An Unattended Death

by Victoria Jenkins

  When she left the stand, Theo thought she slid her eyes in his direction in the instant before she replaced the sunglasses.

  XXI

  Shortly after midnight Jet Blue Flight 67 took off to the south, looping westward over Case Inlet and Gustavus Island before banking into a lazy eastward turn and climbing above the lights of Tacoma. Even at this hour Interstate 5 was a river of light. It was odd, Irene thought looking down, how things resembled other things—the highway seen from above at night looking like corpuscles in a vein viewed under a microscope in some long ago biology film. And continuing the line of thought, cars looked like animals—how would an alien know the difference—headlights for eyes and mirrors for ears and grills and bumpers for noses and mouths. And animate too, darting here and there, stopping and starting. She wondered if anyone else had thought about it, written a dissertation.

  Passing close over the luminous shoulder of Mount Rainier as the plane climbed to its cruising altitude, Irene thought of the mountaineers below, dozens of them, scores maybe, waking now in their tents, preparing for their ascent. She imagined the cold and the anticipation. Not everyone who tried made it and some never came back. The mountain, which loomed so large over Puget Sound and looked so serene from a distance, stood more than fourteen thousand feet and was not benign at all. Every year lives were lost. Irene thought of how it looked from Gustavus, rising above the horizon, catching the sun, a halo of weather of its own creation ringing its summit.

  The summer after high school graduation Nigel Strauss had climbed Mount Rainier. Irene’s mother had sent a clipping from the Mason County Journal with a note jotted in the margin to the effect of what a waste of time, exclamation point. It was a class thing. Irene’s family worked physically hard for a living and at the end of the day collapsed onto the sofa. A game of horseshoes in the backyard once in a while was Irene’s father’s most taxing recreation. He’d scoffed at Irene’s running. She couldn’t quite get her mind around why this was so. Just tired, she supposed, and resentful of anyone whose job left them with enough oomph left over to turn physical exertion from a grinding necessity into something recreational and pleasurable.

  Irene inclined her head and closed her eyes as the terrain below became distant and indistinct before vanishing beneath a high cloud cover. She slept.

  THE ATKINS Psychiatric Hospital was a collection of red brick buildings strewn across ten rolling, iron-fenced acres in Belmont, a little northeast of Boston. Stately maples and elms lined the drive leading from the entryway gates to an open quadrangle. It might be a college or a prep school, except that some of the windows were barred. Irene pulled her rental car into a visitor’s spot in front of a Federalist-style administration building. It was shortly before ten but already hot, the mercury and the humidity both in the nineties. Irene wondered how people here managed. As soon as she stepped out of the car she was limp and filmed with perspiration, her tee shirt sticking to her.

  She had flown all night, sleeping only fitfully, was tired, and wished for a shower. She felt squashed, as though gravity here were stronger, the weight of all that moisture in the air pressing down. It was hard to catch her breath. She’d brushed her teeth in the ladies’ room at Logan and dabbed around her eye with the concealer stick, before picking up her car and navigating through the tunnels and intricacies created by the infamous Big Dig. The rental car was equipped with a GPS, and she had entered her destination into the navigation system, turning left and right as the robotic voice instructed. She was glad for the assistance. The streets were narrow and congested and traffic traveled at breakneck speed. Whizzing along Storrow Drive paralleling the Charles, she glimpsed arched bridges crossing the river, like pictures of Paris, and passing Back Bay, tall houses with verdigris roofs. Irene had never been east before and she felt as though she was in Europe, somewhere foreign and exotic, somewhere with a long history, more settled and solemn than the boisterous, outlaw west she called home. There was a moist dazzle in the air, haloing objects. She had the air-conditioning cranked up and the windows closed.

  Here at Atkins she had a little window of time in which to interview the director, Anne’s clinical supervisor, before meeting Officer Sean Egan at the Cambridge apartment.

  She got out, wrestled herself into a black linen jacket, covering the gun under her arm, and ran her fingers through her hair. Indoors surely it would be air-conditioned.

