“What can I do for you?” she asked, sounding decidedly less friendly.
“I’m investigating the death of Elizabeth Cox,” I said. “Her sis
ter, Faith Roberts, tells me that Billie was coming to you for counseling.”
“Ah,” she said. Apparently my response eased her fears, as Dorin’s smile quickly returned. “I’m glad to hear someone is taking Faith seriously and looking into Billie’s death. I’ve never believed that she took her own life. Come in my office, and tell me how I can help you. I have forty-five minutes before my next patient.”
“So you see, there was no reason for Billie to have fired that bullet,” Dr. Dorin concluded, stirring green tea growing cold in her pink-flowered china cup. The room looked more like a quaint English parlor than a therapist’s office. Rather than a couch, Dorin had an overstuffed recliner for her patients, one I was cuddled up in with a similar nearly empty cup of tea balanced on the arm. On the table beside me was a half-eaten slice of poppy seed bread. It was good, but I was still thinking about that barbecue sandwich.
“Would you like more tea?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
For the previous half-hour, Dr. Dorin had described her sessions with Billie Cox, explaining what she knew about the dead woman. Yes, she said, there had been an affair with a married man, but Cox never revealed the man’s name, only that he was married to someone close to Billie, an old friend Dorin thought, which made the liaison risky.
“The man didn’t end it. Billie told her lover it was over,” Dorin insisted. “Through our work here, she came to understand that in her many past lives she habitually chose the wrong mate, and that she was doing it again. This time, in this life, she said she wanted to wait for a true match.”
As Dorin explained it, we all have multiple lives. Each time we
die, we are reincarnated and come back to work out our failures from our previous lives. Throughout time, we are surrounded by the same souls only in different bodies. Our brother may have been our husband in another life, and our mother might have once been our son or our sister. “We’re all branches on the same tree,” she said. “And each of us has a single person we are meant to be joined to for eternity, a partner we’re intended to spend the hereafter with.”
The identity of that soul mate isn’t always apparent, she said. Billie Cox, through hypnosis, had traveled back in time to discover that in previous lives, including one as an Indian warrior and another in the 1700s as a daughter of a wealthy Swiss shipbuilder, she had made bad choices. “We discovered that Billie consistently chose someone convenient rather than waiting for a mate with whom she had a real bond,” said Dorin. “Through our work here, Billie made the decision not to repeat that mistake in this life. She broke off her relationship with the married man and, at our last meeting, sounded determined to wait to find the one person she truly loved.”
Dorin, who had a doctorate in psychology from Ohio State on the wall, explained what she called “the process,” a journey under hypnosis into the dark recesses of our beings, where we keep the knowledge of previous lives. In sessions, she took patients first into their childhoods, then further back, into their mothers’ wombs. From there, they traveled to a place of peace and solitude, where souls wait between lives. Through the wombs of their mothers, these souls were reborn again and again in new bodies.
The therapist refilled my cup and offered sugar and lemon, as she rattled on about past lives and souls traveling through time. I like to think I’m pretty open-minded, but despite Dorin’s apparent enthusiasm for her work, all I could think of was that it made about as much sense as folks who bring snakes to church, believing if they’re holy enough God won’t let the fork-tongued reptiles bite them. Heck, they’re snakes. They’re genetically engineered to bite humans. It’s
even in the Bible. Reincarnation? It sounded like self-delusion, about as possible as Billie Cox’s ghost turning on ceiling fans and computers. When you thought about it, how did Cox know that under hypnosis her subconscious didn’t replay old movies she’d watched about Indians and a Swiss shipbuilder? In my opinion, there could be lots of reasons folks under hypnosis saw themselves living in teepees or wearing hoop skirts.
I thought I had on my best poker face, but Dr. Dorin shook her head, frowned, and said, “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”
“No,” I said. “But that’s not important. What’s important was whether or not Billie Cox believed it.”
“She did,” Dr. Dorin said. “Absolutely.”
“And you can’t tell me anything about this man, the one she had the affair with?”
“Just that he’s married to someone close to Billie, and that he was furious over the breakup.”
