Blameless (36 page)

She went into her office and dialed Sandy’s apartment, letting the phone ring for what seemed an interminable time. Finally Sandy picked it up, breathlessly explaining she was in the middle of her exercise routine, but would be able to take a break when she finished her abdominals. Diana asked her if she could stop by her office; Sandy readily agreed to come over as soon as possible.

Relieved, Diana went to the file cabinet and got Sandy’s records, hoping for clues on how best to handle the situation. Sandy loved attention and acted as though she was entitled to it, based on her beauty. But Diana knew that this facade of self-confidence hid a frightened and lonely little girl who really thought of herself as ugly and stupid—and unlovable. Sitting in her chair, she tapped the back of her pen on the open folder and waited for Sandy to arrive, trying to remain focused on Sandy’s troubles, not on her own.

But despite her earlier dismissal, the thoughts about Ethan that she had had in the car wouldn’t stay away; the idea was just too persistent—or perhaps her desperation just too great. Diana strained to remember her ethics course. If someone’s life was endangered, the need to inform took priority over doctor-patient privilege. Protection of the victim overrode confidentiality.

Her mind whirled with possibilities, and she could hear the blood pounding through her ears. Perhaps she could say that Ethan had left a message threatening to kill her with a shotgun? No, that wouldn’t work because she, the victim, would already be informed. But if Ethan left a message threatening Sandy, then Diana would be forced to tell Levine and show him Ethan’s previous murder confession in her notes. That, combined with the incriminating girlfriend-shotgun story, would rekindle the police’s search for him—as well as incriminate Ethan in James’s murder. She twirled in her chair and stared into the alley; darkness was already embedded in its corners, although the time was barely five. It might just work.

No, she told herself, snapping the blinds shut, it was out of the question. She was
not
going to falsify records, she was not going to lie about phone messages, and she definitely was not going to malign a possibly innocent man.

Sandy showed up in a sweatsuit that had obviously been hastily thrown over her workout clothes. “I came as fast as I could. Just had to finish up a couple more repetitions,” she said as soon as she entered the office. Then she hesitated, standing uncertainly behind her usual chair. “You did say that
you
needed
me
, didn’t you?” she asked, twisting a slightly damp piece of hair.

“Yes, I did.” Diana nodded solemnly. “I need your help.”

Sandy’s chest puffed out with pride, and a radiant smile illuminated her beautiful face. She sat down and looked expectantly at Diana.

Diana steepled her fingers and pressed them to her upper lip. “I saw Jill Hutchins today,” she said, looking directly at Sandy. “And something she said confused me.”

“You talked to Jill?” Sandy was obviously surprised.

“And she claimed you told her you were with me the afternoon of James’s murder.”

“Yeah.” Sandy inspected her fingernails. “She’s been talking a lot about it lately. Grilling me. Sort of obsessive like, I guess.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Sandy frowned. “Because she hates you.” She looked up at Diana apologetically.

“It’s okay—no one’s liked by everybody,” Diana said. “Why else do you think she’s doing this?”

“She thinks you killed James and doesn’t want me to give you an alibi. She doesn’t want me to go to the police because she wants you to be punished.” Sandy grabbed her purse from the back of her chair. “But I know it’s not true. I know you’d never do anything like that—and I can prove it.”

“You can?” Diana asked, hope rushing through her in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible just a few minutes ago.

“It’s in my appointment book.” Sandy pulled her day-timer from her purse and began flipping through the pages. “I have it right here. I always write down when I’m going to see you. Look,” she said proudly, pointing to October 15. “Dr. Marcus,” it said. “Two o’clock.”

Diana stared at the notation, her heart pounding in her ears. She knew Sandy had not been in her office on the afternoon of October 15. She knew Sandy had added the entry just recently—obviously after Jill had pointed out its absence. But there it was in front of her: her alibi, her salvation.

“Jill’s wrong,” Sandy said, pulling her face into a pout. “She never wanted James to like anyone but her.”

Diana nodded, impressed with Sandy’s perceptiveness. “Don’t you think it’s possible that you might have made a mistake?” she asked gently, trying to assess the strength of Sandy’s delusion. “Just this one time?”

