Everybody Called Her a Saint

by Cecil Murphey

  “So where do we go from here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Burton said, “but I thought that by putting our minds together, we might come up with something.”

  This time I shut up and waited for him to speak. I knew he was thinking about the two murder cases we had worked on together. I’m sure he also knew that’s what I was thinking about.

  “Do you remember when—” he asked.

  “Yes, but let’s focus on now.”

  “Agreed.” This time he imitated me imitating him.

  I tried to maintain a serious expression, but that made me laugh even more. I held up my hand. “Okay, let’s focus.”

  For the next half hour we threw out ideas but came up with nothing concrete. Both of us knew all the passengers in the fourth Zodiac. To us, the ten people still seemed the most likely suspects.

  “Unless—” I said.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless the person who said two people were going in the other Zodiac was not only the killer but a passenger in the other boat.”

  “Do you mean Jon Friesen?”

  “Not necessarily. That would mean it was the killer who brought the message.”

  “It doesn’t register with me,” Burton said, “but I don’t want to disregard that possibility.”

  “The messenger had to be the killer.”

  “Agreed.”

  “The question is whether the killer was one of the ten people who went back or—”

  “Yes, true,” Burton said. “But let’s focus on this. We can assume that whoever told Ivan about two passengers not being on his Zodiac was the killer.”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson,” I said.

  He laughed. “That’s better than agreed.”

  I thought so too, but I was creeping near the edge again, so I said, “But if we assume the killer got into Ivan’s Zodiac, that means we’ve narrowed the suspect list. Ivan said he thought it was a man who told him that two of them went in the other boat.”

  “But he also said he wasn’t sure. He had been distracted—”

  “By the reprimand on the radio,” I finished. “Makes sense.”

  Burton went to the closet. He took out the suitcase and ran his hands across the lining. He found nothing. He picked up each item of clothing, one at a time. He said nothing, but I watched him. He’s a neatnik too, and he carefully folded each item and laid it carefully inside the suitcase. Frankly, Burton is more detail oriented than I am, so I knew he’d do a better job of searching.

  He began to examine the three small shelves where she stored her underwear and jewelry.

  I laughed. “Let me look there,” I said. “I think that’s more of a woman’s task.”

  He moved out of the way, and I carefully looked at each item of jewelry without touching. They seemed to be neatly stored as if no one had disturbed them. It was the same with the underwear. The person who had been careless in the other part of the room hadn’t disturbed anything.

  “I’m going to assume that it was something fairly large,” I said.

  “Agreed—uh, elementary, Dr. Watson.” He winked at me, but I turned away so he couldn’t see the smile on my face.

  “What do you think it was? A letter? A file folder? A book?” Burton said.

  “Probably, but why would anyone want to steal something like a file unless it contained something incriminating? Maybe it was a large envelope with—” I stopped. “Wait! A book! Maybe it was a book. Look in her briefcase. She carried six books with her. I counted them.”

  He pulled them out. All but one of them had dust jackets. The one without a dust jacket was Gifted Hands. He read the other titles: “We have When Someone You Love Abuses Alcohol or Drugs, 90 Minutes in Heaven, Think Big, Heaven Is Real, and Gifted Hands.”

  Again, both of us had the same thought. He snatched the Gifted Hands dust jacket off the last book. The title revealed definitely wasn’t Gifted Hands.

  I stood next to Burton as he opened it. It was some kind of self-published book titled Wasted Life. Twila’s name was at the bottom.

  Both of us skimmed the first few pages, and I shook my head. “It has Twila’s name, but that’s not Twila’s voice.”

  Fourteen

  “Just read it yourself,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like Twila.”

  “I thought the same thing. This sounds more—more academic—”

  “More like case studies,” I said. “We had tons of them during our student days.”

  “Case studies,” he said again.

  We stared at each other.

  “Case studies,” I echoed.

  “Of course! That’s what it is!” he answered.

  I took the book out of his hands. “Look, it’s not really bound like a regular book. It only looks that way.”

  “You’re right.” He pointed to a page where Twila had red-lined a sentence and added a full paragraph in the margin in her small, back-slanted style.

  “You know what I think?” I said. “I think—”

  “She had started to teach a course this semester at Clayton University.” He smiled at me as if he had just figured it out. “I’ll bet these are her lectures.”

  I started to say, “Agreed,” but decided we’d worn out that joke. “That’s exactly what I started to say.” In spite of myself, I smiled when I spoke those words. It felt good—and familiar—to banter again with Burton.

  “And this had to be important enough for her to put on a false dust jacket to disguise it,” he said.

  “Let’s assume she did that on purpose.”

  “Could it have been otherwise?”

  I thought about the question and tried to make a case inside my head for a mistake on her part. “You’re right.”

  “So if she did it intentionally,” he said, “she—”

  “She was suspicious.”

  “Probably,” he said.

  That made sense to me. “But why?”

