Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (11 page)

“When was the last time you were in here?”

“Yesterday, around five.”

“There were half-a-dozen groups here last night. That’s more than fifty people between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Someone could have slipped in without the receptionist noticing.”

“Belinda would have noticed,” I said.

“She wasn’t here last night. We had a temp on the front desk. Serena something. I don’t remember her last name.”

Nina walked over to the windows and tried first the one on the left and then the right. Only one of them was locked. My office was on the second floor. At night, in the dark, during the few hours when New York City’s residential neighborhoods really do go to sleep, it might have been possible for someone to climb up the stone wall and steal into the building.

“Do you lock the windows and the balcony door at night?”

I was searching, sifting through the papers, but I wasn’t focused. Was this the act of an angry ex-patient? Had someone broken into my office looking for valuable information that would allow them to destroy one of my patients?

“Yes, of course,” I said. But had I forgotten to?

“Do you have any idea which one of your patients might be at risk for blackmail?” Nina asked.

“Which one? It’s more like which
ones
. I have one patient who has finally decided to ask her husband for a separation. He’s been sexually abusing her and has even been here with her several times. I guess he might be angry enough to do something like this. He’d know the layout of the office. And
he might have gotten in. Anyone might have gotten in with a temp at the front desk.”

“Who else?”

“There are dozens. I don’t even know where to start.” I felt overwhelmed by the mess and confusion everywhere I looked.

“I’m going to talk to the temp and look through the appointment books. There has to be a way to make sense of this.”

A half hour later, she was back in my office.

“Have you noticed anything missing?” she asked as she began picking up the books off the floor and putting them back on my shelves.

“No. But who knows? It could be one single sheet of paper with my notes on it. Did you find out anything?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Too many options. We had sixtyfive people in here last night between single appointments and groups. Five first-timers. We also had someone from the phone company working here. And about five messengers delivered packages. Any one of them could have stayed behind in a bathroom. We’re going to have to keep track of all the new patients who came in yesterday but don’t come back.”

“That will only work if the person used his or her own name. If not, we might never be able to figure out who it was. Or what they wanted.” I smoothed the end pages of a book on Freud’s whore-madonna complex before I returned it to the shelf.

T
he stone spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral reached up only 330 feet, but despite being dwarfed by boxes of glass and steel, it exuded an importance those taller buildings didn’t have. From the minute its doors opened in the morning to when they shut each night, more than seven thousand people walked up the steps and through the doors to behold this magnificent Gothic house of worship. And no day was more crowded than a Saturday in the summer when people were visiting the city from all over the world.

That was why he had chosen that morning at 11:00 a.m.

It simply was the safest place for him to hide in all of New York. He could spend as long as he needed in the sanctuary, thinking out what he needed to do next without anyone paying attention to him. He never sat in the same pew two visits in a row. Never visited the same shrine more than once a month.

People who prayed sat under a shroud of invisibility. There
was still the sense that it was wrong to stare at someone with their head bowed, eyes closed. And so that was the pose he struck when he needed to escape from the streets outside and the people who knew him and expected things of him.

This was his refuge. And today it was also his shopping mall. The tableau he’d constructed required simple black rosaries. And there was no safer place to buy them than in the gift shop of this holy edifice.

Commercialism had taken over the church with the same voracity as it had taken over the art world. For all the people who stood rapt in front of a van Gogh, there were two dozen who bought the coasters for sale in the museum’s store. For all the people who came to this grand cathedral to reach out to the Lord, hundreds more worshiped in the small shop buying medals, prayer cards, bottles of holy water and any one of the dozens of rosaries offered for sale.

No one would remember the man who purchased the black rosary. No one would think it odd that he had been there once a week for the past few weeks, each time buying the exact same prayer beads. And no one noticed that he managed not to touch the beads with his fingertips but held only the tag when he handed them to the saleswoman.

He chose black again. Because they were simple. Because he liked how they looked against ivory-colored skin. He chose the medium-size beads, with the silver roundels and Virgin medal and crucifix. The gold was ostentatious.

The act of handing over the money and taking the bag holding the rosary was an act of faith in itself. He was doing God’s work. He was bringing another woman into the fold. He was introducing Jesus to another lost soul. And if she did not appreciate him for it, if she did not understand what was happening in the moment, he was sure that her soul did.

The woman smiled at him as she gave him change. He smiled back. Easily. Without fear. Knowing that she would
never remember just another man. He left the gift shop and walked into the apse of the church. He would go to the confessional and ask the priest behind the mesh window to bless these beads. Dozens of people made this request every day. Tourists in the house of the Lord who had no respect. Who took pictures. Who bought souvenirs. If he could push them all out, he would. If he could make the cathedral pure again, he would.

But then he would no longer be invisible. And until his job was done, until he’d completed his task, being seen, being recognized was not anything he could risk.

“Father, it has been one week since my last confession. I have taken the Lord God’s name in vain and coveted my neighbor’s wife. And I would like you to bless my rosary. Would you do that?”

“Yes, my son.”

T
he following Monday morning at eight-fifteen, Dulcie and I were in a taxi, heading downtown to her drama school.

“I wish I could go to this school all year long,” she said longingly.

As the cab worked its way through the traffic, she kept up a steady stream of chatter about how she liked the academy so much more than regular school and how her new friend, Gretchen, and she thought that the earlier you got started with your career, the better chance you had of making it as an actress.

