Inside Out (25 page)

She noticed he omitted Suzanne’s name. “It still won’t confirm that he assaulted either Lynn or Suzanne outside of the prison,” she said.

“No, we’re still beating the air on that one. But one step at a time.”

And then Nat remembered something. “Leo, we definitely need to get ahold of Ross Varda.”

He rolled his eyes. “I told you, Suzanne doesn’t—”

“Not for Suzanne. Father Joe saw him.”

Leo leaned forward in his chair. “What do you mean?”

Nat hit her intercom. “Paul, track down Ross Varda. Get him on the phone for me. It’s urgent.”

Leo was putting it together. “You’re telling me the priest was a patient of Varda’s?”

“And there’s no confidentiality stricture now. It doesn’t carry past the grave.”

Ross Varda apologized when he finally arrived at Nat’s office in midafternoon. “My sister took ill and I had to take her to the doctor.”

“I hope she’s going to be all right,” Nat said.

He smiled, but she detected a shadow of worry on his face. Nat wondered how sick Varda’s sister was, but she sensed from the psychiatrist’s lack of response that he didn’t want to discuss it.

“I presume you asked me here to meet with Suzanne. I got word from the hospital that she was released this morning,” he said. “I presume she knows about the priest’s suicide. It’s been on the news all day, although there’s been no information as to why—”

“The police are trying to keep things quiet until they gather more facts.” She gestured to a chair. He sat down, but grudgingly. “I’d really like to see Suzanne as soon as possible.”

“She doesn’t want to see anyone right now.”

“Then why am I here?” There was a little edge to his voice. Without responding directly, she pressed her intercom button and asked her clerk to get in touch with Leo and let him know

Ross Varda was here. “You can probably reach him out at CCI Grafton,” she added.

She knew she should wait for Leo to get back to her office before questioning Varda, but she had no idea how long it would be until he showed up. She figured she could always fill him in. Besides, Leo and the psychiatrist hadn’t exactly hit it off up to now. She might get more out of Varda talking alone to him.

“I presume this is about Father Joe Parker.”

“You told me that he was a patient of yours.”

Varda lifted one eyebrow but made no response. What psychiatrist ever offered anything without a bit of coaxing, if then?

“Did he confess to raping Lynn in prison?” Nat decided a straightforward question was her best offense.

“Not in so many words,” Varda said after a lengthy delay. “He was aware that Suzanne saw them—”

Varda looked suddenly weary. “He never felt he had anything to fear from Suzanne,”

“Because she was afraid of him? Or because she thought she was in love with him?”

“Sometimes the line can blur between fear and love,”

“Do you think that line is still blurred? After all, Suzanne did finally admit at least some of what happened.” In saying this, Nat was reminded that Suzanne never had actually spelled out what her own relationship had been to the priest.

“I won’t really know the answer to that question until I can talk with Suzanne,” Varda said. “I must tell you I’m concerned about her mental state. She has to be experiencing a vortex of conflicting feelings now that the priest has committed suicide. I’m sure a part of her is blaming herself for having betrayed him. And then there’s the sense of loss, abandonment—”

“Surely another part of her has to feel some relief,” Nat interrupted, not certain whether she was angry at Suzanne or Varda at the moment. Probably both: Suzanne for no doubt having these feelings, and Varda for being so damn calm and accepting about it.

“I’m confident that relief will come in time, but first she is going to need to process these other emotions. I hope you’ll do everything in your power to encourage Suzanne to let me see her as soon as possible.”

“I’ll do what I can, but it’s got to be her decision,” she repeated.

Varda nodded.

“You treat other inmates over at Grafton. Have any of
them
been raped by Father Joe?” Although Leo was probably out at Grafton that very minute trying to find out the answer to that question himself, Nat figured she had nothing to lose by asking Varda directly.

“You know I can’t—”

“You don’t have to name names,” she said impatiently. “Did Father Joe tell you about any other women—”

“I think you have the wrong impression of the priest, Superintendent. It wasn’t that Father Joe was your typical sexual predator and used his position within the prison to have sexual relations with every attractive female inmate with whom he had contact.”

“ ‘Sexual relations’? You mean
rape.”

Varda’s eyes dropped away, troubled. “We all have a dark side, Superintendent. Even priests.”

“Maybe, but most of us manage to keep that ‘dark side’ in check. Especially priests.”