  We skimmed the first fifty pages of the book. She had obviously written the manuscript with a scholarly approach, as we had already noted. She was careful not to use names but only initials. Because I knew Twila, I had a strong feeling that even the initials weren’t the true ones.

  “Where’s the key?” Burton asked. “There must be some way to figure out who these people are.”

  She had twenty-one case studies. The premise of the book was that each of them had been headed toward a wasted life. The causes varied, but each of them had come to see her professionally and had become her clients.

  Burton stood behind me to read over my shoulder.

  I read through the introduction and went back to something I had skimmed. Her point was that too many people waste their lives instead of getting help—and not just any kind of help. She felt they needed to find the type of treatment that worked for them.

  As a therapist, I was familiar with each method. Cognitive behavioral therapy worked for some, psychoanalysis for others. She talked about the value of Gestalt and RET or rational-emotive therapy. Burton had a vague idea about them, but I explained how Twila had distinguished between Freudian and Jungian analysis. I added, “Twila personally advocated psychodynamic therapy.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  I had hoped he’d give me a chance to say something to show off a little of my training. “Psychodynamic therapy is more long term and deals with deep-seated patterns formed in childhood.” I emphasized those three words, but he didn’t react.

  Burton skimmed the rest of the potential procedures and chuckled. “And some benefit from deep-body massage?”

  “Oh yes, it has helped some.”

  “That’s a new one to me.”

  “It’s still around because it works for some people,” I said. “It’s not what I use or anything I see practiced much in Clayton County, but that doesn’t make it useless.”

  “What is it, exactly?” he asked.

  Again, I hoped I would get a response—any kind of response from him. I p
ointed to a paragraph where she insisted that deep-body massage had produced results for some practitioners. She also stated that it must be used only by someone who understands the body. I pointed to her reference to biogenetic analysis.

  He didn’t react, so I added, “Biogenetic analysis is a kind of mind-body connection. I don’t hear much about it today. The expression most often used thirty—years ago—was having someone beat the ground with a stick or some angry repetitive action—”

  “Why?”

  “To bring emotions to the fore. The idea was that we store memories in various places in our body, especially bad memories.”

  I saw a flicker—quick, furtive—but I had gotten a reaction. He dropped his head and read some more.

  I had tried, and I knew that was the only response I was going to get from him. He always says that Christians try to take over God’s work and become the conscience for others. I might as well surrender this to the Lord, I thought. I’m not making any progress with him.

  I turned back to what Twila had written. She made references to medication and stated that many of the popular drugs only masked symptoms so that clients didn’t have access to their pain. She wasn’t against such drugs but advocated stringent, careful prescription.

  Twila devoted four pages to faith. She stated that she’d had considerable success with those who came to her about their desire for faith in their lives. She said that she wrote this with “positive prejudice toward the topic” and made a case for the transforming power of the Christian faith, “Which I have followed since I was fourteen years old.”

  I was familiar with the various theories, of course, but I had never run across a psychiatrist who actually advocated the “different strokes for different folks” idea. Of the twenty-one case histories, before they became her patients, all of them had previously been to psychiatrists, psychics, analysts, faith healers, and counselors of every type, even exorcists.

  Twila made an important note that she had changed a few details about the individuals to protect their identities. “I can say with absolute certainty that fourteen of these clients are quite healthy and no longer need any psychiatric help. Four of the cases, despite five to twelve years of care, are still symptomatic. Three of them are functional but are characterologically impaired.”

  “What does ‘characterologically impaired’ mean?” Burton asked.

  “They would fall into the category of personality disorders.” I enjoy playing knowledgeable occasionally. “While they appear normal in everyday social situations, they have persistent traits that aren’t obvious on the surface.”

  “I’m not clear—”

  “Try this,” I said. “People with personality disorders don’t think they have any problems, but those who know such people have problems with them.”

  “Such as?” Burton asked.

  Immediately I thought of an example. “Paranoid personalities might secretly believe everyone is out to get them. If you didn’t know about that secret belief, their behaviors might not make sense.”

  He got it, so we continued to look at her manuscript. For each case, she went through a three-to-five page history about their condition, how long they had been aware of their symptoms, and what treatment they had received.

  She wrote another section of about the same length in which she described her diagnosis (which was occasionally quite different from previous diagnoses), what she had done, and how long she had worked with the client. She also included her discharge notes. For Twila, discharge included dropping out of treatment, being referred to another therapist because she didn’t feel they had made significant progress with her, or mutually agreeing to terminate therapy.

  What surprised me was her assertion that in many instances, professional interventions were no more effective than intervention by a friend, a pastor, or someone who could listen uncritically and accept the other person without restriction or condition. “Such caring individuals seem to be in great demand but short supply. Hence, the needy individuals feel they have to resort to professional help.” She listed one caveat—unless there was evidence of psychosis. In that case, she would treat the person with medication.

  Although she occasionally had a snappy, well-worded sentence, her writing was what I’d call turgid. If she could find a simple word, she didn’t use it but threw in a lot of psychiatric jargon and never settled for five words when she could write twenty. Because her audience was primarily grad students, that made sense to me.

