Missing Persons

49

We agreed to take two cars into town. The nanny would watch the triplets for an hour or two. Grace would stay with me. I ended up parking in the spot behind the small building where Hannah’s pristine Passat had been parked the night that Diane and I had found Hannah’s body.

Mary’s car, a Honda minivan with temporary plates-her new triplet-mobile, I assumed-was already in the other parking slot.

The back door of the old house was unlocked. Gracie and I found Mary standing in the hallway, her hands hanging limp by her upper thighs. The narrow passage was dimly lit and she was silhouetted by the distant front windows. I thought she seemed disoriented. As Grace and I approached she said, “I don’t like being here anymore. It’s so strange. I never thought I’d feel that way. I used to love being in this space,” she said. “Hannah and I were perfect together here. Perfect.”

“I can only imagine what it’s like for you,” I said. “Mary, I need to get Grace settled with a book or something. I’ll be right back.”

I showed Grace where I’d be talking with Mary, and then led her to the waiting room where I made space on the coffee table for her books and for some paper and crayons. She chose to sit on the same location on the green velvet sofa that the Cheetos lady had chosen on the day that Hannah died. Grace settled right in, picking the crayons and paper over the books. Her cooperation didn’t surprise me; I was already confident that one of my daughter’s enduring skills in life would be her capacity to ride whatever wave rolled her way.

Mary had unlocked her office door and was standing a couple of feet inside. I squeezed in behind her. The leather cube was gone from the room, as was the stained dhurrie. The pine floors looked naked and ancient. The room appeared as cold as it felt.

I spotted the recessed handles for the lateral files that had been built into the rear wall. The three long file cabinets did indeed appear to be part of the beadboard wainscoting.

“I’ve only been back once, with the police and my attorney. The detectives wanted to know if anything was missing. I looked around and told them I didn’t think so. Nothing appeared disturbed to me at the time, but I didn’t do an inventory.”

I recalled how hard it was to return to my own office years before after Diane had been attacked by a patient’s husband. I touched Mary on the arm. She put her hand on my fingers.

“You know where… her body was, don’t you? I mean, exactly?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. Do you want me to…”

“No. Not yet. I’ll tell you if I do.” She stepped away.

“Okay,” I said. “She was wearing a blouse that day, Mary. Button-front, collar, silk, I think. A basic thing.”

“So?”

“The front tail on the left side was tucked up underneath her bra when I found her, exposing her abdomen. I’ve never seen a woman do that before.”

“The police didn’t tell me that. You’re sure?”

“I am.”

“That’s interesting. Hannah was a Type 1 diabetic-she was insulin dependent. She usually injected into her abdomen. Rather than unbuttoning her shirt, she had this habit of just tucking it up under the front of her bra to get it out of the way. Did the police find a syringe close by? Had she just taken insulin?”

“I didn’t see a syringe, but I suppose it could have been beneath her body.”

“Have you seen the results of the autopsy? How was her sugar?” Mary asked.

“I assume it was within normal limits; nobody mentioned it as an anomaly.”

“If her shirt was tucked under her bra, then she was preparing to take insulin. There’s no other explanation.”

“But in your office?”

“That part doesn’t make any sense. She kept the insulin in back, in the kitchen. She would load the syringe back there. But she injected herself in her own office. Hannah was modest, and she was very private about her illness.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

After a poignant pause-I suspected she was still debating whether or not she really wanted to know precisely where Hannah had died-Mary stepped toward the built-ins. “The file is in here.”

The key was secreted on the shelves above the cabinets in a ceramic jar, something small and celadon. Mary retrieved the key and unlocked the middle cabinet. She chose a pillow from the sofa and threw it on the floor before she kneeled down, slid out the top drawer, and began searching for the file. She fingered the brightly colored tabs sequentially, her middle, ring, and index fingers running after each other as though they were skipping over hurdles. After one time through the area that marked the center of the alphabet, she retraced her work.

That’s when she found it.

In a calm voice she announced, “It’s here. I almost missed it, but it’s here.” She pulled the dusky red folder and held it up for me to see.

My voice every bit as level as hers-we were both therapists, after all-I suggested, “Why don’t you take a few minutes and make sure that it hasn’t been… I don’t know, tampered with.”

She crossed her legs and sat on the pillow on the floor. Slowly, she made her way through the inch-and-a-half-thick pile of pages of scrawled notes and medication records and hospital admission papers and discharge summaries.

“It all seems to be here, Alan. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but everything seems to be here. It looks just the way I left it.”

I sighed involuntarily. Relief? Disappointment? I wasn’t sure.

She gazed up at me. “You thought someone stole it, didn’t you? That someone was in my office that day, that Hannah heard them in here, came in to see what was going on. And that’s why she was killed.”

“It was one thought. It all depended on what was in that file.”

She closed the file and stood. “I can’t tell you what’s in it. You know how this works.”

“If it’s a consultation you can.”

“What good will that do? You can’t tell anyone what I tell you. It won’t help.”

“I’ve been looking for Diane all week. I already know other things. Every piece helps. If I can put it all together, I may be able to find her. I’m terrified that time is running out.”

“You won’t divulge what I tell you?”

I said, “No,” and I hoped that I wasn’t lying. Was I willing to be lying if it would help Diane?

Yes. Mary had to know that.

“I wouldn’t treat her the same way today. Probably wouldn’t even diagnose her the same,” Mary said remorsefully, while giving Rachel’s file a little shake. “We know so much more now, don’t we? Take me out for coffee, Alan. I’m dying to sit down with an adult for coffee.”

I made an apologetic face. “Grace will be coming with us.” Grace would be thrilled to go out for coffee; she thought a petite espresso cup full of steamed milk foam with shaved chocolate on top was as good as life got.

Mary deflated, took a step, and slumped down on a nearby chair. “I forgot. She’s a sweet kid, but she’s not an adult.”

“Not the last time I looked, no.”

A strong wind exploded out of Sunshine Canyon ten blocks to the west. Had the Chinooks arrived? The whoosh shook the house, the naked tree branches squinted together and bent to the east. Debris and dust filled the air.

I excused myself and stepped out into the waiting room to check on Grace. She seemed oblivious to the gales; in fact she was so busy coloring that she didn’t notice my arrival in the room. A second blast put the first to shame-the century-old glass began to hum in the window at the front of the house. After one more selfish moment observing my daughter’s concentration, I returned down the hallway to Mary’s office.

She’d moved to the couch, pulled her legs up under her, and tugged a pillow to her chest. She asked, “Did Bill Miller ever mention to you that he’d done something he wasn’t proud of? Something that was eating at him?”

“No, doesn’t ring a bell. Should it?”

“I’m thinking maybe it might be important. He never really explained it all to me, but it had something to do with a traffic accident he witnessed. A young woman died. He was torn up about it.”

I surprised myself by remembering. “She was an orthodontist,” I said.

The winds had quieted. Strange.

Mary said, “Yes.”