Mirror Image

by Dennis Palumbo

  “You mean, like staying alive…?”

  She gave my arm a reassuring squeeze, leaving her hand there as we waited for the cops. The part of me that was still in the car with her was grateful. But some other part of me had already drifted away…

  ***

  Phillip Camden, M.D., Ph.D., professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, author of three definitive textbooks in the field, was something of a legend in the graduate psych department. Primarily a researcher, not a therapist, he took pride in never having actually treated a patient.

  Instead, he “evaluated” them—in controlled studies, cranial autopsies, and by virtue of his nationally-known expertise in interpreting psychological tests. “Patients are subjects,” he’d announce from the podium. “And the most effective tool for examining them is dispassion.”

  Dr. Camden’s students feared and revered him, but rarely liked him. Which was fine with him. An imposing-looking man in his seventies, he’d sit with his legs crossed in the faculty lounge, brandy in hand, and gaze forlornly across the room at the stack of papers to be graded.

  “You know who we attract in the field of psychology, don’t you? They come in two categories: Those who can’t pass the bar, or lack the critical thinking skills for medicine and the natural sciences; or, even worse, those whose psyches are so fragmented that their only sense of cohesion comes from the idea of ‘helping others,’ whatever in God’s name that means. A narcissistic grandiosity masquerading as altruism.”

  I was used to these pronouncements. As his teaching assistant—and the one who would end up having to grade those papers—I’d been on the receiving end of countless rebukes and insults myself.

  Camden was my mentor in the department. He was also my exact opposite in temperament and beliefs. He despised my interest in Kohut, Stolorow, or in any other relational theories of human development. “Postmodernist horseshit,” he’d say. “A flight from objective reality.”

  Phillip Camden was easily the most arrogant, self-satisfied son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever known. I also learned more from him than any other person in the field.

  So it was only natural, if not deeply ironic, that his should be the first face looming down at mine—after ten hours of surgery, following the shooting—when I finally came to in the hospital.

  “You should have died,” he said. And that was all he said, before turning and walking out.

  Even if he’d stayed, I couldn’t have argued with him. Given the head trauma, I should have died. Everyone said so, including the specialist flown in from Dallas. I lay in a hospital bed over the next three months, tubes going in and out, and didn’t—for some reason—die. After a while, I began to feel I was letting everybody down.

  Especially Phillip Camden. On his second—and last— visit to see me, when I was fully conscious and able to sit up, he just stood in a corner of the room, arms folded across his chest, and scowled at me.

  “Phil…” My voice was a croak.

  “Not a word. I will speak to you when I must. The occasional professional, and therefore unavoidable, consultation. Am I clear?”

  I swallowed hard, at a loss.

  Without another look in my direction, he walked out of the room. I haven’t seen him since.

  I couldn’t blame him for his rage, his hatred. I’d been his assistant in the psych department, his favorite student, however contrary and opinionated.

  Then, not long after graduation, I’d become his son-in-law. Was it any wonder he felt this way now?

  After all, I thought, in the yawning silence of the hospital room, as far as he’s concerned, I’d killed his only child. Gotten her killed. His daughter, Barbara.

  It’s taken me a long time since then to believe otherwise. Phil Camden never has.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A fist rapped impatiently on the driver’s side window. I was pulled from my reverie by the sight of Sgt. Harry Polk, craggy face framed in flickering red light from a nearby patrol car, peering through the glass.

  “Hey, Doc, ya wanna join the party?”

  I looked over to find that Casey was already climbing out of her side of the car. I got out, too, and stood in a street now filled with patrol units, a lab van, and a scattering of semi-interested onlookers.

  Polk motioned for me to follow him across the street, where Lt. Biegler and Det. Lowrey stood by an unmarked sedan. The lieutenant looked unhappy.

  “The DA wants me to supervise this personally,” he explained. We all stood with our hands in our pockets, shoulders hunched against the icy wind.

  “CSU guys are doing the office now.” Lowrey’s mouth was hidden behind the fur lining of her jacket collar.

