The Venus Fix (26 page)

I
struggled out of my clothes. Everything took so much time and effort with only one hand. Finally in my robe, I went into the kitchen and tried to get a glass of water from the dispenser, but I couldn’t push down the lever and hold the glass with the same hand. I gave up and used tap water.

Holding the glass in my left hand—which still felt odd— I walked down the hall toward my bedroom, but stopped first at Dulcie’s door.

I missed her. Not the willful teenager who looked at me with determined cold blue eyes and pinched her lips together, but the little girl who curled herself up in my arms, put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep in my lap.

There was something comforting about the small bed. I put the water down on the nightstand, lay back, turned on her television and channel-surfed until I found the news. I wanted to see if anything new had happened with Alan since I’d been hurt.

First up was an international story, about a bombing in the Middle East. Then a national story about a missing corporate jet over the Rockies. Then what I expected: a photograph of Alan Leightman filled the screen. It shouldn’t have surprised
me at all, since I was prepared for it, but as I sat in my daughter’s bedroom, my wrist aching, listening to a reporter I didn’t know read the news that would ruin my client, I felt the sting of tears. A man’s whole reputation, after a life dedicated to the law, to doing the just thing, was being destroyed. Nothing, no matter what happened after this, would ever restore his stature, or probably his spirit.

I picked up the phone. I wasn’t going to call Noah to tell him that I missed him, or that I’d fallen, or that I was having second thoughts about Mitch, but to tell him that they had it all wrong: Alan couldn’t have killed anyone. I knew he couldn’t have. And that meant someone else was still out there. Someone dangerous. Someone they had to keep looking for.

I’d already dialed; I heard the first ring.

But what if I did tell Noah all that and he asked me how I knew—what could I say? I still didn’t have Alan’s permission to speak to the police about him.

I heard the second ring.

No, Alan had been insistent that I not tell anyone. Almost to the point of being threatening. And then, for the first time since the accident, I remembered the man in the shadows under the street lamp in the snow. The man who looked like Alan’s bodyguard, Terry Meziac.

“Hello?”

So instead of telling Noah what I called to tell him, I told him how I’d fallen and broken my wrist.

“Are you crying?” he asked.

I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me, and was about to say something when he said, “You shouldn’t have to cry by yourself. I’m on my way out. Would you like me to bring you something? Did you eat?”

I cried harder.

M
ost men would have brought chicken noodle soup from one of the ubiquitous coffee shops on New York’s Upper East Side. Not Noah. He showed up with a quart of chicken gumbo with big chunks of tender white meat and tiny round slices of okra in a spicy tomato base that brought different tears to my eyes.

While we sat at the kitchen table and ate bowls of the thick Creole stew, I answered all his questions and told him everything but the one thing I wanted to talk to him about the most—how I’d seen Terry Meziac on the street, how I thought he was following me. About the threat Alan Leightman had almost made in my office. About how hard it was to reconcile the Alan who I had been treating for so long with the one who panicked at the thought of me telling anyone that he was in therapy with me, even if it helped him with the police.

Noah had warned me once that if Alan wasn’t guilty, then I was in danger. He’d meant that whoever was guilty might want to keep me quiet.

It had never occurred to him that Alan might have other reasons for wanting me kept quiet.

“Are you in much pain?” he asked.

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Really, no. It was worse before. I took some painkillers.”

“The prescription kind?”

“No. But they helped.”

“Okay. But if you need something stronger, do you have it?”

I nodded.

We were both quiet for a few seconds.

“I need to tell you something about Alan Leightman. I can’t talk about it. I can’t tell you why I know. Or anything. Is that all right?”

“It will have to be all right.”

“There is no way that Alan Leightman killed those girls.”

“I know you believe that, but he confessed. We have evidence proving he watched them online.”

“That’s not evidence that he killed them, is it?”

He looked at me with a sympathetic smile. “No therapist wants to believe that she could have misread her patient. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Damn you. Damn you for patronizing me. First of all, I never said he was my patient.”

“I am not patronizing you. I’m telling you something you know is right. You don’t want him to be guilty. You don’t want to have missed the signs. I know how you feel. I understand.”

I stared down at the empty bowl. I’d never be able to make food that good.

How could I tell Noah that Alan didn’t have any of the personality traits of a person capable of carrying out those four macabre murders without revealing that he was my patient—and without breaking my promise that I would protect Alan’s privacy.

Was that the real reason I didn’t want to tell Noah? Or had Alan scared me? Had seeing Terry Meziac, or someone who I thought was Terry, scared me?

No, Alan wasn’t capable of harming me, even to keep whatever secret he was keeping. I’d worked with him long enough to know that. He’d been excited by risking his reputation and visiting those women online. And at the same time, he was shamed by it. But he had no interest in any of the women he watched. No need to reach out and try to get to know them, help them or hurt them. He didn’t see them as his tormentors. He’d been viewing Internet porn long enough to know that even if he got rid of three or four or five Web-cam girls, there would always be more just a few key strokes away. Yes, he needed the Web-cam girls the same way a coke addict needs a fix, but there was nothing violent about his obsession.

Noah got up, took our bowls and relit the flame under the pot. “My mother never believed that I had gotten drunk and smashed up our car when I was nineteen, either,” he said.

“This isn’t going to work.”

“What isn’t?”

“Telling me some sweet family story about how your mother didn’t believe you were capable of acting out. It won’t convince me that I’m wrong.”

He didn’t argue and he didn’t try to finish the story that he’d started to tell. Using a fancy ladle I’d never used before, he refilled our bowls and put them back on the table. The fragrant, piquant smell wafted up in the steam.

“Eat,” he said. “Nothing you are saying will convince me.”

“Nothing?” I asked after swallowing a spoonful.

“Probably something, darlin’—but it’s also probably something that you won’t tell me.”

