The Dark

by Andrew Neiderman

  “I meant to develop a way to defend her,” Phil said, holding his smile. He shook his head. “I certainly didn’t mean I approve of what happened. I’m just looking . . .”

  “I couldn’t get through to her,” Grant said to Maggie. “I couldn’t make any sense of what she said, either. When she looked at him, she apparently didn’t see Henry. We haven’t seen them for months, so I don’t know what to make of it. Didn’t you speak with her recently?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken to anyone, really. I came off the Hobson case and went right into the Todres matter. You know what our lives have been like this year.”

  “Yeah,” Grant said a little too dryly. “I know.” He looked at Phil. “I’m not your man for this. First off, I’m sure my relationship with Henry and Lydia would discount any testimony, and second,” he continued, looking at Lydia, “you know what I think of forensic psychology these days. You lawyers,” he added, turning back to Phil Martin, “have your teeth sunk into it so deeply, I don’t even recognize what’s being said in the courtroom.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll find a reputable psychiatrist for her,” Phil said, missing Grant’s point or ignoring it.

  “I’ve got to get back to the office, Maggie. Let me know when Henry’s children arrive and we’ll see about visiting with them later.”

  “I better go back in there and get some of the paperwork moving,” Phil said, nodding at the entrance to the police station.

  “Right. Sic ’em, counselor,” Grant said.

  Phil laughed.

  “Hey, it’s like anything else. You hate us until you need us, and then you love us,” Phil said.

  “God help me from ever needing you,” Grant replied.

  Phil laughed harder.

  “I’d love to be in on some of your private discussions at home.”

  “I know you would,” Grant said.

  “Grant. Stop it,” Maggie said, standing. “This is not the time or the place for this discussion. It’s too horrible what’s happened.”

  Grant nodded.

  “You’re right.” He kissed her quickly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  He hurried away, chased by the images Lydia Flemming had spun for him in the conference room as much as by anything else. Late that afternoon, Maggie called to tell him that Henry and Lydia’s son Thackery and his wife Camille had arrived from San Francisco. She suggested they meet at the Flemmings’ residence and visit with Thackery and his sisters when they arrived.

  Grant hadn’t realized how long it had been since they’d been to the Flemmings until he pulled into their driveway and parked behind Maggie’s red 325i BMW convertible. He admitted to himself that it wasn’t only her fault. He hadn’t spoken to Henry or Lydia, either. Time had a way of slipping by, rushing past like some stream after a sudden burst of a dam. When you finally realized how much had gone, it was too late to draw it back.

  Inside, Maggie sat with Henry’s son and daughter-in-law, both looking too stunned to speak. Thackery was a tax attorney. Physically, he took after his mother more than his father and was barely five-feet-five, slim to the point of looking fragile, with small wrists and hands.

  “I should have paid more attention to what my mother was telling me these past months,” he complained. “But who ever thought it would come to this?”

  “What was she telling you?” Grant asked. Maggie had made some coffee and the four of them sat in the living room.

  “She complained about my father a lot. She said he was becoming a stranger.”

  “How?” Maggie asked.

  Thackery shook his head.

  “We haven’t been down here for a while,” he said, now guiltily preparing some rationalization.

  “Neither have we,” Grant said quickly, glancing at Maggie.

  “That was part of how my mother claimed he had changed. It was Dad’s doing. She said he didn’t want to see any of his close friends.”

  “I wish she had called me,” Grant said softly.

  “I told her to, but she said she had made the mistake of telling one of his associates at the group about his personality changes. Dad became enraged, accusing her of betraying him,” Thackery said.

  Maggie looked at Grant.

  “That doesn’t sound like Henry at all.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But it might have been part of her own problem,” he said softly.

  “Her problem?” Thackery asked.

  “I just saw and spoke to her for a few minutes today, Thackery, but it looks to me like she’s lost hold of reality. She’s evincing symptoms of a form of schizophrenia, but there has to be a fuller examination and diagnosis.”

