Drawing Conclusions

by Deirdre Verne

  “Hi, we spoke earlier. I’m Constance Prentice,” I said as I stuck my hand out over the counter. The man standing behind the counter made no attempt to return my shake. Despite his rebuff, I couldn’t stop smiling. My pearly whites, unfortunately, went largely unnoticed because the Records guy refused to catch my eye. My head bobbed up and down trying to find a way into his line of vision, but I quickly realized why he’d chosen to work in the basement. Despite his extremely pleasing physical attributes, this man probably suffered from a severe social disorder. I restrained myself when I realized he wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

  “What have you got for me?” I asked, pulling my hand back to reduce his anxiety.

  “More than I expected,” he said and pointed to four full cardboard boxes marked C. Prentice. “You must be a sick one.”

  “I’m much better now,” I replied and winked for good measure.

  “I got a lot of boxes myself,” he answered, and I nodded in the solidarity of the sick.

  “Thanks so much for your help.”

  “Just doing my job,” he responded and then stepped back to expand his personal space. “Sign here.”

  As I signed my name, I asked what I hoped would be an ordinary question. “So each time a patient’s files are pulled from Records, someone has to sign?”

  “Yup,” he said and then scanned down a list of signatures. “You got pulled two months ago.” He pushed the paper toward me and indicated a signature. T. Prentice signed in mid-April.

  “Good to know,” I said, hoping that whatever Teddy had found in my file would help us. “Have a great day.”

  The Records guy gave Cheski and me a rolling cart for the boxes and told us to leave the trolley at the main reception desk by the front door.

  “What next?” Cheski asked as we boarded the elevator. “A visit to the psych ward?”

  “Nice. And you’re supposed to be a protector of the people.” I smirked. “You get the car, and I’ll wait here with the boxes.” I rolled the cart back to reception. As I parked the cart, I heard my name from across the lobby. The voice was low, steady, and very familiar.

  “Constance.”

  I could have bolted through the front doors, but I hesitated one second too long. Just enough time to hear my name again.

  “Constance,” my father repeated. “I’d like to see you in my office.”

  My boxes remained in a pile by the front door and I didn’t want to leave them unattended. When Teddy had pulled my files two months ago, he must have stashed something in the folders, I was sure of it. I caught Cheski parking the Gremlin near the front doors and gave him the two minutes signal with my fingers. As long as he transferred the boxes safely to the trunk, I’d be okay. I turned and followed my father.

  Dr. William Prentice’s office bordered on spectacular with wide open views of the Long Island Sound. On a clear day, the Connecticut shore was in full view and I wondered if he hadn’t sat here with a pair of binoculars watching Jonathan squirm his way through an interview on Peter Dacks’s yacht. For some reason, I felt renewed confidence, as if the connections between the players were being laid as thick as cable wire so strong I could get across them like a tightrope walker. With that in mind I refused to be interrogated by my father, instead putting myself on the offensive.

  “Have you addressed mom’s illness since we spoke? Your negligence is upsetting to me.”

  “Negligence? That’s an accusatory word to use with a doctor.”

  “If the stethoscope fits,” I let the implication linger.

  “Your mother is entering a facility tomorrow.”

  Unbelievable. He couldn’t even say the word rehab, instead watering it down to a generic facility. Even if the love between my parents had diminished, I hoped that an ounce of respect remained. Yet my father, in his capacity as a doctor and a husband, could not bring himself to admit my mother’s obvious struggle with alcohol. I wanted to lash out at him with an exhaustive list of charges that climaxed with the death of my brother. But up to this point I had nothing definitive to back up such claims. I somehow knew that Teddy had placed something in my medical files for me to find, and I was too close to the answer to let anything get in my way. So I held my tongue between my teeth and sqashed my urge to point a finger at my father.

  “You asked me here,” I said with my arms folded tightly across my chest. “Did you want something?”

  “I fear you think I had something to do with Teddy’s death.”

  “And since when does my opinion matter?”

  “Frankly, Constance, your opinion doesn’t matter, but you seem to have gotten the ear of Detective DeRosa and your opinions couldn’t be farther from the truth. I have been working closely with the police department and have done nothing but encourage the detective to find the truth.”

  “That sounds like you know the truth.”

  “I know I did not kill your brother.” My father answered plainly, but his face was a mangled mass of contradiction.

  “Do you know who killed Teddy?”

  He parsed his words with extreme precision. “My knowledge is not that specific.”

  “Who the fuck are you? Bill Clinton?” I shouted with explosive anger. “It’s a yes or no question.”

  “Life is complicated, Constance.” He rose to a standing position, indicating my dismissal. No problem there. I was happy to depart, but I yearned for one last dig. My father had consistently underestimated me and I expected he thought I knew very little about the case. He had no idea I’d spotted Igor at his home and he was unaware that I saw Igor and Becky together. I also knew that he had been to Bonetti, Italy, in close proximity to Naomi’s medical school. It was a fact I could not contain. So I dropped a heavy hint.

  “DeRosa is in Italy,” I said.

  My father lifted his head and stared directly at me. I held his gaze steadily while he processed the information.

  “I have work to do,” he replied.

