Missing Persons

by Stephen White

  “I’ve been wondering,” Diane said. “Do you think Mary Black would talk to me?”

  I opened the door. “About what?”

  Diane had one hip against the kitchen counter. She was sipping from a big pink mug of coffee. “Mrs. Miller, Mallory’s mom.”

  “No, of course not. Why would she?”

  She ignored my question. “Would she talk to you, then? You referred Mrs. Miller to her.”

  “Last time I checked it didn’t give me lifetime access to the woman’s mental health records.” I squeezed past Diane, and began to snoop around in our little refrigerator for something with caffeine. “What do you hope to find by talking to Mary, anyway?”

  “I can’t talk to her father. There has to be some way to pull all this together.”

  “ ‘All this’ being the Millers’ family situation?”

  “Yes…”

  She’d spoken the simple affirmation as though it constituted an incomplete sentence. I suspected that the other part of the sentence-the part she’d kept to herself-would be something about Hannah’s death and Diane’s ongoing lament that the cops-specifically the evil asshole, Jaris Slocum-weren’t doing much to find Hannah’s killer.

  Diane remained certain that out there-somewhere-was Hannah’s killer.

  For whatever reason, she decided that it wasn’t judicious to go there with me right then. I couldn’t see a reason to quibble with that judgment so I spent a silent moment reflecting on some of the crazy cases I’d been involved with over the past few years, looking for lessons on how to “pull all this together.”

  All I saw were ways to repeat mistakes I’d already made; I couldn’t see a single advisable choice. I said, “Sometimes there isn’t, Diane. Sometimes we end up knowing things that other people should probably know. But that’s just the way it is.”

  Her reply? “This coffee’s old. When did you make it?”

  “Before lunch.”

  She poured the contents of her mug into the sink. “I know somebody who might talk to me. Fill in some pieces.”

  “Yeah, who?” I expected a punch line.

  She fumbled around in a cupboard and came out with a mint Milano. “I never got my trip to Vegas.”

  I wondered where the cookie stash was hidden; I hadn’t spotted them earlier in the day. A millisecond after I absorbed her taunt I realized that she might not be joking. “Diane, you wouldn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t? Watch me. It’s winter and it’s cold here, if you haven’t noticed. It’s warm there. The craps tables are open twenty-four seven. Want to come?”

  She’d stepped out of the kitchen and started back down the hallway to her office.

  I stuck my head out the door. “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

  As she turned the corner toward the waiting room to retrieve her next patient she wiggled her ass in reply. Over her shoulder she called out, “For the record, I think he’s schizoid, too. Asperger, my…” She gave her ass one final shake to finish the sentence.

  20

  No boom box on New Year’s Eve afternoon during Bob’s additional, additional therapy time. I wasn’t surprised; I actually half expected that he would behave as though our conversation about Mallory had never taken place.

  Bob slipped his ancient leather-bottomed North Face backpack from his shoulder onto the floor and sat heavily across from me. He didn’t bother to remove the well-worn fleece-lined denim jacket that covered one of the button-down blue oxford dress shirts he wore year round. Bob had two denim jackets. This one, with the fleece, was the winter version. The other one, unlined, was reserved for spring and fall.

  He didn’t say hello to me. He hadn’t looked in my direction since I’d retrieved him from the waiting room and led him to my office. I thought he looked particularly tired and distant, which left me again questioning the wisdom of scheduling a third session with a man who used so much of his energy to maintain interpersonal distance.

  I said, “Hello, Bob.”

  His gaze was locked on a particular spot on the wall behind me, over my left shoulder. I was tempted to turn and see what was so interesting to him, but I didn’t. I knew I’d discover nothing there but paint.

  If you were to examine the family histories of the last hundred patients who had sought my help, you would find quite a few who had, arguably, suffered worse childhood trauma than Bob. I don’t say that to minimize what he endured when he was young, but rather to create some perspective.

