Model Child_a psychological thriller Page 6

  “Do you travel much?”

  “Every chance I get. It’s one of the academic world’s few perks. The long vacations lend themselves to travel. I also lecture here and there. Ottawa, Boston, and Denver in the last six months alone.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with history?”

  She sipped the spritzer and shrugged. “Why is anyone obsessed with anything? I guess because I think it’s so important. The most important field there is, debatably.”

  “A rather sweeping statement!”

  “So it is, but I’ll stand by it. I firmly believe the old cliché that those who don’t understand it are condemned to repeat it. Here’s an easy example. I grew up during Vietnam. If Americans had known more about the French experience there, do you think we would have gotten so enmeshed ourselves?”

  He considered. “Maybe not, but it might have happened anyway. People have an extraordinary capacity for making wrong decisions.”

  “Can they be taught to make the right ones?”

  He took a long swallow of the Michelob. “In a way. We can

  help them discover why they made the wrong ones in the first place. Then, so goes the theory, they become freer, and maybe more likely to make better ones.”

  “That’s kind of close to what I said. If you understand your personal history, maybe you’re not condemned to repeat it. By the way, does it really work like that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Were you ever in therapy yourself?” Her blue eyes skewered him. Again, evasion was not an option. “Yes, when I was in medical school. It’s the main reason I became a psychiatrist.”

  “It was useful, I gather.”

  “More than I could tell you. I fear to think what my life would have been like without it.” He finished the last of the beer. “How about you? Were you ever in therapy?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “The thought of it scares me shitless. Very little frightens me, but that does! Suppose I will, if I absolutely have to. If my demons make my life unmanageable. But they haven’t, not yet. They only make it terribly uncomfortable from time to time.”

  Gottlieb raised his eyebrows, saying nothing.

  She finished her drink, and he signaled the waitress for a bill. “You don’t fit my image of a forensic psychiatrist,” she said, as they waited for her to return with it. “Not at all.”

  “What kind of image do you have of one?”

  “A slick glib man who wears thousand-dollar suits and a top of the line Swiss watch. A Concord or a Rolex, say. Someone who’ll testify to anything if he’s paid enough. Someone who would have made O.J. sound like the picture of husbandly concern.”

  Gottlieb glanced at his blue-and-white seersucker sports coat and his five-year-old Seiko. “Yes, that’s me, all right.”

  “How did you get involved in forensic work?”

  “By accident. It started when I was working in the South. I

  did it because no one else would. Defendants wound up in prison, sometimes on Death Row, even though they were blatantly psychotic. And then I got more and more caught up in it.”

  “Do you like it?”

  He strummed the table with his fingertips. “I find it fascinating, more than any other part of psychiatry. Whether or not I like it is another matter.”

  The waitress brought their check. He looked at it, left the appropriate bills, and checked the time. “Well, I suppose I should be heading off. It’s been very interesting talking with you.”

  She gave him a brief slight smile, her first of the evening. “Same here.”

  “We . . . we could do this again if you’d like.” He suddenly felt tongue-tied; he hadn’t been so forward with a woman in two decades.

  She pulled a pen from her purse, tore off a piece of her napkin, jotted down her number, and handed it to him. “Call me, if you’d like.”

  “I will.”

  The temperature outside had fallen, and a breeze was coming off the lake. She turned to him as they prepared to part. “Why don’t you sleep well?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned his gaze upward. The sky was putting on a brilliant twilight spectacle, swatches of orange and magenta against the fading blue. In the east were darker streaks of indigo.

  “It’s another long story,” he answered finally.

  CHAPTER VII

  “W E’RE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR TIME,” began Rita Tierney, diffident and ill at ease, as she and her brother sat in Gottlieb’s office. She was gaunt, with poorly dyed reddish-blonde hair, the dark roots still apparent. Her plain black dress would have been suitable for a modest funeral. No makeup; no jewelry except for a wedding band and a small gold cross around her neck. She hasn’t expected much from life, thought Gottlieb, and she’s had her expectations met.

  “We know how busy you are,” added Timothy, her brother. “But we really wanted to have the chance to talk with you.” A beefy man, he wore a white shirt open at the collar, a tan sports coat, and neatly pressed khakis. The open collar displayed a narrow strip of undershirt.

  “If there’s any information we can give you, if there’s anything we can do to help Jimmy . . .” His voice trailed off into a whisper.

  “We’re hoping that you’ll help us too,” implored Rita. “Help us understand what happened. It’s been what, close to a month now? I still can’t make myself believe it. It’s just a nightmare, I keep thinking. I’ll wake up any minute now.”

  “I’ll try to answer your questions the best that I can,” responded Gottlieb, “but I still have more questions of my own than answers. Now I know you met last week with Ms. Caldwell and Mr. Sanderson, so forgive me if we go over some of the same ground.”

  “Where should we start?” asked Rita.

  Gottlieb crossed his legs and folded his hands on top of his knee. “Wherever you want.”

  Timothy leaned towards him. “Let me start by saying this.

