Authors: Jeremiah Healy
“Why?”
Lopez considered that one for ten or fifteen seconds. “I’m not sure I can tell you.”
“Patient-psychotherapist privilege?”
“Yes.”
“Doctor, given the case against William, my finding out all I can about him is pretty vital. I’m sensitive, even sympathetic, to your position. I wish there were a client-investigator privilege. But frankly, I don’t have a lot to go on, and you might tell me something that would help him.”
Lopez played with the blouse again. She made up her mind but talked without looking at me. “William was concerned. He knew he was much brighter than most of the other students here, but he was afraid to show it. Apparently, he’d had some problems with excelling in high school, problems with his classmates there, I mean. So he wanted to be tested by me, to see if he was really good enough to make ‘showing off’—that was
his
expression for it—worthwhile.”
“William wanted to see if he was smart enough to make appearing to be smart worthwhile?”
“Yes. I see you find that surprising. You must remember that many minority children do not enjoy the same family and peer support for educational achievement that majority children receive. For a minority child to excel in schoolwork suggests an alignment of that child with the authority figures in the school. While William’s mother appeared supportive, his father was gone, his friends disapproved, and his uncle, a serviceman who probably represented the epitome of aligning with authority, had been killed in Vietnam. Therefore, William was both externally and internally discouraged from displaying his own capabilities.”
“Go on.”
“Well, in response to his request, I gave him all kinds of tests, from … Do you care about the names?”
“No, just what you found out.”
“What I found out was that William was one of the most gifted students I have ever read about, much less met. His scores on all sorts of cognitive exercises were virtually off the scale. Though I will deny ever having said this, William’s going through that high school must have been the equivalent of you or me masquerading at an institution for the severely retarded.”
“Did the test results convince him?”
“Con
vinc
e him? Oh, yes, he seemed somehow relieved, in fact, as though he’d been told that some extraordinary aspect of him was normal, if not average. Even with the test scores, however, William’s poor high-school grade performance required his, well, ‘prepping’ here before another, more prestigious college would consider him. His evaluations were superb, and through the help of several of our professors who believed in him, Goreham accepted him as a transfer student.”
“Why Goreham?”
“Because it’s a fine school.”
“Granted, but why not Harvard or one of the other Ivies? If William was so extraordinary, I mean.”
Lopez frowned and sighed. “An Hispanic friend of his went to Harvard, academic scholarship. A black football player to Dartmouth, supposedly academic also but really athletic reasons. Both flunked out their freshman year. One committed … well, that’s another story. Suffice it to say that William, and I as well, viewed Goreham as both worthy and achievable.”
“Did you stay in touch with him after he transferred there?”
“Not exactly. William seemed to be caught up very quickly in a different world. He … perhaps he tried to change too much too soon. Dormitory life, a new girlfriend, the girl William … the dead girl, and, well, he had difficulties there.”
“What kind of difficulties?”
“Academic ones. He came here once, midway through his first semester. William showed me some papers he’d written for courses there. C and D grades. The papers had some spelling and grammatical errors, but the professors’ written comments focused more on content. William’s work, while imaginative, wasn’t to the point. He couldn’t seem to concentrate his exceptional qualities on the subject assigned. Rather, he took flights, expanding on tangential themes to the exclusion of central ones. It was as though William felt he had to justify their decision in admitting him by blazing new trails in whatever subjects he took.”
“That sounds like a pretty easy difficulty to correct.”
“Yes, but others weren’t.”
“Others?”
“Non-academic ones. Apparently, William suffered some … ‘hazing’ would be the polite word … from the boy who used to date the dead girl. Those attitudes drove him out of the dormitory. William had to maintain minimum grades to retain his scholarship, and the commuting from his home to Goreham by public transportation took three hours a day, what with bus and train transfers. Then the social pressures of continuing to see the girl while she …”
“Go on.”
Lopez looked squarely at me for the first time since she’d begun talking about William. “I think I have to stop there.”
“Why?”
Lopez just looked at me.
“Doctor, I need to know anything that might help William.”
“This,” she said softly, “can only hurt him.”
