Blackbird (18 page)

Benny rolled his eyes. ‘
Ai, Dios
, it is a mess. These two, they are having a boxfight over the schedule book, directly in the waiting room! They are screaming, the patients are screaming, the secretaries are screaming –
tal locura!
They sue each other from it!’

‘What happened with that?’

‘The judge, he throws them out. Each one keeps whoever
they are seeing. He lectures them, they are bad children, he will have no more of this nonsense in his courtroom.’

‘She must have had a lot of patients,’ I said. ‘I’m wondering what they’d say about her.’

He examined his coffee for a while, then leaned forward and set it on the table in front of him. He seemed to be noticing that his clothes were too tight. He took in a deep breath through his nose. Finally he said, ‘This is where it is becoming tricky. There is a problem of the confidentiality.’

‘Hmm,’ I said, then exercised my right to remain silent. I sipped tea and reached for another cookie.

He leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully put the tip of a manicured forefinger to his lips. ‘But maybe I am thinking of something.’

I waited.

He picked up his coffee again. ‘First, it is to know the general attitude from her ex-patients – ’

‘How do you know about that?’

‘Some of them, they leave her and come to me. They are usually feeling she doesn’t listen to them very much, she is taking the telephone calls all the time when they are there.’

‘During the sessions?’

He nodded. ‘This is what I am hearing.’

‘Who is she talking to? And about what?’

‘Everybody. Everything. Other patients, insurance companies, lawyers, they are all calling. If somebody cancels an appointment, she is calling the patient to complain, telling them they have to be there, they cannot cancel on her, the insurance will not pay.’

‘Sounds like a confidentiality problem right there – ’

‘She is one who does not worry herself about that, my friend. A few years ago she loses a big lawsuit about it.’

A vague memory floated up. ‘Was it something about a suicide?’

‘It was, yes. A woman comes to her with a sexual problem. She is depressed, confused, doesn’t know what to do. Dr Gold, she is always loyal to the money, she is calling the husband, who is rich, saying the woman is dangerous to her children, he should come in and see her, they will make a plan. There is a huge fee and then a divorce, and pretty soon the woman she kills herself. Her family, they sue Dr Gold and get a big settlement.’

‘Did the settlement actually hurt Dr Gold financially?’

‘Probably. If not then, later. We usually have one million or three million dollars of liability insurance. If the lawyers can make a settlement for less than that, she is off the hook, but then the insurance company is probably cancelling her and it is harder to get the coverage, and it will cost more. If the judgement is for more than the policy, she will have to be paying for the difference.’

‘How able was she to do that?’

‘She has some money, I believe. She is marrying the computer guy – ’ Benny searched the air for a name, pinching his lip.

‘Andy Jamison,’ I said.

‘
Si
, Jamison. And she gets her name on everything. It is a good business, so after that she can go to Israel whenever she likes.’

‘What about that?’ I said. ‘I mean the way she ended up with Jamison. He’s a patient, she picks him off when his marriage falls apart – isn’t there an ethics problem there, a psychologist getting involved with a patient?’

‘It is a maximum no-no,’ Benny said, wagging a forefinger from side to side. ‘But maybe there is not a complaint
to the board,
no se
, but anyway nothing happens to her. Now I think it would be different, much more difficult to get away with this.’

‘What about Jamison’s wife? What’s her reaction to Dr Gold poaching her husband like that?’

‘I do not know from a direct certainty but I am sure she is angry, depressed. Maybe the marriage is already not so good, it is in the crappers anyway, I don’t know. But I don’t believe it is so.’

‘Why not?’

‘It is by a patient who knew her. I cannot say who she is. This person is believing the problems they are having are bad ones but not too impossible to solve, Mrs Jamison is willing to have a reconciliation, it is like so many marriages after a few years, usually there can be a resolution.’

‘Who is the ex?’

‘She is Jackie Milner. A high-school teacher for the twelfth grade, in the Terrebonne.’

‘Could she carry enough of a grudge to have Gold killed?’

‘
Quien sabe?
’

‘Did she get married again?’

‘I do not know. I think she cares for her work. I believe her students love her pretty much for being a good teacher. They are bringing her flowers, candy, tickets for the movie. She is being made Educator of the Year.’

