Without a Word (18 page)

Once again I dreamed of fish, striped, dotted, patterned, pied fish, tiny fish that swam together as one being, solitary fish with undershot jaws, fish that looked as if they'd eat you as soon as look at you, New York fish, street-corner fish, gangsta fish, only this time I was wide awake. This time I was following Sally into a small cove, grasses swaying as if they were at the end of a long dance marathon, schools of brightly colored fish suspended as if in midair, Sally, clearly in her element, moving gracefully, easily through the water ahead of me, as if she were one of them.

Afterwards we sat on the warm sand, Roy between us, Madison and Leon between us, too.

“I have Madison's medical records with me,” I said, knowing it was too late for all that, years and years too late, but still feeling I had to try.

She waved a hand in the air.

“I have a couple of pictures.”

“I can't,” she said. “I don't expect you to understand, but I just can't.”

I nodded, and for a while we sat there quietly looking at the ocean, neither of us able to think of anything to say.

“How did it happen,” I finally thought to ask, “you and Leon?”

“Me and Leon,” she said, “some pair. It was the day I'd told Jim that I was pregnant.” Turning to look at me now. “Did he tell you about it?”

I nodded.

“What he said to me, he told you that?”

“He did.”

“I can't think of words to describe how I felt, Jim's sneering disbelief on one side, my mother's fanatical intolerance of anything less than perfection on the other, and me fifteen years old. I was even too afraid to cut class—so I went.”

“Leon's class?”

“I actually sat through another class first. Creative writing. Then Leon's honor history. Last period. When the bell rang, I couldn't move. It was as if I was telling my body to stand and it didn't hear me.

“He didn't do anything at first. He was packing up his briefcase, putting some books in it, erasing the board. Then he saw that I was still sitting there and not doing anything. I must have looked like hell. He must have known something was really wrong because before he came over to talk to me, he walked over and closed the door. Then he sat at the desk next to mine and he said, ‘Something the matter?'

“I still remember the way the tears welled up and out of my eyes, remember how they felt running down my cheeks, how helpless I was to stop them, how helpless I was, period.”

“So you told him?”

She nodded. “Everything but who.”

“And where.”

Sally looked at me, a line between her eyes.

“He didn't know about this place, right? He didn't know the circumstances. Nor how you'd chosen your daughter's name. Is that right?”

She nodded, sighed, put a hand on Roy's back.

“But he knew the boy knew?”

“Yes.”

“And that you had your back against the wall?”

“Yes, he knew that.”

“And then what?”

Sally turned to look at me, her eyes shining. “He said, ‘Marry me.' He said, ‘I'll take care of you. I'll raise the baby as if it were mine.'”

“Did you agree right away?”

“I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I was so overwhelmed by the whole thing, by fear, by grief, by anger, by gratitude, I couldn't speak. So Leon took charge. He worked it out. He figured it out on the spot, what we'd do, how we'd do it, everything. He was so sure.”

“That you became sure.”

She nodded. “Without thinking.”

“There's that,” I said. And now this, I thought.

“What about your mother?” I asked. “How did that…?” I stopped in mid-sentence, lifting a hand, letting it fall back to the warm sand between us. I knew the answer, didn't I? So why ask?

“Leon asked how she'd handle it, and all I could manage was more tears. So he said I shouldn't worry about it at all, I should leave everything to him, if that was okay with me. I'm saved, I thought. He was talking, and I remember sitting there thinking, I'm saved. That's all I could manage. It was like falling off a building, and at the last minute you saw there was a net, you weren't going to die.”

Or you saw Superman coming to scoop you up in his powerful arms moments before you hit the ground.

“So he took the heat on this, too, the blame?” I asked.

“He did.”

“Then how did it end up he wasn't in trouble with the
law? Did your mother relent? Because he said there were no charges pressed. A teacher and a fifteen-year-old student…?”

Sally was shaking her head. “My mother went insane. She never forgave me. Nor Leon.”

“But?”

“When he went to the precinct, and to the Board of Education, he had proof that he wasn't the one who'd gotten me pregnant.”

“I don't understand. What sort of proof?”

“Leon didn't tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She shook her head. “He's still protecting me. Even now.” She smoothed the sand in front of her, making lines afterwards with one finger. “Leon never wanted to have kids.” Not looking at me. “He'd had a vasectomy when he was twenty-eight.”

We sat for a long time after that. She told me more about the night she'd left, how she'd sat saying nothing in the truck for hours, just listening to Paul go on and on and on, sometimes only pretending to listen, or pretending to sleep, sitting there terrified, not understanding what she was doing, what she'd done. They'd stopped at a diner, the parking lot filled with semis, even in the middle of the night. She didn't know where they were, not even what state they were in. She didn't know the time. She didn't care either.

