Remains Silent mm-1
Page 17
She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re a fine one to talk about smells. Why Parklandius’s change of heart, do you think?”
“Because he found out you were a good lawyer?”
“Or because he knows what you’ll do to his corpse if I kill him.”
They walked past the closed door of Mr. Parklandius’s office and entered the reading room. It was empty, but the same files Manny had looked through before were again set out on the table. Jake opened the file for 1964 and riffled through it. “Here’s the picture of the picnic,” he said, comparing the one Pete had left for him, “only it’s been cropped. Pete and the woman aren’t in it.”
“Mysterious,” Manny said. “Somebody must have known Harrigan took the original and substituted the cropped one. Too bad there’s no photo credit. We might be able to lay our hands on an eyewitness.”
A tall lanky man with graying hair and yellow-tinted glasses marched into the room. “Ms. Manfreda, Dr. Rosen, so nice of you to visit.” He did not extend his hand. “I’m Charles Parklandius.”
“How did you know my name?” Jake asked.
“You were on the front page of the paper yesterday. You see, your notoriety has reached as far as Poughkeepsie.” There was no friendliness in his manner. “As for you, Ms. Manfreda, the board voted last night to authorize me to ask the police to issue a warrant for your arrest.”
She stared at him. He avoided her eyes. “Arrest? Whatever for?”
“Theft. There’s a picture missing from our files: a photograph from the Baxter County Daily Gazette. Another had been substituted, but it’s been cropped, and we want the original back.”
Jake extended the picture. “Ms. Manfreda didn’t take it,” he said. “The photograph was found among the belongings of Dr. Peter Harrigan, the former chief medical examiner for New York City who died at his home in Turner two weeks ago. We are returning it to you.”
“It’s true I took an architectural plan when I was last here,” Manny said, opening her tote bag. “I did so inadvertently, and I apologize.” She placed it on the table. “Call off the cops.” If there’s any satisfaction in this, it’s watching Parklandius sputter.
“Dr. Harrigan couldn’t have taken the photograph,” he said.
Jake shrugged. “I found it among his estate documents.”
Parklandius had regained his composure. “Dr. Harrigan had been a member of this foundation since 1963, Dr. Rosen. Indeed, we got him his first job. We placed him at Turner after his residency. Surely he knew we would have loaned him anything from the archives.”
Pete never mentioned he had been at Turner, and it wasn’t on his rйsumй. He took the clipping, never planning to give it back, and substituted the other. It was meant for me- as what? Jake closed his eyes, remembering Pete’s struggle to say something when they met in his house. Sadness swept him like biting wind. Of course. As a confession.
“So you see, it’s all a misunderstanding,” Manny said. “If you don’t have me arrested I won’t sue you for false arrest. You have everything back, no matter who took it, and no harm done. Nice how that works out, isn’t it?” She held out her hand: palm down, like a bleedin’ aristocrat. He looks like he wants to bite it.
Parklandius left, mumbling.
“Rude man,” Manny said. “He didn’t say goodbye.”
“Still, I don’t think we can stay here. I don’t think he’d be pleased if we continued to look through the files.”
Manny called Kenneth from her cell phone. “You didn’t know Kenneth was working for us, did you?” she asked Jake, when she’d finished. “We’re all of us sleuths. Isn’t that cozy?” She turned serious. “He’s been checking into Isabella’s dentists, Iras and Lowell. Both are dead- car accidents- one in seventy-two, the other in eighty-four.”
“Murdered, you think?”
“I don’t know why not. Whoever they are, everyone connected to Turner winds up dead before their time.”
“Including us if we don’t solve this thing.” He started for the door.
She ran after him. “Where are we going?”
“Turner. I want to see Marge Crespy at the Historical Society.”
JAKE SAT IN the car with his head bowed, staring ahead through pained eyes. Manny wanted to comfort him, hold him, but held back. He’s suffering. It wasn’t only Harrigan who died but Jake’s vision of him. He needs to bear this alone.
