by Amanda Cross
It seemed that having started talking, Harriet could hardly stop. Indeed, all that lessened the flow was the approach of a doctor.
He looked at Kate and Reed with what might have been hope. “Are you related to the patient?” he asked.
Reed stood up. “No,” he said. “We just knew her professionally. She worked with our friend here.” He indicated Harriet.
“So she’s not related either,” the doctor said, glancing at his chart. “We need to contact her relatives.”
All three of them looked at Harriet.
“I haven’t any idea where they are,” Harriet said. “Oh, dear. When she came to work at the law school she said her family was from Idaho, but that her parents were dead. She’s never mentioned anyone else. I don’t even know where in Idaho. I’ve never even heard of most places in Idaho.” She began to cry, pushing Reed’s handkerchief against her eyes.
Reed moved so that he was facing the doctor, an obviously competent, probably professional man facing another professional man. The doctor decided that Reed was the one to talk to.
“This woman is an old friend of ours,” Reed said, “She was, as I’ve said, the partner of the assaulted woman. For the moment at least, we’re the only people who can be consulted about her. Could you let us know her condition?”
“Critical,” the doctor said, with (Kate hoped, overhearing them) more blunt frankness than he might have offered the family. “She was beaten on the back of the skull with a heavy instrument. Our guess is that the person who attacked her left her for dead. We’re dealing with brain trauma here, but we’re rather better at that than some hospitals; we get more practice. There wasn’t time to wait for all the forms to be filled out. Since the police were involved, perhaps they’ll locate some relatives; I gather she wasn’t married.”
Reed shook his head.
“So we’ll just wait and see. But I warn you, she may remember nothing of what happened. With brain damage, that’s often the case.”
“May we leave you our names,” Reed asked, “just in case you want to reach someone? I take it you already have the information about her partner here.”
The doctor looked as though he was about to refuse, but Reed, holding the man’s gaze, handed over his card.
“Ah,” said the doctor, glancing at it. “A law professor.” And with that he rushed off.
“Why don’t you go home with us now?” Kate said. “We can let them know where you’ll be.”
“I want to stay here,” Harriet said. “Maybe they’ll let me see her. Maybe she’ll know I’m here, even if she’s unconscious. They say people in comas know you’re there.”
Kate decided not to insist that Toni might not be in a coma. She didn’t, in fact, know whether one fell into a coma immediately after such a blow, or only after a time. Around them in the emergency waiting room, there was constant movement and the almost palpable aura of anxiety and fear. Kate looked at Reed to see if he had a suggestion.
“Look,” he said. “There are two seats over there. Why don’t you two sit in them and wait? There might be news soon. I’ll go and see if I can get some information—perhaps find out where we are with this, and persuade them to let Harriet leave.” He glanced toward a policewoman standing at the edge of the room. She was watching them as they moved toward the now empty seats. Harriet, after all, Kate realized, was a suspect. Was the person who found the body often a suspect? She nodded to Reed. What they did not say to one another, because it was understood, was that Reed still had connections from the years he’d worked in the district attorney’s office. Maybe by now he had them somewhere else too.
“We’ll wait here,” Kate said, “unless they tell us enough so that we can leave. In that case, we’ll be at home.” She urged Harriet into one of the seats and took the other.
Reed touched her shoulder and left. Kate saw him stop to speak a moment to the policewoman, then depart.
For what seemed like hours, Harriet told Kate every detail of finding Toni on the floor of the office, accounted for every minute she had been absent from the office and allowing, by her absence, the attack to happen, and turned over for her own sake, if not for Kate’s, every possible explanation of what had occurred, other cases they were working on, and Kate’s case. Kate had no idea how much time had passed when the doctor reappeared. Kate had let Harriet talk, partly because she thought it would help her, provided she didn’t get into the habit of repeating it endlessly—thus indicating all kinds of possibly neurotic responses—and partly because she, Kate, was really eager to hear all the events and conditions that afternoon.
And then the doctor reappeared. Harriet stopped in the middle of a word. They gave him their ferocious attention, half hope, half dread.
“I think your partner’s going to be all right,” he said to Harriet. “At least a lot better than we had any right to hope. She’s already regained consciousness, which is the best possible sign, although she’s not yet responsive. She may not remember anything that happened, even if she’s able to talk and recognize people and remember other things. That’s usual. In time, if all goes well, her memory of what happened when she was attacked may come back. There was a clot, but we found it and got it out. We have a doctor here who’s studied brain trauma, which most neurologists don’t.” Here he seemed to decide he was talking too much, whether from fatigue or relief or pride, and turned away.
Harriet reached out and touched his arm as he was retreating. “Are you saying she’ll be all right? That she won’t be—well, crippled or deaf or anything?” Or a vegetable, Kate wanted to add, but didn’t because of Harriet.
“I can’t make promises. The signs are good—that’s all I can tell you. Excuse me, now.”
