The Blue Journal Page 23

  CHAPTER 36

  Mitchell Avery was on his way home from the airport, and he was worried.

  He had not been able to reach Joan since he arrived in Miami. That was the last time they had spoken. Her tone seemed more distant than usual, even cold, but he had not asked why. He was not in the mood to have an argument over the telephone. He was in Florida to have fun.

  Yesterday he telephoned the house several times. No one answered, and the voice mail system had been turned off. He tried her cell phone, but got nothing. So this morning, as he rode in the back of the taxicab, he was worried. Joan must have suspected something. She must have discovered he was in Florida.

  Isn’t that perfect? he asked himself. He had not spoken to his wife or children for two days, had no idea where they were, but his first thought was not about their safety, it was about whether she had found him out. He shook his head, knowing what she would say if she could hear his thoughts right now.

  “In the end it’s all about you, Mitchell.” That’s exactly what you would say, right Joan?

  He tried to shake it off. At the moment, he just wanted to know where they were.

  The taxi pulled in to the semicircular driveway of their large colonial. He took great pride in the place, always pleased to come home, to have others know that this grand home belonged to him.

  This morning he had no such feeling.

  He paid the driver, slid his bag off the back seat and hurried to the front door as the cab drove away. Things were unusually still.

  He tried the polished brass knob, but the door was locked. He rang the bell and listened to the chimes as they echoed inside. There was no answer. He dropped his bag and made his way to the kitchen door around the side. That door was also locked. He cupped his hands around his eyes and placed his face to the glass.

  No one was there.

  He went to the end of the driveway, where they kept a spare key hidden beneath the mailbox in a magnetic holder. He found it and let himself in the front door.

  “Joan,” he called out. “Joan, I’m home.”

  There was no response.

  He left his bag in the foyer and took the stairs two at a time, heading up to the master bedroom. Everything looked as it always did. Until he noticed the blank space on one of the walls.

  Joan’s favorite painting had hung there. A small oil of no great value, a Paris café scene at the turn of the century. A man in a wide-brimmed hat, sitting at an outdoor table, bent over a sketchpad, oblivious to the activity behind him. She loved that painting.

  It was gone.

  Instinct led him to her walk-in closet, knowing what he would find when he flung the door open. It was empty. Only hangers remained, some suspended naked and askew on the long, wooden rods, others having spilled to the floor, lying in a mangled heap.

  He went to his own closet and opened the door. Everything was just as he had left it.

  Mitchell ran down the hall to his children’s rooms. As he went from one to the other, he found that some of the clothing had been removed—their closets had not been emptied in the same dramatic style as Joan had done with hers. He noticed that all of the beds were made. Everything else appeared to be in its proper place, just as if they would be returning at any moment.

  But he knew they would not.

  The silence in the house was numbing as he went down to the kitchen, looking for something, some sort of explanation. That would be the place for it, of course, that’s where they left messages for each other.

  An envelope with his name printed on it was taped to the refrigerator door. He pulled it down and tore it open. The note was in her handwriting.

  Dear Mitchell,

  I hope you enjoyed yourself. Unfortunately, you will finally learn that the cost of selfishness is high.

  Joan

  When he placed the envelope down, Joan’s gold wedding band fell out. He watched as it rolled across the granite countertop, onto the floor, and bounced two or three times on the ceramic tiles before coming to rest at his feet. He slowly bent to pick it up, held it in his hand, then carefully studied it as if it were something he had never seen before.

  She must be at her sister’s place, he told himself. He would start making phone calls. She probably had a lawyer by now. He wondered if he should call his own lawyer first.

  Then he turned back to the refrigerator. It was not yet noon, but a beer seemed like a good idea while he figured things out.

  He pulled the door open, flooding the room with an awful, sour smell. He looked inside and saw that Joan had emptied the refrigerator, unplugged it, and left a half-gallon carton of milk, open, to spoil within.

  Avery began to laugh out loud, but there was no merriment in the sound.

  He sat on a stool at the counter and continued laughing, the refrigerator door still open, the nauseating odor of rotten milk permeating the entire kitchen. He laughed so hard his whole body began to shake until he could not distinguish between amusement and sorrow, between his own heartbreak and the anguish he knew he had caused her. He continued to sit there, his body beginning to shudder, feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life.

  CHAPTER 37

  The anonymous notes had concerned Randi, but they had not really frightened her. In her profession this sort of communication was not uncommon, nor were telephone messages from patients disguising their voices, or unattributed gifts.

  The trashing of her office was another matter entirely.

  Now, after confronting Stanley Knoebel, her concerns had only grown.

  As Walker’s men went off to assemble their clues and Stratford worked to protect her legal rights, she decided it was time for her to seek the guidance of a man she had trusted for nearly two decades. She made a call, canceled her afternoon appointments, got in her car and drove more than three hours west, to the university where they had first met.

  For as long as Randi Conway had known him, from their very first faculty-student conference all those years ago, Leonard Rubenfeld maintained his office in a constant state of purposeful chaos. Folders, forms, periodicals and books were haphazardly piled everywhere, documents were scattered about, and the place looked as if it hadn’t been dusted in years.

