Daphne gave Olivia a pleading look. Olivia wouldn't even look at her. Finally, Daphne gave a mute nod and walked over to the conference-room door.
“Would you mind just waiting for us inside?” Chip asked.
Daphne went in. Then Olivia lost it. She stood and spat after her. She shrieked, “You crazy bitch! You promised you'd protect me.”
Kwan was at Olivia's side, talking to her quietly. But the soothing words had no effect. Olivia got louder. “Bitch! You promised you'd help.” Kwan pressed his hands on Olivia's arm, Drew held her on the other side. “Liar!” she screamed and strained to break away. “I never should have trusted you,” she shrieked and sent Drew staggering back into the wall. A pair of uniformed court officers came out of a nearby courtroom and hovered, trying to assess whether the situation was under control.
Gloria came up to Olivia and put her hand on her face. She spoke quietly as Olivia shook her head, back and forth. Kwan squinted at me, his look one of concern. “Olivia should return to the hospital,” he said, adding after a brief pause, “right now. She's quite agitated. She needs something to calm her.”
Chip said, “There's no reason for her to stay.”
“Bitch! Liar!” Olivia screamed as Kwan and Gloria led her away.
I felt as torn as Drew looked, as we watched Kwan and Gloria lead Olivia away, agitated and muttering. I wanted to go with them, to help get Olivia calmed down. To ensure that she didn't hurt herself. But I also needed to stay here, to do what I could to help with her defense. And I knew Olivia was in good hands.
Chip herded Drew and me into the conference room. The small, windowless room had a table and some chairs. Daphne was standing, staring at the blank wall. She looked pale, spent. We all sat.
Chip leaned back, tilted his head to one side, and gave Daphne an appraising look. “You surprised us,” he told her.
Daphne's face was pinched. Her hands were shaking.
“If we'd known that you didn't actually write a prescription for
Ritalin, we wouldn't have asked you to testify,” Chip said, putting it bluntly.
“I thought you knew. When I talked with Peter ⦠I must have misunderstood. I have made rather a cock-up of things. I only wanted to help. I don't know why I said anything about Olivia roaming about. It slipped out.”
Slipped out? As a therapist, Daphne knew as well as anyone that nothing just “slips out.”
Chip said, “Surely you must have realized that saying what you did could affect the judge's decision.”
“It was an accident!” Daphne insisted, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. “How can you even suggest that I'd deliberately sabotage my patient? The daughter of my dearest friend?”
“What a mess,” Drew said, putting his head in his hands.
Daphne touched his shoulder, “I'm so sorry, Drew,” she said.
Drew pushed her away. “Isn't there anything you can do?” he asked Chip.
“I think we're out of options,” Chip replied. “Day after tomorrow, she goes.” He looked at me pointedly. “And I don't think any more suicide attempts or drug reactions are going to make any difference.”
I DROVE back to the Pearce, my jaw clenching and unclenching as I replayed the hearing in my head. I thought about Daphne, how unsure she'd seemed on the stand. Had it been a misunderstanding? Had she tried to tell me that she hadn't written a prescription? Was it usual or unusual to treat a patient for months with a drug without writing a prescription? Borderline, I thought. Getting nailed by Montyâwell, so had I, the last time he cross-examined me. Still, I wonder if the slip was altogether innocent. Then it occurred to me. Perhaps Daphne hadn't given Olivia Ritalin at all. Maybe she was saying so to protect Olivia from a harsher realityâthat Olivia had been stealing the drug all along and self-medicating.
On Mem. Drive, I slowed down and pulled the car over into the turnout in front of an office building. A driver passed me, his horn blaring. Go
with your gut
. That's what Annie had urged me to do. What did my gut say? I shoved the car into neutral, pulled the emergency brake, and closed my eyes.
I saw a kaleidoscope of images. Olivia at the top of the stairs at the party. Holding the gun by the barrel and looking dazed in her mother's office. Cutting her arm. Hiding in her closet. Staring at
me bug-eyed from the mattress in the basement of Albert House. Folding Mr. Fleegle's shirts.
I opened my eyes and gazed out the window. A tree, planted on the shoulder of the road, snagged my attention. The trunk of a tree was snakelike and sinuous, like the one in the Annie Brigman photograph on Olivia's wallâa wall of school-age killers and teenage girls in Cinderella prom dresses. Which was it?
Carefully, I pulled the car back out into traffic and continued to the Pearce.
Gloria was at the nurses' station. Her short hair was standing up on end. She was holding a patient's chart as if she were reading it, but her glasses were on the counter. I knew she was actually communing with space.
