What if he’s still in there?I thought. We were taught to retreat from danger if we were in doubt-to find a security guard and use superior force. Many psychs and nurses got attacked, and it was drilled into us not to take chances. But I wanted to find out what was going on without the need to involve Bob-or even worse, Pagonis-immediately. So I halted, breathing silently and listening for human activity. After two minutes, having heard nothing, I walked slowly down the hallway toward my bedroom, leaving the front door ajar behind me. I needed to be able to get out of there fast if I was wrong about the place being empty. My bedroom door was half-open. I pushed it all the way, my heart thudding, and peered inside.
It was in the same state as the living room. The duvet, sheets, and pillows had been ripped from the bed and thrown around, together with clothes from my cupboard. He’d swept all the objects off the counter in the bathroom-even Rebecca’s vacation seashells. A couple of them had smashed, and I crouched to pick them up. I was upset by it, as if the family jewels had been trashed. They were the only material things I had left of our relationship.
Kneeling there, I looked to one side and saw one of Rebecca’s dresses, which she’d left behind by mistake in my closet. It was bundled in a heap in the corner of the room. I held it up and saw it was slashed from top to bottom with a knife or a pair of scissors. There were deep rips running through the material, from the neck down to the waist. It disturbed me more than the rest of the mess, and I went back out into the bedroom to examine my own clothes, which he’d also pulled from their hangers. They were rumpled but intact. He’d singled out Rebecca’s dress to be cut in half, as if he’d had a reason to resent it. It gave me the nasty sensation of seeing into the mind of someone with a sadistic grudge.
Back in the living room, I piled a few cushions on the sofa and sat down to collect my thoughts. I supposed I should call the cops who’d been called to the scene in the park, to whom I’d described the assault before I’d checked out of Episcopal. Perhaps I ought to call Pagonis and fill her in, too. Yet I knew that I wasn’t going to do either. That would be the end of whatever privacy I had left, and I’d be dragged straight into an investigation that would make things worse. I didn’t even want to call Bob to inquire how the guy had got past him, although he had a lot to explain. What was the point of a uniformed presence in the lobby if a maniac could just walk past? But if I told him, he’d be up here in a minute trying to explain, and everyone in the building would know within a day.
I walked round putting my things back and finished by checking on the bottles of pills my intruder had pulled from the bathroom cabinet. In the back of my mind, I still hoped it might have been an addict’s burglary-the last reassuring possibility-but they were all accounted for. My head screamed and I felt overwhelmed. I undressed, swallowed a Vicodin, and fell into the bed he’d torn apart.
14
Sometimes I think I chose to be a psych to avoid having to answer questions. It’s one of the craft’s comforts that you can bounce back inquiries from patients about what you think or feel and hide behind a wall of detachment. The trouble is, I’m not sure I could answer the questions even if it were allowed. Whenever I was in therapy myself-which we were encouraged to be, but which I’d lately let slip-I would note all my patients’ feelings for me and mine for them, every bit of transference and countertransference. Yet I’d mislaid my feelings about myself somewhere.
There was a rap on the window of my car, making me jump. It was Joe, peering through the glass from a few inches away and gesturing for me to let him in. I had parked in the lot near the Suffolk County DA’s Office, on the side of the Riverhead court complex by the jail where Harry now resided.
“What the hell happened to you?” he said, climbing into the front passenger seat and staring at my battered face.
It had been three days since my walk in Central Park, and the worst of the swelling on my forehead had subsided; but purple bruises had formed around it, making my face look even more alarming. I hadn’t told anyone about the apartment break-in, and I still didn’t feel like doing so: there were too many unanswered questions. If he had been after me, if I hadn’t been picked at random from the park’s passersby and dog walkers, why had he been so frenzied and what had he wanted?
“They told me Central Park was safe after dark these days. Looks like it isn’t true. I went out walking,” I said as lightly as I could.
“Shit. You were mugged?”
It was time for the truth. But if I confessed, his first question would be what I’d been doing there in the first place; then why I’d been with Harry’s housekeeper; then what she’d told me. I couldn’t admit to any of that because I’d pledged not to-she’d made me give my word as we’d stood together. I knew it was foolish to put my loyalty to her, or perhaps just my weakness for her, ahead of my own defense, that I’d been hunted down and attacked and my apartment ransacked, but I kept my promise.
“I was lucky. Someone chased him off.”
“As long as you’re okay,” he said, not appearing to notice my hesitation. “So, what are you going to say in there?”
“Only what you told me.”
“Great. In we go,” he said, swinging his legs out of the vehicle. I followed him up the steps of the Suffolk County Court, a piece of 1970s brutalism that looked as if it had been built from square white blocks by a giant toddler. At the top of the steps, by the double doors to the DA’s offices, was a vista of the back of Harry’s prison that was even more unpleasant than the view from the front. The razor wire was extravagantly piled around bleak exercise yards.
I spotted a familiar figure in the long corridor on the second floor. She was talking to a balding man in a three-piece suit who was carrying a stack of files under his left arm.
“Detective Pagonis,” I said.
Pagonis looked at me as if she were sorry she’d let me out of the interrogation room and would like to rectify her mistake as soon as possible. It was a stony glare that had no sympathy in it-the sort of expression detectives must practice to intimidate suspects. She narrowed her eyes as she saw my face, making me raise a hand to my head self-consciously.
Joe saw the silent interplay and stepped forward to interrupt. “I’m Joe Solomon, Ben’s attorney. He met the wrong guy in Central Park,” he said cheerfully.
Pagonis shook Joe’s hand warily, a cat greeting a dog. “This is Steven Baer, the assistant district attorney,” she said.
“I think I’ve seen you on television,” I told him. I’d watched him once, standing silently on the court steps as Harry’s gray-haired, ponderous lawyer had talked to reporters after one bail hearing. The attorney was impervious to the sound-bite demands of the evening news, but Baer had stood patiently as he’d rumbled away.
“Thanks for coming,” Baer said, leaning toward me as he spoke and gazing mildly at us. His face was pale and oval, and he was bald on top, with two panels of hair above each ear. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said to Joe. “You must be from New York.”
He led us down the corridor at a stately pace, like someone who did not like to be rushed. I could sense Joe struggling to hold himself back from his natural urge to push ahead. When we arrived, Baer’s office had a musty smell from his wooden desk, which was piled high with files, and his stuffed bookshelves. He sat behind the desk, and Joe and I arranged ourselves on the creaky chairs around it. Pagonis stood in the corner, behind my field of vision as I looked at Baer, with a notebook poised.
“This isn’t an interview, more like a getting-to-know-you session, but the detective will take notes if that’s okay,” Baer said.