Delusion (16 page)

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Authors: G. H. Ephron

BOOK: Delusion
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I tried to turn off the game, to think of something else. But when I closed my eyes, I kept hearing “Sucker.” In my head was Nick's voice. He had to pop back in and taunt players who failed. He'd designed his game so that the only way to win was
to be hypervigilant and anticipate, to assume everyone was out to get you.
As I was drifting off to sleep, I remembered Jeff Gratzenberg's comment:
You play the game long enough, you figure out which things are bogus.
THE NEXT evening, I'd just poured myself a glass of wine and sat down to the paper when my doorbell rang, followed immediately by loud knocking. It was not my mother's shave-and-a-haircut.
I flipped on the porch light and peered out through the glass panel alongside the door. It was Richard Teitlebaum. His suit looked like he'd slept in it.
I pulled the door open. Teitlebaum was glancing back over his shoulder. There was a Statie parked across the street, its parking lights on.
He turned back to me, wild-eyed. “I get back from the APA meeting and the police have my house staked out. Search warrant.”
I felt a pang of guilt. “Come in,” I said, backing away. “Take it easy.”
He stepped inside. I closed the door.
“You're working on this case, aren't you?” He didn't give me
a break to explain that I didn't work for the police. “What are they looking for? What in the hell are they—?”
“Duck boots,” I said. “There were footprints at the murder scene—”
“Everyone and his mother's got a pair of those,” he exploded. Then he stopped. “Are you saying they think I did it? I'd kill my own patient? That's insane.” There was a pause. “And how the hell do they know I've got a pair of duck boots?”
Now I was wishing I hadn't answered the door. “When I came to talk to you after the murder, there was a pair of them in the driveway outside your office door. I had to tell them what I'd seen.”
“Outside my office?” Teitlebaum blinked. “
You
told them?”
“I had to, when I found out that there were prints from shoes like that at the murder scene.”
He leaned heavily against the door. “He's setting me up. The bastard, that cunning son of a bitch, he's—”
“Hey, take it easy,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “You look like you could use a drink.”
I led him into the kitchen. He dropped into a chair. I dug around in the cabinet and found a bottle of bourbon shoved to the back. I poured some and gave it to him. He knocked it back and set the glass down on the table. Then he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the eyes that had been so startlingly blue seemed dead gray.
“I keep those shoes in the shed,” he said, his face grim. “I always put them back after I finish working.” He paused. “Christ. That's around the time my gloves went missing too. And …” He stopped short.
“And what?”
He swallowed. “And when I went to finish planting the bushes, my shovel wasn't on the hook where I keep it. It was lying on the floor.”
“Who's setting you up?” I asked.
“Who?” Teitlebaum looked at me like I had the IQ of an amoeba. “Nick Babikian. And now I've got the cops after me.”
“They're just making sure you don't leave town before they see if your shoes match the footprints.”
“And you think there's a chance in hell that they won't?” he asked. “Paranoid, rabidly jealous, smart. What did I want him to do, wave a gun at me too? Why the hell didn't I tell them I was too busy? Or refer them to someone else?” His head jerked to one side. “Christ, who am I kidding? I would have taken Charles Manson if he'd asked. Since I moved up here, the world hasn't exactly been beating a path to my door.”
“I'm just guessing,” I said, “but I'd say it was also because you realized Lisa Babikian needed all the help she could get.”
He pushed away the glass and rested his elbows on the table. “I kept telling myself, no history of physical abuse. There's always physical abuse first. Now she's dead, and the bastard's fixed it so it looks like I'm the one who did it. He's fixed me good.”
I wanted to ask him, Why not tell the police? Surely he could explain. But the doorbell rang.
Teitlebaum leaped to his feet. “See.” His eyes darted about the kitchen, from the doorway that led to the front of the house, to the door to the basement, to the back door. “Told you it was just a matter of time.”
“Wait here,” I said. “Okay?” I squeezed his shoulder.
He shook me off. “It's your fault. If you hadn't told them—”
The bell rang again.
“Wait,” I said and headed for the door.
When I looked out, I couldn't see anyone. From the shadows, I knew at least one large person was standing alongside of the door. The cruiser was still across the street. Now its lights were out.
The bell rang a third time, long and insistent. “Open up. Police,” said a disembodied voice.
“Show yourself,” I called back.
Two police officers emerged from either side of the door. With their caps on, their faces were in shadow. One of them flashed a badge.
I opened the door. “We're looking for Dr. Richard Teitlebaum,” one of them said. “He's wanted for questioning.”
“He's here,” I said, leading them through the front hall and into the kitchen. But when we got there, the room was empty.
One officer yanked open the basement door. The other officer was out on the back porch. “He's out here,” he bellowed.
In the dark, I could see Teitlebaum trying to hoist himself over my neighbor's chain-link fence.
“Halt! Police!” the officer yelled.
He grabbed hold of Teitlebaum's ankle. Teitlebaum kicked, and the officer swore but held on. By now the other officer was outside too. He had his gun out and was pointing it at Teitlebaum.
Cornered, Teitlebaum inched his way down from the fence and landed with a thud. He turned, his face ashen.
One of the officers explained the advantages of coming along quietly. They just wanted to ask him a few questions.
Teitlebaum's eyes seemed to glaze over. “Call your attorney,” I told him. “Don't say anything until your lawyer's with you.”
I couldn't tell if he heard me, or could process what I was saying. “Do you have a lawyer?” I asked as the officers started to lead him away.
Still no response. The officers were walking him out to the street. “Do you want me to call one for you?” I called out.