“Worse than he’s hurt already? The authorities have him cold now.”
Lopez’s eyes left me, flitted around the desk, then closed. “William was certain that the girl was seeing someone else.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t know. It was devastating him. He said …”
“Yes?”
She opened her eyes. “He said it made him want to kill her.”
We both stopped. I took a deep breath and tried a related topic.
“Dr. Lopez, you knew that the dead girl and William were in a therapy group?”
“Yes, he mentioned it.”
“The psychiatrist involved uses hypnosis and a tranquilizer drug called flurazepam to treat—”
“Flurazepam?”
“Yes.”
Lopez shook her head. “Mr. Cuddy, I’m fairly certain that flurazepam is a hypnotic, not an anxiolytic.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The drug flurazepam. It’s more a sleeping potion than a tranquilizer. Using it with hypnosis would be … oh, overkill, I would think.”
I thought back to Clifford Marek and the lab report on William. “How sure of that are you?”
“Well, I’m not a doctor, a medical doctor, that is, and if this psychiatrist, Dr… .?”
“Marek. Clifford Marek.”
“Well, if he’s prescribing it, then perhaps my information is out-of-date.”
“Is there anyone you could refer me to who might know?”
“You mean, like an expert on drugs?”
“And hypnosis, if that’s possible.”
“I don’t know of anyone. I could make some inquiries and get back to you. If it’s important.”
“It might be.” I gave her my card and home phone.
“Anything else?” she said.
“Just one more question. Off the record, off-off the record, what do you think happened?”
Dr. Mariah Lopez’s eyes welled up a bit. “I think a bunch of well-intentioned people pushed William to the point of shooting someone.”
I turned into the cemetery’s driveway and followed it to her part of the hillside. I got out and took the two slanting footpaths to her.
“No flowers this time, kid. I need help.”
What’s the matter?
“Everybody I’ve talked to says William did it. Even the people who are supposed to be on his side. Except his mother, of course.”
What does she say?
“She says he wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. But it was his gun. And the dead girl was his lover. And four eyewitnesses tell the same story.”
What story?
“About William’s confession.”
Does that make it so?
“How do you mean?” I said, hunching down.
Well, just because William told them he killed her doesn’t mean he did it.
“But, Beth, William says he did it. That was about all he said to me, but even he admits it.”
If you’re so sure William did it, why are you asking me?
“Because I’m not sure, and that’s what bothers me. The young lover confesses under hypnosis. The psychiatrist who does the hypnotizing remembers to dim and up the lights but forgets to turn on a video camera. A patient who’s a retired investigator, and who reads a lot about hypnosis, doesn’t check a revolver to see if it’s loaded. Another patient is a drunk, whose perceptions are therefore suspect. The drunk’s wife and another patient play at an overaged-singles bar. Add a college student and a cop who are both ex-flames of the dead girl.”
I don’t see the point you’re making.
“My point, if it is a point, is that there are loose ends, some of which are probably just coincidence, but all of which, accumulated, seem unlikely.”
Meaning someone’s lying?
“Not that I can spot.”
We were silent for a moment. The harbor below was as empty of activity as I was of ideas. Then an Eastern jetliner came in low and deafening over the hill, angling toward Logan Airport at the other end of the harbor.
Basically, she said, you’re troubled that maybe someone else killed the girl.
“Basically.”
Well, then, if you’re at a dead end with William, maybe you should start working on the someone else. If you can’t prove William didn’t do it, maybe you can prove someone else did.
“Maybe.”
I
PULLED ONTO THE
Goreham campus at 2:15 P.M. I parked in a faculty space and was struck by how empty the grounds were. Then I remembered the roommate’s remark about exam time.
I found McCatty’s dormitory. A kid wearing an old QUEBEC LIBRE shirt and looking as if he’d just awakened told me McCatty lived on the top floor, “in that corner”—pointing.
I climbed the stairs. The door in the corner was closed. I knocked on it; no answer. I tried the knob, and it turned easily.
