Читать книгу Inside Passage - Burt Weissbourd - Страница 7

Two

It was sweet and sour pork. Yeah, she was sure of it. Corey walked up the stairs toward Dr. Stein’s office—again. She had tried the other names they had given her. One of them was a prune-faced female psychologist who made her look at inkblots and talk about whatever came to mind. Mostly what came to mind were prison memories. And they were hard to talk about. She talked about them though. About the violence. How it was part of life. Twice she had hurt people. And both times, afterward, it was hard to breathe. Even now it made her sweat whenever she talked about it. She still felt out of control, stunned by what she had done.

When she finished talking, the woman wanted to know if she had always had a problem with violence. When she tried to explain that she had never been violent, that she wasn’t violent now—that her mom had taught her to stick up for herself, that was all—the woman went on for quite a while about how they could work on it together.

“How long?” Corey asked.

“Say twice a week for as long as it takes.”

“So a week or two?”

The psychologist nodded. “Perhaps a year or two.”

“No.” She shook her head. “That can’t be right.”

And that was that.

The next one was another psychiatrist, smooth—not at all like the pipe smoker—and full of himself. He talked like he had this special understanding of her. He had decided that she was volatile. He wanted her to take this drug, Depakote, to stabilize her moods. When she explained that she had always been a little feisty, and that she would cheer right up when Billy came home, the guy said he couldn’t recommend anything until she took a mood stabilizer for at least six months.

And that was that.

So she was back to sweet and sour pork. The little light was on in the waiting room. She figured that it went on when the office door closed, so you would know not to interrupt. She wondered why he didn’t just lift one of those motel “do not disturb” signs, leave it on the waiting room door. Too cheesy, she guessed. The guy’s mind didn’t work like hers, she was thinking. The light went off, and there he was. Same wool jacket. His hair was too long and mussed up, like an orchestra conductor’s. She walked right into the office before he could make that little gesture with his palm.

Corey sat in the leather chair and looked at her work boots. This was going to be hard, she realized. She waited, unsure what to do. The silence lasted a long time. She inspected every thread of the faded gray rug around her feet.

“Perhaps.” Dr. Stein paused. “Perhaps you’d prefer to see someone else?” he finally asked.

Right, that’s why she was sitting in his worn-out old chair.

“They are supposed to give you other choices…other names.”

The guy slowed down between words, like he wasn’t born here. She glanced up. His eyes were on her now. Locked on. The bushy brows were furrowed in that “V,” she remembered; and now that “V” seemed to laser those locked-on pale blue eyes right into her head. How could an out-of-it guy you could hardly hear be so intense?

“You’ve already seen them.”

Intense and smart.

He came around the desk and waited for her to look up again. His eyes were kind now. The lines on his brow had rearranged themselves so that he seemed more relaxed.

“We’ll do the best we can,” he said.

She looked down and thought about that. Finally, she offered, “Thanks.” And looked his way again.

He was leaning against the edge of his table, reviewing her file.

He could use a new, lightweight jacket, she decided, and his hair needed cutting too.

Eventually he set the file down, lifted one of his blackened pipes, a question.

She shrugged. “Your landlord know about this?”

“He lives in Hong Kong.”

“You got a fire extinguisher?”

His laugh was a low rumble. “I prefer Diet Coke.”

The guy was trying to make a joke, she decided. “No problem.”

“I’m absent-minded,” he explained. “Not a good quality for a pipe smoker.”

Absent-minded? Lost in space was more like it. She liked his rumbly laugh, though. And she liked that he had explained.

For maybe half an hour, he asked the routine questions. Easy stuff—address, phone numbers, medical history, more or less the bare bones facts of her life. It made her feel a little more comfortable, almost like she could talk to this guy.

When she finally settled into her chair, he lit a fresh pipe. Then he leaned toward her. “Can I ask some more difficult questions?” It came out kind of tentative, as if he was afraid she might say no.

She thought about saying speak up, but didn’t. “You’ve read my file. Do your worst.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” Abe said.

The “actually” pissed her off.

“It says here,” he tapped her file with the stem of his pipe, “that you stabbed a woman in prison.”

“Yeah. She came at me with some kind of knife.”

“You stabbed her with a pencil.”

“What I had.”

“They never found a knife.”

“So?”

“You’re sure she had a knife?”

“Mister, how can this ever work if you don’t believe what I tell you?”

He looked at the ceiling, took a puff. “Point taken.”

Corey wasn’t done. She touched the scar on her neck. “You think I did this to myself?”

“What happened to her knife?” he asked, his voice flat.

She decided to give him a chance, tell him the whole story. “Okay. It was about seven at night. I was finishing up my shift in the laundry, folding sheets. Two of them came at me from behind. The one gal had a shank, like the pointy part of a screwdriver, filed sharp, and duct-taped to a piece of wood. She cut me. I had this pencil I used for the laundry list. I stuck it into her neck. I didn’t even think about it. Agh.”

