Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set

by Ellery A Kane

  “I don’t hate him.” It takes everything in me to say it. To force those words out. But it’s true. I don’t just hate him. It’s more of a poison stew—envy, fear, bitterness, love, and loathing—and I drink it down even as it burns. “Didn’t, I mean.”

  Jack sits up, squirms a little, and rests his elbows on his knees. “Sorry,” he says. “I know I’m supposed to sit still and keep my trap shut, but I don’t buy that. Hell, I hate the guy and I’ve never even met him.” There’s a quiet fierceness, a sheathed blade, behind his eyes, even as he chuckles. The same sort of subtlety he’d passed to Luke. But not to Cooper. Who’s all razor-sharp edges right in your face.

  I shrug at him. Give him the only answer I can. “In my line of work, love and hate are two sides of the same coin. And I’ll be damned if I ever give him that much power again. So I’d say I’ve been mostly indifferent.”

  “You’re a better person than I am, Ava, I’ll tell ya that. If Marianne ever did me that way, I’d hate her with the fire of a thousand suns.”

  I laugh, but I don’t relax. He’s leading me too. Just like his partner. “Let’s just say it took a lot of therapy to sound this blasé.” And by therapy I mean vandalism, mischief, and blackmail. And karma. That too.

  “Any violence in the marriage?” he asks.

  Violence. A word that sounds like what it is—sharp and severing. It cut our marriage in two. But not the way they’d think. “Ian never hit me.”

  “What about his mental state? Did he ever threaten suicide? Or hurt himself?”

  I can’t tell them the truth. It would dangle like a loose thread, and they’d unravel it all. “Ian loved himself too much to do anything like that.”

  Their eyes meet for a moment, then flit back to me.

  “Did Ian have any enemies?” Doreen asks, sliding the file folder toward her. It makes a delicate swish against the table, soft and sinister as a snake.

  If not for that folder—menacing in its ordinariness—I’d laugh again. “You probably won’t be surprised to hear Ian was a bit of a jackass. His students at Berkeley loved him. UCLA too. But his colleagues not so much. He could be abrasive. Demanding. Egotistical. But no one stands out. Not as a potential murderer.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to Ian?”

  “Summer, I think. I ran into him outside my office. We said hello and went our separate ways. It was cordial.”

  “Really? In a small town like Carmel? I can’t go to the post office without running into my ex. You sure you haven’t seen him since then?”

  “If I have, I don’t remember.” Best to hedge my bets.

  “Lucky girl, then.” Doreen says as she sets the folder on her lap. I eye it, nervous, already knowing it will bite. “Ever been to Ian’s house?”

  “I’ve driven past it a few times. It’s quite a palace from what I remember.” An answer that’s not an answer. Not really.

  “For a mansion like that, I’d reckon a girl could put up with almost anything.” She winks at me, and I play along with an ironic smirk. “Now you know I have to ask where you were that night. The night of the fourteenth, Valentine’s Day.”

  “Of course. I understand. I was at home. With Luke.”

  “All night?”

  “Starting a little after ten, I think. Before that, I went for a run and stopped by Cliffside to see my mom. I ordered Chinese from Happy Dragon.” Doreen scribbles Happy Dragon, then circles it, as if it’s the smoking gun. “I kept the receipt.”

  A perfunctory nod from Doreen. Another step in the dance. She’s just getting to the good part. The big finale. “I’d like you to take a look at something for me. We’re having a hard time explaining it. Maybe you can help.”

  She sets the folder in front of me, the edge of a photograph peeking from its cover. It reminds me of a door. A door in a house. The house of my childhood. Left slightly ajar, dust motes dancing in a thin stream of summer twilight. And I’d called out to him—Dad?

  “Open it,” she says.

  ****

  Two clients later and dead Ian is still all I see. He followed me on cold, stiff legs from the police station. But more than that, he’s in the room with me. He’s there with Verna, as she blathers on about the heart-shaped cake pans she ordered on sale from QVC. And with my eleven o’clock, Claus, who’s mourning the loss of his beloved schnauzer.

  I try not to look at him—dead Ian—but he’s in the corner of my office, slumped over the side of a claw-footed tub. The old-fashioned kind I’d always told him I wanted. His skin is all wrong. Pale and waxy and starting to loosen. And the rug beneath him is saturated with blood. It’s wet. You can tell just by looking.

