Before I could object, Welle was on his way to the door.
The first words from Barrett's mouth were, "We're way off schedule, Ray. People are waiting next door at the tennis house." He turned his head to face me.
"Doctor, I'm sorry, but we need to wrap this up."
I'd just looked at my watch. The time period I had been promised for the meeting had not been used up. But I didn't protest; I expected the congressman and I would be speaking again and I didn't want to poison the well. I also suspected the final request I planned to make was going to cause him some trouble and I didn't want to antagonize him before I antagonized him.
I needed to get a copy of his case file for the treatment of Mariko. The case materials should have been collected for the initial investigation by Phil Barrett's department at the time of the murders. But I'd searched the materials twice already and they contained no written records from Raymond Welle.
"I understand you have a busy day. I appreciate your time, Congressman. And your candor. One last thing, though. I'll need a copy of your case file. Notes, treatment plan, ancillary contacts. You know what I mean. Locard insists on the written records. It's part of the protocol." I made that part up.
With only a heartbeats hesitation, Raymond said, "I'm sure I don't have that anymore. I think those old clinical files were all shredded. Years ago. When I moved on in my career."
I didn't hesitate any longer than he had.
"I hope not. Ray. State board regulations require that you keep those records available for fifteen years after therapy termination. I wouldn't like to see you reprimanded for violating that kind of thing." I wasn't certain what interval the regs actually specified but I suspected Ray would be more ignorant than I about the regulations of the State Board of Psychologist Examiners.
Ray's cheeks scrunched up and I could hear him force an exhale through his nostrils.
"Really? Didn't know that." His face immediately transformed into something more conciliatory.
"I'll tell you, the fool laws that legislators pass sometimes…" He made a comical face.
"I'll have someone look into the record thing, then. Phil, can you have someone show Dr. Gregory to the door? I promised to make a couple more of those damn phone calls." He smiled and waved goodbye.
Barrett escorted me back to the entry hall. A large table in the center was now nearly covered with a neatly arranged pyramid of Dr. Raymond Welle's two-year-old hardcover book. Toward Healing America: America's Therapist's Prescription/or a Better Future.
Rather snidely, I thought, Barrett said, "Want one? Go ahead. Take one. They're all signed."
I did.
He walked me all the way to the door. He said, "You people at Lo-card are wasting your time. You won't solve this case. Those girls are going to stay dead. And the killers going to stay gone. You, my friend, are on a fool's errand."
Before I could come up with a response, he had turned and walked away and the door was being closed against my back.
One of the men in gray suits was blocking the shortcut that led back to my car through the formal gardens. I waved in his direction as I circled down the long driveway. He didn't wave back.
Since my arrival an hour earlier the streets of the quiet residential neighborhood around the mansion appeared to have been transformed into the parking lot for a convention of limousine drivers. A sound system blared music from the direction of the tennis house. I thought I was hearing a Barbra Streisand ballad. Barbra, I assumed, would not be pleased. I loitered for a while and the music changed to a Garth Brooks number that stopped abruptly as a shrill voice screamed, "I give you the next United States senator from the great state of Colorado…," but clapping and cheers drowned out the final words.
I assumed they were "Representative Raymond Welle." The music resumed. Garth had been replaced by some patriotic march that I couldn't name, but that I assumed was by John Philip Sousa.
I reflected on the introducer's comments-"I give you the next United States senator…"-and decided that allowing for the prices that were being charged for admission to Raymond Welle's fund-raising reception, there might be a whole lot of buying and selling, or at the very least, renting, going on.
But giving7 Certainly not from Welle's side of the ledger.
I haven't met too many national politicians in my life. Seeing them on the news, especially when they are engaging in their four most public activities-raising campaign funds, making laws, and either accusing their opponents of impropriety or defending themselves against charges of impropriety-does not leave me inclined to socialize with them. But the point of my disinclination is moot: the fact that I'm not prone to donate money to their campaigns seems, somehow, to interfere with their desire to pencil me into their social calendars.
Nevertheless, my meeting with Raymond Welle had not left me running for a disinfectant shower, as I feared it would.
I was not surprised that Welle was as a smooth and polished as a river stone. I was surprised that I also found him to be affable, gracious, and personable. He was slippery enough to survive in the treacherous waters of Congress, but he wasn't, well, slimy-and the fact that he could actually talk intelligently about the profession we shared pleased me. The platitude-rich national radio program that had carried him to national prominence on a tide of poorly considered quasi-psychological advice and narrow-minded polemics had not prepared me for the possibility that the man might actually have known what he was doing as a clinician.
This new appraisal gave me caution. If I was viewing him accurately, Welle was an effective chameleon, which made him a more dangerous adversary. And despite the tacit cooperation he had offered during our meeting, Welle and his right-hand man, Phil Barrett, felt like adversaries to me.
I was walking down the road from the manse, skirting a Mercedes limousine that was sporting an American flag from each fender, when I heard my name. Loudly, a female voice called, "Dr. Gregory? Hello-o."
I turned to see a thin woman who appeared to be on the northern side of thirty approaching me from the entrance to the tennis house. I stopped and waited for her. She pulled sunglasses from her eyes and perched them on top of her head.
I decided immediately that she wasn't a native. She was dressed in a chocolate brown gabardine suit that was way too warm for a typical June day at the base of the Rockies. Her skin was so pale it seemed to glow from within her like a pearl. The purse she carried screamed "carry-on luggage" and was so large and heavy it caused her left shoulder to sag a good three inches lower than the right.
I guessed Seattle or Portland.
The wind shifted to the west and a noxious blend of good perfume and stale tobacco wafted my way. The combination smelled like an industrial-strength room deodorizer.
The woman was tall and composed, and as she got closer to me I couldn't steal my attention from her eyes. They were large and the color was the deep green hue of shallow water in the Caribbean. From ten feet away she again said, "Dr. Gregory?
It's you, right?"
Damn. I knew that voice. I'd guessed wrong about the Pacific Northwest. This lady was from Washington, D.C.
"I'm Dorothy Levin. We've talked? I'm a reporter with the Washington Post. Ring any bells?"
"Oh, yes."
"Good. Niceties are covered. I know you're a doctor. You know I'm a reporter.
And you know the story I'm working on." She stretched the collar of her blouse away from her neck with her fingers.
"Is it always this hot here? I thought I was going to be in the mountains."
"Common misconception. Summers tend to be quite warm along the Front Range."
"And dry? Shit, I swear the inside of my nose is cracking into a miniature mud flat and my contacts feel like they're made of Saran Wrap."
I was going to go into a relatively lengthy explanation about the value of good hydration in high-desert climes, but decided against it.