I’m disappearing, he thought. Whoever I am…
Chapter 23
SeaSpray was a powder-blue Cape Cod on 4th Street, just around the corner from the beach.
Sparsely decorated, and slightly forlorn, it was a beach cottage with mismatched furniture and amateur seascapes on the walls. A faint, but pervasive smell of mildew hung in the air as Duran lay down on the rattan couch in the living room, and gazed at the ceiling in a funk.
In the kitchen, Adrienne sat down to make a list.
1. Slough—she wrote, then sat back with a sigh. She had to call in. She should have called in—long ago—from the real estate office or a pay phone on the road. It was 10:30 already, which made her more than late: she was missing in action. So she really had to call in, only… what could she say? What could she possibly say without sounding like a lunatic?
She imagined the scene at work. When you counted the paralegals, the interns, and the court reporter, at least a dozen people would have assembled for the McEligot deposition. First, there would have been a grace period. Maybe fifteen minutes of chitchat, ending in a certain amount of frowning. Nervous glances at the clock, followed by expressions of bewilderment and concern. Where could Adrienne be? I hope she’s all right! People would begin to make calls, go out for coffee, read the paper, look over their notes. Half an hour later (if that), counsel for the plaintiff would put away her notes and get to her feet—even as Bette placed calls to Adrienne at home, and to Slough in San Diego. What? What do you mean she’s not there?
She heard Duran get up and turn on the television. Canned laughter floated toward her through the doorway to the kitchen.
2. Call Bill Fellowes—name/phone of memory witness
3. Insurance co.—re Duran’s tapes of Nikki
4. Shopping: food, clothes, hairbrush
5.
There wasn’t any 5. And, truth to tell, there wasn’t any point in adding to her list until she’d crossed off the first entry. Everything else was stalling. So she gritted her teeth, gave herself a Nike pep talk—Just do it!—and dialed Bette’s number at Slough, Hawley. Then she listened as it rang—or almost rang—and hung up.
It wasn’t so much that she was afraid. She just didn’t know what to say. Curtis Slough was not what you’d call a stand-up guy. On the contrary, his reaction to the news that she’d grown up an orphan had been a kind of embarrassed alarm—as if she’d confessed to having an unpleasant, and possibly contagious, disease. How, then, might he react to the news that she was sharing a beach cottage with a maniac, while running from a killer who’d murdered two people—including one of the firm’s own investigators? And if to that she added the information that all this had something to do with her sister’s recent electrocution, itself brought on by false memories of Satanic abuse…
Slough, Hawley was an old and respected Washington firm. Most of its lawyers were graduates of Ivy League schools, William & Mary and Stanford. They were ambitious and tightly-wrapped people who were bright, bland, and dependable. They did not stay in Comfort Inns. They were not orphans. And they never, ever “went on the run.” So…
This isn’t going to get any easier, Adrienne told herself, and began dialing.
Bette answered on the first ring. “Bette. It’s me—Adrienne.”
“Oh my God! Scout! What happened to you?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
A nervous laugh. “It better be hard to explain. D’you realize what a meltdown we have here? We are talking fifteen people, including two partners just… standing there… looking at one another for almost an hour and—the Old Man’s ballistic. Tell me you were hit by a car! Tell me you were killed! Were you?” This last, hopefully.
“No.”
“Then—what?”
“There was a… an emergency.”
“What kind of ‘emergency’?”
“A sudden emergency.” Before Bette could question her any further, Adrienne hurried on, explaining where to find the file on the McEligot depo. “It’s not the final draft,” she said. “I was going to work on it at the motel—”
“What motel?”
Ignoring the question, Adrienne plowed on. “It’s in the asphalt folder on my computer. I think I called it—”
“Wait a second—you mean you’re not coming back? What am I gonna tell Curtis?”
“I’ll call him.”
“And tell him what? That you had ‘an emergency’?”
To Adrienne’s ear, her friend sounded more excited than worried. “Exactly.”
“But he’ll want to know what kind of emergency—other than ‘sudden.’ ‘Sudden’ won’t cut it.”
“Then I’ll tell him it was ‘a female emergency.’”
“A what?”
“You heard me.”
“But I don’t even know what that is,” Bette protested. “I mean, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know—but I do know Slough and, trust me, he won’t ask.”
As soon as she hung up, she gritted her teeth and called Slough in San Diego—where, to her delight, she found he wasn’t in. So she left a message:
Curtis? Adrienne Cope. I’m really sorry about this morning, but… there was an emergency, a sort of a… female thing and, well… everything’s back to normal, now. I’ll reschedule the depo as soon as I get in. And I’ll try to reach you later. Bye!
Then she called Bill Fellowes who, to her surprise, was unaware of the morning’s fiasco. “I just got in myself,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Remember that divorce case you worked on when you were interning with Nelson?”
He thought about it for a moment, then said, “No.”
“I think it was a divorce case. The guy worked for the SEC—”
“Oh, you mean the Brewster case!”
“Right!”
“That was a lot more than ‘a divorce case.’ But, what about it?”
“You had an expert witness—a shrink or something. Knew a lot about memory.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well,” Adrienne said, “I was wondering if I could get his name—”
“Ray Shaw!” Fellowes boomed. “Neuropsychiatrist to the stars!”
“You know where I could find him?”
“Last I looked—Columbia Medical School.”
“And he’s good?” she asked. “On memory?”
“Bulletproof. He wrote the Encarta entry.”
She laughed. “Okay, but… is he in court a lot?”
It was Fellowes’s turn to chuckle. “You mean, is he a professional witness?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I think Brewster was his first time out. And he only testified then because he went to school with the guy.”
“So he’s the real deal,” Adrienne said.
“Absolutely. Hang on. I’ll get you his numbers.”
She did and he did, and then she thanked him and they said good-bye. Canned laughter rose and fell just past the door. What would she say to Shaw? And what did she expect from him?
I’m with this man, Doctor, who thinks he’s a psychologist—but he’s not. He was treating my sister when she committed suicide and, since then, someone’s been trying to kill me—or maybe us, I’m not sure. Anyway, he isn’t who he thinks he is—that person’s dead, too—and I was hoping you could help him recover his memory—so we can figure out what’s going on—and maybe I can get my life back together.
Hmmmnn. Maybe not. He gets that call, and the first call he makes is to Bellevue. There’s a madwoman on the phone…
She turned to a new page in the pad, and wrote Shaw at the very top. Then she tapped her pen against the page a few times, and added: Lawyer—Fellowes—Brewster case
She sighed. If she knew a little more about the Brewster business, that would be good. It wouldn’t seem as if she were coming out of left field. The easy thing to do would be to look it up on Nexis.