Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [123]
“Why do you believe your brother was … intimate with Ana Watkins?”
“You may perhaps think me foolish,” she said. “But I had my suspicions for some time. Then one day I lingered outside the office during one of her sessions, and I heard—” She paused to blink back tears. “I heard sounds that could only mean one thing. Later, I was standing outside in the hall when she came out. She caught my eye, and gave a triumphant little smile, as if to say, ‘See, he’s mine now.’ I hated her then, and I hate her still.”
“If you hate her, then why come to me to help catch her killer?”
“Because if you don’t find him, other women will die. And I could never live with that on my conscience.” “Even if the killer turns out to be your brother?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate him, too?”
“I tried to hate him—oh, how I tried! But I couldn’t. It seems I am incapable of hating him—weak, pathetic creature that I am.”
“You are neither weak nor pathetic, Miss Perkins,” Lee said. “In fact, you are very determined and brave, coming here through a storm like this to tell me something that is obviously so difficult for you to talk about.”
In response, she walked over to the piano, its shiny wood gleaming in the lamplight, and touched the keyboard lightly. Her back to him, she said, “There’s something else I should tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“I wrote the threatening note Ana received in the mail.” “You? But the magazine was found at her house.”
“Yes—because I left it there. After she died I wanted the police to think she had written it herself.” “How did her prints get on it?”
For the first time since she arrived, Charlotte Perkins smiled—a sly, prideful smile. “I saw her reading that same magazine in the waiting room—that’s why I chose it when I made my note.”
“You would make a very good criminal, Miss Perkins,” Lee said.
“But I only did it to scare her! I wanted her to stay away from my brother, not only for my sake, but for her own.”
“Did it occur to you that you could be arrested and prosecuted for your actions?”
“There is something else I doubt my brother told you,” she said, ignoring the question.
“What’s that?”
“He sees patients at a public clinic in the city twice a month. He doesn’t want people to know because it hurts his pride that he can’t make his living entirely from private practice.”
“Where is this clinic?”
“It’s the mental health outpatient clinic at St. Vincent’s.” At the sound of the words, Lee’s mind momentarily froze. “What is it?” she said. “Is something wrong?” “Oh, no,” he said. “You know of it?”
“Yes.”
He knew of it more than he was willing to tell her. He had spent a week there as a patient following his sister’s disappearance, suffering from a clinical depression so severe that he was considered a suicide risk.
“Do you think one of his patients there could be violent?”
“Possibly. But I thought I ought to tell you, in any case.”
She looked at him with an anxious expression, her thin lips compressed, worry lines crisscrossing her forehead like railroad tracks at a busy junction.
“I’ll look into it. Can I ask you something?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There was an entry in Ana’s diary about confronting someone. Do you think that could have referred to your brother?”
She bit her lip again. “I suppose so. One day a few weeks after I realized they were … together … I heard what sounded like an argument in his office, and when she came out after her session, I could see she had been crying.”
“So you think she might have wanted to break it off with him?”
“Perhaps. It was a violation of the doctor–patient relationship, after all.”
Lee thought about how he had nearly violated that relationship himself, and a thin shiver sliced its way up his spine. He put a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder and was surprised when she reacted by leaning into him. He stepped away and coughed to cover his own reaction. “Thank you for everything you’ve told me.”
“What happens now?