When I left Dorin’s offices, a pale-skinned, balding man in his forties wearing a business suit was seated on the waiting room couch. As I pushed the elevator button, I wondered what he’d been in previous lives. My guess was that most folks opted for something glamorous, not a fishmonger but Henry VIII or Cochise. I figured if I got to pick, it would probably be Sherlock Holmes. Rangers don’t get to have partners. Most of the time, we work alone. I’ve always thought it would be comforting to have a Dr. Watson.
As I walked through the parking lot to my car, my cell phone rang, and it appeared I might be getting my wish.
“Lieutenant Armstrong,” Janet said. “We’ve had a hitch in the subpoenas for the Collins case, the ones I wrote to get records on the e-mail accounts Argus uses.”
“What kind of a hitch?” I asked.
“Jurisdictional,” she said. “Unless we can prove Argus is operating
out of Texas, the district attorney’s office tells me that we don’t have jurisdiction to subpoena the Internet information.”
“Now, that complicates matters,” I said. “Have you talked to the captain? Did he have a suggestion?”
“I did, and I think he’s already solved it,” Janet said. I wondered why she hadn’t said that up front, but then I knew. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the news when Janet said, “The captain decided to get the FBI involved, figuring they have methods of getting at the information. He called the Houston office, and Agent David Garrity is on his way over. He’ll meet you here, at the office, to discuss the situation at two o’clock.”
I
’d left my hairbrush somewhere, probably at home or the office. It wasn’t in the Tahoe or my purse. Squinting into the visor mirror, I ran my fingers through my frizzy mane a couple dozen times. My only tube of lipstick was used flat down, but I scraped it over my lips and turned them a faint but somewhat alluring Sunset Mauve. Then, driving to the office, I felt ridiculous for fussing for David Garrity. After all, where had he been? I hadn’t seen him since the end of the Lucas case. That wasn’t totally true. He’d called a couple of times, wanted to get together, but at that point things were still rocky at home, especially with Maggie. I thought David would hang in there, give us a little time to repair. I thought he and I had something, maybe it was too early to define what exactly, but something. Instead he just stopped calling. It was disappointing. I hadn’t pegged David for a quitter.
So instead of rushing back to the office, I stopped at a hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint where the ceiling was cured black from decades of grease and smoke. The tables were battered, the chairs rocky, and the only napkins torn from paper towel rolls. Famished,
I ordered a chopped beef sandwich smothered in barbecue sauce, and when it came on a sheet of butcher paper, I lovingly cradled it in my hands to the self-serve counter, where I ladled on pickles and chopped onions.
Why not?
I thought.
Seated at the table, I wished I’d taken the sliced onions. They would have been easier to ditch, once I reconsidered greeting David with dragon breath. After inhaling lunch, I thought about stopping at a drugstore for more lipstick. But by then I was running late, so I took a clean paper towel to the women’s room. In front of the chipped mirror, I used the paper towel to scoop out the remains from the base of the tube, dabbed the little I scored on my chapped lips, and rubbed it on with my finger. My reflection stared back at me unimpressed. It wasn’t great, but I looked passable. Considering the potential benefits of base and mascara, I thought,
Tomorrow, I’m buying real makeup, along with new shampoo and conditioner.
A little while later, at ten minutes after two, I walked into the captain’s office, where the walls and bookshelves were covered with ranger memorabilia, old badges, patches, books, and vintage photos from the Wild West days. Leaning back in his oak desk chair, Captain Williams was talking to David. As soon as the captain saw me, he grinned, I thought perhaps a bit mischievously. “Sarah, look who’s riding to your rescue again,” he said. “I made one call, and Agent Garrity came right over.”
Standing up and turning around to greet me, David didn’t look a lick different. His hair, a soft brown graying around the temples, still bunched around his neck and ears, and his gray suit hung vaguely rumpled on his athletic frame. I thought he might be a little apprehensive at first, but if so that quickly washed away, and he couldn’t have appeared more pleased. To my surprise, I felt anxious shaking his hand. I’d always liked David’s hands. Actually, there was a lot of David I found appealing.
“You look great, Sarah,” he said. He still had that rugged look that attracted me a year earlier. I got a whiff of aftershave and wondered if he’d fussed, as nervous about seeing me as I was about seeing him.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s been awhile.”
