The Girl in the Maze (21 page)

She limped around the broken glass and entered, stepping out of the rain. She ignored the chaos at the front of the store and looked around, staying focused on her single, shining idea
.

Martha stepped over a toppled rack and worked her way through the debris. The store was small and crowded with merchandise, much of it in disarray. In back was a long counter with a hinged leaf and a sign that said
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. Behind the counter, attached to the wall, Martha saw what she was looking for—a plastic wall phone.

As she went behind the counter, a desk chair swiveled around to face her. Its occupant sat with his hands behind his head. Smoke curled out of his nostrils. Dragon breath.

Oh bugger! You think that's gonna work? In this weather? You're off your nut, woman.

Martha stepped past Lenny, ignoring him, holding on to the counter to steady herself, and went straight for the phone.
It's only rain,
Martha thought
. Not much wind, at least not yet. Maybe the phone lines are intact.

She lifted the handset from its cradle and placed it to her ear. Silence.

Lenny burst out in croaking laughs.
All that work, cut yer feet up an everythin', for a brown bread phone. Are you ever going to get anything right?

Martha struggled to hang on to her concentration, her tenuous thread of purpose.
Don't give up. Focus. Think.
Her leg was killing her, and she noticed that her field of vision was shrinking, turning into a circle that blurred and darkened at the edges. In the center of that circle, the phone itself. Along the side of the phone, a series of plastic buttons, with labels. The next-to-last button had a handwritten label—
OUTSIDE LINE
. She pressed that button. A red LED came on. The handset emitted a dial tone.

But you can't remember the number, can you, Lovie?

Simple. Of course I can remember it.
She dialed “1,” then with a shaking finger, punched in the area code for Vince's office.

Ten, nine, eight,
Lenny rambled on.
Four, eight, seven…let's see, what was your childhood phone number? Two-two-seven…

Martha lost her place…did she dial the
eight
yet?

Nine, two, three, now I've got to wee…seven, eight, ten, you're going to the pen.

Martha ignored Lenny's stream of babble and punched the last two digits. The phone at the other end rang.
Yes.
Sometimes, between sessions, Vince answered the phone himself. Martha gripped the phone cord in her fingers.
Please let it be you, Vince.
On the second ring, a female voice answered.

“Hello?” It was an unknown voice, an older woman, not the familiar voice of Vince's receptionist. “Hello? May I help you?”

“Dr. Trauger…” Martha started. Her voice came out thin and hoarse.

“Hello? Could you speak up, please?”

“This…Dr. Trauger's office?”

“This is his answering service. Dr. Trauger will be on administrative leave through August fifth.”

Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate?

“Shut up, Lenny—”

“I beg your pardon?” The woman's voice was impatient. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“Did you say admin—”

“I'm sorry?”

All for the green team, stand up and holler!
Lenny sprang up between Martha and the wall, shouted in her face, his breath smelling of stale beer and tobacco. She spun away from him and fumbled the phone.

“SHUT UP, LENNY. STOP IT.” The phone clattered against the wall. The handset dangled from its cord, making cricketlike chirps.

See? There's no one to help you, Lovie. No one at all.

Martha heard the sound of the rain through the broken door, hissing like a giant steak on a griddle. The air outside was full of rain, more rain than it could hold. She felt herself surrendering, sliding toward the linoleum, her circle of vision turning into a tunnel.
But the child,
she thought.
What about that poor child…?

Martha closed her eyes and looked inward, traveled deep inside, back to that place where she had first seen the shape in the cloth sack. And she found her way to the dark shed and it was still hanging there, suspended in a faint ray of sunlight, under a stir of dust motes—the tumescent sack, weighed down by the child's form.

Don't give up,
Martha told the child, transmitting her thoughts.
It's all right. I can't help you now. I'm so sorry. I know you were counting on me. But don't give up. Someone will get there, I know they will.

The shape was silent, unresponsive. Martha's eyes popped open. “No—”

Lenny was standing over her now, his sallow face tilted forward. The rain was still hissing outside, and the tarnished cross dangled from his earlobe.
Like I already told you…you're too late, Lovie.

“No no no.” Martha wanted to get to her feet, to move, to run, but her limbs wouldn't respond.

I'm all you've got left,
Lenny said, moving closer, eyes full of hunger.
Now it's just you and me.

Vince paced on the redwood deck. No escape from the self. No diversions except for long walks, his journal, and his bungled attempts at woodcarving. His supervisor at the Emory clinic had assured him that this was the fastest path to healing, but it was proving to be more of an ordeal than he had bargained for. Not that he had a choice in the matter.

The wind stirred through tall pines beyond the deck railing of the cottage. The surface of Lake Claire was dark gray and choppy today, a Jungian mirror of his own mental condition. But the weather was not caused by his mood, it was a consequence of Carlos, an Atlantic hurricane swirling off the Georgia coast more than three hundred miles away. That much he'd gleaned from his morning half hour of NPR news, his one sliver of connection with the outside world.

