Missing Persons

11

“The girl was anxious about the holidays? And she misses her mother? That’s what the session she had with Hannah was about? That’s it?” I said to Diane.

“No. No, that’s not all of it,” Diane said. “Come on, I’m doing this from memory. It was no big deal at the time. I didn’t take any notes. The whole consultation lasted five minutes, maybe. God, I should write things down. I just should.”

“What do you remember?”

“The girl told Hannah that her mother has a severe mental illness and had left Boulder years ago. The girl doesn’t talk to her much, misses her. Hannah was speculating about the mother having bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, but she didn’t really have enough information. She was worried about the girl developing symptoms.”

I wanted to tell Diane that I already knew the details. I wanted to tell her about all the weddings that Mrs. Miller attended, about the lovely bonnets and the QVC gifts, and about the delusions, and the voices. I wanted to tell her that at the time I did my eval that I thought Hannah was right about the schizophrenia, wrong about the bipolar disorder.

Instead I said, “You can’t tell anybody, Diane. You can only divulge the fact that this girl saw Hannah for psychotherapy if you have reason to suspect that there has been, or is likely to be, child abuse. Otherwise the privilege holds.”

“But she can’t seek care without a parent’s permission until she’s fifteen.”

“You’re sure about that?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Diane was often sure about things that turned out not to be true, but I suspected she was right about that one. “Even if it’s true, I don’t know whether that would abrogate her privilege.”

“But it might.”

“You’re not even sure it was really Mallory. You’d have to violate privilege even to be certain. God knows there would be lawyers involved, and once there are lawyers involved, anything can happen. Either way, the privilege won’t evaporate today. If they started litigating this tomorrow you wouldn’t have an answer before next year’s aspen season. You know lawyers better than I do.”

“What do you mean? You’re married to one, while I”-she paused for effect-“am married to a Mediterranean god.”

I decided not to take that detour with her.

“What if she’s dead?” Diane asked.

Shit. “Diane, do you know that she’s-”

“No, no, I don’t. I don’t. But if she were, if that was determined, I was wondering if I could-”

“No, you couldn’t-confidentiality survives death. Well, actually you’d have to tell her parents if they asked, because they would probably have control of her estate, which includes all her medical records, but-”

“Why would they ask? If they didn’t know she’d been in treatment, why would they ask?”

“Exactly.”

Diane and I had been partners longer than Lauren and I had been married. I wasn’t surprised that we were finishing each other’s thoughts. But the ping-pong nature of the conversation we were having felt awkward to me. Why? I suspected that each of us was in possession of some information that we weren’t sure how to handle, information we didn’t want to keep to ourselves, but information we weren’t at all sure we were permitted to share.

“The girl also told Hannah-”

“Wait, I want to do this face-to-face. I have a patient late this afternoon at the office. I’ll come downtown. You available?”

She sighed. “I was just about to head out to the after-Christmas sales on the Mall. Things are going to get really picked over if I don’t get down there soon.”

After-Christmas shopping on the Pearl Street Mall? I would have preferred to be strapped into a chair and serenaded by The Captain and Tennille.

“With Raoul?” That was wishful thinking on my part. The worse the party, the more grateful I was for Raoul’s company. After-Christmas shopping on the Mall sounded like a very bad party.

“Shopping? With me? Are you kidding? He won’t shop with me.”

There was a caution there I knew; Raoul was a wise man. I swallowed a sigh. “Okay, where do think you’re going to be? I’ll meet you someplace.”

The little office building that Diane and I owned together was an architecturally pedestrian-certainly not a painted-lady-early-1900s Victorian house on the west end of Walnut, a couple of blocks from the Pearl Street Mall. The odds of finding street parking in downtown Boulder during the closeout-sale-frenzied week between Christmas and New Year’s were about the same as the odds of being eaten by a great white shark, so Diane was planning to stash her Saab behind our building and start her quest for bargains near Ninth and Pearl on the west end of downtown. Since I had a patient to see, I told her I’d park at our offices, too, and suggested we rendezvous outside Peppercorn at three.

Dirty snow from the Christmas-night snowstorm lingered in shady places along the herringbone brick pathways of the Mall, but despite what the calendar said, the day was pleasant in the sun. That’s where I was sitting enjoying an afternoon interlude when Diane sauntered up to me at about ten after. She was carrying two huge shopping bags. I gave her a hug and a kiss on one cheek. She gave me one of the bags to carry. In many ways-mostly but not entirely good-Diane and I were like an old married couple.

We began walking, the sun low against our backs. From the heft of the bag in my hand, I surmised that she had been scouring the sales for either bricks or bullion.

“This doesn’t happen to me, you know,” she said. “This is the sort of thing that happens to you. This stuff with this mystery girl and Hannah. This murder and kidnapping and cops and criminals crap I seem to be mixed up with. It’s your specialty, not mine.”

