though ours had been a chance encounter, if we hadn’t bumped into each other soon, he would have arranged a meeting.

  I was too small a fry for him to care what I thought about him.

  Except as it related to Cassie and Chip and Cindy.

  Wanting to know what I’d learned about his family.

  Meaning there was probably something to hide and he didn’t know if I’d discovered it.

  I thought of Cindy’s worry: People must think I’m crazy.

  Was there a breakdown in her past?

  The entire family fearful of a psychological probe?

  If so, what better place to avoid scrutiny than a hospital without a Psychiatry department?

  Another reason not to transfer Cassie.

  Then Stephanie had gone and ruined things by bringing in a free-lance.

  I remembered Plumb’s surprise when she told him what I was.

  Now his boss had checked me out personally.

  Shaping, molding. Painting a rosy picture of Chip and Cindy.

  Mostly Chip— I realized he’d spent very little time on Cindy.

  Paternal pride? Or directing me away from his daughter-in-law because the less said about her the better?

  I stopped for a red light at Sunset and La Brea.

  My hands were tight on the steering wheel. I’d cruised a couple of miles without knowing it.

  When I got home I was in a bad mood and thankful that Robin wasn’t there to share it.

  • • •

  The operator at my service said, “Nothing, Dr. Delaware. Isn’t that nice?”

  “You bet.” We told each other to have a nice day.

  Unable to get Ashmore and Dawn Herbert out of my head, I drove over to the university, hooking into the campus at the north end and continuing southward until I came to the Medical Center.

  A new exhibit on the history of leeching lined the hallway leading to the Biomed library— medieval etchings and wax simulations of patients being feasted upon by rubbery parasites. The main reading room was open for another two hours. One librarian, a good-looking blond woman, sat at the reference desk.

  I searched through a decade of th
e Index Medicus for articles by Ashmore and Herbert and came up with four by him, all published during the last ten years.

  The earliest appeared in the World Health Organization’s public-health bulletin— Ashmore’s summary of his work on infectious diseases in the southern Sudan, emphasizing the difficulty of conducting research in a war-torn environment. His writing style was cool, but the anger leaked through.

  The other three pieces had been published in biomathematics journals. The first, funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, was Ashmore’s take on the Love Canal disaster. The second was a federally funded review of mathematical applications to the life sciences, Ashmore’s final sentence: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

  The last report was the work Mrs. Ashmore had described: analyzing the relationship between soil-concentration of pesticides and rates of leukemia, brain tumors, and lymphatic and liver cancers in children. The results were less than dramatic— a small numerical link between chemicals and disease, but one that wasn’t statistically significant. But Ashmore said if even one life was saved, the study had justified itself.

  A little strident and self-serving for scientific writing. I checked the funding on the study: The Ferris Dixon Institute for Chemical Research, Norfolk, Virginia. Grant #37958.

  It sounded like an industry front, though Ashmore’s point of view wouldn’t have made him a likely candidate for the chemical industry’s largesse. I wondered if the absence of any more publications meant the institute had cut off his grant money.

  If so, who paid his bills at Western Peds?

  I went over to the librarian and asked her if there was a compilation of scientific grants issued by private agencies.

  “Sure,” she said. “Life science or physical?”

  Not sure how Ashmore’s work would be categorized, I said, “Both.”

  She got up and walked briskly back to the reference shelves. Heading straight for a case in the center of the section, she pulled down two thick soft-cover books.

  “Here you go— these are the most recent. Anything prior to this year is bound, over there. If you want federally funded research, that’s over there to the right.”

  I thanked her, took the books to a table, and read their covers.

  CATALOGUE OF PRIVATELY FUNDED RESEARCH: VOLUME I: THE BIOMEDICAL AND LIFE SCIENCES.

  Ditto, VOLUME II: ENGINEERING, MATHEMATICS, AND THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.

  I opened the first one and turned to the “Grantee” section at the back. Laurence Ashmore’s name popped out at me midway through the As, cross-referenced to a page number in the “Grantor” section. I flipped to it:

  THE FERRIS DIXON INSTITUTE FOR

  CHEMICAL RESEARCH

  NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

  The institute had funded only two projects for the current academic year:

  #37959: Ashmore, Laurence Allan. Western Pediatric Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA. Soil toxicity as a factor in the etiology of pediatric neoplasms: a follow-up study. $973,652.75, three years. #37960: Zimberg, Walter William. University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD. Non-parametric statistics versus Pearson correlations in scientific prediction: the investigative, heuristic, and predictive value of a priori determination of sample distribution. $124,731.00, three years.