I didn’t mean for that to sound like a dig, but it must have, because David frowned. For a moment, he appeared pensive, as if considering a response. If so, he decided against it, and the captain took over the conversation.
“Agent Garrity figures he can get those subpoenas for you without too much red tape,” he said. “Tell Sarah what you’ve got in mind.”
“I’m not surprised your subpoenas ran into problems. Jurisdiction is a persistent problem with the Internet,” David explained. “But the Bureau has tackled this before, and we’ve found that sidestepping county and state courts and getting a federal judge to sign the paperwork cuts through the red tape. I called ahead, and we’re meeting with an assistant U.S. attorney at the courthouse in half an hour. Why don’t we discuss this on the way downtown?”
I thought about being alone with David, wondered what he would say. Maybe he’d explain what had happened. “Sure,” I said. “My Tahoe’s in the lot and the engine’s still warm. Let’s go.”
Ten minutes down the road, David hadn’t said a word. I kept my eyes on the freeway, but occasionally felt him looking at me. Maybe he was waiting for me to start the conversation? The way I figured it, that chore was his.
“How’s Maggie and your mom?” he finally asked.
“Great,” I said. I asked about his son, who lives with David’s ex-wife in Denver. “And Jack?”
“Good. Really good,” he said. “I just saw him last month. We went skiing.”
Silence again. There was a time when I enjoyed our silences, impressed that David wasn’t the type who felt compelled to fill every moment with senseless chatter. This was a different quiet, uneasy, like a gaping yawn between us, one that grew wider every moment the silence endured.
“You going to take Memorial Drive downtown?” he asked.
“Thought I’d shoot over on I-10,” I answered.
“That’ll work,” David said.
With the exception of commenting on the exceptionally warm winter day, little more information was shared in the car. I pulled into a parking lot across from the federal courthouse, in the middle of downtown Houston. It had to be one of the ugliest buildings on the planet, a gray box with rows of small square-framed windows. Minutes later, David and I were in a third-floor room going over the Collins case with a young prosecutor and the judge he’d convinced to sign our subpoenas.
“How hopeful are you that this will actually get you anything useful?” the judge asked as he signed each page.
“We have to start somewhere, Judge,” I said. “This is our only lead.”
Outside in the hallway, the prosecutor handed us the subpoenas. “Good luck,” he said. “Let me know how it works out. My thirteen-year-old daughter loves that Collins girl.”
“Be afraid,” I said, straight-faced. “Be very afraid.”
The lawyer looked as if he couldn’t decide how to take my warning, but he laughed. If he met Collins in person, or even over the telephone, he might not have found my words funny.
“I hope this helps,” I said to David in the car. He’d just called his office to let them know that we had the documents signed and they could notify the Internet companies to start gathering the in
formation. Thinking again about the likelihood of any of it being useful, I asked, “As computer savvy as this stalker is, what’s your guess on how successful this will be? Think it’ll lead anywhere?”
“Probably not,” David said. He looked at me, and again, for a brief moment, I thought he’d say more. Instead, he turned away and stared out the window. This new David wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for in a Dr. Watson. But I had to admit; I wasn’t really stirring up conversation myself. I wondered if maybe I was the problem, that I’d been too distant, given him the impression that I wasn’t interested. It felt strained, uncomfortable, and at first, I was relieved when my cell phone rang. But when I saw it was Mom, my relief turned to worry.
“Bobby and I noticed it this afternoon. Emma Lou’s waxing up,” Mom said when David and I arrived at the ranch.
Waxing up
meant that the milky discharge released before foaling was coming in. I’d filled David in on the situation during the drive. He seemed to understand the seriousness, but he didn’t ask many questions. There’d been no time to drop him at the office, and I regretted that we hadn’t taken separate cars. His silence made me increasingly uncomfortable.
“That’s not good,” I said. “How long do we have?”
“Doc figures less than a week,” Mom said. “But it’s not all bad news. If Emma Lou makes it just two more days, until Friday, the foal has a chance. From the date of breeding, that’s three hundred and one days.”