Fever Dream (2 page)

“Do you know where you are now, Treva?”

She stared straight ahead. “Outside. On the street.”

Suddenly, an unmarked sedan screeched to a halt just beyond the perimeter. Two guys in jackets and ties got out. One was the assistant chief of police, scowling as he brushed past a woman reporter from WTAE-TV who’d rushed to intercept him. He waded into the throng of uniforms, barking orders, his subordinate at his heels.

Lowrey and I exchanged glances. Treva hadn’t even reacted to the squeal of tires, the slamming of car doors. The upraised voices of the cops on the scene.

“Can you look at me, Treva?”

She nodded, then turned her head. A pretty, oval face. Muted makeup smudged, etched with tears. Deep brown eyes, gone nearly black as her consciousness kept trying to recede, to escape an unacceptable reality.

Treva Williams was a smallish, slender woman of thirty or so. Under the blanket, I saw her standard bank officer’s pale blue skirt and jacket, collared white blouse, and appropriately tasteful pearl necklace. Only her earrings betrayed any individuality. Larger than you’d expect, loops with tiny green stones dangling. A personal statement. Saying to the world,
I’m not just some drone in a bank…

A world she was drifting away from, moment by moment. Pulled as though by a powerful force into a different time and space. Someplace far removed from bank hold-ups, men with guns, sudden violence. A place where the blood and brains of a colleague didn’t end up on your fingers.

“Are you still with me, Treva?”

Her “yes” was unconvincing.

I kept my face composed. No smile, no reassuring look of empathy and concern. Nothing to set off her warning bells, remind her that people were worried about her. That something bad had happened.

“What color is my tie?” I said.

“Blue.”

“What about my shirt?”

“You’re wearing one.”

I had to smile. “Yes, I am.”

She stared me. Waiting. Compliant.

“Am I wearing a jacket with my tie?” I said. “And don’t forget to breathe now, okay?”

“A jacket? Yes, you are. You must be hot.” A long pause. “Did you say something else?”

“Yes. I said, don’t forget to breathe.”

“Okay.” As if to comply with the crazy man, she took a deep breath.

Eleanor leaned across then and tapped my knee. Hard.
We need real info, Dan,
she was signaling me.
Get her to give us something we can use.

I stared back at her. Treva Willams was in no shape to be a star witness. She was barely holding it together as it was.

“Do you want anything, Treva? More tea?”

For the first time, she looked down at the cooling Styrofoam cup in her small hands. Unpainted nails. No rings on her fingers. Odd, I thought, given the earrings.

“Is this tea?” Her voice thin, a wisp of sound.

“Yes. Would you like another cup?”

She was about to answer when her hands, as though with a will of their own, opened, and the cup fell to the pavement. Tea splashed my trouser cuffs.

“Treva?” I brought my face closer to hers, which had turned once again away from mine. Staring with unseeing eyes past where we three huddled at the curb.

Her face was frozen, a pale mask. Her body slumped, folded in on itself, as though deflated. As though her spirit had fled.

She was alive, unhurt. Saved from her ordeal in the bank.

But Treva Williams was…elsewhere.

Chapter Two

Two hours earlier, I was in session with one of my regular patients. Mary Lewicki had been in therapy with me for over three months, the victim of an armed carjacking that had left her with recurrent nightmares and a frequent, debilitating anxiety.

Like many of my patients, she’d been referred to me by Angela Villanova, the chief community liaison officer for the Pittsburgh Police.
And
a third cousin of mine, twice removed. From the neighborhood, as my old man used to say.

When I first met Mary Lewicki, she was sitting nervously in my waiting room, kneading her chafed red hands on her lap. After we’d exchanged brief, careful smiles, she seemed momentarily confused, as though unsure what to do next. Then, reluctantly, she got to her feet and allowed me to usher her into my office.

Like most new patients, she took a few minutes to acclimate herself to the place. She sat up straight in the chair that faced mine, looking expectantly at the diplomas on the walls, my bookshelves holding both clinical texts and old copies of
Ringsider
magazine. My weathered Tumi briefcase was in its customary position against one leg of the marble-topped antique desk.

Finally, as though a wary animal slowly trusting to the safety of her new home, she settled back against the brown leather chair. Her shoulders relaxed. Then she took that long, acquiescing first breath and brought her gaze up to meet mine. The familiar ritual, enacted by almost every patient on his or her initial visit.

Mary was a heavy-set woman in her late fifties, a long-time employee of AT&T, and a recent widow. As she later explained during that first session, “I just buried my husband, God rest his soul, and two months later this other thing happens. I don’t know, Dr. Rinaldi. Maybe somebody up there’s tryin’ to tell me something.”

The police had managed to arrest a suspect in the carjacking, but Mary was unable to pick him out of the line-up. Her nerves, she said. But according to Angie Villanova, Mary had actually had a panic attack while looking through the one-way glass at the line of suspects.

Fearing she’d had a coronary, the cops drove her to the ER at Pittsburgh Memorial. An hour later, given a sedative and a clean bill of health—at least physically—she was taken home.

After which, an angry Assistant D.A. named Parnelli figured there was no sense pressing charges against the suspect, some career loser from Wilkinsburg. If Mary couldn’t make it through a line-up, there was no way she’d be able to point out her assailant from the witness stand. At least, Parnelli figured, the odds weren’t good.

Besides, nobody gets promoted in the District Attorney’s office for clearing routine carjackings. Not unless somebody had ended up dead.

But Angie Villanova, exposing the bleeding heart she keeps hidden under that alligator-tough hide—as well as a similar middle-aged, blue-collar kinship—referred Mary to me anyway.

