Hanging Time

41

Jason sat in his swivel desk chair. Milicia was opposite him in the chair he used with patients who liked to lie on his leather sofa. Her face was very pale. He could see a muscle twitch in her cheek. She was wearing a conservative suit and very little makeup. The sensitive skin under her eyes was dark and bruised-looking. She’d lost a few pounds. The stress in her face, and what appeared to be sleep deprivation, made her look vulnerable and seriously frightened. Jason could feel his body stiffen in defense against any sympathy that would work against his being able to help her.

“What is your real concern, Milicia?” he asked, getting to the core of the matter right at the start.

“I told you I was afraid Camille would hurt somebody, and now I know she has.” Her words were angry. She spat them out at him, showing him how furious she still was at his being out of town when she needed him. She regarded him accusingly, as if it were his fault that it had taken twenty-four hours to make contact. He knew it was the time lapse she would count, not the attempts he made to reach her when she was out.

Milicia had insisted that she needed to see him Tuesday, his first day back in the office. There was no putting her off. In order to work it out, he’d had to reschedule his appointment with Jenny, the woman who did his secretarial work and bookkeeping.

He was used to hearing his patients accuse him of everything under the sun. He was concerned by the way Milicia looked, but unmoved by her rage.

“You think … Camille … has hurt someone?” he said flatly, careful to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“Killed someone, Jason. Don’t you listen to the news?”

He nodded. Of course he did. “So?”

She stared at him as if he were retarded, or worse. “There’s been another boutique murder.”

“Oh?” Her face was flushed. He could see she had begun to sweat.

“Just like the one last week,” she prompted. “Right here on Columbus. Don’t you remember?”

He nodded. “Salesgirl in a boutique, wasn’t it?” He’d read about it.

“I had a feeling then. I had this really creepy feeling.” Milicia covered her face with her fingers so he couldn’t see her. “I just had a feeling Camille had something to do with it. And now there’s been another one. The truth is, I’m terrified, and I feel responsible.”

She dropped her hands and confronted him, green eyes flashing. “I came to you for help. I told you all about Camille, and you let this happen.”

Jason didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he let it out. He glanced at the clock on the table. He didn’t have much time to calm her down.

“Milicia, let’s go back a little. You didn’t tell me when we met the first two times that you thought your sister was a murderer.”

“How could I? You didn’t even believe that she was sick.”

Had he missed something here? Jason thought back to his notes, quickly reviewed them in his mind, shook his head. Milicia had been vague. She said she came to him because she wanted her sister to get treatment, wanted her removed from her boyfriend’s influence and taken care of in a safe environment. But she had not been able to give any convincing reasons for intervention. And certainly no legal ones. It was very hard to put people away. You couldn’t do it just because they were inconvenient.

At the time of Milicia’s visits, Jason had a feeling her assessment of her sister’s violent tendencies was an afterthought. Milicia hadn’t known what constituted symptoms of potential violence. Certainly, she didn’t mention the homicide in the neighborhood as part of her concern. If she was really worried about the boutique murder, why didn’t she tell him about that right away?

“Milicia, I must confess. I was away this weekend, and I read the papers only briefly this morning. I didn’t see any article about another—”

“It was on the news a little while ago. I heard it in the office,” Milicia said. Defiantly, she crossed her legs the other way, showing a lot of thigh in the process.

“It happened today?” Jason frowned. But Milicia had called him on Sunday, starting very early in the morning. How could she have known if it happened today? “But you called me on Sunday.”

“I called you on Sunday because she disappeared on Sunday. I told you she’s been acting very strange lately. So when I couldn’t reach her, I was concerned. In fact, I was frantic. Camille is autistic, catatonic—I don’t know what you call it. Sometimes she can’t move at all. She just sits like a stone with no reflexes.… She calls it soul death. And then she goes kind of wild afterward.”

What was going on here? Jason’s face was perfectly still, like Camille’s in soul death. He was trying to figure it out. The scene wasn’t playing for him. He didn’t know where it was wrong.

“Have you located her since?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s come back. She won’t tell me where she was. I’m so scared.” She looked scared.

Jason drew a breath. “What makes you think Camille is responsible for these—murders?”

“I just do, just the whole picture, the sort of killings they are. She liked to hang our dolls. In a row. Sometimes she put my clothes on the dolls and then hung them. I told you that, didn’t I? Dressed them up and hung them by their necks.”

Jason’s head had begun to throb, but he didn’t move.

“She’s obsessed with death, and with hanging. She says she feels like she’s choking. Often she can’t eat anything because she thinks she’ll choke on the food. Sometimes she chews one bite for an hour. It’s disgusting to watch.” Milicia’s agitation became extreme as she described it.

