Dr. Brownlee sorted through the previous day’s mail in the shower of morning sunlight coming through their kitchen window. The coffee was strong this morning because he made it that way. Libby hadn’t come home last night and he was stewing about it. He heard the familiar footsteps of his wife coming down the stairs.
“You’re up early,” Carla Brownlee said. She grabbed a mug from the cupboard, pouring herself a cup of the dark brew.
“Um.” Dr. Brownlee was engrossed in his sorting, trying to concentrate, hoping there weren’t another one of those disturbing letters. He didn’t want his wife to find it, if there was. Phone bill and gas bill to the right, a magazine to the left. Two catalogues in the front for his wife to grab. A couple of handwritten letters from someone unknown, both with hand-drawn smiley faces where the return address should be.
Oh fuck, another two.
“You have trouble sleeping last night?” she asked him.
“Not really,” he lied, as he slipped the letters inside the psychology trade magazine. Truth was, he had hardly slept at all. He couldn’t stop thinking about the SEAL who visited his home, daring to accuse him of drinking too much and being disrespectful of his dead brother. He’d been up most of the night ruminating over the young man’s words.
“Maybe he didn’t die for you.”
Dr. Brownlee looked up. His wife was waiting for an answer he didn’t want to give.
“You thinking about the SEAL or Libby?” So she had checked Libby’s bedroom, too, and found the bed unused.
“Both of them.” He replied. “I think she’s at Gen’s house.”
“That’s what she said.” Carla turned her back to him and walked over to the French doors leading to her bright flower garden. The hiss of sprinklers was the sound he’d heard all night. He hoped her flower garden had survived the deluge.
“I’ll call him later on today,” he said as he neatly stacked the mail.
“Who?” His wife turned back to face him.
“The new guy. The gardener. Obviously he isn’t as experienced as he said he was.”
“Oh,” she shrugged.
“God, Carla. You don’t think I would call that fuckin’ sailor, do you?”
“And why wouldn’t that be a good idea? Austin, your manners were horrible. And I’ve never seen you drink so much in front of a perfect stranger before. If I’d done it, you would say something to me about it.” She sauntered over to him, letting her fuzzy yellow robe untie, exposing the fact that she had on a very sheer nightie he’d not noticed before. “You know you’ve been distracted,” she said as she drew his hand up to her breast, and then maneuvered it down between her legs.
He sucked in air so quickly he almost started to cough. His libido was back.
Thank God I won’t have to use the little blue pills today.
Maybe fear and worry were good for his sex drive. Not likely, though.
Austin Brownlee came downstairs, preparing for a swim after a very enjoyable romp with his wife. He was even more in love with her body now than the first time she gave herself to him twenty-five years ago in that cheap hotel in Coronado. He’d just grabbed the first room he could find that evening, they were so hot for each other.
But their sex life had changed in the last few years. Some of the passion subsided as his practice grew. He not only had a string of huge successes, he also had some gargantuan failures. It was some of the failures he couldn’t get out of his mind, especially the patients he’d lost to suicide. He’d often replayed their sessions, wondering what he could have done here and there, to perhaps save them from the ultimate choice of ending themselves. He’d only had a handful. But that handful was tormenting him to the point that he entertained suicidal thoughts himself. It had begun as a fleeting thought, but now stuck with him day and night like a thick oil sludge. His dark side bubbling up and contaminating his decent life. God knew, he recognized all the signs.
And now these letters started coming. He’d read them after his swim. Almost sounded like one of Dr. Dolan’s patients that he’d asked Brownlee to take over. He wasn’t interested in immersing himself in someone else’s failures. He had enough of his own.
He halfway thought maybe he ought to get help himself. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis thing. He’d been so happy. Their son was married and had a successful career. Libby was happy at Santa Clara, and going to follow in his footsteps. He was hoping some day to have her be part of his office, if that’s what she wanted to do with her life.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed glass glinting in the morning sunlight. He’d left a tumbler on the mantle next to Will’s picture. He hesitated as he got close to that picture, as if it was his own face staring back at him in that uniform, sporting the smug smile. The thought of how Will died sent a hot spear right up his rectum. His eyes stung.
He placed his forehead against the mantle, closed his eyes and prayed. “Please. Give me peace.” A friend had recommended AA, but he felt he was too high-profile to try it.
Not yet.
He looked at the photo again. Will had not changed. God, he wished he could talk to his twin. His best friend.
All throughout their growing up, Will had excelled at sports. Although they played on the same teams, Will had all the playing time. He was the one who made the huge plays that counted, the MVP. But while Will had the athletic edge, Austin’s grades were just a little bit better. He was usually ranked one, two or three in all his classes, and while Will did well, he wasn’t outstanding.
They looked alike, which was fun, because the girls they dated never could tell the difference. They acted alike. Austin didn’t mind getting the congrats as he walked down the hall, congrats intended for his brother. They halfway thought maybe they could continue their friendship and healthy competition by attending the same schools and remaining roommates in college. They’d talked about it many times.
He remembered the day they got the first of the letters. Both of them had applied to Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley. In a twist of fate the responses came within a week of each other. Austin got three acceptances, including a combination financial aid/scholarship package from Stanford. Will got three rejections.
