Wallflower (38 page)

It wasn't what he wanted, but he knew it was all he was going to get. After he accepted her offer, she escorted him to the door. Just before she opened it, she lightly touched the scar tissue on his throat.

"I would have been very sorry if something had happened to you, my friend."

He turned to her, kissed her cheek. "You talk tough, Kit, but you're still a pussycat."

She smiled. "I'm glad you found someone, Frank. I liked what I saw of her, especially the way she shot over here when we called to tell her you'd been cut." She stood before him, took hold of both his hands, stared up into his face. "Listen to me. Don't poison the fruit," she warned quietly. "If Archer did it, I want you to nail her. But with a straight nail. Hear me, Frank? Make damn sure that nail goes in her straight. . . ."

W
hen he left Police Plaza, the sky was dark, but the city seemed strangely void of rancor.
It's the holidays,
he thought. But then he remembered: Christmas was the season when New Yorkers turned their rage against themselves. It was the season of suicides.

He found a liquor store open on Nassau Street, went in, bought a chilled bottle of champagne, carried it home on the subway in a paper bag. Monika was waiting for him. They drank it out of the goblet she'd given him in Venice. The wine tasted very good, they agreed. If anything, the ancient glass enhanced it.

He told her about his interview with Kit, the deal they'd made, the pressure he was under now to develop sufficient proof to keep his investigation alive.

"I'm not going to be able to do the kind of deep background work I like," he said. "That'll take months, and we don't have months. No support team either. Just Aaron and me."

"Then you'll have to focus your search," she said.

He nodded. "Any ideas?"

She thought about it. The lady in the picture, the mother up there on the wall—“I'd look to her first. Look to the past, Frank. Try to reconstruct the family history. The secret is always there. . . ."

L
ater, after they had made love, they clung to each other in the dark. He was filled with passionate adoration for his stylish, brilliant, nurturing German psychoanalyst.

"I love you," he told her in the middle of the night. "I love you more than anyone I've ever known. Has anyone ever said that to you before, Monika? Has anyone ever loved you so much?"

O
n Christmas morning he cooked breakfast for Monika, then taxied with her out to Kennedy Airport. After she had checked in, they went to the Lufthansa waiting lounge and exchanged gifts. He presented her with a framed vintage Berenice Abbott photograph of the New York skyline.

"A little remembrance of New York," he said. "I hope this'll make you want to come back."

She held the picture to her chest. "It's beautiful. I love it. But if I come back, it'll be because of you."

Even as he opened her gift, a heavy blue envelope tied with golden ribbon, she apologized for its modest value. He was delighted with what he found inside, a picture she'd snapped of him
surreptitiously in Mexico while he lay out on their terrace in his bathing trunks trying to draw the trophies.

"You really helped me. You know that?"

She smiled. "It was for my own benefit. It's hard to sleep next to a guy who's having bad dreams all the time."

"You!" He embraced her. "What am I going to do without you?"

"You'll do fine. Promise me you'll visit soon."

"As soon as this case is finished," he promised.

He waited until her plane took off, then walked slowly back though the nearly empty terminal to catch a bus to Manhattan. There was a certain poignancy, he thought, in the tawdry, commercial Christmas decorations placed sporadically about the airline lobby.

T
he next morning he drove out to the airport again, this time to La Guardia to see Aaron off for Cleveland. In front of the terminal Aaron briefed him on the peculiar traits of his car, which he was leaving in Janek's trusted hands.

"She drinks oil the way my ex drank booze, so it's best to check whenever you gas her up. And remember, don't stick your finger in the little hole where the cigarette lighter used to be."

"Yeah, yeah, very funny. Call me when you find something, okay?"

Aaron looked at him. "This is a big one, right?"

Janek nodded. "I thought Sullivan was a real asshole when he called it a great crime. Now I think maybe he was right."

"Don't worry, Frank, I won't blow it. If there's anything out in Cleveland, I'll find it for you."

T
hat afternoon, back in the city, Janek waited until it was exactly ten to three. Then he dialed Beverly Archer's number. "Pick it up, butterball," he whispered. "I know you just finished with a patient. So pick up the goddamn phone."

She answered on the sixth ring.

"It's Janek," he said. "I need to talk. How about tomorrow morning?"

There was a long pause at the other end. "All right." Beverly's voice was steady. "I have a cancellation at eleven."

When he set down the receiver, he looked at his hands. No shaking, no trembling.

I just might bring this oft he thought.

W
hen she showed herself at the waiting-room door, she looked exactly as she had the last time they'd talked. Gone were the distraught features and agonized grimaces of Aaron's videotaped interview. She was once again the cool and proper professional, the superior, unflappable clinical psychologist.

"Lieutenant." She smiled her thin-lipped smile.

"Doctor." Janek smiled back, imitating the position of her lips. They stared at each other, engrossed in their mirrored expressions. For just a moment, Janek thought, Beverly looked nonplussed.

As she ushered him into her office, she commented on his healthy appearance. "The last time I saw you, you were bleeding heavily on my bedroom floor. You look a lot better now." The same small, thin-lipped smile.

"You look better, too." He sent her a mental message:
I know
you
did it!
The idea that she might actually pick up on it filled him with a savage joy. "Last time I saw you," he said, "you were carrying on about what a failure you'd been as Diana Proctor's therapist."

At first she seemed confused. She recovered quickly. "Oh, of course," she said. "On the videotape. I've tried to regain my perspective since then."