“Pete must have known about the experiments,” he said finally. “Known about them and performed them. He was too young to have acted on his own, but he was involved. My God, how it must have weighed on him! Forty years of keeping secret the worst sin a doctor can commit.” He turned to her. “I loved him, Manny. He was my teacher and my spiritual father. I don’t know if I can ever forgive him.”
“He wanted to confess to you,” she said. “That’s why he called you back. Not to tell you he had cancer, but about this.”
“Cancer of the soul. I wonder if he’d have said anything if we hadn’t discovered the bones. He must have realized immediately whose they were and confirmed it by x-raying them. No wonder he didn’t send the X-rays to me. He must have destroyed them.”
“And somebody destroyed him,” Manny said quietly. “Don’t forget that. Someone must have known Pete Harrigan was ready to talk.”
Ms. Crespy, it turned out, lived on the top floor of the Historical Society. “You’re the doctor from New York,” she said to Jake. She was a wiry woman, plainly robust, looking younger than the fifty Jake had originally guessed. “I remember you working with dear Dr. Harrigan.” She looked at Manny. “And this is?”
“Philomena Manfreda. I’m a lawyer, helping the daughter of James Lyons, one of the patients whose bones were discovered at the construction site.”
Ms. Crespy led them upstairs to her residence, settled them in her living room, and provided them with coffee. “We think we’ve identified Skeleton Four,” Jake said. “The female.”
“Her name was Isabella de la Schallier,” Manny said, handing her the copy Jake had made of the uncropped photograph before returning it to the Academie. “She was another patient at Turner. She’s the one standing with-”
“Dr. Harrigan!” Ms. Crespy was clearly astonished. “I had no idea he was ever at Turner Psychiatric. My goodness, you’d think he’d have said something.”
Wally had said she had nothing to do with the kickbacks at the mall site, Jake thought. He was right. “Yes. Do you recognize the young woman?”
She studied the photograph. “No. But there’s no reason I should. I socialized with very few of the patients, and this picture was taken more than forty years ago.”
“Would the Historical Society have any information about her?” Manny asked. “Maybe something about her death?”
“I don’t remember seeing her name in our records. But we have only a few scraggly documents. The Psychoanalytic Academie for the Betterment of Life has more.”
“We went there this morning,” Jake said. “It’s where we got the photo.”
Ms. Crespy looked at it again. “I don’t know her, I’m afraid.” She brightened. “But look. On the path behind her and Dr. Harrigan. I recognize the girl walking by herself.”
Hope blazed in Manny’s brain. “You do?”
“My goodness, yes. That’s Cassandra Collier- when she was a teenager, of course.”
“Is she still alive?” asked Jake, his voice rising.
“Alive, if you can call it that. She’s a recluse. Lives in her daddy’s old house. People here think she’s loony, but she’s as sane as sunshine. I take food to her now and then, and we talk.”
“Will she talk to us?” Manny asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. She’s moody.”
“Why was she in Turner Psychiatric?”
“Her daddy- Timothy Collier, the well-known gynecologist- institutionalized her after her mother died. Mrs. C was a concert pianist until arthritis crippled her- died of grief, they say.”
Get on with it, Manny though
t.
“Anyway, Cassandra was evidently a hellion when she was young. Promiscuous in an age when no good girl let a man touch her till she was married. Collier put her in Turner to tame her, not because she was crazy. He was a huge contributor to the hospital- there used to be a Collier Library on the grounds- and they took her in because they needed his patronage. The director wasn’t the most ethical man around-”
If you only knew.
“- but they kept the poor girl against her will until her daddy died. Then they couldn’t wait to get rid of her.”
“She’d know what was going on at the hospital when Isabella de la Schallier died,” Jake said, keeping his voice neutral.
“Suspect so.”
“But she might not talk to us?”
