When She Was Bad

5

Martin Cohen was a short, tidy-looking, brown-skinned Hispanic in dark slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a powder-blue bowtie. He looked awfully young to Irene-scarcely old enough to be one of her students.

“Sorry for the delay-I was just getting ready to make my rounds,” he said in a pleasantly textured Mexican accent as he ushered Irene and Pender over to a three-armchair grouping in the lobby and turned up the dimmer switch on a tall floor lamp with an upside-down frosted-glass shade. “I’m Dr. Cohen. Senior resident. Please, have a seat.”

“I’m Irene Cogan, this is Agent Pender. We won’t take up much of your time, I promise,” said Irene; she and Pender sat across a low round table from each other, flanking Cohen.

“I appreciate it. I gather this is about your former patient, Miss DeVries?”

“You’re familiar with the case?”

“I’m familiar with all our cases,” he said, glancing pointedly at his wristwatch. “Please, go on.”

“Here’s the situation. I’ve been trying to contact Lily by phone for two days-unsuccessfully. But I finally spoke to her about…“She glanced at her own watch. “…a little over an hour ago, and I had a very strong impression that it wasn’t Lily I was speaking with, it was one of her alter personalities.”

“I see,” said Cohen; to Irene it sounded more like so what?

She understood his point of view. A patient’s erstwhile doctor shows up after hours insisting that her erstwhile patient has been displaying symptoms of the disorder for which she’d been admitted in the first place-not exactly earth-shattering news.

But Irene persevered, making the same points she’d made earlier to Pender, and eventually, to his credit, Cohen caught on. Curtly, he excused himself to make a phone call, leaving Irene and Pender waiting in the lobby. When he returned a few minutes later, it was to Pender that he addressed himself. “I understand you’re with the FBI?”

“For almost thirty years,” said Pender ambiguously.

“Okay, sure, well, the reason I ask, we may have a small problem here.” He told them about the birthday party at the director’s residence. “There’s probably no reason to worry-Walter and Patricia are very experienced psych techs, nobody’s going to pull a fast one on them. Only when I call over there, there’s no answer, nobody’s picking up the phone, and Dr. Corder, he’s not answering his pager. I’ll keep trying, but I was wondering, just to err on the side of caution, if you wouldn’t mind maybe going over there, make sure everything’s okay?”

“Of course.” Pender’s turn to glance at his watch. “How far is it?”

“Right around the corner,” said Cohen.

“I know where it is,” added Irene. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”