The Survivors (5 page)

Weston turned a deeper shade of red. All the training in the world can't stop some reflexes.

I said, “If Scottie gets in touch with me, I'll let him know you're looking for him.” I motioned toward the hallway. “Now, I think we're done here.”

She braced her shoulders, trying to seem still in control, and marched out.

Tori opened her desk drawer. “Your appointments calendar has been moved.”

“Uhh,” I said. My mind was elsewhere, thinking about how completely I'd been conned by the good cop/bad cop routine.

“Cal, she looked at your patient schedule.” Tori picked up the phone.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I'm going to call the police. That snake can't slither in here and look at our records like that. You know how tight the federal rules are now.”

No, she can't, but she did. And I didn't want to make any unnecessary waves. I took the phone from her and hung it up. “I think the right people to call for that would be the FBI, and they're not going to do anything to one of their own.”

Tori gave me a sour look, but nodded. “Who's ‘Scottie'?”

“Ted Gaines. Scottie is his real name.” I realized the slip I'd made, calling him Scottie. Had Weston noticed? Was she wondering if maybe I knew him better than I let on?

Tori had a way of narrowing her eyes and arching an eyebrow, criticism and question at the same time.

At the moment, I didn't feeling like explaining. “What happened to Denton?”

“He wasn't comfortable with the FBI around. I walked him out to his car. He's really a sweet guy. You know he's having an affair with an intern. Nineteen years old from George Washington University—”

“How did that come up?”

“I tricked him a little, to get him to open up. It's for his own good. He could use some advice from a woman.”

“Tori, what were you just complaining about with Weston? My patients' medical information is confidential. You can't talk with them like that.”

She gave me the eyebrow again. “Somebody has to.”

“Right,” I said, sick of arguing. I headed for my office. “Could you bring Denton's number in, please? I want to call him and apologize.”

It took her a few minutes to bring the slip with the number. She had her purse with her and her coat on. “Leaving already?” I said. She usually stayed until five thirty.

She kept her eyes down and tapped my desk. Her French manicure was a flashy contrast to Agent Weston's bitten nubs. “I talked to Felix. He said he can see you any time. You don't have to wait until six.”

“You called him?” I couldn't keep the note of betrayal out of my voice. Calling Felix was like tattling to the teacher.

“It's been a crazy day, Cal. I thought . . . you always say talking to him helps.” Then she brightened a little. Even a thin smile on her was gorgeous. “He said he was going to dig out his pliers and wrenches.” She blew me a kiss and left.

I thumped my feet up on the desk and rubbed my hands over my face.

Shrink humor.
Tools to fix the nutcase.

FOUR

F
elix Martinez lived in Spring Valley, a few blocks from American University. It wasn't the swankiest neighborhood in DC, but it ranked up there. As I drove past the college, I saw flocks of coeds strolling between the buildings. How many of those fresh faces were nineteen years old? How many would be interns this year?

I hadn't known about Denton Rivlin's affair, but I'd suspected something like that, and I'd been prodding him to come clean. Leave it to Tori to wheedle the story out of him in one conversation. Tori was an oddity in the therapy business. Most psychologists work alone, making their own appointments, sending out their own bills. But I didn't have a choice. Tori came with the office, just like the furniture.

I bought the practice from Felix. He'd been thinking about retiring and knew I wanted to set up shop in DC. He offered a price so low I could barely believe it and seven years to pay it off. There were conditions, however. First, I had to agree to take on all of his patients, no matter how difficult they were. Second, I had to keep Tori as receptionist
cum
staff sergeant, with the same (outrageous) salary and benefits. He said he was just a softy when it came to her; I figured that soft spot had started some weekend over champagne and lingerie. Neither explanation was right. What he really wanted was for Tori to keep tabs on me, make sure I treated his patients right.
Thanks for the vote of confidence
, I told him when I figured it out. With a twinkle in his eye, he said,
You don't think she adds a little spice to the place?
He had me there.

