Insomnia (13 page)

‘No.
Helen’s
the important thing. Helen and the baby.’

‘I can ride with that. Tell me what you and Mr Deepneau talked about before we got up here, Mr Roberts . . . or can I call you Ralph?’

‘Ralph, please.’ He ran through his conversation with Ed, trying to keep it brief. McGovern, who had heard some of it but not all of it, listened in round-eyed silence. Every time Ralph looked at him, he found himself wishing Bill had worn his Panama. He looked older without it. Almost ancient.

‘Well, that certainly sounds pretty weird, doesn’t it?’ Leydecker remarked when Ralph had finished.

‘What will happen? Will he go to jail? He shouldn’t go to jail; he should be committed.’

‘Probably should be,’ Leydecker agreed, ‘but there’s a lot of distance between should be and will be. He won’t go to jail, and he isn’t going to be carted off to Sunnyvale Sanitarium, either – that sort of thing only happens in old movies. The best we can hope for is some court-ordered therapy.’

‘But didn’t Helen tell you—’

‘The lady didn’t tell us anything, and we didn’t try to question her in the store. She was in a lot of pain, both physical and emotional.’

‘Yes, of course she was,’ Ralph said. ‘Stupid of me.’

‘She might corroborate your stuff later on . . . but she might not. Domestic abuse victims have a way of turning into clams, you know. Luckily, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other under the new law. We got him nailed to the wall. You and the lady in the little store down the street can testify to Mrs Deepneau’s condition, and to who she said put her in that condition. I can testify to the fact that the victim’s husband had blood on his hands. Best of all, he said the magic words: “Man, I just can’t believe I hit her.” I’d like you to come in – probably tomorrow morning, if that works for you – so I can take a complete statement from you, Ralph, but that’s just filling in the blanks. Basically, this one’s a done deal.’

Leydecker took the toothpick out of his mouth, broke it, tossed it in the gutter, and produced his tube again. ‘Pick?’

‘No thanks,’ Ralph said, smiling faintly.

‘Don’t blame you. Lousy habit, but I’m trying to quit smoking, which is an even worse one. The thing about guys like Deepneau is that they’re too goddam smart for their own good. They go over the high side, hurt someone . . . and then they pull back. If you get there soon enough after the blow-up – like you did, Ralph – you can almost see them standing there with their heads cocked, listening to the music and trying to get back on the beat.’

‘That’s just how it was,’ Ralph said. ‘
Exactly
how it was.’

‘It’s a trick the bright ones manage for quite awhile – they appear remorseful, appalled by their own actions, determined to make amends. They’re persuasive, they’re charming, and it’s often all but impossible to see that underneath the sugar coating they’re as nutty as Christmas fruitcakes. Even extreme cases like Ted Bundy sometimes manage to look normal for years. The good news is that there aren’t many guys like Ted Bundy out there, in spite of all the psycho-killer books and movies.’

Ralph sighed deeply. ‘What a mess.’

‘Yeah. But look on the bright side: we’re gonna be able to keep him away from her, at least for a while. He’ll be out by suppertime on twenty-five dollars bail, but—’

‘Twenty-five dollars?’ McGovern asked. He sounded simultaneously shocked and cynical. ‘That’s
all
?’

‘Yup,’ Leydecker said. ‘I gave Deepneau the second-degree assault stuff because it do sound fearsome, but in the state of Maine, lumping up your wife is only a misdemeanor.’

‘Still, there’s a nifty new wrinkle in the law,’ Chris Nell said, joining them. ‘If Deepneau wants bail, he has to agree that he’ll have absolutely no contact with his wife until the case is settled in court – he can’t come to the house, approach her on the street, or even call her on the phone. If he doesn’t agree, he sits in jail.’

‘Suppose he agrees and then comes back, anyway?’ Ralph asked.

‘Then we slam-dunk him,’ Nell said, ‘because that one
is
a felony . . . or can be, if the district attorney wants to play hardball. In any case, violators of the Domestic Violence bail agreement usually spend a lot more than just the afternoon in jail.’

‘And hopefully the spouse he breaks the agreement to visit will still be alive when he comes to trial,’ McGovern said.