I thought about that. Even if there was something I could tell him, I didn’t have any facts, either. I only had my educated guess after listening to a man talk about his demons for weeks and weeks.

Yes, Alan was destructive, but only toward himself. He had devoted his whole life to justice. To protecting the innocent.

Who was he protecting now?

I spooned more of the gumbo into my mouth. If I kept eating, I wouldn’t be tempted to speak.

“If there is something, you really should tell me.”

More gumbo.

“Morgan?”

Okay, maybe I could do this. Maybe I could steer him toward what I’d realized without saying anything that was privileged. “Why those four girls, Noah? Why poison? Why would he go to all that trouble to kill them in front of the whole world? And if he did, why admit it? What did confession buy him? There are a million questions. Do you have answers for them all?”

“Not yet, but we’ll get them. I know how you feel, but I don’t really care why he confessed. Besides, even if he hadn’t, there’s enough circumstantial evidence on his computer that most juries would convict him.”

“That may be. But he didn’t do it.”

Before I knew it, I was looking into the bottom of the soup bowl again.

“Do you want more?” Noah asked.

I shook my head. “Three bowls? No.” I laughed.

“So how
did
you break your hand?”

“Wrist. I slipped on a patch of ice helping Nina over a snowdrift.”

“There have been more broken bones in New York City in the past three weeks than in the past two years combined. You sure it doesn’t hurt?”

“Sure. Yesterday it was throbbing, now it’s just a dull ache. You get used to pain.”

“You can, but why would you want to?”

“Sometimes you have no choice.”

I was following the subtext and was sure he was, too. He got up and began clearing the table. It felt luxurious to have him do this.

“You want some tea?” he asked. “I’d suggest coffee but it’s late, and I think you need to sleep.”

“Thanks. Tea is fine.”

He filled the kettle, got out the mugs and the chamomile tea bags, and cut a lemon.

“Honey?”

For a second, I thought he was using the word to address me, then realized what he meant. “Sure.” There must have been something in my tone because his hand froze in midair and he held my glance for a few seconds. “You’re having a rough time, aren’t you?” he asked.

I nodded. “You, too?”

Now he nodded.

We were like dashboard figurines, silently bobbing our heads.

I stood up. Walked to him. Pushed him away from the stove. “Let me. Let me make you tea.”

He watched me clumsily take out two tea bags and put one in each mug, then use one hand to spoon in the honey. The kettle started to sing.

It was awkward but I managed it, poured the hot water, stirred it together and squeezed in the lemon. Then I picked up the mug and offered it to him.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not you. It wasn’t even about you. I know I have a lot of work to do with Dulcie, but I’m going to do it on my own. Mitch isn’t part of the solution.”

He smiled. “At least you’re thinking straight about one thing. Come on, bring your tea. I think you need to get into bed, with the covers pulled way up to your chin, and the television turned on to an old movie.” He held out his hand.

I
stood by the bed and Noah undressed me—slowly, without any suggestion of sexuality, but with extreme tenderness. He pulled my sweater over my head and then smoothed down my hair where it had gotten ruffled. His hand soothed me like a lullaby. “Where’s your nightgown?”

I pointed to the bathroom. “Back of the door.” I stepped out of my shoes.

He came back with it and laid it on the edge of the bed. He undid the button and the zipper on my slacks. I started to tug at them with my one good hand, but Noah pushed my hand away and pulled them down. He held my left arm up by the elbow and I stepped out of my pants. I knew I should object and tell him that I could do all this alone, that I didn’t need anyone to help me. I meant to say it. But while I was thinking about it, he knelt down and pulled the sock off my right foot, and then my left. It wasn’t so bad having him help me.

Standing behind me, he unhooked my bra and helped me pull it over the cast on my right arm. I slipped it off my left. He did not touch my skin with his fingers, but I felt his breath
on the back of my neck and felt the rough fabric of his jeans where his left leg touched mine, seemingly inadvertently.

He stayed behind me and lowered the nightgown over my head, holding it while I maneuvered my right arm through the sleeve, and then pulling it down for me.

“Now,” he said, folding the comforter back, “get in.”

Noah pulled the covers up, then found the remote, turned on the TV and surfed through the channels until he found what he was looking for.

“Perfect,” he said, even before I knew what it was.

He was right, though.

Roman Holiday,
with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.

It was exactly the right movie for a night when everything is complicated and there don’t seem to be any solutions.

“Before I fall asleep, can you hand me the phone? I need to call Dulcie. I need to start getting this straightened out.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’m going to explain how I feel about—”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

“You can try.”

“Tell her you miss her and you are picking her up on Sunday after her performance and that she’s coming home with you.”

“That might not be the best way to deal with—”

“Morgan, you have spent so much time trying to handle Dulcie and analyze just the right way to deal with her. Some rules won’t hurt her. And one of them is that you are the mama and she does what you say. Call.”

I started to argue, but there was something so simple about what Noah was saying. He wasn’t overthinking it. Wasn’t worried about ramifications and psychological issues. Just the truth: I am your mother and there are some things you have to do.

I called.

Noah got up and stood by the window, watching out for
me, I thought, as I kept my eyes on his back and shoulders until my daughter got on the phone.

Dulcie asked me how I felt. I said I was fine. I didn’t want to tell her about my accident over the phone. I’d ask Mitch to tell her. Or I’d wait until I saw her. We talked for a few minutes about how her performances had been going. She didn’t bring up the television audition. She was a little distant, but agreed to come home without any argument.

“I’m exhausted,” I said to Noah when I hung up the phone.

“I bet you are.” He walked over to the bedside table, turned off the light, took the remote, set the timer so that the TV would shut off when the movie ended, and then pulled the covers to my chin. “Time to go to sleep now, darlin’.”