  As adults, none of those other patients was as psychologically damaged as Bob. To me, that meant that Bob’s unfortunate childhood wasn’t sufficient to explain his psychopathology.

  Bob’s father-the man had been emotionally abusive, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn someday that he had been physically abusive as well-had abandoned the family when Bob was only four. Bob’s older brother-the one who lived near his mother-was a high school football star who’d become a college football star who’d become a successful tax attorney. Bob had more than enough insight to know that despite the fact that they had shared a house growing up, he and his brother had never really lived on the same planet.

  His sister, five years older-Bob’s memory of her is innocent, and his worship of her saintlike-died of leukemia a year after their father deserted them, on the very day that Bob entered kindergarten.

  She’d died at home before breakfast and Bob’s mother didn’t permit him to miss his first day of school.

  His mother was, by Bob’s description, a hot-and-cold, smother-and-reject kind of caretaker whom I surmised, had she made her way into a clinician’s office for a diagnostic sit-down, would probably have walked out with the dreaded 301.83 label of borderline personality disorder.

  As a childhood tableau, it was an awful set piece. But sadly, I saw worse all the time.

  All the time.

  If a traumatic upbringing wasn’t responsible for Bob’s seemingly intractable character pathology, was nature to blame? Did the shuffle and deal of genetic bounty leave Bob with a particularly bad hand? Possibly.

  Most likely, though, it was some combination of two powerful forces, some unpredictable interaction between Bob’s genetic fabric and the bedeviled caprice of his human family.

  But I didn’t know for sure. The only solace I could find was that a lot of work was being done on the spectrum of disorders that covers the broad territory from autism to schizoid personality. Someday soon, maybe, we’d learn something that would allow me to be a more effective therapist for people like Bob.

  Bob said, “When Doyle sells it, I’m going to have to find a new place to garage the Camaro.”

  Something I’d learned about Bob over our years of Tuesdays together was that he often started our conversations midstream, as though an important dialogue had been going on in his head and at some point in my presence-a random point possibly, but more likely not-he decided to put voice to one of the thoughts. I was left to wonder why segue, context, and transition were absent from those rhetorical equations. For the time being, until the long list of goals that comprised my treatment plan for Bob was completed, keeping up with the nature of the progression of his thinking was part of my responsibility.

  That day, though, what I was most aware of was that Bob hadn’t started the session talking about Mallory.

  “Doyle is…?” I asked.

  “The guy I rent the garage from. For my Camaro.”

  Bob explained the simple fact as though he was annoyed that he was being forced to repeat it for my benefit. Although Bob had mentioned the garage arrangement already that week, the truth was that I’d never heard him mention anyone named Doyle before. I was certain.

  “And he’s selling…?” I guessed that Doyle was selling the garage.

  “The house. It’s been on the market for a while, since fall. When he sells it, I’m going to have to move my car, obviously.”

  Bob garages his car next door to the home where Mallory Miller lives with her father and br
other. And a guy named Doyle owns the house.

  Interesting. Lauren hadn’t mentioned that last fact to me. Nor did I think I had seen that tidbit in the paper. Not in the Boulder Daily Camera. Not in the Denver papers.

  The house had been on the market for a while before Mallory disappeared. Had I seen that detail in the paper? I wasn’t sure about that either. Maybe. I reminded myself that I wasn’t exactly a student of the case.

  Bob is concerned about losing the garage for his Camaro.

  Check.

  “Have you spoken with this guy Doyle, Bob? Do you know his plans for the… garage?”

  With Bob, where interpersonal relationships were involved, the obvious step often wasn’t obvious at all.

  “He’s selling the house. There’s a sign up outside. What’s to ask? He moved out a couple of months ago. It’s a nice place. I can’t afford to buy anything like that.”

  Bob’s reply was edgier than usual. I noticed that I was tiptoeing with him. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but I could feel the care I was forcing into my words as I said, “When he sells the house you’ll have to look for a new place for your car?”

