Andrew Vachss - Pain Management

“When?”

“This evening.”

“Okay. I’ll come by—”

“Seven,” he said. “And . . . no disrespect, but could you wear your suit?”

“Jenn will be down in a minute,” the guy who had introduced himself as her father told me. He was shorter than me, but much wider through the chest and shoulders, with an amiable face and eyes as warm as ball bearings.

“What do you need to talk to her for?” a kid who I figured for her brother asked. He was taller than his father, leaner, with an athlete’s grace to his body.

“Michael . . .” the father said, gently. He turned his attention back to me. “The police have already been here,” he said, as if that disposed of the matter.

“Yes, sir, I understand,” I told him. “I don’t know how much you know about investigations—”

“I’m a forensic psychologist,” he interrupted.

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” I told him. But I know something about you, pal. Any Ph.D. who doesn’t introduce himself by sticking “Doctor” in front of his name doesn’t have a self-confidence problem. “What’s your specialty?”

“The effects of incarceration on mental health,” he said, holding my eyes.

“Fascinating,” I said, my voice as flat as his. “Anyway, the core tool is the same, right?”

“I’m not certain I follow you.”

“Interviewing. That’s it, isn’t it? Whether you’re doing an evaluation or debriefing a source or questioning a suspect, it all comes down to the interview.”

“Well, there are various tests as well as—”

“Sure. No argument. But you’d always want an interview if you could get one, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” he agreed.

“And interviewing, it’s a special talent, fair enough to say? Some of it you can teach, but some of it’s a gift . . . combination of instinct and experience.”

He nodded silently, a professional’s way of telling me to keep talking.

“And, bottom line,” I said, “it’s not mechanical. One interviewer could get information another wouldn’t even ask about.”

“That’s true. So what you’re saying, Mr. . . . Hazard, is it . . . ?”

My turn to nod.

“. . . is that you would do a better job than the detectives.”

“That’s been my experience,” I said. “And I’ll bet it’s been yours, too.”

“Sometimes.” He chuckled. “Not always.”

“Joel, you said he could—” Kevin started to say.

“Your daughter, you let her go out on dates?” the psychologist interrupted Rosebud’s father.

“Uh . . . yes.”

“So that’s the permission piece. But you still want to meet the young man, don’t you? Kind of make up your own mind right on the spot?”

“Well . . . yes, sure.”

“What I told you was that you could have somebody come here and talk to Jenn. You brought this gentleman with you. I wanted to talk to him first. Is that okay with you?”

Kevin didn’t say a word. He knew the last sentence hadn’t been a question.

“Go get your sister,” the psychologist said to his son.

“What did you do time for?” he asked me, as soon as the kid left the room.

He may have been guessing, or he may have smelled it on me. Didn’t matter. I sensed that if I didn’t give him what he was looking for, his daughter wasn’t going to be interviewed.

“Violence for money,” I said, trying to cover it all in as few words as possible.

“Where?”

“You got a glass?” I asked, giving him a thumb’s-up signal.

Kevin looked confused.

“Your investigator is offering his fingerprints,” the psychologist explained to him.

“Is that really—?”

He shrugged. Then barked, “Michael!”

The kid came into the room with what I took to be his older sister, a strikingly pretty girl, who didn’t seem aware she was.

“Daddy, why are you bellowing ?” she said, a smile in her voice.

“I thought you were still upstairs,” he said sheepishly.

“Hi, Mr. Carpin,” she said to Rosebud’s father. “Hello,” she said to me. “I’m Jennifer.”

“B. B. Hazard,” I said, getting to my feet and holding out my hand. She took it, squeezed gently, and pulled away.

“Mr. Hazard wants to talk with you about Rosebud,” her father said.

“Yes, Daddy. You told me. We’ll talk in my room, okay?”

“I’ll be right down here,” he said. As clear a threat as I’d heard in years.

Jennifer’s room was smaller than Rosebud’s, but it looked as if it got a great deal more traffic. She pulled a one-armed panda bear off an old easy chair like a maître d’ showing me to my table. I sat down and she jumped into the air, spun around, and landed facing me on the bed.

“How can I help?” she asked. Her father’s daughter.

“Well, you can tell me what you know.”

“About Rosa?”

“Rosa?”

“Yes. That’s the name she liked. Not everybody called her that, but I did.”

“You’ve already told me more than I knew when I came.”

“Oh. All right . . .”

“What did they tell you ?” I asked.

“The police?”

“Or her father.”

“Well . . . they seemed to think Rosa had run away. But they weren’t sure.”

“But you know, don’t you, Jennifer?”

“Me?”

“Sure. You and Rosa were very close.”

“You didn’t say that like it was a question.”

“It’s not. I know you were.”

“How?” she challenged.

“You told her father that Rosa had never come over to spend the weekend with you at all.”

“That’s right. She hadn’t. . . .”

“But you told him after she didn’t return on Sunday night.”

“That’s when he asked me.”

“I know. But if he had asked you, during that weekend, you would have told him Rosa was around somewhere. Or in the bathroom. Or at the movies. Whatever you agreed on. Then you’d have called her, given her the heads-up, and she would have called home.”

“Why would you say—?”

“She needed you for a running start. Probably figured nobody would ever check—she seems like a very smart young lady, and she would have been planning this for a while. But she had a backup plan in case they did.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You mean I can’t prove it, don’t you, Jennifer? They’re not the same thing.”

“I’m not saying anything,” she said, folding her arms.

“Okay. Tell me about the crow girls, then.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to read mine. Someday, she’d be even better than her father, but right now she wasn’t in his league. “What about them?” she finally said.

“Charles de Lint . . .”

“Yes, sure. I mean, everybody knows that. But what are you asking me?”

“How could I read about them?”

“The crow girls? Why, they’re in all . . . Wait!” She bounced off the bed, walked over to a short bookcase suspended over her computer terminal, pulled down a book, and handed it to me.

“Moonlight and Vines,” I read aloud. A different title from the one I’d gotten at the bookstore.

“There’s a separate story just about them—the crow girls—in there.”

“Thanks. I’ll bring it back to you.”

“Okay.”

“Well, Jennifer . . . thanks for taking the time to talk with me.”

“That’s all? I mean, you aren’t going to—?”

“No. There’s no reason for you to trust me. I was trying to think of a way I could convince you that I’d never do anything to hurt your friend. I just want to find her, make sure she’s all right. If she doesn’t want to come back home, I wouldn’t try to make her. But I see you’re not ready to believe me.”