The next week, Will enlisted in the Navy, and before Austin’s classes started in the fall, was off to basic training in Michigan.
Could I have helped him with the grades? He felt guilty, but Will said he was having the time of his life jumping out of planes and helicopters and doing shit Austin was afraid to even think about. Will also wanted to be a doctor, and the Navy was going to see to it he could. But after Will’s death Austin had survivor’s guilt. It almost derailed his scholarship at Stanford until he realized his brother would be furious with him for squandering an opportunity he’d been given.
Thank God Carla had come along just at the right time. He’d met her the summer between his junior and senior year, when she’d come out to visit a friend living in San Diego. And it had been the right thing, too. After they fell in love, he focused on his studies, his new girl, and, then later on his family and his practice. And he’d tried not to look back.
But now old wounds were being re-opened. Brownlee didn’t like God’s sense of humor, nor the knife stuck in his gut. Especially now.
Fucking KA-BAR with Will’s name on it. He could just imagine what that sucker looked like. He could see it in the SEAL’s grip.
Enough! With a sigh, Brownlee tied the string on his swimming shorts and walked through the kitchen barefoot, across the covered patio to the pool area. The sprinklers shut off. A fluffy yellow towel was draped on the chaise. He grabbed it as he made his way across the paver tiles to the pool’s edge.
He was looking at a spot of red on the towel when he saw a dark shadow in the bottom of the pool. A small animal.
Libby’s cat.
The police were respectful to the good doctor who had helped them profile some dangerous nutjobs. Brownlee knew they hadn’t taken the situation very seriously when he’d called them. But when he told them w
ho he was and how he had helped Detective Clark Riverton, who was a legend in the San Diego PD, profiling some pretty notorious killers, they agreed to come right over. Riverton was out of town until tomorrow. Brownlee intended to tell him about the letter he’d tossed and the two waiting for him in the magazine. It upset him that he’d tossed the first letter into the fireplace; it had been an unprofessional and uncharacteristic lapse in judgment.
Even if it was a child or an adolescent—anyone who caused the death of an animal, especially a pet that would come up to strangers, trusted humans, and liked to rub against everyone’s legs at the drop of a hat as Noodles had done—a person who would destroy a pet like that would grow up to be very violent, if they weren’t already. It was a pattern of criminal behavior every student learned about in Psych 101.
He’d seen a number of his patients after they’d been incarcerated for doing such things, or worse. It devastated their families. It was as if everyone in the family was placed behind bars.
Even though the Detective said it wasn’t, Brownlee thought this was personal. He just wasn’t sure whether it was against Libby, or him. He would call her; make sure she was somewhere safe. Or…Oh. My. God.
“Yessir?” Detective Bamer looked up from his notes.
“Libby. My daughter Libby.” Brownlee was short of breath from the quick run across the lawn. “This is Libby’s cat. She didn’t come home last night.”
The detective was going to call something into his shoulder radio when Brownlee heard his daughter’s screams coming from inside the house. With a mixture of relief and sadness, he saw her run toward the edge of the pool, where the small, dark body of the wet feline lay on a yellow plastic sheet. It was guarded by a member of San Diego’s finest, one who was way too short for his girth.
“Noodles!” she screamed. It broke his heart. She ran past him, sank to her knees and wailed over the dead animal. “No. No.”
Brownlee was filled with panic and stood watching his daughter unravel, unable to move. She was hysterical. He wasn’t sure what to do.
Carla ran past the doctor on her way to her daughter’s side, giving him The Look.
“Carla,” Brownlee whispered as he caught Carla’s arm and pulled her back to his side. “Where’s she been?”
“She’s been with Him.”
“Shit,” he whispered. It got the attention of the investigating detective.
“Now is not the time, Austin. Would you just shut up for once?”
She was good at showing him non-verbally something he could never say to any of his patients: “Are you out of your mind?”
An hour later, all the police and rescue workers left the Brownlee back yard. A report had been made. Libby had gone upstairs with Carla. He heard the two women talking in whispers, an occasional sob punctuating the echoes.
Like the whispers in my own head. Perhaps he was losing it, after all. He knew many of his patients heard these whispers, commanding them to do things. Unspeakable things. Could one of them have killed Libby’s cat?
After verifying it was after three o’clock—his personal rule governing when he could have his first drink before dinner—he poured himself what he knew would be the beginning of several drinks of the day. Dinner would take care of the first buzz. The second buzz would put him into a comatose sleep, until he woke up sweating at about three in the morning, unable to sleep again. He knew he needed help. As a doctor, he recognized it. As a patient, he was powerless over the grip of the fear immobilizing him.
With his drink in one hand, he sat back down at the table and continued his mail perusal. There were those two smiley-faced letters. He took a sip of courage, inhaled and slit open the first one with a steak knife. He pulled the letter from the envelope. Did he really want to know what it said?
Hell yes. Denial again. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Not yet.
Placing his hands in sandwich baggies so he wouldn’t taint the evidence, he slipped the letter out from the envelope. A single piece of paper. Perfumed. Something familiar about it. On pink stationery. The letters were cut out of magazines and formed the message:
Y-O-U W-I-L-L P-A-Y
The other message was just as brief: G-E-T R-E-A-D-Y F-O-R H-E-L-L.