  Bob was pulling his lower lip across the sharp surface of his front teeth. He did it three or four times before he said, “I don’t actually pay him.”

  It was my turn. “You don’t pay Doyle? For the garage?”

  “He, um… builds fountains and ponds and streams and waterfalls, you know, crap like that for rich people. That’s his… his business. He does pretty well. I mean, to buy that house, right? It has a theater-a real theater-in the basement. It’s like… a great place to watch movies. So cool. He has to be doing okay. I help him sometimes, on weekends mostly. He lets me use the garage for the Camaro, and lets me watch movies sometimes. The Trilogy down there? Oh, that’s the deal. That is the deal. It may turn out I’ve been getting screwed. I don’t know. I really should have done the math.”

  For two years I’d known Bob and I didn’t know anything about Doyle, nor did I know anything about his weekends spent building fancy water features for people self-indulgent enough to expect to have large quantities of scarce water decorating their high desert properties. What else didn’t I know about this man across from me?

  Experience had taught me that with someone like Bob, the scope of my ignorance could be breathtaking.

  “The Trilogy?” I asked, trying to fill in at least one blank.

  “The Lord of the Rings?” he explained as though I were a dunce.

  “Of course,” I said, feeling appropriately chastised. Of course. For Bob, what other trilogy could there have been? “I didn’t know you worked for anyone else, Bob.”

  “It’s just moving dirt.”

  “And that means it’s not important?”

  “What’s the big deal? We put down liners. Move rocks. Lay down some pipes, attach pumps. It’s pretty easy. But people pay him a mint for this stuff. You should see his yard. Surrounded by berms and rocks. A big pond, a stream, a bridge, two waterfalls. Those fish-koi. It’s pretty cool. We moved a lot of dirt for all that. I like driving the little tractor, the Bobcat? That’s a trip.”

  “But no more?”

  “I told you, he moved. I’m watching his house now until it sells. Keeping the walks shoveled, sweeping up, checking on stuff. Timers, lights. Like that. I think I will go back and do the math. I probably got screwed in the deal.”

  If he had been screwed, he didn’t sound too upset about it.

  Assuming that he had one, I wasn’t certain precisely what emotional point Bob was trying to make. Was he aggravated at losing his garage space? Was he sad that he would no longer have a part-time job building water features? Was he going to miss whatever relationship he had with Doyle?

  All of the above? I had no idea.

  “Will you miss it?” I asked. The “it” was deliberate on my part. Bob could select an object himself. Garage, job, friend. His choice.

  “Miss what?” he asked, instantly abrogating the intent of my clever quiz.

  Forcing myself to remain placid, I asked an obvious shrink question. I said, “I don’t know. What do you think you will miss?”

  Bob sometimes did this thing with his head that was exactly half of a shake. He’d turn his head to one side-I thought exclusively toward the right, but I wasn’t done testing that hypothesis-and begin a head-shaking motion, but he would interrupt the arc of the shake precisely at the moment his nose was back at the neutral position. The movement wasn’t graceful; it was abrupt. His face would jerk to a stop as though it had smacked into an invisible obstacle. Typically he accompanied the motion with a verbalized, “Sheeesh.”

  Years before, I’d had another patient who possessed the same bizarre affectation. I found that curious; it was like knowing two people who each had a sixth finger growing out of his elbow.

  Bob chose that moment-after I pressed him a second time on what he would miss were Doyle to sell the house-to do the half head-shake thing, and he included the exasperated “sheeesh” for emphasis.

  As I always did, I interpreted the little choreography as a sign of his impatience. With many patients I would probably have kept my interpretation to myself, but with Bob I tried to do as much as possible out in front of the curtain. Human behavior was already enough of a mystery to him.

  “You didn’t like my question?” I said to reveal the progression of my thoughts.

  “I don’t like anybody’s inane questions.”