  She stood in the open doorway for a moment, watching as he pored over some papers, feeling the urge to rush over and hug him. But she hesitated, knowing how the professor felt about physical displays of affection. When he finally looked up from his work, his rumpled face broke into a wide grin. Then he stood and, as Randi approached with her arms outstretched, he grudgingly allowed her to wrap him in a warm embrace.

  “All right,” he said as he backed away, “are we all done with that now?”

  Rubenfeld was several inches shorter than Randi, his paunchy physique earned from endless hours hunched over a desk. His nose was a touch too large, his mouth a touch too small, and he was almost completely bald, the few surviving wisps of hair giving him something of a monastic look. He had a weak left eye that regularly floated off to the side, making any effort to meet his gaze through his thick-lensed glasses a virtual impossibility.

  As she took a step back Randi saw that he appeared much older than the last time they met. They kept in touch over the years, occasionally speaking on the telephone, running into each other at professional conferences, exchanging e-mails and articles and so forth. Still, it was sad for her to see how he had aged.

  He waved her toward one of the two old-fashioned leather armchairs in front of the cluttered bookcases that lined the walls of the musty old room. They exchanged some pleasantries but Rubenfeld, in his brusque manner, soon cut that short. “I was happy to get your call, but you didn’t come all this way to make small talk. Let’s begin with the headlines, shall we?”

  “I’ve got a few issues,” she told him.

  Rubenfeld removed his tortoise-shell glasses and wiped them with a crumpled tissue he found amidst the papers and books on his untidy desk. He studied her for a moment, then replaced the smudged specta
cles and made an impatient wave of his hand. He was exceptionally fond of hand signals. “Go,” he said.

  “First, one of my female patients was murdered a week ago.” She gave him the headlines, as he would say.

  “I actually read something about it when I saw it was in your part of the world. Didn’t have any idea she was one of yours. Tell me everything.”

  Randi did, including the involvement of Anthony Walker, the discovery of Elizabeth’s diary, the anonymous notes and the vandalism of her office.

  “Hmmm. I certainly didn’t read anything about a diary,” he said, zeroing in on the key piece of information.

  “It’s not public knowledge yet, but based on what she wrote, the police believe she had affairs with some of my male patients, husbands of the other women in her group.”

  “Is it true?”

  Randi sighed. “I think it is.”

  “Nice girl,” the professor observed with a frown.

  “I also believe she had a brief sexual relationship with at least one of my female patients.” Here Randi paused again. “A woman I introduced her to.”

  Rubenfeld nodded solemnly without comment.

  “The other woman had an extremely difficult background. She was an abused child of an alcoholic father. Then she was an abused wife.”

  He shook his head. “Abused child becomes abused wife. Textbook stuff.” Rubenfeld was well respected in his profession—an academic who had forsaken private practice and lucrative offers to write pop psychology manuals, choosing to remain at the university, conducting his classes, engaging in research, issuing scholarly papers and maintaining the purity of his intellectual purpose. It was a rewarding position, leaving him free to pursue anything that piqued his interest. “So now we have two victims, so to speak.”

  “Not that simple. This other woman was not only a victim.”

  He responded with one of his lopsided looks, but said nothing.

  “Several years ago, in the midst of an attack by her husband, she stabbed him with a kitchen knife. Spent five years in a psychiatric facility.”

  “Killed the sonuvabitch. Good.”

  “No. He didn’t die.”

  “Just ventilated him for a while, eh?” He made a slashing motion through the air with his right hand.

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “And you figure Lizzie Borden might be the one who did in Madame Bovary?”

  Randi shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “All right, what about these men she was sleeping with. You know who they were?”

  “I have a suspicion about who three of them were.”

  “Only three, eh? And is this just a suspicion?”

  “None of them ever admitted it to me outright. One of them is a patient I don’t feel I know all that well, I only see him in group, but he made some comments to me a while back. And Elizabeth said things. Nothing specific . . .”

  “Have you asked any of them about her? Since this Elizabeth woman was killed, I mean.”

  “Not directly.”

  Rubenfeld leaned forward, now peering at Randi over the top of his glasses. “This isn’t one of those ‘I’ve got a friend with a problem’ deals, is it?”

  “No, no, no. Of course not.”

  “You weren’t drawn into this little web yourself, were you?”

  She did her best to meet his off-kilter gaze and said, “No.” She replied to his dubious look by saying, “I would tell you.”

  “But she took a run at you, am I right?”

  Randi sat back. “Yes,” she admitted.

  “All right,” he said with another wave of his hand, “go on.”

  “The police want me to cooperate with their investigation. If they have it their way I’d tell them everything I know about each of my patients, just on the chance it might help them solve the murder.”

  “And this is only topic number one?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s next, world peace?”

  Randi managed a wan smile. “No. The next two subjects are my personal life and my future as a practitioner.”