I was tempted to argue that it was debatable that Hannah had been murdered, and that it seemed more likely that Mallory was indeed a runaway and not a kidnap victim. But Diane’s bigger point was close to the truth. Karma did seem to deliver mayhem to my door with disturbing regularity.

“If it’s what you think it is, I’m mixed up in it, too, Diane.”

For a moment she was quiet. She either didn’t quite hear me, she didn’t quite believe me, or she was busy discounting my words as an unwelcome empathic gesture.

Finally, she replied, “Sure, you were part of the Hannah thing. I know, I know. I know you were there. And well, now you’re part of this other thing, but that’s only because I’ve dragged you into it. Listen, if you’d rather I talk to someone else about this, I understand. But I really felt I needed a second opinion about what to do next, and I don’t know anyone else who has as much experience with crazy therapy crap as you do.”

Crazy therapy crap? Once again I was tempted to argue her premise, but recognizing the futility, I said, “The truth is that I was a little bit mixed up in the Mallory thing already, even before we talked.”

She heard me that time. Her voice grew conspiratorial. “What?”

I shook my head and kept walking. “I need to make this a consultation, too. My knowledge is clinical, just like yours.”

She’d grown tired of the forced-infantry-march nature of our pace and abruptly stopped walking. Once I realized she had stopped I did, too, and turned back to face her. Over the top of her head the sun was looming just above the highest peaks of the Front Range in the southwest sky. The light was sharp but gentle. It felt only faintly warm on my face.

“Tell me,” she said.

It was a shrink phrase, psychotherapy shorthand for “go on” or “don’t stop there” or “damn your resistance, spill the beans.”

“This is for real-a professional consultation-you can’t tell anyone.”

“Holy moly,” she said.

I wished I had my sunglasses on my eyes instead of in my jacket pocket. I was squinting into the sun. Holy moly? “Is that a yes?”

“I’m thinking. You get into the weirdest things, Alan. I’m not sure I want any part of whatever it is.”

She was playing with me. “Sure you do,” I said.

“You’re right, I do. I’m a glutton for punishment. Okay, go ahead and consult with me.” She raised her chin an inch and tilted it up to the side as though she were opening herself for a right cross. I opened my mouth to reply just as she changed her strategy. “No, no, let me guess.” She made a face that a bad acting student might make to try to portray someone cogitating, contorted it a few times for dramatic effect, and finally said, “Nope, I give up.”

“Years ago, I saw the Millers, Mallory’s parents-those Millers-for an assessment. One session only. Turned out to be a long eval, over two hours. I saw them as a couple, immediately recognized that Mrs. Miller’s individual problems were… significant, and referred her on to Mary Black for ongoing treatment and some serious pharmacological intervention. I never saw them again. Mary took over from there. Mr. Miller came back sometime later to thank me for my help. But I never laid eyes on the kids, don’t even remember if I knew their names.”

Diane was a smart lady. She made all the appropriate connections instantly. “That must be how Mallory knew about Hannah, right? Right? I bet the crazy mother parked Mallory in the waiting room while she had her psychotherapy sessions and her med consultations with Mary. Don’t you think? If Hannah had seen a little girl alone in the waiting room she would have chatted her up. You know she would have. She would have made friends with her. Especially if she saw her sitting out there alone on a regular basis. That’s the connection. That’s it.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s probably it.” Hannah’s kindness was almost as legendary as her obsessiveness. I had no trouble manufacturing a vision of Hannah on her knees in the waiting room connecting with a lonely or frightened little girl who was waiting for her mother to finish an appointment with her psychiatrist.

Hi, sweetheart, what’s your name?

I’m Mallory.

I’m Hannah. You waiting for your mom to finish her meeting?

“Holy moly,” Diane repeated.

Diane started walking down the Mall again. I tagged along behind. “Holy moly” was a new phrase for Diane. I was already beginning to hope that-like most everything designed by Microsoft-it came equipped with built-in obsolescence.

I said, “I’d bet mortgage money that her disease isn’t stable. Rachel Miller sabotaged every last treatment that Mary Black tried years ago.”

Diane added an edge to her tone and said, “Why do you say ‘disease’? Almost everyone else says ‘illness.’ ”

“A lot of other people say ‘clients.’ I say ‘patients.’ Do you know why? ‘Patient’ is from the Latin. It means ‘one who suffers.’ It fits what we do.”

She smiled, and shifted her voice into sarcasm mode. “I bet if a new client walked into your office and had to listen to you parsing Latin all day long, she’d become one-who-suffers in no time at all. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Other people say ‘illness’?”

“They do.”

