Without a Word (4 page)

After a swim at the Y, I stopped at home to drop off my wet swimsuit, make a couple of phone calls and pick up Dashiell, heading back where we'd been the night before, to Dr. Bechman's office. It seemed that Dr. Bechman wasn't the only one who didn't have hours on Friday morning. According to the two recordings I'd just listened to, the entire office would be closed Friday morning. Dr. Willet's recording said that in case of an emergency, he could be reached at St. Vincent's Hospital. His pager number was repeated twice. Dr. Edelstein had hours from one to four on Fridays, the same as the late Dr. Bechman. It was still early and no one answered the bell. I crossed the street and leaned against the park fence to wait.

An hour earlier, floating in the pool after doing laps, letting my mind wander along with my body, I thought not about Madison Spector or her missing mother. I thought about my sister Lillian, on the day her son was born. My brother-in-law, Ted, had called to give me the news and I'd gone straight to the hospital to see the newborn Zachery, his tiny dimpled hands in fists he held to his face, like a boxer protecting a glass chin. The moment I picked him up, I felt a lurching in my chest, something opening to embrace him,
to make room for this small being in my heart. It was difficult to take my eyes off him, but when I did, I saw my sister watching him, too, the expression on her face one I'd never seen before.

“It's as if the whole world was in black and white,” she whispered, “and now, all at once, it's in color.”

I was sitting on the edge of her bed, the baby's head against one arm, his almost weightless body on my lap, watching his lips work, practicing for his first big meal.

“I saw him being born,” she said. “And the strangest thing happened.” My sister pale, her hair still damp against her brow, her hand on my arm, the backs of her long fingers against the baby's head. “It was as if I was finally ready to start my life. No one ever told me,” she said, taking her hand away, reaching for the cup of water on her nightstand. “No one ever said I would feel like this.”

Waiting for someone to show up and open the office, I wondered how Sally had felt when Madison was born, if she, too, felt that her life was about to begin. Or did she feel it had just ended? Instead of the brightness my sister had experienced, my sister who always felt she'd been born to be a mother, did Sally feel the world closing in? From that moment on, everything she wanted to do would have to be preceded by an answer to the question “What about the baby?” Had the tiny person she held in her arms represented not the freedom to be herself, the way it had for my sister, but a kind of prison, a taking away of everything she'd ever wanted?

Turning the corner from MacDougal Street, a woman caught my eye. Was it the brisk, no-nonsense walk, the fact that she was heading for the place I was watching, or was it something else, some hard-to-pin-down quality that said
receptionist
? Did she somehow appear to be the person whose voice was on all three recordings? Or was it the white uni
form, white stockings and white shoes? I wondered if she really was a nurse or if she just played one on the bus coming to work and, perhaps, in the office, doling out sage advice and urgent warnings along with the little white card with the next appointment on it.

I crossed the street and met her at the gate that led to the garden floor of the town house. When her eyebrows rose, I realized I hadn't planned what I was going to say. I wasn't related to Madison. I hadn't even been hired to do the work I was attempting to do. I had no right to ask anything. Could I tell her I had some questions to ask her because I was just curious? When I didn't speak, she reached for the latch to open the gate, but her manners and her training took over and she didn't continue on inside.

“Yes?”

“I'm not sure,” I said, trying to gather my thoughts. Since lying when I was on the job was one of my specialties, in fact, lying for a living was as good a definition of undercover work as I'd ever heard, I was surprised to find myself tongue-tied. I knew what I wanted, but for once in my life, not how to try to get it. “It's about Madison Spector,” I finally said. “I've been hired to find her mother.”

She didn't say anything but she was shaking her head, holding her hand out the way you might hold a cross out to ward off a vampire. She looked startled, almost afraid, then angry, her face a slide show of emotions.

“I was the one who found him,” she said. She shook her head again. “Whatever it is you want, I'm
not
the person to ask.”

“I'm only trying to understand a child who doesn't talk,” I said. “Her father thinks that if I can find her mother, Madison might be willing to speak again, might be able to tell us what happened.”

“Oh, we
know
what happened.”

“Do you?”

“I guess you're new on the scene,” she nearly spat out at me. “I guess you haven't spent much time with her.” She cocked her head and waited for my reply.

“That's correct,” I told her.

“Do you think this is the first time she's acted up?” Shaking her head, frowning. “Well, it's not. Only this time—”

“Was there yelling?” I asked.

“Yelling? She doesn't make a sound.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It's just one of her many ways of manipulating the people who are forced to deal with her.”

“So there was no yelling?”

“Well, Dr. Bechman would never have yelled at a child. At anyone. So the answer to your question is no, there was no yelling.”

The little tag pinned to her chest uniform said “L. Peach.”

“So you didn't hear anything, Ms. Peach, anything at all?”

She inhaled sharply through her nose but said nothing, a woman in her sixties, neat in her white uniform, hair pulled tightly back off her full face. Her cheeks were doughy and she was wearing too much makeup. Behind her bifocals I could see she was fuming. A second later, I thought she was about to cry.

“She was the last person here. She, she…”

I just waited, Dashiell sitting close to my leg.

“I heard him before I left for the day. I heard him saying what he'd said before, what he'd told Mr. Spector when he came in with her right after it happened,” pointing to her eyelid, “that the effects of the Botox were temporary, that that's why she was supposed to come in every three months for shots, because it wasn't permanent. Anyway, this shot was supposed to be for her other eye. He did one at a time. He was very conservative in his treatment of…”

“Yeah, yeah. And then what?”

Ms. Peach looked puzzled.

“You heard him explain to Madison that the effects of the Botox were temporary. And then what happened?”

“I left. I had no idea, of course…”

“Nothing else before you left?”