“Earth to Alspag,” I said.
Gloria gave me a tired smile. “We've got her calmed down. Finally. She'd worked herself up into quite a state by the time we got back. Then she broke down and couldn't stop crying. Kwan gave her some Klonopin. That didn't do much, so he gave her more. Even that hasn't knocked her out.”
I started toward Olivia's room.
“Not there,” Gloria said. “She's in the quiet room.”
The quiet room is a cell-like space we use with agitated patients. It's got a simple bed in it with slots for restraints, white walls, low light. No hard edges or other furnishings. We keep the door open and someone posted on a chair outside until the patient is stabilized.
Jess was sitting on the chair outside the quiet room. She had a portable computer balanced in her lap, her black pumps on tiptoe to make a flat surface.
“Since when do psychiatrists do one-on-ones?” I asked.
“I volunteered,” Jess said. “I'm just spelling Joe while he takes a break. He'll be back in a minute.”
“I can take over for you,” I said.
She turned off the computer, bent down, and stowed it in her backpack, which was under the chair.
“At least she's quieted down now,” she said.
Jess stood and dropped her pen. As I stooped over to retrieve it for her, I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on her ankle. It was a dragonfly. I stood slowly. Something was familiar, but it took me a minute to make the connection to the page from Channing's journalâthe patient had a dragonfly tattoo. Or I'd assumed it was a patient. It could as easily have been a devoted disciple.
Slowly, I handed Jess her pen. Was Jess the suicidal woman whom Daphne said Channing was working withâthe one who was causing Channing to lose her clinical perspective? Surely, Jess was the subject of Channing's intense sexual fantasy.
Jess dropped the pen into her backpack.
“You carry that around a lot don't you?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Jess glanced down at the bag with some surprise. “I guess I do.”
“You even had it with you at Channing's birthday party. It seemed a little odd at the time. You were so dressed up. And still, you were carrying your backpack.”
“I guess it's a habit.”
“When I met you up on the second-floor landing during the party, you were coming out of Channing's study carrying it.”
“Joe promised he'd be right back.” Jess looked at her watch.
“You were zipping it up.”
“I've got to go see a patient.” Jess took a step back from me.
“Do you remember what you said you were doing? You said you were using the bathroom.”
“Did I?”
“Only there isn't any bathroom adjoining the study. If there had been, then Channing would have sent me there instead of down the hall to get cold water for the stain on Jensen's jacket.”
Jess was frozen, her mouth open, the backpack clutched to her chest.
“Why were you in Dr. Temple's study the night of her party?”
“It's not what you think,” she said.
“What do I think?”
“I was trying to put it back.”
“Trying to put what back?”
Just then, Joe came ambling up the hall carrying a can of Diet Dr Pepper. A thick man with a soft, kind face, he checked into the quiet room. Then he lowered himself into the chair outside the door and opened up his newspaper.
From inside the room came Olivia's weak voice, “Dr. Zak?”
“I can explain everything,” Jess said, her voice urgent. “Just give me a chance to explain.”
“Dr. Zak?” Olivia called out again. “Is that you?
I put my head into the room. “Olivia, I'm here. Be there in a sec.”
I turned back to Jess. Her eyes were bright, the way they'd been when she emerged from Channing's study. Had she been putting something back or taking something?
“It's not what you think,” Jess repeated, her voice pleading.
“I have to go in and see Olivia,” I said. “After that you and I need to talk.”
“I'll be in the dining room working. Come get me when you're finished,” she said. Then she hurried off.
I told Joe he could take another five-minute break while I borrowed his chair. I dragged it into the quiet room and sat alongside Olivia.
She was lying on her back, her eyes barely open, the lids drifting shut and then jerking open. Spittle was dried at the corner of her mouth.
“Olivia,” I said, pulling my chair close, “why don't you let yourself relax. Sleep.”
“Can't shleep,” Olivia said, her tongue thick with sedative. “Mustn't sleep.”
“Shh,” I said. “We can talk later, you know. I'm not going anywhere.”
“Talk ⦠now.” She rolled over on her side and held a finger to her mouth. I leaned close. “She promised she wouldn't tell.”
“Who promised? To tell what?”
“About the Ritalin.”
“Dr. Smythe-Gooding?”
“Mommy didn't want me to take it.”
“Dr. Smythe-Gooding gave you the drugs?”
Olivia nodded. “She said Mommy wouldn't understand.”
“Was she lying about you stealing Ritalin?”
