One We Love, The (21 page)

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

A
s
soon as I was sure she was gone, I scurried around her desk and started yanking
open the drawers.

Paul was horror-struck. “Letty, should you be doing that?”

“It’s okay, Paul. I’m just looking for a file I’m supposed
to have.”

I glanced up. His face was a strange conglomeration of
bewilderment and despondency. "Letty, I can't just sit there in groups. I
won't pass my internship if I can't say anything. I'm not supposed to just
observe. Plus, I’ll look stupid.”

"I know, Paul. Listen, don't worry about it. I'll think
of something. I promise." The drawer that Clotilde had pulled Karissa’s
file from was locked. I jiggled it in frustration.

Paul sniffed. As soon as he saw me looking at him, he ducked
his head, but not before I saw the tears welling up in his eyes. Unexpectedly,
he dropped to his knees and started crawling around on the floor.

"Paul, what the hell are you doing?"

"She dropped her pens."

"Are you kidding me? You're picking up her pens?"

He set the cup on the desk and stuffed a handful of pens and
pencils inside. "Good thing, too. She dropped her keys.” He plunked them
on top of the pile of folders that Clotilde had brought in.

Halleluiah.

My hands were shaking so bad it took three tries before I
found the right key.

“Letty, I don’t think you should be doing this.”

“Keep watch,” I said.

“What?”

Good lord, hadn’t he ever played cops-n-robbers? I shooed my
hand at him, pointing to the open door. “Go watch out for people.” I started
pawing through the drawer, unearthing legal pads and stationery and the various
office flotsam that people end up stuffing in a drawer instead of filing it.

Or things they want hidden.

I pulled a file out—Karissa Dillard’s—not the one I had, but
a duplicate. Or rather—the original. The door to the group room opened and a
mishmash of women’s voices floated down the hall to us.

 Paul squeaked. His version of “hssst!” I supposed. He had
the door cracked an inch or so and was peeking out from it. Because a lone
eyeball staring out at the hall from Clotilde’s office wouldn’t be the least
bit suspicious, would it?

In three strides I was at his side, the file clutched in my
sweaty little hands.

“You can’t take that,” he said. His face was ashen and he
was shaking so bad I thought he would fall down.

“I know I can’t,” I said. “I don’t have anywhere to put it.
That’s why you’re taking it.”

I grabbed his belt, spun him around, and stuffed the folder
down the back of his pants. His suit jacket—worn to impress his internship supervisor,
I was sure—covered the bulge well enough that I was sure we could get out the
door.

“I c-c-c-c—”

“Yes, you can, Paul. Otherwise they’re going to find you
with a confidential file stuck down your shorts, you’ll flunk your internship,
never graduate, and end up on skid row talking to dumpster rats. Just follow me
and stop sweating so much.” 

And I whisked his poor, tremulous self right out the back
door and straight out to our cars.

W
e fled to a
nearby Mickey D’s and grabbed a booth back in the children’s playland section—a
cross between an aquarium and a hamster trail composed of red and blue tunnels
and slides. Privacy was practically guaranteed given the fact that no one could
hear anything over the shrill shrieks of an assortment of excited toddlers
turned loose. Sanity was not so assured.

Paul hadn’t quite recovered from our “adventure,” as I was
choosing to call it. He’d been hiking back and forth to the bathroom every five
minutes, growing paler with each trip. We each reacted to stress in our own
ways—I had both hands wrapped around a bucketful of peppermint mocha coffee
with extra whip cream, and Paul had a small diet Sprite. We were both shaking
so hard that our drinks had ripple effects going on, suggesting that either
Wisconsin was experiencing a slight earthquake or Paul and I were experiencing
stereo-palsy.

Paul had used the first of his emergency bathroom trips to
remove the file, bringing it back to me with a reproachful look plastered on
his face. My head throbbed. Avoiding his eyes, I dug through my purse looking
for Tylenol.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“You mean,
I
shouldn’t have done that, Paul. I didn’t
give you much choice in the matter.” I finally met his eyes. “I’m sorry. I
really am.”

