So Like Sleep

by Jeremiah Healy

  “I don’t think so. I think the way I described it is about what happened.”

  Marek made a noise deep in his chest, like a mountain about to slough off in avalanche a couple hundred tons of ice and snow. He leaned forward again. “You ever kill anyone, Cuddy?”

  I thought for a second. “Not that we can talk about.”

  He started to laugh, then choked a little. “After what you’ve just put me through, ‘Not that we can …’ Well, let me tell you, my friend, you have no idea what hell is until … How do you think I felt about Lester Briles, that boy at New York Central? How do you think it feels to be pushed to do something that every part of you but one says will be wonderful, and the one part says is despicable?”

  “If the one part’s your conscience, I’d say it ought to feel pretty human.”

  “Don’t patronize me!” he snapped, slamming his hand flat on the desktop. “I’ve had enough of your ‘homo’ innuendos. You despise me, don’t you? You despise me because I go down on black boys and bugger them.”

  “No, Marek. I despise you, all right, but not for being gay. I despise you because of the way you traded on a relationship. You took advantage of people, of patients, who were coming to you professionally for treatment.”

  “Mr. High and Might—”

  “A professional’s supposed to be like the keeper in a game preserve. Only you fed the animals out of your hand one day and gunned them down the next. You killed two innocent, at least relatively innocent, people and did your best to ruin a third, all of them in your care. That’s what I despise.”

  Marek snorted. “So what do you do now, detective? Do you kill me?”

  “I thought about it. After I figured out what you did, I thought about it.”

  Marek’s eyes opened wider. He started to speak, then stopped.

  I said, “But then I decided it wouldn’t do any good.”

  Marek recovered. “Why not? People with delusions like yours often believe that revenge is its own reward.”

  “Maybe. But only when it also solves the problem. Killing you might square your crimes, but I’d go to jail, and William wouldn’t necessarily get out.”

  “I see,” said Marek ponderously. “So you want me to turn myself in. To make the grand gesture of self-confession to free what you see as my wrongly accused patient.”

  “No, just the opposite. I want you to run.”

  Marek stared at me. He finally said, “You want me to what?”

  “Run. Soon, like tomorrow, maybe. And far, as far as you can.”

  “Why in God’s name would I do that?”

  “Because either way, you’re finished here. And as a psychiatrist, anywhere.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Okay, I’ll go slowly. Let’s say you stonewall it and try to stay in Calem. You and I both know what actually happened. I go to the cops, they investigate a little deeper. They look at the records in New York and other places. They bring in Zerle, maybe Gemelman too. They go back to Lainie’s, find some piece of physical evidence like threads from a coat to tie you there. They have a superstar hypnotist deprogram William, unravel those mistaken recollections you planted in his head.”

  “None of this would begin to stand up in court.”

  “It wouldn’t have to. I’d just have to smear you enough that your professional life in this area would be a memory. A bad memory that would stick in people’s minds.”

  “Then why should I run, if you’ll ruin me anyway?”

  “Because if you don’t run, there’s at least a chance that things will stand up in court, and you’ll be nailed, civilly and criminally. If you stay, you’re ruined and maybe jailed. If you run, you’re ruined but free. Free to be anything you want to be. Except, of course, a psychiatrist or doctor again.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?”

  “The licensing procedure. Every state has one of some kind. I’ll see to it that you never get licensed again anywhere, even if you stay and beat the killings. The reason you’ve been able to hop from state to state like a migrating predator is that each hospital you were leaving had too much to lose in really dealing with you. I don’t have anything to lose. I’ll just hound you. Forever.”

  Marek puffed up his lower lip. “But if I run, I get away with it. If you’re right—that is, if I killed Jennifer and Lainie—you’d be letting me get away with murder.”

