by G. H. Ephron
“He was pretty distraught,” Annie said.
“Not why the suicide. That makes sense. But why would Richard Teitlebaum kill Lisa Babikian, then slice her open and bury her unborn child in his own garden?”
There was a pause. “Well,” Annie suggested, “suppose it was his child.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Say he and Lisa are having an affair. She gets pregnant. Hysterical. Wants to leave her husband and go off with the man who truly understands her. Teitlebaum freaks out, kills her, then destroys the evidence that would show their relationship was more than doctor-patient. Buries it in his own garden because he is, after all, the baby’s father. He can’t just throw it away.”
“That’s certainly what the DA would have us believe,” Naresh said.
“That baby is not Teitlebaum’s,” I said, surprised at the conviction in my own voice. “I’ll bet you anything that a DNA test—”
“I don’t bet when it comes to my clients,” Naresh interrupted.
“If he dies,” I said, “he’ll be condemned in the court of public opinion, based on circumstantial evidence confirmed by his own final act. But he’s not dead now. A DNA test would at least show he didn’t abuse his position as her therapist.”
Naresh didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know, Peter. I always say, never open a door unless you’re one hundred percent sure what you’re going to find on the other side.”
“They’ve already taken fingerprints, interviewed him,” I said. “I tried to get him to call a lawyer when they questioned him. But he ignored me. I warned the detective in charge of the investigation, told him Teitlebaum wasn’t acting in his own best interest.”
“You told him that?”
“I went to the police station where they were holding him. I told Boley that anything they got from him would get thrown out of court. We argued about it—lots of people overheard.”
“Very interesting,” Naresh said. I could see the wheels turning as Naresh strategized about how to prevent the police from using the evidence Teitlebaum had given freely while overwhelmed by despair.
We left my car at the hospital and Annie drove, her Jeep’s A/C on full blast. “You have to admit, the evidence is stacking up,” Annie said, as she barreled along winding back roads to get to the Middlesex County Courthouse and Boley’s office.
She was right. Bloody shoes. What looked like Lisa Babikian’s unborn child and bloody gloves buried in his garden. And a suicide attempt that made him look guilty. “On the other hand,” I said, “no witnesses. Unless you count Mrs. Babikian. Too bad that surveillance data is missing.”
“That’s what I forgot to tell you,” Annie said, swerving around a dead raccoon. “They also found the hard drive that was missing from Babikian’s computer.”
“Where?”
“In Teitlebaum’s desk.”
“Shit.” I felt as if the ground had been yanked out from under me. Here was yet another piece of evidence implicating Teitlebaum in Lisa Babikian’s murder.
Wait a minute. I’d been in Teitlebaum’s office. Watched him go through that desk. Gone through it myself. Could I have seen the hard drive there and not realized? “What’s a hard drive look like?”
“About so big.” Annie made a frame with her thumb and index finger. “Flattish. Looks like computer hardware. It’s got an actual disk on it, like a little record. It had been smashed, maybe with a hammer. They’re trying to recover the data.”
Annie circled the courthouse four times before she finally gave up and went into a parking garage. She slid into a spot on the fifth floor, pulled the parking brake, but didn’t get out of the car.
“Peter,” she said, giving me a long look. “You ever worry that after doing this work for so long, you’ll wake up one morning with your feelings for other people paralyzed?”
“You worried that’s what’s happening to you?”
Annie shrugged. “Maybe. A little. I mean here I am, talking about a buried fetus like it’s nothing.”
“I guess the work you do, investigating crimes, isn’t so different from the work I do, poking around in people’s heads. If you let yourself feel too much, you’d never be able to do your job. You’ve got to keep your distance.” I put my hand over hers. “It’s healthy. More than that, it’s essential. But it doesn’t make you insensitive. I know that for a fact.”
Annie slid me a smile. She opened the car door. Warm air rushed in, like tepid swamp water.
Inside the courthouse, it was only marginally cooler. The desk sergeant—the same woman who’d been presiding last time I was there—had a fan set up on her desk blowing air right in her face. She had her shirt button undone, showing some compressed cleavage. This morning, she was writing on a clipboard.
“Peter!” It was Boley. He’d emerged from the inner area. Today he had the chummies. “Annie!”
“Hey, Al,” Annie said. “Seems like they’re keeping you pretty busy.”
He gave Annie a lazy smile. He looked refreshed, the tension from around his eyes gone. “Thanks for coming in,” he told me. “Like I said, just a formality. I need a statement about how you found Teitlebaum. Should pretty much tie things up.”
“Tie up what, exactly?” I asked.
“Looks like we’ve got our killer, and he might even save the taxpayers the cost of a jury trial.”
Boley seemed so smug, so sure of himself. Were they even considering the possibility that Teitlebaum had been set up? “He’s not dead yet, Detective Boley,” I said, trying to put a little distance between us. “And have you considered the possibility that he’s innocent?”
Boley did a slow blink. “How the hell do you think Lisa Babikian’s blood got on his shoes? You think someone else buried those remains and the gloves in his garden?” He stood there, trying to stare me down.
