Six Strokes Under (3 page)

On my way down the exit hallway, I noticed that the double doors guarding Baxter's neighbor's office stood cracked open several inches. This was not up to Dr. Bencher's usual standard of security. Not that I blamed him for being careful. I, too, would have preferred to keep two steel-reinforced doors and a peephole between me and the sea of human flotsam that bobbed about in the safe harbor of his waiting room.

A muffled gurgling noise halted my beeline charge for the stairs. I heard the noise again—not so much gurgling this time as rasping, like someone who seriously could not breathe. I decided to go back and tell Baxter—let him check on Bencher.

But when I reached the waiting area, Baxter's door had been shut, and the heavy-set, miserable-looking woman who often followed my session no longer sat in the chair by the window. Damn. Now alerting Baxter to the weird noise would involve bursting into her reserved hour and reporting what would most likely turn out to be a figment of my presently overexcitable imagination. Then next session, we'd end up discussing sibling rivalry or not having gotten enough attention from my father in the process of growing up or some other equally absurd and embarrassing interpretation of my attempt to be helpful.

For the second time, I walked past Bencher's open doors. I heard a faint hiss, then more gurgling, slower this time. I turned back and knocked on the door. No answer. I peered around the door and into the doctor's office. An Impressionist print hung on the beige wall—a mother carrying a parasol, strolling through a hazy field of flowers with her child. Neutral colors, subtle subject, nothing that would agitate an already fragile psyche.

I stepped all the way into the room. The layout mirrored Baxter's office, but with the furnishings just half a step classier and more welcoming. Like in Baxter's inner sanctum, the office had a leather Eames chair for the doctor— comfortable enough, but not so plush that the occupant would be tempted to doze off. Bencher's patients had the choice of a flowered Victorian fainting couch or an upholstered rocker. I wondered whether he was a better shrink or just more generous with his decorating budget.

Then I was seized with an irresistible urge to try out the couch. I snickered. Goldilocks and the three shrinks. The pillow on the couch was covered with white paper— no sharing of head lice allowed. Just as the weight of my head began to crinkle the paper on the sofa, I spotted Bencher. He lay sprawled on his back, partly hidden by his rolltop desk. He had a hole punched in his neck. Although his body didn't move, his lips twitched. His eyes were wide and desperate. And the wound gurgled like some horrible, enormous baby's mouth as blood poured out onto the carpet.

I screamed. I leaped up and backed into the corridor yelling for help. Then I stepped back over Bencher's body and dialed 911. The police, who must have continued hassling the protesters during the length of my session, arrived quickly. Dr. Baxter was next, his fat, unhappy patient trailing behind him. The first officer on the scene interviewed me briefly, then grabbed Bencher's footstool, dragged it to a corner of the room, and pointed.

"Sit," said the officer, whose name tag identified him as Sergeant Dixon. "Don't touch anything."

I watched him speak with Baxter and his patient in the hallway. Then he returned to help cordon off the crime scene, while paramedics attended to the psychiatrist. As I sat, facing away from the doctor's body, my nostrils filled with a strong metallic odor. I knew it was his blood.

I remembered a technique Joe taught me for blocking out distracting or unpleasant thoughts on the golf course. "If your mind is busy cataloging horizontal and vertical lines in your environment," he said, "it pushes the panic and negativity right out. Don't analyze the lines, just notice them." Bookshelves: vertical. Countertop: horizontal. Directory of South Carolina Psychiatric Services: horizontal. Pole lamp: vertical.

As I worked my way across the room, I noticed the disarray in the adjoining filing cubby. Manila folders were tossed in heaps on the floor and the drawers of the cabinets had been left dangling open. A small glass coffeepot lay shattered on the floor, its contents soaking into the folders. Without thinking, I walked over and began to blot the liquid up off the binders with a roll of paper towels I found on the counter.