When I drove up, Felix was in his yard playing with his dog. The dog was as close to family as he had—no kids, never married. Coop, short for Gary Cooper, was a chubby golden retriever. Felix named all his dogs after Hollywood tough guys. There'd been a Duke and a Clint and a Bogey. None of them lived up to their billing. Coop bounded over and jumped on me, missed with one paw, and did a barrel roll on the sidewalk. “Clumsy sod,” Felix called. “Here, give him a treat.” He tossed something that looked like dried liver. Coop snatched it before it got to me.

Felix cultivated the look of a Latino Kriss Kringle. His broad, brown face was ringed with curly white hair and a white beard that came down below his shirt collar. In public, he was forever smiling, as if someone had just told him a wonderful joke. Being around him in private was a whole different thing. He was a lot more complicated than he looked—and a lot more sharp-tempered.

“I've got something on the stove. Let's go inside.” He clapped his hands. “Inside Coop! House!” Coop sat down, staring dumbly at him. Felix sighed—“Idiot dog.”—and tossed a treat onto the porch. Coop bounded after it, not such an idiot after all.

The house was a stone Tudor, tall and imposing on the outside. Inside, the rooms were small with lots of dark wood. On a nice day, it felt cozy. In the dead of a Washington winter it was like an overfurnished prison block. Felix didn't care one way or the other. He'd lived there for over thirty years and swore they'd carry him out feet first someday.

We went to the kitchen, where a pot of pasta sauce was simmering. He dipped up a spoonful for me. Before I could swallow it, I started coughing. “Too much oregano?” he said.

I shrugged.

He turned to the spice rack and dumped in a heavy tablespoon of garlic powder. “That'll cover it.”

“Or add to the mystery,” I said, taking the spoon to the sink.

When I turned around, he took hold of my hand and looked at the scratches on my wrist. “What's this?”

“Tori told you,” I said.

“She said something about it.” His eyes had lost their twinkle.

In his younger days, Felix would have approached the subject more carefully, giving me some small talk, a few easy questions. Now he didn't have the patience. He told me that was why he retired, a constant feeling he was treading water and running out of time.

“I had a new patient today. He used a fake name, so I didn't spot it from the file. He was my friend when I was a kid, the guy my mother shot who survived.”

Felix didn't show a lick of surprise. “Sure. That could do it.” He turned the burner off under the sauce and pointed at the sunroom across the hall. “Go play with the dog. I'll get us some coffee.”

Coop was asleep on the sofa. I let him be and flipped through the newspaper from a couple of days ago. Felix wasn't a tidy housekeeper, but that added to the lived-in feel of the place.

He came in with two steaming mugs and set one in front of me. He settled into the rocking chair opposite. “So what's this kid's real name?”

“Scottie Glass, and he's not a kid anymore.”

“You both are to me.” He adjusted his gut over his belt and took a noisy slurp of coffee. He was old and maybe worn-out as a therapist, but he had some real strengths. He was absolutely comfortable in his own skin, and he didn't care one bit what anybody thought of him. Of course, that was probably why he never married.

Another slurp of coffee. “He came to talk to you because of the anniversary.”

October 3rd, a month away, was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the night my family died. “I thought of that, too. But we didn't get to talk about it.” I looked down. “I didn't react very well. Actually, I froze up, got defensive. It scared him and he took off.”

“What the hell should he expect, showing up like that?” He set his mug down on the table between us. “Tell me the rest of it. Your blackout.”

“There's not much to tell. I was out looking for Scottie and spotted him about a block away. I called to him but he kept going. Next thing I knew—” I clicked my fingers. “I was out of it.”

“How long?”

“I—” Suddenly I didn't want to make more of this than I already had. “A minute, no more. I feel fine now.”

“The first episode in what—five years? I'd say that's no reason to celebrate.”

“Nobody's celebrating, Felix.”

