The Secret Room

by Sandra Block

  We are both staring at the briefcase.

  Still standing, Mr. Green grabs his belongings, throwing on his coat, slipping his phone in his pocket, and taking his briefcase in his hand. “I’ll be going now,” he says, “as this was obviously a complete waste of my time. And you can be sure, Dr. Goldman, that you will be coming off Andre’s case. Or you will be hearing from my lawyer.”

  With that he storms out of the room, and I sit there, trying to figure out my next step. That has to be the burner phone in his briefcase, and I have to get a hold of it somehow.

  So I count out thirty seconds, and then I follow him.

  * * *

  Mr. Green strides over to a dark-gray sedan in the visitor’s lot.

  It looks old and possibly used, certainly not like the flashy car you’d expect a millionaire to be driving. But then again, June Green died ten years ago, and maybe the money’s all gone by now. And if the coffers were empty, perhaps Charmayne was the next deposit.

  As he backs up his sedan, I dart into my car (a conspicuous red MINI Cooper) and follow two cars behind him. I don’t have a plan at all, except to follow him, and, if possible, call the phone while he’s in earshot. I already called both text numbers and got no answer. But that may not mean anything. I wasn’t close enough to hear if the phone was ringing.

  A late-afternoon flurry hasn’t been plowed yet, and the streets are caked in snow. All the cars are crawling and skidding, and I have no idea where we’re going.

  We drive past the city in a painfully slow slog down Main Street, past old, faded storefronts with peeling paint and hand-lettered signs. The night darkens, the streetlights casting an orange glow on the street. As we snail toward the suburbs, the storefronts change, turning richly colored with confident bold signs and pricey restaurants on either side. I am monitoring the progress of the car crawling on my bumper in my rearview, when suddenly Abraham’s car makes a sharp left turn.

  I slam on the brakes, fishtailing the MINI Cooper, overcorrecting and then undercorrecting my steering, and finally end up an inch away from the car in front of me. My heart trots in my chest as the driver behind me lays on the horn, then passes me. At last I get the chance to make the left turn and park in a dark corner in the front of the parking lot.

  Powering the grimy car window down, I let cold air blow in but keep him in sight. I’m rewarded with a view of his thick form sauntering toward the entrance. His keys jingle in black leather gloves, and he is whistling some carefree ditty.

  No briefcase.

  I hear the bells of the door as he opens it to the gold-lit doorway of an expensive Italian restaurant. Someone stands up to greet him in the front window, a pretty African American woman in a dark-blue, work dress–type outfit. They kiss on the lips briskly, then sit down at the table. I have a perfect view of them, picking out a wine on their tall menus and laughing, their breath fogging the window. He puts his hand on hers, and they beam at each other like actors in a Viagra commercial.

  I take a blurry but unmistakable picture with my phone, in case no one believes me. I wait a while, watching them, but nothing happens. They just keep making lovey-dovey faces at each other. And then, because I am freezing and hungry, and wouldn’t last ten minutes on an actual stakeout, I carefully pull the car out, make a slow, skidding turn out of the restaurant, and drive home.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  You told me you were putting together a plan, and I could help you. I leaned back, the heels of my palms scraping against the cement floor, and asked you what kind of plan.

  You gave me a serious look. Can I trust you?

  Of course, I said.

  You said I could help you, be your soldier. But I’d need to follow your every order, without hesitation. You asked if I would be able to do that and I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. My wrists were getting tired of leaning, and I sat up and crawled on top of you. What’s my first order, sir? I asked, in a joke-sexy voice, and you didn’t smile. But you didn’t push me off either.

  You said we needed two more patients, then we could go on to the next step. I started unbuttoning your shirt. I remember marveling at the pearl sheen of the buttons. We don’t get anything pretty in here. You asked if I had a name for you right now, and I was ready this time.

  They call her Ol’ White Lady, I said.