  “Ciao,” I replied.

  I left my father’s office, heart pounding in my chest. I found my way to Cheski on legs too thin to support my fragile body. He noticed the change immediately.

  “You okay?”

  “Do you think it’s possible my father had something to do with Teddy’s death?”

  It was apparent the officer could not maintain a poker face. He opened his eyes a bit too wide in an attempt to convey surprise at my question, but I knew where his head was. We climbed into the Gremlin.

  “Come on, Cheski. Has DeRosa said anything to you?”

  “You want the statistics first?”

  “If they’ll help,” I answered.

  “Okay. There are thousands of cases where a son kills a father, but the reverse is almost an unheard-of crime,” Cheski said as he pulled out of the lab parking lot.

  “Go on.”

  “Fathers rarely harm adult children, but,” he said, tilting his head back and forth as he presented both sides of the argument, “parents have been known to make bad decisions.”

  “Decisions that could harm their children?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out now.” He drove in the direction of the police station as opposed to Harbor House. “Lamendola picked up Becky. She’s being held at the station.”

  “Was she in the East Village?”

  “No, that address was bogus.”

  “No surprise there. How did you find her?”

  “I got a call when you were speaking to your father .You know the ad for the roommate that Charlie picked up in Brighton Beach? The FBI dismissed it because Charlie was too high to explain the connection. So this morning Trina thought to reply to the email listed on the ad.”

  “But why would Becky talk to Trina?”

  “She didn’t know it was Trina. The girl played to Becky’s ego and pretended she was a retailer
in SoHo interested in carrying Becky’s clothing line. She gave Trina an address to meet at and Lamendola scooped her right up.”

  thirty-one

  The interrogation room at the police station was barren except for a worn metal table and two hard-backed chairs. By the look of the chairs and the lack of decoration, I suspected the strategy was to make the guilty party so physically uncomfortable that they confessed quickly. It seemed as though it worked. Becky shifted anxiously in her seat, with nowhere to look but directly at Lamendola seated across from her. Lamendola forced his shoulders and chest across the table, maintaining an aggressive and dominant position. He started by running through what seemed to be a list of standard identification questions. Becky refused to answer a single one. Her arms were folded snugly across her body and her bare legs were entwined tightly around each other like twisted pipe cleaners.

  I was sitting with Cheski in an adjacent room watching the drama unfold on a mounted closed-circuit television. I had a hard time believing the person in front of me was my former housemate. Last time I saw her, she was taking afternoon tea on a bleak day with her pal Igor. I studied her countenance, her soft, full cheeks replaced by strains of sheer panic. She clearly had no idea she was going to ever be holed up in an interrogation room.

  Lamendola was getting nowhere with her when a stray piece of paper inspired me. I bummed a pen from Cheski and started sketching, my eyes glued to Becky’s face. It came easily since I had already worked out similar features a week ago. It was the shape of her nose that caught me, the flat bridge leading to eyes covered by a slight Asian lid. I interpreted her features quickly and then handed the sketch to Cheski.

  “Give Lamendola my sketch,” I directed. “Have him tell Becky you’re holding her father in a room across the hall.”

  Cheski’s eyebrow rose quizzically until he took one look at the sketch. He patted me on the back. “Damn good work,” he said, taking the paper and leaving the room. I watched through the camera as he handed my sketch to Lamendola and grumbled in his ear. Lamendola smiled smugly as if he’d just came into possession of an opposing team’s playbook, which wasn’t far off. My sketch showed two faces, a man and a young woman. The triangular area punctuated by the eyes and leading down to the nose was practically identical in both faces. Juxtaposed next to each other, it became immediately obvious that Becky was Igor’s daughter, a fact none of us had detected until my drawing was completed. The sketch worked like a charm, bringing Becky to tears at the thought that both she and father had been caught and were being interrogated simultaneously.

  As she studied my sketch, her hand rose to her mouth. I figured she had just realized I was nearby. She stood up and approached the camera, staring directly into the lens. “I’m sorry, CeCe,” she cried, tears tumbling down her round face. Lamendola led her back to the chair and asked her if she wanted a lawyer.

  “I didn’t do anything.” She covered her face with her hands.

  “First tell me your name,” Lamendola said firmly.

  “Rebekkah Volwitz.”

  “Your father’s name?”

  “Stash Volwitz.”

  I was taken aback hearing Igor’s real name; it transformed the crime from a fantasy world of guessing and supposing into reality. Matching a name to my initial drawing was frightening as it gave Igor, now Stash, a form and identity. I wasn’t being chased by an apparition. Stash Volwitz was a real person with intent to harm. And if I wasn’t mistaken, his intent was to harm me.

  “Who do you work for?’

  Becky looked down at my drawing and ran her hand across the sketch. “I was helping my father,” she said, her blue eyes wet and moist.

  “Whom does your father work for?”

  “My uncle,” Becky said without hesitation. “My uncle Peter.”

  Lamendola sat back, clearly caught off-guard by Becky’s reference to Uncle Peter. Her comment must have set Lamendola’s head spinning. In an amateur move, he looked into the camera as if he needed coaching.

