Loving Time

fifty

It was hot and dry in Clara Treadwell’s elegant living room. In fact, the whole apartment had that beginning-of-winter feeling prewar buildings got when the furnaces were turned on full force for the first time after a long humid summer. Clara paced anxiously in front of the windows facing the Hudson River, black as ink against the evening sky. Outside the windows the first snow flurries danced on the decorative black railings and were swept away without sticking. Around her, the room dimmed to deep gray without her noticing.

April Woo sat motionless in a Queen Anne armchair, her face completely empty. This detective was no friendly Connie Chung type, and the emptiness behind her eyes was a little unnerving to Clara, especially after the open approach of the FBI man, Daveys.

Clara considered how best to deal with the situation. Her area of expertise didn’t have cultural sections like the humanities and sociology. Psychiatry still believed that all peoples developed pretty much along the same Freudian model. Lately, Asian psychiatrists had begun advising their colleagues about the Oriental character. Asian patients (even those born and raised in the West) were organized around a concept of the collective good and not around individualism, so patients urged toward a “healthy” Western standard of integration were threatened with becoming selfish, alienated criminals by their culture’s standards. Asian shrinks warned that the incorrect integration of the two cultures could have devastating consequences.

Clara had never treated an Asian patient. She tended to snub Asian psychiatrists in the same way she snubbed the Canadians, the French, and the Italians—as hopelessly backwater and with nothing worthwhile to contribute to the field. The first time the two police detectives came into her office, she’d had them classified. Detective Woo was a definite petty-bureaucrat type, unimaginative, rigid, and unyielding. The Latino she figured was about on the level of the security guards at the door. Macho and clueless. Clara knew how to handle people like that.

Woo’s notebook was open on her lap. Clara noticed that it was the same kind her assistant used, but that the detective’s notes had a few Chinese characters in them. That bit of foreign secretiveness, too, fanned the deep hostility she had toward the police.

Clara believed April Woo had botched the investigation of the Cowles death and set her up for a malpractice suit that threatened the position she’d spent so many years creating for herself. She believed her whole life was on the line because of this young cop’s fuck-up. And now—no doubt because she had allowed Jason Frank to overrule her own best judgment about the condom this morning—Woo was still hanging around, investigating Hal’s death.

Clara suddenly realized it was dark and began to circle the room flipping light switches. Now she could see that the Asian detective’s hands were not completely at rest on her notebook. The cop was getting nervous and impatient. Clara deliberately slowed her pace to let the other woman stew. She’d talk when she was ready.

Clara did not look at the policewoman, did not want to talk to her. It was Friday at five-thirty, now completely black outside. She had made the woman wait downstairs in the lobby for fifteen minutes. Then, up here in her living room, she had delayed several more minutes. Clara didn’t like the police. She had been comforted by the emblems of her own class displayed by Special Agent Daveys, the familiar gray suit and white shirt, the briefcase, and the familiarity with the same English language she spoke. She seemed to recall from somewhere the fact that FBI agents had law degrees, and it was the FBI that set up the techniques of profiling serial killers. Daveys had assured her they would be able to obtain all the evidence in Hal’s murder and do what was necessary to quickly apprehend the man who had killed him.

“What did you find out?” she asked suddenly.

“We don’t believe at this time that Dr. Dickey’s death was an accident,” the detective said flatly.

Clara inhaled through clenched teeth. The sound she made was like the hiss of an angry cat. “The reason?”

“There were no containers of substances that killed Dr. Dickey in his office.”

Clara frowned, raking her thoughts back to the day Hal died. There had been a bottle of Johnnie Walker on his desk. She remembered thinking it was almost empty and Hal was drunk. She had concluded that he must have been drinking all afternoon. She had assumed the bottle was still there.

“Why don’t you tell me about that afternoon,” the detective suggested.

Clara opened and closed her hand around the scab that had formed over the cut on her hand. A few more days and the scab would peel off. By then she was certain the man responsible for it would be behind bars. She tried to concentrate on that as she spoke.

“I returned to my apartment around four on Sunday—I had been in Florida for the weekend. There was a message from Hal on my answering machine.” The tic that lived in Clara’s cheek began to dance. She tightened up, resisting it. “He asked me to come to his office right away.”

“Why?”

Clara fixed her gaze on the Chinese cop. “I’m being harassed. Hal was looking into it for me.”

“And that was what Dr. Dickey called you about?”

“Yes. He told me who it was. He wanted to show me—I don’t know—something that would prove it.”

“And …?”

“When I got to the office, I saw that Hal was drunk. Then, almost immediately, I realized he was having some kind of psychotic break. I didn’t have any idea of the cause, of course. And then he collapsed. It was immediately clear to me something was wrong.” Clara clicked her tongue. “Obviously he was poisoned by the man who was threatening me.”