  “What does that say?” Detective Lennox had asked me, pointing me to the mirror in the photograph. Oversized, ornate, and completely unnecessary—just the sort of thing Ian would buy—it towers behind the tub, even now, even here, reflecting the top of his head. His chin drooping lifeless against his chest.

  “It—it looks like . . . well, it could be my name. Ava.”

  Luke hadn’t lied. The letters are rust-colored smears, dripping and streaky. Dead Ian’s fingers are wet too. The rigid tips of them just visible in the mirror. He wrote my name. The last thing he did. And I worry what it says about me that I like that.

  “We think so too. Any clue how it got there?” I could have sworn her voice echoed against the stone tile beneath Ian’s bare feet. As if we’d been standing in the middle of the crime scene all along.

  I hadn’t trusted myself to speak so I shook my head, though it seemed not to belong to me, the way it wobbled on the stem of my neck like a cattail in the wind. I shook it at Jack too when he’d asked if I needed a ride to my office. And now, I shake my head at dead Ian. He’s eyeing me in that ridiculous mirror. And he wants me to feel sorry for him.

  “So we can’t reschedule next week’s session?” Claus asks, his face scrunched in a kind of wary confusion. I think how I must look to him. Unhinged. A therapist gone wild.

  “I’m sorry. I must’ve misheard you. Of course we can. When would you like to come in?”

  ****

  Dead Ian trails me home like a zombie. And I thank God I didn’t walk to the office today. Pedal to the floorboard, I tear down Ocean Avenue like a bat out of hell. Too bad he’s still there, staggering behind the car, tracking red footprints. And pointing that blood-stained finger right at me.

  Better him than Kate, though. Because when I think of her—of the other photo Detective Lennox had shown me—it’s more than I can bear. The Hydra feeds on my shame, and I can’t get home fast enough. I rush inside and drop to my knees at the toilet. An altar of sorts, I offer up what remains of lunch and sit cross-legged on the cool tile, praying it’s enough for absolution.

  “Kate put up one heck of a fight,” Detective Lennox had said, tapping the edge of the second photo with her bitten-down nails. She expected me to look, so I had. At Kate lying on her side on the floor near the bed, still wearing the red dress she’d had on at dinner. One arm stretched outward. The other pinned awkwardly beneath her. The arm I could see was crisscrossed with cuts, a deep gash in the palm. Defense wounds, Detective Lennox had called them. As if a delicate hand like Kate’s could defend against anything, much less a knife. Broken near her feet, the remains of one of two matching bedside lamps. A wicked trail of blood, heavy at first, meandered between her body and the bathroom. And beyond, extending to the threshold of the door.

  Looking at her too long had hurt, like staring into the sun. So I’d set my eyes adrift, scanning the bedroom that should’ve been mine while the detective went on sticking her pins at random, casting a particular kind of voodoo. The law enforcement kind.

  “Were you having an affair with your ex-husband, Doctor Lawson?”

  Before my incredulous no, a laugh had spurted out, sharp and sour, as I’d spotted an overnight bag crouchin
g at the center of their bed—the marital bed—like a toad. It bore Kate’s initials. K.A.C. And her clothes spewed from its mouth, littering the stark white comforter.

  I’d noted the T-shirts, the designer jeans, the matching lingerie, all the while wondering why Detective Lennox would call it an affair when I’d had him first.

  “We believe Kate was killed first, before Ian. He might’ve been drunk or . . .” On the corner of the oversized dresser, a bottle of Far Niente Cabernet—Ian’s favorite—and a half-empty glass. Just one. Because Kate hadn’t been drinking. But I’d kept that to myself. It would’ve come with a question I wasn’t prepared to answer: How do you know?

  “Did your ex-husband ever abuse illegal drugs or prescription medication?”

  I shrugged and shook my head, noncommittal, ignoring the furious churning in my gut. Stamping out the sparks of memory that had threatened to catch like a wildfire.

  “And the show? The suicide? The lawsuit against the network? Did Ian ever mention any of that to you?”

  Another shake of my head. Had I lost my voice entirely?