“He was a sick man. I thought I could help him. 1 failed.”

“You not only failed. You sat back and did nothing while he raped two of your patients.”

He appeared momentarily puzzled, but then he nodded. “You mean Suzanne.”

“Am I wrong?”

He hesitated. “I don’t think Suzanne would call it rape. She never felt that he forced her to have sex.”

Nat gave a harsh laugh.

“Yes, I know,” he said somberly. “It’s always rape in that kind of situation. But all I can tell you is that Suzanne did feel he cared for her. And I think she was right.”

“Is that what Father Joe told you? That he ‘cared for’ Suzanne?”

“Yes.”

Nat’s stomach was churning with anger and disgust. “And what about Lynn? Did he ‘care for’ her, too?”

Varda sighed. “The priest’s feelings about Lynn were complicated, at best. Father Joe only met with me for a few sessions. Far too brief for us to even make a dent in unraveling all his feelings.”

“Did he confide in you about having brutally stabbed Lynn? Did he tell you why?”

“Father Joe terminated therapy with me months ago. I’ve had no contact with him since.”

“Did you make any effort to see Father Joe after Lynn’s attack?”

Varda shook his head.

“But you did think it could have been him,” she pressed.

“I hoped he would get in touch with me, but he didn’t.” “You hoped Father Joe would confess to having tried to kill Lynn?”

“If he had, all I could have done was endeavor to convince him to turn himself in. ”

“Do you think you could have convinced him?”

“No.” His expression was forlorn. “I wish I could have done more. People frequently say doctors think of themselves as God. Believe me, I have never felt that way. Being a psychiatrist is, at the least, a humbling experience. At times, it can fill me with utter despair and a terrible sense of failure. Sometimes I wonder why 1 go on trying.”

Varda glanced at his watch. “Fm due at my sister’s for an early dinner. Fm afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you, Superintendent.”

He smoothed down his gray sports jacket, adjusted his paisley tie. “Would you at least let Suzanne know I asked after her? And that I’m here for her whenever she feels ready to see me?”

“Of course.” Her phone rang. “Just a sec, Ross. Maybe that’s Detective Coscarelli. He may have some other questions—” she said as she picked up.

“Superintendent Price?” It was a woman’s voice. Vaguely familiar.

“Yes?”

“It’s Claire Fisher. Dr. Bell’s nurse.” There was a note of urgency in her voice.

“Yes, of course. Is something wrong, Claire?”

“Yes, well ... I don’t know. I found . . . something tucked behind one of Lynn’s old files. You see, I was cleaning out—” “What did you find, Claire?”

“A loose-leaf binder with a thick sheaf of handwritten pages inside.”

“Lynn’s handwriting?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Does anyone else know you’ve found it?”

She hesitated. “I. . . I’m not sure.” She sounded clearly anxious now.

“What do you mean?”

“Well . . . Dr. Bell was in the file room with me when ... I don’t know if he saw it.”

“You didn’t show it to him.”

Again, she hesitated. “No. No . . . I. . . There are some things I haven’t told you ...”

Yes, Nat was thinking, she was sure there were. Like the fact that Lynn and Harrison Bell had been having an affair. It suddenly struck Nat that the voice on that tape Leo had played for her at the precinct house might not have been an ex-patient of Bell’s at all. It could have been Claire Fisher.

“Look, I don’t feel comfortable talking here,” Claire said in a lowered voice. “Could you possibly come over to my apartment this evening? I’ll bring . . . it. . . home and give it to you there.”

“Sure. What time—?”

“I need to run some errands when I leave here. Would seven be okay?”

“Seven is fine. Just give me your address.”

Nat scribbled it down as she said it, then she heard a male voice in the background—Harrison Bell’s?—and Claire abruptly clicked off.

Varda was watching Nat closely.

“Lynn’s journal?” he asked.

“Possibly.”

“Good. That’s good it turned up.”

“Yes. It might help. But, obviously, there won’t be anything in it since the attack. Even if she wrote about Father Joe and what he did to her in prison, it won’t prove he was the one who tried to kill her. Or Suzanne.”

“No,” Varda said. “That’s true enough.”

“Still, she might have written something about the priest contacting her, even confronting her since she’s been in prerelease— possibly threatening her not to reveal what took place between them.”

“It’s possible,” Varda said.