‘Who loves her, the boys or the girls?’

Benny seemed surprised by the question. He thought for a moment. ‘I believe it is mostly the boys, you know, now that I am thinking of it. Why is it that you ask?’

‘Just trying to get a picture of her in my head. She and Jamison had kids, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, two. One is a girl, twelve, the other is a boy who is fourteen.’

‘How are they doing?’

‘They are not seeing their father very much. Dr Gold is not making them feel welcome, I think.’

‘What’s the boy like?’

‘His soul is of the artist. He studies the dance. A very kind boy.’ From the way Benny said this I knew the boy was his patient.

‘You’re saying he’s gay?’

‘I am not believing it is for me to say.’ He shrugged.

‘Okay, Benny, I appreciate this,’ I said. ‘I think it’s going to help us a lot.’

‘The other thing is a certain patient I am thinking of,’ he said. ‘I will ask if she would be agreeing to talk with you. I believe her judgement is good to decide this. I am sure she would not suffer harm to do it.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Thanks. If she agrees, just let me know when and where. What the hell would we do without you?’

He smiled broadly. ‘You flatter me too much. We are after all on the same side together, no? Please let me help in any way that I can.’

‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Does the word “glowen” ring a bell with you?’

‘
Como?
’

I wrote it out on a sticky note from his desk and handed it to him.

He studied it a moment. ‘I do not like this word,’ he said.

‘Why? Do you know what it means?’

‘No, I do not, but it has a feeling that is not good.’

‘What feeling?’

‘
Un sentimiento de maldad
,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He placed his hand over his heart.

‘Okay, can we go back a little bit? I’m wondering if you know whether Dr Gold had sex with any other patients.’

‘Yes, I am hearing that this is so.’

‘What about underage patients?’

‘
Me temo que es tan
, I am having pains to say.’

‘Would that be with males or females?’

He shrugged. ‘
Quien sabe?
’

When I described the interview to LA later, she asked for details of phrasing, body language, pauses, respiration rate, eye movements. When she’d heard it all she said, ‘He’s not hiding anything important.’

Jana said, ‘He’s required to report that stuff about kids, isn’t he?’

‘Not necessarily, when it’s just rumours,’ LA said. ‘Kind of a fine line there sometimes.’

We’d just finished dinner at Haddad’s, prime rib medium-rare and baked potato for me, a smidgen of haddock with steamed carrots and zucchini for LA, a veggie plate with portobellos, broccoli and red potatoes for Jana. The wreckage of all that had been cleared and we were having coffee while we waited for dessert. Casey and Jordan were overnighting with friends.

‘What about Jamison’s ex?’ I asked LA.

‘Not a good suspect.’ She sipped coffee.

Jana nodded, picking up her tea cup. Female consensus. Case closed.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘This wasn’t a woman’s crime,’ said LA.

‘Anyway, how does somebody like her put together a
crew to do it?’ said Jana. ‘Does she troll the Harley shops, KKK meetings, tattoo parlours?’

‘Okay, point taken,’ I said.

‘Second place, she wouldn’t have waited this long,’ said LA. ‘When women kill, it’s usually an affair of the heart and it’s usually impulsive, or else it’s surreptitious stuff like slow poisoning.’

Our crème brulees came, LA eyeing hers suspiciously. Jana pushed her own across to me and asked the waitress for melon. I drifted off into reflection about the murders. I was sure Jana and LA were right. There was nothing about the Gold operation that seemed at all feminine, impulsive, hesitant or haphazard. In fact it had an almost military feel: focused killers who’d acted cold-bloodedly and with coordinated precision, each one knowing exactly what to do at every stage of the mission.

Operation?
I thought.
Mission?
Why was I calling it that? I didn’t know, but the way they’d planned and pulled it off – being ready with camouflage netting, timber, spikes large enough to nail a human being up to die, carrying a framing hammer around – made them sound to me like blue-collar guys, working stiffs but not necessarily career thugs, vets maybe, enlisted or low-level non-coms, knowing all about tools and timbers, guys who were agile and fit but not kids, working like well-drilled soldiers.