  “Just make sure they bring me the knife first, before it goes to forensics,” Biegler said.

  Casey joined us from the sidewalk, carrying her own cell phone. She handed it to Biegler. “Sinclair, for you.”

  The lieutenant spoke into the phone. Once. “Biegler.”

  For the next two minutes, Biegler just nodded, phone at his ear, not even managing an “uh-huh” or “okay.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, impatient, embarrassed, suddenly a low link in the chain of command.

  Polk gave me a sidelong glance, through the plume of smoke from the cigarette he was lighting. The wind took the smoke and fanned it away like a flag unfurling.

  Finally, Biegler got another word in. “Right.” Then he hung up and handed the phone back to Casey.

  “Okay, here’s the deal.” He squared his shoulders with importance. “The knife is probably the murder weapon, which pretty much clinches it that the Doc here is the target. Also, looks like the killer is totally confident that he will succeed next time. And wants us to know it.”

  “Or, at least, wants me to,” I offered.

  Ignoring me, he turned to Lowrey. “Detective, I want you to coordinate the CSU data, keeping me informed at all times. I want everything they find—prints, whatever—funneled through me first.”

  Only then, a quick look at me. “Dr. Rinaldi, we’ll need a list of everything that should be in your office. Files, books, personal items. ASAP.”

  Finally, he turned and pointed at Polk. “And, Harry, you get the cakewalk. Baby-sitting the Doc.”

  “No fuckin’ way.” Polk flicked ash from his Camel. “I’m supposed to be Primary on this investigation.”

  “Sinclair wants it this way. At least for the next day or two. If the killer makes a move, we’ve got to have somebody with the stones and experience to block it.”

  Lowrey punched Polk’s arm. “And since we don’t got anybody like that, you’re the next best thing.”

  “Don’t I get a vote?” I asked.

  “No.” Casey’s quick answer surprised me.

  She took a step toward me, subtly putting her back between us and the others. Her look was warm and strangely intimate. Again, as if there were nobody else here but us.

  “We have a safe house on Fifth,” she said. “Just till morning, at least. No way we can let you go home.”

  Just then, a CSU tech in a blue jumpsuit and gloves came out of the office building, holding a plastic evidence bag in both hands. Lowrey waved him over.

  Biegler peered at the long, thin knife through the plastic. Some dried blood from the blade dotted the inside of the bag.

  “All right,” he said. “Tag it and take it down.”

  The CSU guy hurried off. Biegler turned to Lowrey. “I want the whole building sealed. Then grab some uniforms and start canvassing the area. Again.” He pulled his overcoat collar up to his ears. “That’s it. Call me at home if anything pops.”

  We all watched Biegler walk quickly toward his car, parked a few spaces down the street. Something about the petulant stamp of his footsteps managed to convey the lieutenant’s overall disappointment with his life. Conferring with social inferiors at a crime scene, huddling in the frigid wind at one in the morning, having to look at blood-stained murder weapons in plastic bags. He probab
ly figured that wherever Leland Sinclair was right now, barking orders on the phone all over the city, he was indoors and warm, and nursing a drink.

  “God, what a pussy,” Lowrey said in a low voice.

  “Look.” I turned to Casey. “I can’t do any good stuck in some roach motel, playing cards with Sergeant Polk.”

  “You’ve seen too many movies. Besides, this is police business. You’re out of it.”

  “More important,” Polk said, “you sure as hell ain’t gonna get your ass killed on my watch.”

  “I’m touched.”

  “Point is,” Casey went on, “finding that knife in your office made a believer out of Sinclair. And me. This guy’s determined, Danny. So let’s play it safe, okay?”

  “Okay. But let me ask you a question. I had to unlock the outer door, and the connecting door, to let us into my office. So how did the killer get in before us, to plant the knife? Shouldn’t you guys be trying to learn who else has a key to my office besides me?”

  “Give us some credit, will ya?” Lowrey flipped open a small spiral notebook. “We already contacted the owners of the building. They have a master key to all the suites. So does the building manager, a Stephanie Moss, and the maintenance guy.”

