Strong 03 - Twice (7 page)

Jeffrey waved to Ford as he watched his old friend make his way through the crowd that was forming for lunch. Jeffrey stood up to shake Ford’s hand.

“It’s been too long, man,” Jeffrey said. “How’re you doing?”

“You look good, Jeff. You, too, Lydia. How are you?” said Ford, taking Lydia’s hand.

He sat down across from them, and placed on the table a manila envelope he had carried in his left hand. Ford McKirdy looked soft and pasty to Lydia. She knew him to be a little over fifty and he looked every second of it. The late nights, high stress level, and
bad diet of a cop’s life were taking their toll. He had a light sheen of perspiration on his forehead and she noticed that his belly grazed the edge of the table as he slid with effort into the booth.

“How was your meeting with Eleanor Ross?” asked Lydia.

“Chilly,” said Ford, wiping his brow with a napkin. “That woman is a real piece of work. She was supposed to come with the nanny. But she claimed not to have anyone else to leave the children with; I’ll have to catch up with Geneva Stout later.”

“She give you anything?” asked Jeff.

“Claims she didn’t see or hear anything until Julian started screaming.”

“What did she tell you about their marriage?” asked Lydia.

“Said they were happy. She’d been with them three weeks and said they didn’t have so much as a tiff that she saw.”

“Where’s she visiting from?”

“She lives in Boca now part of the year, part of the year here with her daughter. Said she would have been with them through the holidays and then back down to the condo after the New Year.”

“So what was it like? The scene, I mean,” asked Jeffrey.

“You know, you asked me the same question ten years ago. My answer is the same. It was a fucking mess. Not the same struggle as last time, but Richard Stratton was taken to pieces, just the same as Tad Jenson. I brought you copies of the crime scene photos and my preliminary findings and notes,” he said, sliding the envelope over to them. “You guys are taking the case, right?”

“I haven’t called Eleanor Ross yet, but I think so. I want another shot at this and I know you do, too.”

“You’re damn right.”

“You think there was someone else there this time?”

“I don’t know … doesn’t look like it. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like she could have done it alone. There was blood on the ceiling … a twelve-foot ceiling, for Christ’s sake. The doorman said no one came or left from the front door. But we got no murder
weapon. From the preliminary findings of the ME, he said it was a serrated knife, just like the last time. One other thing … don’t tell anyone about this. We’re keeping it from the press. Richard Stratton’s ring finger, and his wedding ring with it, are missing. Unless she swallowed the knife, the ring, and the finger or hid them very, very well, someone else took them from the scene. When I got to her, she was in no condition for a lucid action like hiding evidence.”

“Or so she’d have you believe,” said Jeffrey.

Ford shrugged, gave a quick nod. “Yeah. Tell you what. She’s faking it? Then she’s one hell of an actress.”

“Tad was missing his ring and ring finger, too,” Jeffrey explained to Lydia.

“Nice,” said Lydia with a shake of her head.

Lydia turned it over in her mind, what a thing like that might mean. Was it a symbol? Was she freeing herself from the bonds of marriage? Or was someone else freeing her from it?

“You said she wasn’t lucid when you found her?” asked Lydia.

“She was losing it. She wouldn’t leave the room where her husband had been killed. When the paramedics took her away, she was ranting. She said, among other things, ‘He’s come for me.’ ”

Lydia and Jeffrey exchanged a look.

“What?”

“We just came from her gallery. A couple of days ago she turned in a painting to Orlando DiMarco, her rep there. She’d titled it
He Has Come for Me
.”

Lydia described the painting to Ford. He took notes as she spoke, she could see him taking the information in, plugging it into the equation that was growing in his mind.

“I’ll head over there and check it out,” said Ford. “I remember Orlando DiMarco from the investigation ten years ago. He was a big cokehead then. Rumor was that they were lovers, on-again off-again … nothing serious. But I was never able to place him at
the scene. Anyway I had him pegged for a lover … not a murderer. Bet he wouldn’t want to mess up all those pretty clothes.”

“It looked to me like there were some hurt feelings there. I would have put money on him being in love with her,” said Lydia.