“Was it common knowledge that Dr. Dickey drank in his office?”

Clara traced the scab with two fingers, testing the skin around it as if for doneness. “I have no idea. I didn’t know myself.”

“Dr. Treadwell, the threats you were getting, the incidents with the scalpel and the condoms that Dr. Frank told us about”—the detective watched Clara play with her hands—“why didn’t you report them to us?”

Clara stilled her fingers. “It was stupid. I realize that now.”

“Dr. Treadwell, you’re the director of a mental hospital. Surely you’d be the first person to understand how dangerous troubled people can be.”

Clara smiled bitterly. “Sick people often get a bad rap, Detective. Sane people can be deadly, too.”

“In any case, you didn’t call the police.”

“No.”

“And a man died.”

“Yes.” Clara looked down at her hands. Now this stupid cop was accusing her of negligence. Her face blazed, but she kept her voice under control. “I said it was a mistake. I had no way of knowing this would happen.”

“What about Raymond Cowles? Did you have no way of knowing that would happen?”

“Detective, the Cowles death has nothing to do with this. If you carry on in this vein, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I think you messed up. I don’t believe Ray committed suicide.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened before?” The detective looked surprised. “No patient connected with your hospital has ever committed suicide? I thought a certain percentage of mental patients commit suicide no matter what you do to help them. Even in the hospital it happens.”

“Look, we work with very sick people. Of course it happens.”

“In fact, it happens fairly frequently.”

“It happens. I said it hasn’t happened to me.”

“But Dr. Dickey was familiar with such incidents. He dealt with them all the tipie. He was the chairman of the Quality Control Committee.”

“Assurance. Quality Assurance Committee. Yes. And that was how we knew the man who jumped off the terrace last year was not a suicide. That man had been poisoned, just as Dr. Dickey was. They’re not all suicides, Detective. Dickey was murdered by Robert Boudreau. We know that, so go arrest him before he kills someone else. That’s what you’re paid for.”

The detective appeared undaunted. “How do we know that? Did Dr. Dickey show you what he called you to his office to see?”

“No.” Clara took a breath and calmed down. “But there was a nearly empty bottle of Johnnie Walker on Dr. Dickey’s desk when I got there.”

“Where did it go?”

“I saw Boudreau outside of the emergency room when I left. Maybe he put the drug in the scotch bottle and then took the bottle after Hal was taken away. In the confusion, I didn’t stop to lock the office. But even if it had been locked—well, obviously he can get in.”

“Wasn’t the bottle there when you came back?”

Clara shook her head. “I never looked. I didn’t go in. I merely locked the door and left.”

“You didn’t go in for the materials Dr. Dickey wanted you to see?”

Clara’s face flared again. “A friend had just died. I wasn’t thinking of anything but that.”

“A friend?” the detective said with a small smile. “Wasn’t Dr. Dickey’s involvement with you causing you some embarrassment, both in the Cowles lawsuit and personally as well?”

“That’s enough.” Clara stood up. “You’re way out of line here. I live by the Hippocratic oath,” she said coldly. “I would never harm another human being. It’s against everything I believe.” She pushed air through her nose, outraged at even the hint of suspicion against her.

“Think about what you’re implying, Detective. I called for the paramedics. I was the one who thought the death was suspicious. I requested the autopsy. Why would I do that if I wanted to get rid of Hal?”

The detective closed her notebook. “I’m not a psychiatrist, Dr. Treadwell. You’re the psychiatrist. It’s not for me to explain why people do the things they do. I just know people do the most unreasonable things all the time.” April stood and hitched her bag to her shoulder. “And who knows, maybe somebody put the stuff in the liquor bottle as a prank, to make Dr. Dickey act crazy, to make him sick so he wouldn’t be competent in his job anymore. Maybe the person didn’t know he’d down the whole bottle in one go …”

“Get Boudreau,” Clara snapped. “This isn’t a hard one. This guy has killed before. He’s threatened me.” Clara closed her eyes. She didn’t want to scream at this clever cop.

“I’m trying to help you,” she went on, her voice tight and angry. “I’ve given you the man’s name. Your job is to go and get him, not stand here fishing in my stream.”

“It’s my job to fish in all the streams,” April said softly. “Any old fish doesn’t count. I’m paid to catch the right fish.” She headed for the door, then suddenly turned back. “So you didn’t put the drug in the bottle and then take the bottle away after Dickey was dead?”

“No,” Clara said angrily. “I’m a doctor. I could never use a medication to hurt someone.”

“Well, thanks. It may have been painful, but I needed to know that. I appreciate your help.” The detective headed for the door with no further comment.