  “Lenny Wilcox?” I frowned. “Forget about him. I’ve known him for years. And Stephanie’s a sixty-three-year-old grandmother of two. Believe me, we’re up way past her bedtime.”

  “How ’bout your friends and family?” Lowrey persisted. “Colleagues. Anybody else who might have a key?”

  “Nope. No one.”

  I was lying, of course. I’d just remembered the one other person who had a key to my office, as well as to my house. In case of emergency. In case he ever got lost or disoriented or needed a place to crash.

  But I wanted to talk with him privately first, before saying anything to the cops. Or even to Casey.

  I figured I owed Noah that. If not a lot more.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I couldn’t see the killer’s face, only the neon flash of the long, silvery blade as it plunged down toward me.

  I knew I was going to die.

  The stiletto blade punctured my chest, with a sound like ice cracking. Great plumes of blood spurted from the wound. Bits of flesh and bone.

  Blood splattered everywhere, spraying the killer. It peppered his dark shirt. Dotted the blur where his face should have been.

  Then something in my brain exploded, and a fierce blackness swallowed me whole.

  ***

  I bolted awake, upright in the armchair. Papers spilled off my lap onto the carpet. Files, flying open.

  Where the hell was I? Who the hell was I?…

  Memory flooded back. Awareness crashed in around my ears. The cops. The bloody knife. Kevin’s murder.

  I took a couple of deep breaths, blinking my eyes in the dimness. The table lamp beside me had long since burned out. The one I’d turned on hours before.

  Slowly, I got my bearings. I looked around the room, taking it all in as if for the first time.

  The hotel the cops had put us in wasn’t bad. Quiet, carpeted suite, flanked by two identical rooms that are always “booked,” but never occupied.

  Dawn light was gleaming in thin lines off the closed window shutters. I’d spent the whole night in the stuffed armchair, head throbbing, listening to the muffled sounds from the street below. Sleepless in Pittsburgh.

  Until at some point, I’d nodded off. And dreamed.

  Shit, I thought, some dream. I rubbed my eyes. Maybe awake was better.

  I bent over and started gathering up the scattered files. I’d been poring over them, re-reading case notes from every patient I’d seen since going into practice.

  Earlier, I’d made a deal with Polk and Lowrey that I got to review everything first on my own, and only then pass along the name of anyone who seemed in the slightest way capable of murder, or who’d exhibited enough antagonism toward me in therapy to warrant a second look. It was the best way I could think of to assist the cops, and still maintain my patients’ confidentiality.

  And, as I’d expected, I’d come up with nothing. If one of my patients did want to kill me, he’d done a great job hiding it from me during our sessions. He or she, I guess.

  I put aside the pile of folders and stretched, feeling fatigue tug at my shoulder muscles.

  Across the room, sprawled on one of the twin beds, lay Sgt. Polk, snoring. He was fully dressed, including his shoulder holster and scuffed brown Florsheims. His gun sat in the ashtray on the nightstand, along with an empty Camel pack and two sticks of Wrigley’s gum.

  He stirred now, a low grumble coming from his throat.

  Dreaming, too, I guessed. God knew what. His face was pinched, contorted.

  Hours before, as I was climbing into his car to come here, Eleanor Lowrey had put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Go easy on Polk, okay?” she whispered. “His wife left him last month. After fifteen years.”

  What took her so long? I’d thought, as Polk gave us a disgruntled look from behind the wheel. “Ya wanna wrap it up, girls? It’s fuckin’ freezin’ out.”

  Now, watching his restless sleep, I reminded myself that Harry Polk was just another slob with a story, like the rest of us. Nursing memories of joy and loss, triumphs and failures. Maybe I could cut the guy some slack.

  Suddenly, Polk opened one rheumy eye, staring at me. “Instead o’ just sittin’ there on your ass, why don’tcha order us up some breakfast?”

  Then again, maybe not.