Harriet seemed about to reach for him again, but Kate seized her outstretched arm. “For a doctor he was amazingly communicative,” Kate said. “Most of them either utter telegraphic nonsense or ask what should be done with the body. Just be grateful. I think he was telling us we could and should leave now. Let’s go home. You ask that nice policeperson if you can go, give her my address if she asks, and I’ll go and make sure they have our number should there be any reason to call, though I think Reed gave it to them. I’ll just make sure. Go on, now,” Kate said, shoving Harriet ever so slightly. She had never seen Harriet anything but in absolute control of herself, and she felt, though it annoyed her to realize it, like a child who has discovered an idol is not omnipotent. Kate walked toward the woman at the reception desk and waited for a chance to leave her number once again. More than anything, she needed a few minutes to collect herself.
By the time they reached home, Harriet—who’d been shaking in the taxi beyond anything caused by the driver or potholes—was near to tears, which astonished Kate. Harriet had been through some bizarre adventures in her life but had not collapsed; she had mustered her determination and will and accomplished what needed to be done. In this case, clearly, she was out of control; nothing she might do, at least nothing that occurred to her at this time, could alter these events. Regret joined with powerlessness induces despair.
Kate offered single malt Scotch, Harriet’s favorite, but was not surprised to observe that the drink had little effect on Harriet’s mood or spirits. There are, Kate had long ago learned, certain worries that neither Scotch nor prescription drugs can touch, at least not right away. But Kate plied the whiskey in the hope that, exhausted, Harriet might give way to sleep.
By the time Reed returned, Harriet had at last laid her head on the arm of the couch and dozed off. Reed suggested that they leave her to rest undisturbed, but Kate thought her likelier to remain asleep if she had, even subconsciously, the sense that she was still in the midst of things. Harriet, at that moment, opened her eyes, saw Kate, and closed them. They heard her breathing become even again.
“How do you know these things?” Reed asked.
Kate shrugged. “I know some things; you know others. Between us, we cover a certain amount of ground. I only hope we can make the
combination work with this awful mess. What did you learn, if anything? The doctor, by the way, is sounding as close to hopeful as doctors ever sound when they’re being honest, but I gather she has a long way to go before she’s out of danger.”
“You haven’t changed your opinion of the medical profession, I see,” Reed commented, when she had told him of the doctor’s report. “They sound as though they’ve done a pretty good job in this case.”
“I’m willing to wait and see. I’ll admit that much. What’s your news?”
Reed had just opened his mouth to speak when the telephone rang. They had brought their cordless phone into the living room and Reed answered it immediately. Kate glanced over at Harriet, but she hadn’t budged.
Reed, meanwhile, was oozing apologies. “A crisis,” he was saying. “I can’t go into it now. We must keep the line clear. No, not in the family. Well call as soon as we can, and please forgive us.” He disconnected by pressing a button and pushed in the aerial. Inappropriately, Kate thought of how satisfying the gesture of firmly replacing the receiver used to be. “Dorothy Hedge,” Reed said. “Wondering what had become of us. You heard my end.”
“What about Banny? Will Dorothy Hedge keep her awhile? I don’t know why on earth I should think of that, under these circumstances.”
“I didn’t ask. I think she was going to say something else, but I wanted to get off before I had to answer any more questions. Remember, we don’t know who tried to kill Toni.”
“But why on earth …?” Kate began.
“Everyone who knew Toni or knew of her is a suspect at this moment. Do you want to hear my news?”
“I hate it when you become officious, but yes, I do. My main question is: did the attacker leave her for dead or not? Did he or she think Toni was dead?”
“The first question I asked,” Reed said, his tone praising her and making up for sounding officious. “They can’t be sure, but the detective, whose instincts I’ve learned to trust, thinks they did leave her for dead. This suggests it was someone not used to battering people, someone who panicked, who was running scared. I think that’s a good guess.”
“That ought to assure them that it wasn’t Harriet, oughtn’t it?” Kate asked, glancing at the couch. They had managed to lift Harriet’s legs onto the couch and they had covered her; she was deeply asleep. Perhaps, Kate thought, Scotch had worked in its own way after all. “I mean, she’d hardly have called the police if she wasn’t sure Toni was dead. They can’t really suspect Harriet, can they?”
“Not for long, I hope. What we’ve got to find is what motive anyone would have had for attempting to kill Toni. It’s perfectly possible it’s from another part of her life and has nothing to do with us, but somehow I doubt that. When Harriet wakes up, we’ll ask what else she and Toni were working on. Someone will have to go over the papers in their office. Either Harriet will let me do that with her, or the police will get a warrant. But assuming that Toni was attacked because of your case, I think we ought to get all of that straight in our minds.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“We changed our tactics. We decided to follow Leslie’s suggestion. In short, we altered the whole direction of the investigation. Not twenty-four hours after you discussed this new direction with Toni and Harriet, Toni was attacked. I’m inclined to see a connection. At the very least, I want to assure myself and you that there isn’t one.”
“You’re suggesting,” Kate said, after turning this over in her mind, “that whoever was responsible for kidnapping you, for trying to force me to repudiate feminism, and all the rest of it, got so frightened by the idea of our hitching onto Leslie’s idea that they tried to murder Toni? What would be the point?”
