Santa Fe Rules (5 page)

“A natural enough mistake,” Wolf said absently.

“I told Martinez about that afternoon,” Mark said.

Wolf looked up. “What about that afternoon?”

“Just that I had a drink with you over there around five, then came home. The day of the murders.”

“You had a drink at my house that same afternoon?”

“Well, of course; you called me. You were there alone. Surely you remember that.”

“I don’t remember anything about that night, Mark, and nothing about the day before.”

The two men stared at each other for a moment, and some unspoken fear seemed to pass between them.

Mark spoke first. “Tell me where you’ve been,” he said, in the voice he had used when Wolf had been his patient.

Wolf told him about waking alone in the house, about the trip to the Grand Canyon, his stay there, the trip back.

“Well,” Mark said, when Wolf had finished. “Who would ever have thought to look for you at the Grand Canyon?”

“Who would have thought to look for me at all?” Wolf said. “After all, I’m supposed to be on a slab somewhere.” He winced at the thought. “Mark, where is Julia?”

“At the county morgue, with Jack and…whoever. The body won’t be released until a postmortem has been conducted—another day or two, I should think.” He paused. “Wolf, you said you read the
Times;
did you read the obituaries, too?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know about Julia’s…background.”

“Yes. How the hell did they find out about that? I never knew about it. Why would they put a thing like that in an obituary, for Christ’s sake?”

“I called a friend at the
Times
and checked that out,” Mark replied. “A
Times
reporter had interviewed Julia’s
sister in prison a couple of times. She was apparently trying to interest him in a book about her case. She told him about Julia’s background when he called to tell her about the murders.”

“Mark, you were her analyst. Did you know anything about that?”

Pain crossed Mark’s face. “Yes. After a long time had passed. I sensed she was holding something back, and finally she came out with it.”

“The
Times
stuff was true, then?”

“All of it, I’m afraid. I hope you understand why I couldn’t tell you, Wolf.”

“Sure, doctor-patient confidentiality, and all that.”

“Exactly. Julia would never have told me anything if she’d had the slightest notion that I might tell you. I was in something of a quandary about it, but I decided to go by the book.”

“Of course.” Wolf remembered something. “Mark, the
Times
said something about your having been arrested in New York for practicing medicine without a license.”

Mark sighed deeply. “It was accurate, as far as it went. When I was in medical school at Columbia, I got a girl pregnant. We were at a lake house upstate for the weekend—I didn’t know about her condition—when she miscarried. Our friends were out shopping in the car, and there was no phone. I helped her as best I could, then sedated her and made her comfortable. The other girl in the group, when she returned to the house, thought I’d performed an abortion, and turned me in. When the girl recovered enough to talk to the police, it was all cleared up, but charges had been filed in the meantime. The incident has haunted my medical career.”

“I see,” Wolf said. “I knew it had to be something like
that; I knew you couldn’t have done anything unethical.”

“I appreciate that, Wolf,” Mark said.

“Mark,” Wolf said, “I want you to hypnotize me.” Mark had hypnotized him half a dozen times a couple of years before, to help him stop smoking; he had been a good subject.

Mark looked down into his drink. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Wolf.”

“Mark, I’ve lost a whole day; I want it back. I’ve got to know what happened.”

“Wolf, if your mind refuses to remember, it’s for a reason. It’s likely that you’ve suffered a trauma that you couldn’t handle. It’s a protective function of the mind, like a circuit breaker that cuts out when there’s an electrical overload.”

“I understand that. I still want to know. Maybe I…was a witness.”

“If you couldn’t handle it then, what makes you think you can handle it now? You could end up catatonic.”

“I’m willing to take that chance. I can’t stand not knowing.”

“You have to understand, hypnotizing you now could put me in a very dangerous situation, legally speaking—dangerous for you, I mean. There are limits to doctor-patient confidentiality, and if I were subpoenaed—”

“I won’t ask you to lie for me, Mark, but I can’t go on living without knowing what happened that night.”