  The entry door was locked and she announced herself over an intercom—Detective Irene Chavez from Washington State here to see the medical director, Dr. Storey Lindstrom. After what seemed like a long wait, a receptionist appeared and let her in. She was asked to sign in and wait. The furniture was a mismatched assemblage of sixties Danish modern, warring with the paneled walls and mullioned windows dating from the Colonial era.

  Dr. Lindstrom, when he appeared, was tall and rangy, gaunt even, a little hollow in the chest with narrow shoulders and a slightly oversized head. But handsome. In his fifties maybe. A nice craggy face and cool blue eyes. He looked like he spent time outdoors. Irene flipped her badge for him to see, and he led her through a labyrinth of passageways and into a tall, book-lined office. He waved her into a cracked leather armchair, sat down behind a desk piled with papers, and leaned back, propping his feet on an open drawer. A window fan stirred the air and fluttered papers, but the room was not air-conditioned. Dr. Lindstrom was in his shirtsleeves.

  “I’m not used to this kind of heat,” Irene said.

  “No one is,” he said. “This is crushing. It’s record-breaking. We’re all dying. Most of the buildings have air-conditioning, but we’re in this quaint artifact—very lovely and impractical.” His smile was wry and kind and his inflection pure New York.

  “You know why I’m here, I suppose,” said Irene, somewhat disingenuously.

  “I don’t actually,” he said. “You’re just a name on my calendar. Somebody slotted you in but I don’t know the reason why.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Indeed,” he said, giving her a quizzical look. “I hadn’t thought about it, to tell the truth. You’re here from Washington State?”

  “I am,” she said.

  “So, what is it that brings you all the way over here?”

  ”It’s about Anne Paris.”

  “Anne Paris,” he echoed, and she saw it register and saw a flicker of worry or concern. Surprise, the inquisitor’s friend. The name, she thought, had triggered some other association and momentarily taken him somewhere else, away from her and the present moment. Something for her to pursue. But for now she had his interest. He was studying her and she thought he was deciding what to say or whether to say anything at all. Shrinks, she thought, had a way of letting their faces settle into utter neutrality. How did you learn that? Were there classes in impassivity? Did they practice in front of a mirror? When he spoke again his voice was neutral too, gently prompting in the same way she knew he’d encourage a patient to go on. “What about Anne Paris?”

  “She was a doctor here?” asked Irene.

  “She’s a doctor here, yes,” he answered. Then looking at her added sharply, “I hope that whatever it is, it’s not something that’s going to involve the hospital.”

  “And why would it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What kind of doctor is she, Doctor?” asked Irene.

  “A very talented young psychiatrist. Prominent family in the analytic world. A star, Detective Chavez. A candidate in analytic training at the Boston Institute. Very well thought of. She’s on vacation at the moment—I suppose you know that—Washington State, where you’re from.”

  Irene nodded. She could see that he was being agreeable, cooperative and informative, letting her take her time getting to the point, accustomed, she supposed, to taking the role of observer and interpreter, not needing to control or direct a conversation.

  “She did her residency with us and is about to start a fellowship year. She’ll continue her analytic traini
ng but focus here with us on borderlines.”

  “Borderlines?” Irene queried.

  “Borderline personality. Very disturbed, often harm themselves. Cutters—cut themselves, maim themselves. Suicidal. It’s difficult work. Young people mostly, girls primarily. She’s very good, very empathic. Makes a good connection.” He stopped, looking at her intently. “I’m not getting a good feeling,” he said. “I think you’d better tell me what’s up.”

  “What do you think is up, Doctor?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Something occurred to you, something crossed your mind. I saw it in your face when I said her name,” said Irene.

