Every Fifteen Minutes (43 page)

“Eric, it's public record that you were taken in for questioning and are a suspect.”

“I won't be a suspect much longer—”

“But you are now. It was a true statement when they filed. That's why they didn't wait. Their argument is strongest now.”

“Do I get any points, because of the mall thing? I don't really think I'm a hero, but if it gets me Hannah, I'll take it.”

“No, not in a custody case. You keep forgetting that it's not a nice-guy contest, it's all about the best interests of Hannah. Plus their papers are really good, and so is their argument.”

“So what do they say?”

“I can sum it up for you. Max Jakubowski is your patient, and he's clearly a dangerous character. He took kids hostage and imprisoned them in the video store.” Susan paused. “By the way, my son and his friends shop in that store, all the time. If that
nutjob
had hurt one hair on my son's head—”

“Max wasn't going to hurt anyone. He had no bullets, no bomb.” Eric let the
nutjob
go.

Susan scoffed. “Oh, that makes it okay? Do you know the
trauma
those kids must have gone through? You, of all people!”

“Susan, let's stay on point. What does that have to do with my custody petition?”

“Everything, and I was getting to that. Max is your private patient, isn't he? You hold your sessions with him at your house, don't you?”

“Yes, right.”

“This would be the same house where you want Hannah to live with you?”

Eric grasped the implication of what she was saying.

“You're asking them to award you primary custody at a home where, under the same roof, you treat patients so dangerous they take children hostage—at
gunpoint?
Make bomb threats? Cause the largest police action this area has seen, like,
ever
?”

“Oh no.” Eric rubbed his forehead. “But I curate my private clients. They're harmless.”

“Then how did Max get into your private practice?”

“Max came in through the hospital, but that's not the point. They're safe.”

“We can't convince a court of that, not now, after the mall. It only takes one kook to hurt Hannah. Hold on, let me read you Caitlin's response.” Susan paused, and there was the sound of computer keys. “Here, it says, ‘Petitioner Husband has a list of ten private psychiatric clients whom he treats during regular therapy sessions, which are held at his home, in a small room attached to the back. The office is directly connected to the home through a door, which doesn't even have a lock, and there is no security to prevent these mentally ill patients, including many on psychotropic medications, from entering the house at will.'”

Eric groaned. “I treat depressed people, anxious people, people in deep grief. It's not
Silence of the Lambs.
”

“Let me continue. ‘In addition, Petitioner Husband treats these mentally ill patients during the evening hours, when the likelihood of dangerous assaults on the couple's seven-year-old daughter is far greater, and the possibility of sexual assault is ever-present—'”

“Enough,” Eric said, his stomach turning over.

“To be honest, it's a winning argument.”

“I could move. Get a new place that has a separate building for my office, like an outbuilding. I have a lease, but I guess I could break it.” Eric thought of Hannah's bedroom, which he'd just painted Primrose Pink. “Or I could rent an office that's not in my home.”

“Okay, now we're talking. Those are two possibilities.”

“Do we tell the court that?”

“Eric, hold that thought. I have an appointment, I have to go.” Susan paused. “We have ten days to respond. Do you think you'll be clear of this murder investigation by then?”

“I hope so.” Eric looked down at Max's file.

“Good. I'll send you their papers in hard copy, so you can read them yourself. In the meantime, keep me posted.”

“I really don't get Hannah tonight?”

“No, you don't. I'm going to write the judge a self-serving letter, saying that he needn't issue an order and we'll agree not to see her tonight, in view of the extraordinary circumstances. I'll play up your actions at the mall, how brave you were.”

Eric sighed, temporarily defeated. “Maybe it's better for her tonight. I have reporters on the front lawn.”

“It's the right way to go. Pick your battles. Let this cool down before you start making demands.”

“Okay, thanks.” Eric hung up, and his attention returned to his notes from his first session with Max. He pressed Hannah to the back of his mind and started reading. The landline on his desk rang a few moments later, and he answered it reflexively, in case it was a patient. “Hello, this is Dr. Parrish.”