Vince sat, blew away the wood shavings, and inspected his work. After an hour or more of obsessive whittling with his knife, the eye he'd been trying to fashion out of a wood knot was beginning to resemble a small volcano. Earlier, he'd thought he could see some marvelous potential in the driftwood, perhaps the shape of a great whale breaching the surf.

You just gotta find the secret in the wood,
his father would always say.
Don't force it. Listen to what the wood is trying to tell you.

He sliced and sawed around the remaining bit of branch that protruded from the knot. The nodule of branch popped out, leaving a grotesque cavity. Not eyelike at all. He put the knife down on the glass table and stood.

A sudden breeze stirred the pine needles in the surrounding trees and blew most of the wood shavings off the table. A distant, noncommittal rumble of thunder. Vince turned, opened the sliding door, and went into the cottage.

Several of his father's folk-art wood sculptures peered at him from different places in the room. The one Vince called “Buckley,” all teeth, leered from the coffee table. “Malcolm” watched from the mantel, his shy, comical face emerging. Always emerging. Malcolm was a fixture in Vince's office—a favorite of many of his patients. Vince had brought him to the cottage as a kind of mascot during his two-week sabbatical.

He craved the normalizing routines, the affirmation of work. Email. Escapes, avoidances. Anything. He wondered how his patients were doing. He walked over to the mantel, placed his hand on his Android.
Just one call, just to check in.

Vince pulled his hand away from the device and placed his chin on the wood surface, touched his forehead against the cool mirror that ran the length of the fireplace.
You will get over this. You will recover. No one can blame you. The disease is still so mysterious, so little understood, so unpredictable….

But would he ever regain his confidence, the one quality his ability to heal others depended upon? More doubtful was the future of the Village, the career development center for the mentally ill, a program he had established and staked his career on. Would it ever recover from the bad publicity?

It didn't help that Vince had gone on the local TV affiliate just three months ago to gab about his doctrine of
accelerated normalization.
A job, gainful employment, that was the best therapy, Vince had said on camera. He had believed it then, and he still believed it, passionately. And favorable publicity was essential to reverse stereotypes about the mentally ill. They were no more prone to violence than any other segment of society—less so than average, in fact.

Then a case like Martha came along. The exception, the rare schizophrenic who turned to violence. The media pounced on such stories like jackals. Such incidents lingered in the public mind like urban legends, setting back years of good work.

Unquestionably, Martha had relapsed. That much was clear from the testimony of her landlady and other tenants about her hysteria and delusions. God knows what had really happened in that little town, what hallucinations had compelled Martha. She may have believed the woman she killed was some kind of monster, perhaps an alien in human form who needed to be destroyed. Maybe Martha thought she was saving the world.

But…
there was nothing in Martha's case history to suggest a potential for violent behavior. With her intelligence, focus, and determination, Martha had been a model case. He'd prescribed a regime of antipsychotics and sent her back out into the world to do good work, to become a productive and independent member of society, with monthly checkups. He'd even published a brief about her in the
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
.

A month later, the whole shining edifice of his doctrine had crumbled. Two people were dead—the old woman and Martha herself.
Or was she?
Vince's thoughts turned once again to a review of the painful, undisputed facts of the case:

An old woman, Martha's employer, was dead. Garroted with a drapery cord.

Martha was at the woman's house on the night of the murder.

There was little sign of struggle. The assailant was someone the woman knew and trusted.

When police arrived, the house was locked from the inside. No sign of forced entry.

Particularly galling was the fact that Martha's body hadn't been found. She fled, was shot in the leg, and escaped. The trail of blood led to a canal. And then, what? The area had rapid tidal surges, so her body was swept out and might never be found. At least, that was what the local authorities would have you believe. But they
had
to find her, because if they didn't, Vince knew he would never find closure. His mind would never let go of the notion that she might still be alive out there, somewhere. Needing him.

Amberleen. Just a five-hour drive from Atlanta. Maybe he should just go out there, poke around. He could take a look at the rooming house where Martha had lived. Talk to some of the people she worked with. His supervisor, Frank Chen, wouldn't approve, but…

Another slow rumble of thunder outside, like a throat clearing. Vince lifted his forehead from the mirror, where it had left an oval smear. When he'd arrived at the lake cottage, one of his first actions had been to shave off his beard. The skin where the hair had been, long shielded from the sun, looked pasty. His face looked boyish, unprofessional, and a little chubby. His lips seemed thicker.

Not many dates with that look, eh, chubby?

Now, where had that thought come from?
Don't ignore it.
Vince turned and looked around the room. His gaze landed on the sculpture on the coffee table.

Buckley.

The figure had been fashioned from a double log, joined at the base. One branch was still just a log, but the other half had been sculpted into a man wearing overalls. He was peeing against the log. You could tell what was happening from the position of Buckley's arms, from his self-satisfied leer over his shoulder. As if this were the grandest joke of all time.