‘Yeah,’ Leydecker said heavily. ‘Sometimes that’s a problem.’

Ralph went home and sat staring not at the TV but through it for an hour or so. He got up during a commercial to see if there was a cold Coke in the refrigerator, staggered on his feet, and had to put a hand on the wall to steady himself. He was trembling all over and felt unpleasantly close to vomiting. He understood that this was nothing but delayed reaction, but the weakness and nausea still frightened him.

He sat down again, took a minute’s worth of deep breaths with his head down and his eyes closed, then got up and walked slowly into the bathroom. He filled the tub with warm water and soaked until he heard
Night Court,
the first of the afternoon sitcoms, starting up on the TV in the living room. By then the water in the tub had become almost chilly, and Ralph was glad to get out. He dried off, dressed in fresh clothes, and decided that a light supper was at least in the realm of possibility. He called downstairs, thinking McGovern might like to join him for a bite to eat, but there was no answer.

Ralph put on water in which to boil a couple of eggs and called Derry Home Hospital from the phone by the stove. His call was shunted to a woman in Patient Services who checked her computer and told him yes, he was correct, Helen Deepneau
had
been admitted to the hospital. Her condition was listed as fair. No, she had no idea who was taking care of Mrs Deepneau’s baby; all she knew was that she did not have a Natalie Deepneau on her admissions list. No, Ralph could not visit Mrs Deepneau that evening, but not because her doctor had established a no-visitors policy; Mrs Deepneau had left that order herself.

Why would she do that?
Ralph started to ask, then didn’t bother. The woman in Patient Services would probably tell him she was sorry, she didn’t have that information in her computer, but Ralph decided he had it in
his
computer, the one between his giant economy-size ears. Helen didn’t want visitors because she was ashamed. None of what had happened was her fault, but Ralph doubted if that changed the way she felt. She had been seen by half of Harris Avenue staggering around like a badly beaten boxer after the ref has stopped the fight, she had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and her husband – the father of her daughter – was responsible. Ralph hoped they would give her something that would help her sleep through the night; he had an idea things might look a little better to her in the morning. God knew they couldn’t look much worse.

Hell, I wish someone would give me something to help me sleep through the night,
he thought.

Then go see Dr Litchfield, you idiot,
another part of his mind responded immediately.

The woman in Patient Services was asking Ralph if she could do anything else for him. Ralph said no and was starting to thank her when the line clicked in his ear.

‘Nice,’ Ralph said. ‘Very nice.’ He hung up himself, got a tablespoon, and gently lowered his eggs into the water. Ten minutes later, as he was sitting down with the boiled eggs sliding around on a plate and looking like the world’s biggest pearls, the phone rang. He put his supper on the table and grabbed it off the wall. ‘Hello?’

Silence, broken only by breathing.

‘Hello?’ Ralph repeated.

There was one more breath, this one almost loud enough to be an aspirated sob, and then another click in his ear. Ralph hung up the telephone and stood looking at it for a moment, his frown putting three ascending wave-lines on his brow.

‘Come on, Helen,’he said. ‘Call me back. Please.’ Then he returned to the table, sat down, and began to eat his small bachelor’s supper.

He was washing up his few dishes fifteen minutes later when the phone rang again.
That won’t be her,
he thought, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and then flipping it over his shoulder as he went to the phone.
No way it’ll be her. It’s probably Lois or Bill
. But another part of him knew differently.

‘Hi, Ralph.’

‘Hello, Helen.’

‘That was me a few minutes ago.’ Her voice was husky, as if she had been drinking or crying, and Ralph didn’t think they allowed booze in the hospital.

‘I kind of figured that.’

‘I heard your voice and I . . . I couldn’t . . .’

‘That’s okay. I understand.’

‘Do you?’ She gave a long, watery sniff.

‘I think so, yes.’

‘The nurse came by and gave me a pain-pill. I can use it, too – my face really hurts. But I wouldn’t let myself take it until I called you again and said what I had to say. Pain sucks, but it’s a hell of an incentive.’

