The Dark

by Andrew Neiderman

  “It can wait. The hungrier we are, the better it will taste,” she said.

  He laughed, rose, threw on his robe, and followed. Now that he was calmer, he felt contrite.

  “I’m sorry I was so aggressive. You’re right. It’s not like me.”

  He sat on the settee. His face was still quite flushed, his hair over his forehead, but he looked more like himself.

  “You want a drink?” she asked him.

  “Please.”

  She made him a cocktail and brought it to him.

  “Go on, Doctor,” she said stepping back, her left arm folded under her breasts.

  Grant laughed to himself, recalling what Carl had said about his wife analyzing him. That was the way Maggie looked at the moment, like his analyst.

  He shook his head, took a sip of his drink, and sat back, gazing toward the ceiling rather than at her.

  “I have described this patient’s perceived problem . . . this compulsive obsession to get people to do wrong things, harmful, immoral things.”

  “Yes.”

  “Patients often try to get their doctors to admit they have similar problems. It makes them feel less insecure to know that others, even doctors, have committed comparable actions or have like thoughts troubling them. It’s part of what builds trust between the psychiatrist and his patient. It alleviates guilt, the fear of being freaky—”

  “I get the point,” Maggie said.

  “Yeah, well, everyone has some evidence of compulsive behavior. We all might count our money occasionally, maybe even twice the same day if we forgot or thought we lost some, but if we did it every ten minutes . . .”

  “It would be obsessive.”

  “Right. Anyway, my patient was trying to make the point that I, like him, instigated someone to do something wrong or did something wrong myself.”

  “So?”

  “To do so he brought up three examples, specific examples of acts I might have committed in my past.”

  Maggie stared for a moment, her eyes narrowing.

  “So?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “What are you saying, he accurately described something you actually had done?”

  “Yes,” Grant said.

  “More than one thing?” He nodded. “So it wasn’t just a lucky guess?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Her body tightened as if a chill had passed through her, too.

  “Who else would know about these bad things you had done in the past?”

  “Well, all psychiatrists go through analysis themselves, but the chances of someone learning the intimate details of that analysis are quite remote. I think I once mentioned some of it to Henry after we had a few drinks together, but it’s very unlikely, impossible to suspect he would tell a stranger intimate things about me.”

  “How else would you explain such a thing, Grant?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve never seen you so obsessed with a case, Grant,” Maggie said.

  He hesitated and leaned forward. “There’s more,” he said. “He just happened to turn up at the gym today.”

  “He’s really following you? You didn’t imagine it?”

  “I don’t know. He claimed an attorney friend of his brought him there and he just happened to spot me.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She stared a moment, sipped her drink. He sighed deeply and sat back.

  “What else, Grant?”

  “There’s something about this patient, something . . . intangible. He gets to me, gets inside me. I sorta lose my gracefulness, if that makes any sense. No patient since interning has made me feel as nervous and made me so careful about what I say and ask.”

  “I don’t like any of this, Grant. Why don’t you refer him to someone else?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can. You told me sometimes a patient and his psychiatrist have a personality problem and it’s best to have another doctor involved.”

  Grant shook his head.

  “You’re too proud to admit you can’t handle it, is that it, Grant?”

  “No. I’m too . . . intrigued. Maybe that’s the same sort of sin,” he added softly.

  “You once referred a patient to Henry for other reasons, didn’t you, Grant?”

  “That was different. Henry has become known as the expert in functional dyspareunia.”

  “Had become,” she reminded him.

  He sat back, shaking his head.

  “It’s hard to believe he’s gone, and gone that way, Maggie.”

  “I know.” She stared a moment, sipping more of her drink. “At this last session, did this patient Bois give you another example of his instigating?”

  “Yes.”

  She paused almost as if she didn’t want to hear about it and then nodded.

  “Can you tell me?”

  He described the Mosley situation just the way Bois had presented it to him.

  “Grant, it’s becoming eerie. You had better go to the police.”

  “What? I can’t do that. This is privileged information between me and my client.”

  “But what about his following you about?”

  “I can’t say for sure he’s doing that, and besides, patients often develop fixations on their doctor. I said I can handle it,” he said.

  “But . . .”

  “Come on, Maggie.” He shook his shoulders as if throwing off a cold feeling. “You’ve got me talking nonsense. The man’s delusional. He’s finding stories in newspapers.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “What else could it be? You want me to go to the police and tell them I have a patient who has the power to make others do evil things? What’s the charge, counselor? Being a bad influence? Psychiatrists have enough problems these days being taken seriously thanks to some of the crap that goes on in the courtroom. I’m not going to become part of all that,” he said firmly.

  “Okay, Grant,” she said, not wanting to stir up old arguments. She took another sip of her drink. “Maybe it’s better we put all this aside and concentrate on Suzy Homemaker,” she offered.

  He brightened immediately.

  “Love to.”

  She rose.

  “Give me another twenty minutes and maybe I’ll surprise you.”