  Burton and I stared at the book. He took it from me and leafed through the entire manuscript, which ran about 250 pages, single-spaced, in ten-point type.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “My assumption is that whoever killed her is one of those three incorrigibles,” I said.

  “That’s logical, but—”

  “I know. We can’t prove it. In fact, we can’t prove anything—”

  “But it’s as good a place to start as any,” he said.

  I wanted to say to him, “Please stop finishing my sentences.” I didn’t. He had been accurate each time. But I had to remind myself that I wasn’t supposed to like him very much right now. Yet how could I remain aloof with a person like Burton who thinks the same way I do?

  “We don’t know the identity of any of them, especially the three that—”

  “That’s exactly what I started to say,” I said.

  He shrugged and gave me that gorgeous, heart-melting smile. “Maybe that’s why we work so well together.”

  I chose to ignore that. “Do you suppose she left some kind of key?” I asked instead of answering him. “Surely she had some way to track and keep twenty-one identities separate.”

  “Of course she did,” Burton said. “I assume it’ll be somewhere in her office—”

  “Which we don’t have access to right now!” In spite of myself, I giggled. I had finished his sentence.

  “That’s what I was going to say.”

  “Oh, really?” I tried to act surprised. “You know, I read somewhere that if two people think the same way, one of them isn’t necessary.”

  “Ah, but they don’t know us. They obviously didn’t know people who could—”

  “Right, but let’s focus on this situation.”

  I closed my eyes and thought about Twila’s habits. She had a phenomenal memory. So it was possible she hadn’t needed any written key.

  I mentioned that to Burton, and he said, “And if she was concerned enough to use a false cover—”

  “We can assume that the murderer could very well be one of the people named in her book—her lectures.” I thought for a moment. “Something else,” I said. “The killer must have known about the book or that she had something in writing—”

  “Or he wouldn’t have searched.”

  “Or she,” I added.

  “I stand corrected. It could be a woman. Anyone can plunge a knife into someone.”

  “Or whatever it was.” Again I mentioned that someone would have had to bring the weapon inside checked luggage. I was thinking out loud. As Burton had long known, I sometimes do my best thinking when I talk.

  “I don’t know where anyone could have picked up a knife in Buenos Aires, because we never left the airport. In Ushuaia it doesn’t seem likely either. How many stores did you see?”

  “Aside from restaurants, I’d say not more than a dozen.”

  “Too easy to trace and—”

  “How would the person know that she or he would be able to buy a knife in Ushuaia?”

  “Unless that person had an accomplice on the ship.” Even as I said the words, I knew that idea seemed too far-fetched.

  “Conspiracy theory?” Burton said. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “I know,” he said. “And I doubt that we’ll find the knife or whatever it was. There is a big ocean on all sides of this ship. Too easy to get rid of.”

  “Agreed,” I said. This time I tried hard to imitate
his way of talking and cocked my head slightly, just the way he did.

  He laughed. “You do me quite well.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’re playful and cute when you do it, too.”

  I think I blushed, but I had to admit to myself that I had never known anyone in my life who understood me—and especially my humor—like Burton.

  “I’ve missed your smart mouth,” he said softly. “I’ve missed it a lot.”

  “I missed someone to practice on,” I said and immediately regretted it. I held up my hand. “Okay, that’s the end of that road. Let’s detour. I don’t want to fall into our old way of talking and interacting.”

  He only nodded. A few seconds later, he asked, “What if we let it slip that we had found—”

  “The book?” I said. “Yes—”

  “Agreed.” I saw the merriment in his eyes, but I didn’t give way to my feelings. Instead, I took the book from him, pulled out the first half of the pages, and gave him the rest. He had the Gifted Hands dust cover, and I took it from him to keep my pages together. I made a loose fold and put it inside the large pocket of my heavy jacket.

  I didn’t understand much, but I sensed that Twila’s book of lectures would lead us to the killer.

  Fifteen

  Burton and I talked for several minutes longer in Twila’s cabin. No matter where we took our thinking, it always came back to her lecture book.

  Hours later and unable to think of anything new, we went to see Captain Robert. He was in the lounge, setting up a film about plant life on Antarctica. I had already read about the subject in the Explore Antarctica guidebook. The fact that earlier explorers found lichen meant they could classify Antarctica as a continent. By contrast, nothing grew on or around the Arctic ice cap, so it wasn’t a continent.

  The captain said he was finished with his work and motioned for us to sit down. Without asking, he brought each of us a bottle of cold Coca Cola and a glass.

  “You already know quite a bit about us, I assume,” Burton said.

  “Not really so much,” he said.

  In a space of twenty minutes, we told him the story of how we had been thrown together eighteen months earlier at Palm Island, off the coast of Georgia. We arrived at the island after the death of the host, Roger Harden. Because the others were already on the island when the murder was committed, and the police couldn’t get to the island until the next day, we had worked together and solved the crime.