Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (9 page)

And then the wind blew the paper away.

I went over the stats I’d read earlier in the paper, thinking that at least all the girls I worked with in prison were safe. Safer behind bars than they were on the street.

And Cleo was safe. She was too savvy to get messed up with anyone she didn’t know. I knew enough about how she worked and how careful she was about screening clients. She would never go to a hotel with a complete stranger. Would never allow herself to be put in a position where she wasn’t protected.

And yet, and yet, what if some man was smarter than she was? What if this psychopath was clever enough to—

I sat down under the wisteria arbor on the West Side and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed my office number, listened to it ring and then punched in the code to play back my messages.

I wasn’t usually this nervous about a patient. But the news preyed on me. And Cleo mattered to me.

I had three messages.

The first was from a client requesting a second appointment that week.

The next was from another therapist at the institute requesting a consult later in the week.

I waited for the third message, desperately wanting it to be Cleo, worried that it wouldn’t be, concerned that if it wasn’t, my imagination would take off like the newspaper had.

The third message was from my ex-husband to say hello and talk about the rest of Dulcie’s summer schedule with him.

There was no word from Cleo.

O
n the other side of the world from my office at the Butterfield Institute lay the women’s state penitentiary in upstate New York. Almost three hours from the city, the redbrick building sat at the bottom of a hill on a lonely stretch of road near a state park. Every Thursday morning Simon Weiss, a fellow therapist at the institute, and I drove there. Between us we met with anywhere from two to six patients, prostitutes who had either requested to see a therapist or who were required to see one.

This gig started as part of my graduate-school work, but I kept doing it, because I was still innocent enough, or dumb enough, to think that I might actually make a difference. And Simon, who was one of my closest friends, in addition to being an associate, had been doing it with me for the past year.

Since the first prostitute’s killing, the women were angrier and sadder than usual. Worried about their friends on the outside and about themselves when they would be released.

As Simon navigated the city traffic we shared office gossip and then fell into a companionable silence. I was looking out the window, but I could see him in my peripheral vision.

Between the curly, dirty-blond hair, dimples and lively blue eyes, and a mind that leaped ahead when other people were still trying to figure out what direction to take, he was impressive. But it was more than that. He had that rare male attribute: he loved women. He loved to talk to us, spend time with us, listen to us and bond with us. Sometimes, when we were out having a drink, along with a heart-to-heart, he joked that he was a chick with a dick.

“You know, you are really quiet,” he said.

“How does that make you feel?”

He laughed. It was our joke, the jargon we used on each other. We made each other laugh by dipping into patient-doctor talk. One day we’d have to dig deep and find what we were covering up with all the teasing. But I was hoping it wouldn’t be for a while.

“Seriously,” he said, “what’s going on?”

“I have a patient who missed an appointment yesterday and didn’t call. I hate to admit it, but I have a feeling that something might be wrong.”

“Did you call her?”

“I tried to. Late yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t sure I should.”

“Why?”

“I don’t usually.”

“But she’s special?”

I nodded.

Simon smiled. Every once in a while, a patient got to me the way Cleo had. But it had been a long time.

“She didn’t call back?”

“No.”

“Who is it? Cleo Thane?”

I nodded.

During weekly meetings, all ten therapists at the institute discussed their respective patients, so they all knew about Cleo.

“When is she scheduled to come in next?”

“Monday. I’m assuming she got a job that took her out of town.”

“Is that all that’s bothering you?”

Simon had been a friend for a long time. “My divorce came through last week.”

“And you waited a whole week to tell me.” For a moment I was embarrassed.

“Morgan?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not yet. I just want to be in denial that anything in my life has to change any more than it already has.”

“Change is not always bad.”

“I know that professionally. But on a personal level, let’s just say I am not yet convinced.”

We were out of Manhattan and on the highway heading toward the George Washington Bridge. In the sunlight the metal girders and trusses gleamed and the Hudson River glinted.

“It looks like a postcard, doesn’t it? All that blue sky and green trees and that gigantic bridge,” he said.

“From a distance it’s easy to see things in symmetry.”

He reached out and took my hand and held it on the seat between us. I relied upon all of my training and insight and intuition to figure out if this touch was the same as the million touches he had given me over the past five years. He was a physical person, and hugs and brotherly kisses and things like holding my hand to make me feel as if we were connected were just how we were.

But now I was divorced. And he was a flirt. And what would have been innocent before could be interpreted differently now. His skin was warm and his fingers were long and strong. What would happen if I moved my fingers against his? If, instead of letting my hand lie limp in his, I pressed my fingertips into his? What would it feel like to channel energy into the touch? To use the proximity of our hands to give him a message? To say to him with my flesh that I wanted more?

I would ruin a wonderful friendship. Of that I had no doubt. If I was going to experiment with a side of myself that had been dormant for too long, it was not going to be with someone I sat across a conference-room table from several times a week.

The sun was coming through the window and making me warm. I shifted in my seat and extracted my hand.

As if nothing had happened, because it hadn’t, Simon put his hand back on the wheel. We drove another few minutes before he asked me something I was surprised we’d never covered in all our hundreds of hours of conversation.

“Why do you do this prison work?”

“Because of ‘grace.’”

He knew my shorthand for “There but for the grace of God go I.”

There were too many things I’d seen that made me stop, catch my breath and be grateful that I was not there and that was not my life. Dulcie had picked up on it and sometimes came home from school with a “grace” story.

“That is a wonderfully Morgan thing to say.” Simon smiled.

In my lap, I put my right hand over my left and let my fingers play with one another.

But you can’t make a connection with your own skin.