“Can’t be a mistake.” Sandy’s voice was emphatic. “I know that for a fact.”

“How can you be so positive?”

Sandy clicked the latch on her day-timer a few times, then looked up at Diana, her expression sheepish and childishly appealing. “I count them.”

“Count them?” Diana repeated, not sure she had heard Sandy correctly. “Count what?”

“I know you’re going to think I’m stupid and immature …”

“I’d never think that,” Diana said, a flood of warmth for Sandy pouring through her. Underneath all that damage, Sandy was just a little girl trying desperately to make people like her, trying to keep them from leaving her.

“I always write down the times I see you because I count them,” Sandy mumbled. “I keep track of them so that I’ll know when you start to get tired of me—or are trying to get rid of me. I even sort of have a chart.” She lifted her head and stuck out her chin. “And that’s how I know that the appointment really happened,” she added, crossing her arms defiantly over her chest.

Diana watched Sandy carefully. It was obvious Sandy was completely convinced of the truth of her words—and that, because of her conviction, she would make a compelling witness. That was the thing about a true delusion. The person suffering from it wasn’t lying; he or she was certain of the veracity of their memory. But Diana also knew that a person who believed in this kind of delusion was also quite ill: sick and fearful and confused. Sandy was her patient; Sandy trusted that Diana would do what was best to help her, the patient—not herself, the doctor.

Sandy fiddled with her clothes and her hair for a few moments, not raising her eyes. “I’d never make a mistake about an appointment with you.” She played with the clasp on her day-timer. “I’m always very careful. Always.”

“Sandy,” Diana began and then stopped. The battle raging within her caused nausea to twist her stomach. She paused to let the wave of sickness pass, knowing there was no way she could ever consciously hurt this woman. “Sandy, it’s okay to make a mistake.”

“I know for a fact that I was here that afternoon,” Sandy answered quickly, but with less certainty. The telephone began to ring, and Sandy looked at Diana questioningly.

“The machine will get it,” Diana said. “What else do you remember about that afternoon?”

“We talked about my father.”

Diana hesitated for a long moment. “Not that day,” she finally said, her sense of both relief and disappointment at her victory over self-interest so powerful it caused her voice to break. “Don’t you remember? We met
after
James’s funeral,” she said gently. “We talked about your memory of your dad and that Red Sox game.” Diana reached into her drawer and pulled out her appointment book. “Look,” she said, flipping to October 15. “The afternoon’s empty.”

Sandy let her hair cover her face. “I thought we talked about it that day,” she whispered.

“I only wish we had.” Diana sat back in her chair, exhausted from her internal battle, unsure whether she was the victor or the vanquished.

“But—but it’s just that it’s not like me,” Sandy said, wringing her hands. “You know how I can get a little obsessive about things …” She glanced furtively at Diana, then her eyes began darting around the room. Suddenly she jumped from her chair and stood behind it. She gripped the back cushion tightly, as if using it for protection.

“Sandy,” Diana said, standing and starting to walk toward the frightened woman. “What—”

“Don’t come any closer!” Sandy cried, holding the chair even more tightly, her knuckles turning white. “You—you made me lie.”

Diana stopped walking. She stood completely still, her hand resting on the edge of her desk in a casual gesture. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’m not going to touch you. If you don’t want me to come any closer, then I won’t.”

Sandy backed slowly toward the door, horror contorting her beautiful face. “You were the best person in the world. The one I admired the most,” she said, her voice registering both fear and disappointment. “I—I wanted to be like you. To be you. And now … And now …” She leaned over, pressing her day-timer to her stomach. “I feel sick,” she moaned.

“Sandy, honey,” Diana began.

Sandy shook her head and started to cry. “How could you?” she asked plaintively. Then her eyes became wild, full of terror at the horrible truth she thought she saw before her. “How could you kill James?” she screamed, and ran out the door.

Diana was stunned into immobility. She just stood there, motionless, her hand clutching the edge of the desk. The pain she had experienced on the street in front of Ken’s was nothing compared to the dark despair that flooded her now. She had failed everyone.