  “But wouldn’t my father have noticed that?” Thackery asked.

  “Of course,” Grant said.

  “Then how . . . why?”

  “I don’t know,” Grant said. “Henry might have felt he was handling it. I just don’t know.”

  Some of the associates from Henry’s group began to arrive to commiserate with the family. As more people learned of the tragedy, the phone rang and others arrived.

  Henry and Lydia’s daughter Cassandra and her husband arrived from Tucson, soon to be followed by the Flemming’s second daughter, Beatrice, and her husband, in from Santa Fe. They, too, had been away from their parents for a while, and also talked about their mother’s complaints concerning their father, but like Thackery, his sisters had no idea how serious things had become.

  Finally, Grant and Maggie decided it was time to leave. Late in the day, Maggie called him to say she had fallen so far behind because of the loss of her morning, she would have to stay at the office and send out for dinner.

  “I forgot about this pretrial hearing in the morning,” she explained. “Sorry.”

  Grant found himself alone at home, preparing leftovers and muttering to himself about how the modern American scene had reversed itself. Used to be the wife waited home alone while the husband went into overtime at work, he thought.

  The Flemming murder was the number one story on the local news. Every channel carried it and highlighted it with pictures of the Flemming home and interviews with other psychiatrists, some patients, and especially members of the bar who commented on Henry’s expertise at murder trials and rape trials. Grant had forgotten how much forensic work Henry had done recently. It was difficult to resist. The money was good, the exposure was great, and the impact on one’s career and reputation enormous, especially in a high-profile case. Carl Thornton’s group had been specializing in expert witness testimony lately, sending associates as far as New York to testify in criminal proceedings. But Grant remained adamant. His treatments would stay behind his closed doors where they belonged. He was aware that some were sarcastically referring to him as the “gentleman psychiatrist,” the one who wouldn’t dirty his analysis, but he ignored it. He was comfortable and happy with himself. What was more important?

  It was nearly eleven o’clock before Maggie returned. Grant was already in bed with a book. He heard her come in and heard her high heels clicking as she marched down the tile corridor to their bedroom.

  “Hi,” she said. “I just want to get something cold to drink. Anything new?”

  “Blue chips are up three points.”

  She smirked.

  “You know what I mean, Grant.”

  “Nothing on the news that we didn’t know. I saw your Clarence Darrow giving his sound bite, calling Lydia a seriously disturbed woman. What do you attorneys call that, setting a foundation, influencing prospective jurors?”

  “What would satisfy you, Grant—seeing Lydia sent to hard time, maybe even the gas chamber?” She walked away before he could respond. He folded the book and lay back on his hands to gaze up at the ceiling. What did he want? Henry was dead; it was bizarre. Lydia was suffering from something. If ever there was a case of diminished responsibility . . . but how, why?

  Maggie returned and silently got ready for bed.

  “I keep going over it,” he said. “How did
we lose touch so completely?”

  “It sounds like Lydia was living in abject terror, damned if she didn’t do anything and damned if she did. You can’t remember anything unusual about Henry the last time you two spoke?” Maggie asked.

  “No. We had some of our typical philosophical arguments, but he was always the calm, clear-thinking man. I didn’t see anything coming. He mentioned something about working on a new book and I just assumed that was taking up much of his free time. He certainly didn’t say anything negative about Lydia. And we were all close enough so that he would have, I’m sure.”

  She crawled under the covers and put her head on his shoulder.

  “It’s terrifying,” she said. “I tried working hard to keep from thinking about it, but every once in a while I would stop and see Lydia’s face, that strange smile that made her look like someone else. You know what I mean? It’s as if . . . she was possessed and what she said about Henry is even truer about her.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “That’s not Lydia.”

  He nodded.

  “Yes, schizophrenics often take on such distinctly different features, gestures, even voices that it’s possible to think of them as being possessed. Maybe psychiatry is just a fiction. Maybe we’re trying to put medical and scientific concepts on supernatural events,” he said.