  “So, help us out then. If you had to venture a guess, what do you think happened here?” And she’d pointed at Kate again, at the blinding, white-hot center of the sun. An impossibly long gash that stretched across her neck and splayed open to the core of her. Unreal in its utter finality. Not so different than the bullet hole in my father’s head.

  When I’d finally found it, my voice sounded stronger than I felt. Forged in fire and all the years of pretending not to feel anything at all. “I want to help. I wish I knew something. But I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  I pushed the photos back to her, desperate to be rid of them. Ian first, then Kate. But Detective Lennox had left them there—testing me, taunting me—until Jack returned with a camera and a cotton swab and a pitying half-smile. He photographed my hands, collected my DNA, took my prints. I walked out the door, measured and steady, like an innocent woman. Which I was once, I suppose. But I wanted to run.

  I did nothing wrong. I stand up and find my reflection in the mirror. The doubt there. I flip open the medicine cabinet and find the bottle of Xanax Ian had prescribed to me just before our divorce. “To take the edge off,” he’d said. Like it was my problem to fix. And a pill could fix it.

  I shake the bottle, rattling the little white bars meant to dull the blade, to file the sharp teeth of agitation. Fuck you, Ian. That’s what I think as I dump it, bombs away, into the toilet and flush. The pills and my vomit swirling down toward a quiet oblivion.

  I couldn’t tell Detective Lennox what I really thought had happened, so I say it now to myself. Like a mantra. Like a prayer. Like a curse. You reap what you sow. You reap what you sow.

  Chapter

  Nine

  I make my way to the center of the crowd, cupping my hand around the flame of a thin, white candle. It flickers, curls, stretches in the wind. Nearly snuffs out. Cold and vicious, the sudden gusts lash my hair across my face like a whip. Punishment for coming here. I’m sure of it. Because this is a crime against nature. Practically sacrilegious. Still, here I am, smack-dab in the middle of Ian’s vigil, wedged between rows of weepy mourners. Most of them students clad in their MCC sweatshirts and flip-flops. There are cops too, at the periphery. But what have I got to hide?

  I hold my candle like an acolyte. Paying homage to a photo—a headshot, enlarged to ghastly proportions—and a smattering of dying flowers, hand-scrawled cards, and stuffed things.

  “Did you know him?” a young man asks me, leaning so close I see the raw scrape of his razor burn, the eruption of acne on his cheeks. I smell the oniony bite of his breath.

  I resist the urge to recoil. To run, even. I don’t belong here. “A little.”

  “Lucky. I tried to get into his weekend lecture for the spring semester. But, of course, it was full.”

  I shrug and say nothing. Pretend I hadn’t scoured the online MCC course catalog, reciting the names of Ian’s classes as if they were precious to me somehow. Like the names of our children, never to be born.

  Introduction to Psychopharmacology—M/W/F 8–10 Gleeson Hall

  The Science of Love: A Total Eclipse of the Brain—Sat/Sun 10–3 (April) Lawrence Research Center

  Psychopharmacological Treatment of Major Mental Disorders—Tu/Th 11–1 Gleeson Hall

  “Science of Love,” he says, wistfully. “A total eclipse of the brain. That’s what the class was called. Cool, huh?”

  I stare straight ahead, worried he might read my eyes. See the contempt there. The bitterness. Though I suppose I’d won in a way. Ian had ended up teaching here—community college—after the Love Doctored scandal. And that must’ve galled him. To be relegated to this bastion of mediocrity. “Clever.”

  “Isn’t it, though? I hear he was an amazing teacher. Funny and charismatic and . . . well, he obviously knows his stuff. Knew his stuff, I mean.”

  “Obviously.” I shuffle to my right, searching for an escape route, but I bump against a solid shoulder, mumble an apology. A chain of backs in front of me, jack-o’-lantern faces behind, I’m boxed in now. By hundreds of thin, white candles, just like mine, casting half-moons of shadow and light.

  “Not like these other MCC hacks. We were lucky to have him here.” Onion Breath leans in again. “Did you ever get a chance to hear him lecture?” The thought of it, the memory—Ian with chalk on his fingers, my fingers, my face—is a touchstone. The vigorous rub of an old scar.

