Jonathan Kellerman - Devil's Waltz

“This stinks,” she said, without conviction. “You have no right — I am calling Dr. Eves.”

I picked up the phone, called the page operator and asked for Stephanie.

“Wait,” she said. “Hang up.”

I canceled the page and replaced the receiver. She did a little toe-heel dance, finally sank into the chair, fiddling with her cap, both feet flat on the ground. I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: a tiny daisy drawn in nail polish marker, on her new badge, just above her photo. The polish was starting to flake and the flower looked shredded.

She put her hands in her spreading lap. A condemned-prisoner look filled her face.

“I have work to do,” she said. “Still have to change the sheets, check to make sure Dietary gets the dinner order right.”

“The nurse in New Jersey,” I said. “What made you bring that up?”

“Still on that?”

I waited.

“No big deal,” she said. “I told you, there was a book and I read it, that’s all. I don’t like to read those kinds of things usually, but someone gave it to me, so I read it. Okay?”

She was smiling, but suddenly her eyes had filled with tears. She flailed at her face, trying to dry it with her fingers. I looked around the room. No tissues. My handkerchief was clean and I gave it to her.

She looked at it, ignored it. Her face stayed wet, mascara tracing black cat-scratches through the impasto of her makeup.

“Who gave you the book?” I said.

Her face clogged with pain. I felt as if I’d stabbed her.

“It had nothing to do with Cassie. Believe me.”

“Okay. What exactly did this nurse do?”

“Poisoned babies — with lidocaine. But she was no nurse. Nurses love kids. Real nurses.” Her eyes shifted to the bumper sticker on the wall and she cried harder.

When she stopped, I held out the handkerchief again. She pretended it wasn’t there. “What do you want from me?”

“Some honesty—”

“About what?”

“All the hostility I’ve been getting from you—”

“I said I was sorry about that.”

“I don’t need an apology, Vicki. My honor isn’t the issue and we don’t have to be buddies — make talky-talk. But we do have to communicate well enough to take care of Cassie. And your behavior’s getting in the way.”

“I disag—”

“It is , Vicki. And I know it can’t be anything I’ve said or done because you were hostile before I opened my mouth. So it’s obvious you have something against psychologists, and I suspect it’s because they’ve failed you — or mistreated you.”

“What are you doing? Analyzing me?”

“If I need to.”

“That’s not fair.”

“If you want to keep working the case, let’s get it out in the open. Lord knows it’s difficult enough as is. Cassie’s getting sicker each time she comes in; no one knows what the hell’s going on. A few more seizures like the one you saw and she could be at risk for some serious brain damage. We can’t afford to get distracted by interpersonal crap.”

Her lip shook and scooted forward.

“There’s no need,” she said, “to swear.”

“Sorry. Besides my foul mouth, what do you have against me?”

“Nothing.”

“Baloney, Vicki.”

“There’s really no—”

“You don’t like shrinks,” I said, “and my intuition is you’ve got a good reason.”

She sat back. “That so?”

I nodded. “There are plenty of bad ones out there, happy to take your money without doing anything for you. I happen not to be one of them but I don’t expect you to believe that just because I say so.”

She screwed up her mouth. Relaxed it. Puckers remained above her upper lip. Her face was streaked and smudged and weary and I felt like the Grand Inquisitor.

“On the other hand,” I said, “maybe it’s just me you resent — some sort of turf thing over Cassie, your wanting to be the boss.”

“That’s not it at all !”

“Then what is it, Vicki?”

She didn’t answer. Looked down at her hands. Used a nail to push back a cuticle. Her expression was blank but the tears hadn’t stopped.

“Why not get it out into the open and be done with it?” I said. “If it’s not related to Cassie, it won’t leave this room.”

She sniffed and pinched the tip of her nose.

I moved forward and softened my tone: “Look, this needn’t be a marathon. I’m not out to expose you in any way. All I want to do is clear the air — work out a real truce.”

“Won’t leave this room, huh?” Return of the smug smile. “I’ve heard that before.”

Our eyes met. Hers blinked. Mine didn’t waver.

Suddenly her arms flew upward, hands scissoring. Ripping her cap from her hair, she hurled it across the room. It landed on the floor. She started to get up, but didn’t.

“Damn you!” she said. The top of her head was a bird’s nest.

I’d folded the handkerchief and rested it on one of my knees. Such a neat boy, the Inquisitor.

She put her hands to her temples.

I got up and placed a hand on her shoulder, certain she’d fling it off. But she didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She sobbed and started to talk, and I had nothing to do but listen.

She told only part of it. Ripping open old wounds while struggling to hold on to some dignity.

The felonious Reggie transformed into an “active boy with school problems.”

“He was smart enough, but he just couldn’t find anything that interested him and his mind used to wander all over the place.”

The boy growing into a “restless” young man who “just couldn’t seem to settle down.”

Years of petty crime reduced to “some problems.”

She sobbed some more. This time she took my handkerchief.

Weeping and whispering the punch line: her only child’s death at nineteen, due to “an accident.”

Relieved of his secret, the Inquisitor held his tongue.

She was silent for a long time, dried her eyes, wiped her face, then began talking again:

Alcoholic husband upgraded to blue-collar hero. Dead at thirty-eight, the victim of “high cholesterol.”

“Thank God we owned the house,” she said. “Besides that, the only other thing Jimmy left us worth anything was an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle — one of those choppers. He was always tinkering with that thing, making a mess. Putting Reggie on the back and racing through the neighborhood. He used to call it his hog. Till Reggie was four he actually thought that’s what a hog was.”

Smiling.

“It was the first thing I sold,” she said. “I didn’t want Reggie getting ideas that it was his birthright to just go out and crack himself up on the freeway. He always liked speed. Just like his dad. So I sold it to one of the doctors where I worked — over at Foothill General. I’d worked there before Reggie was born. After Jimmy died, I had to go back there again.”

I said, “Pediatrics?”

She shook her head. “General ward — they didn’t do peds there. I would have preferred peds, but I needed a place that was close to home, so I could be close to Reggie — he was ten but he still wasn’t good by himself. I wanted to be home when he was. So I worked nights. Used to put him in at nine, wait till he was asleep, grab a nap for an hour, then go off at ten forty-five so I could be on shift by eleven.”

She waited for judgment.

The Inquisitor didn’t oblige.

“He was all alone,” she said. “Every night. But I figured with him sleeping it would be okay. What they call latchkey now, but they didn’t have a name for it back then. There was no choice — I had no one to help me. No family, no such thing as day care back then. You could only get all-night babysitters from an agency and they charged as much as I was making.”