David Jackson - The Helper

‘S’pose you tell me, Cal. What is up?’

Doyle waits for elaboration. Doesn’t get any.

‘Look, man, I don’t know what’s on your mind, but whatever it is-’

‘I took a phone call while you were out at lunch.’

Uh-oh, thinks Doyle. If this was from my little helper. .

‘From Mrs Mellish. Cindy Mellish’s mother.’

Doyle almost breathes a sigh of relief, but it sticks in his chest. The lesser of two evils maybe, but still not good news.

‘Okay. And?’

‘She asked about the computer. ’Course, this being my case, and me knowing everything about it, I asked her what the fuck she was talking about. “You know,” she said. “The computer. The one Detective Doyle borrowed from me.”’

Ah, thinks Doyle. This cat is definitely out of its bag.

‘Yeah, I guess I shoulda told you about that.’

‘You guess ? Man, what the fuck is going on?’

Doyle holds off for as long as he dares before Holden can guess that he’s desperately trying to come up with something plausible.

‘Look, I got tired of being the office boy, all right? So I went to speak with Mrs Mellish. I’m assigned to the case too, remember? I thought maybe it would help. Maybe she could give me something useful. We got talking, and she told me about how Cindy liked to write. All kinds of personal shit about her life. It sounded like there was a chance something might be in her bedroom, so I asked to see it. I couldn’t find anything in her notebooks, but then it got mentioned that she also wrote on her computer, so I asked if I could borrow it so I could take a look at that too. If there was nothing on the computer, I was just going to hand it back and that would be it.’

Doyle pauses, partly because he knows that people who ramble on too long often do so because they’re trying to hide something, which he is, but also because he wants to check whether Holden appears convinced with the story so far. Holden continues to glare at him, but when he speaks, there is a slight softening of his tone.

‘You shoulda brought it to me, Cal. Even just a mention. Something.’

‘You’re right. I should have. I apologize.’

Holden nods. A sign it’s over. They can forget about it. Unless there’s a next time.

Doyle considers this. He wasn’t intending to say anything more about the diary. His plan was to go see Vasey himself and hope it led somewhere. But he’s wondering if this hasn’t changed things. Didn’t Holden ask him about the computer? Isn’t this a prime opportunity to bring his colleagues into it without breaking the terms of his contract with the mysterious phone caller?

He adds, ‘But maybe it paid off.’

Holden narrows his eyes at him. ‘In what way?’

‘I found something on the computer. A diary.’

Holden is clearly interested now. ‘Go on.’

‘When Cindy broke up with her boyfriend she went to see a shrink. A friend of a friend. He came on to her. She rejected him. This was last October. A month later he tracked her down. In the bookstore, no less. He tried it on again. This time she slapped him.’

There are questions written all over Holden’s face.

‘Hold up. The shrink tried to hit on her? During a consultation? And then he went to see her at her place of work?’

Doyle frowns. When you put it like that. .

‘Yeah. Crazy, huh? But worth a look, wouldn’t you say?’

Holden stares again. Doyle imagines that there are all sorts of doubts and queries jockeying for position in his brain.

Finally, Holden shakes his head, turns away, and takes the few short paces across the room. At the door, he pauses and faces Doyle again.

‘You coming, or what?’

Vasey’s practice is situated on the twentieth floor of an office building on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-second Street. Doyle finds himself comparing it with the office of Travis Repp. It’s like comparing a prize Arabian stallion with a three-legged mule.

Instead of an indifferent girl with a nail fixation, the receptionist here is a model of clinical efficiency and professionalism. She smiles appreciatively at the two hunky policemen in front of her, offers them a seat and coffee while she puts through a call announcing their presence. The cops relax on a tan leather sofa and leaf through magazines that are crisp and current instead of the curled specimens dating from the previous century that are normally on display in waiting rooms. When they’re done with the magazines, the detectives while away their time observing the tropical fish in the tank set into the wall. Cynic that he is, Doyle wonders if all this is designed to lull clients into a false sense of security and calm before the shrink pounces on their brains and dissects their thoughts.

As if timing everything to perfection, the glossy-haired receptionist waits until Doyle drains his coffee cup before crooning that they can enter the inner sanctum. Doyle is almost reluctant to abandon the comfort and service that would better that of most hotels.

Vasey’s office is as big as the Eighth Precinct squadroom. It has a small seating area with comfy-looking chairs and a coffee table, a long bookcase housing weighty tomes on psychology, and a display cabinet exhibiting a softly lit collection of fossils. At the far end of the room, framed by the vast window behind him, Vasey sits at a pale wooden desk. As his visitors enter, he finishes typing at his computer and stands to greet them. He appears to Doyle to be over six feet tall and in his early forties. He also looks tanned, well-groomed, healthy, self-assured, and not short of a few bucks. Some people always end up grabbing the shitty end of the stick, thinks Doyle.

‘Gentlemen,’ says Vasey. ‘Come on in.’

He shakes their hands, waves them into chairs, then retakes his own seat behind the vast desk.

‘What can I do for you?’

Doyle is happy to let Holden lead the questioning. Partly as an acknowledgement of Holden’s role as primary investigator on this case, but also because he hates talking to psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and anybody else who has ‘psycho’ as the first part of their profession. They make him feel uncomfortable. He always thinks they are capable of seeing meaning beyond what he actually intends to impart — that every word he utters reveals clues to his psyche, rendering him transparent. He finds himself being overly cautious in what he says, for fear that he is being analyzed and labeled as exhibiting all kinds of neuroses and psychoses. He doesn’t know where this unease originated. Perhaps a traumatic event in his childhood. He should probably ask a shrink.

‘Just some routine questions,’ says Holden. ‘Your name came up in a case we’re investigating, so we have to check it out.’

Vasey glances at Doyle, who gives him nothing, then back to Holden.

‘May I ask what the case is?’

‘Do you know the name Cindy Mellish?’

Vasey thinks for a moment. ‘It doesn’t ring any bells. Should it

‘She was the girl murdered in the East Village bookstore on Saturday.’

‘Her? God! Then this is serious.’

‘It’s serious, all right.’

‘And my name came up? How?’

‘Miss Mellish kept a diary. Your name was in it. She said she came to see you. Here, at your office.’

‘Really? Just a minute.’ Vasey’s fingers fly over his keyboard.

‘No. I’ve never had a client by that name. Are you sure about this?’

Holden looks across to Doyle, who takes the reins. ‘It’s possible she was never an official client. According to the diary, Cindy’s appointment with you was made by a student friend of hers. Apparently, you’re a close buddy of the friend’s father.’

‘What’s the man’s name?’

‘We don’t know. The student friend is only referred to in the diary by the letter M.’