He didn’t argue and he didn’t look any happier with my
admission. I was so used to Paul’s abject adoration that I almost felt a pang
at its loss. It looked like I was going to have to tell him everything.

He knew about  Regina’s “accident” and my suspicions that
files had been tampered with, but I went back and told him everything I
suspected.

Paul darted to the bathroom twice more during my little
recitation. Apparently the news that Regina had been murdered and I’d been
attacked the night before last wasn’t soothing his intestinal discomfort. But
at least he’d stopped looking at me as though he’d caught me shoving bamboo
shoots up Mother Teresa’s fingernails.

“So what do you think is in here?” he asked, tapping
Karissa’s file.

“Good question.” I pulled it over and began paging through
it. I’d have to compare it page by page to the file I already had at home, but
I’d been over the information in that one so many times I was sure I’d catch
any obvious discrepancies.

And, of course, there were. Two, in fact. The first was the
discovery of the original contact information form—the one I’d previously discovered
had been copied. When Clotilde or whomever duplicated the file, she must have
accidentally switched the two. The second discrepancy was more interesting.

A discharge summary.

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

I
’d assumed the
absence of the discharge form from the file I’d reviewed at the shelter was due,
in part, to Karissa’s taking off the morning Regina’s body was discovered. It
would be an easy thing to overlook since the therapist, Regina, obviously wasn’t
available to complete it. It was one of the things I had planned to address in
my review.

But one
had
been filled out—by Lachlyn, no less, who
certainly should have noticed that it was missing when she’d been supervising
my review. There was no question in my mind now that she’d known about the
duplicate file.

I skimmed the page, then went back and re-read it more
carefully. Although Karissa had agreed to meet with Lachlyn before leaving, she
refused to let her talk to the kids. Lachlyn had noted “permission withheld”
and underlined it twice. Irritated, perhaps?

The information was sparse, but the sight of a forwarding
address made my heart pound briefly. Briefly, because directly underneath a
different hand had scribbled ‘nonexistent’ in blue ink. So much for that.

Apparently someone
had
tried to follow up . . . and
failed. Had Karissa given a false address on purpose? Actually, remembering her
cantankerous personality, I could see her withholding the information just on
general principles. She didn’t strike me as someone who tolerated others messing
in her business. Grandma Crazy-Pants would certainly agree with that.

That got me wondering again about where the two had run off
to and why? Who had been out to the trailer that Saturday and subsequently
scared off both Karissa and her feisty grandma? A tall, professional woman with
short hair, Tallie had said.

I’d been assuming it was Lachlyn. But what about Clotilde?
The two could be sisters. Astrid, too, as far as that went. Hell, maybe it was
Bob in drag.

I needed to find Karissa.

I turned my attention back to Paul. He hadn’t made a
bathroom run in the last ten minutes and his shaking had calmed. He looked
better.

Color flooded his face when he saw me studying him. “Find
anything?” he asked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.  

“Maybe. A discharge summary that didn’t exist in the file I
saw, for one thing. Listen, Paul, this isn’t going to work. You need to get
transferred to a new internship. This shelter, it’s not a good place. It would
be wrong for you even if . . .  Well, even if there wasn’t some crazy person
running around killing people.”

“People? You mean, more than one? More than just Regina?”
Whatever color he’d managed to regain evaporated. This could not be good for
his blood pressure.

“Anything’s possible,” I said. “Regina might have been
killed for, well, personal reasons, for lack of a better term. Like if she
pissed somebody off all on her own, which she was certainly capable of doing.
But something weird is going on with the shelter’s files. Why bother
duplicating this one? That’s illegal, for one thing, so why do it if not to
keep me or others from seeing it? And why did Regina snatch the others? What
was she looking for?” 

Paul tapped the file between us. “If it’s just the discharge
summary, why bother creating a whole ’nother file? Why not just keep that one
page out?”

“You’re right. I haven’t looked at the other forms. I’ll
have to do a line by line comparison for that, but it makes sense that there’s
something hinky about them as well.” I sighed.