Olivia closed her eyes.
I pressed, “She wasn't lying about that, was she?”
“I needed more. She wouldn't give me more. She promised she wouldn't tell.”
A bell went off in my head. “Were you in Dr. Smythe-Gooding's office stealing drugs when your mother died?”
A tear squeezed out of Olivia's eye and made a damp spot on the mattress.
“Mommy,” she whispered.
“You heard the gunshot, didn't you?”
“I promised I wouldn't tell.”
“Who did you promise you wouldn't tell?”
“Lying bitch,” Olivia said, her eyes closing.
“You promised Daphne you wouldn't tell?”
Olivia's eyes drifted shut.
“Dr. Dyer was a friend of your mom's, too, wasn't she?”
“Special friend,” Olivia said, slurring over the words.
“Like Daphne was a special friend?”
“Lying bitch,” Olivia said again. This time the words made a gentle sound.
I sat there for a few minutes, listening as her breathing deepened. Her clenched hand fell open. I smoothed the hair away from her face. She looked very young and vulnerable.
Special friend? Was that all it was, friendship? Or did Jess and Channing's relationship go beyond?
I found a blanket, and as I was putting it over Olivia, I noticed her necklace. It was an old-fashioned, engraved gold locket. Where
had I seen it before? The locket was open a crack. I reached over, meaning to snap it shut, but instead I found myself opening it. A black-and-white photograph of a little girl, maybe ten years old, stared back at me. She resembled Olivia, her hair still blond and soft around her face. I'd seen that little girl before. It was Channing, the way she looked in the pictures in her family photo album.
Now I pressed the locket shut and rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger. This was the locket Jess had around her neck just a week earlier. Was this what Jess was trying to return?
When Joe came back, I told him I was going to write an order restricting Olivia's visitors. “So, please, don't let anyone in except me, Nurse Alspag, and Dr. Liu. Okay?”
Joe nodded. “Just you three.”
“Right.”
“What if ⦠?” he started.
“If anyone else wants to see Ms. Temple, and I mean anyone at all, I want you to beep me to get permission first.”
I checked in with Gloria and Kwan, told them I was restricting Olivia's visitors to the three of us. Good thing that neither of them questioned it, because I'm not sure I could explain, even to myself, whatâor whomâI was protecting Olivia from.
Jess was working in the dining room. I caught her attention through the glass and pointed up, to indicate I was heading up to my office. She nodded, held her hand up and spread her fingers. Five minutes.
I took the elevator and let myself into my office. I leaned back in my chair, took off my glasses, and stared up at the ceiling. So Olivia had been right there, a few feet away, when Channing was killed. She'd heard the gunshot. What had Daphne made her promise not to tell? Had she seen anyone? Someone Daphne didn't want named?
Which brought me back to wondering what Jess was doing in
Channing's study the night of the party. If she was returning something, then why lie and say she'd been in the bathroom? Unless she was returning something she'd stolen. Something like a locket. Or maybe she was taking a gun.
Channing had written
D
in her datebook on the morning she was killed. Dyer?
J
would have been a more likely shorthand for a woman Olivia termed her mother's
special friend
.
The phone rang. I checked my watch. It had been more than five minutes since I'd left Jess on the unit. Maybe she was calling to say she'd been delayed. I picked up.
“Hey, Peter!”
It was Annie. I felt a rush of pleasure. “Hey, yourself,” I said.
“I heard things didn't go so well this morning. How's Olivia?” Her voice sounded echoey, as if she was calling from her cell phone.
“Sedated. Sleeping.” As an afterthought, I added, “Feeling betrayed.”
“Friday she goes to the Bechtel.”
“Two more days.”
Annie didn't say anything for a few moments. “Well, I guess there's nothing for it but to keep going,” she said. “I went to those AA meetings and schmoozed with anyone who looked over forty. Told them I'd been thinking of signing up for one of those drug trials at the Pearce and wondered if anyone else had gone that route. People can be so helpful. I've got a couple of names.”
“Amazing,” I said. I pulled out the envelope I'd scrounged from Destler's trash. There was the list of overage subjects. “Shoot.”
Annie gave me three names and ages. One of them was a match.
“I can't believe it. Shit. Looks like Channing really did recruit participants who didn't meet the Kutril trial criteria.”
“Whoa. Slow down. Did I say they participated in the Kutril trial? These folks were in the DX-200 trial.”
“Jensen's ⦔ I murmured as I traced and retraced a circle around the name. “So how did a subject from the DX-200 trial find his way into the Kutril research?”