  You smirked at the name and I circled my fingers around your chest. I said she was crazy, and I could probably get her to drink something like Barbara Donalds, but you said that was too obvious, and we needed to do something different. You pushed my hand away, but gently. Let me think about it.

  I nodded, but the idea made me apprehensive. Giving someone a drink was one thing. Killing them with my hands was something different. But you were happy that I got you a name anyway, and said we just needed one more, then we could go on to the final stage. I asked what the final stage was, and you told me I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  I can see now that you were right. I wasn’t ready. Maybe in your heart you knew that I would have left you then. I would never have agreed to do that.

  You ready for your reward now? you asked with that grin. That wicked grin I have grown to love and to hate in equal parts.

  I smiled in answer and you told me to get on my hands and knees. So, awkwardly, I shifted off you. I wish I could say I felt turned on, but I didn’t. It was just playing games. I didn’t want that. I wanted to hold you again, to be held.

  But instead I waited for you, feeling stupid and anxious with my knees getting sore on the hard floor until you pulled down my pants and positioned yourself so it became very clear what you wanted. Because you’re not original, Professor. It turns out you’re just like every other man out there, wanting to fuck some girl in the ass. I tried to relax because I knew what was coming, and you whispered, almost tenderly, Is this okay?

  But before I could answer, you rammed into me so hard that I fell to the floor. I lay there, my face scratching against the cold cement, just wishing you would finish already. But you took your time. Then finally, after what seemed like forever, you were done. I was on my stomach still, exhausted and hurting. I stared at a patch of mold on the wall, trying not to cry. I remember thinking, This is it. It’s over this time, for good. He doesn’t respect me, and I don’t need this from him, or anyone. But then you rolled next to me, surprising me with a deep, warm embrace. You held me for a long time, until I relaxed into your arms.

  Then you sighed right into my ear, I love you.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Come on, Zoe,” the detective roars into the phone. “It was a date!”

  He is responding to the picture of Abraham and the mystery woman that I e-mailed to him. Though I didn’t necessarily expect gratitude for my initiative, I also didn’t expect outrage.

  “Yeah, but what about the other phone, in his briefcase?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. We’ll look into it. But there’s plenty of reasons people might have a second phone,” the detective says. (Which is what Mike said when he came home late last night. Though I failed to mention the part about following Andre’s father to the restaurant.)

  “You don’t think it’s suspicious?”

  “No, Zoe, I don’t,” Detective Adams says, not sugarcoating it in the least. “His wife’s been gone for over a year now. So he went to dinner with someone. Last I checked, that wasn’t illegal.” I hear papers shuffle over the phone. “And by the way, how did you even know he was going to be there? You just happened to be eating at the same restaurant?”

  I tap my pen on my desk and don’t say anything.

  “Please don’t tell me you were following him.” Again I don’t have a satisfactory answer. “Okay, Zoe, this conversation is ending here and now. I understand that you care about your patients, and we will get to the bottom of the texting thing. But this isn’t helping,” he says, stressing each word. “If Abraham Green is involved in his wife’s death, and that is an enormous if at this point, then he is a dangerous man, and you
could be putting yourself in harm’s way by going after him. Not to mention messing up any investigation we might end up doing.”

  Jason sits down at the computer next to me, smelling strongly of coconuts.

  “Could you do something, then? Search his house, maybe?”

  “We’re nowhere near a search warrant, Zoe.” He sighs into the phone. “Listen. I agree with you about the life insurance, it’s suspicious. And the second phone is…possibly suspicious. But here’s what we have right now. June Green was ruled an accident and Charmayne a heart attack. Both natural causes.”

  “But what about the text about Andre?”

  “Zoe,” he says, his voice low on patience. “Please. Please don’t play detective anymore. I’m sure you must have a million other things to worry about.”

  “Yeah,” I answer. He’s wrong, though. I don’t have a million things to worry about, just one thing. About the size of an apricot. “I’m sorry. The whole thing just has me worried. And I do appreciate all you’re doing to investigate it.”