We stared hard at each other. Then he sighed and slouched back. “Sorry. I didn't mean to push your buttons.”

He meant the anniversary. We'd talked about it—how it would put stress on me in ways I didn't realize. So far I just avoided thinking about it.

“There's another thing Scottie may have wanted to see me about. Two FBI agents came to the office looking for him.”

“What did they want him for?”

“To interview him, part of some investigation. They wouldn't give any specifics except to say it was about some threatening messages.”

Felix had had his practice in DC for a long time. He had nothing but disdain for official Washington. He said it was like life on the reef: the big fish ate the small, and the smart ones stayed the hell out of the way. “Tori mentioned something about the FBI. But OK—you didn't tell them anything, right?”

“Basically, right.”

“So your friend Scottie has gotten himself in a bind. Maybe he wanted your help with that. Maybe it was something else—like giving you a load of grief about what your mother did to him. Either way, you shouldn't be treating him, not with the baggage you two have.”

“Can't argue with you there.” It was pretty much textbook advice.

“Tell me what you did after your episode.”

“I took a train ride. Tried to process.”

I was rubbing my wrist, and I sighed and pulled my hand away. Felix just stared at me.

“I thought about the old days. Lancaster. The hospitals. Moving to Arlington.”

“How did that go for you?”

I looked into my coffee. “Not so well.”

Felix bided his time for a change.

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “Think forward, not back.”

“That's a start.” He tapped his mug on the table, a signal we should move on. “You had other appointments today. What's looking up there?”

I told him about couples therapy with Michelle and Henry, how they were getting on.

“Concentrate on them,” he said. “Looks like they're ready for a game-changer. How's that sound?”

“Like a plan,” I said.

We both glanced at the clock on the bookshelf and laughed. It had been exactly fifty minutes since I arrived. Therapists' hours always are fifty minutes long.

“Look at us,” he said, standing up. “We are what we do.”

We went back to the kitchen, and he put the mugs with the pile of dirty dishes on the counter. “I'd ask you to stay for dinner, but even I can't eat that slop.” He sniffed the pasta sauce and dropped the pot in the sink.

He followed me to the front door. Coop trotted along with us. We stopped on the porch, enjoying the evening air.

“How are you doing, by the way?” I said.

For a moment Felix looked off across the street, and I thought he might say something serious. Instead, he gave one of his Kriss Kringle smiles. “I'm tip-top. Who wouldn't love living without an alarm clock?” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Take care of yourself. Tori says cash flow is down at the office. I count on your payment every month to keep me in good scotch.”

“And we couldn't have you drinking the cheap stuff.”

“No, we couldn't.” He let his hand slip down my arm. “You're a great therapist, Cal, but you can't help anybody if your own head isn't on straight.”

“I hear you, Felix.”

I was halfway to my car when he called, “Tori said one of the FBI agents was a woman. Real looker. What'd you think of her?”

The first thing that came to my mind was
she's a damn sneak
. But that would have started a whole new conversation about trust and women, not my strong suit. My friend Tim's wife, Anne, had set me up a few times on blind dates. She soon gave up and liked to joke that I operated on a one-date limit. That wasn't fair. It was more like three. What would anybody expect, given what happened with my mother and my family? Still, a lot of those women I'd dated ended up as friends; if not, they caught the next train with no harm done. And me—I tried not to think about a long future of cooking solo meals and using only half the bed.

Felix was staring at me. “She's got quite a smile,” I said.

“I've been around those people. Justice Department lawyers, FBI. They'll use anybody to get what they want. Don't care about the wreckage they leave. You steer clear of them.”

From what I'd seen so far, that might be a pretty accurate description of Agents Weston and Cade. “Don't worry, I'm not looking for trouble.”

“And steer clear of Scottie Glass.”

That was one piece of advice too much. He saw the annoyance in my eyes. “It's been too many years, Cal. The guy can only bring you grief, so let him solve his own problems.”

I quickly got behind the wheel and cranked the engine.