He nodded and looked at her without seeing her. It was a look she recognized from Jeffrey and even herself. He was moving pieces of information around in his head trying to see what fit where.

“So, what’s the game plan, kids?” he said after a moment in thought and coming back to the present. “I think
I’ll
pay a visit to Mr. DiMarco. Take a look at that painting.”

“I think we’ll pay Julian Ross a visit,” answered Lydia.

“Good luck. She’s gone, baby, gone. You’re going to need a decoder ring to get anywhere with that one right now.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Lydia said as the waitress approached. She looked ridiculous and unhappy in a pink-and-white-checked uniform with matching cap, someone’s idea of what a fifties diner waitress would wear. Her name tag read
BUFFY
. She was clearly over fifty years old, and her enormous breasts hung down to the top of her apron. Buffy looked at her customers beneath layers of blue eye makeup and mascara.

“What can I getcha?” she said.

“I’ll have a bacon double cheeseburger with fries and a large chocolate milkshake,” said Ford as the waitress scribbled in her pad.

Lydia looked at him with worry, hoping that he wasn’t going to have a heart attack right there at the table.

“I’ll have the same,” she said.

U
rine, Lysol, and misery were the odors that assailed Lydia and Jeffrey as a strapping orderly buzzed them through a heavy metal door. They stepped into a gray, dimly lit hallway with speckled Formica floors, brightly clean and polished, with a flat wooden railing running the length of each of the walls. Lydia could hear the sounds of someone sobbing and someone laughing.

“Is this your first visit to a psychiatric facility?” asked Dr. Linda Barnes, a bright, pretty young woman whose deep, sultry voice seemed incongruous to her petite frame. Lydia and Jeffrey had met the doctor down on the street in front of the clinic. It was clear from her clipped attitude that the doctor was not pleased with the visit Eleanor Ross had insisted upon. She had the drawn look of someone acting against her better judgment, offered nothing but a quick polite greeting and then an escort up to Julian Ross. She walked quickly and quietly, her rubber-soled shoes not making a sound on the floor. Lydia and Jeffrey had to pick up their pace to keep up with her.

“No,” answered Lydia, “We’ve both seen our share of places like this.”

“I ask because the first time can be pretty rough on the uninitiated,” she said.

“We are fairly well acquainted with insanity,” said Jeffrey.

The doctor shot him a look. “We prefer ‘mental illness’ in my profession.”

“Call it what you will, Doctor,” said Jeffrey.

A large man with a larger brow and a badly shaved head shuffled past them. His lids were purple and heavy, his eyes stared off into the distance intently as he clenched and unclenched his fists. He muttered something unintelligible as he moved past.

“Normally, we wouldn’t allow Ms. Ross any visitors at all,” she said. “It is not advisable to her recovery at this point. But since there are special circumstances and her mother insists, I’ll allow it. But I am going to ask you to keep this visit as brief as possible.”

“I understand,” said Lydia. “How is she?”

“She’s had a psychotic break. It’s a state that occurs, usually, when the mind has sustained a shock that it is not equipped to handle. Julian has more or less shut down. She is incoherent … sometimes ranting, sometimes nearly catatonic. This is more than likely a temporary condition … but I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how long it will last.”

“Could she be faking it?” asked Jeffrey.

“If she is, she’s a very convincing actress,” said Dr. Barnes. “Generally, Mr. Mark, people don’t try to fake their way into a place like this.”

“It’s better than prison.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” answered Lydia.

An elderly woman in a pink smock holding on to a walker with one hand pounded on a door at the end of the hall. “Let me in!” she yelled, frantically looking around her with eyes wild and red-rimmed at her invisible pursuers. “Let me in!” An attendant in green scrubs ran over to her and gently ushered her down the hall, whispering to her. A crowd of patients, all wearing the same pink smocks, crowded around a window where a nurse was handing out tiny paper cups filled with pills.

Looking around her, Lydia felt some combination of pity and dread. She couldn’t imagine a more grim place in which to find yourself. She felt the fear and suffering radiating off the walls and
wondered what it would be like to wake up and go to sleep in this place haunted by the delusions of your own mind, searching for the road back to sanity.

“How long have you been Julian’s doctor?” asked Lydia.