Her face tightened, an involuntary reflex. “She went down, bleeding, you know…” She was frowning now, trying to get this right. “You ever kill an elk, or a deer?”

He shook his head.

Corey nodded. Dumb question. She was starting to sweat. “Anyway, the woman I stabbed started gasping and shaking. The other one went for the shank. I scrambled over the table. I was bleeding pretty badly. Next thing I know, my one friend is there. She’s got me down on the floor, and she’s standing over me with a long mop handle. This other gal takes one look at Suze, that’s what we called my friend, and she backs off. Before I know what’s what, Suze’s gone and I’m being cuffed. The one that got away must have grabbed the shank.”

“Who’s Suze?”

“Great big girl. I listened to her stories. We got to be friends.”

Abe was taking notes. “I see.” And after a short silence, “Why were they trying to hurt you?”

“They weren’t trying to hurt me, they were trying to kill me.”

“But why?”

Nick Season was why. But she couldn’t tell him that. Un-unh. Not ever. Corey closed her eyes, massaged the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. When she was back on track, she opened her eyes. “Have you ever been inside a prison at night?”

“No.”

“Guy doing your job, he should spend a night inside.” She hesitated. “People kill each other in prison over little things. I don’t know what I did. Maybe it was just a mistake…some kind of unmeant insult, or a gang deal. Happens all the time.”

“How did you feel after you stabbed her?”

Every shrink she saw asked her that. What did he think she would say…“great?”

She looked right at him. “She was on her knees, making throaty noises, with this pencil sticking out of her neck. How do you think I felt? Out of control. Afraid. Relieved it was her and not me. Mostly, I felt like screaming. But when I opened my mouth, no sound came out.” Her shirt was sticking now, under her arms and at the small of her back.

He set down his pipe, glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid we have to stop.”

Now? She had just done the hard part. “Why?”

“I schedule forty-five minutes for a session. An evaluation usually takes three or four sessions.”

“How can you get me started talking about stuff like that then just turn it off?”

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew how I worked. There are time constraints. I should have explained.”

“That’s not right. Do you think it’s easy to talk about this? It makes me sweaty and cold at the same time.”

“We can continue for another few minutes—”

She interrupted. “I haven’t even talked about Billy, my son. I’m worried about him.”

He checked a calendar. “Can you come tomorrow? Say eleven-thirty?”

“I guess.” She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t getting this, that he was screwing it up. Instead she said, “The picture.” She pointed at the colorful abstract painting behind her. He hadn’t bought that picture. “Your mother give you that?”

“How did you know?” he asked.

“A hunch.” She stood. He directed her out through a door she hadn’t even noticed. It opened right into the hallway. Weird, one door for coming, another for going. She recalled the schoolgirl’s scornful look. Corey wondered if she would ever get this right.

Nick checked his smile, working with a hand mirror he kept in his desk. He flashed on Corey Logan. The woman was worming her way into his mind, a nagging, nasty, waking dream.

He hit a button on his phone, then two numbers.

When Lester picked up the phone, Nick could hear him breathing. No greeting, nothing. He wondered if he waited long enough, Lester might say something. Not likely.

“Corey Logan?” Nick finally asked.

“Her probation guy’s got a history. I’m on it.”

“Speed up the program. Put Riley on it.” Riley was a hot-shot P.I. and sometime bounty hunter. Hiring Riley made this a big deal.

“And her kid?”

“Suggest what we’re capable of. Give her a taste.” Nick cracked his knuckles. “I’ve got a bad feeling,” he added, mostly to himself. Nick knew that feelings didn’t mean much to Lester, one way or another. He, on the other hand, paid attention to his worries.

Nick sighed; he had reason to worry. Corey Logan had threatened him, written down what she knew, then set it up so it would be released to the newspaper if anything happened to her. It had to be a bluff—she had no evidence. Still, he would be a politician soon, and then the press wouldn’t need proof…so it was more of a threat than she knew. What it was…it was a stain, a debasement, hovering just out of reach, poised to soil his candidacy. She did that after two women tried to kill her in prison. She wasn’t stupid.

He wondered, yet again, how much Al had actually told her. His cousin was smart enough, and careful, but she had him on some kind of short, good-father leash. What was that about? Pussy-whipped. That was all he could think of. Which was okay, except several years ago Al had dug up some dirt in L.A. and tied Lester to the Russian diamonds. It was a fluke, a one-in-a-million deal. Al was checking out known diamond traders from the eighties on some case he had caught, and he recognized Lester, the same man Nick had paid him to ferry to Vancouver, B.C. twenty years earlier. This was the kind of thing only Al could have put together. No evidence, but still.

Nick sat back, troubled. Maybe two years now, this had been worrying him. He stopped himself before he started going over and over the same things. The bad worries could suck the juice right out of you.

And he could see how the bitch was working her way under his skin, little by little.