Missing Persons

12

The moment the sun completed its descent behind the Rockies the day turned from pleasantly brisk to downright cold. What I had been considering a light breeze felt decidedly like an icy wind. Diane had seen it coming-now that I was schlepping both of her shopping bags she was able to shove her mittened hands deep into her jacket pockets for additional warmth.

My gloves were in my car and the flesh on my hands was the color of the fat on a slab of uncooked bacon.

“The kid was concerned that her dad was ‘up to something’ or ‘into something.’ She’d left Hannah with the impression that she didn’t like it, whatever it was. The girl was feeling like she had to do something about it, or else. That kind of thing.”

“ ‘Up to something’? That’s a quote?”

“Close as I can remember. It was a casual consultation-I didn’t exactly memorize it. I didn’t know what was about to happen.”

“ ‘Or else’? What did that mean?”

Diane shrugged. “I should have asked. I didn’t ask. She also had some friend trouble, too, was conflicted about some guy she was seeing.”

“Boyfriend?”

“I guess.”

“It felt like typical adolescent stuff to you?”

“At the time it did.”

“And the nature of what the girl’s father was up to?”

“Hannah didn’t know.”

“Precipitant?”

“See, that’s the thing. I asked Hannah that, too. Hannah felt there was some urgency for the girl, but couldn’t get the kid to admit to anything.”

“A secret?”

“I wish I knew.”

“The holidays?”

“Hannah didn’t stress that part. I suppose it’s possible.”

“The police should know all this,” I said. “Boulder’s two most high-profile recent…”

I didn’t know what to call Hannah’s death and Mallory’s disappearance. Diane did. “Crimes. The word you’re looking for is ‘crimes.’ ‘Felonies’ would work fine, too.”

“Whatever. The police would want to know that there’s a possible connection-a big connection-between Hannah’s death and Mallory’s disappearance. But nobody knows about it but you,” I said.

“And you,” she reminded me.

“Mostly you. It’s too bad you can’t tell the police.”

She skipped for one step. I think that’s what she did, anyway-just one little schoolgirl skip. Why? Who knew? “I bet that twerp Slocum would love to know what the two of us know, wouldn’t he? He’d probably cuff me again and throw me in the slammer if he knew what I was keeping from him.”

I was thinking that not only would Detective Slocum like to know, but so would Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Geraldo Rivera, and Oprah. Not to mention the Enquirer and the Sun and the Star.

And Bill Miller.

I was also thinking that Diane’s continuing animosity toward Detective Jaris Slocum, though completely understandable, was one of the ways that she was postponing her grief about Hannah’s death. That moment, however, wasn’t the time to confront her with that particular reality. Years of experience with her had taught me that with Diane I had to pick my spots.

“Raoul wants me to sue Slocum. Did I tell you that?”

“For what?”

“He doesn’t care. He calls him ‘that little fascist.’ ‘Let’s sue that little fascist, baby,’ he tells me. He hates it when I say it, but sometimes he’s such an American.”

I said, “Raoul has too much time on his hands. He needs to go start a new company or something.” Diane’s husband was a legendary Boulder entrepreneur. When he wasn’t nurturing somebody else’s start-up tech company, he was busy casting the bricks to create a new one of his own.

As we crossed back over Fifteenth to the herringbone pathways of the Mall, Diane asked the money question: “So what do I do about all this?”

“Did Hannah leave any notes?”

“She named me in her will to handle the details of closing up her practice should anything happen to her. But I haven’t found any notes about that session. Zip, nada.”

Few therapists show the foresight to make death stipulations in their wills. But Hannah had. I said, “She knew Paul Weinman back when, didn’t she?”

“Yes, she knew Paul.” Paul had been another friend of Diane’s, a psychologist who’d skied into a tree at Breckenridge years before. His sudden death, and the subsequent uncertainty about what to do with his current cases and his practice records, had caused a lot of procrastinating Boulder therapists to make plans for what would happen to their practices in case of their own death.

“Do the police have her appointment calendar?” I asked.

“Hannah just used initials, same as us. They would have to cross-reference the calendar with her billing records or her clinical files to find out who she was seeing. Cozy is handling the cops for me, and he’s not going to let them see anything confidential.”

“Anything else important in Hannah’s records?”