  Of all the people I’ve ever known—relatives, friends, neighbors, everyone—Jimmy’s the one least likely to commit a violent crime.”

  Rita agreed with a forceful nod. “He hated violence, always did, ever since he was a little boy. The other night I was thinking about something I hadn’t thought about in years. It was when our father took all of us to see professional wrestling at the old International Amphitheater. You know, over on Forty-Second and Halsted.” Gottlieb nodded. “This would have been in 1956 or ’57.” She turned to her brother. “Do you remember, Tim?”

  “Of course I do! I used to love those wrestlers! Gorgeous George, Argentina Rocca, Killer Kowalski, and the rest of them. They put on a great show, those guys.”

  “So, the whole family went,” continued Rita. “Now everyone knew that most of the time those wrestlers faked it. They slammed each other left and right; they’d jump up and crash down on each other’s faces, but it was all like a script. No one got hurt, at least not usually. Everyone knew they were faking, but it bothered Jimmy anyway. A lot of times he’d turn away, he wouldn’t look at what was going on. I think he was glad when it was over. The rest of the family wanted to go there again, but not Jimmy. He never did.”

  “Did you ever see him become violent with anyone, under any circumstances?” They shook their heads in unison. “How about when he drank?”

  “I only saw him once when he’d been drinking. That is, when he’d had more than a beer or two.” Rita recounted the story she’d told Dwight and Norma, the only such occasion that they knew about.

  “He never had much taste for alcohol,” Timothy elaborated. “I also think he had a fear of it. The whole family does. We’re Irish, we know what it can do.”

  “He must have gotten angry once in a while. When he did, how did he show it?”

  “Well, it didn’t happen very often,” Rita answered him, “but

  when it did he’d keep it bottled up. He’d get real quiet. Vincent, he’s our other brother, was the one with a temper, but not Jimmy.”

  Gottlieb went quickly through their brothe
r’s formative years. There were no startling new revelations. Then he turned to James’s relationship with Margaret. “I believe you told Ms. Caldwell that you were surprised when he got married.”

  “I can’t speak for the rest of the family, but I was,” acknowledged Timothy. “It’s not that he disliked women. I mean, it’s not like he was, uh, queer or something.” Gottlieb tried to keep from smiling as he recalled what Dwight theorized the week before. Maybe they thought he was one of those ho-mo-sex-uhls we hear about . . .

  “Tell me about your sister-in-law,” he forged ahead.

  “Margaret was a sweetheart,” said Rita. “She had a sunny, even disposition, and it was just about impossible to get her riled up. I couldn’t imagine her being mean to anyone. It simply wasn’t in her.”

  “She was always there if you needed her; she always did what she could to help,” her brother added. “Danny and Mary, that’s my son and daughter-in-law, they had a terrible thing happen a couple of years ago. Their house burned to the ground. So there they were, this young couple with a three-year-old daughter, and they had nothing. The whole family helped them, gave them clothes and money, did whatever they could for them. Margaret was wonderful. Apart from giving them all kinds of stuff, from sheets and blankets to pots and pans, she was practically a full-time babysitter while Danny and Mary went all over Chicago trying to find a new place, and that was in addition to their regular jobs. She cooked and baked for them, did their laundry, did everything. And she never waited to be asked, she just volunteered. I remember thinking at the time, she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.”

  “Were they happily married?”

  “Yes.” Tim hesitated momentarily. “At least, I think they

  were.”

  “You’re not certain?”

  “Can anyone be certain about someone else’s marriage? There was this foot doctor, had an office down the hall from me. Nice enough fellow, or so we thought. A real family man. He’d talk your ear off about his wife and kids. Well, last year, he skipped town with his secretary. I heard he was in

  Florida—”

  “They seemed happy,” Rita broke in impatiently. “Not that they were lovey-dovey. None of us are. But they seemed comfortable together. They liked the same things. They shared the same beliefs and values. They seemed to want the same thing out of life.”

  “What was that, do you think?”

  “To get through life honorably,” replied Timothy, “with as few complications as possible. If they enjoyed themselves along the way, they’d consider that a bonus. But it wasn’t their chief aim.”

  “How did he cope with her medical problems?”

  Rita twisted the gold cross around her neck. “Better than I would have guessed. Now I wouldn’t call Jimmy exactly spoiled, but he and Vincent were the younger ones, and they were used to being taken care of. But as Margaret got sicker and sicker, Jimmy did more and more. More of the cooking and housekeeping, more of everything. He never made a big deal about it. He just did it.”

  “How did he cope with her dying?” Gottlieb asked quietly. He still posited a lingering severe depression as the most likely cause of what had happened. A depression severe enough to turn psychotic.

  “He was heartbroken,” answered Timothy. “He went through the motions. He would come to family gatherings, he’d try his best to be a part of things, but he wasn’t there.

  “He did what he had to do,” went on Timothy.“ He went to work, he cared for Christina, but all the joy, all the contentment had left his life. He didn’t put it into just those words, but that was the sense you got from him.”

  “I don’t think he ever thought of suicide,” elaborated Rita, “but a couple of times he told me that he would have liked to be with her.”