Then her paralysis loosened, and she followed Sandy down the hallway. “Stop!” she called when she reached the open door. “You’re wrong. You don’t understand!”

But Sandy ignored her, running from her in terror, flying across the alley. Sandy stumbled, fell, then righted herself as she lunged for her car. She grasped the door handle and pulled it, then frantically pawed through her purse and thrust her keys into the lock. Suddenly she stopped and stood statue-still, her tear-streaked face haunted and pale.

Diana didn’t move. She didn’t call out, afraid to startle the terrified woman, afraid of what Sandy might do. But all Sandy did was turn and vomit violently into the trash barrel.

After Sandy’s car careened out of the alley, Diana walked back into her office. She stood in the center of the room, looking at it as if she had never seen it before, wondering how the next owners of the house might choose to use the space. Perhaps as an au pair’s room. Or maybe a teenager’s hideaway, a gentleman’s library, a sewing room, or an art studio. So many possibilities. She walked to the window and opened the blinds, looking into their “back city.” The back city that would now never hold a swing set. She snapped the blinds shut. If Sandy—who knew her, and loved her, and understood how much she had cared for James—concluded that she had killed James, what might Herb Levine’s conclusion be?

Numbly she pressed the button on her answering machine. When Levine’s voice boomed out at her, she jumped. “Got that warrant I was telling you about the other day,” he said. “I’ll be by later this evening—around eight. Please be home.” Warrant, she thought, her hands beginning to tremble. Herb Levine had a warrant. Was it for her printer, or was it for her? Diana knew it had to be for the printer; Levine’s voice had sounded too casual for it to be an arrest warrant. Nevertheless, Diana paced her small office in fear.

She walked over to the file cabinet in the comer and stood in front of it. Then she pulled Ethan’s records from the top drawer and sat down at her desk. Without conscious awareness that she had come to a decision, Diana took a few pens from her drawer and scribbled on a pad of lined paper with each. Selecting the one with the most faded ink, she calmly and deliberately began to jot short notes on various sheets of paper in his file. “Threatened Sandy and Bruce,” she wrote on one sheet. “Told James he would kill him,” she wrote on another.

Then she switched to a different pen and wrote a much longer paragraph, in a much neater hand. “E confessed to murdering glfrd in apt. No details ’cept it was messy,” Diana began, using the cryptic notations she always employed in her personal files. She ended the paragraph with the words, “No remorse. Laughed. Said: ‘She deserved it for lying.’ I feel terrible. Scared. Can do nothing. D-P privilege.” It was as if some outside force had control of her actions, a force more concerned with her survival than she was. But whether it was a benevolent or malevolent force, she wasn’t sure.

When she completed her work, Diana took the pens she had used and carried them upstairs. She put the pens underneath a few inches of garbage in the trash compactor and turned the knob. Then she went back downstairs and called Gail.

“I’m having some trouble with my answering machine,” Diana said. “Could you do me a favor and call me right back? Just say something like, ‘Hi, this is Gail,’ so I can test it?”

“Sure,” Gail said. “But, sweetie, I need to talk to you. It’s really important.”

“We’ll talk when you call back,” Diana promised and hung up.

But when Gail called back, leaving a message on the machine that would erase any earlier ones, Diana told her that she had to run, she had a patient arriving in a few minutes and a lecture to prepare for the next day. Not easily brushed off, Gail refused to hang up until Diana had promised she would call her as soon as she got home from class in the morning.

Then Diana took a deep breath and held it in. Just when she thought she would explode from lack of air, she dialed the police station and asked for Detective Levine. While she waited for him to come to the phone, she held her breath again.

“You,” she gasped when she heard his voice, letting her breath out with a rush. “You’ve got to come over here now—this can’t wait till later. There’s a message and I’m scared. I think that … I don’t know what to think, but you need to hear this. And—”

“Whoa,” Levine said. “Slow down and start again.”

So Diana told him that Ethan had just called and left a message threatening both her and another one of her patients. That she needed Levine to come right away because she had some new evidence for him. Evidence she hadn’t been able to reveal before. Evidence she was sure he would be very interested in seeing.

After she hung up, she sat at her desk, dead-calm and waiting. Waiting for what she knew would be her last chance.