  “Not my job.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not my job to see you get convicted. My worry is getting William off. If you run, combined with the story I give the cops about you, my guess is the DA either dismisses the indictment or runs a serious risk of losing at trial on the reasonable-doubt question. He wouldn’t want the resultant embarrassing publicity as everyone realizes he’d tried the wrong man and no one knows where you are.”

  “Whereas if I stay, I’m still around to deny things.”

  “Right, but you’re also around to be nailed yourself.”

  A full minute wound by before Marek spoke again. “Why don’t you just get out of here?”

  I stood up. “Sure. Just don’t take too long to think it over. And when you make up your mind to run, don’t even call me. Just disappear. And wonder what god you should thank for sparing you again.”

  I backed out of the room and closed the door. I crossed the waiting area and was out that door too. I rode the elevator down. Outside, I started my car and drove around the corner. I stopped behind a nondescript panel truck parked near a telephone pole. As I got out of my car, Chief Wooten came through the back doors of the van.

  “I think he’ll run,” I said, unbuttoning my shirt and reaching in for the tape holding the transmitter under my right nipple.

  “We didn’t get all of it,” said Wooten, crossing his arms so that the Navy tattoo was facing me.

  “What?” I said, tearing the transmitter free and drawing it out. I even forgot to rub the burning, tender spot the tape left.

  O’Boy stuck his head out the doors, a pair of earphones down around his neck like a high-tech slave collar. “We got bits and pieces, Cuddy. We heard you and the receptionist fine, and Marek telling you to take a seat. But after that, static, bird noises, and maybe every other sentence. Granted I’m no expert on this stuff, but it was like we were being jammed or something.”

  I closed my eyes. Marek had a lot of electronic equipment in that office, and he fiddled with the dials on that control panel the last two times I’d talked with him. When he thought I could be coming after him. Dammit.

  Wooten said, “Cuddy, with what we did get, it sounded to me like he admitted it. Killing both the girl and the Bishop woman.”

  I looked at him. “Yes, but never in so many words.”

  “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s supposed to mean that he outfoxed me, Chief. He spotted the wire. Electronically. He confirmed it when I passed up taking off my coat in a hot room. He knew all the time I was trying to trap him, and he interfered with the signal back to the truck.”

  “So?”

  “So he was playing me when I thought I was playing him, Chief. Get it now? He was just using me to find out what I had on him. Now he knows. And by spotting the wire, he knows you suspect him too.”

  O’Boy said, “Not necessarily.”

  I looked at O’Boy, who continued talking. “Lots of private outfits have this kind of gear now. He might have known you were wired, but still not be sure you’re working with us.”

  O’Boy had a point. I said, “Then what do you think we should do?”

  O’Boy said, “You went through his alternatives with him, right? I mean, we heard parts of the run/don’t run, and all that shit.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I say we wait him out. Two, three days, anyway. Maybe he still sees the sense of it, that both Daniels and him are better off if he runs. Then we grab him on the fly.”

  Wooten waved his arm like a semaphore and said, “I say we take the faggot
now.”

  I started, “Chief—”

  “No,” spat Wooten. “You and him talked, Cuddy. Christ, he admitted queering the boy and killing the two females. What more do you think you’re gonna get?”

  “Chief,” said O’Boy. “Please wait a minute.”

  “No, I’ve waited long enough on this case. The papers, Creasey’s fucking TV station, the whole world’s gonna wonder what the hell took so long to figure out anyway. If we don’t take him now, there’s a dozen ways we could lose him.” A Calem PD cruiser screeched to a halt beside Wooten, and he opened the passenger side to get in.

  I talked as fast as I could. “Chief, even if the guy had admitted everything to me chapter and verse, without a complete tape of it the DA’s got only my word against Marek’s, and I’m impeachable as hell because of my interest in helping Daniels get off.”

  “No.”

  I started to suggest that he at least wait to consult the young prosecutor that we’d worked it out with that afternoon, but you can’t argue with taillights. As Wooten sped off toward Marek’s building, I looked at O’Boy. He shrugged and disappeared back into the van.