“Dr. Parrish, my name is Tyler Choudhury and I'm calling from
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
and I'd like to ask you a few questions about the Bevilacqua murder—”

“I'm sorry, I have no comment.”

“But Dr. Parrish, this would be a chance for you to tell your side of the story. You can try to explain whether you're standing on the confidentiality laws, or hiding behind them—”

“No comment. Good-bye.” Eric hung up the phone, opened Max's file, and got busy.

 

Chapter Forty-nine

An hour later, Eric had read his notes thoroughly, and though they jarred his memory for many details, they didn't give him any thoughts or clues about who could have killed Ren
é
e. His gaze strayed out the window to the leafy butterfly bush, and orange monarchs and yellow swallowtails flitted here and there. It would've been a restorative sight if not for the reporters out front, who talked constantly, laughed, and sent clouds of cigarette smoke wafting through the screened windows.

He felt distracted, and it struck him how odd it was that he was at home, when he should've been at the hospital. His life, like his house, had been turned upside down. His thoughts reverted to his patients at the hospital, as if his mental processes followed the track during the workday, and he found himself wishing he could hold the morning meeting and hear from Amaka how everyone's night had been, then make treatment rounds, go through each of his patients, wondering how they were doing, expecting Sam was up to the task, hoping that Perino was improving. He thought then of Perino's wife, wondering if she believed that Eric was the bad guy she'd pegged him as, now that he was officially protecting the secrets of a murderer, or maybe was one himself.

Eric realized that Kristine would probably have a good laugh over his troubles, delighted to see that her attempt to ruin him was being done even more efficiently by the police. He still had no idea why she'd filed the sexual harassment charge, unless it was out of some jealousy of Laurie, but if that were so, Kristine had a level of pathology that Eric hadn't detected, undoubtedly because he wasn't paying any attention to her. To him, she was just another medical student on a psychiatric rotation, even though she was an exceptionally pretty one, but it struck him that Kristine was unusually skilled at hiding her emotions, as well as bizarrely focused on harming him. But she and her bogus harassment charges were the last thing he had to worry about right now.

Eric heard the reporters out front burst into laughter, so he got up and closed the windows, his thoughts churning. It was almost impossible to try to understand who had killed Ren
é
e, because he knew almost nothing about her. He went back to the desk, thinking more clearly now that the room was quieter. It was also possible that Ren
é
e's murder could've been an instance of random violence, so that the murderer would be unrelated to Ren
é
e. That was a possibility about which he would have no information, exclusively within the knowledge of the police, but Eric doubted they were even exploring those avenues, now that they had Max in custody.

The phone rang again, and Eric knew it was probably a reporter, but he couldn't not answer. There was no other way for anyone to reach him, either his patients or his staff from the hospital. “Hello, this is Dr. Parrish.”

“Dr. Parrish, my name is Nancy Steinman, I'm calling from
USA Today
regarding your patient, Max Jakubowski. We're doing a think piece on the relationship of gun laws to mental health laws, and I was wondering if you would comment—”

“I'm sorry, no comment.”

“But your experience would really illuminate—”

“No comment.” Eric hung up. He thought a minute, wondering again about Ren
é
e. She was a teenager, so she had to have a Facebook page. He hardly spent any time on Facebook; so much of his work was confidential and Caitlin was the one in their household who kept it up. She spent time on Facebook at night, reading her feed, keeping her status updated to her network at the D.A.'s Office, and posting their family and vacation photos.

He returned to his phone, opened the Facebook app, and out of curiosity, went first to check up on Caitlin. He typed her name in the search field, but
Add Friend
popped up next to her name. Eric blinked, stung. Of course, he was already Caitlin's Facebook friend, but he realized that Caitlin must have unfriended him, which was evidently the Facebook version of divorce. He tapped to double-check and could see only a limited version of Caitlin's profile. He stalled a moment, eyeing the screen, which showed only thumbnails of their Facebook friends, noticing that there were a few new ones. He scanned quickly and found the one he was looking for. Brian Allsworth, it read beside his name.