She told Paul she wasn't hungry, but he insisted. He told her not to worry about the money, how often did he get the chance to eat with someone when he was working, and anyway, he told her, they were in the South, cheap living, this was New York, he might think twice. He'd meant it as a joke, to lighten things up, but Sally hadn't laughed. She just got down from the cab, and as she was closing the door, he asked about the dog, didn't he have to eat, too? And Sally was confused because in New York you couldn't take your
dog into a restaurant, and anyway, Leon had always fed Roy. She'd never had to think about it, about feeding him, walking him, about anything else he might need. What had she done? she wondered. Why had she taken him along? Now there was Paul making her worry about Roy when all she wanted to do was never worry about anyone again for the rest of her life. She looked toward the diner across the sandy parking lot, then back at Roy. She'd never been anyplace where you could take a dog into a restaurant but she'd read once you could in Paris, only this wasn't France, this was the middle of nowhere, or maybe the edge of nowhere.

But Paul had taken the leash, had whistled the dog down from the truck, and they'd gone into the diner, Maud's, she told me. She still remembered the name. She still remembered a lot about that night, the night her life changed, the night she became a free person. The night her husband's life changed, I thought but didn't say, the night Madison's life changed as well. The night their worst nightmare came true.

Roy had gone under the table, all on his own, and Sally said she thought maybe Leon did that with him when they were out on a shoot and it got to be lunchtime, maybe he just walked in someplace with the dog and no one said boo, and Roy went under the table where no one would see him, and then Leon might feed him from his hand. That was what Paul did, first asking the old man who waited on them for a bowl of water, to put it in a take-out container if anyone was going to be fussy about eating from a bowl that a dog ate from, and the guy had laughed and told them, you going to be fussy, you're not stopping at Maud's, the old bat wouldn't spend a nickel she didn't have to. Have the fried chicken, he'd told them, it's the only thing we can't seem to ruin here. Some folks say it's not half bad. When he laughed, you could see he had a tooth missing, one of his upper canines, maybe a result of eating at Maud's. They ordered the
chicken, Paul taking the meat off the thigh and the leg of his half, putting it on the palm of his hand for the dog to take. And then he'd asked her, what made you take the dog with you? And that's when she told him, spilled it all, every single bit of it. It was the first time, too, the first time she'd ever said any of it out loud, and it felt like a cement block was being lifted off her chest, and that's when she thought about the Keys, where she'd been happy for two days, where she felt what that was for the first and only time in her entire life.

Paul wasn't only a good talker. He was a good listener. He nodded a lot. He didn't seem to judge her. And then when they got to Georgia, he'd given her money. This is for a bus ticket, he'd told her, folding her hand around the money with his, leaving it there for a second. You pick the direction. You pick the place. It's up to you.

He gave a hundred dollars on top of it, but when she'd asked for his last name and his address so that she could pay him back one day, he'd said no, that that wasn't part of the deal. He didn't want to know her last name, he didn't want that responsibility, and he wouldn't tell her his.

“Sally, had there been any talk of abortion? Did Jim suggest it? Or Leon?”

She shook her head. “No. And I couldn't have.” Looking away again. “I know it makes no sense, but I just couldn't have.”

We took one last swim, Roy, too, to rinse off the sand. Then we stood at the edge of the beach, Sally holding her mask, flippers and snorkel, mine in the bag from Hank's.

“You're sure?” I asked.

“I am,” she told me.

I nodded. I thanked her for being up front with me. I didn't suggest she come back for just a week or so, see if Madison would start talking. For her to do that and then leave again, I couldn't think of anything worse.

“If Leon wants to come down here…” She shook her head. “You tell him…”

“I will,” I said, knowing she'd be gone anyway. Knowing she'd be someplace else, someone else, before I got off the plane in New York. Even staying in one spot, she'd been traveling light for over five years. She knew how to do it. I imagined there wouldn't be more than a couple of bags to pack, more than likely, no car. No bank account either. My guess was that Sally Russell didn't exist the way the rest of us did, that she didn't pay taxes, serve jury duty, have a phone, a library card, get junk mail. I'd passed a used book store on the way down. I bet they knew Sally there, the way Hank did. I bet if I'd shown her picture there, whoever was behind the desk would have shaken their head, no, no, pretty girl, never saw her. Something about her made you want to protect her. By the time I was in a cab on my way back to the Village, I was sure Sally Russell would be swallowed up by the Keys again, paying cash, living free. It was something everyone thought about from time to time, disappearing without a word to anyone. Standing there, my last minutes with her, part of me was rooting for her to get away with it.