It probably wasn’t true. Diane’s penchant for assuredness about this kind of thing often had scant correlation to reality. Regardless, it took me only about three steps to arrive at an answer to her question. “Think about it. The word is disease. Dis. Ease. It’s apropos, don’t you think, to what we deal with every day?”

In my peripheral vision I could tell that Diane had shaken off my explanation with the same ease with which she’d just ridiculed the tiny bit of Latin I recalled from high school. I consoled myself with the fact that she was equally dismissive as she discounted her husband Raoul’s opinions about just about everything political.

Thankfully, she moved on to a fresh thought, and said, “In case you didn’t know it, she’s in Las Vegas. The girl told Hannah that her mother is living in Las Vegas. She gets phone calls from her every once in a while. Her father doesn’t know that they’re in touch as much as they are. It’s a source of conflict. The girl wasn’t sure what to do.”

“Vegas?” I asked, but it was more of an “ah-ha!” exclamation than a question. I was thinking, Of course Rachel Miller is in Las Vegas. Where else would someone go who is addicted to weddings?

“You don’t sound that surprised, Alan. Does she gamble? Is that part of her pathology, her dis-ease?”

“No,” I said, refusing to bite. “She goes to weddings. That’s what the presenting complaint was for the couple’s therapy: Rachel Miller went to lots and lots of weddings. She thought she was a special guest at all of them. It was the center of her delusional world. I suspected that she had command hallucinations but she didn’t admit to hearing voices during our one interview. Her husband told me she did, that she heard voices.”

“Paranoid schizophrenia?”

“That’s what I thought at the time, but a lot has changed in how we all view psychotic process, you know? I’m not sure how I’d diagnose her today.”

“Mixed thought and mood disorder? That’s what you’re thinking?” Diane asked.

“Something like that, yes.”

By that time Diane and I had covered all four blocks and were at the east end of the Mall. We were waiting at the light to cross Fifteenth onto the sidewalk on the still-sunny side of Pearl Street. I said, “You want to keep going or head back?”

“I don’t care. We can walk to Denver if you want, but I want to hear more about Mallory’s mother and all the weddings.”

It took me a while but I explained Mrs. Miller’s odd nuptial delusions to Diane, who had many questions, some psychological in nature, more having to do with wedding logistics, owning all those outfits, and buying all those gifts.

I had answers for a paltry few of the questions in any of the categories, psychological or matrimonial. After multiple prods on her part I tried to refocus her by saying, “I only saw the Millers for that one session. That’s all. Most of my energy went into trying to understand her history and then trying to prepare the two of them for a whole different kind of treatment than they’d come in the door thinking they’d get.”

“Receptions, too?” Diane asked, ignoring my pleas of ignorance.

I told her, yes, that Rachel had also attended the receptions. I shared the story about the one at the Boulderado where she’d been busted by the sheriff’s deputy.

Diane had more questions. While I protested my continued ignorance about most things matrimonial, Diane chided me that it had been a very long session I’d had with the Millers, and I should know more than I was letting on.

Once Diane had-finally-exhausted her queries about Mrs. Miller and her serial wedding attendance, I had a question of my own. It was the question that I had wanted to ask Diane since the moment she told me that Hannah had done an intake with the girl who was probably Mallory. “Do you think it’s possible that Mallory went to Vegas to see her mother? Based on what Hannah told you, would she have done that? Could that be what this is all about?”

“It’s possible. Hannah stressed that the girl missed her mother. May even have said it a couple of times, so you have to wonder. Hannah focused on the mother/daughter relationship and the conflicts between the girl and her dad.”

“Might explain the Christmas Day stomachache,” I said. “Her holiday anxiety, missing her mom.”

“Psychosomatic?”

“Why not? If she was worried enough to seek a therapist on her own, she could certainly be worried enough to develop symptoms.”

She paused after a couple more steps. We had walked all the way down to Eighteenth Street by then, almost a full ten blocks from our cars. I stopped and turned back to the west. The late December sun was just a slash of brilliance above the Divide and pedestrian traffic was thinning out on the Mall.

“What was the mother like, Alan? Could she have come and taken Mallory?” Diane asked.

“I suppose that’s possible. Anything is, but-”

“The cops would check that first, right? They would have gone to Vegas and checked with Mallory’s mother to see if her kid was there, to see if the mom had been in Boulder?”

“Yes,” I said. I was also thinking that the Boulder cops who went to Vegas would probably have found a truly disturbed woman.

Diane casually tapped me on the shoulder and handed me the second shopping bag. Like a fool, I took it.

We started walking back in the direction of the mountains. The western sky was much brighter than the eastern sky had been. She asked, “So are you ready now?”

Segue or no segue, I knew exactly what she was talking about. We really had been friends a long, long time. “Sure, as ready as I’ll be. So what else did the girl tell Hannah?”