“I’ve seen Julian on and off for about the last eight years,” she said. “Until about a year ago.”

“What happened then?”

“She came to her appointment and told me she would no longer be continuing our sessions.”

“Did she say why?”

“She said something very odd. That she’d realized that ninety percent of her problems were due to the fact that she hadn’t been true to herself. That she’d decided to surrender.”

“Surrender?”

“That was the word she used. She wouldn’t expound. Just thanked me, wrote me a check, and left. I didn’t see her again until she was admitted here.”

Lydia turned the connotations of the word over in her mind. Surrender … to give up, to admit defeat. What within herself had she been fighting?

“Her mother told us that she’s suffered with depression. Any indication that there might be something more seriously wrong with her? Did she ever discuss with you the murder of her first husband?”

This time Dr. Barnes didn’t bother to hide her annoyance.

“Naturally,”
she said officiously, “I am not at liberty to discuss my patient’s condition or the things we discussed with you. But if you’re asking me if I had any indication that she might be a threat to herself or to others, the answer is no.”

“Did she mention to you at any time that she was afraid of someone, that she had any enemies who might wish to harm her or her family?”

The doctor didn’t answer Lydia. She pulled her mouth into a
tight grimace as if she were physically trying to prevent words from flying out.

Lydia stopped walking and the doctor turned to face her. “Look, Doctor. I’m not trying to infringe upon your professional ethics. But a man is dead and your patient is the prime suspect—the only suspect. We’re trying to help her. Maybe you can do the same.”

“I can’t help you. And the only way I can help Julian is by treating her illness and protecting her patient-doctor privilege.”

Case closed. Dr. Barnes was a tough nut and Lydia could see that they’d gotten as far with her as they would today.

After a number of twists and turns down long gray hallways, they reached another metal door and were buzzed through into yet another hallway that had six closed doors on each side and ended in a large, barred window. Sunlight streamed in through the grating and a uniformed police officer sat in a green metal chair reading a copy of the
New York Post
outside the last door.

“This is the wing for patients who are not stable enough to mix with the others. Ms. Ross is being kept here for obvious reasons,” said Dr. Barnes.

The cop at the door checked his list for Lydia and Jeffrey’s names and found them. He stood up and stepped aside as the three of them entered Julian Ross’s room.

Julian Ross was a ghost of the woman Lydia had seen in the photograph back at the gallery. She sat on the small twin bed in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest. She was pale, her eyes glassy and wet. All the light had drained from her. Lydia imagined that she could be picked up and tossed to the floor like a rag doll.

Lydia tried to reconcile the frail woman before them with the gruesome images in the crime scene photographs Ford had given them. She tried to imagine Julian’s tiny, delicate hands wielding a serrated knife and committing the carnage that had been wrought
in her Park Avenue duplex. It didn’t work for her. Physically it didn’t seem possible. But more than that, Lydia just couldn’t envision it, though she couldn’t say why. Lydia pulled up a metal chair beside Julian’s bed and tried to look into her eyes. But they were like the eyes of a cat, flat and without depth. It was as if her soul, the essence of who she was, had floated away, leaving only a breathing human shell.

Lydia was not uncomfortable with mentally ill people. She’d interviewed more than one in the past. In fact, she was more comfortable with them than she was with most “sane” people. There was often a logic to their thoughts that made a kind of sense if you listened carefully. There was no artifice to their personalities, nothing put on. It was crazy but it was
real
.

“Julian,” said the doctor as if she were talking to a child. “This is Lydia Strong and Jeffrey Mark. They are here to see you at your mother’s request.”

There was no sign that she had heard.

“Julian,” said Lydia, “we want to help you.”

She turned bright green eyes on Lydia. Lydia felt a little jolt of shock inside as she saw clearly the eyes from the portrait in Orlando DiMarco’s gallery. She wondered if, as in the painting, there was another side to the wispy woman before her, another side that only Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton had seen. Someone that she had hidden from others and maybe even from herself. In the hard fluorescent light of the room, Lydia could see that Julian’s pupils were dilated. Her long dark hair was highlighted with strands of red and was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Several strands had escaped and hung listlessly around her frail shoulders and in front of her eyes.