His shoulders sagged. He looked as if he was giving up.
One officer opened the back door to the cruiser, put his hand on Teitlebaum's head, and pushed him in. The door slammed
shut and the officers got in front. Teitlebaum pressed the side of his face against the glass.
“Get a lawyer,” I yelled as the cruiser slid away.
I trudged back to the house. The porch lights were on and my front door was standing open. I went to my mother's door and rapped. “Mom?” I called out, so she'd know it was me.
The door opened immediately. “You had visitors?” she said. She loves to state the obvious.
“You okay?”
“Why shouldn't I be okay? A little yelling. A person is climbing over our back fence. The police. This business of yours, helping criminals?” She screwed up her face. “Why shouldn't I be okay?”
“He's not a criminal. He's a psychiatrist,” I said.
My mother raised her eyebrows. Like what else would she expect? “A friend?” she asked.
It hit me. I did feel a kinship with Teitlebaum. Shrink kills patient? It was like man bites dog. It did happen—occasionally. But like Teitlebaum suggested, it was usually the other way around.
“Maybe. Kind of,” I admitted.
“And you didn't go with?”
Trust my mother to be able to rearrange my priorities with a firm smack. She was right. If anyone was in need of help right now, it was Richard Teitlebaum. More than that, he needed to call himself a lawyer. But that meant he'd have to want to fight back, and it looked as if anything resembling a survival instinct had been sucked out of him. Without someone there as his advocate, the cops would steamroll him. I'd done what I had to do. But still, if he
had
been set up to look like a murderer, then I'd helped ensure that the setup worked.
“Actually, I thought I would. Go with, that is. I just wanted to be sure you're okay alone.”
“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm not alone.”
“You aren't?”
“Why does this always surprise you?” she asked and closed her door.
I locked up the house, jumped into my car. But where to go? I hadn't a clue where they'd taken him.
Then I remembered. I still had Boley's card. I took it out. His office was at the state police homicide office on the second floor of the Middlesex County Courthouse. I hoped that was where they'd taken Teitlebaum.
I screamed up Mem Drive doing sixty, checking my rearview mirror every so often and praying that the patron saint of speeders and scofflaws was on duty. I made the trip in record time, slid into a parking spot on the street. Even at this hour there were people ahead of me, getting their credentials checked and passing through the courthouse metal detectors.
The homicide unit was on the second floor, just around the corner from the elevator. Go the other way, and there was the cafeteria, now closed but still oozing the smell of stale coffee. Up a few floors were courtrooms. The floors above that housed the jail.
There was a small reception area with an oversized metal desk. The American and state flags were the only color in an otherwise gray room. The desk sergeant, a woman, was talking on the phone. She had dark hair, medium-length, a lot of shoulders, and no ring. She gave me a quick glance and a tight nod, and continued her conversation. Then she turned to a microphone and barked some instructions, listened to some static, then barked some more.
I couldn't remember if there had been any female cops at the Babikian crime scene. Another officer came out and mumbled
something to her. I didn't recognize him either, couldn't tell you if he'd been at the Babikian house two weeks earlier, or if he'd been at mine an hour ago. I'd make a lousy eyewitness.
Finally, she turned to me. “Yes, sir?” She was giving me that blank look cops give you when you roll down your window and they've got out their pencil poised to write you up.
“Dr. Richard Teitlebaum was just brought in?” I said.
“And you are?”
“His”—if I were his lawyer, I'd be able to get in; but I wasn't—“colleague. Has he called a lawyer?”
She gave me a look, like,
How the hell should I know?
Just then Boley came striding through.
“Detective Boley!” I said.
He stopped. Recognition turned to wariness. “What are you doing here?”
“They picked up Teitlebaum.”
“Yeah, thanks for the tip.” He started to walk off.
“He was at my house.”
He paused. “So?”
“He's distraught.” I knew I sounded crazy. First I'd ratted on the guy. Now I was doing an about-face and worrying about his welfare.
Boley gazed back at me, like why was this his problem? Looked like “Easy Al,” as Annie called him, was going to blithely trade Nick for Teitlebaum and nail the sucker.
“In my professional opinion, he's in shock. He's not making rational judgments.” I waited for that to sink in. “If he hasn't asked for a lawyer, then he's not acting in his own best interest. Anything you get from him now will get thrown out in court.”
A look of annoyance passed over Boley's face. He glanced toward the back. The room they had Teitlebaum in must have been back there somewhere. “I'm sure Dr. Teitlebaum appreciates your concern.”
Just then, an officer came through carrying a box. Boley pulled him over. They talked, heads bent together.
“They found something?” I asked, when Boley turned back to me.
“Shoes,” he said. His face gave me nothing. “Just like you told us.”
“He should have an attorney present.”
“You already said that.” Boley turned and marched away.
If Teitlebaum's state of mind hadn't miraculously improved over the last thirty minutes, then he was undoubtedly satisfying his interrogators' craving for raw meat. Short of storming the examining room, there wasn't much I could do. At least I could try to get him an attorney.
I went into the hall, got out my cell phone and called Chip. Yes, he could recommend an attorney. But Teitlebaum was going to have to ask for it. No attorney was going to show up without knowing he had a client who wanted to be represented and who was good for the bill. For free, Teitlebaum would have to ask for a public defender. But he'd have to ask.
I hung up, discouraged. I stuck my head back in the homicide unit. The woman officer at the desk looked up and glared at me, her look saying, Go
home!
I went back out into the hall and sat on a bench.

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