“So, let me get this straight. You think Regina was killed
because she knew something. Something about other people getting killed. And
those files she took, those are the people you think were killed?”

“I looked them up on the Internet. They’re all dead. Of
course, they all returned to their abusers, but the coincidence of Regina
having those particular files and all the women being dead has to mean
something.”

“That’s something I don’t get. Why would anyone go back to
someone who hurts them? That’s crazy.”

Eyebrows raised, I gave him my professionals-don’t-use-the-word-crazy
look and then said, “It’s a lot more complicated than that, Paul. Sometimes a
woman isn’t as weak as we’re stereotyping her. Sometimes she’s warm, loving,
and just wants so badly to change her guy. It’s her very strength and
compassion that snares her in the abusive relationship. Sometimes it’s about
money—not about wanting more, but about not having enough. One of the first
things a dominant personality is going to do is tie up the money, keep the
victim dependent. It’s all fine and dandy to say ‘Well, money doesn’t matter.
If it were me, I’d just pack up and go,’ but the truth is money has to be
considered.

“Has the woman been allowed to have a job?” I continued. “A
credit card? Access to the marital accounts? Did she finish school, get a
degree? What will she have to give up? A house? The car that’s in
his
name? What kind of life will she be dragging the kids into? Will he come after
them? Are they going to have to switch schools or towns or states to get away
from him? And will the courts even allow her to take them that far anyway?
There are tons of considerations. Now, I’m not saying she should stay with him,
but nothing is black and white in this job, Paul. Nothing.”

His forehead furrowed, and I could tell he was trying to
take it in. “You would think getting away would just be simple, survival
instincts, but I see what you’re saying. If I was the one trying to help that
would make me crazy. I bet the burnout rate is pretty high in this field, huh?
I guess that’s one reason everyone is so cranky at the shelter, huh?”

No denying that. The “why doesn’t she just leave him”
question is one that rankles everybody faced with domestic abuse. Family and
friends aware of the situation often get so frustrated with the victim’s supposed
inaction that they heap their own kind of abuse—shame—which only makes a bad
situation worse. Even experienced professionals fall into the trap, especially,
as Paul said, when burnout clouds the issue. It can be so frustrating, make you
feel so helpless, that it becomes easy to strike out at the very person you
want to help.

An idea stirred in the back of my brain.

Paul sucked the last of his pop from his cup, then burped
quietly. “Excuse me.”

I sighed again. “Are you going to transfer your internship?”

“I can’t. This was the only thing I could get, and it’s not
even a paying job. You would think in this economy that agencies would want
free labor, but they don’t. All the ones I’ve been to say they don’t have
anyone who could supervise me.”

I nodded. Times were tight and jobs had dried up everywhere.
I also remembered something Clotilde had said. “You tried to get in at the
shelter, though,” I pointed out. “Clotilde said Astrid agreed as a favor to
Kaylee Somebody. So, be honest, you pushed for this. Can’t you go back to
Kaylee or whoever and get reassigned?”

He shook his head miserably. “I’ll flunk out. I have to have
this internship or I don’t graduate. That’s why I can’t just sit there and not
say anything. How is that going to teach me anything? I can’t learn that way.”

“Okay, look. I need you to at least try to transfer. I can’t
watch you and deal with all this at the same time. It’s too dangerous. They
obviously think you’re some kind of plant and that we’re in this together.”

He smiled a little at the “in this together” part. Until I
reminded him that I’d been attacked as recently as two nights ago.

We compromised. I got him to agree to talk to his internship
advisor about a transfer. Since neither of us were confident that would happen,
I reluctantly agreed to put together a tentative schedule for supervision.

My headache had escalated to near-lethal levels. His involvement
had complicated things exponentially, and we’d both be lucky to get out of this
in one piece. As he got up to leave, I asked one more time, “Paul, why did you
do this? What were you thinking?”

He looked at me, all eyes and blushing cheeks. “I was
thinking about you.”

It was all I could do not to thunk my traumatized head on
the sticky table top.