Hanging Time

73

Jason and Charles lived and worked in the same latitude on opposite sides of Manhattan. Charles’s office was on Seventy-ninth Street near the East River. Drawing a straight line across the island, Jason’s was on the corner of Riverside Drive, facing the Hudson River. Charles had a view of the sunrise and Jason had a view of the sunset, but there were differences between them much deeper than who could watch the day begin and who could watch it end. Charles knew whenever he had the slightest feeling of unhappiness and promptly dealt with its source. He was unable to tolerate a moment’s annoyance more than was absolutely necessary.

Jason often suffered vague uneasiness—even intense malaise—for weeks without acknowledging anything was wrong. He wanted everything to be all right with him so he could be strong for his patients and resisted giving his feelings of discomfort a name.

Since yesterday he had something new to be uneasy about. On the way across town in the taxi he kept worrying about the ethics of his situation. What was his responsibility in a case like this? This issue had come up with him before, once in a child abuse case and once with the unethical behavior of a colleague in treatment with him. Questions of patient confidentiality, a potential victim’s right to be protected, and a moral responsibility to uphold the laws of the land were exceedingly tricky to balance. The bottom line, he knew, was that there was no elegant equation for the proper management of these issues. To satisfy one moral imperative, it was sometimes necessary to disregard another.

As Jason evaluated the things Camille had told him, he could see a clear picture of the escalation of her illness over the years, especially the years after puberty when the sexual abuse continued until Milicia left for college.

Sibling rivalry was an old, old story. The lethal greed and self-interest of the daughters of King Lear, and the bastard sons Edmund and Don John, were only a few of Shakespeare’s dangerous, warring children. The Bible had many more. In fact, aside from temptation and lust, sibling rivalry was the Bible’s most-told cautionary tale. No invading enemy army could be as vicious, as insidious, or as dangerous as the voracious, grasping child desperate to be first and foremost in his parents’ hearts.

In dysfunctional families like the one in which Camille and Milicia Honiger-Stanton had grown up, with a great deal of illness, little love, and no one watching, a brutal and sadistic war could rage on undetected for years. In this case it was continuing still, even after the death of both parents. Jason felt as if he had been caught in the path of a tornado with no place to hide from the howling wind and flying objects. It was not lost on him that the second victim, Rachel Stark, had died during a gale.

Unrestrained by conscience, human emotions could be as wild and destructive as nature run amok in fire and storm. Jason heard the venting of savage and vengeful feelings in his office daily. He was accustomed to patients’ self-involvement so extreme, nothing else but their fury and desire for revenge mattered to them. Still, he did not find it easy to accept the possibility that someone he was treating could be close enough to that murderous edge to cross it without his awareness.

“You’re not God, Jason,” his first wife liked to scream at him. “Why can’t you accept the fact that even though you went to medical school, you’re not a king, you’re not a god. You’re just a man, and not a very good one.” His first wife had been surprised and embittered when their marriage ended. She had no idea how she sounded, never heard a word she said.

About five minutes early, Jason stood on Madison Avenue praying for his nausea and dizziness to recede. As he waited, horns erupted at a sudden gridlock in the intersection. The Seventy-ninth crosstown was closed. It had been closed for over two years now, but a clot of traffic still got stuck several times an hour because drivers used to crossing there refused to adjust to the change.

He caught sight of Charles down the block, hurrying toward him. Charles had his complaining face on; his handsome features were furrowed with offense. If Jason hadn’t felt so shaky, the sight would have made him smile.

“Where do you want to go?” Charles demanded without preliminaries when he reached him.

“How are you, pal?” Jason tried not to feel hurt that his old friend didn’t offer his hand.

“How do you think I am? I feel like shit. I can’t believe you kept me in the dark about all this. Brenda and I have been working with Milicia for a year. She designed our house. It isn’t even finished.…” His voice trailed off.

“I know.” Jason touched his friend’s arm. “Let’s sit down somewhere and have a cup of coffee, huh?”

Reluctantly, Charles nodded. “Fine.” His lips were pursed at the thought of his big, unfinished house, and the outrage of his best friend involving his architect in a murder case.

They headed uptown toward a coffee shop on Madison, each deep in his own thoughts.

“It’s hot,” Jason offered as they trudged unhappily along.

“Yeah.” Charles loosened his tie.

That was as far as they could get until they were sitting in the air-conditioned booth stirring Sweet’n Lows into frothy cappuccini. The tiny place was still crowded with an eclectic lunch crowd. They took a table in the window. A heavily made-up old lady with a Walkman stuck in her ear sat at the next booth.

“I just can’t believe you did this without talking to me, Jason,” Charles said peevishly.

“Why don’t we just review the situation?” Jason suggested. He tore open two more Sweet’n Lows.

“I trusted you,” Charles muttered.

“I don’t think it’s me you’re upset about.”

“Oh, yeah? You took a step involving a colleague and friend of mine that will affect her for the rest of her life. You didn’t inform me before you did it, and didn’t inform me after it was done. How do you think I feel?”

“I think you’re upset that you missed it.” Jason took a swig of his steaming coffee. It burned like a son of a bitch. He felt like spewing it out in a great spray and splattering it against his old friend’s hundred-and-seventy-dollar Turnbull and Asser shirt, custom-made blue banker’s suit, and hundred-dollar Gucci tie. Charles was being such an asshole. But instead, he swallowed the mouthful, scalding his palate, tongue, and throat. Shit.