  I grabbed Cheski’s arm. “He better not screw this up. This is a huge break.”

  Cheski spoke into a small microphone that was wired to Lamendola’s ear. “Get a last name for the uncle,” he demanded.

  Lamendola’s eyes lit up as if he just remembered where he had left a set of lost car keys. “Your uncle’s full name?” he asked after a slight pause.

  “At home he went by Dackow, but here he goes by Dacks.”

  “Where is home?” Lamendola asked as he jotted down notes.

  “Slovenia.”

  “When did you immigrate to the United States?”

  “When I was five. My uncle helped us come to the country after my mother died. Uncle Peter is my mother’s brother.”

  “How did your mother die?” We watched Becky’s face fill with grief. I almost felt sorry for her, but I knew in my heart that she and her father had done something unforgiveable.

  “We were very poor. Everyone in our village was poor except my uncle. He always had money.” She wiped her eyes with her hands.

  Lamendola retrieved a box of tissues and gave her a second to collect herself.

  “My uncle recruited villagers to participate in drug trials. It was easy money. You just had to be healthy. People would take the pills and every few months, American doctors would give you a check-up to determine if the pills had an effect on you. But one time, my mother and about ten other villagers got sick right away.” Her sobs seemed endless as she replayed her mother’s final days.

  “My mother was in terrible pain and throwing up blood. I stayed home from school and sat by her bed until she passed. My uncle paid the villagers to keep quiet, but my father wouldn’t accept the money. He pressured my uncle to bring us back to the United States with him instead, and he did. Now my father works for my uncle in security at his company.”

  “And you are also employed by your uncle?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Explain.”

  “The girls from home work for a living”—Becky paused—“if you know what I mean.”

  “But you’ve grown up here.” Lamendola’s voice was laced with sympathy. He was losing perspective, forgetting she was a suspect in Teddy’s death. “Why would you need to do that type of work, Becky?” He made a critical mistake by using her first name.

  Cheski groaned through the microphone and admonished Lamendola’s overly familiar line of questioning. The message got through, and his face went from kind to cold in a matter of seconds.

  “I’m not legal,” Becky offered. “My uncle kept promising he’d process my paperwork. He knew how these things worked, but he wanted me to help with a job. He told me all I had to do was get close to Teddy, but just as a friend. No … intimate stuff. There was another girl before me, but she wasn’t good at it, my uncle said.”

  “Was that Dr. Naomi Gupta?” Lamendola asked.

  Becky nodded affirmatively.

  “What was the purpose of staying close to Dr. Prentice?”

  “I had to tell my uncle anything Teddy said about his work. I tried taking notes after we talked, but the medical terms were confusing. It was hard and I kept disappointing my uncle, especially if we had plans with Teddy’s work friends. I didn’t understand what they were talking about.”

  Just as Charlie and I had suspected, Becky and Naomi worked for the same person, Peter Dacks, both assigned to watch Teddy at different points in time.

  “Were you trying to be Dr. Prentice’s girlfriend?”

  “No, Teddy wasn’t interested in me that way,” Becky said, as if she were apologizing for not successfully selling her body to a disinterested client. “I promised my uncle I could still stay in Teddy’s life by connecting with his friends. That’s how I met his sister and the people at Harbor House. I was actually happy for once.” She looked away, lost in thought now.

  It wasn’t that sh
e had fooled us into thinking we were all friends; we were all friends because when Becky was with us, she wasn’t acting.

  “Tell me what happened the day Teddy died.”

  “I was trying to break away from my uncle. I thought I could actually make it as a clothing designer, and then he came to see me. He asked me to visit Teddy’s office. He knew it was easy for me to enter the building because the receptionist had stopped asking me to sign in.”

  Cheski whispered to me, “Now we know why her name didn’t appear on the visitor’s list.” I nodded and then turned my attention back to the interrogation. I knew I was about to hear something that would make me terribly upset. I saw that Becky, too, could see it coming as she continued to twist and turn her body like a snake shedding its skin.

  “And you brought him something?” Lamendola led her.

  “I didn’t know,” she screamed, practically clawing at the policeman. “How could I know there was something in the cookies?” She stood and started pacing around the room, her movements frantic as she recounted her horror at the site of Teddy choking. She had snuck a cookie in the car ride over with no reaction, so she assumed a piece had simply lodged in his throat. She attempted to give Teddy the Heimlich Maneuver, but he shoved her away. He must have known an obstruction was not the cause of his choking; the symptoms would be entirely different. Becky’s story was mesmerizing and dreadful, a nightmarish account of my brother’s last breaths. I caught my reflection in the monitor’s screen, my hand partially over my eyes, as if I could soften the gruesome blows.

  Becky rubbed her throat as she spoke. “I realized it was hopeless and I knew my uncle was behind it. I opened Teddy’s office window and crawled out.”

  Since she had never signed in, no one remembered her presence on the day Teddy died.

  Lamendola sat stone-faced, pen idle in his hand. When Becky crumbled to a halt, he stood abruptly and stormed out of the room, leaving her alone with her confession. He joined Cheski and me, and we watched the monitor as Becky cried like a baby. Her remorse was genuine, but it was too late to recant.