Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [92]
Perkins regarded him with a mixture of disappointment and pity. “I fear you’ve been chasing criminals too long, Detective. Your mind seems to be stuck permanently in the gutter.”
Unperturbed, Butts took a bite of his cookie, crumbs tumbling onto his trousers; a few of them fell onto the carpet. As Perkins watched, Lee saw his hands twitch and jerk. It occurred to him that Perkins might have OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, in which case it would be very difficult for him to watch crumbs falling on his carpet. The twitching might be his impulse to scoop them up.
“It’s my job to consider all the angles,” Butts said placidly. “So you’re saying you never laid a hand on her?”
“Even if I had been tempted—which I wasn’t, by the way—I would never betray my profession or my patients like that. I merely assisted in guiding her thoughts where they were headed and recorded what she said. Why?” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Was her murder a sex crime?”
Lee intervened. He wanted to give Perkins as little information as possible.
“No,” he said, “but with an attractive young woman we have to consider all the possibilities.”
“I see,” Perkins said, giving him a searching look. Lee thought Perkins was clever enough to sense he might be lying, but kept his face blank as a poker champion—or so he hoped.
“I hope you will appreciate the delicacy of our task,” Lee added, realizing once again that he was beginning to sound like Perkins, adopting his quaint and archaic manner of speech.
Perkins smiled. “As to the answer to your question, Detective, Ana wasn’t a member of our faith. But she was becoming interested in it, especially as she found herself repeatedly recollecting a past life. She was beginning to think we were on to something.”
“And what about you?” Butts asked. “Did you encourage her belief?”
“I neither encouraged nor discouraged it. As her therapist, it is—was—my job not to tell her what to believe, but to support her in the search for truth.”
“And how was that going—her search for truth?”
“As I indicated, I felt she was on the verge of a real breakthrough.”
“Does it usually happen like that?” Butts asked, leaning forward so the small pile of crumbs on his trouser leg tumbled to the floor. “I mean, that’s kind of strange to know you were abused but not who did it?”
“It’s not all that unusual, Detective,” Perkins replied with a dismayed glance at the crumbs scattered on the expensive wool carpet. “When things are deeply buried in the unconscious mind, you’d be surprised. They can emerge any which way, years or even decades later, in bits and pieces, all higgledy-piggledy sometimes. As a therapist, you have to be flexible—and ready for whatever emerges.”
“Well, I guess that’s where your job and mine are alike,” Butts remarked. “We both have to be ready for whatever emerges.”
Butts had a friendly smile on his face, but Perkins frowned at him, perhaps suspicious he was now the one being mocked. Lee had to hand it to the stubby detective for turning the tables so neatly—in spite of his rumpled appearance and unsophisticated manner, Butts was a crafty investigator with a keen mind. He used his homely ways to mislead suspects into a sense of false superiority, catching them off guard, as he had just done with Perkins.
Their host rose from his chair and pulled his gold watch from his vest pocket.
“Oh, dear,” he said, “you’ll have to forgive me. I am chairman of the Neighborhood Watch committee, and I have a meeting in twenty minutes.” He smiled at Butts. “You were right, Detective—our jobs are not dissimilar at all.”
“One more thing,” Lee said as they walked toward the door. “I don’t suppose you’d let us have a look at your patient files, just in case Ana’s killer was—”
“One of my patients?” Perkins replied. “Oh, dear me, no—that’s highly unlikely. And I’m afraid I couldn’t violate doctor–patient confidentiality