Model Child_a psychological thriller Read online

  “Maybe we should ask him why he killed her,” suggested Norma.

  “I already did.” They looked at him, surprised. Gottlieb usually opted for a slow, deliberate style of interviewing. He took a thorough history, did a careful mental status examination; above all else, he let relations with a patient develop gradually. Not like him, starting off with such a loaded question.

  “Come on, Hal, don’t be a tease. What did he say?”

  “He said he wanted to save the world from her.”

  Dwight broke the silence that ensued. For once there was no banter, no fake Ebonics. “Worst thing is, he probably believes it. Christ, I hate this fucking job sometimes.”

  ⸎

  Gottlieb left GCFI shortly after lunch and drove to the office where he conducted his private practice. He fell into his afternoon routine: opening mail, answering messages, dictating a few letters and insurance forms. Then he began to see a steady stream of patients. He finished at six thirty, and pulled into his driveway three quarters of an hour later.

  Fighting a losing battle to keep his spirits up, he made his way slowly to the house. He wondered what lay in store for him. More precisely, what his son had in store for him. Peter Gottlieb had turned fifteen the previous April. Thoughts of him besieged his father throughout the day, and not uncommonly throughout the night, slipping in and out of his dreams like wraiths. Thoughts that took him back and forth in time . . .

  ⸎

  First, there was the newborn son, inconceivably beautiful with his round perfect face and his wealth of black ringlets. Gottlieb scarcely believed he could have fathered such an exquisite creature. The newborn son, the link to generations stretching forward to the end of time, the holder of infinite possibilities. And then there was the little boy with the serious bright dark eyes and the laugh that boomed like a trombone. The little boy who favored his father’s company over everyone else’s, even his mother’s. Whose idea of a perfect afternoon was to drive around with him while they did errands, and take a walk together in a park, and end it with an ice cream cone or donut. The little boy who didn’t know his father was too fat, with unruly, kinky hair—his father, still deeply self-conscious about his acne scars, and his eyes too close together, and all the rest of his aesthetic failings. The little boy who not only loved his father but accepted him unqualifiedly. Who saw him (was this possible?) as something akin to a hero. Gottlieb’s wife and his mother and brothers loved him—his own father had died when he was nineteen—but not like that.

  And then there was the schoolboy who invariably did well, who never needed prodding to complete his homework or turn in book reports on time. Who took a B+ as a personal affront. Not gregarious, but with a solid coterie of friends. Not athletic, but strong and healthy. Given to walking and swimming, like his father, instead of more pulsating sports. Like his father in a lot of ways: quiet; a creature of understatement; demanding of himself, intolerant of his own errors. An avid reader who vastly preferred books to television. A curious child who asked unanswerable questions. What made them so sure that George Washington never told a lie? How could they prove he didn’t? Why were some people, like his best friend Cal Utley, left-handed? Do animals know they’ll die someday? Why didn’t Jews like them believe in Jesus like everyone else? Could they be wrong? What if he really was the son of God?

  And then there was the boy of nine, blindsided when his parents split up for more than half a year. One evening he did his homework as usual, and he drank a glass of milk and ate a couple of gingersnaps, and his parents said goodnight to him, and he went to bed. Everything was fine. He woke up an hour later to the unaccustomed din of their fighting, which lasted all night long. The next night his parents told him that they wouldn’t be living together for a while. How long was a while, he asked them. They didn’t know. Neither one of them looked him in the eyes when they told him. That was spooky. Unprecedented. It bothered him as much as the news itself.

  And then there was the boy of six months later, reunited with both parents, relieved but wary. Untrusting and shaken. They told him everything had been worked out. That made him feel better, but he had no idea what they meant. He didn’t know they’d had things to work out in the first place.

  Then they moved away, one thousand miles away, to Chicago. He left behind his best friend, and everyone and everything else familiar to him.