  She lifted her head.

  “You don’t believe that?”

  “No, but after today, I won’t laugh when someone else proposes the idea,” he said.

  He reached over to turn off the light and in the darkness, more to confirm their own sanity and safety, they kissed and held each other until they both surrendered to fatigue and let sleep shut off the shock of what they had witnessed and learned.

  Twice a week and sometimes once on the weekend, Grant ran on the beach. It was only about a fifteen-minute ride down Sunset to the Will Rogers Beach, where he parked, stretched, breathed in the raw, misty sea air, and then began his jog toward the pier in Santa Monica. Usually he was at the beach by seven and found it deserted. Today, as he ran, he hoped more than ever that the ocean breeze would wash the cobwebs of sadness out of his mind and help him to be clear-thinking. Sometimes he ran with his eyes closed, striding as if in a dream. Today, he did that.

  He felt his feet lift and fall in the sand, his ankles straining with the effort, with pain traveling up his calves and into his thighs. He wanted it; he wanted to suffer to purge himself of his nightmares and dreary thoughts. It was working. He felt his lungs clearing, his mind stimulated. Then he caught the whiff of a familiar redolent fragrance and opened his eyes to see her pass only inches from him.

  She was wearing skintight white shorts that pinched her buttocks so just an inch or so of them were exposed. Her shapely legs lifted and fell rhythmically. She wore no socks or sneakers and he could see the red-tinted toenails in the sand. His gaze went to her back. She wore an abbreviated halter, really no more than a fancy bra. Her shoulders were tanned and smooth. When she turned, her cerulean eyes were dazzling with lust. Her smile was taunting.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, “can’t you keep up?” Her laughter trailed behind as she picked up the pace.

  So did he. He dug his sneakers into the sand and pushed on his thighs until he drew within a foot or so from her. Her dark brown hair floated, the strands so close he could reach out and touch them. His breathing quickened and he felt himself hardening as she titillated him with her childish laugh, her teasing eyes.

  “I have a blanket out here,” she said, turning on the sand toward the ocean. He slowed, but followed. She collapsed on her blanket, laughing.

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing, Mrs. Leyland?”

  “Morning exercise, what else?” she said, leaning back on her hands and smiling. “You don’t think I came out here just because you do, do you, Doctor?”

  “That’s exactly what I think, Mrs. Leyland.” He stood there gazing down at her. She turned her shoulders suggestively and ran her tongue over her lips.

  “Beats your office, doesn’t it?” she said, holding her arms out. “Sunshine, fresh air, the ocean.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’d like to hold all my sessions here, but there are distractions.”

  “I know,” she said, teasing him with her smile. “But I thought you should know something I haven’t told you during any of our sessions.”

  “Oh?”

  He knew he should just walk away, return to his jog, but that halter was so loose and her cleavage was so deep and inviting, he was drawn for a moment. He rationalized that learning about a patient any way possible was a worthy endeavor.

  “Whenever I’m in the sunshine and fresh air, I get aroused even more. I could make love with anyone. My heart starts to pound; I just want to open myself,” she said, spreading her legs a little.

  He felt his own heart begin to palpitate even more than it had from the jog.

  “Why do you suppose that is, Doctor? Am I Nature Girl?”

  “In natural surroundings, our basic instincts emerge more clearly, vividly,” he said.

  “Basic instinct,” she said. “I like that.” She batted her eyelashes.

  “Yes, well, this is a discussion we should continue in the office.”

  “Can’t we continue it here?”

  “No, Mrs. Leyland. We can’t,” he said, but it almost sounded as if he were really sorry, as if he wished he could. He was surprised at his own tone. It frightened him and he stepped back. “I’ve got to finish my jogging,” he said, and backed farther. She started to laugh. He turned and quickened his pace, her laughter following and chasing him like a sharp, embarrassing whip.