He thought of a case in Boston, or maybe it was Atlanta. A psychiatrist with a patient who committed a number of murders over several years while he was in therapy to ease his tension headaches. The patient fit the profile of a psychopath. He was a charming and persuasive personality with a high level of social perceptiveness who just had to break every rule he encountered. He hurt everyone around him, committing one destructive act after another and describing some of them with undisguised relish. But the psychiatrist who was treating him never associated him with the other more vicious crimes that were well-publicized in the area.

How did he miss it? The question was raised during a seminar on the antisocial personality at a conference Jason attended. His colleague’s answer to the question was a shrug. “He lied to me,” he said. End of story.

Hey, but the patient lied all the time. All patients lied. Everybody knew that. A good doctor was supposed to get beneath the lies. Milicia sexually abused her sister for many years. She destroyed Camille totally. And Milicia never would have told him. Would he have figured it out eventually?

“Okay, what’s really going on here?” Charles demanded.

“Remember that day I came to Southampton?” Jason started slowly.

“Of course I remember it,” Charles said irritably. His eyes drifted over to the dessert cabinet, where a lavish display of cakes and pies beckoned. “They’d just finished putting the kitchen cabinets in.”

“I got there on Sunday. When did Milicia get there?”

“Oh, about ten-thirty, eleven on Saturday night. Something like that.”

“Did she say why she got out there so late?”

Charles shrugged. “Something about having to work late. Why?”

“On Saturday night?”

“Why?”

“The first girl was murdered that Saturday night. The police think she died around seven in the evening, just after the boutique closed.”

“So, what are you telling me?” Charles glanced at the desserts again. He was a hedonist, never able to let an appetite go unsatisfied for long.

“I’m telling you that Sunday night Milicia drove me home. We talked. I had the feeling she might be interested in a relationship, but I—didn’t pick up on it. After I got out of the car, she said she wanted to see me professionally. I was surprised. I thought if she needed professional advice, it would be more natural for her to go to you.”

Charles focused on that. “Hmmm,” he said.

“I thought maybe you were hitting on her—”

“Jesus, our architect? What do you think I am?” Charles exclaimed.

Jason chose not to respond to that. “I thought she must need somebody neutral, so I agreed to see her. Charles, the whole thing was odd. She was seductive, clearly trying to manipulate me for some purpose that was unclear to me. I tried to get her to tell me what the crisis was. What event had occurred to cause her to seek help at this particular moment. She felt a great urgency, but refused to say why.”

“So?”

“So, we met a number of times and she kept hinting things about her sister. But she gave me no real indicators that would call for any kind of intervention. She became frustrated and hostile. She was very angry at me for being unable to see her every day last week, but I was in Baltimore on Thursday. Friday I went out to L.A. for the weekend.”

“You went to see Emma. How did that go?”

Charles changed the subject suddenly, throwing Jason off balance.

“Well. It went well,” Jason murmured. But his visit with Emma seemed like a long time ago now.

“That’s good. I like Emma.”

Jason didn’t say anything. He more than liked Emma. He loved her.

“Yeah, I know.” Reading his thoughts, Charles looked sad for a moment. “Want some cheesecake?”

Jason shook his head. He felt old, was thirty-nine today and already he felt he’d crossed the line to forty.

“Then what?”

“Milicia called me several times while I was away, again about the sister. Again, nothing specific. We connected on Tuesday. Yesterday. It was then that she told me about the second murder. She said she’d heard about it on the news. You know how unnerving she is. You were the one who told me there was something about her—”

Charles nodded.

“Well, what?” Jason demanded.

“Little things.” Charles gave up the fight. He raised his hand for the waiter.

The waiter had a huge handlebar mustache that did not come out quite far enough to conceal an ugly black mole on his cheek. The mole reminded Jason of Camille.

“I’ll have a cheesecake and another cappuccino,” Charles said. “Are you sure you won’t?” he asked Jason.

“Nothing for me.”

“Milicia was so upset last night, really wired. She felt she’d come to you in all innocence and you let her down in the end, sent her into the lion’s den alone. And you were over there interviewing her sister the whole time. Unbelievable.”

Jason took a deep breath and let it out. And Charles believed Milicia. That’s how good she was.

The cheesecake came. Charles shoved a bite into his mouth. Jason waited until he’d swallowed.

“Milicia sexually abused her sister for years.”

Charles dropped the fork.

“Are you sure?”

“All the indicators are there. Camille’s illness, her dissociation. Self-mutilation beginning in adolescence … She’s very sick, but she’s not a killer.”

“Do you think Milicia …?” Charles couldn’t bring himself to frame the question. He shoved his dessert to one side.

“The police are pretty sure the killer is one of the three of them. It could be the boyfriend dressed up to look like Camille. It appears Camille was set up.”

Jason picked up his fork and reached across the table to Charles’s plate, tasted the abandoned cheesecake. Then he told Charles about his sessions with Camille and the police, and filled him in on everything he knew about the case, including the ritualistic aspects of the crime scenes and how the careful design of the murders related to the ritualized abuse of years ago.

Cloudy with doubt for a long time, Charles’s eyes slowly cleared to a hard intensity. From time to time as Jason spoke, Charles stopped him with a question, then nodded at the answer. Finally Jason finished.

Charles tapped his coffee spoon against the table, shaking his head at the cracked Formica tabletop. For a moment the two friends sat in silence as Charles searched for a response to a situation that was incomprehensible to him. The people Charles knew and treated suffered from a different kind of illness. They didn’t do things like this.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmured, finally raising his head to look Jason in the eye. But even as Charles spoke in denial, Jason could see that all their years of training, and their long and close relationship, weighed more heavily than any doubts he could have. Charles did believe it.

Jason reached out to pat his friend’s arm, then raised his hand for the check.