“Then again,” Nat said thoughtfully, “Lynn might have written about someone else she feared. This is far from an open-and-shut case.”

twenty-two

Sometimes I wonder—would it have been easier if I wasn’t able to pass? Would I have posed less of a threat?

L. I.

"A COMPLETE WASTE of time,” Leo said glumly. It was nearly six p.m. and he’d just come back from CCI Grafton, having spent most of the afternoon there. “If the priest was messing with any other inmates, they’re not talking. As for the staff, they all seem genuinely shocked by the suicide. And they had nothing but good things to say about Father Joe,” Leo said sourly.

He started for the door.

“Leo—”

“Later. I need to talk to Suzanne again,” he said tightly.

Nat went after him, grabbing his jacket sleeve. “Not a good

idea, Leo. Not the way you’re feeling right now. Besides, I have something important—”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Natalie.”

“This isn’t about your job. It’s personal.”

“Well, then, don’t mess with my personal life, either,” he snapped.

His words were like a cold slap in Nat’s face. She let go of his sleeve and stepped back.

Leo winced. “I’m sorry, Natalie. That didn’t come out. . . That’s not what—Shit.”

A sharp rap on her door startled them both.

It was Jack. He stepped into her office, looked from her to Leo then back to her again. “You okay?”

So much for her ability to camouflage her feelings. “What is it, Jack?”

Jack slowly shifted his gaze over to Leo again. “Your partner’s here. He’s looking for you.”

Mitchell Oates, who was standing in the anteroom, started for her office as soon as he caught sight of Leo.

“What’s up?” Leo was all business now as he zeroed in on his partner.

“We gotta go,” Oates said crisply. “Now. We got a call from a doc over at Claire Fisher’s apartment—”

Nat’s mouth went dry. “Claire Fisher? What happened?”

Claire Fisher’s one-bedroom apartment was on the fourth floor of a brick-and-stone Edwardian mansion in South Boston that had been converted into condominium apartments a dozen years ago. It was small but bright thanks to large windows, high ceilings, and linen-white walls. The decor was simple but tasteful.

A taupe-colored cotton couch and lounge chair, a Berber rug on the pale wood floors, an antique trunk serving as a coffee table on top of which was an oversized book of Impressionist paintings and a blown-glass vase filled with a mix of yellow roses and white daisies that appeared to be only a day or two old.

Dr. Julie Morganstein, the woman who’d discovered Claire’s body, was the owner of the condo. Claire Fisher had not only been her tenant, but a friend. They’d met while Julie was an intern at the Boston Harbor Community Pain Clinic.

“We weren’t all that close,” the doctor was saying, her voice a little shaky, her fair complexion ashen. She was a petite woman with straight brown hair pulled back from her face with simple silver barrettes. She was wearing a black light wool pantsuit. Her jacket was open, and Nat noticed several red smudges on her white silk overblouse. Blood. Nat also noticed the doctor’s slightly rounded belly. Given her otherwise slender-to-almost-waiflike figure, Nat deduced that the woman must be pregnant. Probably in her fourth or fifth month. Nat was instantly concerned that the trauma the doc had just been through might have some detrimental effect on the pregnancy.

“Let me make you a cup of tea,” Nat offered, thinking that what the poor woman really needed was a shot of whiskey. But not for a pregnant woman. Tea would have to suffice. But Julie shook her head.

“I’m fine.” She smiled wanly. “Well, no, not fine at all, but . . . really, I couldn’t drink anything.”

Her eyes strayed toward the closed bedroom door. On the other side of that door, Claire Fisher’s body lay in a small puddle of blood on her beige carpet, two bullet wounds in her chest, at least one of which had proved fatal.

“I came over to bring ...” The doctor’s eyes shifted to a large cardboard box sitting near the front door. “It’s a new lighting fixture for the dining room.” Her lips quivered. “The old one had a short. It could have been fixed but. . . but Claire was . . . nervous.”

The doctor squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then pulled herself together. “I picked it up at the lighting shop and I phoned Claire to tell her I was bringing it over. She wasn’t. . . She didn’t...” Julie bit down so hard on her lower lip the skin broke and a bit of blood seeped out. She was oblivious and hurried on in a rush. “I left a message on her answering machine saying I’d be by with the fixture. I have a key, but of course I knocked first. When Claire didn’t answer, I... I assumed she wasn’t—”