Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver

She rose. Turned to him. “Maybe I should just ask one of the ghosts to come along to a session... but then you’d have to charge me double, wouldn’t you?”

He laughed. “See you next week.”

At three A.M. the next morning Harry was wakened by a phone call.

“Dr. Bernstein?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Officer Kavanaugh with the police department.”

Sitting up, trying to shake off his drowsiness, he thought immediately of Herb, a patient at the clinic in Brooklyn. The poor man, a mild schizophrenic who was completely harmless, was forever getting beat up because of his gruff, threatening manner.

But that wasn’t the reason for the call.

“You’re Mrs. Patricia Randolph’s psychiatrist. Is that correct?”

His heart thudded hard. “Yes, I am. Is she all right?”

“We’ve had a call... We found her on the street outside her apartment. No one’s hurt but she’s a bit hysterical.”

“I’ll be right there.”

When he arrived at the Randolphs’ apartment building, ten blocks away, Harry found Patsy and her husband in the front lobby. A uniformed policeman stood next to them.

Harry knew that the Randolphs were wealthy but the building was much nicer than he’d expected. It was one of the luxurious high-rises that Donald Trump had built in the eighties. There were penthouse triplexes selling for $20 million, Harry had read in the Times.

“Doctor,” Patsy cried when she saw Harry. She ran to him. Harry was careful about physical contact with his patients. He knew all about transference and countertransference — the perfectly normal attraction between patients and their therapists — but contact had to be handled carefully. Harry took Patsy by the shoulders so that she couldn’t hug him and led her back to the lobby couch.

“Mr. Randolph?” Harry asked, turning to her husband.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Harry Bernstein.”

The men shook hands. Peter Randolph was very much what Harry was expecting. He was a trim, athletic man of about forty. Handsome. His eyes were angry and bewildered and looked victimized. He reminded Harry of a patient he’d treated briefly — a man whose sole complaint was that he was having trouble maintaining a life with a wife and two mistresses. Peter wore a burgundy silk bathrobe and supple leather slippers.

“Would you mind if I spoke to Patsy alone?” Harry asked him.

“No. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” He said this to both Harry and the police officer.

Harry too glanced at the cop, who also stepped away and let the doctor talk to his patient.

“What happened?” Harry asked Patsy.

“The bird,” she said, choking back tears.

“One of the ceramic birds?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “He broke it.”

Harry studied her carefully. She was in bad shape tonight. Hair stringy, robe filthy, fingernails unclean. As in her session the other day, only her makeup was normal.

“Tell me about what happened.”

“I was asleep and then I heard this voice say, ‘Run! You have to get out. They’re almost here. They’re going to hurt you.’ And I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room and there — there was a Boehm bird. The robin. It was shattered and scattered all over the floor. I started screaming — because I knew they were after me.” Her voice rose. “The ghosts... They... I mean, Peter was after me. I just threw on my robe and escaped.”

“And what did Peter do?”

“He ran after me.”

“But he didn’t hurt you?”

She hesitated. “No.” She looked around the cold, marble lobby with paranoid eyes. “Well, what he did was he called the police... But don’t you see? Peter didn’t have any choice. He had to call the police. Isn’t that what somebody would normally do if their wife ran out of the apartment, screaming? Not calling them would have been suspicious...” Her voice faded.

Harry looked for signs of overmedication or drinking. He could see none. She looked around the lobby once more.

“Are you feeling better now?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Making you come all the way over here tonight.”

“That’s what I’m here for... Tell me: You don’t hear any voices now, do you?”

“No.”

“And the bird? Could it have been an accident?”

She thought about this for a moment. “Well, Peter was asleep... Maybe I was looking at it earlier and left it on the edge of the table.” She sounded perfectly reasonable. “Maybe the housekeeper did. I might’ve bumped it.”

The policeman looked at his watch and then ambled over. He asked, “Can I talk to you, Doctor?”

They stepped into a corner of the lobby.

“I’m thinking I oughta take her downtown,” the cop said in a Queens drawl. “She was pretty outta control before. But it’s your call. You think she’s ED?”

Emotionally disturbed — the trigger diagnosis for involuntary commitment. If he said, yes, Patsy would be taken off and hospitalized.

This was the critical moment. Harry debated.

I can help you and you can help me...

He said to the cop, “Give me a minute.”

He returned to Patsy, sat down next to her. “We have a problem. The police want to take you to a hospital. And if you claim that Peter’s trying to drive you crazy or hurt you, the fact is the judge just isn’t going to believe you.”

“Me? I’m not doing anything! It’s the voices! It’s them... I mean, it’s Peter.”

“But they’re not going to believe you. That’s just the way it is. Now, you can go back upstairs and carry on with your life or they can take you downtown to the city hospital. And you don’t want that. Believe me. Can you stay in control?”

She lowered her head to her hands. Finally she said, “Yes, Doctor, I can.”

“Good... Patsy, I want to ask you something else. I want to see your husband alone. Can I call him, have him come in?”

“Why?” she asked, her face dark with suspicion.

“Because I’m your doctor and I want to get to the bottom of what’s bothering you.”

She glanced at the cop. Gave him a dark look. Then she said to Harry, “Sure.”

“Good.”

After Patsy’d disappeared into the elevator car the cop said, “I don’t know, Doctor. She seems like a nut case to me. Things like this... they can get real ugly. I’ve seen it a million times.”

“She’s got some problems but she’s not dangerous.”

“You’re willing to take that chance?”

After a moment he said, “Yes, I’m willing to take that chance.”

“How was she last night, after I left?” Harry asked Peter Randolph the next morning. The two men sat in Harry’s office.

“She seemed all right. Calmer.” Peter sipped the coffee that Miriam had brought him. “What exactly is going on with her?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I can’t discuss the specifics of your wife’s condition with you. Confidentiality.”

Peter’s eyes flared angrily for a moment.

“Then why did you ask me here?”

“Because I need you to help me treat her. You do want her to get better, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. I love her very much.” He sat forward in the chair. “But I don’t understand what’s going on. She was fine until a couple of months ago — when she started seeing you, if you have to know the truth. Then things started to go bad.”

“When people see therapists they sometimes confront issues they’ve never had to deal with. I think that was Patsy’s situation. She’s getting close to some important issues. And that can be very disorienting.”

“She claims I’m pretending to be a ghost,” Peter said sarcastically. “That seems a little worse than just disoriented.”