  An hour later, as I downed an unaccustomed third cup of coffee, the phone rang. Polk snatched it up, grunted a few times, and hung up.

  “That was Biegler.” He popped a last slice of bacon into his mouth. “Wants the background check to go all the way back to the patients you saw when you were an intern.”

  “That’s a lot of people,” I said. “And another waste of time. I told you guys, the killer isn’t some crazed patient out of my past. That’s just Hollywood bullshit.”

  Polk shrugged. “Not my call.” He got to his feet, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I’m outta here.”

  I stood up, too. “I’m going with you. I want the same deal we had before. I get first look.”

  “Forget it. You’re stayin’ put. Besides, I thought you said it was a waste of time.”

  “I still think so.” I smiled. “But every once in a while I’m wrong.”

  He failed to see the humor. “What is it with you, anyway? Christ.”

  “Look,” I said, “there’s no way I’m hanging around here all day. I’m a consultant, right? Let me consult.”

  Polk rubbed his chin. “Well, one thing’s for sure. I let you outta my sight, and you get whacked, I’m screwed.”

  “Not to mention the paperwork.”

  He waved a hand in surrender and went off to the bathroom. When the door closed, I called Noah. I had to ask him about my office key, but I still wanted to keep the cops out of it. If they knew he had one, and started hassling him about it, Noah could unravel like a ball of string.

  I got his answering machine.

  “This is Noah. Our quote for today comes from my main man, the Marquis de Sade. ‘Freedom is born in constraint, and dies in liberty.’ Roll that one around your brain pans, children.” BEEP.

  Jesus. I left him a message to call me as soon as possible. As though that would do any good.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Later that morning, under a patchwork sky heavy with the threat of more rain, Sgt. Polk and I drove through the wrought-iron front gates and up the curving driveway to the entrance of Ten Oaks.

  Nestled in the bank of trees that inspired its name, surrounded by ten acres of landscaped lawns and gardens, the gable-roofed building looked more like a private boarding school than a psychiatric clinic.

  Which, in fact, it had been, until some thirty years ago. Prior to that, it had been the home of one of the city’s lesser robber barons, who’d made his millions out of what lit
tle industry was left after the Scaifes, Mellons, and Carnegies took their sizeable cuts.

  His fortunes declined somewhat after he was found guilty of strangling his mistress with one of her own panties and burying her body under the gardener’s shed. In the ensuing years, the family lost most of its wealth and holdings, including this house, to legal fees.

  We drove past the massive, gilt-framed double front doors, and into a small lot on the side of the building. Getting out of Polk’s car, I could see through the sculpted hedges onto the muddy recreation field, where some patients and staff—indistinguishable in assorted t-shirts, jeans, and sweat shirts—were tossing a football around.

  Polk followed my gaze, mumbled something, and shook his head. I knew better than to ask.

  Our feet crunched on damp gravel as we made our way back to the entrance. As we approached the doors, whose brass fittings gleamed, a glance at Polk confirmed my hunch that Ten Oaks was not exactly what he’d expected.

  I paused at the doors, noting a change in the plaque set discreetly in the rich red brick. It read: “Ten Oaks. A Private Psychiatric Facility.” Under these familiar words, new gold-plated lettering added “Part of the UniHealth Family.”

  Funny how much things can change in just one week.

  Polk and I pushed through the doors and entered the egg-shell white reception area, an expensively-decorated room whose high walls always drew my eye up to the circular skylight. Varnished oak beams crisscrossed the ceiling.

  In the middle of the room stood a massive oak desk, behind which sat the receptionist, a college-aged Asian girl I didn’t recognize. Her name tag read “Amy.”

  “I’m Dr. Rinaldi,” I said, smiling. “You’re new?”

  “Just two days. Are you on staff, Doctor?”

  “Not anymore. But I have visiting privileges.” I took out my hospital ID badge and clipped it to my jacket. “Can you tell me if Dr. Garman is free?”

  Polk flashed his badge. “And if he ain’t, tell him to get out here anyway.”