‘Or legionnaires,’ I said.

‘What?’ said LA, glancing at me.

‘He does that all the time when he’s on a case,’ said Jana. ‘Thinking out loud.’

I realised I hadn’t told Jana about the coin. I described it to her.

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Jay’s got a point,’ LA said. She took a tiny bite of crème. ‘You’re definitely dealing with something strange here, Bis.’

‘It
is
spooky,’ said Jana. ‘Like a Sherlock Holmes mystery.’ Her order came, half a dozen chilled cantaloupe and honeydew balls in what looked like a margarita glass, and she spooned one into her mouth.

‘You didn’t let the press have this, did you?’ LA asked me.

‘You know I didn’t.’

She nodded. ‘Bet our bad guys wanted them to get it, though,’ she said. ‘Assuming they actually are twentieth-century crooks instead of real Roman soldiers risen from the sand.’

It was my turn to nod. I took a bite of crème, which was sweet enough to make me wonder how long it had been since my last visit to the dentist. I laid my spoon down.

‘Why would they want that?’ asked Jana.

‘Because unless they dropped the coin there by accident, which is hard to believe, it was a message.’

‘So what are they trying to say?’ asked Jana. ‘And who are they saying it to?’

After a few seconds of silence LA said, ‘Gonna have to wait for the third act to find out, huh?’

TWENTY

I cleared the last of the swipe-locks at the federal prison north of town in time to catch Dr Mark Pendergrass just as a slender kid with shaved head, spade-shaped goatee and at least three dozen tattoos was being escorted away in shackles.

Long-term lockups are tireless engines of rage, despair and insanity that unspecifiably foul the air, and nothing about the bright prints and soft carpet in Pendergrass’s office or the Donald Duck tie he sported did anything to lighten the impression. He dropped a little bottle of hand sanitiser back into his desk drawer as he stood to shake hands.

He was not quite my height, with a roundish face and light brown hair that tended to fall onto his forehead, giving him the look of a tassel-toed preppie hitting middle age while still in the grip of denial, a little soft in the middle but not really fat, still boylike in some way that was hard to pin down.

He gestured toward a couple of comfortable-looking orange chairs set in conversational proximity across the room and said, ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘You’re investigating Dr Gold’s death, you said? I’m surprised to see you out doing it yourself.’

‘I try to stay busy,’ I said. I glanced over his desk, which was a little less cluttered and military-surplus-looking than mine but about the same size. Walking in, I’d seen the usual stuff on it: blotter calendar, pen and pencil cup, stapler, black four-line phone, tape dispenser, picture of the kids, couple of yellow legal tablets, a tear-off memo pad. If it were my desk there’d also be doodles on sticky notes, paper clips bent into various abstract shapes, a mystery key or two and at least one orphan stick-pen cap, maybe a forgotten coffee cup in which early Cambrian evolution was starting over. I didn’t believe the tidiness quotient of a man’s workspace meant much about his character, but I mentally recorded the observation anyway.

‘So how can I help you?’ asked Pendergrass.

‘I’m still trying to fill in the blanks, Mark – figure out who Dr Gold really was and why anybody’d want to kill her. What can you tell me about her?’

He picked up a pencil that had been lying on his blotter calendar, re-squared the calendar and leaned back in his chair, idly twiddling the pencil. ‘Other than on the street or across the supermarket, I think I’ve seen her twice since we ended our association – dissociated, you might say.’ A brief smile at his own little shrink joke. ‘Both times were at the monthly psychology meetings.’

‘Talk is, the two of you had some personal history.’

He made eye contact briefly, then looked away. ‘What can I say? We came to a parting of the ways.’

‘Style or substance?’

‘Not sure how you’d break it down, but one thing I
wanted was more control over who ended up on my case-load.’

I said, ‘She was a cherry-picker.’

He shrugged. ‘I guess you’d have to expect it from the senior clinician in any group practice, but yeah, that was my perception.’

‘What about the billing?’

‘All done jointly. But unless it was a contract situation the patients pretty much paid as they went. Either way, you got a cheque at the end of the month for whoever you saw that month.’

‘Any adjustments based on ability to pay? Any kind of sliding scale?’