“Look, Milicia,” Jason said gently. “I can understand that all of this is disturbing. But murder is going a very long way. The two, uh, murders you’ve told me about happen to coincide with your own anxiety about your sister. It’s an unfortunate coincidence. In any case, all the studies have shown that most murders are committed by men. Only a tiny percentage of murders are committed by women, and they’re almost never stranger murders. Look, I’m not a detective, but I haven’t heard any compelling evidence—”

“But I know—”

“What do you know?”

“I know Camille. You don’t. Sometimes you just know things.” Milicia thrust out her chin. The twitch had moved up to her temple.

He watched it jump. It was true that he didn’t know Camille, and his not knowing Camille made it even more important that he be extremely careful with this. Milicia had her own agenda. He decided to try something else. He’d float an interpretation. If he was right, she’d calm down. If he was wrong, she’d dismiss it out of hand. Then he’d know what to do.

“You’ve told me Camille is angry,” he said gently. “What she does is experience her emotions as murderous and dangerous. But that is very far from acting on those impulses. You’ve also told me that Camille’s angry feelings incapacitate her. She’s overwhelmed and becomes immobile. People like that are not capable of any action at all, much less very complicated and stressful acts of violence. Having murderous feelings is kind of like having fantasies—watching movies of oneself killing someone, smashing a car, setting a building on fire. They’re wishes about committing violent acts. Wishes are not reality.”

Yet as he spoke, Milicia shook her head. “You’re wrong about this. You’re talking theory. You’re telling me what you’ve read in studies. I’ve seen you do this before. You push yourself away from what you don’t want to hear. The bottom line, Doctor Frank, is if my sister is killing people, and if you don’t do something about it, you’re responsible for murder.”

The woman was very smart. A door in Jason’s mind closed, and another one opened. He’d made his judgment. He would no longer try to manage the patient. He’d manage the situation. Abruptly his manner altered. His warmth was gone.

“I think we can change the subject just a bit, Milicia. You’ve been trying to persuade me that your sister has actually committed murder. Let’s presume that what you say is true. In that case, I must notify the police immediately.”

“If I wanted to go to the police, I would have gone to the police in the first place,” Milicia retorted, but the tension in her face began to ease. Her color slowly returned.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” she murmured. “Is there no other way?”

“In a matter like this it’s not a judgment call,” Jason said firmly. He wasn’t going to negotiate. “I’m not questioning whether we should go to the police. You want me to accept your suspicions. All right, I do. Where life is at stake, I have absolutely no choice but to go to the authorities.”

“You mean it, don’t you?” Milicia’s cheeks were red now.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well then, it’s out of my hands.” She sat back, soothed in an instant.

Jason could feel something like a sigh of relief escape her, and suddenly her abstract design came into crisp focus for him.

“I don’t want Camille to suffer,” Milicia was saying, completely in control again. “I had hoped we could just take care of her quietly. But now …” She made a gesture of helplessness. “You say we have no choice. Calling the police is the only thing to do.”

Jason thought of April Woo and said nothing. He had every confidence the police would get to the bottom of this, and a whole lot faster than he could. He couldn’t talk to Milicia’s sister unless she came in to see him. The police had instant access to anyone. He watched Milicia’s face. Now he got it. This was what Milicia had wanted all along.

Milicia had wanted police involvement, but she couldn’t get it on her own. She felt she needed an authority figure behind her. But what was the pathology? Was Milicia a variation on the kind of people who confess to crimes they didn’t commit out of guilt for unrelated acts of their own? And because they crave attention. Did she crave attention? Was the twist here that she wanted to turn her sister in to the police for something the sister most likely did not do in order to punish the sister? Or did Milicia figure this kind of stunt was the route she needed to take to draw attention to the illness of a sibling she couldn’t control?

Jason’s brow furrowed deeply. He was well aware that he had been manipulated by Milicia in a very big way. But there was always the possibility, remote as it seemed to him at the moment, that the sister had committed the crimes.

As Jason’s eyes bored into Milicia, her blush deepened.

“When do you want to do it?” she said, her voice throaty.

He continued to study her, looking for an answer. “Right now,” he said coldly. “Immediately. I know a detective. Do you want to call her, or do you want me to call her?”

“A woman?” Milicia laughed.

“Yes, and very good at her job.”

Jason hadn’t spoken to April Woo since May, in the debriefing after Emma’s rescue. But he thought about her often. He felt no hesitation about calling her now, in a situation like this.

“You do it.” Milicia’s voice sank to a whisper. Once again she covered her face with her fingers. “I couldn’t. I’d be incoherent. I’d break down. Poor Camille. I hate to think what will happen to her.”

“Fine.” Jason reached for his address book and looked up the number. Even months later he realized he still knew it by heart. He glanced at the skeleton clock. It was five-thirty. Sometimes Detective Woo was there after four o’clock, and sometimes she wasn’t.