"
Have you?"

"What?"

"Regained it?"

"Oh, I've tried, Lieutenant. It's a terrible blow when a patient goes off . . . turns out . . . whatever. But there's only so much a person in my position can do. Psychotherapy's not a science; it's not exact. We know so little, you see. And we're all such frail creatures underneath, which, I think, may be the real lesson in all of this. The only thing to do after a failure like Diana is try to pick yourself up and go on as best you can."

"Still," Janek said, "I congratulate you on a remarkable recovery."

She looked at him curiously. "And
I
congratulate you."

"It was a pretty bleak night for both of us."

"I put a cushion under your head. Do you remember?"

"I must have been unconscious. Did you put it there before or after you discovered Diana was dead?"

This time her glance was sharp. "I don't recall. After, I suppose."

"I imagine you were pretty busy before Aaron Greenberg got to the scene?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"With three of us lying there. Two dead, of course. And you still had things to move around."

She stared at him. "I don't know what you're talking about, Lieutenant."

"Okay, Beverly, have it your way, let it go for now." He watched carefully for her reaction to his familiar use of her first name. She looked as if she were trying not to react. "Please forgive my informality, but since I nearly died in your bedroom and you were kind enough to cushion my head—well, I hope it's all right to call you Beverly. I'd like for you to call me Frank."

She smiled. "Thank you. That's fine. I'll feel very comfortable calling you that." She paused. "Now, what can I do for you. . . Frank?"

"I want to ask about the picture of your mother, the one upstairs."

"What about it?"

"I'd like to see it again if you don't mind."

"I don't understand." She was struggling, he could see, to regain her slightly rumpled composure. If there was one thing, it seemed, that Beverly Archer did not like, it was to be caught off guard by a man.

"It made a striking impression on me. I'd like to see it again."

She smiled sweetly, her composure restored. "I'm sorry, Frank, but no house tours today."

He stared at her. She stared back.
Now she knows I know,
he thought. Finally, when she spoke, her smile was guarded. "When you called, I assumed you wanted to talk about Diana. I already told everything to your Sergeant Greenberg and to that very kind Inspector Sullivan of the FBI. But I'll be happy to tell it all again to you—if that's why you're here."

"I didn't come to talk about Diana."

She blinked. “Why did you come?"

"To see you."

"Well, here I am!" She beamed.

"I wanted to look into your eyes."

She squinted. "I get the feeling you're trying to intimidate me, Frank." She paused. "I was told I was cleared."

"Not by me." He grinned.

He could see she didn't know how to react to that, didn't know whether she should grin back or scowl. In the end she tried to preserve her dignity. "Perhaps we should cut this short," she said.

"As you like," Janek said. "But I think you'll be interested to hear what I have to say."

She gazed at him. "I'm waiting."

"You're a very composed woman."

"I suppose I try to be."

"Your poise impresses me. Even the first time I came here, I was impressed. Even when you tried to make me think I had sexual fantasies about my goddaughter." He erased the half-smile from his lips; he wanted her to understand he was serious.
"
Jess was afraid of you. She left a message on my answering machine. She said she was deathly afraid." He paused.
"
If I hadn't been abroad at the time, I might have saved her life. But I was away, so she was killed. I hold you responsible for that."

Beverly Archer sat straight up in her chair, her features contorted by fury. "Oh, you're really impossible! That's just absurd!"

"I don't think so."

"Now you listen to me, detective. Before you emote any more garbage, you should know how impossibly stupid you sound. Jessica was
not
frightened of me. She had no reason to be. We were getting along very well. I was helping her. She told me I was. My only regret, and I can understand if you hold me responsible for this, is that I had no knowledge of what was going on between her and Diana. If I'd had any inkling, I assure you I would have taken steps."

She sat back, her lips still trembling. She didn't bother to disguise her anger. Even though he'd broken through her veneer, Janek was impressed. She came across as utterly authentic.
Perhaps she really didn't know,
he thought.

When she spoke again, her tone was more constrained.
"
For me the tragedy is having to live with my blindness to what was happening between two beloved patients. Neither girl said a word to me, not a solitary word about the other, except for occasional casual remarks. I had no idea they were involved on such an intense level. I wish I'd known. I think I could have done something if I had."

She was, he realized, apologizing to him the only way she knew. Not outright, without equivocation, as would have been appropriate, but tentatively, defensively. She wasn't capable of more.

"Perhaps you didn't know," he said. "Perhaps now you really are suffering over that. But it's hard for me to feel compassion when you speak about a 'tragedy,' and then it turns out what you mean is having to live with your personal failure as a therapist. Both girls are dead. As are seventeen other people. And you're responsible for all of them. I told you Jess was afraid of you. She had good reason to be. Diana told her a tale of being sent to various parts of the country to kill people who had offended you in the past. It was all for Mother, Diana told Jess—Mother, being, of course, your mother, the lady in the picture upstairs. An insane fantasy? Jess wasn't sure. She was just terribly, terribly scared. Well, I've had a lot of time to think about it, Beverly. Brushing close to death tends to focus your thinking. And I've decided that what Diana told
Jess wasn't an insane fantasy at all. I think it was true. I think you were behind every murder Diana Proctor committed, except maybe Jess. And because you weren't behind that one killing, you're able to work up sufficient emotion about it to convince people you had nothing to do with the rest."