“I’ll bet she will if I introduce you,” Ms. Crespy said. She jumped up and started for the door. “Come on, I’ll take you. We can swing by the mall site; there’s been lots of progress. You seem like nice enough folk, and you were Dr. Harrigan’s friends.” She sighed. “Cassandra’s sure to be home.”
***
“Forgive me,” Cassandra Collier said. “I don’t entertain, so I can offer you only tea.”
It had not taken much of Marge Crespy’s persuasion to get her to agree to see Manny and Jake, and the three stood awkwardly in the large foyer of a once-splendid house now sagging in disrepair.
Cassandra was a small woman with luxuriant white hair down to her shoulders and the muscles, Jake noted, of a gymnast. Her eyes were bright, her skin ruddy and wind-tanned, and her hands, peeking out from the sleeves of a bright green wool turtleneck sweater, were those of a young woman.
“Actually, we just had coffee with Ms. Crespy,” Manny said, “and we don’t want to take much of your time.” If she’s insane, I’m a Martian.
“I have time to spare. Would you like to see the garden?”
We’ve no choice. She’ll talk if we’re patient.
Cassandra led them through a living room that seemed to Manny out of an English manor house. A large portrait of a man- her father?- hung over the fireplace; a chandelier blazed light; the leather chairs were scratched but otherwise not worn; the Oriental carpet- an original- had lost none of its opulence. A fraying couch, a pockmarked coffee table, and tattered lampshades over splendid Chinese lamps were the only signs of the passage of time.
“The house was once a showplace,” Cassandra explained. “I keep it up as best I can, but it’s the garden that gets my main attention. I’m happiest there. You’ll see, though, that in the battle between a single woman and nature, nature wins.” They went through the back door to the garden.
The trees were oaks, the vines wisteria, rose bushes, the flowers geraniums, impatiens. But there were weeds among them, and a gazebo in the center had partially collapsed.
Cassandra read Manny’s gaze. “There’s no beauty in destruction. Only sadists like my father think that.”
“Ms. Crespy told us something about him- and your history,” Manny said. “You’ve had a hard life.”
“He was a hard man. Marge told you he sent me to the mental hospital?”
“Yes. It must have been awful for you.”
“It’s what we’re here to talk to you about,” Jake said. “What was going on when you were there?”
She shied back as though he had slapped her. “No, sir. I won’t discuss it.”
“We think there were crimes committed. Crimes that reach into the present.”
“Yes, crimes,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to think about them.” She waved a hand. “Please go away.”
“But you’re the only one who can tell us-”
“Go away!” She fled toward the house.
“Isabella. Isabella de la Schallier,” Manny called.
Cassandra stopped, turned. “What did you say?”
“Isabella de la Schallier. She was at Turner when you were.”
“We found her bones,” Jake said. “Now we need you to help us find out what happened to her.”
She approached them, arms out as though sleepwalking, her face a portrait of grief. “You found her bones?”
“Secretly buried in the field behind the hospital.”
Cassandra’s voice was hushed. “Was anyone buried with her?”
“Yes. Three men.”
“Only grown men?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Isabella and three men. That’s all?”
“Yes. Why?”
Cassandra looked down, unwilling to meet their eyes. “Isabella-” she began, then stopped, her voice catching. “You see, Isabella… There was a child…” Her voice was a whisper as she gazed into a lost world. “Where is Joseph? Where are the bones of her baby?”
***
They went back to the living room. Cassandra made them tea and now sat with her eyes lowered, as if she had committed a sinful act herself. Manny and Jake faced her from the couch, both sensing that questions would be counterproductive.
At last Cassandra sighed, a sound of such regret that Manny had to fight back an urge to leave and bother her no longer. We’re subjecting her to something terrible. She’s reliving Turner. It’s too cruel. She could tell from his expression that Jake was having similar thoughts.