  “Wrong psychology. You should diminish my expectations so when I sit down, I am impressed.”

  “I,” she said, standing tall, “however, am confident.”

  He laughed as she marched back to the kitchen.

  Twenty minutes later she called him to the dining room. She had the lights low, the candles lit, and wine on the table. A flick of the switch on the stereo produced the already set up disc of love songs.

  “Doctor Blaine,” she said, pulling out his chair. She had prepared the chopped salad he loved and for the main course she had made her own sauce for the pasta.

  “I’m impressed,” he said after tasting it. “I really am. This is as good as Antonio’s.”

  She brightened; they finished off one bottle of wine and then started on another. Before coffee, they were both giggling like teenagers. They had a cappuccino machine they had used only once. Maggie admitted not knowing how to use it, so Grant reread the directions and started to make the cappuccino, but they had been gazing at each other lustfully throughout dinner, giving each other side glances, letting their eyes linger, until they both felt the heat. When she moved beside him, ostensibly to watch how he made the cappuccino so she could do it next time, his arm went around her waist and then his hand moved down until she was smiling, her breath hot on his neck. They kissed.

  “I’d like another chance,” he whispered. “To get it right.”

  “What about the cappuccino?”

  “Fuck the cappuccino,” he said.

  He scooped her up far more gently this time and carried her back to the bedroom.

  This time their sex reassured them of their commitme
nt; they were more eager than ever to please each other, and Grant was far more gentle and caring. When he pulled back from her after his climax, he saw there were tears streaming down her cheeks. She smiled through them and he kissed them and stroked her hair lovingly. Then he turned on his back and caught his breath. Neither spoke for a long moment.

  “Did you ever tell me?” she suddenly asked.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Any of the evil things you did in your past?”

  “Of course not. I wanted you to think of me as Mr. Perfect.”

  She turned and leaned on her elbow to gaze into his face.

  “You are Mr. Perfect. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Is the trust a patient has with her psychiatrist the same trust a woman has with her lover?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “It’s one thing to open your mind; it’s another to open your heart.”

  She smiled.

  “I like that. You can be romantic, Grant Blaine, and for an analyst, that’s not an easy task.”

  He laughed. Then he grew serious.

  “So what about children, Maggie? We keep putting off the decision.”

  She lay on her back again. After a moment of silence, she spoke.

  “Maybe I should get the partnership locked up first and then get pregnant and take the leave of absence,” she said.

  “And after you get the partnership and they present you with the greatest case the firm ever had, will it be after that case and then the next?”

  “Unfair, Grant.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” he said, and started to rise. “Let’s have our coffee.”

  She seized his arm.

  “I can do both if you’ll help; if you really want me to do both.”

  “Maggie, I have no doubt if anyone can do both, you can. I just don’t want you to lie to yourself about it. You’re the one who has to believe she can do both.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” she said, smiling. “You don’t mind having a schizophrenic for a wife: a relentless, conniving defense attorney during the day who becomes Suzy Homemaker, housewife, and mother at night?”

  “Sounds like Cat Woman. Anyway, we’re all a little schizophrenic.”

  He laughed at the surprised look on her face and then put on his robe.

  “Back to the cappuccino.”

  They had it on the patio and sat listening to the sounds of traffic on Sunset Boulevard.

  “Don’t forget tomorrow night,” she said.

  “I forgot. What?”

  “Your mother’s ball . . . at the Hilton?”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess we had better show up for that one.”

  “Grant, I was wondering about something.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Make my day.”

  “No, really. Why did this Bois give you the name of one of his victims this time? He didn’t give you Dunbar’s name, right?”

  “He thinks I’m going to go out there and check on it, I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  “Sometimes a patient can’t get himself or herself to tell you the truth about himself or herself, but they want you to know it, need for you to know it, and so they leave clues, deliberate and obvious lies. Like a serial killer who wants to be caught,” he explained, “and leaves just enough for the police to track him.”

  “Great,” Maggie said. “Serial killers.”

  He laughed.

  “Stop worrying so much.”

  “I keep thinking that’s what Henry did: stopped worrying until it was too late,” she said.

  “I don’t know what Henry did.”

  “He did nothing,” she replied. “And that’s not the Henry Flemming you and I knew.”

  Grant was silent. From somewhere east, they could hear the sound of a siren. It suddenly seemed closer than ever.

  “Grant?”

  “Yes, Maggie.”

  “Does this Bois ever talk about Henry?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What did Henry think of his problem?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Didn’t you get his records sent over from Henry’s group?”

  “Bois insisted I don’t.”

  “Why?”

  Grant shrugged.

  “He wanted a fresh and objective analysis. He was very adamant about that.”

  “Really?” She thought a moment. “But he must have respected Henry if he continued to see him.”

  “So?”

  “So why wouldn’t he want you to know what Henry thought?” she followed, with that cross-examination speed for which she was so famous in the courtroom.