She clipped a short rope onto Roy's collar and turned to go. Then she looked at me one last time.

“I used to have a pair of glasses just like yours.” She looked sad for a moment, but only for a moment. “But that was a long time ago.”

There was an airport in Marathon. I could have returned the car there, flown to Miami, and tried to get an earlier flight home. But I decided to drive back to Miami. Heading toward the mainland, the Bay of Florida on one side, the Atlantic Ocean on the other, visible because of a full moon, I'd have time to think, time I needed because I had no idea what I was going to tell Leon and Madison about this trip. What, I wondered, were my choices? Leon was my client. I'd come here to try to do what he'd asked me to. I'd come here on Leon's dime. So what would I tell him, that against all odds, I'd found his missing wife, but what might seem like a combination of incredible genius, some great second-guessing and a ton of good luck hadn't turned out all that great after all, that said missing wife had refused to come back with me, had declined the opportunity to even look at photographs of her daughter or to examine Dr. Bechman's records of the treatment, if you could call it that, of Madison's disease? Would I tell him, too, that while I was driving to Miami to catch my plane home, I was sure Sally was packing her few belongings and moving elsewhere, that even before he heard what I had to say, she'd be missing again, this time for good?

And what of Madison, hearing all of this? What of Madison? Of course, I could talk to Leon privately. Then what? Would he lie to Madison and say I'd failed to find Sally? Would I do that, too? Would she be better off thinking Sally was still out there someplace, not wanting to come home, not wanting her, or that she was dead? And where in myself could I possibly find an answer to these questions?

I'd taken a turn someplace past the one to the Everglades to stop for something to eat, something to wake me up. There'd been only three other vehicles at the all-night diner, all delivery trucks. On the way back to the highway, I heard the mournful sound of a train whistle, but I didn't see the railroad crossing or the train. Still, the whistle kept blowing, warning people that something big and fast and unforgiving was heading their way. Watch out, it said, watch out, watch out. Why couldn't we have something like that in our lives, some warning sound to indicate that danger was barreling down on us, something to tell us to jump out of the way? Leon and Madison would be hearing the warning now. Rachel's coming, Rachel's coming, get out of the way.

By the time I'd turned in the rental car and spent four hours in the Miami airport, waiting to board my plane, I'd changed my focus. Finding Sally, that was done. It was over. Whether Leon would be better off knowing she was alive but wouldn't return, that wasn't the issue for me. Madison was the issue. Saving Madison was the issue. And in order to do that, I had to see if there was any way I could help her on the assumption that she
had
killed Bechman. As I boarded the plane, that was my new bottom line, no longer thinking about a series of mistakes a young girl had made, now thinking about her daughter and about the issues of malice, premeditation, and deliberation.

The detectives were trying to get the court to allow them to see the records of all the children Bechman had treated, to
determine Madison's
mens rea
, her guilty mind, trying to prove Madison was a bad seed, with a little help from Ms. Peach, it seemed. But even if Madison had committed the crime, it seems to me it would have been in a moment of uncontrollable frustration and rage, her doctor not understanding that the kid was already hanging on by a thread, that the droopy eyelid had polished off any remaining positive sense of self she had. The needle was filled with Botox and ready. She'd handed him the drawing. Had he merely put it down on the desk without really looking at it?

Mens rea
holds the belief that people should be punished only when they understand that their actions will cause harm, when they are morally blameworthy. Did the detectives believe that Madison had researched Botox on her computer, as I had on mine, and that she fully understood what it could do if the needle were plunged into her doctor's heart? Acting out of control was one thing. A cold-blooded, deliberate homicide was something else entirely. To accuse Madison of murder necessitated both the act,
actus reus,
and intent,
mens rea
. But how could we know what was in the mind of a child who didn't speak?

What if Madison had been impaired in some way due to medication? Wouldn't that change everything? Wasn't that why the detectives wanted Bechman's records, to see what, if anything, he'd given Madison and what the side effects might be, and to compare the effect of those drugs on his other patients, to see, for example, if several of the children taking dopamine blockers such as pimozide or risperidone to reduce tics suffered fits of violence?

Leon had said Madison hadn't been taking any drugs. Had he told the detectives that as well? Had they, in fact, given up on getting the children's records released?

Suppose Bechman had given Madison the drugs by injection? Madison didn't speak. She couldn't have gone
home and told Leon. Would Bechman have bothered to call and tell him, a father who didn't even show up with his child when she came for treatment, a father who seemed to be sleepwalking through life?