The two guys in the room were stretched out on their respective beds, fully dressed, each with a smoldering toke in his hand. Both wore Walkman headphones, eyes closed, wires running down to a unit on the floor between them. I knocked louder on the open door, but neither acknowledged.
I walked in, sat in one of the desk chairs, and watched them for a few minutes. The smell of the marijuana was strong and sweet. No apparent activity except for draw, hold, and exhale. One was shorter, chubby, in jeans and a Pat Benatar tank top. The other wore shorts and a Ralph Lauren Polo jersey, shirttails out. Polo had the legs of a soccer player, the look of money. I bet myself that Polo was McCatty and that the octopus music machine was his.
I was about to step over when the little floor unit clicked. Polo cursed and said loudly, “Joey, flip it over.”
Chubby sat up and nearly didn’t see me, jumping when he did. “Who are you?” he said, pushing the earphones back and down so they rode like a necklace.
“John Cuddy. I called earlier. I want to speak with your friend.”
Polo cursed again and came up on one elbow. He started to say, “Joey, what the fuck …” then saw me. “Who are you?”
“John Cuddy. I’m investigating a matter that you might be able to help me with.”
McCatty sank back down into the bed and closed his eyes. “I haven’t got time. I got an exam tomorrow. Come back in September.” He coughed. “Joey, flip the fuckin’ tape, will ya?”
Joey bent toward the tape machine, but kept his eyes on me. I shook my head very slowly, even melodramatically. Joey stopped, swallowed. I hooked my thumb toward the door and mouthed the word “now.”
Joey looked to McCatty briefly. I gestured again. Joey took off the headphones, laid them on the floor, and walked out, saying over his shoulder, “Richie, I’ve gotta see Moon for a while.”
“What the …” said McCatty, up on both elbows now, but Joey was already gone. He looked at me. “Get the fuck out of here.”
McCatty got up to change the tape. He looked to me again. “I said get out.”
“I heard you,” I said.
“Well?”
“Why don’t we pretend it’s intermission at the concert, and you and I are having a nice little talk in the lobby?”
“What about?”
“Jennifer Creasey. I’ve been hired to look into her death, and I’d like some information.”
He’d gotten his back up over the mention of her name. “Get the fuck out of my room.”
“As soon as we talk.”
“Now!”
“No.”
Based on watching him with Joey, I had the feeling little Richard wasn’t used to defiance of his orders. It’s amazing how readily we mistake one person’s acquiescence for the world’s obedience. He eyed the telephone.
“I’ll call campus security.”
“I’d wait till the atmosphere clears a bit,” I said.
He looked at his joint, crossed to the desk opposite me, and carefully stubbed it out. He put the stub in a desk drawer. There were actually some books gathering dust on the shelf above it. One caught my eye. A yellow binding with bold blue lettering.
“What’s your major, Richard?”
He turned, sneering. “What is this, a mixer? You trying to pick me up?”
I smiled and moved toward him. He took a step back, which put him against the desk. I grabbed his left elbow with my right hand, digging my fingers like nails into the fleshy part.
“Hey,” he said, wriggling a little. “Hey, that hurts. Stop it.”
I read, sideways,
The Art of Hypnosis
over his shoulder. “What’s your major?”
“Psychology. Hey, stop it. No shit, that hurts.”
I kept the come-along hold on him and led him back over to his bed. A little push, and he sat heavily as I released the hold. He rubbed his arm, watching my hand.
“You do much hypnotizing in psychology, Richard?”
“Hypnotizing? Yeah, a little. In this seminar, we hypnotized each other.”
“When did you first meet Jennifer Creasey?”
“This year. She was a freshman. In September, I met her at a party.”
“Date her?”
“Yeah, I dated her.” A little belligerence returned to his voice.
“Who broke it off?”
“None of your business.”
I shook my head as I had with Joey. Richard got the message.
“She did,” he said, head down, “when the black bastard who killed her showed up.”
“Daniels lived in this dormitory?”
“Yeah. Single room. You know, special privileges? Shit, you have to be a senior or a cripple or something to have a single. But they gave him one, all right. Make up for his deprived upbringing.”