  He ran harder than usual and finished the run sooner than he expected. When he arrived back at the parking lot, he wondered if he was breathing harder from the run or the sexual arousal. He glanced down the beach and saw she was gone. He hadn’t treated many patients with nymphomania. He had always been a little afraid of it and was beginning to regret taking on this one.

  He stretched, cooled down, and got back into his vehicle to go home to shower and change for work.

  The sight of his mother’s Rolls took him by surprise. It was just a little after eight A.M. Patricia Blaine up, dressed, cosmetically together, and properly scented by this early hour? What’s happening to the privileged classes? he wondered with amusement.

  “In here,” Maggie called when he entered the house. They were having coffee in the sunroom, a recent addition to their Beverly Hills hacienda. The room was three-quarters glass and offered a view of their banana trees, flower garden, fountains, and pool with the water cascading over the blue- and white-tiled whirlpool.

  Maggie was dressed for work, stylish in her light green suit. His mother wore her black leather toreador outfit. For a woman of sixty, she had a remarkable figure. Of course, he knew her breasts were implanted nearly twenty-five years ago, she had had a tummy tuck five years ago, a butt tuck four years ago, various facial surgeries, and even cosmetic work done on her hands. Her plastic surgeon built a house on her body work, Grant thought.

  “Mother, what are you doing up and at it before noon? I thought you told me that’s uncivilized.”

  “It is,” she said, “but I got talked into heading the fund-raiser for the new pediatric wing at the hospital and these idiots planned a meeting at nine A.M. Maggie was kind enough to provide me with a jolt of caffeine. How do you manage to get up and get all sweaty before breakfast, Grant?”

  “It’s not easy, Mother.” He looked at Maggie, all smiles. “I’ll just shower and come down,” he said.

  “Grant, I don’t understand this business with Lydia Flemming,” his mother said before he could turn away.

  “Business? She shot and killed him, Mother.”

  “That’s what I mean. Obviously, she’s not in her right mind. Maggie tells me you were asked to evaluate her and testify in court.”

  “Oh?”

&
nbsp; “I didn’t exactly say he was asked to testify, Mom.”

  “Well, if he’s examined her and can make a diagnosis . . .”

  “I didn’t spend enough time with her, Mother.”

  “Nevertheless, dear, look at what’s going on. Do you know the murder is on the front page of the L.A. Times this morning?”

  “I didn’t look at the paper yet.”

  “Well, it is. Everyone’s wondering about it. A noted psychiatrist’s wife shoots him in cold blood? Really, Grant, it will be on Hard Copy, for sure. Think of what your testifying could do for your career. I’m sure you’re more capable than anyone Maggie’s associate can get and—”

  “Mother,” Grant said slowly, “I’m not crazy about being involved in a case concerning someone who was almost a father to me.”

  “That’s exactly why you should involve yourself, Grant,” she continued, undaunted. “You should have more concern.”

  “Mother,” he said, closing and opening his eyes to illustrate his battle to remain patient, “when you are too close to a patient, you can’t be properly objective.”

  “Oh, that’s—”

  “That’s the truth and my decision about this is final,” he said firmly.

  “Just like his father,” she said, shaking her head. “Stubborn to the point of irritation. When he was a little boy, he would fold his arms and close his eyes and pretend not to hear me until I gave up.”

  Grant folded his arms and closed his eyes. Maggie roared.

  “That’s not funny, Grant,” his mother said. “How do you put up with him, Maggie?”

  “She closes her eyes,” Grant said, and shrugged. “Got to get dressed. Have a good committee meeting, Mother, and try to listen to other people when they talk.”

  “What?”

  He hurried away, very self-satisfied. As he showered, his thoughts went back to Deirdre Leyland’s short shorts and that bulge beneath the bottom, the bulge of promise. He found himself getting hard again and deliberately turned the water colder.

  “Check your libido at the door, Doctor Blaine,” he warned himself.

  His mother was gone by the time he went down for breakfast. Maggie was just finishing her coffee.