I unzipped my bag and pulled out the envelope Ms. Peach had given Leon, the envelope Sally wanted no part of. It was sealed, and I slit it open, pulling out the folded sheets, opening them on my lap. There were all Dr. Bechman's notations, the first visit five and a half years ago, the mother and father both there, the doctor's perceptive note about a stressful home environment, the parents “loosely connected,” in his words, the child wearing socks that didn't match, a button undone at the back of her dress. Notes for the next visit were on the next line, the second visit just three days after the first. There were two visits before the diagnosis, chronic motor tic disorder, and three more before Sally's disappearance, and then a note with a box drawn around it saying that the patient now declines to speak both at home and at the office.

The plane was finally boarding. I put away the notes, pulled out my ticket and walked to the end of the line, people queuing up even before the announcement to do so. Once seated, I took out the copy of Madison's medical treatment again, reading the sometimes elaborate paragraphs now separated by whiteness, space to indicate the passage of time between appointments, to separate one visit from another. I checked the dates. The change in the way the notes were written happened after Ms. Peach had been hired, perhaps part of her overhaul of office procedures, her redecorating intruding into the patient files. The notes were easier to read this way. If the change had been the result of Ms. Peach's suggestion, you had to give her that.

I read all the notes, the recommendation of an ear, nose and throat specialist, a child psychiatrist, relaxation exer
cises, biofeedback, increasing the amount of exercise Madison did, including the recommendation that she be taken swimming. But no drugs had been prescribed. Until the first and only Botox shot, there was no mention at all of medication.

Leon had to be with her for the first few years. She wouldn't have been old enough to walk to the doctor's office on her own, but the records didn't say whether he was there or not, what he'd been told and what he hadn't been told. Either way, there were no medications used at all until the Botox, and there was a note prior to the use of Botox that Leon had been “informed” and had signed the appropriate forms giving permission for the procedure.

When I got to the last page, I was surprised to find a note written the day Bechman had been killed. Often doctors take notes while they talk to you, ask you questions about your health, your habits, your complaints if any. But Madison didn't talk. So he must have stopped after examining her to make his notes before attempting to give her the shot.

Is that when she drew the picture, when he told her he wanted to give her Botox on the other side, that he was willing to take the chance that both her eyelids would droop and make her feel like a total freak?

Notes the last day. And then nothing, of course.

I put the pages back inside the envelope and closed my eyes, thinking of the drawing. Would that seal Madison's
mens rea
? A threat would surely show intent, would surely demonstrate malice, premeditation and deliberation, wouldn't it?

And no meds. I'd been hoping for something that would lead to a lesser charge, but it wasn't there. I'd looked up the side effects of Botox, hoping that might explain Madison's actions, and to my surprise, dysphasia, the inability to speak or understand words, was at the top of the list. But Madison
could understand words without any difficulty, and no one, not her father, her former doctor, the throat specialist, the child psychiatrist, none of them thought that Madison couldn't speak, only that she
wouldn't
speak.

None of the other side effects could mitigate
mens rea;
nausea, neck pain, an asymmetry if the Botox were injected into the wrong muscle, ptosis or drooping of the upper eyelid, the side effect we know Madison had, bruising at the injection site, headache, upper respiratory infection and, of course, the intended effect of Botox, paralysis of the muscles in the area of the injection.

How could anyone think an extremely bright twelve-year-old couldn't figure out what Botox could do to the human heart, her own paralyzed for so long?

Homicide was at an all-time low in the city, but still, no one liked the idea of a murderer on the loose, even one who was only twelve. The cops weren't going to let this go. They were going to keep at it, no matter what it took. Well, so would I.

I closed my eyes and must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember was the sound of the landing gear descending, then clicking into position, and the announcement alerting passengers to fasten their seat belts and return their trays to the upright position. The envelope with Madison's medical records was still on my tray. I tucked it into my tote bag, zipping it closed, then waited for the plane to land, taxi up to the terminal and let us go on our way.

I was walking toward the exit where the taxis lined up when my phone rang, the number familiar but only vaguely so.

“Alexander.”

“Rachel? It's Charles Abele. I've been trying you at home and when you didn't return my call…”

I wasn't sure if I'd lost the signal or if Charles had tem
porarily lost his voice. I reached the door and stepped outside, but still I heard nothing.

“Charles?”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I can't…”

“What happened?”

A cabdriver opened the rear door for me but I stood on the sidewalk, not wanting to lose the signal.

“It's Celia,” he said. “She's dead.”

“Oh my god. How?”

“They're saying it was suicide, but it can't be. It just can't. She never would have left JoAnn.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At home.”

I got into the cab and gave the driver his address.

“I'm at the airport. I'll be there in thirty minutes.”