  The “anybody’s” was Bob’s way of cushioning the blow, of telling me not to take his “inane” rebuke personally. I considered the fact that he was depersonalizing the insult as another sign of clinical progress. On another day I would have been patting myself on the back at the emergence of even that paltry evidence of Bob’s growth in compassion.

  Not that day, though. I knew it was my turn to speak, but I decided to pass. Where Bob chose to go next would tell me something.

  I figured that Bob was waiting for me to take my turn in this real-life board game of ours. After a long pause, he shifted his gaze from the fascinating blankness on the wall behind me, chanced the briefest of glances at me, and then began looking at his hands. His eyeballs began to shimmy.

  As always, it gave me the creeps.

  Finally, resigned that I was upsetting the world order by skipping my turn, he said, “It’s not safe yet. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten into. It’s just too soon.”

  Huh? “What’s too soon? I don’t think I understand.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t get,” Bob said.

  What the hell are we talking about? “For Doyle to sell his house?”

  “I’m not sure everything is turning out, you know, the way… It might have been a mistake. I stumble into stuff, I do. Not very often, but, boy, when I do…”

  “Are you talking about Mallory again, Bob?”

  He did the half head-shake thing one more time and exclaimed, “Sheeesh.”

  21

  I am-almost without fail-thoughtful during psychotherapy sessions. My words are measured. My mannerisms are controlled. It is unusual that I say or do anything while in a treatment session that is not considered and deliberate. That is not to say that I don’t often say things that are, in retrospect, ill advised or outright stupid. Rather it is an acknowledgment that when I do, it turns out that I have made the ultimately questionable move with conscious intent.

  But the next question that I asked was actually no more deliberate than had been my decision to reach across the hall and try the knob on Mary Black’s office door on the day that Hannah Grant died. What I said was, “Why don’t you tell me about Doyle?”

  Doyle had to be important. Bob, who lived his life devoid of relationships, apparently had one-however loosely defined-with this guy Doyle. In this psychotherapy, with this patient, with his problems, that was monumental news.

  Was the presence of Doyle in Bob’s life a sign of some drift in the continental plates of Bob’s pathology? I had to suppose
that it was. Could Bob really have a friend? But if Doyle was important, why hadn’t Bob mentioned him to me before that day?

  Did Doyle’s sudden appearance say something I couldn’t afford to miss about my relationship with Bob? Or perhaps, more importantly, about Bob’s perception of his relationship with me?

  The context of Doyle’s emergence in Bob’s psychotherapy was significant, too. Bob had decided to talk about Doyle while he was discussing loss. The “loss” in question was, at the surface, the loss of a garage for his cherished Camaro, but the fact that he raised the issue of Doyle in the context of any attachment had to be significant. Right?

  Maybe. I admit that I wasn’t totally certain. Part of me thought I might be making a classic psychotherapy reach.

  This work I did was much more art than science.

  “Doyle’s just a guy,” Bob said in reply to my question.

  With as much nonchalance as I could muster I said, “But you’ve known him a while? I don’t think you’ve mentioned him before.”

  “I don’t know him. I park my car at his house. And I’m sure I mentioned him.”

  “And you work for him sometimes.”

  He pondered my words for five seconds before he said, “I work for the state of Colorado, too, but I don’t know the governor.”

  It was a good retort; I reminded myself that Bob was a smart guy. As an employee of a university that was suffering through an era of eroding state support, Bob wasn’t terribly fond of Colorado governor Bill Owens’s style of leadership. When Bob mentioned the gov during one of his not-infrequent political rants, he typically called him “Invisi-Bill,” not “Governor Owens.”

  I chose to avoid the partisan detour. “Before last week you hadn’t mentioned Doyle.”

  He backed off his earlier position. “So you say. Unless I’ve been misunderstanding something, I’m here to talk about problems. Doyle hasn’t been a problem. He’s a guy. I do some work for him; he lets me use his garage. That’s all, folks.”