Mark’s shoulders sagged. “You’re my friend, Wolf. I’ll help you if I can.”

When Wolf woke, Mark was gone from the room. He sat up on the leather couch and rubbed his face with his
hands. He felt a little light-headed, but well rested; his exhaustion had left him. He looked at his watch: two
A.M.
He had been out for over two hours.

Mark entered the office with a tray of food. Right behind him came Flaps. There was the usual two minutes of pandemonium that constituted any reunion with the dog.

“I’m glad to see you, girl,” Wolf whispered into her soft ear. She grinned for him.

“Maria was going to take her, but I thought she’d be happier here with some land to romp on.”

“Thanks, Mark, I really appreciate that.”

Mark handed him a large glass of fresh orange juice. “I had difficulty waking you, so I just let you sleep it off naturally.”

“Does that happen often with subjects?”

“It’s not rare; it’s not common, either. You needed the rest, I think, and your unconscious knew that.”

“I still don’t remember anything. What did I say when I was under?”

“Wolf, you have to understand that what you said isn’t necessarily what happened.”

“I did it, didn’t I?” Wolf sank onto the sofa again.

Mark raised a finger. “The mind is strange, Wolf. You’ve obviously been worrying about this since you read the story in the
Times
, and your mind may have…altered events, in order to expiate the guilt you were feeling—a kind of self-confession, if you see what I mean.”

“So this was inconclusive?”

“Yes, I think so. Otherwise, I’d be in the position of having to wonder whether I should call the police.”

“Why don’t I remember what I said when I was under?”

“I instructed you not to. It would have done no earthly good for you to remember, and it may have done you a
great deal of harm. You are fortunate, I think, that this hypnosis was not administered by a court-appointed psychiatrist, who might not have been quite so well acquainted with the nuances. Incidentally, should it come to that, I’d advise you not to submit. I should think your best chance in this would be to remain mute at your trial.”

“My
trial?
”

“Assuming it comes to that, of course,” Mark said, looking away.

Suddenly Wolf was ravenous. He tore into the scrambled eggs and ham that Mark had brought him. When he had finished, he sat back and looked at Mark, who had been regarding him quietly. “What am I going to do, Mark?”

Mark sighed. “I think your choices are very limited,” he said sadly.

“You think I should turn myself in?”

“Only after talking to the best possible criminal lawyer,” Mark said, raising a warning finger. “Locally, that would be Ed Eagle.”

“The Indian guy?”

“He’s thought to be among the best in the country. Ed plays by what he calls Santa Fe Rules, and it works for him and for his clients. I know him, and I’d be glad to call him for you.”

“What are my other choices?”

Mark looked away.

“Run, huh?”

Mark looked back at him. “There’s always Mexico. Nobody’s looking for you; it’s thought you’re dead.”

“A new life south of the border,” Wolf mused. “I wonder what demand there is for entertainment lawyers in Puerto Vallarta?”

“Not much, I should think. Wolf, I think you should see Ed Eagle, but it’s your choice; if you want to leave, even if only for a while, I’ll help you in any way I can. I’ve got about thirty thousand in the bank, and if you need more, there are some bearer bonds in my safety deposit box—about two hundred thousand, I think.”

“Thanks, Mark, but I’m okay for money at the moment.”

“I wouldn’t cash any checks, if I were you, or use your credit cards.”

Wolf looked at the psychiatrist closely. “You’re assuming I’m going to run.”

Mark smiled. “You always had a fear of authority. That’s why you chose your career as an independent producer—so you could be as free as possible from the talent agencies and the studios. Frankly, I can’t see you placing your trust in the criminal justice system.” His smile faded. “I wish you would, though.”

“You know me well, Mark.”

“I should, after two years of deep analysis, don’t you think?”

“And you’re a good friend, too.”