“It’s all right,” Cassandra said. “If I didn’t want to tell you I wouldn’t. A psychiatrist at Turner- one of the rare good men- said that to survive psychic pain you had to confront it.” She smiled weakly. “Perhaps better late than never.” She walked to the door opening into the garden and stopped there without turning back. When she spoke, her voice was steady and clear.
“I was eighteen when Dad sent me to Turner. The age of majority in the sixties was twenty-one, so I had no choice. It was a hellish place. The doctors and psychiatrists were mostly old men, interested in the patients only as specimens, clay to mold as they wished. The patients were mostly old, too, and most of them were genuinely crazy. One man, younger than the majority, was maybe the craziest of all. He had fought in the Korean War and thought all of us- doctors, nurses, and patients- were the enemy. Often he had to be restrained. When he was untied, he’d explode. And his screams in the night- dreadful.”
“James Lyons,” Jake said.
She looked at him in surprise. “That’s right. I’d forgotten his name. He was one of the few close enough to my age to talk to, but I was kept away from him for my own safety. The doctors didn’t want the child of their biggest benefactor hurt.
“God, I was lonely! I’m lonely here, too, sometimes, but I have my garden and the sunlight and I can move about as I please. The cries are the cries of birds; the howling is the wind. It’s a pleasant loneliness. No one bothers me.”
“And you have Ms. Crespy,” Manny said, too brightly.
“Yes. She’s someone I can trust. I lost all trust at Turner. The first six months there were so awful I wished for madness. To be imprisoned and sane in such a place is torture worse than a thumbscrew.”
She fumbled for control, regained it. “I was saved by Isabella. She was admitted in the summer- my age, and also sane. She was put there by her parents, as I was by my father, only in her case it was that they couldn’t afford to keep her and thought a hospital was a better place than their other option, a home for delinquent girls.
“Isabella cried for weeks, because she thought her parents didn’t want her and because she was in such great pain from her teeth. That turned out to be a simple thing; she got her cavities filled, and the pain went away. We were put in the same room and were friends from the first. We even learned to laugh.”
Her face clouded. “She met one of the new doctors. He was young, probably not ten years older than she was. He was kind to her; he was the one who arranged to have her teeth fixed. And soon they fell in love.”
Manny watched the blood drain from Jake’s face. He sat spellbound, his right leg jiggling up and down in his anxiety. “Go on,” he said hoarsely.
“What was the doctor’s name?” Manny asked, sure of the answer. Jake seemed incapable of speech. “Can you remember?”
“Of course I remember. He was an attractive man, the only doctor at Turner capable of laughter. Dr. Peter Harrigan. Is he still around?”
“He’s dead,” Jake managed.
“Oh. Too bad.” There was no sympathy in her voice. “Soon after Isabella told me she was pregnant, my father died. He left money to the hospital in his will, but not for my upkeep, so I was released, thank God. I visited Isabella a few times right after. Her parents had been killed, died in a grain explosion on the farm upstate where they worked. Dr. Harrigan broke the news to her. She wanted to leave Turner, and had to be restrained and sedated. They put her away, and I never saw her again.”
“Put her away?”
“Yes. There was a Seclusion Room at the hospital. Lieutenant Lyons was kept there a lot. They used it for violent patients, though I can’t imagine Isabella being violent.”
Manny felt chilled. They wanted to hide what they were doing to her. “Do you remember who authorized putting her in solitary?”
“Only one man could do that: Dr. Henry Ewing. He was the chief doctor. Mean as all get-out. The other doctors were terrified of him. He’s head of the Catskill Medical School now. Talk about rising to the top on the backs of the people you’ve tormented.”
“And Dr. Harrigan?” Manny asked, watching Jake wrestle with what they’d heard.
“Left soon afterward. He never did marry her, never did take her with him. That miserable son of a bitch.”
MANNY DROVE them back to the city. When she tried to talk to Jake, he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I’m thinking.”
“Granted there’s lots to think about, but I don’t like feeling I’m only your chauffeur. Would the Great Man care to share his thoughts?”