Prayers For Rain Part 42

"-we approach and tell them about the break-in."

"In the interest of the public good," Angie said. "People's right to know. Gosh, we're kinda swell that way, aren't we?"

I nodded. "No coal in our stockings this Christmas."

Diane Bourne lit a second cigarette and watched us through the smoke, her pale eyes flat and seemingly nonplussed. "What do you want?" she said, and I detected just the hint of a throb in her vocal cords, a slight ticking not unlike the metronome.

"For starters," I said, "we want to know how those session notes took flight from your office."

"I haven't the faintest."

Angie lit her own cigarette. "Get the faintest, lady."

Diane Bourne uncrossed her legs and tucked them to the side in that effortless way all women can and no man is remotely capable of. She held her cigarette up by her temple and gazed at Blake's Los Los on the east wall, a painting that was about as calming as a plane crash. on the east wall, a painting that was about as calming as a plane crash.

"I had a temp secretary a couple of months ago. I sensed-no proof, mind you, just a sense-that she had been going through the files. She was only with me a week, so I didn't give it much thought after she left."

"Her name?"

"I don't remember."

"But you have records."

"Of course. I'll have Miles get them for you on your way out." Then she smiled. "Oh, I forgot, he's not here today. Well, I'll make a note to have him send that information to you."

Angie was sitting two feet away, but I could feel her pulse quicken and her blood warm along with my own.

I indicated the outer office with a backward jerk of my thumb. "Miles would be who?"

She suddenly looked as if she regretted ever mentioning him. "He's, ah, just someone who works for me part-time as a secretary."

"Part-time," I said. "So he has another job?"

She nodded.

"Where?"

"Why?"

"Curious," I said. "It's an occupational hazard. Humor me."

She sighed. "He works at Evanton Hospital in Wellesley."

"The psych hospital?"

"Yes."

"Doing what?" Angie asked.

"He's their records clerk."

"And how long has he worked here?"

"Why do you ask?" Another small c.o.c.k of the head.

"I'm trying to ascertain who has access to your files, Doctor."

She leaned forward, tapped some ash into the tray. "Miles Lovell has been in my employ for three and a half years, Mr. Kenzie, and to answer your next question, No, he would have no reason to remove session notes from Karen Nichols's file and mail them to her."

Lovell, I thought. Not Brewster. Uses a false last name, but sticks to his first name out of comfort. Not a bad move if your name is John. Kind of dumb, though, if you name's somewhat less common.

"Okay." I smiled. Picture of the satisfied detective. No more questions here about ol' Miles Lovell. He's right as rain in my book, ma'am.

"He's the most trustworthy a.s.sistant I've ever had."

"I'm sure he is."

"Now," she said, "have I answered all your questions?"

My smile widened. "Not even close."

"Tell us about Karen Nichols," Angie said.

"There's very little to tell..."

Half an hour later she was still talking, ticking off the details of Karen Nichols's psyche with all the consistency and emotion of that metronome of hers.

Karen, according to Dr. Diane Bourne, had been a cla.s.sic bipolar manic depressive. She had over the years taken prescriptions for lithium, Depakote, and Tegretol, as well as the Prozac I'd found in Warren's barn. Whether hers was a condition mandated by genetics became largely irrelevant when her father died and his killer shot himself in front of Karen. Following textbook patterns, according to Dr. Bourne, Karen, far from acting out as a child or an adolescent, had been preternaturally well behaved, molding herself into the role of perfect daughter, sister, and eventually, girlfriend.

"She modeled herself," Dr. Bourne said, "like a lot of girls, after television ideals. Repeats mostly in Karen's case. That was part of her pathology-to live as much in the past and an idealized America as she could, so she idolized Mary Tyler Moore's Mary Richards and also all those mothers from fifties and sixties sitcoms-Barbara Billingsley, Donna Reed, Mary Tyler Moore again as d.i.c.k Van d.y.k.e's wife. She read Jane Austen and missed the irony and anger of Austen's work entirely. She chose instead to see her work as fantasies of how a good girl's life could be successful if she lived correctly and opted to marry well like Emma or Elinor Dashwood. So this became the goal, and David Wetterau, her Darcy or Rob Petrie, if you will, was the linchpin to a happy life."

"And when he was turned into a vegetable..."

"All those demons of hers, repressed for twenty years, came back to roost. I had long suspected that were Karen's model life ever to suffer a serious fissure, her breakdown would manifest s.e.xually."

"Why would you suspect that?" Angie asked.

"You must understand that it was her father's s.e.xual liaisons with the wife of Lieutenant Crowe which predicated Lieutenant Crowe's extreme act of violence and the death of Karen's father."

"So Karen's father had an affair with his best friend's wife."

She nodded. "That's what the shooting was all about. Add in certain aspects of the Electra complex, which at six years old would have surely been blooming, if not raging, in Karen, her guilt over her father's death, and her conflicted s.e.xual feelings for her brother, and you have a recipe for-"

"She had s.e.xual relations with her brother?" I said.

Diane Bourne shook her head. "No. Emphatically, no. But, like a lot of women with an older stepbrother, she did, during adolescence, first recognize symptoms of her s.e.xual awakening in terms of Wesley. The male ideal in Karen's world, you see, was a dominating figure. Her natural father was a military man, a warrior. Her stepfather was domineering in his own right. Wesley Dawe was given to violent, psychotic episodes and, until his disappearance, was being treated with antipsychotic medication."

"You treated Wesley?"