  “A while ago.” Mercifully, a man ascends the stage, walks to the podium, taps the mic. The throb of it beats in my chest, reverberating like a drum. “A lifetime really,” I add. Though it feels like yesterday. The smells of Tolman Hall, Room 25. The coffee. Ian’s sandalwood aftershave. “Good morning, future drug pushers,” he’d teased that first day, grinning. “Welcome to Psychopharmacology.” And I’d thought he was clever too then—so clever and so funny. So handsome when he winked at me. Even if his words had rankled me.

  “What do you think happened to him?” Onion Breath’s exaggerated whisper seems to rise above the din of the crowd. And in front of us, two heads turn to look. My face gets hot, even as the cold wind thrashes against it.

  “Probably a murder-suicide. That would be typical.” The voice comes from a girl with a long sheet of black hair and red-framed glasses. Quirky, I’d call her. “I’m sure he got caught screwing the babysitter or his assistant or—”

  “But the cops said they’d both been stabbed,” Onion Breath counters. “That’s a tough way to off yourself. And surely, they’d be able to tell if it was self-inflicted. Have you ever watched CSI?”

  “Whatever. The guy was brilliant, I’ll give you that. But he’s still a guy. A husband. And it’s always the husband. Am I right?” The girl snickers. The question is mine to answer, but my mouth hangs open. Nothing comes out.

  “Best not to speculate, I’d say. Leave the theorizing to the police.” Rescued by the stranger on my right, the shoulder I’d bumped a moment ago. Kind eyes meet mine, and he puts a finger to his lips, points to the stage. Onion Breath and Quirky go silent, reverent, as MCC’s Dean Gotleib addresses the crowd, extolling Ian’s many virtues.

  “I first met the Culpeppers two years ago when my wife and I had the privilege of attending one of their sold-out lectures on love. That day, I believe Ian and Kate saved my marriage. So when Ian asked to teach a few classes at MCC, I was floored and beyond thrilled. As many of you know, he was larger than life. He had a way of making you feel like you were in the presence of a . . .”

  In another life, I yell out fraud. Or narcissist. Asshole. Any number of expletives really. But in this one, I simply grit my teeth and mouth a thanks to the man next to me before I implode. He smiles and extends his hand. The other grips the neck of the candle, holding firm, just below the small circle of paper meant to catch the melting wax. As if we’d be here all night, wi
de-eyed. Devout followers of the cult of Ian. “Dan Jarvis, Psychology Department.”

  “Jennifer Davis.” The name slips from my tongue as effortlessly as my own. It’s his name that sticks. I know it. And I can’t resist. “I think my friend is doing an independent study with you. Cleo Campbell?” The lines in his forehead deepen, furrows etched in sun-spotted earth. And Gotleib drones on in the silence between us. Until I can’t stand it. “Do you know her?”

  “Cleo, you said?”

  I nod, impatient.

  “Are you sure it’s Cleo?”

  It’s almost obscene, the wet click of his tongue as he invokes her name again and again. But it’s me who feels spotlighted, called out, as if I’d been caught passing a dirty note in his class. “I’m sure. She’s working on her thesis. The father-daughter dyad and its impact on . . .”

  I stop talking. His face is a blank. “Nope. Not one of mine.”

  “Tall redhead. Bikes to class.” Screws her professors. Or just one really. I feel desperate. Confused. Like I’ve wandered into a dream. But I’m not wrong. Cleo had said it herself, so many times. Doctor Jarvis says it’s smart to pick a topic from my own life. Doctor Jarvis says I write like a graduate student. Doctor Jarvis says I have potential.

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. And truth be told, I took a leave of absence last semester.” His eyes shift back to the podium, to the oversized Ian and his stark blue eyes, bearing down on us all. Jarvis sighs, so long and so deep, I watch his candle in fear it might burn out. And the therapist in me senses an opening, a soft spot to probe with careful precision. A scalpel rather than an axe.

  “Did you know him well?”

  “I’d been helping Kate with some edits on the new book. She was a talented writer. Ian was lucky to have her. I’m not sure he knew how lucky he was.”

  I’m embarrassed to admit how much it pains me to hear that. How I wish he’d said anything else. So I spit out the first question that comes to mind.