  And then there was the eleven-year-old, still reeling from the near-demise and resurrection of his parents’ marriage, still reeling from a move he’d had no say in, and now he had a baby sister. The apple of his parents’ eye, just as he had been, the new focal point of their time and attention. Eleven years of an absolute monopoly, and now he had a baby sister. Sarah Gottlieb, a beautiful child, with her mother’s fine features and fair coloring, resembling her father only in her dark eyes, soft and inquisitive. Sarah Gottlieb, an adorable usurper.

  He’d tried to be the good big brother. He’d held her proudly, chucked her under the chin, enjoyed her smiles and coos. He even loved her in his fashion, even when he resented her the most forcefully, even when he wished she’d die—a thought that filled him with intolerable guilt. The truth of the matter: he didn’t know how he felt about her.

  And now there was the boy of fifteen, the man-child who’d grown too fast for his own or anyone else’s comfort. Whose added girth was disproportionate to his added height. Increasingly unhappy, Peter had turned to food for solace. He might eat three oversized muffins at a sitting. But other times, he scarcely ate at all.

  His smooth boyhood skin had given way to the acne his father knew too well. His openness had given way to little more than a sullen yes or no, more commonly yeah or nah. He withdrew from the rest of the family at every opportunity, sequestering himself in his room. His room, with its slag heaps of clothing and its always-unmade bed, with its scattered books and CDs. His room, with its indescribable smell which Gottlieb could only liken to the office of a busy vet. Gottlieb saw the room as metaphor, as a mirror of his son’s emotional disarray.

  And somewhere deep within this homely, sad, reclusive youth still lurked the beautiful child, serious but happy, still possessed of a sharp wit and a wide-reaching curiosity, still full of infinite promise. Or so believed his father. A belief which sustained him, however much he had to struggle to hold on to it. If he lost it, a large part of him would die.

  ⸎

  Gottlieb let himself in the front door. As he made his way across the living room, he heard a joyous high-pitched shriek.

  “Hi, Daddy!” Sarah flew towards her, throwing her chubby arms around his knees. The highlight of his day, most days.

  He picked her up, kissed her, and went to the kitchen. Sharon, his wife, was getting dinner ready. They greeted each other with a casual hug, which didn’t interrupt her tossing of a salad.

  “Where’s Peter?” he asked, a few minutes later.

  She pursed her lips. “In that squatter’s camp of a room

  of his.”

  “Has he eaten?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Tuna fish, straight from the can, and a couple of Pop Tarts.”

  He thought about going upstairs to Peter’s room, trying to cajole him into having dinner with rest of them. Trying to break through to him, somehow. He thought about it but lacked the heart to carry out the good intention. After dinner—he’d go then. He now had to steel himself to see his son, his one-time greatest joy in life.

  The three of them sat down to eat at the kitchen counter. A light summer supper of salad, jellied consommé, leftover meat loaf. Sharon rarely had the time or inclination to prepare elaborate meals. A clinical social worker with a small private practice of her own, she also worked part time for a nearby office of Catholic Family Services. The token JAP, she dubbed herself.

  Gottlieb glanced across the counter at her. Dark circles lined her eyes, and her crow’s-feet looked more pronounced than usual. Sharon was forty-three. She’d always had a girlish aspect to her, but the gap between her age and
appearance had narrowed lately. A sun lover who’d spent hours at the beach or on the tennis court at every opportunity, she’d begun to pay the price for it. Wrinkles had begun to line her oval face; her smooth hands were roughening and showing spots.

  “You look tired.”

  “No more than usual. I didn’t get out of the office till almost three. An hour later than I planned on.” She took a forkful of salad. “How was your day? How’s life among the bottom feeders?”

  His face darkened. “Damn it, Sharon, I’ve asked you not to call them that.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.” She tapped her chest in mock contrition.

  He reached over to Sarah’s plate and helped her cut the meat loaf into manageable pieces. “As a matter of fact, my day was pretty interesting. I had another meeting with James Shannon.”

  Her curiosity heightened. “Tell me more.”

  “No dramatic revelations, no big insights. He still describes himself as the most ordinary man in the world. He is, too, in most respects. Except for the little matter of what he did.”

  “Is there any chance he didn’t do it?”