I had not minded that Dulcie was going to spend the summer at the academy, instead of going to a sleep-away camp, although I would have preferred she spend the summer months outdoors, swimming and playing softball and tennis. Of all the things for her to be fascinated by, the theater was the last one I would have chosen for her. And not just because I’d seen what my mother’s early success as an actress, and
then later failure, had done to her. How it had destroyed her. I just wanted Dulcie to enjoy her childhood and not face the pressure and rejections of an acting career before she had the coping mechanisms of an adult. It could be a cruel business no matter how old you were—and she was only twelve.

Except acting was in my daughter’s blood.

The cab pulled up to the school on Madison and Thirtyninth Street, and Dulcie jumped out while I paid the fare. We stood outside the school and she kissed me goodbye, her high-voltage blue eyes shining.

“Have a wonderful day,” I said to her.

“Oh, I will,” she said, and ran into the building. Her happiness was contagious and I found myself smiling.

But my smile didn’t last long.

I got to the office in time for my nine o’clock patient, who left at nine-forty-five, which gave me a fifteen-minute break until Cleo was supposed to show up.

Ten o’clock came and went without her appearing. I waited at my desk until ten-fifteen and then went outside onto my balcony. Ostensibly I was watering the many plants that lived out there, but I was really watching the street.

For the second time in five days, Cleo Thane had not shown up for her appointment. And she hadn’t called to cancel. Maybe I was overreacting, but I was worried.

The sun was shining and a warm breeze was blowing. The geraniums in the terra-cotta pots in front of the institute were in full bloom, and the white and pink blossoms bent in the wind. From above, they looked as if they were praying.

I scanned the street, watching and waiting to see Cleo turn the corner and walk down the block.

At ten-thirty-five I went back into my office, called her and got her answering machine. I left a brief message, then sat at my desk wondering what else I could do. How worried should I be?

I opened her folder and found the form she’d been required to fill out when she first came to see me. I scanned past her insurance-company data, home address, phone number and place of work. In the space where we required the patient to list whom to contact in case of emergencies, she had written the name Gil Howard. And then a New York City phone number.

I assumed this was the man she referred to as Caesar, but calling him raised an ethical dilemma.

Cleo had told me that he was aware that she was in therapy, but that still didn’t give me the right to contact him if, by doing so, I wound up giving him information about her that she didn’t want him to have.

What if, for instance, she had taken an out-of-town job and not told him? If I called and said she’d missed appointments, I might be giving him knowledge she didn’t want him to have.

And what if she’d just walked away from therapy and decided not to come back? Patients occasionally did that. A therapist could dig too deep and get too far too fast and a patient could bolt. And what if she hadn’t told him that she’d quit?

I put off making the call.

My eleven o’clock patient was on time.

As soon as she left, I picked up the phone and called Cleo’s number once more. When the machine answered, I hung up. I’d already left two messages—one last Wednesday, one earlier today.

A bolt of fear ripped through my stomach. Until then, that particular feeling had been reserved for Dulcie and, when I was young, for my mother.

The sixth sense that mothers and daughters have—or that at least I had had with my mother and my daughter—was kicking in for the first time with a client.

* * *

At noon I left my office. A walk in the park would help me clear my head and allow me to figure out why I was reacting so powerfully to Cleo’s disappearance.

With every step I took under the thick canopy of leaves, I became more and more certain that Cleo was in trouble. If she simply had gone away or taken a job, she would have let me know. And if she had forgotten, I’d left messages. She would have picked them up. She was a successful businesswoman; no matter where she was, she would monitor her calls. She took in more than two million dollars a year. She was involved with dozens of important, wealthy and wellplaced men. This was not a teenager acting out and running away from home. Cleo was a responsible woman.

Something was wrong.

On the way back to the office, I stopped to get a double espresso at the café but didn’t bother with any food. Now that I had decided what to do, I was in a hurry to get upstairs.

Opening her file, I found Gil Howard’s number and dialed.

“Diablo Cigar Bar,” said a sweet-sounding woman.

“Gil Howard, please.”

“Who can I say is calling?”

I didn’t know what to do. Give my name or not?

“This is Morgan Snow.”

The man who came on the line had a New York accent and sounded concerned. “Hello?”

“I’m calling from the doctor’s office. Cleo Thane had an appointment with me earlier today, but she didn’t keep it. Since she gave your number as emergency contact, I just wanted to find out if she was ill.”

“No… I…” He clearly didn’t know what to say.

“Do you have a number where I could reach her?”

“No.”

I had no idea who he was, but still I could tell that the man I was talking to was distraught.

“Are you all right?” It slipped out. A professional knee-jerk reaction. A person’s voice goes into a certain cadence and rhythm of distress and I ask if he or she’s all right.

“Cleo’s not here.”

It wasn’t an answer to my question. “Can I leave my number? If you hear from her, will you let her know she missed her appointment?”

“When was it?” he asked.

“This morning at ten.”

There was a long silence. Then he said, “Right. That’s right. I know that. She told me. Mondays and Wednesdays at ten. Was she there last Wednesday at ten?”

But he sounded as if he already knew the answer to his question.

“No.”

“You are her therapist, aren’t you?”

“Yes. This is Dr. Snow. I’m sorry to be cryptic, but I had to be careful—”

He cut me off. “I’m going crazy here and I’m worried as hell. No one has heard from her since last Tuesday night. That’s six days. Six fucking days. Cleo has never done anything like this. And I’m scared out of my mind. I’m still making phone calls. Looking for her. Can I call you back later? Will you be there?”

“Yes, I have patients all afternoon. The best time to call is ten minutes before the hour.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Been there, done that. There’s my other phone. I’ll talk to you later.”

And without waiting for me to answer, he hung up. The sudden dead quiet was alarming.

But there wasn’t time to think about the call because my two o’clock patient had arrived.