“Not really. Closing her practice has been routine. I’ve done a few one-time visits with her patients to check for decompensation or acute reactive problems to her… death. I decided to pick up a couple of her cases. Oh, and did I tell you I’m going to see the woman who was at her office that day, the day that Hannah died?”

“The woman with the hair?” And the Cheetos. “You’re seeing her for treatment?”

“I am. She’s having a lot of trouble. I guess it’s not too surprising, considering. She’s coping by becoming a little Nancy Drew, trying to solve the mystery of what happened to her therapist.”

“Isn’t it kind of odd seeing her? Given what happened.”

“You don’t think it’s a problem, do you?”

I wasn’t sure. Psychologists are prohibited from treating people with whom they have another existing relationship. It means, for instance, that I couldn’t treat Grace’s preschool teacher, when Grace gets around to having one. But I didn’t know if the fact that both parties had been present when a possible murder victim’s body was discovered really constituted a preexisting relationship. The issue had never come up before in any of the ethics discussions I’d had.

I didn’t want to make Diane crazy, so I immediately resolved my ambivalence by saying, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Good. Anyway, I’ve referred a few of Hannah’s other patients to other therapists in town. Don’t be hurt. I’m not ignoring your talents-they all wanted female therapists, baby. But most of them decided not to continue for now. I’m still having her office phone lines forwarded to my number. The hardest part of the whole thing has been letting people who hadn’t heard what happened to her know that she is dead. And, you know, how she died.”

“I can imagine.” We took two more steps. “Is it possible you spoke with her?”

“With whom?”

“Mallory.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it possible she was one of the people who called who hadn’t heard about Hannah’s death?”

“Oh my God.”

“Well?”

“It’s possible. I had a couple of difficult calls… a woman asked… she was young-I guessed a CU student-wanted ‘Dr. Grant.’ I’m not sure I ever got a name. I told her what had happened and she… hung up. Oh my God.”

“When was that call?” I asked.

“Last week. Maybe Monday. Oh my God, I may have talked with her.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

“I’ve been upset,” Diane said, her voice suddenly hollow. “I might not have handled it well. When Hannah’s patients asked me how she died, I…”

“Suggested the possibility she’d been murdered?”

“It’s not just me, Alan. Everybody-the papers-I’m not the only one…”

I touched her. “It’s okay.”

“The kid was really upset. I offered to meet with her, but she hung up.”

What did it mean that Diane might have talked with Mallory a few days before she disappeared? Maybe nothing. But it was possible that Mallory walked away from the conversation believing that her therapist had been murdered.

“What about the other call? You said there were two difficult calls.”

“The other one was from a man. Wanted to know what would happen to his therapy records. I assured him I had custody of them and that they’d stay confidential. He wouldn’t give me his name, either. He asked how he could get the records. I told him. He didn’t want a referral. He was almost… belligerent.”

I didn’t reply right away. Diane wanted to move on. “Speaking of records, Hannah’s attorney-the guy who drew up her will-called me a couple of days before Christmas and asked if she had left any records that would allow final bills to be prepared.”

“For her patients?”

“Yes.”

“That’s rude. Who’s the attorney?”

“Guy named Jerry Crandall. I don’t know him. He’s a general-practice guy, doesn’t do much divorce work.” Diane did do a lot of divorce and custody work; she knew all the family-law attorneys in town. “But that’s what I told him, too, that it was kind of cold. He said he had a fiduciary responsibility and that Hannah’s accounts receivable are an asset of her estate.”

“Fiduciary responsibility aside, I’m not sure I’d like to get a bill from my dead therapist.”

“He’s a lawyer. Can I finish?” Diane didn’t wait for me to say yes. “I told him I’d take a look and get back to him. While you guys were up skiing I checked through Hannah’s practice calendar and matched things up with her recent process notes, gave him a list of unbilled sessions. When I compared all her records I realized that the session with this kid wasn’t in her calendar, didn’t have any notes, and had never been billed. It was the only one not in her calendar.”

“No other sessions without notes?”

“None that I found. Hannah was Hannah.” Loud exhale. “What do I do, Alan?”

“In a word, nothing. Hell, Diane, you’re not even sure it was Mallory. I think the kid is entitled to confidentiality, so you can’t reveal what you know from the session.”

“It was her,” Diane said.

I ignored that. “Any hint of abuse during the consultation?”