“Brilliant strategy for getting rid of evidence—bury it in your own garden. And leave the shoes lying around. The guy must have at least a high school diploma.”
Boley narrowed his eyes at me. “You can’t believe he did it because he’s a shrink. You people.” His complexion was going from red to purple. “Stick together, don’t you?”
Did he get extra brownie points if he could blame it on someone with a fancy degree? Still, I wondered if there wasn’t some truth to what he said. Was I so sure Teitlebaum couldn’t have done it because of my own biases about the basic goodness of the mental health professions? I pushed away the thought. “Anyone can come and dig in a garden,” I said. “You still haven’t got a witness.”
Annie broke in. “Maybe this isn’t something you two need to discuss right now?”
Boley ran his index finger around the inside of his collar. I could feel his anger tick down a notch. Nick Babikian’s words came back to me: Find the father. Teitlebaum insisted he wasn’t having an affair with Lisa, and I believed him.
“You are going to push for a DNA test, aren’t you?” I asked.
Red seeped back up from Boley’s neck and into his face. “What?” he exploded. “You must be out in La La Land. Why the hell would we be doing a DNA test? He tries to kill himself. We find the missing hard drive right in his goddamn desk drawer. Who do you think is guilty?” It was full-fledged fight-or-flight—gaze intensified and pupils constricting, capillaries dilating, sweating. “What the hell difference would a DNA test make?”
I ignored Annie’s look telling me to back off and took a step toward Boley. We were inches apart. “If it didn’t matter, then why would he take the fetus? And whoever the father is, I’m sure you’d want to talk to him. Wouldn’t you?” Boley blinked in spite of himself. “If it’s not Teitlebaum, and it’s not Babikian, then it’s someone else. I’m just saying it’s important to find out who that someone is.”
Boley took a step back and looked away. He rubbed his hand back and forth over his mouth. Seemed as if he was trying to regroup. “We don’t do frivolous DNA testing. It’s expensive. Especially when there’s no direct connection to the murder. Ties up resource
s that could be used on real cases.”
“This is a real case,” I found myself shouting. “You don’t know there’s no connection. And Richard Teitlebaum could be innocent. It’s just easier, isn’t it, to let him take the blame? Gets one off the books for you.”
“Gets one off the—?” Boley glared at me. “How dare you suggest …” He swallowed. “People who are innocent don’t try to kill themselves. It’s not natural.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I know,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. “I’m a homicide detective. It’s my job to know.” Boley pulled himself up and accordion-pleated his chin until it disappeared into his neck. “This is none of your goddamn business anyway.”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I asked you to come down and give a statement about finding Dr. Richard Teitlebaum. You’re just a witness. That’s all.”
“Al,” Annie said, “maybe one of these gentlemen wouldn’t mind taking Dr. Zak’s statement?”
Boley looked around, noticing that we had acquired an audience. About a half dozen people, officers in uniform and staff, were hovering. Boley jerked his chin at one of them who came over and took me back to his cube.
I gave my statement.
On the way home, I barely heard Annie say, “It’s like I told you before. Easy Al. Once he’s got what he considers enough evidence, he wants to ram it home. Doesn’t want to be distracted by anything else. If Teitlebaum dies, easier still. Boley doesn’t even have to testify.”
“There’s something else that’s bothering me,” I told Annie. “That hard drive that investigators found in Teitlebaum’s desk drawer. Teitlebaum went through those desk drawers when I talked to him right after the murder. I went through them again after they took him to the hospital.”
“Maybe you missed it. It’s not that big,” she said.
“I never saw any smashed computer innard,” I insisted.
Annie thought about that. “Are you saying someone planted it for the police to find after Teitlebaum tried to kill himself?”
That would have been one way to explain it.
20
MONDAY THE heat broke with spectacular thunderstorms. The temperature dropped twenty degrees and it turned clear and crisp. I was on the unit most of the day. When I got to my office I checked my messages. Naresh Sharma had called. “I wonder if I might impose on you,” he said. “Dr. Teitlebaum has regained consciousness.” He left his cell phone number.
I felt a surge of relief. If Teitlebaum was conscious, that was a positive sign. I called Naresh.
“Hello, Peter. After our talk at the hospital, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I ask your advice.”
“Of course. You said Dr. Teitlebaum is conscious?”
“He’s awake.”
“Communicating?”
“Yes. I had to tell him about the suicide attempt. He didn’t remember.”
That wasn’t unusual. With head injuries and coma, there was always some retrograde amnesia, forgetting what happened around the time of the injury. How much of it returned depended on how much his brain had been poisoned by carbon monoxide and the length of the coma. Four days wasn’t all that long.
“Can I see him?” I asked.
“I was hoping you’d suggest that.”
“Have they done any brain imaging?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, it would be good if you could find out. If they haven’t, see if you can get them to do a CAT scan or, better yet, an MRI. And if they have, I’d like to see the pictures.”
I met Naresh later that afternoon in the hospital lobby. Teitlebaum was out of the ICU and in a private room. When we got there he was dozing, his eyes open a slit and his head dropping off to one side, then righting itself. I pulled a chair over to sit, my face level with his. “Richard?”
