After his last patient, he did some insurance paperwork, then left his office at about six fifteen. When he left the subway station in Forest Hills he called home. He wanted to apologize to Dana for giving her the silent treatment and for leaving that note on the blackboard, but the machine answered. He wondered if she was home but was screening his calls. He was going to leave a message or say something like “If you’re there, pick up, I need to speak to you,” but he ended the call, figuring he’d see her in a few minutes anyway. He stopped at a grocery store and did some shopping for the house. There was a long line at the checkout counter, and then the woman ahead of him disputed the price of a canister of coffee, so the cashier- who seemed new- had to do a price check. She paged the manager, but it took several minutes for him to come over and then several more minutes for him to find the actual price and remove the overcharge. Finally Adam checked out and headed home. He couldn’t wait to see Dana, to start communicating with her again. He’d had enough of the childish behavior of the past couple of days and it was time to act like an adult and confront this situation head- on. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. He planned to apologize to her for his inappropriate behavior- while not blaming her for hers- and suggest that they go into counseling. He still felt angry and betrayed, but he felt like he was ready to reach out to Dana and make a recommitment to the marriage. If it turned out they couldn’t resolve their differences, then so be it, but he felt it was important to at least make a serious attempt. He entered the house, noticing that the lights were on upstairs and in the kitchen but the rest of the house was dark.
“Dana!”
No answer.
He called out, “Dana!” a little louder, but there was still no response. He figured she probably heard him loud and clear and was just giving him the silent treatment to get back at him for the way he’d treated her last night and this morning. She often played childish revenge games, though in this situation he couldn’t blame her.
But then, as he was hanging up his coat in the hall closet, he thought, What if she’s with Tony? It certainly wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they’d decided to continue their affair. People in full- blown affairs often found it extremely difficult to break up with their lovers. A patient had once told Adam that having to end an affair was one of the most painful experiences of his life, on par with the deaths of his parents.
“Dana!” he called upstairs. “Dana, are you there?”
The house was almost completely silent; the only noise was the wind rattling the dining room windows.
He tried not to get too upset. After all, nothing had actually happened. He’d simply made up a scenario in his head and was reacting to it. He had to be aware of his anger and monitor its effect. As he often reminded his patients, feelings were fleeting. No one stayed angry forever, and no one stayed happy forever, so if you became too attached to your emotions you were setting yourself up for disappointment.
Feeling in control, in what he sometimes referred to as an even- keel state, he entered the kitchen.
At first, he didn’t know what he was looking at. He just knew it that it was something strange, something he’d never seen before. He registered the bright red liquid and the body- a woman’s body- and the knife in her back. It took at least another ten seconds before it hit him that he was staring at his dead wife.
He didn’t even know how the police had gotten here. He didn’t remember calling them; he could barely remember anything since discovering Dana’s body. It was like trying to remember a dream he’d almost forgotten.
“Mr. Bloom?” Adam focused on Detective Clements’s face. Clements was standing, and Adam was sitting on the living room couch next to a guy in a navy hospital uniform.
“I need to talk to you, just for a few minutes,” Clements said. “Is that okay?” Then he said to the guy next to Adam, “Is it okay if I talk to him now?”
“His pressure’s still high, but he should be all right,” the hospital guy said, getting up, then heading out toward the foyer.
Like on the night of the robbery, the house was filled with cops, detectives, and crime scene technicians. Now Adam remembered calling 911, screaming into the phone, frustrated that the woman on the other end didn’t seem to understand him.
“I appreciate you taking a few moments to talk to me,” Clements said. “I know how difficult this is for you right now, but we have to move fast on this thing, and what you tell me right now could be crucial to our investigation. So I’m just gonna ask you a few very brief questions, okay?”
Adam nodded. He felt like he was barely there.
Clements asked a question, and Adam actually couldn’t pro cess what he was saying. He watched his lips moving and heard the words, but the only words he actually understood were “time” and “discover.”
“What was that?” Adam asked.
“I said, what time did you discover your wife’s body?”
“Oh.” Adam was still confused. “I don’t know.”
“You have to focus on this, Dr. Bloom… I know how hard this is.”
“You know how hard this is,” Adam said flatly.
“Excuse me?”
“You said you know how hard this is.” Adam laughed, but not in an amused way. “Sorry, but I doubt you know how hard this is, Detective.”
“You’re right,” Clements said. “I have no idea how hard this is, but you have to bear down now, focus as well as you can just for a few minutes and tell me what I need to know. Do you think you can do that for me, Dr. Bloom?”
Adam hated the way Clements was talking down to him.
“I told you about him yesterday,” Adam said. “I told you he left the notes, I told you he might’ve robbed our house. Did you even bother to look into any of this?”
“Yes, we did, Doctor.”
“You could’ve prevented this from happening,” Adam said. “You could’ve arrested him, you could’ve done something.”
“I understand your frustration, but we can’t simply go arrest somebody because we think he might’ve done something.”
“I told you about the notes, and look what he did to me, for chrissake. How do you think I got these bruises on my face?”
“I was going to ask you about your face.”
“Tony did this to me yesterday at the health club. I was angry when I saw the note, so I went over there to… to talk to him, and this is what he did to me.”
“You didn’t mention he hit you when you called me last night.”
“I didn’t?” Adam thought he had, but maybe he hadn’t. It was hard to think clearly about anything right now.
“Maybe if you’d mentioned that, we could’ve held him on assault or at least would’ve had a reason to question him longer than we did. But I did talk to him yesterday, went to his apartment actually. I asked him where he was last Thursday, the day you received the first note, and he claimed he was on Long Island that whole day, helping his brother-in- law paint his house. We checked this out, and I didn’t think there was any reason to believe he was lying. Also, he claimed he didn’t leave any note at your house yesterday.”
“Come on, that’s bullshit.” Adam was practically yelling. “He left the note, he left both notes, and then he came over here and killed my wife.”
“Okay, try to stay calm, Mr. Bloom. We’re one step ahead of you, okay? We’re picking Tony Ferretti up right now, and we’re gonna check him out thoroughly, okay? If he’s our guy we’re not gonna let him get away, okay?”
“He is the guy,” Adam said. “I know he is.”
“What I need to know from you,” Clements said, “is do you have any evidence that Tony was in the house today? I mean, did your wife tell you she was expecting him? Do you know if he called her at some point or came by to talk to her?”
Adam suddenly felt dazed and disoriented.