  Twenty-nine

  THE CLOCK IN THE bedroom said only 6:30 A.M., but I wanted to arrive at Middlesex early enough to see William privately before Marek’s arraignment. I had reached Mrs. Daniels by telephone the night before, and she thanked me profusely through her tears. I wanted her to be the first to tell William the good news. I left only a blind “call me” message for Rothenberg with his answering service. I left the same for Murphy with Detective Cross, who said that the lieutenant would probably be gone for the night on a possible murder/suicide in Bay Village.

  I was knotting my tie when the telephone rang. I picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Cuddy. I got a message from Cross that you called me last night.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Cross said Willa called too. I thought maybe I’d better talk with you first. What’s up?” He barely spoke the last part, sounding dead tired.

  “The Calem cops arrested Marek yesterday for Jennifer Creasey’s murder. It looks like William’s going to be clear of it.”

  Murphy’s voice revived. “No shit?”

  “Straight. They’re arraigning Marek this morning.”

  “That’s awful quick to … Damn, I haven’t gotten any sleep with this murder/suicide thing.”

  “Cross told me. Why don’t I call you later today with the details on Marek?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.” He stopped. “I don’t mean to put you off, Cuddy. I really appreciate your dogging this one.”

  “Glad to do it.” While William could probably use a father figure about now, I decided that for once I’d like to part with Murphy cordially. The suggestion could wait too. “Get some sleep.”

  “Right. Hear from you later.”

  I hung up and finished dressing.

  I got to the courthouse building so early I walked in with the camera crew from Channel 8, the TV station covering the courts that morning. As a woman in the Middlesex County Police security team checked me through the metal detector in the lobby, a man in the team joked with a cameraman.

  “Christ, Manny,” said the officer, glancing into one of the big black cases the cameraman was hauling. “Think you got enough videotape there?”

  “Tell my hernia about it,” said Manny. “The boss, Creasey himself, wanted it all brought in, all the tape of the Daniels kid plus the blanks for today.”

  “Why, for chrissakes?”

  “Creasey’s a nut for some things, you know? He wants us to line up the camera today on this shrink guy exactly, and I mean exactly, the way we had it on Daniels.”

  “Spooky.”

  “Yeah. I figure maybe it’s ’cause this’ll be his last go-round.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Didn’t you hear? Fucking FCC yanked our license yesterday.”

  “No! You mean you’re off the air?”

  “Not right away. There’s court stuff they gotta go through and all. But the way people were talking at the station last night, it don’t look good.”

  “Gee, Manny, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Gotta give the boss credit, though. He gets hit with that yesterday, but still checks us out this morning before we leave the station. Goes through every fucking tape himself while we’re getting the rest of our stuff, making sure we didn’t miss one. Not just the arraignment, either. The arrest, the witnesses coming in and out of the building here. The works. Some people, y’know?”

  The crew and I caught the same elevator. They got off at the ninth floor while I continued to the seventeenth, trying to push Sam Creasey’s problems out of my mind.

  William’s first words to me were “The fuck do you want?”

  I guess I didn’t expect a bear hug, but I said, “I called your mother last night. Didn’t she get the word to you about Marek?”

  “Yeah. She made like you figured that he was punking me.”

  “Basically.”

  “Great fucking news.”

  “But, William, it means—”

  “It means—” he shouted, then he lowered his voice to a raspy but conversational level. “It means that I did things with him and to him and it’s gonna be all over the news tonight.”

  “Yes, but it also means you’re off the hook for Jennifer’s murder. You didn’t kill her, and the police and everybody know you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, terrific. But the police and everybody don’t got to do a year with the wrong kind of sign hanging around their necks, you dig?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jail, man. In-car-cer-a-tion. Twelve fucking months for the gun charge. Or did you forget about that?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Yeah, well, too bad you ain’t running the system. They ain’t gonna forget about it.”

  “Maybe Rothenberg can work something out.”