He’d thought perhaps someone had found out he’d donated to the Women’s Free Health Clinic. Perhaps they got a copy of all their benefactors and sent out hate mail. But this was definitely more personal. Seeing his daughter’s cat at the bottom of the pool, and hearing her anguished screams did feel like Hell itself.
He gulped down the rest of his drink and stared at the letters.
Why? For a mistake I made? He couldn’t think of anyone with this level of anger that was not institutionalized. He scanned his files, mentally. Could not find any animal abusers he was treating, or treatments that had gone wrong. Except for the ones he couldn’t stop from taking their own lives. Those haunted him daily.
He slipped the notes back inside their envelopes, and tucked the two envelopes inside the bills and took them to his study. Opening up a file drawer, he slipped the bills and the notes in the To Be Paid file and re-locked the drawer.
The little headache that had niggled around the back of his head now came on strong, pounding his skull at the temples. He’d go see his friend on the force and show him the letters. Tonight he needed to be with his women.
Carla closed the door to Libby’s room behind her as he rounded the top of the stairs.
He took her in his arms and held her while she wept silently. His big hand rubbed through her hair, finding the top of her spine, where he massaged her neck while he held her.
“Who is doing this, Austin? Do you know?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why?”
“Someone deeply disturbed.” He sighed. “I’ll go see Clark at the precinct. Maybe he will give me something to look for.”
She drew back to stare into his eyes. “Look for? You think you know this person somehow? One of your patients?”
He didn’t want to answer that question, but he could see she’d figured it out. Twenty-five years of marriage made it easy for her to spot his fear, to intuit what he feared. He’d learned long ago it was useless to hide his feelings from her. She read him like a book. The way he wished he could read his patients.
“Maybe,” he whispered. “But no one that I’m aware of.” He held her face between his palms. “Carla, no one, understand? I wouldn’t be treating someone like this without precautions.”
She nodded.
He felt like a heel, but he didn’t want to tell her about the letters. Maybe the cat caper would satisfy the pervert. Or, maybe there was evidence on the letters the police could use to catch the guy. Either way, he didn’t want Carla alarmed. He would tell her to take precautions tonight, after they’d had a family meal, and after his head cleared. In the meantime, he’d set up a meeting for tomorrow with his friend in the San Diego Police Department. He’d also be rehearsing that speech to Carla several times.
It was going to be nearly impossible to get Carla out of the house, but he knew it was time to face the reality of their situation. He had to make her understand, without showing her the letters.
If that was possible.
Chapter 9
The next day, Dr. Brownlee knew Detective Clark Riverton was not happy about his call, and had probably spent the morning cleaning up his office in preparation for their meeting. It was Sunday, after all, and Brownlee had insisted they meet at the detective’s office, not the Brownlee home. That made it more official. And meant he didn’t yet have to tell his wife and daughter about the letters.
The surface of Riverton’s dented metal desk was hardly ever exposed, not like today. The detective’s man-cave was a perpetual cleanup in process, one never completed. The desk’s soft plastic top was perfect for pressing hard when filling out quadruplicate forms for the Department. Over the years he’d seen the man grip his medium point blue pens and press so hard, as if to savor making indentatio
ns in the soft grey surface beneath. After coming back from an interview or profile meeting, Brownlee would watch the detective rummage for a patch of desk surface, and fill out those reports. It was totally unnecessary in this day and age of computers, which of course could be altered with a keystroke.
The good old days.
He was struck by how heavy Clark had gotten. He’d gained as much weight as Brownlee had lost. Riverton stood and extended his hand.
“Austin. Good to see you. We’re overdue.” He pointed to a chair and Dr. Brownlee sat down as the metal groaned beneath him. He suspected these chairs were uncomfortable for a reason. Riverton wasn’t the chit-chat type of cop.
“Thanks, Clark. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday,” Brownlee said while rearranging his legs. It did no good. He decided to get right to it. “I’ve got something going on.”
“Okay. Saw the report about your daughter’s cat. Not good. Not good at all.”
“Agreed. That’s why I’m here.”
A series of rings distracted Riverton. He wrinkled his forehead as he searched the outside nearly deserted room. Several lines ringing continued. He swore.
“Just a minute, Austin. I gotta get someone on these damned phones. Been crazy over here all morning.”
He yelled at one of the female staff. “Helen, the phones!”
She delivered him a murderous look while she slowly ambled toward a headset. A pair of detectives were drinking coffee in another office and came out to give her a hand.
“Thanks, guys.”
Riverton closed the door behind him, adjusted his wrinkled tie, and deposited his frame in the cracked leather swivel chair. He gave full attention to his friend. “Sorry.”
Brownlee looked at his lap, pulling out a plastic baggie containing two envelopes. He handed them across the desk. “You’ll want to look at these. I got them yesterday.”
The detective slipped on a pair of gloves and opened the sealed freezer bag. Side by side, he laid each letter over the envelopes they came in, and looked back and forth between them.
Fallen SEAL Legacy Page 8