  “Okay,” he says, mollified. “Promise me something, then. Stay away from Abraham Green. Remember what I said. If it’s him, we don’t want him to catch on that we know. Let him tie his own noose.”

  “Okay,” I say with a shiver, thinking of my patient on that hot day in July, hanging from his own noose.

  “’Sup?” Jason asks, unzipping his sweater a bit.

  “Nothing much, you?”

  “Saw Red Gloves in the hall.”

  “Oh yeah?” I pull up something on my computer.

  “Yeah. I don’t know what cocktail you guys have him on right now, but I gotta say, the kid looked half-dead.”

  * * *

  I rush off to see Andre while I have the chance.

  If Abraham does speak with Novaire, this might be the last time. It takes me a while to find Andre but I finally catch up with him in his classroom. The teacher is talking about Darwinism, in a place where survival of the fittest surely has its advocates.

  Jason is right. Andre looks bad, worse than when I saw him last. He is seated at the back of the classroom, slumped in his chair and barely focusing.

  “Andre,” I whisper. “How are you doing?”

  His eyes are glazed over. “Okay.”

  “Have you had any more visions?”

  “Huh?”

  “Visions, demons. Have you seen any?”

  He shakes his head. “He’s hiding.” The words are slurred.

  The Haldol appears to be doing a number on him today. Though last week he seemed to be acclimating to it. It doesn’t make sense. He shouldn’t be going backward at this point. I make a note to check his Haldol dose. “Who’s hiding?” I ask.

  “The devil. Getting reinforcements.” Chalk smacks against the board, echoing around us. “Sgt. Fury is coming, though. He told me. He’s gonna help me.”

  The teacher speaks louder now, glancing pointedly at us. He booms the next question out, and a teenager in the front half raises his hand. “Andre, I need to ask you a question,” I whisper, softer. “Did you know your father was married before?”

  He nods, slowly, robotically.

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  “April.” He grips a yellow pencil in the palm of his red glove. “She died, too.”

  “Do you know how she died?”

  “The heart. Devil always goes for the heart.”

  “Uh-huh.” I scoot my chair toward him as the teacher blares on. “I called your Aunt Zena, by the way. I haven’t heard back from her yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.”

  “The devil always goes for the heart, but it’s okay. Sgt. Fury’s gonna help me.”

  “Okay, Andre.” I’m realizing that real conversation is fruitless at the moment but take one last stab at it. “One more question. Do you have a cousin named Jermaine?”

  Andre whips his face toward me, the absent look gone. His eyes are a force field. “That’s him. The double.” The pencil is trembling in his gloves. “They sent him to replace me.”

  * * *

  I dab my lips with toilet paper.

  I was in the clinic already when a wave of nausea came out of nowhere, and I made it to the bathroom just in time. Lumbering back to the clinic, I sit down across from Aubrey, praying it doesn’t happen again.

  “You okay?” Aubrey asks.

  “Yeah. A little food poisoning, I think.”

  “Yuck.” She scrunches her face. “That’s the worst.”

  “No fun at all,” I say, guilty at the lie. “So, you thought things were going a bit better?” She is looking better, brighter. Her hair is wet and smells freshly washed. She has a bit of lip gloss on, if I’m not mistaken.

  “Definitely better. And I think I know why.”

  “Tell me.”

  She leans over toward me across the table, sharing a secret. “I wrote to Todd.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” she says with finality. “I told him it’s over. I told him he was a pig and an asshole for what he did to me. And I told him I was never ever speaking to him again.”

  “Wow.” That serotonin really is kicking in. Surveying her arms, I see no new cuts either. “And have you been working on the stress relief measures we talked about?”

  “I have.” Her voice is proud. “Working out with my friend.” Her pale skin blushes a tinge at the word. “Doing more reading. Writing poetry.”

