She snuck back to where his father--or someone--had bricked up the entrance to the administration area of the hospital and, quietly, started carting cinder blocks back to the trap, struggling under their weight. When she'd lugged eight bricks back to the corridor she began stacking them in the hole she'd cut, balancing them on top of one another, slightly off center.
Megan then used her glass knife and sliced strips off the tail of her shirt. She knotted them into a ten-foot length of rope and tied one end to one of the blocks in the stack. Finally she placed the piece of Sheetrock back in the opening and examined her work. She'd lead Peter back here and when he walked past the trap she'd pull the rope. A hundred pounds of concrete would crash down on top of him. She'd leap on him with the knife and stab him--she decided she couldn't kill him but would slash his hands and feet--to make sure he couldn't attack or chase her. Then she'd demand the keys and run like hell.
Megan walked softly down to the main corridor and looked back. Couldn't see anything except the tail of rope.
Now, she just needed some bait.
"Guess that's gonna be us, right?" she asked, speaking out loud, though in a whisper.
Who else? Crazy Megan answers.
*
Bett McCall poured herself a glass of chardonnay and kicked her shoes off.
She was so accustomed to the dull thud of the bass and drums leaching through the floor from Megan's room upstairs that the absence of the sound of Stone Temple Pilots or Santana brought her to tears.
It's so frustrating, she thought. People can deal with almost anything if they can talk about it. You argue. You make up and live more or less comfortably for the rest of your lives. Or you discover irreconcilable differences and you slowly separate into different worlds. Or you find that you're soul mates. But if the person you love is physically gone--if you can't talk--then you have less than nothing. It's the worst kind of pain.
The house hummed and tapped silently. A motor somewhere clicked, the computer in the next room emitted a pitch slightly higher than the refrigerator's.
The sounds of alone.
Maybe she'd take a bath, Bett thought. No, that would remind her of the soap dish Megan was going to give her. Maybe--
The phone rang. Heart racing, she leapt for it. Praying that it was Megan. Please . . . Please . . . Let it be her. I want to hear her voice so badly.
Or at least Tate.
But it was neither. Disappointed at first, she listened to the caller, nodding, growing more and more interested in what she heard. "All right," she said. "Sure . . . No, a half hour would be fine . . . Thank you. Really, thank you."
After she hung up she dropped heavily into the couch and sipped her wine.
Wonderful, she thought, feeling greatly relieved after talking to him for only three minutes. The caller was Megan's other therapist--a colleague of Dr. Hanson's, a doctor named Bill Peters, and he was coming over to speak to her about the girl. He didn't have any specific news. But he wanted to talk to her about her daughter's disappearance. He'd sounded so reassuring, so comforting.
She was curious only about one thing that the doctor had said during his call. Why did he want to see her alone? Without Tate there?
III
THE DEVIL'S
ADVOCATE
Chapter Nineteen
"When you called," Bett McCall confessed, "I was a little uneasy."
"Of course," the man said, walking into the room. Dr. Bill Peters seemed confident, comfortable with himself. He had a handsome face. His eyes latched onto Bett's and radiated sympathy. "What a terrible, terrible time for you."
"It's a nightmare."
"I'm so sorry." He was a tall man but walked slightly stooped. His arms hung at his side. A benign smile on his face. Bett McCall, short and slight, was continually aware of the power of body stature and posture. Though she was a foot shorter and much lighter, she felt--from his withdrawing stance alone--that he was one of the least threatening men she'd ever met.
He looked approvingly at the house. "Megan said you were a talented interior designer. I didn't know quite how talented, though."
Bett felt a double burst of pleasure. That he liked her painstaking efforts to make her house nice. But, much more significant to her, that Megan had actually complimented her to a stranger.
Then the memory of the letter came back and her mood darkened. She asked, "Have you heard about Dr. Hanson? That terrible thing with his mother?"
Dr. Peters's face clouded. "It's got to be a mix-up. I've known him for years." He glanced at a crystal ball on her bookshelf. "He's been an advocate for assisted suicide and I think he did talk about it with his mother."