“Simple fear—an hysterical response. An attempt to provide a red herring, distract us from one trail to another. It’s all guesswork for now. Maybe someone feared that something or other that Toni had happened upon might lead her to the person behind all this. Who knows? One possibility is that she or he meant to incriminate Harriet, thus putting the whole firm out of business, but something interrupted her, which is why Toni isn’t dead.”
“Ye gods,” Kate said. She realized that she had to face what she had been carefully avoiding while concerning herself entirely with Harriet. “In other words, I’m responsible for what happened to Toni.”
“In a way, you are,” Reed said. He never tried to hide the truth from her, which was, she supposed, what above everything she loved him for. “But that’s like saying if the police are shot by a person burglarizing a store, the store owner is to blame. Toni worked as a detective, a licensed detective. Risks are part of the job. And she must have let whoever it was into the office. I haven’t asked Harriet about that yet, but New Yorkers don’t leave their office doors open unless there’s a receptionist just inside, and even then there’s usually a buzzer to release the door.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Kate looked abashed. It was startling to realize the extent to which she hadn’t really begun to think at all.
“So,” Reed said, “what you’ve got to do is work even harder on trying to locate this woman whose possible motive Leslie described. She may not be the key to the whole thing; she may only be a small part of it. But the coincidence, the timing of the attack on Toni, certainly suggests the possibility of a connection. My instincts tell me the solution lies in that direction.”
“Reed, we don’t even know if she exists. And if she does exist, how on earth am I going to think of her? The whole thing’s absurd. We need a few clues, at least. My God, she may even go back to nursery school, and I can’t remember anyone I’ve met later than the last decade—and not most of those.”
“Nonsense. What did you do when you thought it might be a professor in your department? You made lists: probable, improbable, impossible.”
“There are only thirty professors in the department. Maybe thirty-one—I haven’t counted lately.”
Reed ignored this. “If you made such an impression on her that she has seethed with it ever since, you must at least have some memory of her, however recessed. You’ll have to dig it out. It hardly seems likely that a casual remark or a one-time meeting is the cause of all this. It’s possible, but if that’s the case we’re dealing with a lunatic”—at Kate’s raised eyebrows, he amended this—“with an insane rather than an obsessed person. You know what I mean. In that case, we may never find her or him, or this may have nothing to do with you. But if the same person is behind this and the former caper, and that’s what I believe, the sooner you can come up with a list of possibilities, the better.”
“Going back to nursery school?” Kate almost sneered.
“Let’s start a bit later—say, high school. On through college, jobs, boyfriends, travels—I’m suggesting the situations in which you and she may have both been involved.”
“Well, thanks for leaving out childhood anyway. I’m bored to death with childhoods. That’s all anyone seems to write about these days. There’s a fancy new theorist people are reading in lit crit circles named Adam Phillips. I recently looked at a book of his called On Flirtation, and he quotes something from Philip Larkin that I endorse most heartily.”
Reed, who earlier that day had been distressed by her quoting of Auden, took hope now from her return to her customary patterns of thought. “I know you admire Philip Larkin’s poetry, but I thought you were still reading a biography of him.”
“That was last year.”
“I can never keep up with your reading.”
“Some of us read a lot, fast. Some of us read slowly, a few pages in bed at night before drowsiness overcomes us.”
Reed smiled to see her old habits of speech reappearing. She smiled back at him.
“The quote from Larkin is relevant,” she said, understanding his relief. “He said this to an interviewer: ‘Whenever I read an autobiography I tend to start halfway through, when the chap’s grown up, and it becomes interesting.’ That’s how I feel about my life. So I
’ll do a hasty survey of high school and college and then concentrate.”
“You’d better concentrate from the beginning,” Reed said. “We’re looking for a murderer, even if it’s one who failed, as we hope. Remember that. Sorry, I’m sounding officious.”
There was no further news from the hospital about Toni that night. Harriet woke up and eventually agreed to be put to bed and to swallow a sleeping pill and a bit more Scotch. When all was quiet Kate went to call Leslie.
“A fine mess you’ve gotten me in,” she said.
“Remembering your past, are you?”
“Yes, damn it,” Kate said. And told her about Toni. They talked about that for a time, Kate asking again for reassurance that Leslie’s analysis of the situation would turn out to be anywhere near the mark.
“It’s just a guess, a supposition, a trial balloon,” Leslie said. Kate could picture her in her studio, perched on a stool with her legs looped around its legs. She often retreated to the studio in the evening to brood over her painting and contemplate tomorrow’s work. “The worst that can happen is that you’ll waste some hours making lists and remembering. Who knows, it may all turn into a best-selling memoir, like Gore Vidal’s.”
Kate decided to let that pass. “The real problem is that I can’t imagine anyone getting that angry, let alone staying that angry so long, or actually planning this whole mess.”
“That’s your personality,” Leslie said. “Quick anger, short stew, complete forget. Well, you’ve got to stop forgetting just now. And don’t underestimate anger in women. Hold on. I’m going to put down the phone and get a book.”