  “Poetry?” I add this to her chart for future reference. “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” she backtracks. “I’m in this little class thing. I don’t even go all that often, but it isn’t bad.” She pauses a second. “There’s a girl in there, says she knows you.”

  “I do see a lot of patients.”

  “Not this one. She said she was your sister.” The line is delivered with scorn, and she watches me, gauging my response. When I don’t respond, she shrugs. “That’s what I figured. She lies about everything. And she’s all over the teacher, like, please, as if you have a chance with him. She’s very into herself.”

  “An inflated ego,” I say, in psychiatry-speak.

  “A superinflated ego,” she returns.

  After ten more distracted minutes, I ascertain that she does in fact seem to be doing better and make a note to ask her about her new workout friend at the next visit. Aubrey has borderline tendencies, a point on which Dr. Novaire agrees with me. When this new relationship ends, she could go spiraling downward again, and damn it, I’m determined to keep this one in my win column.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Maloney sidling up to the door, and I give him a thumbs-up to collect Aubrey. “Hey,” I say, “can you get Sofia Vallano for me?”

  He consults his tablet. “I don’t have her on for today.”

  “Add-on,” I say.

  * * *

  Sofia plops down in the chair. “So what’s up? The hours were crawling by without me?”

  “Have you been telling people about us?” I demand.

  “What, about our affair?” She lets out a throaty laugh, and right then a wave of nausea hits. I grab for a packet of saltines in my lab coat pocket and stuff one in my mouth. “I’m just kidding, Jesus.” She leans back in her chair, checking me out. “You sick or something?”

  “Just getting over a bug,” I mutter.

  “Hey, wanna see my new tat?” She whips up her pant leg to reveal a dark-blue verse in pseudo-Gothic lettering. Pseudo apparently because the jailhouse tattooist is in the apprentice stage. “A time to love. A time to hate.” I get a flashback of her other tattoo, which she got after sneaking off on a field trip from her previous mental hospital. It is more artful as well as more sinister, a black-and-white tattoo of a knight on his horse, the tarot Death card.

  “That’s something,” I say, as she pulls her pant leg back down. “Ecclesiastes. Or is that meant to be the Byrds version?”

  “Fuck off,” she says, not unpleasantly. “I like it.
” She pulls the pant leg up for another glance. “Anyway, what’s up? You’re the one who wanted to see me this time.”

  “Yes, this is true.” I polish off the second cracker and wipe the crumbs off my lab coat. “One of my patients had something interesting to say. That you told her I was your sister.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “So…it just came to her out of nowhere?”

  “Who was it?” Sofia asks with curiosity more than annoyance. “Maybe someone else told her.”

  I pause. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Then we’re at a stalemate, aren’t we?” The silence grows, and Sofia taps her polka-dotted nails on the table. She catches me staring at them. “Someone stole some Wite-Out,” she explains.

  I nod. “She was in your writing class. Implied you were very close to the teacher.”

  “In his dreams,” she scoffs, but the way she swallows makes me think I’ve struck a nerve. She runs her polka-dotted fingers through her hair, seductively. “I could have any man in this place in a heartbeat. I don’t need him. Plus I have enough bitches trying to service me anyway.”

  “Of course.” I try not to snicker.

  “Ridiculous class. I’m only doing it for good behavior. Bunch of drama queens sobbing about their mommies.”

  “Right. Though most of them probably didn’t kill their mommies.”

  Her jaw muscle pulses in a clench. “That’s pretty low,” she says, quietly. “Even for you.”

  Right then I wonder what I’m even doing here, fighting with my sociopathic sister, stooping to her level. “I’m sorry, Sofia. Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go around telling people.”

  “I won’t. Trust me, Tan—” She catches herself. “Dr. Goldman. As they say, blood is thicker than water.” Her hint of a smile is back.

  “Right.” I stand up, and she stands, too, at the cue to leave. “By the way, Sofia, you might want to know something. Jews don’t get tattoos.”

  This gives her pause. “How do you know that? The rabbi never said that.”