"I said don't touch anything!" shouted Sergeant Dixon. I sat again. Now my teeth rattled—I felt cold and sick, any illusion of calm shattered. The paramedics covered the doctor's wound, fastened an oxygen mask around his graying face, and wrapped him in a shiny silver blanket.

"We're ready for you now, Miss Burdette," said a man dressed in a tweed jacket and corduroys. "I'm Detective Maloney."

"Is he going to live?" I asked. "I swear he was alive when I came in." I couldn't stop shaking. And I had developed that saliva-swallowing sensation you get just before you throw up.

"How did you happen to find the victim?"

"As I already told the fellow over there," I said, waving at Officer Dixon, "I was leaving Dr. Baxter's office when I saw both doors ajar and heard an odd sound."

"And you went in because ... ?"

"Because this seemed strange. His doors are never open and I got worried about the noise."

"And you come here a lot?"

I knew where we were going with this—what kind of a kook was I, and just how far might I have carried my kookiness.

"Once a week," I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. "Whether I need it or not." Dr. Baxter, looking naked without his armchair and notepad, flashed me a reassuring smile from across the room.

"How is he?" I asked, watching the paramedics as they loaded the doctor onto a gurney and carried him out. "He looks awful." In fact, he looked dead. I hoped my medically uninformed assessment was wrong.

"We won't know anything until they get him to the hospital," said the detective. "Did you know the doctor?"

"Only by sight."

"Did you see anyone leaving the area before you found the body?"

"No, I was busy talking with Dr. Baxter."

"Do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead?"

"No." I doubted he wanted to hear my unfounded opinions about the parade of weirdos I'd seen march through the waiting room each week. Or maybe he would, but then I'd rate a do-not-pass-go ride to the loony bin.

"You're free to leave now," said the detective. "But we'll need you to stay in the area over the next week in case we have further questions."

'That's not possible," I said, beginning to cry. "I'm leaving for qualifying school the day after tomorrow."

"It's a golf tournament," said Dr. Baxter, moving a few steps closer to where we stood. "She'll be back by next weekend. Maybe you could give the officers your cell phone number so they can call if you're needed?"

Finally, with Dr. Baxter's reassuring intervention, the police allowed me to go.

I headed directly to Chili-Dippers. Paul, the bartender, laid a napkin featuring kidney beans square-dancing with hot peppers on the bar in front of me, then set a draft Budweiser in a frosted mug on the napkin. All this before my butt had even settled onto the barstool. The perks of being promoted to a regular.

"I'll take a shot of tequila, too," I said. "Long, long day."

Just the sameness of the bar felt comforting. On the far wall hung pictures of every football team that ever came out of Myrtle Beach High. From 1970 on, Coach Rupert was in all of them, exhibiting a toothy grin you never saw on the ball field. The golf team portraits were posted high above the football teams. My father stood in the back row in the pictures from the sixties and seventies. Each year, his smile looked a little more strained, until he finally disappeared altogether—burned out on coaching. In the photos from my junior and senior years, I was the only girl, small and awkward among the crowd of gawky teenage boys.

Prom pictures had been tacked up to the right of the football teams—hundreds of them. I knew if I looked hard enough, I'd find the one of me and Max. Mom had fought me on the dress—clinging burgundy velvet with a scalloped décolletage that plunged halfway to my waist. She hand-sewed three inches of the gap shut to create a neckline she considered decent—and safe. Once we reached the dance, I clipped her stitches out in the girls' room with the tiny scissors on Max's Swiss Army knife.

Paul smiled as he delivered the shooter, then returned to the conversation he'd been involved with when I came in. I downed the tequila, took a long pull on the beer, and finally began to feel calm enough to consider the gruesome scene I'd just left.

Because they shared a waiting room, I figured Dr. Baxter had to know Dr. Bencher pretty well. I wondered if they'd been friends. Did shrinks have real friends or were they too busy trying to psych each other out?