  Grant was a little annoyed by her tone. He didn’t like feeling he was on the witness stand.

  “It’s not an unusual request, Maggie. I’ve had other patients who’ve come to me after being with another therapist and not wanted me to be influenced by their previous doctor’s findings.”

  She sipped her coffee. He could see the wheels turning.

  “Maybe he wasn’t ever one of Henry’s patients. Maybe he made it up.”

  “Then how did he meet Dunbar, Maggie? And why would he do that? Come on. You’re getting paranoid. I’m not going to tell you any more about him. That’s a promise.”

  “That’s a mistake, Grant.”

  “I thought you said I was Mr. Perfect.” He smiled. “I don’t make mistakes when it comes to my patients.”

  “Maybe that’s what Henry thought, too,” she said, and wiped the smile from his face.

  5

  Despite Grant’s facade of self-confidence, Maggie remained worried. His situation with this patient Bois was the first thing that came to mind when she woke the next morning. When she got to the office, she asked Phil for a copy of the Dunbar case facts and put aside her own work to read them.

  Clarence Dunbar was a salesman for a dental equipment company and quite successful at it. He and his wife had bought a home in Westwood five years ago. She had been a receptionist at ITF, an independent film production company, for nearly four years. They had no children. Dunbar, because of a psychosexual dysfunction, had been seeing Henry Flemming. According to the record, he had been in analysis for over six months.

  One night, Dunbar had risen from bed, quietly gone out to his workroom, fetched a hammer, and returned to bludgeon his wife while she slept. After the murder, he went back to bed and didn’t call the police until eight o’clock in the morning. They found the hammer beside Janet Dunbar on the bed. Dunbar himself was quite disoriented when the police arrived, babbling more about the hammer than his wife. Dunbar’s sister was the one who had called Phil to ask him to take the case.

  Maggie digested the material and thought for a while. Then she made an impulsive decision, called Phil, and asked him if he could make arrangements for her to visit with Dunbar.

  “I was just going over to talk to him myself,” Phil said. “What’s up?”

  “I’ll explain in the car,” she promised.

  As they rode to the jail together, she described her fear that the man Grant now had as a patient could very well be doing the evil things he claimed to be doing and may, in fact, have influenced Dunbar.

  “Shouldn’t Grant recognize that, Maggie? I mean, he kids me a lot and I kid him, but I have a great deal of respect for his abilities and intelligence. Anyway, if he needed anyone else’s input, wouldn’t he ask? Maybe go to Carl Thornton?”

  “I think he’s too close to this one, maybe because this patient was one of Henry’s. He feels an obligation to solve it himself.”

  Phil glanced at her and she shifted her gaze quickly.

  “There’s more to this,” Phil said. “Isn’t there?”

  Maggie was silent.

  “Trouble between you? Just tell me it’s none of my business,” he added.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  Phil laughed.

  “Let’s just say, I just don’t like the effect this patient is h
aving on him,” Maggie offered. “It worries me.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’d like to talk to Dunbar alone first, Phil.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  When they arrived at the jail, she entered the conference room with Phil, who introduced her as his associate.

  “She needs to ask you a few questions, Clarence. I have to do something and I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

  Dunbar nodded. Phil looked at Maggie.

  “All yours, counselor.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She sat across from Dunbar. He was about five-feet-eight, easily fifteen pounds too heavy, with a round face and dark brown eyes. His brown hair was cut neatly and brushed back, but he had a rather fancy pompadour.

  “You know why you’re here?” Maggie began, recalling Lydia Flemming’s behavior after she had killed Henry. Dunbar nodded. He followed it with a shrug.

  “I don’t remember doing it,” he claimed. “But I don’t deny I did because I remember thinking about doing it on and off for days.”

  “Do you know why you did it?”

  “Sure,” he replied quickly, but with a matter-of-fact tone that implied everyone knew. “It’s because of what she did to me.”

  “And what was that, Mr. Dunbar? What had your wife done?”

  “She took away my . . .”

  “Go on. Please.”

  “Manliness,” he said, and quickly shut his lips, as if releasing the word were blasphemy.

  “And how did she do that?”

  “In lots of ways.” He looked up, his eyes finally animated, only now they were bright with anger. “I didn’t even realize what she was doing. My psychiatrist explained it.”

  “Doctor Flemming?”

  “Yes. Once I told him everything, I could see he was just as angry about it as I was.”

  “I knew Henry Flemming very well, Mr. Dunbar. He wasn’t one to show anger so easily. That’s not something a psychiatrist is supposed to do,” she added softly.

  “He did this time,” Dunbar insisted. Maggie noted how he was becoming more agitated, shifting in his seat, opening and closing his fist, nibbling on his lower lip.

  “Okay,” she said calmly. “Why did your wife do this to you?”

  “She’s was getting back at me.”

  “For what?”

  “For not making her a baby.”

  “Why didn’t she ask you for a divorce? Wouldn’t that have been easier?”