Vince's father was a genius with wood. But this particular sculpture reminded Vince of a side of his heritage he'd rather forget—a side that celebrated crudity, bad grammar. It was a part that Vince had sought to distance himself from through education and professional achievement.

Vince went over to the sofa, sat down, laced his fingers together, and looked at the statue. Gestalt therapy. Why not? Chen was a strong advocate for the method—dialogue with an inanimate object as a conduit to the subconscious. Maybe Buckley had something valuable to tell him.

“That's correct,” Vince told the statue. “Dates aren't going to be on my agenda for a while.”

You never were a great success with the women, were you?

Vince reflected. He considered himself handsome, just a little on the short side, a little thick-limbed. Vince knew these qualities resulted in few dates in high school or college, but they also fueled his drive for professional achievement. Vince turned the sculpture around on its base to face him. “I have status now. I have overcome my physical shortcomings. That's what matters most.”

You just ain't picking up the scent, Tubby,
the statue's expression seemed to say.
You've got your head in the sand. Do I have to draw you a picture?

Vince leaned back on the sofa, struck by the verbosity of this subconscious voice. “I'm not here to hide anything. What have you got to tell me?”

You keep goin' over all the particulars of this here train wreck, but you leave out the best part.

“And that would be?”

The fact that
you thought Martha was hot.

“Yes, I found her somewhat attractive. Not excessively. She wasn't my only attractive patient. So what?”

You couldn't deal with it, that's what.

“Bullshit.”

Vince imagined that Buckley cackled, pleased to have gotten a rise from him.

And let's not forget that little issue with your willie.

“You are off base. Yes, of course I felt attraction to her, briefly.”

You had hard-ons during the sessions
.

“It's normal in therapy. It happens to all psychotherapists. It's called countertransference. How you deal with it, that's what matters.”

And how did you deal with it, Romeo?

“I recognized it for what it was. Then I set it aside.”

Don't kid yourself. She was everything you wanted. Pretty, smart, admiring—and damaged. And you had complete power over her. Hoowee! That turned you on, boy.

“I had feelings for Martha, certainly. Fatherly and brotherly.”

And lustful.

Vince chuckled to himself. “I can't believe I'm practicing gestalt therapy with a piece of firewood.” He crossed his legs and sat back, shifting into his professorial mode, addressing himself instead of the woodcarving. “Patients can be very seductive, and the connection with patients—in an effective relationship—is sure to become very intense. The issue isn't arousal. It's how you deal with it. You acknowledge it. You own it, you don't resist it. But you don't let it own you.”

Remember that time? When she made a pass?
Buckley grinned at him, his wooden face frozen in a perpetual wink.

Vince's mind flashed back to a moment that still burned in his mind. The breathless moment that she had leaned forward, placed her hand on his, and looked into his eyes with deep longing.

“Yes. I remember. And I remember the outcome. I passed the test. I maintained therapeutic distance.”

You did then, but what about next time? How long could you control yourself? One way to solve that, eh?

“You are mistaken.”

You sent her off to her doom. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Buckley maintained his self-satisfied, toothy grin; his eternal wink.

Vince stood and paced. Could it be true? Did the stress of managing the attraction he felt for her lead to premature closure of therapy?
You have to consider that possibility
, Vince thought.
You have to.

He stopped at the sliding glass door and looked out at the darkening sky. The pines bent in the wind, shedding tufts of needles. Vince's reflected shape, transparent against the glass, looked ghostly. Wider than ever. He kicked at the glass with the toe of his shoe. The reflection wobbled.

The Android on the mantel buzzed softly. Vince grabbed for it, almost dropping the device as he pressed the
ANSWER
button.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Trauger?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you on your vacation—”

“It's fine, Janice, what's up?”

“The police called, tried to reach you here.”

Vince's hand tightened on the phone. “Why? What did they say?”

“It seems the alarm went off at your house—the one on Dunwoody Road—about an hour ago.”

“What happened?”

“Don't worry, it was nothing. It was just the wind. The police went to check it out, they said everything's fine. I just wanted to let you know.”

Vince sighed. “That's all? No other news from the police?”

“No. How's the vacation going?”

“It's going fine. Have there been any messages?”

He could hear a faint ruffle of papers on the other end. “Let me see…just someone from the Autism Society. They want to know if you're going to make a contribution this year.”

“Nothing else?”

“Just one other call this morning—I think it was a wrong number.”

“What did they say?”

“I think it was a woman, but I'm not sure. There was a lot of static. It sounded like she was arguing with someone.”

“Arguing?”

“I'm not sure, the voice was pretty faint. She said something about Lenny.”

Vince's stomach tightened into a ball, as if someone had just punched him there. He felt blood rushing to his head. “What?”

“ ‘Shut up, Lenny.' That's what I heard. Someone you know?”

Vince's fingers dampened against the Android. “Janice, I need you to do something for me. Go back through the call logs. I'd like to know exactly where that call was placed from.”