"You do?"
"But I think she misinterpreted what he said. You know that a nurse said his mother lifted the hypodermic off a medicine cart."
Bett considered this. Maybe Tate had been wrong about somebody framing Dr. Hanson to get him into jail and unavailable to speak to them.
"Doctor . . ."
"Oh, call me Bill. Please."
"Is he a good therapist? Dr. Hanson?"
The therapist examined a framed tapestry from France, mounted above the couch.
Why was he hesitating to answer?
"He's very good, yes," Dr. Peters said after a moment. "In certain areas. What was your impression of him?"
"Well," she said, "we've never met."
"You haven't?" He seemed surprised. "He hasn't talked to you about Megan?"
"No. Should he have?"
"Well, maybe with his mother's accident . . . he's had a lot on his mind."
"But that just happened this week," Bett pointed out. "Megan's been seeing him for nearly two months."
In his face she could see that he couldn't really defend his friend.
"Well, frankly, I think he should have talked to you. I would have. But he and I have very different styles. Mrs. McCall--"
"Bett, please."
"Betty?"
"Betty Sue." She smiled, and then blushed. Hoped he couldn't see it, thankful for the dimmed lighting. "All right . . . Deep, dark secret? The name's Beatrice Susan McCall. My sister--"
"Your twin. Megan told me."
"That's right. She's Susan Beatrice. We were named dyslexically. I can't tell you how many years we plotted revenge against Mom and Dad for that little trick."
He laughed. "Say, could I trouble you for a glass of water?"
"Of course."
She noticed that he examined her briefly--the tight black jeans and black blouse. Wild earrings dangled; crescent moons and shooting stars. She started toward the kitchen. "Come on in here. Would you rather have a soda? Or wine?"
"No, thanks . . . Oh, look." He picked up a bottle of Mietz merlot, which Brad had bought for them last week and they hadn't gotten around to drinking yet. He glanced at the eighteen-dollar price tag. "Funny, I just bought a case of this. It's a wonderful wine. Eighteen's a great price. I paid twenty-one a bottle--and that was supposed to be a discount."
"You know the vineyard? Brad said it's real hard to find."
"It is."
She said, "Let's open it."
"You're sure?"
"Yep." Bett was happy to impress him. She opened and poured the wine. They touched glasses.
"Do you live in the area?" she asked.
"In Fairfax. Near the courthouse. It's a nice place. Only . . . there're a lot of law offices around there and I get these lawyers coming and going at all hours. Drives me crazy sometimes."
She gave a brief laugh. He lifted an eyebrow. She'd been thinking of all the nights Tate had spent in that very neighborhood, interviewing prisoners and police and getting home at ten or eleven. "Tate--"
"Your ex."
"Right. I'm afraid he's one of them. Working late, I mean."
"Oh, that's right. Megan told me he was an attorney. But he doesn't live in Fairfax, does he? Didn't she tell me he's got a farm somewhere?"
"Prince William. But his office is here."
Dr. Peters smiled and examined the collection of refrigerator magnets that she and Megan had collected. It pinched her heart to see them. And she had to look away before the tears started.
He asked her some questions about the interior design business in Virginia. It turned out his mother had been a decorator.
"Where?" she asked.
"Boston."
"No kidding! That's where the McCalls are from." She pointed to some pictures of her family in front of Old Ironsides and in their front yard, the Prudential building towering over the skyline in the background.
"Sure," he said. "I thought I detected a bit of accent. I'm driving the cah to the pahty . . ."
She laughed.
"You miss it?" he asked.
"No. We moved here when I was ten. The South definitely appeals to me more than New England."
"To the extent this is the South," he offered.
"That's true."
He took her glass and refilled it. He handed it back and leaned against the island, glanced at the expensive stainless-steel utensils. "I love to cook," he said. "It's a hobby of mine."
"Me too. It's relaxing to open some wine, come out to the kitchen and start slicing and dicing."