  “None. But why? Now that’s the overriding question.” He recounted the theories posited during lunch, paraphrased and full of circumlocutions lest Sarah become too curious.

  “Maybe he has some weird kind of secret life,” she offered. “Something you’d never guess from outward appearances. Like, he’s a Satanic cultist, and he dispatched her as part of some ritual.”

  “Of course. I should have thought of that. Late at night they sneak into the back of the office supply place where he works. They lock up, perform a Black Mass amidst the reams of paper and the laptops, and drink bodily fluids and sacrifice virgins.”

  “What’s a virgin?” Sarah asked.

  “A young girl,” her father answered quickly, hoping that she’d let it go. She did.

  “So give me a better theory,” his wife challenged him.

  He and Sarah helped her clear the table, and she brought in dishes of lemon sorbet. “By the way,” she said, “you got a call from that woman from Public Television. Fuller, Fullerton, I forget her name.”

  “Melanie Fuller.”

  “That was it. Anyway, she said to tell you everything’s all set for Thursday.”

  He frowned. “I can’t wait.”

  “Spare me the coyness, please.” She made a clucking sound. “Admit it, Hal, you’ve come to love the media attention. If they offered you your own TV show, you’d take it in a minute.”

  Gottlieb snorted. “You make it sound as if they’re badgering me around the clock. As if People magazine was getting ready for a cover story on me.” He’d edited a book on forensic psychiatry, written for a professional audience but noticed favorably in the popular press too. He’d also appeared as an expert witness in several high-profile criminal cases.

  “I’ve done what,” he continued, “six interviews spread out over the last two years?”

  “And each time you’ve gotten just a wee bit itchier for the next one.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s interesting, Hal. You really don’t believe that. Doesn’t matter, it’s still true. So what if it is? All of us enjoy a bit of narcissistic gratification, even you.” She turned towards him. “You don’t find it ever so slightly gratifying when they quote the eminent Doctor Gottlieb? When you read about yourself or

  see your face on TV?”

  “Of course I do. So what? It doesn’t mean I yearn for the public eye.”

  “Doesn’t mean you’d shun it either.”

  She stopped to load the dishwasher. Sarah skipped outside to play in the backyard, so her parents had the kitchen to themselves. A silence fell over them. Not an awkward silence, but not an altogether comfortable one either. Not an angry silence, but not particularly friendly. A silence that meant a conversation had been abandoned, rather than resolved. They’d begun to have a lot of them, he noticed.

  CHAPTER V

  “G UY COMES HOME FROM WORK, he finds his girl- friend packin’ up her suitcase. ‘Whass goin’ on,’ he asks her. She glares at him, says, ‘I’m leavin’ you!’ Guy’s so stunned he can’t hardly talk. ‘But WHY? We been gettin’ along so well!’ ‘Because,’ she says, ‘I just found out you’re a pedophile!’ He looks at her, real proud like, smiles. ‘What a big word for a nine-year-old!’”

  It was Dwight’s offering for joke of the week, a tradition they’d maintained for more than a year. A tradition like the homemade brownies Norma brought in every month or so, or the Danish pastries Gottlieb brought, or their occasional lunchtime game of Hearts. Anything to ward off the GCFI doldrums.

  Norma laughed. “Not bad,” she acknowledged. “Very sick, as we’ve come to expect from you, but not bad.”

  The three of them sat in Gottlieb’s office drinking coffee and eating Norma’s brownies. Gottlieb hadn’t come to GCFI the day before and wanted updates on his patients, his most notorious one in particular. “How’s Shannon?”

  “About the same as when you saw him last,” Dwight answered. “Maybe a little more talkative, but still not sayin’ much unless you ask a direct question.”

  “How does he spend his time?”

  “Same as before. Sleeps a lot, paces, reads the Bible. Writes in that composition book of his. Shee-it, I’d like to know what kinda stuff he’s got in there.”

  “We’ll find out, one way or the other. But I’d rather have him give it to us voluntarily.” Gottlieb knew, they all knew, that he could order a shakedown of Shannon’s room at any time and

  examine anything they found there.

