Anne lowered her head once more and a tear fell into her lap. Martha covered her mouth with her hand as if to stop herself from talking. Shelby focused on Cara, watching her intently. Ginny, who hadn’t yet spoken, took off her large silver-and-onyx ring and then put it back on, as if this action in some way centered her.
Cara had stopped mid-sentence but clearly had something else she wanted to say.
“Go on,” I encouraged.
“His name was Philip Maur. It was bad enough that he was missing. Then last Friday the New York Times reported that he’d been killed.”
I was shocked and hoped it didn’t show on my face.
Davina, who had started to cry, asked me, “Did you see the article?”
“I did,” I said, and clearly remembered that moment in the greenroom at the Today show when I’d read the story and seen the letters at the bottom of the page that spelled out Detective Noah Jordain’s name.
“The problem is, how do we cope with this?” Finally, Ellen got to the point of why they were in my office. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. Men have left, but of their own volition. A few guys have gotten sick, but Christ, no one has died. What do we do? How do we cope with this?” she asked again, her voice tight and agitated.
Now that someone had exposed the problem, they all spoke at once, and I had to stop them and explain that they needed to go one at a time.
“A lot of us knew Philip really well. He’d been with the society for the past eight years.” Davina said.
“We’ve all been with him, haven’t we?” Martha asked, looking around the room.
Everyone nodded.
“We don’t know what to do,” Anne said. Her voice was musical and studied. I recognized its cadence and wondered if she was an actress.
Louise, who also wore sunglasses that covered more than a third of her face, and who had a faint Boston accent, said, “We can’t talk about this with anyone outside of the society. It’s driving us crazy. We don’t know what to tell our friends or families about our melancholy. I burst into tears at the office this morning and my boss, whom I am incredibly close to, asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her. What am I supposed to do with all this grief?”
Around the room, with nods or murmurs, they all acknowledged that this was what they wanted me to help them with.
“There’s something else,” Ellen said. She looked angry, and tucked her hair behind her ears as if she was getting ready for a fight. I noticed the large ruby studs in her earlobes. “From the story in the paper, it doesn’t sound like the police have any leads. What if his death has some connection to the society? What if one of us has something to do with it?”
“Don’t you see? Any one of us could be involved with his murder,” Martha whispered. “What if it’s because he’s part of the society that Philip’s dead?”
Fifteen
Officers Tana Butler and Steve Fisher sat in an unmarked car parked on East Sixty-fifth Street between Madison and Park Avenues, across the street and four doors down from a turn-of-the-century limestone building.
“You wouldn’t think to look at it that it’s a sex clinic,” Fisher said.
For the first time, Butler paid attention to the building’s architecture: the elegant facade and decorative wroughtiron door.
“I guess not.”
“And if you didn’t know, nothing about the name on that nice little brass plaque would give it away. The Butterfield Institute could be anything, you know? A high-level think tank. An art school.”
Butler looked at her watch. They’d been sitting in the car since 6:45 p.m. and it was almost eight. “You sure there’s no back door to this place?”
“Nope.”
“Well this doesn’t make sense. She’s been in there for more than an hour. And why was she wearing a wig?”
“Maybe she’s doing some undercover investigation with one of the therapists. Pretending to be a patient instead of a reporter. Makes sense. The case has a sexual component. Why wouldn’t she do some follow-up with a sex therapist?”
“I guess. But how do you explain all the other women who went in there along with her?”
“It is a clinic, Tana. I’d bet most people go after work. Or maybe there’s some group thing going and they all wound up going in at the same time.”
Butler’s cell phone rang. It was Jordain, and she gave him an update on where they were, how long they’d been there, and the odd detail of Betsy Young wearing the wig.
When she got off the phone, she filled Fisher in on Jordain’s call. While they talked, they watched the Butterfield’s front door. A young couple came out; the woman looked visibly upset.
“Have you ever been to a therapist?” Butler asked.
Fisher shook his head. “You?”
“For a few weeks after I-” She broke off. The door to the institute had opened again and Young walked out. She turned left, in the opposite direction of the car, and started walking toward Park Avenue.
Fisher turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking space. The one easy thing about tailing someone in Manhattan was the traffic. Even at night, there were always a few cars on the street.
Even so, Betsy noticed the sedan trailing her.
Sixteen
The man was stretched out and tethered to the gurney with leather straps, but they were no longer buckled. He couldn’t get up and walk away anymore. His eyes were shut. His cheeks were hollow. His skin was ashen. It was a color that was without color. One doesn’t realize how many shades of yellow, peach and pink make up flesh tones until one has seen a body drained of all those colors.
Timothy Wheaton’s skin was exposed to the air-conditioning and yet he didn’t shiver or shake. He did not look like he was sleeping. A sleeping man has his head bent to one side. Or his fingers curled up under his chin. Or one of his feet twitches. This man looked dead.
It was midnight. Wheaton had been there for exactly four days. That was long enough. It was time to get to work.
The light exploded, illuminating the previously darkened room.
If a man was just sleeping, he might have sensed the brightness and opened his eyes, but Timothy Wheaton didn’t, not even when the camera’s flash went off for the second time.
The photographer smiled. After all these years of using a camera only for reference, it was satisfying to use it now creatively.
The process had been easier with this second man than with the first. The third would go even more smoothly. If there was a third. That was not yet decided.
It was a long walk to the darkroom, where one wall was covered with cork and more than a dozen shots of Phil Maur were pinned up in neat, even rows. Several of them had been sent to the New York Times. Others were too private to show to anyone. Every step had been documented: setting the stage, trapping the man, restraining him, preparing him and then rendering him helpless.
As each new, still-wet shot of Timothy Wheaton came out of the developer bath, it was added to the wall.
Both Philip and Timothy had been easy to seduce. Flattery and interest got them to settle down in the big comfortable chair, sip a glass of amber-colored liquor and talk about their sexploits. Neither of them had guessed that, along with the Scotch, they were ingesting liquid Thorazine.
They ignored the first relaxing effects of the drug because they were drinking and weren’t surprised to feel a slight buzz. But by the time their eyelids became heavy, they had trouble lifting their hands and standing up. Once the drug completely kicked in, they were harmless.
The photographer had no trouble undressing them. In fact, Philip Maur had helped undress himself, thinking he was having a drunken adventure. He’d even been able to sprout an erection. That had been interesting: sex with a half-dead man who was helpless but hard.