  Rubenfeld started to laugh so hard he doubled over and began coughing. “You really are some piece of work, you know that?” He rubbed the palm of his hand across the top of his mostly bald pate. “Well, I don’t have a class until day after tomorrow. Maybe if we talk until then we can make some headway.”

  She watched as Rubenfeld lit his pipe. It was part of an age-old routine. He would light it, take a single puff, then ignore it as it went cold again.

  “Let’s start with the ethics problem,” he said as he exhaled a small amber cloud of smoke. “Honoring the confidences of your patients is more than a matter of your personal integrity, it is an absolute obligation.”

  “I understand that. But this is murder.”

  “And murder is a terrible thing. But so is forcible incest. Spousal abuse. Molestation. Where do you draw the line on where you’re allowed to betray these confidences? Will you reveal the confidences of a murderer but protect a sodomizer of children? How about an adulterer who contracts HIV and may infect a spouse?”

  “I understand the issue.”

  “Oh, good. Do you also understand the difference between someone threatening to commit a heinous act and someone who confesses a horrible deed that is already done? And, by the way, who gets to make these moral judgments? You? Who the hell died and left you in charge? A secret is a secret, a confidence is a confidence. There is no ambiguity here, it’s black and white.” He struck another match. “Unless you’re being warned about a crime that is about to be committed, you have no right to share these secrets with anyone. That leaves you with the problem of how to protect your patients, your practice and, by the way, yourself.” He lit the tobacco remaining in his pipe, then blew out the match just as it was about to burn his fingers. “But you’ve omitted one critical piece of information.” He stared at his former student through his thick lenses. “Do you actually know who murdered this woman?”

  Randi Conway stared back at him, this man she respected and trusted more than any she had ever known. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m afraid that I might not be seeing things I should.”

  “The abused woman who stabbed her husband, for instance?”

  Randi nodded. “For instance.”

  “You simply can’t bring yourself to believe she’d be capable of murdering this Elizabeth, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not,” Rubenfeld responded with a rheumatic chuckle as his pipe went out again. He drew on it, saw it was dead, then tossed it on his desk, cold ashes flying out of the bowl, scattering among the others already strewn amidst the clutter. “No decent therapist wants to believe a patient is capable of a horrible deed like murder. Before therapy, fine, that’s perfect. They had problems, that’s why they came to see you in the first place. Or worst case, they do something terrible after your therapy is completed, when they’re not your patient anymore. Not so terrific, but what the hell, she was beyond your influence, you can forgive yourself. But doing something terrible while a patient is still in your care? That’s the ultimate proof you’ve failed, you’ve cocked it up completely, you’re an imbecile and that’s that. Am I right?” When she hesitated, he said, “Of course I’m right.”

  “I see your point, but I still don’t believe she’s the murderer.”

  “Fine,” the professor responded with a dismissive flick of his wrist, “that’s good enough for me. We’ve decided this woman is not guilty. So who’s the next suspect? Let’s get back to all the men this Elizabeth was screwing. Any of them you don’t like?”

  Randi shook her head.

  “What about the husband? Don’t the police think it was the husband? You’re telling me the woman was cheating on him all over town, right?”

  “The police say he had an alibi.”

  “Ah, an alibi.” He rolled that one again on his tongue. “An alibi. Good, now we can start talking like TV show detectives. A
libi,” he repeated derisively. “Forget the alibi. Give him the third degree. Work him over. Throw the book at him.”

  Randi tried to force a smile, but Rubenfeld waved it off.

  “Don’t humor me,” he told her. “Tell me who else you aren’t looking at.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Yourself?”

  “Me?”

  “Hey, don’t look so upset, I don’t mean that you murdered this woman. I mean you were never any good at looking at yourself. That’s why I was always so concerned about you. You’ve always avoided your own feelings. You lose yourself in your work, you hide behind the problems of these strangers you treat.”

  She wanted to say something, but just stared at him dumbly.

  “What about this policeman you mentioned?”

  “What about him?”

  “When you started telling me this saga, you mentioned your personal life. The way you talked about him, I was wondering . . .”

  “Detective Walker,” Randi interrupted, as if stating his name would explain something.

  “Is that what you call him, ‘Detective Walker’? How intimate.”

  This time Randi could not help but laugh. “We’re not intimate. And sometimes I call him Anthony.”

  “Ah, now we are getting someplace.”

  “I thought you wanted to discuss who might have murdered Elizabeth.”

  “Is that what you thought, that I’m interested in solving a murder? Not my line of work, young lady. My only interest here is you.”

  She stared at him.

  “All right, all right. Let’s get back to these guys who slept with this Elizabeth. The men you know about.”

  Randi shook her head slowly. “They’re patients. One of them I don’t see privately, only in group. I don’t feel I know him very well.”

  “So you said,” Rubenfeld reminded her impatiently. “Tell me, Randi, do you think I’m not listening or am I starting to look a touch senile?”

  She sighed.

  “So then,” Rubenfeld announced triumphantly, “the man you don’t know very well, he must be the murderer, because you had the least influence on him. It’s obvious, no?”