Verses for the Dead

27

Roger Smithback paused to blow his nose on a real estate gazetteer, crumple it into a ball of newsprint, and then toss it in the trash before entering Bronner Psychiatric Group PA, a low white-brick building on Northwest Fifteenth Avenue. The pollen season — actually, not a season but a year-round threat in Florida — was in full swing and his allergies were acting up as usual.

He took a moment to breathe deeply and practice mindfulness, centering himself for what was to come. He wasn’t an investigative reporter, but the last few days he’d started wondering if maybe he should switch his focus: he seemed to have the nose of a good one. The nose — presently runny — had brought him here, for example.

With a pair of binoculars it had been easy to get the names and dates of the decedents off the two roped-off graves where Mister Brokenhearts had left his grisly offerings — Baxter and Flayley. Other journalists, of course, had done the same thing and now the names were publicly known. Same with yesterday’s recipient, Mary Adler, the one whose ashes were kept in a columbarium.

But he’d taken it further than the rest of his half-assed journalistic brethren. He’d retrieved Baxter’s and Flayley’s obituaries from his paper’s digital morgue — he hadn’t been able to find Adler’s — and learned they were both suicides. And then he’d dug up their former addresses from old phone books and figured out that — though they’d died out of state — they’d lived in Miami, just a few miles from each other. From there he was able to fit together bits and pieces of their personal histories.

No doubt Miami PD and Pendergast had trod the same path. But then he’d had a stroke of genius. He flushed even now, thinking about his amazing cleverness. Here were suicides of two young women full of promise. He wondered: Did either of them go to a shrink? And if so, which ones, and could he prize any information from them?

Then it got even better. As he went through archived web pages, he was able to pull up sixteen psychiatrist and psychotherapist offices within a reasonable radius of each residence. He cleared his throat, worked up a shtick, and began making calls, using a variety of ruses, including posing as a long-bereaved brother seeking closure on his sister’s inexplicable suicide. He knew that he wasn’t going to pry any medical records out of these clinics over the phone, but he might be able to learn if anyone had at least treated a patient named Baxter or Flayley.

And this was where he hit pay dirt. Baxter and Flayley had indeed both seen shrinks — the same one. A guy named Peterson Bronner. Now, this was an incredible connection — yet one so improbable he doubted whether the police or even Pendergast had made it. Or had they, and they were just keeping it secret? Either way, it didn’t matter — he had the scoop.

So who was this Bronner, and what did he know about Baxter and Flayley? Smithback had a vague idea — or maybe it was a hope — that Bronner himself might be involved in nefarious doings. Mind working feverishly, he had posited a number of scenarios: Baxter and Flayley had discovered Bronner was cheating Medicare, or he was a cash-hungry Dr. Feelgood, or he was doing something else of an illegal nature... and he had killed them to cover it up. Who better than a shrink to know exactly how to stage a suicide? Or maybe Mister Brokenhearts himself had been — or still was — a patient of Bronner’s? Christ, maybe Bronner was Brokenhearts, apologizing for their suicides, which would be an obvious treatment failure for a psychiatrist... !

Smithback took another deep breath and tried to rein in his imagination. First, he had to meet this Dr. Bronner.

Smoothing down his unruly hair, he put on the hangdog look that he imagined a severely depressed person might exhibit and pushed open the glass door to Bronner Psychiatric Group PA. He shuffled up to the receptionist. A plump man in his thirties greeted him cheerfully, asked his name, then inquired as to whether he had an appointment.

“Um, I don’t,” Smithback said in a monotone. “I’m—” He stifled a sob. “I’ve tried everything. I’ve got no hope left. I just want to end it all. I need to see Dr. Bronner right away — it’s an emergency.”

The receptionist seemed flustered, especially for someone working in a shrink’s office. “I’m so sorry, but we don’t handle walk-ins. You need to go to an emergency room.” He picked up the phone. “Here, I’ll dial nine-one-one and get you an ambulance.”

“Wait! No. I won’t go. I want to see Dr. Bronner and no one else! He helped my sister years ago — she said he worked miracles. I won’t see anyone but him!” He raised his voice, hoping to become enough of a nuisance to flush out the doctor.

The receptionist, now thoroughly alarmed, said, “I’ll get you a nurse right away.” He pressed a button.

“I want the doctor!” Smithback wailed. This was a little embarrassing — his brother Bill had always enjoyed staging shows like this, but then he was an extrovert. Roger wasn’t nearly as good at it himself.

A nurse rushed out into the reception area: a gaunt older woman with the demeanor of a battle-ax.

“I need to see Dr. Bronner!” Smithback cried. “Don’t you understand? I’m desperate!”

The woman fixed him with a stern but compassionate look. “What is your name, sir?”

“Smithback. Ro... Robert Smithback.”

The nurse nodded briskly. “Dr. Bronner is retired. I will bring you in to see Dr. Shadid.”

Smithback hadn’t considered the possibility Bronner was retired. The clinic still bore his name. He stared, stupefied, trying to think what to do next.

“Mr. Smithback? Please come with me.”

If Bronner was retired, he didn’t need to go through all this rigmarole. He’d better get the hell out. “Um, you know what? I’m feeling much better.”

Apparently, this was a bad sign, because her voice immediately softened. “I think you should see the doctor right away. Really I do.”

Oh God. “No, no. I’m good!” He turned and fled the office, the nurse’s voice calling him back as he hurried out the door and sprinted across the parking lot to his car.

Inside the car, he glanced back. No one was following him. Thank God. He pulled out his phone and — using his newspaper’s information gateway — quickly located a Dr. Peterson Bronner. But he lived way the hell down in Key Largo, and it was already late in the day — he would hit murderous traffic. He would go tomorrow morning and beard the doc in his den. If he was retired, that probably made him too old to be the Brokenhearts killer. Anyway, Smithback was pretty sure a kindly old shrink would be no match for him. He’d learn all there was to learn — and then just maybe publish the scoop of his career.