  He studied her for a moment. “It’s interesting to think—to realize actually—that other professions—yours in point of fact— might have some shared capacity with our own to divine some sort of psychological truth from very subtle, ineffable physical signals. There’s a study,” he said, “a test, actually, that you can administer. It’s easy. There are these cards, photographs of people’s faces showing different expressions, and you look at them for a brief period of time—just seconds—and then say what you saw. Like anger or disgust or fear or happiness. Five or six choices. It’s primitive. It’s like what dogs perceive. It’s there, it’s just whether you see it and can interpret it, or don’t see it. Essentially it comes down to is there a threat or no threat. It’s something they administer to law enforcement. And law enforcement—you—they’re way better than us mental health professionals at assessing peril. And the best, they’re the ones who trust it, they know when to shoot and when to talk. That’s what it’s about, recognizing peril.” He paused. “What was it you saw in my face?”

  Irene smiled. “I can’t tell you what I saw,” she said. “Just something that makes me know that when I said ‘Anne Paris’ you processed something and weren’t one hundred percent surprised.”

  “No,” he said. “Maybe not. So, what’s up?”

  “What’s up, Dr. Lindstrom, is that Anne is dead.”

  He gasped, stunned. It took him a moment to recover, then he said, “Oh, my.” He had known that something bad was coming and he’d been braced, she had seen that, but not braced for this. Some sort of infraction or malfeasance that would be difficult or surprising or embarrassing, but dead, no. She felt brutal putting it so baldly.

  “How?” he asked finally.

  “It was a blow to the head,” she said. “Maybe accidental, a sailing accident, a fall. We don’t know yet. It’s under investigation. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Accidental,” he said, “maybe accidental. That means maybe not accidental. So what, then?” When she didn’t answer he said, “Foul play?”

  “Right,” said Irene. “Foul play can’t be ruled out. Not yet. It’s an unattended death.”

  “Fuck,” he said, surprising her. He stood up, agitated, his hand to his forehead, and took a few steps behind his desk, and sat down again. “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing. Tell me anything you can think of. Tell me why your first thought was something involving the hospital, that you hoped it wouldn’t.”

  Storey Lindstrom sighed, leaning forward now, his elbows on the desk, face in his hands. He had let go of his impassive, neutral mask and seemed human and engaged again, collegial. “The thing about Anne, the reason I worried about her, was a concern—something I thought about as director, her supervisor, and counseled her about—that in our line of work it’s important to maintain a distance. You can’t get too close. It’s counterproductive. It’s not good for the patient and it’s not good for you. You know, there’s transference and countertransference of course, those are connections that we use in the analytic process. But Anne—some of it was just her personality, her style, and part of it was a theory she was developing in working with these very difficult patients, a theory that in order to help, in order to make the necessary connection with them so that they trust you, reveal themselves, open themselves to change—she blurred boundaries. She let them believe that in some future way she might figure in their lives. It’s very audacious, very controversial.

  “In therapy we have what’s called the ‘frame,’ a safe place within which the therapy is carried on. Within the frame it’s safe to say anything, feel anything. That’s why it’s so hard for people to encounter their therapists in everyday situations—at the symphony or the grocery store. Outside of the frame there is no frame of reference, so to speak, no guidelines for the relationship.” He smiled. “Anne didn’t rule out some future personal connection. She let patients have her home phone number, her cell phone number. She made herself available. Let them believe in their importance to her outside the frame, beyond the therapeutic relationship. ‘Allow them room for hope,’ she’d say, ‘don’t close the door on anything.’ Normally, you know, success in analysis or psychotherapy is measured by arriving at a point of not needing the analyst anymore. Anne’s boundaries weren’t always clear. I thought she might be vulnerable, that a patient or the parent of a patient—if something went wrong she could be open to an accusation, an ethics charge, a lawsuit. We all are, frankly. This is not an exact science and we’re working with very troubled people.”

  He paused and looked at Irene. “I want to be very clear. There never was an ethics charge. Never. She was very passionate about what she was doing and she knew the risks, she knew that not everyone endorsed her methods or her theories. But she got results. The results are compelling. She helped people.”

  “When you say ethics, Doctor, sex with a patient?”

  He gave her a long, tired look. “It’s more complicated than that. It’s the promise or hope of sex, the hope of love, of a connection beyond the therapeutic dynamic—something more than the necessity of eventual termination. But, Detective Chavez, there was never a charge. I’m simply answering your question. She was a very engaged clinician.”

