The smell was getting worse and Mrs. Meeker said faintly, “Can we get out of here?”
They went into the outer office where the air was stale but relatively odorless, and Latovsky shut Bunner’s door. Mrs. Meeker staggered to the black vinyl couch and sank down. Latovsky took the typing chair and Lucci leaned against the wall with his arms folded.
“It wasn’t a patient,” she said. “All the files are there.”
“You’re sure.”
“Positive. The folders are numbered, the numbers are in sequence.”
“But the cabinet was wiped.”
“My fault, Lieutenant. I complained about smudges on it. The cleaning people must have polished it.”
“It could still be—”
“Could, I suppose. But none of our office patients are violent or even what you’d call sick. Mr. Kinski sometimes carries on about killing someone, usually his wife. But he’s just old and unhappy. Been clinically depressed on and off for years. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone, especially not Dr. Bunner. He once said Bunny was all that stood between him and the oubliette. Had to look up oubliette... it means secret dungeon.
“Bunny says Mr. Kinski uses anger to cover his sadness, because anger hurts... less...” She started to cry. Tears pooled behind her glasses; she yanked them off, pulled out a snowy man-sized handkerchief, and wiped her eyes and glasses.
The tears were infectious. Latovsky stared past her at the outer door and swallowed until he got rid of the hot lump in his throat. When she was quiet, he said, “Did you happen to ask the cleaning people to polish Dr. Bunner’s tape recorder?”
“No, why?”
“Just wondered.”
They were quiet a moment, then Latovsky said, “Look, Mrs. Meeker, you might be right and it wasn’t a patient. But we’ve got to start somewhere, and maybe it’s arbitrary but we’re starting with male patients between twenty-five and titty.”
“Why male, Lieutenant? The officer who brought me here said a woman called about the shooting.”
Frawley should keep his mouth shut.
Latovsky said, “Yes. But the killer probably didn’t call the police. We figure the woman was in the building or passing by outside and heard the shot.”
Lucci straightened up as if he wanted to say something, then he shook his head and subsided back against the wall.
Latovsky said, “Can you get me a list of those patients, Mrs. Meeker?”
“Sure. We’ve got them computerized by vitals. It’ll only take a minute once the computer comes up.”
She activated it, and a few minutes later Latovsky had a dot-matrix list of twenty-six names. Then Mrs. Meeker put the handkerchief over her face and they went back to the inner office. She pulled the files to match names and found a box of back issues of American Journal of Psychiatry in the closet. “Don’t suppose anyone’ll want these,” she said sadly from behind the handkerchief. She dumped them out and then put the files in the box.
“What about the tapes?” she asked.
Latovsky shook his head. “They’ll take too much time to listen to. We’ll probably be better off with Dr. Bunner’s notes, at least for now.”
They went back out and Latovsky closed the door, knowing he’d probably never see this room again. By next month it would be repainted, the window would be replaced, and there’d be an ad in the local paper: Office for rent, suitable doctor or lawyer, prestige building...
Mrs. Meeker stuffed the handkerchief in her slacks pocket, took a deep breath, and looked at her neat desk. “Can I take my things now?” she asked. “I don’t want to come back here if I can help it.”
“Sure.”
“And the plants? They’ll just die if I leave them. It’s not their fault.”
The lump shot back into Latovsky’s throat, and he swallowed with all his might. He’d made it this far and wasn’t going to let a philodendron and a couple of African violets break him down. “Of course you can take them, Mrs. Meeker.”
She left a little later with a shopping bag with her cardigan, coffee mug, memo pads with a happy face and her name on them, packs of extra pantyhose, and so on. Frawley carried the plants. The door closed on them and Lucci said, “The caller was not just ‘in the building,’ Dave.”
“Oh?” Latovsky was at Mrs. Meeker’s desk with the box of files. It would take a day to get them to behavioral sciences in Quantico, a week to get answers, more time to get the stultifying jargon translated. But Al Cohen was—had been—Bunner’s buddy and consultant. He would know a lot of the men in those tiles, could interpret what Bunner had written about the ones he didn’t know. And Cohen spoke English.
Latovsky turned Mrs. Meeker’s Rolodex looking for Cohen’s number.
“Dave, I said—”
“I heard you.” He found the number and picked up the phone.
“Then pay attention. The caller said Dr. Bunner. She knew his name.”
Latovsky put the phone down. “Then she had to be right here.”
“Exactly.”
“Find her. Get the agent for the building and get names of everyone on this floor.”
“Done.” Lucci rushed out, elated to have something to do that could be done and Latovsky called Cohen’s number. He got the service and told the woman who he was and that it was urgent he find Dr. Cohen.
“You can verify my ID with the troop, ma’am,” he said politely.
A few minutes later, she called back and gave him the number where he could reach Cohen. It was Bunner’s.
“Mary, it’s Dave.”
Her eyes rolled open, looked out blearily at him, then closed again. She was wearing the same slacks and blouse she’d had on when he’d seen her this morning, but her face had aged thirty years. Cohen had given her a giant jolt of something and she was riding it to limbo. He wasn’t sure she even knew who he was.
He sat down on the bed next to her. The mattress tilted with his weight and her eyes opened halfway again, then closed.
“Mary, did you talk to the man who called?”
“Sounded like a nut,” she mumbled. “I’m a shrink’s wife, I know a nut when I hear one.”
“Did you recognize his voice?”
“Uh-uh. It was muffled and garbled, like he had marbles in his mouth.”
“Bunny didn’t know him either?”
“Uh-uh. But the nut said he’d kill himself and Bunny believed him. Bunny believes everyone. It’ll be the death of him... it’s been the death of him. He believed him and he went... he went... he went...”
Her voice trailed away, tears leaked out of her closed eyes, and she turned away from him, hunching over so her shoulder hid her face. “Leave me alone, Dave, leave me alone.”
He went to the door and looked back. Mary Bunner was a tall, strong-bodied woman, but she looked shrunken in the big bed. On the dresser, he saw the cuff links and studs Bunner had worn last night, and a gold pocket watch on a chain with a frat key on it. But he’d never been in this room before, never seen Bunner with the things on the dresser, and they didn’t mean anything to him.
Downstairs would be harder, especially the kitchen, where he and Bunner had drunk beer and coffee, coffee and beer, and eaten almost twenty years’ worth of sandwiches and snacks.
But even the kitchen was strange after the remodeling.
Al Cohen sat at the table nursing a tumbler of brandy. Ada, his wife, was at the stove, lifting pieces of boiled chicken out of a gigantic pot with tears running down her face.
Pete, Bunner’s younger son, sat next to Al. The veins in his eyes had broken from crying and they looked like they were full of blood. Al had told Latovsky he’d tried to give the kid something, but he wouldn’t take it, said he had to be compos mentis to help his mother, a bit of unnecessary, endearing, adolescent gallantry. Across from him was Amie, the Cohens’ son and Pete’s best friend. The kid looked totally lost as if this were his first death, the first disaster Mom and Dad couldn’t fix.