Eric was about to touch the profile picture, but stopped himself, realizing it was a vortex he didn't want to enter. Caitlin had moved on, he would have to as well, and in any event, his personal life wasn't as important as Ren
é
e Bevilacqua.

So he typed Ren
é
e's name into the search function, and a long list of Ren
é
e Bevilacquas appeared, their thumbnail pictures difficult to see on the tiny phone screen. He scrolled past older women, women from Australia and Italy, and clicked on a few that looked a little like Ren
é
e, but weren't her. Finally, a thumbnail of Ren
é
e jumped out at him, and he touched the screen.

A large profile picture of the young girl filled his screen, fresh-faced and beaming, surrounded by girlfriends, their arms around each other at the beach. Ren
é
e looked so alive that it was almost impossible to understand that she was dead, much less murdered. Eric glanced down on the page, and the only thing that showed about Ren
é
e were her past profile pictures and the most recent one, from about a month ago, had a caption that read CAN'T WAIT FOR SUMMER, BITCHES!!!!!! It showed her with a giggling group of girls wearing 3-D glasses, in front of the IMAX theater at the King of Prussia Mall. It was the same mall that Max tried to get himself killed in, despairing over her death.

Eric swallowed hard, imagining that Ren
é
e's last Facebook post would be on her page, with memorial R.I.P. posts from all of her friends at school and work. He suppressed his emotion and scanned thumbnails of Ren
é
e's Facebook friends, grinning, making faces at parties, wearing funny hats, or girls just trying to look their prettiest or their most provocative.

Their names were beside each face, and Eric scrolled down to the left and saw her friends' photos. He went back to Ren
é
e's page and saw the music that she liked: Iron and Wine, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Faith Hill. Books like
The Fault in Our Stars,
the
Divergent
series,
Mockingjay
, and
Eleanor & Park.
All of it touched Eric's heart, making her more real to him, bringing the tragedy of her murder into poignant focus.

The phone on the desk rang again, and Eric still couldn't ignore it, so he picked up. “This is Dr. Parrish.”

“I'm calling from the
New York Times
and—”

“I have no comment.”

“But Dr. Parrish—”

“Thank you, but no.” Eric hung up and returned to the task at hand. He was going to go through Ren
é
e's photos, trying to determine who was closest to her and see if any of them seemed remotely off or suspicious. She could've had a jealous boyfriend, a frenemy, a mean girl, or a bully. He knew it was a longshot, but it was a start and it was all he had. He clicked on the first picture on the left, which was of a young girl named Katie Shoop. Her privacy settings were in place, so he couldn't see much about her. However, Katie changed her profile picture often, and in almost every picture, she was hugging the same group of girls, including Ren
é
e. They appeared to be in the choir, because they were wearing blue robes, grinning with their arms around each other.

Eric grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil, and took notes as he went through the photos of Ren
é
e's Facebook friends. Almost all of the girls, but none of the boys, had protected their pages from the public, but Eric could still get information about the girls from their profile pictures, finding connections between them from their photo albums, Facebook friends, the groups they joined, and even where they lived. It was helpful, as well as scary, to see how much information he could glean.

An hour turned into two, and Eric ended up with a list of Sacred Heart sophomores, juniors, and seniors—nineteen girls and thirteen boys—who looked to be in Ren
é
e's inner circle. Oddly, Eric didn't see any mention of Ren
é
e's boyfriend, though he knew she had one from Max. He couldn't figure out which of the boys was her boyfriend, nor did any of the boys list her as a girlfriend on his page. One of the boys, senior Jason Tandore, listed Pickering Park as one of his favorite places, which set the hair on the back of Eric's neck on end, since Pickering Park was where Ren
é
e had been found dead.