Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“I guess I’m distracted. I’ve actually been working very hard.”

“Really? I thought you had finished your work on that case. We spoke of it last time. You told me that the man you were looking for turned out to be dead, and your partner had proved to be unreliable.”

“Right. Right, right, right. This is something new.”

“What are you working on now?”

“Oh, nothing interesting. This is a deskbound project, lots of computer time. Securities fraud.”

“I didn’t know you did that kind of work.”

Neither did I. “The boring cases pay the bills, actually.” She yawned, largely for show, but it was a mistake. Even a yawn was fraught with meaning in Dr. Armistead’s lair.

“Are you not sleeping well?”

“I’m a little restless. It’s gotten so hot, but I hate to turn on the AC before summer truly starts. It feels like such a defeat.”

“Insomnia.”

“I’d call it… wakefulness.

“I fall asleep.” Once Crow came home. “I just don’t stay asleep.”

“Are you having the nightmare you spoke of in a previous session? The one in which you see your friend die?”

How did he remember so much? It’s not as if he had notes in front of him. Was he taping her secretly? Did he write things down after she left and then read them later? But there were always appointments on either side of their hour together, so he didn’t have time to make notes while his memory was fresh. Although the day and hour of their appointments changed weekly, she always saw the same sad, older woman in the hall, the one with the yellowish skin and bluish hair.

“No, not that nightmare.”

“Another, then? A new one?”

“I meant, no nightmares at all.”

But, despite her best efforts, tears welled in her eyes. His question had taken her back to the alley, to the morning that Jonathan had died. They had made love the night before. Well, they had sex. He was excited, certain of the glorious future that awaited him when he broke his big story. She had been a little depressed, as if Jonathan’s upward progress ensured her downward path.

The lights of the cab had come out of nowhere. They should have heard the engine when they left her apartment, should have noticed the sound of the chugging motor. But they didn’t have time to notice anything. Jonathan did take a moment, however, to push her to the side of the alley, so she was not in the taxi’s path. The driver probably didn’t care if he killed her too, but she was not important enough to come back for.

The inevitable question: “What are these tears about?”

“Nothing. It’s a bad memory, okay? I should cry when I think about it. A man died.”

“Surviving,” Dr. Armistead intoned with a self-impressed solemnity, “exacts a price. In dreams begin responsibilities.”

“We always come back to poetry,” Tess muttered. And not particularly apt poetry, she yearned to add.

“Poetry? It’s the title of a prose work by Delmore Schwartz.”

“Schwartz took it from some French poem. Villon, I think.”

Another awkward silence. Tess studied the degrees on the wall. It seemed a little show-off, to her, all those degrees, a half dozen in all. There was George Washington, Wisconsin, two from Johns Hopkins. Of course. Johns Hopkins, the ultimate Baltimore pedigree. If you could claim any link to Hopkins-if you just had your appendix out there-the detail would probably appear in your obituary.

Obituaries. Johns Hopkins. Maybe she could get something out of this hour after all.

“Did you know a psychiatrist named Michael Shaw?”

For once, Dr. Armistead was caught off guard. “By reputation. I’m sure we met at some point, but I have no distinct memory of him. Why do you ask?”

“He’s connected to a case I’m working on.”

“The one on security fraud?”

“Sure. Yes. He may be one of the investors who was swindled in this derivative scam.” Derivative scam? She wasn’t even sure what a derivative was. “My client is another victim, but he would like to file a class-action suit, so I’m trying to find others, so he can sue the brokerage.”

“What brokerage?”

“An out-of-state one.” Her eyes were still focused on the diplomas looming over Dr. Armistead’s shoulder. “Washington Securities.”

“And you think Shaw-”

“May have treated the man who ended up ripping him off. Is there a way to find out?”

“Of course not.” Dr. Armistead looked offended. “Confidentiality would not be breached in such a matter.”

“But he’s dead, and a crime may have been committed-”

“Michael Shaw is dead, not your quarry. And being a suspect in a securities fraud does not mean one suspends the usual doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Oh.” She slumped back in her chair, running her fingers through the unraveling fringe on the arms. She had thought she was on to something.

“If it’s any comfort, I doubt Shaw treated the man you’re investigating.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Before he went into private practice, Shaw worked under a mutual friend at Hopkins. He treated rapists, the hard-core cases-repeat offenders, pedophiles.”

“Really?” As Carl had told her, over and over again, serial killings had a sexual component.

“He started with the program as a young resident, back in the 1980s. You may have heard of the study. About a hundred and fifty offenders were given Depo-Provera.”

“I thought that was a contraceptive.”

“It’s derived from the female hormone progestin and is used as a contraceptive, yes. But it also was employed for what is known as chemical castration. The program was somewhat misrepresented in the press, I’m afraid. Depo-Provera was only one component, along with traditional therapy and behavior modification. But the media focused on one patient, the so-called ski-mask rapist, who volunteered for treatment. Unfortunately, he stopped taking the drugs and was arrested a few years ago for raping a three-year-old girl. Very sad.”

“But this program was up and running twenty years ago?” She did the math in her head. Billy Windsor had “died” at age seventeen, but that had been fifteen years ago. Could he have disappeared in order to enter the program, or a subsequent version? Had Becca Harrison’s murder been a sex crime? No, they were boyfriend and girlfriend, suitably puppylike in their devotion, according to the old woman on Notting Island. Yet Michael Shaw was on Billy Windsor’s list. No coincidences, Luisa O’Neal had said. No, that was Freud. Luisa had said nothing was random.

What if Billy Windsor had sought treatment from Michael Shaw in order to control his impulses? Could he have been that self-aware, that analytical? It seemed impossible, yet that would explain why the deaths had stopped, why there was the long gap between Hazel Ligetti’s murder and Dr. Shaw’s hit-and-run.

And it would explain why they had started again. Billy Windsor had given up on modern psychiatry.

“Why are you smiling that rueful little smile, Tess?”

“Am I?” A half-dozen minute hands snapped to twelve, signaling her freedom. “I’m just thinking about what I want for lunch, now that we’re done.”

“Do you see yourself as a godlike figure?”

The question comes back to him, unbidden. Why is he thinking about that now, when he has so much that he must fix, so many unanticipated problems, so much that has gone wrong?

But he doesn’t even have time to track that thought as he normally would. He’s vigilant about his own mind, knows it as well as he knew the marshy inlets back home and navigates it with the same delicacy. Only two people have ever known him as well as he knows himself, and one is lost to him forever.