He lifted the heavy Sabatier butcher knife and tested the edge carefully with his thumb. Nodded. "Sharp knives are--"
"--safer than dull ones," she said. "My mother taught me that."
"Mine too," he said, weighing the knife in his hand for a moment, studying the blade carefully. Then he set it on the table. "Should we go back in the other room?"
"Sure."
He nodded toward the door. She preceded him into the living room. Bett sat on the couch and he walked over to the bookshelves, looked at her collection of crystals and several boxes of tarot cards.
He chided, "Didn't you know you're supposed to keep your tarot cards wrapped in silk?"
"You know about that?" She laughed.
"Sure do."
"I was really into the occult a long time ago." She smiled and realized that she was relaxing for the first time all day. "I was kind of crazy when I was young."
"You look embarrassed. You shouldn't be. I think our spiritual side's as important as our physical and our psychic sides. I use a holistic approach in my treatment. A lot of times I'll prescribe herbs--they have both organic and psychosomatic effects."
"I try to use them whenever I can," Bett said.
"If my patients need something I'd rather it was Saint-John's-wort instead of Prozac."
He was a doctor who felt this way? How often had she explained these things to doctors, or to friends, or to Tate, only to be met with a politely wary gaze--at best.
Dr. Peters continued. "It makes a lot of sense to me. Take tarot cards . . . do they predict the future? Well, in a way they do. They make us look at who we are, where we fit in with the godhead or the Oversoul--"
"Oh, you know Emerson?" she asked, pointing to a book of his writings.
Dr. Peters walked to it and pulled the volume off the shelf. He flipped through it, held up the book and showed her the title of an essay, "The Oversoul." "I've been reading him since college . . . I think fortune-telling makes us look at where we fit in with the life force, what our relationships are like, makes us question where we're going. That has to affect our future."
"That's true," she said, feeling warm and comfortable. She sipped more wine. "That's what I've always felt. Most people don't get it. They just make fun of the Madame Zostra's fortune-telling stuff. It's not fair. My ex . . ."
But she decided to let the thought die. And Dr. Peters didn't push her to finish.
The doctor was looking at her bookshelf, head cocked sideways. Pointing out volumes. "Ah, Joseph Campbell. That's very good. Sure, sure . . . You know Jung?"
"Sort of, not really."
"About the archetypes? There are certain persistent myths we see surfacing in people's lives. The Arthurian legend--you know it?"
Know it? she thought, laughing to herself. I lived it.
"T. H. White, Camelot, the whole thing." She pointed out an old copy of The Once and Future King.
"What a book that is," he said. "Oh, and The Mists of Avalon," nodding at the book.
"The best," she said enthusiastically. Remembering how Tate didn't have time for any of this. She found the old angers and resentments churning up again and recalled how much comfort she'd found in the New Age world. Here was a man who truly understood her. It was so refreshing . . .
Dr. Peters tapped his glass to hers and they sipped. Her glass was nearly empty. Yet she didn't feel drunk, she felt elated. He sat down close to her. "Um, Bett . . . I don't know how much Megan told you about me."
"Nothing, really. But she didn't want to talk about her therapy sessions. That's what we were going to do today, Tate and I. Meet her for lunch and find out how it was going."
He nodded. He was really quite a handsome man, well built. Interior designer Bett McCall thought: Proportions are everything.
"Dr. Hanson saw her more frequently than I did. But I wanted to come over tonight and just talk to you about her a little. Try to reassure you."
Oh, I'll take that. Anything you want to give me in the reassurance department, I'll take.
"Have you heard anything from her?" he asked.
"Not a word. But there are some funny things going on."
"What sort of things?"
"We think maybe somebody was following her. My husband . . . my ex-husband thinks it might have to do with a case he's working on. He thinks the man he's suing is trying to distract him or something. I don't know."
"Any . . . what would they say on NYPD Blue? Any concrete leads?"
"Not really. But Tate's been in touch with a friend of his at the police."
"Oh, is that the detective who called me? He asked me a few questions about Megan. Um, what's his name again?"
"Konstantinatis."
"Right. Well," he continued, pouring more wine, "I think you should know what I told him."