  William shook his head. “You don’t know shit, man. Gun charge is automatic. No deals, no probation, no parole. One year gone.”

  “Look, they’ve got to control for things, at least. They’ll give you credit for the time you’ve already served.”

  “Oh, great, man! Wonderful system. One down, just eleven to go, huh?” He hitched his seat forward, clenching and unclenching his fists and his teeth. “Well, let me tell you something, mother’. This the same system that encourage me to step up in class. To go from home to U Mass, and U Mass to Goreham. But it didn’t ‘control’ for the bloods back on Millrose Street that made me buy the piece, or the dudes in the dorm at Goreham, or the shrink who was supposed to be helping me instead of helping himself to me. You got that, Jack? This system of yours has fucked me but good. And now it’s gonna keep on fucking me by way of any mother’ doing hard time with a hard-on. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot for all you and your system done for me.”

  William stood and gestured impatiently for the guard.

  The proceedings against Marek were to be held in courtroom 9A. Like most of the new courthouse, 9A was carpeted and acoustically perfect, a modern butcher-block arena for deciding which side had hired the better lawyer.

  The camera crew was still setting up off to the left. The courtroom was nearly half full already, and it looked like old home week. I could see Chief Wooten talking intently with a shrugging guy at the district attorney’s table. Officers Clay and Bjorkman were sitting in the first row. When Clay saw me, he got up and said something to the chief. The prosecutor looked at me and mouthed “Him?” Clay nodded and the prosecutor, now ignoring Wooten, started walking back toward me. Before he reached me, I spotted Homer Linden in one corner on the left waving to me sociably and the backs of Sam and Tyne Creasey in the first row on the right. Sam Creasey stood and moved over to his camera crew, directing one of them. Then Creasey began looking through one of the big black cases as the prosecutor drew even with me and said, “C’mon.”

  “You’re kidding.”

 
He said, “Wish I was.”

  The assistant district attorney’s name was Gibson. He was sturdy and paramilitary in a three-piece suit. I didn’t like what I’d just heard him tell me in the little conference room outside 9A.

  “You mean that even if the tape had come out perfectly, it still wouldn’t be admissible?”

  “That’s right. You want the short version or the long one?”

  “The short one, please.”

  “Okay. We have a statute in this commonwealth, call it Section Ninety-nine. That statute says generally that the police can’t tape a conversation without a warrant. Section Ninety-nine has an exception, though, that basically says that if one party to a conversation agrees to the interception, then we don’t need the others to consent nor do we need a warrant.”

  “That’s what happened, though. I was a party to the conversation, and I agreed to the taping.”

  “Yeah, but the exception requires you to be a law enforcement officer, which, even stretching things, you aren’t. And the taping has to be done to prove certain ‘designated offenses’ connected to some kind of ‘organized crime.’ Our boy Marek doesn’t fit.”

  “So what does that mean? Aside from the fact we can’t use the tape.”

  Gibson tugged on an earlobe. “It means that you, Wooten, and O’Boy broke the law.”

  I stood up, walked over to the window to calm down. “The assistant DA yesterday, the one Wooten and O’Boy and I met with before the taping. He approved all this.”

  “That kid’s been in the office barely a year. Wooten calls him—he’s Wooten’s brother-in-law’s kid, by the way—Wooten calls him with this maybe big case opportunity, so the kid speed-reads the statute, Section Ninety-nine. The kid misses the organized-crime part, which is interpreted in Supreme Judicial Court cases and elaborated in a Massachusetts Law Review article to the point where a dim ten-year-old could deal with it. The kid, however, misses it, like I said, signs out the wire equipment, and … Well, you know the rest.”

  I turned back to Gibson. “Does this foul-up mean that even I can’t testify on what Marek told me?”

  “Hard to say. The statute just limits recording or eavesdropping on conversations. A party to the conversation should still be able to testify about what the prospective defendant, here Marek, said during the conversation.”