Mark shrugged. “A psychiatrist isn’t often called upon to be a friend. Lots of other things, but not a friend. To tell you the truth, there are some psychic rewards for me in helping a friend in trouble, so maybe I’m just being selfish.” He rearranged himself in the chair and slipped back into his role as analyst. “Wolf, there was something that came up in your analysis that you wouldn’t talk about at the time. I didn’t want to ask you about it under hypnosis.”

“What was that?” Wolf asked, knowing the answer.

“There was another time when you lost a day from your life.”

Wolf looked into the fire. “A day and a half,” he said.

“At the time of your first wife’s death?”

Wolf looked up at him. “How did you know that?”

“It was obvious. I didn’t want to press you at the time, but I will now. I think it’s important.”

“You mean you think that blackout and this more recent one may be related?”

“It’s possible. If they are related, we should know. Start at the beginning.”

Wolf looked back into the glowing embers. “All right,” he said.

CHAPTER
6

T
he fear came back. The dread that he had fought for so many years crept out of its banishment and seized him again. He did not try to fight it.

“Her name was Maggie. She worked for a casting agent Jack and I used, and she and I were in a lot of readings together. I was impressed with her judgment of actors, and she was extremely attractive, too. We began seeing a lot of each other.” He paused.

“Go on,” Mark said gently.

“I was just trying to remember how long we saw each other before…Oh, I guess it was seven or eight months, and after that long she was spending so much time at my apartment—I had a condo in Beverly Hills at the time—that we were practically living together. Pretty soon, I asked her to give up her place. We had talked about marriage, and agreed that neither of us had any business getting married. She thought that I was a workaholic, and I
knew she didn’t want to give up her career—she wanted her own casting agency.” He shook his head. “She would have had it, too.”

“What happened to stop her?”

“She got pregnant.”

“And what was your reaction to that?”

“Panic. No other word for it. When she told me, I had this flash forward of the next twenty years, and I didn’t like it.”

“What didn’t you like about it?”

“The confinement; the obligation to somebody other than myself.”

“That’s honest. What about the obligations you had to Maggie already?”

“Those either of us could end at any time; it was the sort of arrangement we had.”

“Until she got pregnant.”

“Yes. Then everything changed. I couldn’t just say, ‘Thanks, that’s it, see you around the casting sessions.”

“Responsibility.”

“Yes. But you know I never shied away from responsibility; I craved it.”

“But only to yourself. That’s what you craved. We worked all this out long ago, remember?”

“Sure, I remember.”

“Did you ask her to have an abortion?”

“Not in so many words. I think I was as afraid of doing that as I was afraid of having a child. She brought it up. ‘That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it? Kill him?’ She already had it in her mind that it was a boy.”

“How did you make your decision?”

“She put it to me bluntly; she said she loved me, and she wanted us to be married and raise the child, and have
others. But, she said, if I didn’t want that, too, then it was over—she would have the child and raise it on her own, and I would never see either of them again.”

“How did you feel about the prospect of not seeing her again?”

“The thought of not seeing her nearly killed me; I couldn’t stand it. That surprised me; I guess you never really know how you feel about a woman until you face the prospect of los-ing her.”

“So how did you deal with the problem?”

“I made my decision. I told her that I loved her, and I wanted to marry her, and I wanted the baby, and we would send him to Princeton, and he’d make us proud of him.”

“And was all that true?”

“Not all of it. I loved her, God knows, but I didn’t want a child. I was that selfish.”

“But you made the sacrifice to keep her?”

“Yes. We were married, we bought a house. I refused to go to childbirth classes on the grounds that I was squeamish.”

“And she accepted that?”

“Not really. Although I never admitted it to her, she knew how I felt about the baby. I think she thought that the first time I held my own child in my arms, all my reservations would vanish and everything would be all right.”

“And was that true?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I do know that if she had felt I wasn’t adapting, she’d have left me and brought up the child alone. She was a very determined girl, and she wanted that baby.”

“Did you see the baby as driving a wedge between you and Maggie?”

Wolf leaned forward and put his face in his hands. “God
help me, I did. I know now how stupid that was. I think I even knew it at the time, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.”