T
he walk from the parking lot to the prison itself was bizarrely lovely. It was about a quarter of a mile down a path that bordered on a state park with trees spilling into the grounds of the institution. Towering old oaks, maples, cedars and pine trees bathe the path in shade, and you could easily forget where you were. Until you reached the summit and saw the guardhouse, the barbed-wire fence, the huge spotlights and a fleet of police, prison and state cars in the smaller parking area beside the building.

The prison sat on the estate of a wealthy industrialist whose three-year-old son was brutally murdered in the house while everyone slept. The murderer was his mother: a woman who had been troubled and in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals for years.

Regardless of her mental history, she was sentenced to life in prison and hung herself the first week she was there. The noose was made of her bedsheet, ripped with her teeth.

Her husband, Al Serwin, moved away, leaving the property, the house and an endowment to the state with the express desire that it be turned into a women’s prison. But a special house of incarceration, one where the most hopeful cases would go, with a generous fund to ensure that every prisoner got psychiatric help. The best, brought in and paid in full. Not the sad social workers who took whatever work they could get and sat through appointments, only slightly more capable than the people they were counseling.

It was warmer than I’d anticipated and I took off my jacket as we approached the doors. Just as well, as I had to be patted down and all my pockets emptied before I could go in.

Once inside we were greeted by Mary Kathryn Evans, the guard we had seen every Thursday for the past few years.

“We had a little scene here last night,” she told us with a rueful smile. She was heavyset and always chewed cinnamonflavored gum.

Her hands were on my hips.

“What happened?”

“One of the ladies had a visitor. Turns out he was the ex of another one of our ladies.”

Her hand moved down my legs, pat, pat, pat, feeling for something that wasn’t there.

“There was quite a fight. Scratching, biting. Turned into a party.”

“Anyone hurt?”

Her hands were on my arms now.

“Stitches, concussions. Some of the bites broke skin—and, you know, with AIDS, that can be serious business.”

Mary Kathryn was finished and moved on to Simon. “I don’t know where Joe is. You want to wait? Or do you mind if
I
do this today?”

“I’d rather if you did it, darling,” he joked.

She started her hands down his hips and I watched the way
her fingers so impersonally felt for the nonexistent contraband.

“One of your patients was involved,” she said to me as her hands moved around Simon’s ankles.

Now she had my full attention.

“Who?”

“Coffey Gerard.”

I was hoping she wasn’t going to say her name. “Did she get attacked or was she the instigator?”

“She’s the one who got attacked. Caty Laine attacked her.”

Coffey was a gorgeous African-American prostitute whom many of the other girls were jealous of.

“But I can see her?”

“Guess so—you are on the sheet with her at eleven.” Mary Kathryn nodded to a printed sheet of doctor appointments for the day. And with that she buzzed Simon and me through.

We walked down the hallway to the waiting room reserved for doctors and therapists and correctional officials. We usually didn’t have to wait long.

The smell wasn’t too bad in that room, other than the use of too much disinfectant. But I knew that once the next guard came to escort me to the room where I conducted my sessions, the stench would be overwhelming.

The prison was crowded, even though this was one of the better places to be holed up in. But there were no good prisons. There were no easy ways to do time.

“Dr. Snow?” A male guard stood at the door. I didn’t recognize him. Standing, I turned back to Simon and said goodbye.

“See you later, alligator,” he said.

I smiled and followed the guard out.

As soon as I left that room and started down the hallway, I bit into the mint I’d put in my mouth so that the peppermint would overwhelm every other odor. If I focused on breathing
through my mouth it was always better. But the stale body odor, the whiff of urine, the cigarette smoke and the cheap perfumes and shampoos that some of the women used to try to pretty themselves up were still stifling. It was like inhaling desperation.

Dante wrote about the three circles of hell: every Thursday I walked through purgatory.

I took a seat in the windowless room. There was a couch and a chair next to a desk. An approximation of a therapist’s office. At least the room was not filthy. The women here had to do cleanup, and they worked harder in some rooms than others. The therapy room was one of those they took pride in keeping pristine. Many of them wanted to come to therapy. They said they felt better after it. We treated our patients the same way here we treated the patients we saw in our own offices, and that dignity was precious to them.

While I waited for Coffey, whose real name was Sarah, I popped another strong peppermint into my mouth and breathed in, placing the pack on the table, knowing that I wouldn’t leave with them. At some point when my head was turned, Coffey would carefully roll them off the tabletop and secret them in her pocket.

Eventually we’d get to her petty thievery. But in the meantime we had bigger issues to deal with.

“Morning, Doc,” she said after the guard had opened the door and let her in.

I tried not to look surprised. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and if her nose hadn’t been broken, it had been badly injured. A long scratch, crusted with dried blood, ran the length of her neck.

“You should see what I did to her,” Coffey said, bragging a little.

“Yeah?”

She smiled. “It was self-defense, but not the guards or nobody knows that.”

“How come?”

“Just because I’m mad at Billy, I was not going to rat on Caty. She had a nail file. Shit. Who knows how she got it. But she had it and she was heading for my eye with it.”

“Because?”

“I had a visitor yesterday.”

“Who?”

“Tyson.” She gave me the self-satisfied smile of a woman who knows she has a man so hot for her that he’ll come all the way out to a prison just to look at her through a wire-andglass partition.

“So he’s back?”

Coffey nodded. We’d had a few conversations about her pimp, and she knew that if she wanted to get out of prison and stay off the streets, she was going to have to break off with him.

“He’s going to try to get me an interview with someone really big when I get out. He thinks I can do more. He thinks I have something extra. He’s worried about me. This guy who is killing girls and dressing us up like nuns? He’s got everyone freaked. And Tyson cares about me too much to let me back on the street. So he’s gonna get me an interview.”