“You’ve gotta help this lady, Danny,” Angie had said on the phone. “She’s the walkin’ wounded. And her husband just croaked, which don’t help. Though if it were my
Sonny
who kicked it, I’d be bookin’ a goddam cruise to celebrate. But don’t quote me.”

She knew I wouldn’t. She also knew I’d take the case.

I’m a clinical psychologist, and people like Mary Lewicki are my specialty. Victims of violent crime whose traumatic experience has left them with residual anxiety, depression, paranoia and fear.

Feelings I know all about myself…

Years ago, my wife Barbara and I were mugged coming out of a restaurant near the Point. Coked out of his mind, the mugger lost it and started shooting. Barbara was shot twice, killed at the scene, while a stray bullet in my brain kept me in the hospital for months.

After being discharged, I went into a tailspin, both personally and professionally. The grief was searing, unendurable, like someone was peeling away my skin. The only thing worse was the survivor guilt. The knowledge that I had lived, and Barbara had not.

During those long, agonizing months, I replayed the mugging a thousand times in my mind. I’d done some boxing when I was young. Golden Gloves. Pan Am Games. I should have been able to stop the guy, I thought. I should have protected her.
Saved
her.

It took me two years to finally accept that
I
didn’t kill Barbara, some hooded thug with a 9 mm did. Some guy who’s never been found. And probably never will be.

I still carry the scar from that bullet in my skull, as well as other, perhaps deeper scars—which, though less painful with each passing year, can still ache during certain long, quiet hours of the night…

***

It took a lot of time and therapy to recover from that experience. Part of that recovery, as it turns out, was signing on as a consultant to the Pittsburgh police seven years ago.

Over that time, crime victims of all types and ages have consulted with me in my cluttered office overlooking Forbes Avenue. From the mildest of symptoms to the most severe ravages of post-traumatic stress disorder. From the survivors of rape and armed assault to kidnapping victims and battered spouses, I’ve borne witness to their anguish and, often, unexpected courage. Ordinary people struggling to make sense of their experience and trying, somehow, someway, to move on.

Over time, I’ve come to believe that trauma victims live in a very different world than everybody else—a world where the tragic, the inconceivable, the horrifying can
and
does occur. They’re denied the complacency, the normal assumptions of daily life that most people walk around with. But I also believe that, with help and luck, they can learn to cope with the reality of what’s happened to them.

All I can provide them is the help, to the best of my clinical ability. As for the luck part, I’m afraid that’s above my pay grade.

But against the odds, and for reasons I’ll never fully understand, I’m still here.

Chapter Three

Mary’s appointment that day of the robbery had been coming to a close when my office phone rang. As usual, during a session, I let the answering machine pick up.

It was almost one o’clock, and a fierce sun shone stubbornly through the window blinds. Even the Oakland traffic rumbling up from the street five floors below seemed strangely muted, as though sluggish in the heat.

As had been the case for weeks, the suite’s AC was putting up a losing battle with another typical Pittsburgh summer.

Mary was dabbing her forehead with a tissue.

“At least today I’m just mopping up sweat,” she said ruefully. “Usually it’s tears. Does that mean I’m getting better?”

Before I could reply, my cell phone rang. Unusual. My friends and colleagues knew not to call that number during office hours, unless there was an emergency.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” I said, reaching for where it beeped insistently on the side table.

“Dr. Rinaldi?”

It took me a few moments to recognize the throaty voice on the phone. Detective Eleanor Lowrey. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in almost a year, when she and her partner, Sgt. Harry Polk, had worked with me on the Wingfield case. Or, as Polk would probably put it, when I had gotten my lame-ass self mixed up in the Wingfield case.

“This is Dan Rinaldi, Detective. But I’m in session with a patient and—”

She briskly cut me off. “I need you to excuse yourself for a minute so we can talk. It’s important.”

I didn’t hesitate. I remembered Eleanor Lowrey as a no-nonsense cop, with none of her partner’s angry swagger, owning instead a cool, somewhat guarded determination. I’d never heard this much intensity in her voice before.

“Of course.” I asked Mary to excuse me, closed my office door behind me, and stood in the empty waiting room. Without a window facing the sun, the room was a full ten degrees cooler than my office. Almost immediately, I felt the sweat starting to dry on my shirt.

“Sorry to bother you, Doctor,” Lowrey said. “But there’s a situation. Have you heard the news? The story just broke on TV.”

“I’ve been with patients all morning. What’s going on?”

“An armed robbery in progress. Midtown, the First Allegheny Bank. We’ve got uniforms, SWAT. Half the damn force. Looks like a couple perps. Somehow the thing went down wrong, shots were fired. Apparently somebody’s dead in there. Probably an employee.”

“Jesus.”

“Tell me about it. The pricks are still in the bank, holding the four remaining employees hostage. Demanding safe passage out of town. Your basic cluster fuck.”

Her voice changed then, the urgent tones softening.

“Look, Dan, we got our hostage negotiator trying to talk these mooks outta there, but so far nobody’s playing ball. Sergeant Chester, the SWAT leader—”

“Let me guess. Chester wants to go in, guns blazing. Practically guarantees more dead hostages.”

“Maybe, but the SWAT presence must’ve spooked the perps, because just five minutes ago they let one of the hostages go. Woman named Treva Williams. EMT guys are working on her now, but she’s in bad shape.”

“Hurt? Wounded?”

“Freaked out. She’s falling apart on us, Dan, and we need some intel about what’s going on in that bank. Stuff only she can tell us.”

By now, I knew where this was going.

“Any police shrinks on site?”

“Yeah, one of the regulars.” Again, a shift in her voice. Softer still. “But he’s not
you
, Dan. I mean, Harry would kill me if he knew I was calling you, but we need you down here. We need your help with this woman.”