Then I wondered whether Bencher had been attacked while I was there. Or had he been lying in the suite next door the whole time I whined about my mother? I certainly hadn't heard a gunshot or any signs of a struggle. I tried to remember whether Dr. Baxter had seemed less attentive than usual. Hard to say. He didn't generally demonstrate what shrinks liked to call a "wide range of affect" during an hour with me. I counted it as a victory if I got him to laugh even once during a session.

As a rule, I tried to keep the idea of Baxter, the person, out of my mind. If I could think of him as a doctor, a professional without feelings, the gut-spilling felt more tolerable. But today we'd crossed a line. I felt grateful for his kind intervention with the police. I guessed I'd have to go back week after next, because now we'd gotten tangled up in a whole new way.

As I sipped my Bud, fragments of a conversation occurring down the bar came into focus.

"How was he killed?"

"Bullet right between the eyes," said a man at the bar, flicking a finger of ash from his cigarette onto the floor.

"Did you hear this, Cassie?" Paul called over to me. "The headshrinker involved in the Rupert sex abuse case was found murdered this afternoon. Who do they like for the shooting?" Paul asked his informant.

The smoker shrugged. "Too early to say, I guess."

"He was shot in the neck, not between the eyes," I said, sliding my beer down the bar to join the conversation. "Are they sure he's dead?"

The smoker nodded.

"Hot off the press," said Paul, his eyebrows raised at me. "What was his name?"

"Dr. Bencher. Gregory Bencher."

"How come you got the news flash on where he was shot?"

"He has an office on Seaview," I said. "I rode by there today and stopped when I saw all the commotion." No way was I going to admit that I'd seen the hubbub up close and personal because I was leaving my own shrink appointment.

"I know that guy," said Paul. "He has a way of mixing it up with clients that put him in the limelight. Hasn't he been testifying for the Harrington custody case?"

"Saw him on the five o'clock news just last week," said the smoker. "Both the parents sounded like they're fresh out of the asylum. I feel sorry for the kid, either way the thing turns out."

"This time, Bencher's made the spotlight for sure." Paul's tongue made a clucking sound as he wiped down the mahogany planks in front of him. "Five bucks says he's front page in the
Sun
tomorrow morning." He began to polish the copper edging along the bar.

"You knew Coach Rupert," said Paul to the man at the bar. "Do you think he did this or did Kaitlin make it up?"

The man blew a wide swath of smoke out of his nostrils and reached a meaty paw in my direction. "Lester Fort-right. I knew your dad. Great guy, he was." He nodded toward the pictures of the high school golf team displayed behind my right shoulder.

I shook his hand and shrugged. One of the major drawbacks of coming back home: hearing my father, the ship-jumping rodent, described as a local hero.

"Coach Rupert had a lot of flaws," Lester continued. "A real bad temper, an awful high opinion of himself, and a tendency to scratch around henhouses where he had no business being. On the plus side, he was one hell of a fine coach."

"I'll never forget how he put the Rankin kid in at quarterback during the championship game," said Paul. "Everyone thought he'd gone and lost his mind. But Coach pulled it off—the kid came through for him."

"Besides all that, he wasn't a bad man, either," said Lester. "So I'd bet the long odds, she made it up. Hell if I know why, though."

"Maxie!" Paul hollered, interrupting Lester's theorizing. "Where've you been the last year, my friend? Come on in and take a load off, Counselor." A handsome man in wire-rimmed glasses, a gray suit, and a red power tie approached the bar. He had a slightly receding hairline and a triangle-shaped body—narrow waist and hips and strong shoulders that strained the center seam of his suit jacket.

I snatched up the laminated sandwich menu in front of me and buried my face in it. So. Max Harding was neither bald nor fat. Hunched down behind the menu, I listened to him order a beer and join the banter of the men lining the bar.

"What can you tell us about Bencher?" Paul asked. "Does this put a hole in your case, prime witness with a hole in his head and all?"

Max laughed, a deep baritone, bordering on bass, that I remembered just as clearly as if I'd told him a joke yesterday. "You know I can't tell you anything, Pauly. But we have lots of other witnesses. This has to hurt their case more than ours."