‘Helen, you don’t have to say anything.’ But he was afraid that she did, and he was afraid of what it might be . . . afraid of finding out that she had decided to be angry at him because she couldn’t be angry with Ed.

‘Yes I do. I have to say thank you.’

Ralph leaned against the side of the door and closed his eyes for a moment. He was relieved but unsure how to reply. He had been ready to say
I’m sorry you feel that way, Helen
in the calmest voice he could manage, that was how sure he’d been that she was going to start off by asking him why he couldn’t mind his own business.

And, as if she had read his mind and wanted to let him know he wasn’t entirely off the hook, Helen said, ‘I spent most of the ride here, and the check-in, and the first hour or so in the room, being terribly angry at you. I called Candy Shoemaker, my friend from over on Kansas Street, and she came and got Nat. She’s keeping her for the night. She wanted to know what had happened, but I wouldn’t tell her. I just wanted to lie here and be mad that you called 911 even though I told you not to.’

‘Helen—’

‘Let me finish so I can take my pill and go to sleep. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Just after Candy left with the baby – Nat didn’t cry, thank God, I don’t know if I could have handled that – a woman came in. At first I thought she must have gotten the wrong room because I didn’t know her from Eve, and when I got it through my head that she was here to see me, I told her I didn’t want any visitors. She didn’t pay any attention. She closed the door and lifted her skirt up so I could see her left thigh. There was a deep scar running down it, almost all the way from her hip to her knee.

‘She said her name was Gretchen Tillbury, that she was a family-abuse counsellor at WomanCare, and that her husband had cut her leg open with a kitchen knife in 1978. She said if the man in the downstairs apartment hadn’t gotten a tourniquet on it, she would have bled to death. I said I was very sorry to hear that, but I didn’t want to talk about my own situation until I’d had a chance to think it over.’ Helen paused and then said, ‘But that was a lie, you know. I’ve had plenty of time to think it over, because Ed first hit me two years ago, just before I got pregnant with Nat. I just kept . . . pushing it away.’

‘I can see how a person would do that,’ Ralph said.

‘This lady . . . well, they must give people like her lessons on how to get through people’s defenses.’

Ralph smiled. ‘I believe that’s about half their training.’

‘She said I couldn’t put it off, that I had a bad situation on my hands and I had to start dealing with it right away. I said that whatever I did, I didn’t have to consult her before I did it, or listen to her line of bullshit just because her husband had cut her once. I almost said he probably did it because she wouldn’t shut up and go away and give him some peace, can you believe that? But I was really pissed, Ralph. Hurting . . . confused . . . ashamed . . . but mostly just PO’d.’

‘I think that’s probably a pretty normal reaction.’

‘She asked me how I’d feel about myself – not about Ed but about
myself
– if I went back into the relationship and Ed beat me up again. Then she asked how I’d feel if I went back in and Ed did it to Nat. That made me furious. It
still
makes me furious. Ed has never laid so much as a finger on her, and I said so. She nodded and said, “That doesn’t mean he
won’t,
Helen. I know you don’t want to think about that, but you have to. Still, suppose you’re right? Suppose he never so much as slaps her on the wrist? Do you want her to grow up watching him hit
you
? Do you want her to grow up seeing the things she saw today?” And that stopped me. Stopped me cold. I remembered how Ed looked when he came back in . . . how I knew as soon as I saw how white his face was . . . the way his head was moving . . .’

‘Like a rooster,’ Ralph murmured.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Go on.’

‘I don’t know what set him off . . . I never do anymore, but I knew he was going to start in on me. There’s nothing you can do or say to stop it once he gets to a certain point. I ran for the bedroom, but he grabbed me by the hair . . . he pulled out a great big bunch of it . . . I screamed . . . and Natalie was sitting there in her highchair . . . sitting there watching us . . . and when
I
screamed,
she
screamed . . .’

Helen broke down then, crying hard. Ralph waited with his forehead leaning against the side of the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He used the end of the dishtowel he’d slung over his shoulder to wipe away his own tears almost without thinking about it.

‘Anyway,’ Helen said when she was capable of speaking again, ‘I ended up talking to this woman for almost an hour. It’s called Victim Counselling and she does it for a living, can you believe it?’