“No.”

“You can’t tell anyone then, including the police.”

“What if the police knew Mallory had been kidnapped? If the parents got a note, or a ransom demand. Would that change things?”

I thought about it for the length of time it took to try, and fail, to pass three young mothers pushing strollers wheel hub to wheel hub on the bricks of the Mall. It was the pedestrian equivalent of trying to drive past some recalcitrant semis that were rolling side-by-side on the highway.

“Sure. Then it would be a whole different ball game. By definition a kidnapped kid is a kid who’s being abused, and abuse changes all the privilege rules. If you thought you knew something that could aid the investigation into her kidnapping-once the authorities decided it was a kidnapping-you would have an ethical and legal responsibility to divulge it to the police because of the child-abuse exception.”

Diane said, “But the police say she ran. As long as that’s the current theory, I can’t play the I-think-she’s-been-kidnapped card.”

The holiday lights that were strung on the trees on the Mall began snapping on block by block, and within seconds snakes of twinkling dots wrapped the skeletal forms that stretched out in front of us. Diane and I both watched the spectacle develop for a moment.

“That was pretty,” I said. “Sorry, your hands are tied.”

Hers may have been figuratively tied; mine were literally going numb from the cold and the weight of the shopping bags I was carrying.

“I suppose this means that I probably shouldn’t prepare a bill for the intake and send it to Mallory’s father.”

Diane’s last comment was intended sardonically, but I recognized some fuzzy edges at the margins; the ramifications weren’t as clear as she might have expected. “It’s an interesting point, Diane.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you were looking for a way to tell her father that you know something, sending him a bill would probably be an ethically acceptable excuse for letting him get a toe inside the consultation room door.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“I’m not sure you would. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say you believed that what you learned from Hannah’s consultation might help track down Mallory.”

“And if I did believe that…”

“The fact that no bill has gone out yet might give you an avenue to breach confidence with her father. If you were sure the kid was Mallory. Did Hannah say anything about billing arrangements for her session with the girl?”

“Not a word. But I have to work under the assumption that the kid didn’t want her parents to know about the therapy, don’t I? Knowing Hannah, I bet she did the session pro bono, anyway.”

“Why? Why would you assume that the girl wouldn’t want her father to know about the therapy?”

“Why? Because the kid just showed up without an appointment, and she told Hannah that he was up to something and she wasn’t happy about it.”

I played devil’s advocate. “But what if he’s the one who sent her to see Hannah? What if her father already knows all about whatever it was that caused her to go? Ninety-nine out of a hundred kids are in psychotherapy because somebody sends them, and the someone is usually one of the kid’s parents. A kid doesn’t often go on her own.”

Diane’s tone grew dismissive. “If Mallory’s father sent her into treatment he’d have told the police that his daughter had seen a therapist recently, right? That would be important information to consider after her disappearance.”

“You would think.”

“And the police would have contacted that therapist, right? To try and find out what the kid was troubled about.”

I knew where she was going. “Unless the police already knew that the therapist was dead.”

“But if they knew that Mallory was seeing Hannah and that Hannah was dead, they would have sent whoever had legal custody of her practice records-c’est moi-a subpoena in order to get access to the treatment notes.”

“Agreed. If the cops were thinking.”

“Well, none of that happened. None of it. Nobody from the police department has contacted me about Mallory. And I certainly haven’t been subpoenaed.” As she began to connect more of the dots Diane’s foot speed kept pace with her mouth speed, and I had to hustle to keep up with her. “So I’m left thinking that Mallory sought out Hannah for treatment on her own, which would tell me that she didn’t want her father to know what she was up to. Or… her father had sent Mallory to Hannah, which-given his subsequent silence on the matter-would tell me that for some reason he doesn’t want the police to know what his daughter was up to.”

I said, “That about covers the possibilities.”

“As a therapist, I don’t especially like either theory. But I’d put my money on Mallory as the one who was trying to keep the secret.”

We arrived at the intersection with Broadway. The pedestrian signal was red and enough traffic was humming past us to rule out jaywalking. I lowered Diane’s shopping bags to the bricks and lifted my hands so I could show her that my fingers were curled into hooks. I asked, “Do you mind taking these bags back? My hands are frozen.”

She looked imposed upon.

And I realized, belatedly, why her husband refused to shop with her.