“Yes. One other thing.”

This time my eyebrows went up, but whatever it was Ms. Peach was going to say, it wasn't coming easily.

“A kick.”

“A kick? You heard a kick?”

“It sounded as if she kicked the desk.” In control again. “Have you ever seen one of her fits, Miss…”

“Alexander. Rachel Alexander. No, I haven't. I only met her once. The thing is…”

Ms. Peach was shaking her head again. “Then you have no idea, simply no idea.”

“That's why I came to you,” I told her.

She nodded, then looked around to see who might be watching us. “Nasty,” she whispered. “A real terror.”

“Did you know her before?”

“Before
what
?”

“Before she stopped talking.”

Ms. Peach sighed. She shook her head.

“How long have you been working here, if I might ask?”

“Nearly five years, as if that's any of your—”

“And the person who was here before you?”

“You mean the temp?” She rolled her eyes.

“No. The person who held the job before you.”

“Oh, you mean Celia?”

“Yes, Celia. How long had she been here?”

Ms. Peach's brow furrowed. No free Botox for employees, I thought.

“Was she here before Madison stopped talking?”

“Well, yes, she was, but…”

“But what?”

“Two weeks after Madison was diagnosed, that's when her mother disappeared and Madison became silent. So Celia would have only seen her five or six times.”

I nodded. “It's Tourette's syndrome, is that right?”

She began to shake her head. “I can't discuss that with you, Ms. Alexander. You're not a blood relative of the child's, are you?”

“I understand,” I said. “But I'm confused now. Mr. Spector mentioned her, Celia, as one of Madison's favorite people.”

“Celia?”

I nodded.

Ms. Peach snorted. “So
that's
what she did with her time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she certainly didn't pay attention to the files. I can attest to that.”

“They were disorganized, inaccurate?”

“You wouldn't believe what I had to deal with.”

“How long had she been here?”

Ms. Peach compressed her lips and waited for me to come to my senses and stop asking her questions she knew she shouldn't be answering. Or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps Ms. Peach was upset because she had already told me things she shouldn't have. She reached into her purse and took out her keys and turned her back to me.

“Some people just don't have the knack for it.”

“For?”

“For keeping things in order. For staying on top of things.”

“What a nightmare for you,” I said, “coming in on something like that, everything a total mess. I bet you put in a lot of overtime fixing the mess she left.”

“For months,” she whispered. “I never got home before eight at night.” She shook her head. “I was brought up to have pride in my work.”

“It's amazing to me how few people there are like you nowadays. How does someone like that even keep a job?”

Ms. Peach inhaled through her nose but didn't respond.

“I'm trying to remember what else he said about her.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Mr. Spector. Something about Celia being especially kind to Madison at such a difficult time,” I said, continuing to make it up as I went along, keeping an eye on Ms. Peach as I spoke. “Was it Storch, Celia Storch? I'm sure it started with an S, is that right?”

But Ms. Peach was on to me. She was frowning now, looking down at her keys, perhaps thinking it was time to get to work, time to get rid of the snoopy stranger.

I went on as if nothing had happened. “I wonder, Ms. Peach, is there any way you could help me out here?”

“In what way?”

“I wonder if I might talk to any of the other parents of the doctor's other patients?”

“You know that's impossible. And what on earth do you want to do that for?”

“I just wonder if any of the other children had a run-in with Madison,” I said.

“Oh, I couldn't possibly give you the names of any of the doctor's other patients. That would be against the law.”

“I understand. But you could tell me that, couldn't you?”

“Certainly not. Anything that goes on here is private, confidential.”

“Even in the waiting room?”

“Yes, even there.”

“I guess you're right,” I said. “Well, how about just letting me peek inside at the doctor's office, for just one minute?”

Ms. Peach stood taller, somewhat appalled by what I was asking. “Isn't that a bit ghoulish?”

“No, no, no,” I said, “it's not what you think. It's just so that if the child tries to communicate something to me, I'll know what it is. I'm told her communications, her pictures, are kind of cryptic.”

“Not the one I found on the doctor's desk.”

“Do you still have that?”

“Certainly not! The police took that.”

“Not even a copy?”

“Of course not. I wouldn't have touched anything. It was a crime scene.”

“Not even the doctor? To make sure he was dead?”

“That's different. Naturally I felt for a pulse.”

“And did you see the needle at the time, when you knelt next to Dr. Bechman to feel for a pulse?”

Ms. Peach put both her hands against her chest. “It was lying next to him. It must have fallen out when he fell.”

“Did you pick it up? Or did you go straight for the phone?”

“I went straight for the phone,” she said, a little too quickly.

“His or yours?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean did you just reach over, as anyone would, and pick up the closest phone, and did you see the drawing Madison had made at that time? Or did you carefully back out of the office and use your own phone, so as not to disturb any possible evidentiary material?”

Ms. Peach's mouth opened but nothing came out.

“The detectives who were here had no issues with any of my behavior,” she said a moment later.

“Not that they mentioned,” I said.

“You're making it sound as if I had some part in this when it's clear it was Madison who—”

“No, no, no,” I said. “Nothing like that.”

Ms. Peach nodded.

“You mentioned that Madison was a terror. But you didn't say whether or not she'd ever hurt anyone before, you or another child or, of course, Dr. Bechman.”

Ms. Peach leaned closer. “I shouldn't be telling you any of this. I shouldn't even be talking to you, but since you are being so persistent, yes, she did hurt other children here. That's why Dr. Bechman started having her come last, when the other children were gone. Are you satisfied now? You're barking up the wrong tree, Ms. Alexander, if you think by snooping around here you'll find out that Madison didn't do this. I don't know when I've ever seen a child as full of rage, as mean-spirited.”