His eyes opened. He saw Naresh hovering behind me. He blinked at me. “Peter?” Recognition. That was a good sign.
“Hey. Glad you’re awake.”
“Yeah, though this feels like a bad dream.” He licked his lips.
“Heard you saved my life.” His voice was thick.
That was good too. He was taking in new information and remembering it. “Know where you are?” I asked.
He gave a wry smile. “This a test?”
I nodded.
He pushed against the mattress to raise himself and groaned. “God, am I sore. My head. My back. Feels like someone hit me on the head and pushed me down a flight of stairs.”
“Up.”
“Huh?”
“Up a flight of stairs. I had to get you out of the basement.”
“Thanks.” Groggy, he touched the back of his head. He glanced about the room. “Actually, I don’t know where I am. But Mr. Sharma tells me I’m in Newton-Wellesley Hospital.”
This simple statement was actually quite telling. It showed he was self-reflective—he didn’t know where he was, but he recalled he’d been told. He knew his lawyer’s name. That suggested that his critical faculties might not be in too bad shape.
“Do you remember Lisa Babikian?”
He turned still. “She was my patient.”
“How long had you been treating her?”
“I already told you this,” he said.
“So tell me again.”
He took a deep inhale and winced. “Since October with her husband. And alone for the last four months,” he added.
Longer-term memory seemed to be intact. “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up here?”
He closed his eyes, opened them. “Last thing I remember … talking to you on the phone.”
“Do you remember the police coming to your house?”
“I didn’t at first. But it’s coming back to me. They were digging.”
That was good too. Memories were already starting to return.
“Do you know what the police found?”
“I do now,” he said. I thought I saw a flicker of anger in his eyes.
“Any idea how it got there?”
“Not the slightest.”
“Were you having an affair with Lisa Babikian?”
He sat forward. “For God’s sake, no!” The look of outrage quickly turned to pain. “Ow, shit.” He eyed me. “That, I would remember.”
“Someone was. I think you know who.”
Teitlebaum’s eyes widened, his pupils dilating. “You sound like them. That’s what that detective … Boley … kept asking me.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t know. Which is true. Between you and me, if she’d told me who she thought she was in love with, I’m not sure I would have told Boley.”
“Thought she was in love with?”
“Lisa Babikian was vulnerable. Easily taken in by a little kindness. Easily taken advantage of, I’m afraid. And she was quite unhappy.”
Just then, Naresh tapped me on the shoulder. He was holding a folder. Teitlebaum’s CT scan. “We need to leave anyway,” Naresh said. “There’s someone here to take a DNA sample. I’m having it analyzed first by a private lab.” That was smart. If the results came out the way we thought they would, Teitlebaum could agree to give the state a swab and make it official.
“They took some CT scans,” I told Teitlebaum. “Mind if I have a look?”
“Help yourself.”
I left and Naresh ushered in the fellow from the lab. I went to the end of the hall, pulled out the film, and held it up to the light.
The oval-shaped, thickish layer of white was Teitlebaum’s skull. In it, the textured gray was brain. There were light gray areas at the inside edge of the skull. These indicated contusions, bruises where there was bleeding and swelling inside of the brain where the head had been struck.
Naresh joined me and perched on the windowsill. “He’s suffered some brain damage,” I told him, pointing out the darker gray spots on the image. “We call them lacunae, a fancy word meaning h
oles. Carbon monoxide poisoning acts like a moth, eating away at the limbic structure of the brain—subcortical areas that mediate emotion and memory. But I’ve seen much worse, and in a patient who eventually recovered most of her memories.”
I wondered how long it would be before Teitlebaum remembered forming the plan in his mind to kill himself. How long before he remembered attaching the garden hose, starting the car, and closing himself in the sauna? Would he remember sitting on the bench, leaning against the wall, and waiting for the end?
The next day, I was back at the Pearce early for rounds. There was a package addressed to me in my morning mail. It looked innocuous enough—about the size of a shirt box, brown paper, tape. It was heavy for its size and seemed to be padded around the outside.
I dropped it onto the table and stared at it. The label to me was typed, and the return-address label was typed too: S. ZAK in Pittsburgh. My brother. I’d talked to him on the phone a few weeks earlier and he hadn’t mentioned sending me anything.
I remembered what the police had said to do if I got another unexpected package. Don’t open it. Call us immediately.
While I was hovering between ignoring the warning and opening the package, or paying attention and calling the police, Kwan arrived. “I didn’t know it was your birthday again. Though you do seem to be getting older more quickly than I am.”
“Yes,” I said. It took an effort to keep my tone light and come back at him. “Just a few more birthdays, and we’ll be the same age.”
He looked at the package with interest, obviously sensing nothing sinister about it. “Hey, aren’t you going to open it?”
Gloria arrived, her crisp white shirt tucked into khaki pants.
“He got a present, and he won’t open it,” Kwan complained.
“It’s just something from my brother …”
“Aw, come on Peter,” Kwan said. “Be a sport.”
“Kwan, you’re just bored,” Gloria said. It was true. Now that Mrs. Smetz was on the mend, our remaining patients were a fairly tame bunch. “Let’s see what you got.”