Laura Lippman - What The Dead Know

She got back to her office in time to intercept Schumeier from psychiatry leaving a note on her door. He looked chagrined to be caught, and she wondered why he had risked coming to see her in person at all when he could have sent an e-mail. Schumeier was living proof that psychotherapy often attracted those most in need of it. He avoided face-to-face contact whenever possible, even voice-to-voice. E-mail had been a godsend for him.

“There’s a woman who was brought in last night-” he began.

“The Jane Doe?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t surprised that Kay had heard about the woman, quite the opposite. He had probably sought Kay out because he knew there would be little explanation required and therefore less conversation involved. “She’s refusing the psych exam. I mean, she spoke briefly to the doctor, but once the conversation became specific, she said she wouldn’t talk to anyone without a lawyer present. Only she doesn’t want to work with a public defender, and she says she doesn’t know any attorneys.”

Kay sighed. “Does she have money?”

“She says she does, but it’s hard to know when she won’t even give her name. She said she wouldn’t do anything without a lawyer present.”

“And you want me to…?”

“Don’t you have an…um, friend? That woman attorney who’s in the newspapers all the time?”

“Gloria Bustamante? I know of her. We’re not really friends, but we’re both on the House of Ruth board.” And I’m not a lesbian , Kay wanted to add, sure that this was the way Schumeier’s mind worked. If Gloria Bustamante, sexually ambiguous attorney, was acquainted with Kay Sullivan, who had not dated anyone since her marriage ended, then it followed that Kay must be a lesbian, too. Kay sometimes thought she should get a little custom-made button: I’M NOT GAY, I JUST LIKE TO READ.

“Yes. That’s it. Perhaps you could call her?”

“Before I do, I think I should check with the Jane Doe first. I don’t want to summon Gloria out here unless she’s going to talk to her. At the rates Gloria charges, the trip alone would be almost six hundred dollars.”

Schumeier smiled. “You’re curious, aren’t you? You want to get a look at the hospital’s mystery woman.”

Kay ducked her head, searching her purse for one of the peppermints she’d grabbed the last time she splurged and took Grace and Seth to a restaurant. She had always disliked Schumeier’s emphatic pronouncements about what others were thinking or feeling. It was another reason she had transferred out of his department. You’re a psychiatrist, not a psychic , she wanted to say. Instead she muttered, “What room is she in?”

THE YOUNG POLICE officer posted outside room 3030 quizzed Kay endlessly, excited to have something to do at last, but finally let her go in. The room was dark, the blinds drawn against the winter-bright sky, and the woman appeared to have fallen asleep in an upright position, her head twisted awkwardly to the side, like a child in a car seat. Her hair was quite short, a dangerous style for anyone without exquisite bone structure. A fashion choice or the result of chemo?

“Hi,” the woman said, her eyes opening suddenly. And Kay, who had counseled burn victims and accident victims, women whose faces had been all but vandalized by men, was more unnerved by this woman’s relatively unmarred gaze than anything she had ever seen. There was an almost searing frailty to the woman in bed, and not just the usual shakiness of an accident victim. The woman was a bruise, her skin about as effective as an eggshell in keeping the pain of the world at bay. The fresh cut on her forehead was nothing compared to the wounded eyes.

“I’m Kay Sullivan, one of the social workers on staff here.”

“Why do I need a social worker?”

“You don’t, but Dr. Schumeier thought I might be able to help you get an attorney.”

“No public defenders. I need someone good, someone who can concentrate on me .”

“It’s true, they do carry heavy caseloads, but they’re still-”

“It’s not that I don’t admire them, their commitment. It’s just-I need someone independent. Someone not reliant on the government in any fashion. Public defenders get paid by the government in the end. In the end-my father always said-they never forget where their bread is buttered. Government workers. He was one. Once. And he disliked them intensely.”

Kay couldn’t be sure of the woman’s age. The young doctor had said forty, but she could have been five years younger or older. Too old to be speaking of her father in such reverent tones, at any rate, as if he were an oracle. Most people outgrew that by eighteen. “Yes…” Kay began, trying to find a footing in the conversation.

“It was an accident. I panicked. I mean, if you knew the things going through my head, how I hadn’t seen that stretch of highway for-How’s the little girl? I saw a little girl. I’ll kill myself if…Well, I don’t even want to say it out loud. I’m poison. Just by existing, I bring pain and death. It’s his curse. I can’t escape it, no matter what I do.”

Kay suddenly recalled the state fair up at Timonium, the freak-show tent, how at age thirteen she had worked up the nerve to go in, only to find just slightly odd people-fat, tattooed, skinny, big-sitting placidly. Schumeier had her pegged, after all: There was a bit of voyeurism in her mission here, a desire to look, nothing more. But this woman was talking to her, drawing her in, babbling as if Kay knew, or should know, everything about her. Kay had worked with many clients like this, people who spoke as if they were celebrities, with their every moment of existence documented in tabloids and television shows.

But at least the woman in the bed seemed to see Kay, which was more than some self-involved clients managed. “Are you from here?”

“Yes, all my life. I grew up in Northwest Baltimore.”

“And you’re what? Forty-five?”

Ah, that hurt. Kay was used to, even liked, the version of herself she glimpsed in mirrors and windows, but now she was forced to consider what a stranger saw-the short, squat body, the shoulder-length gray hair that aged her more than anything else. She was in good shape by every internal measure, but it was hard to convey one’s blood-pressure, bone-density, and cholesterol numbers via wardrobe or casual conversation. “Thirty-nine, actually.”

“I’m going to say a name.”

“Your name?”

“Don’t think that way, not yet. I’m going to say a name-”

“Yes?”

“It’s a name you’ll know. Or maybe not. It depends on how I say it, how I tell it. There’s a girl, and she’s dead, and that won’t surprise anyone. They’ve believed she was dead, all these years. But there’s another girl, and she’s not dead, and that’s the harder part to explain.”

“Are you-”

“The Bethany girls. Easter weekend, 1975.”

“The Bethany…oh. Oh.” And just like that it came back to Kay. Two sisters, who went to…what, a movie? The mall? She saw their likenesses-the older one with smooth ponytails fastened behind the ears, the younger one in pigtails-remembered the panic that had gripped the city, with children herded into assemblies and shown cautionary yet elliptical films. Girls Beware and Boys Beware . It had been years before Kay had understood the euphemistic warnings therein: After accompanying the strange boys to the beach party, Sally was found wandering down the highway, barefoot and confused… Jimmy’s parents told him that it wasn’t his fault that Greg had befriended him and taken him fishing but made it clear to him that such friendships with older men were not natural… She got in the stranger’s car-and was never seen again .