  “Any new evidence of psychosis?” he went on. “Strange speech or mannerisms? Posturing?” They both shook their heads.

  “He had some visitors yesterday,” said Norma. “His sister and older brother. His lawyer, too, but that was later. I’d left by then.”

  “Did you get a chance to speak with them?”

  She nodded. “We both did. I spent about an hour with them. Dwight was with me for fifteen or twenty minutes. I haven’t dictated anything, but the notes are in my office. We could go over them, if you’d like.”

  “Okay, but first just tell me about them.”

  “The sister’s quiet, kind of mousy. The brother’s more outgoing. Looks like James, but bigger boned. Pushing sixty, I imagine. Gray hair, not much of it left in front, pot belly. They seem to be regular sorts. Unpretentious, on the somber side.”

  “I think they’re still in shock,” Dwight added. “Can’t say I blame ’em. I mean, here they are, these whitebread types, none of them ever been in real bad trouble, and now they got this brother who maybe gonna find hisself on Death Row.”

  “Did they shed any new light on the family?”

  “Not really.” She took a sip of coffee. “They describe their parents just as he did. Devout, hard-working, not given to great emotional displays.”

  “Any history of mental illness James neglected to mention?”

  “None. No hints of abuse either.”

  “But we saw ’em together. We might get a different story if we saw ’em separately,” Dwight speculated.

  She shrugged. “We might, but I doubt it.”

  Gottlieb leaned slightly forward. “What did they have to say about their brother?”

  “Mundane details. Good baby, didn’t cry much, did the normal things at the normal ages. Had his tonsils out at seven, only time they knew of when he’d been in a hospital. Got the usual playground scrapes and bruises. Nothing big, nothing broken, no head injuries.”

  “How about school?”

  “Just what he tol’ you,” Dwight replied. “Always in the middle. Respectable grades, nothin’ woulda got him into Harvard.”

  “Bedwetting? Fire setting? Cruelty to animals?” These traits made a classic triad in children who often turn out to be sociopathic adults.

  Norma shook her head. “Negative on all counts. The joy of his life was a cocker spaniel named Buster.”

&nbs
p; “Any suggestions of neurosis? Separation anxiety, thumb-sucking, and the like?”

  She shook her head again. “I tell you, Hal, he must have been the most boringly average kid who ever lived. Except for one thing. It sounds like religion was more important to him than it is to most children. Did I mention that he’d been an altar boy?”

  “No, but I’m not surprised.” Gottlieb began to tap his legs impatiently. Shannon’s stark normality was starting to oppress him. “What about his adolescence?”

  “No big storms. One night when he was sixteen or so, he came home after he’d been drinking. His father blew a fuse and grounded him for a month but didn’t hit him. Beginning and end of his substance abuse, to their knowledge. Let’s see, what else? One year he skipped school to catch the opener at Wrigley.”

  “He a real hellion, all right,” muttered Dwight. “Just like the guys I grew up with.”

  “When did he start to date?”

  “They weren’t sure. They weren’t even sure if he dated at all in high school. Girls never seemed to be important to him.”

  Dwight made his eyes bug out, like a caricature of an agitated black man. “Maybe they figured he was one of those ho-mo-sex-uhls we hear about.”

  Norma looked towards him. “I didn’t ask them, but I don’t

  think so. Not their brother Jimmy, not in a million years.”

  “Shee-it, I wish I had a buck for every former Irish Catholic altar boy I been with.”

  “They didn’t say this,” she went on, “at least not directly, but I think they had him pegged as a lifelong bachelor. It caught them off guard when he got married. They knew he’d been seeing Margaret, but they didn’t know—how did the sister put it?—they didn’t know it had been that sort of thing.”

  How did they feel about Margaret?”

  “They liked her. They thought she leaned over backwards to make their brother happy, which was their chief concern. They considered her a good wife, a good mother.” Norma hesitated. “This is interesting, though. I don’t think they were all that crazy about their niece. Not that they badmouthed her, but they didn’t say much good about her either. When they did, it smacked of lip service. I didn’t pick up on any grief about her death.”