  “Is there a particular instance, a particular patient, you’re thinking of?” Irene asked.

  “A particular patient,” he said. “No, no particular patient.”

  She held his eye. “Who?”

  He gave her an affectless gaze, impassive, opaque.

  “I need to see her files,” said Irene, “patient records, her notes, calendars.”

  “HIPAA protects all of that,” he replied. “You’ll need a court order.”

  “I’ll get a warrant,” said Irene.

  “If you must,” he said.

  She waited.

  “There’s a patient,” he said finally, “a patient of Anne’s, someone she’s treating here at Atkins, but not a legally committed patient, not someone we have legal responsibility for, but here for voluntary inpatient treatment. A case I’m supervising. August is always hard. Patients hate it when their doctors go on vacation. This particular patient, a difficult, very troubled patient, was extremely unhappy about Anne’s absence, and left.”

  “Left?” asked Irene.

  “Walked out. There’s been no contact with the family, none with us here at the hospital. It’s a worry. It isn’t surprising. Actually it’s not uncommon. Unless they’re committed, we can’t keep them. Usually they discharge themselves—against medical advice. This one just disappeared. It’s August, the therapist is on vacation, they feel abandoned, resentful. Anyway, if you saw something, some worry or concern, that’s what you saw—a patient we haven’t heard from. That’s all.

  “Man or woman?” asked Irene.

  “Oh,” said Dr. Lindstrom, “a man.”

  Irene’s heart rate ticked up. She wished she had a photo of the stranger on the beach—his face so clear in her mind’s eye she felt it ought to be possible to transfer it directly into Dr. Lindstrom’s brain. “What does he look like?” she asked. “Is there a photo?”

  “A photo,” said Dr. Lindstrom. “No, I don’t think there’s a photo. Maybe. I don’t quite know all the intricacies of the intake procedure. We could find out. Late twenties, I’d say. Mid-twenties. Dutch descent.
Kind of Slavic bone structure. Fair. Nice looking.”

  Momentary disappointment, then Irene moved on. Too bad. It wasn’t her stranger, which, if it had been, would have tied things up nicely. Nothing was that easy.

  “I’ve been out there, you know,” said Dr. Lindstrom after a moment, “to their place on that island. Twice. Two different summers. I can picture it exactly. Berry picking. Hunting in the woods for wild mushrooms. The beach in the afternoon. Swimming with the seals in that frigid water. Meals on the lip of the cliff.”

  Irene smiled, picturing it herself.

  “Anne loved it and she was different there. Relaxed. She was at home.” He paused. “How is the family?”

  “Pretty much as you’d expect, I guess,” said Irene.

  “So sad for Oliver,” he said. “So soon after Julia. How does he seem?”

  “Devastated.”

  “Devastated,” he echoed. “Losing Julia was hard. I went out to San Francisco for the memorial. But losing Anne—I can’t imagine Oliver without Anne. She was his golden child. His darling girl. The sun rose and set on Anne. She hung the moon. It wasn’t a secret. He wrote about it. She wrote about it.”

  “Wrote about what? What wasn’t a secret?” Irene asked.

  “Their relationship. The erotized nature of their relationship.”

  “What does that mean, erotized?”

  A quick apologetic smile, but he’d used the word on purpose to probe for the edge of her knowledge and vocabulary. “It’s from erotic, of course, meaning he perceived her sexually, not just paternally. And vice versa too. It’s a little out of the ordinary. In a different sort of family it can lead to incest, abuse.”

  “She was a sexual lightning rod, wasn’t she?” said Irene after a moment.

  “You could say that,” he said.

  “For you too?” she asked.

  He shot her a quick look. “No,” he said, “not for me. Well, maybe at one time. Early on. But it’s the way she interacted with the world. Whether you went down that road with her or not, it was her half of any duet. Always very seductive, very intimate— sharing a secret with you. Very certain of her welcome in the world.” He looked very intently at Irene. “You wouldn’t be here if you thought it was an accident.”