  “We’re talking about right after she died, the first nine months or so,” said Timothy. “And then he seemed to get a little better.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “By small things. He walked more briskly, his shoulders didn’t slump so much. Someone would tell a joke at a family get-together, and maybe he’d laugh. Once in a great while he’d even tell one himself.”

  “Vincent’s birthday is in March,” Rita added. “This year, Tim and I made plans to take him to a Blackhawks game and out to dinner afterward. We invited Jimmy to come along. And he did, he came too. I was pleasantly surprised, I guess I really didn’t think he’d do it. He wouldn’t have considered it the year before.”

  Gottlieb sipped cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup and contemplated his next round of questions. He wanted to steer the discussion towards Christina. “I’d like to know more about his relationship with his daughter,” he resumed. When he mentioned her, he noticed their expressions stiffen.

  “It wasn’t bad, as best we could tell,” Rita answered slow-ly. “He did his best to be a good father.”

  “Not that she made it easy,” bit off Timothy.

  Gottlieb turned towards him. “You didn’t like her?”

  The optometrist picked his words carefully. “She wasn’t the sort of child you could warm up to easily. It was like she had a wall around her, ten feet thick.”

  “I would have liked to like her.” The tinge of distaste on Rita’s face gave way to sadness. “Vincent has no children, and Tim here has two sons, so she was my only niece. I would have liked to like her, but . . .”

  But what?” Gottlieb prodded.

  “Like Rita said before, we’re not a lovey-dovey bunch,” her brother elaborated. “We may not hug and kiss a lot. We don’t spend all our free time together. But we care about each other, in our fashion. We may not advertise our emotions on billboards, but we have them. But Christina! If she had them at all, she kept them locked up behind that wall of hers.”

  “She was the coldest person I’ve ever known, adult or child,” his sister added. “No one else came close.” Gottlieb sat back in silence, not wanting to interrupt the flow.

  “I’m no expert on kids,” added Timothy, “but I always had a sense that she was different from most of them. The things that other children care about—their friends and families, their pets, their toys and games and everything—she could take them or leave them. There was an amazing self-sufficiency about her.”

  “I’ll never forget the way she was at Margaret’s funeral,” recalled Rita. “Well-behaved, like she always was, but she never shed a tear. Not through the wake, the funeral mass, not even the burial. Never! Some of the people thought she was in shock. Myself, I didn’t believe that for a second.” She paused. “God forgive me for saying so, but I didn’t think her mother’s death meant very much to her.”

  Her brother turned towards her, surprised. “You felt that way too?”

  Gottlieb waited for further elaboration, but none came. “How were things between her mother and her?”

  “Calm enough. At least, that’s how it looked,” Rita answered. “There was none of that mother-daughter nonsense you hear about, no yelling or hysterics. Margaret never complained about her. Of course, Margaret never complained about anything. But I’ll tell you something, Doctor. She worried about her. They both did, they felt she wasn’t right. They even took her to some kind of psychologist.”

  Gottlieb jerked his head up sharply. James Shannon hadn’t

  mentioned this to him before.

  “You have to understand,” broke in Timothy, “that’s a real big step for a family like ours. We tend to keep our business to ourselves.”

  “How old would she have been then?”

  They turned to each other, uncertain. “Eleven or twelve?” Rita answered tentatively. “It was around the time they tried to send her to that camp.” Gottlieb reached for his note pad, jotted down a quick memo to himself.

  Changing course, he asked more questions about the period between the death of Margaret Shannon and the present, especially the very recent past. The answers jibed with what Dwight and Norma had said to him. James Shannon showed no obvious changes in behavior,
speech, or personality just prior to his daughter’s murder. He gave no evidence of suffering from a physical illness. He made no allusions to major changes in the offing; he gave away no possessions; he gave no hints that others would have to take care of things. He made no threats, however veiled, to kill himself or anyone else.

  “Just one final question,” concluded Gottlieb. “When was the last time you saw your brother before Christina’s death?”

  “It was five or six weeks ago,” replied Timothy. “Early June, the first real hot spell of the summer. We have an in-ground pool, and we invited Jimmy and Christina over for a swim. An ordinary day, as I recall. We swam, we talked about this and that, and I made us burgers on the grill. Jimmy had his customary beer or two, no more.” He pointed to his sister. “We invited Rita and her family too, but they’d gone out of town for the day.”

  “What was he like? What were they like together?”

  “He was quiet, the way he usually was. He didn’t seem upset

  or worried about anything. They didn’t fight, didn’t seem dis-

  turbed with one another.”

  “And Christina?”

  “Same as always. Not snotty, but just this close to it.” He

  held his right hand in front of him, keeping his thumb and index finger a fraction of an inch apart. “She stayed off by herself, for the most part. Impossible to tell if she enjoyed herself or not.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that she was snotty,” he backed off. “The thing is, Christina had decent manners. Polite enough, and she always said please and thank you. But—I don’t know exactly how to put this—it’s as if she was polite to you because she didn’t care enough about you to be rude.”