"What's that?"
"That I don't think she's in any danger."
"Oh, did she say something to you about running away?" Bett asked quickly. "You'd tell me if she did."
"Ordinarily that'd be confidential. But . . . yes, I would tell you. And she didn't say anything specific about it though she was always talking about going to a big city like San Francisco or New York."
"They found an Amtrak timetable in her car. She'd marked trains to New York."
He nodded, as if a mystery had been explained. "I'd guess that's what happened. No, I'd say I'm positive that's what happened. I really doubt there are stalkers or bogeymen out to get her."
"Why're you so sure?"
He didn't answer her. Instead he said, "I think we need more wine. I'll get it. Okay?"
"Sure."
Dr. Peters vanished into the kitchen. He returned a moment later, sat down and poured. After a moment he asked, "How does your husband feel about his daughter?"
"Tate's . . ." She groped for words.
He supplied one. "Indifferent?"
"Yes. He's never been very involved with Megan."
"I understand that. But why?"
She now looked at the crystal ball. In it was captured the orange glow from a wall lamp. She stared at the distorted trapezoid of light and said, "Tate wanted to be his grandfather. He was a famous lawyer and judge in the area. He had a big family, a traditional lifestyle. Well, Tate wanted that--and a good, dependable farmwife." She lifted her hands and slapped her thighs. "He got me instead. Big disappointment."
"No, that's not you." The doctor smiled wryly. "I can see that. That was very unfair to you for him to expect that."
"To me?" she asked. "Unfair?"
"Of course," he offered as if it were obvious. "Your husband had a distorted level of expectations--based on a child's view of the past--and he tried to project that onto you. I'll bet he worked a lot, spent time away from home."
"He did, yes. But I was busy
too. My sister was sick--"
"Her heart condition."
Oh, she could talk to this man for hours! She'd met him only thirty minutes ago and yet he knew her. Knew her better than Tate did--even after all those years of marriage.
"That's right."
"But why are you taking the blame? You're attractive, intelligent, have a mind of your own. If you wanted an independent life, why should you feel bad about that? It seems to me that he's the one to blame for all this. He went into the marriage knowing who you were and tried to change you. And probably in some less-than-honest ways."
"Less than honest?"
"He appeared supportive, I'll bet. He probably said, 'Honey, do whatever you want to do. I'll be behind it.' "
She was stunned. It was as if Dr. Peters were looking directly into her memories. "Yes, that's exactly what he'd say."
"But in fact, what he was doing was the opposite. Little comments, even body language, that'd whittle away at your spirit. He wanted you barefoot and pregnant and wanted you to give up your life, have dinner on the table for him, give him a brood of kids, ignore your ill sister. And he was going to make a name for himself as a prosecutor and to hell with everybody else." His eyes flickered with pain--her pain. "It was horrible what he did to you. Inexcusable. But I suppose it's understandable. His character, you know."
"Character."
"You know the old expression? 'A man's character is his fate.' That's your ex-husband. He's reaping now what he sowed. With Megan running away."
I wish I could believe that, Bett thought. Please . . . Tears now. From the wine, from the astonishing comfort she felt, years and years of pain and confusion and loneliness being stripped away. "I . . ." She caught her breath. "He'd sit down and talk to me and say that he loved me and what could he do for me--"
"Tricks," Dr. Peters said quickly. "All tricks."
"I couldn't argue with him. He had an answer for everything."
"He's smooth, isn't he? A slick talker. Megan told me that."
"Oh, you better believe it. I couldn't win against him. Not at words. Never. I always came away feeling, I don't know, violated, I guess."
"Bett, most women would've put up with that. They would've stayed and stayed and destroyed themselves. And their children. But you had the courage to do something about it. To strike out on your own."
"But Megan . . . she's suffered . . ."
"Suffered?" He laughed. "Because of him, yes. Not because of you. You've done a miraculous job with her. Here's to you." He tapped her glass and they drank. The room was swimming. She realized he'd moved very close to her and she enjoyed the proximity.
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