  The second study was quite a mouthful, but Ferris Dixon obviously wasn’t paying by the word. Ashmore had received nearly 90 percent of its total funding.

  Nearly a million dollars for three years.

  Very big bucks for a one-man project that was basically a rehash. I was curious about what it took to impress the folks at Ferris Dixon. But it was Sunday and even those with deep pockets rested.

  • • •

  I returned home, changed into soft clothes, and puttered, pretending the fact that it was the weekend meant something to me. At six o’clock, no longer able to fake it, I called the Jones house. As the phone rang, the front door opened and Robin stepped in. She waved, stopped in the kitchen to kiss my cheek, then kept going toward the bedroom. Just as she disappeared from view Cindy’s voice came on the line.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi. It’s Alex Delaware.”

  “Oh, hi. How are you, Dr. Delaware?”

  “Fine. And you?”

  “Oh . . . pretty good.” She sounded edgy.

  “Something the matter, Cindy?”

  “No . . . Um, could you hold for just one second?”

  She covered the receiver and the next time I heard her voice it was muffled and her words were unintelligible. But I made out another voice answering— from the low tones, Chip.

  “Sorry,” she said. “We’re just getting settled. I thought I heard Cassie— she’s taking a nap.”

  Definitely edgy.

  “Tired from the ride?” I said.

  “Um . . . that and just getting readjusted. She had a great big dinner, plus dessert, then just dropped off. I’m across the hall from her right now. Keeping my ears open . . . you know.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I keep her door open to our bathroom— it connects to our room— and a night light on inside. So I can look in on her regularly.”

  “How do you get any sleep that way?”

  “Oh, I manage. If I’m tired, I nap when she does. Being together so much, we’ve kind of gotten on to the same schedule.”

  “Do you and Chip ever take shifts?”

  “No, I couldn’t do that— his course load’s really heavy this semester. Are you coming out to visit us, soon?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? Sure. Um . . . how about in the afternoon— around four?”

  Thinking of the 101 freeway snarl, I said, “Would earlier be possible?”

  “Um, okay— three-thirty?”

  “I was thinking even earlier, Cindy, like two?”

  “Oh, sure . . . I’ve got some things to do— would two-thirty be okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Great, Dr. Delaware. We’re looking forward to seeing you.”

  • • •

  I walked to the bedroom, thinking how much more nervous she sounded at home than in the hospital. Something about home setting her off— raising her anxiety and leading to Munchausen manipulation?

  Though, even if she was virgin-innocent, I supposed it made sense for her house to spook her. For her, home was where the harm was.

  Robin was slipping into a little black dress I’d never seen before. I zipped her up, pressed my cheek to the warmth between her shoulder blades, and finally managed to complete the process. We drove to the top of the Glen, to an Italian place in the shopping center just below Mulholland. No reservation, and we had to wait at a cold onyx bar. Frantic singles scene tonight, lots of tanned flesh and triple entendres. We enjoyed not being part of it, reveled in silence. I started to have real faith in our reunion— something pleasant to think about.

  A half hour later we were seated at a corner table and ordering before the waiter could escape. We ate veal and drank wine for a peaceful hour, drove back home, got out of our clothes and straight into bed. Despite the wine, our union was quick, limber, almost jovial. Afterward, Robin ran a bath, got in, and called for me to join her. Just as I was about to, the phone rang.

  “Dr. Delaware, this is Janie at your service. I’ve got a call from a Chip Jones.”

  “Thanks. Put him on, please.”

  “Dr. Delaware?”

  “Hi, Chip, what’s up?”

  “Nothing— nothing medical, that is, thank God. I hope I’m not calling too late?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Cindy just phoned me to say you’re coming by, tomorrow afternoon. I’m checking to see if you need me to be there.”

  “Your input’s always welcome, Chip.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “I’m afraid there is. I’ve got an afternoon class at one-thirty, then a meeting with some of my students right afterward. Nothing earth-shattering—
just routine office hours— but with finals approaching, the undergraduate panic level’s been rising at a precipitous rate.”