Shakespeare's Counselor (6 page)

“Who
is
that woman?” Carla said, more struck by this shock than by any of the others, apparently.

That naked woman, I amplified her statement.

“The naked and the dead,” I said, drawing from somewhere in the attic of my mind.

“So,” Firella said. Her voice was unsteady, and I heard her gulp back nausea. “She's actually pinned to the wall?”

There was a groan practically under my feet, and I was shocked enough to lurch back, knocking everyone else into confusion.

Janet was lying on the floor in front of the desk. We'd been so transfixed by the dead woman that we hadn't even seen her. Janet rolled, with great effort, from her back to her front, and I saw a darkening bruise on her forehead. But her hand went to the back of her head, moving slowly and painfully.

In a moment, Firella was on her other side, and we tried to raise her. Though we believed we were the only ones in the building (at least I did) I wanted to get Janet out of there as fast as possible, as if the woman's deadness was contagious.

Janet began mumbling something, but I couldn't make it out. She moaned, though, as we tried to pull her to her feet. Without discussion, we lowered her back to the carpet.

“We gotta get out of here,” Carla said urgently, and I agreed. But we couldn't all go. I handed my cell phone to Melanie, who was silent and shocked.

“Go outside and call the police,” I said.

“Can't we just leave and call it in later?” Carla asked.

We all stared at her. She shrugged.

“I mean, take Janet to the hospital ourselves. Just so we won't be connected to the police side of this. I mean, someone offed this gal, someone really, really seriously sick. Right?”

Sandy said, “That's true.”

“Look,” I said, and they did all look at me. I was feeling Janet's pulse, trying to decide if her pupils were even. I stopped and collected myself. “We're listed on some schedule as coming here tonight, you know. All of us. Our names are written down somewhere, no matter how confidential Tamsin promised us this would be. I don't think we can opt out of this.”

“Do you think whoever killed this woman put her there for us to see?” Sandy asked in a quavering voice. “Or for Tamsin?”

It was a funny question if you weren't there. If you were there, you could see the intention of display that had gone into arranging the body. To see the poor woman pinned up there, among the articles about rape and the empowerment of women, the accuracy of DNA testing and the heavier sentences being handed down to men who raped…we were meant to know we were powerless, after all.

We tried to look anywhere but at the body. “White as a sheet” was a phrase that came to mind when I looked at my therapy group…except Firella, and she had turned an ashen color.

“So we can't dodge this,” Carla admitted. “But…no, I guess, we just have to face the music.”

“After all, we didn't kill her,” Sandy said briskly—as if that cleared up the whole thing, and assured smooth sailing ahead.

When there was a long, thick pause, she said, “Well,
I
didn't.”

“Enough of this, we have to get help for Janet.” I looked at Melanie. “You and Carla and Sandy go out the door we came in,” I said. “Call nine one one. Firella and I will stay here with Janet. Be sure to tell them we need an ambulance.”

“We haven't found Tamsin,” Sandy said.

The rest of us had forgotten all about Tamsin in the turmoil of finding the naked impaled woman and the unconscious Janet.

“She might be in here somewhere,” Sandy whispered. “She might be the one who did this.” We stared at Sandy as though she'd sprouted another head.

“Or she might have been killed, too,” Carla reminded her.

“I don't think we better wander around here looking for her,” Firella said sensibly. “I think we better call the cops, like Lily said. Janet needs an ambulance bad.”

Carla, Melanie, and Sandy turned to go, when Firella said, “Just for the hell of it, any of you know this woman?”

“I do,” Melanie said. She started out, not looking back. “That's my sister-in-law, who was married to the man who raped me.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Carla and Sandy hurried after her, down the hall and out into the parking lot. They stood holding open the door so we wouldn't be shut off from them, a piece of thoughtfulness I appreciated. I could hear Carla placing the phone call, having to repeat herself a few times. Firella and I stared at each other, sideswiped by the identification of the dead woman and uncertain how to react to it.

I turned my attention from what I couldn't understand to what I could, the fact that my friend had been attacked. But there didn't seem to be much I could do for her. Janet made little movements from time to time, but she didn't appear to be exactly conscious.

“She's not really stuck up there, is she? Like the newspaper clippings?” Firella said after a moment. Of course, the white-and-red display on the wall was what we were really thinking about.

“I don't see how the wall could be soft enough to drive the stake in far enough to actually hold her up.” Janet's color was awful, a sort of muddy green.

“I see what you're saying. I'm looking behind the desk.” Firella, proving she was tougher than I—I guess years of the school system will do it—stood and peered over the top of the desk.

She abruptly sat down on the floor again.

“I think she's kind of propped up,” she reported, “with string around her arms in loops, attached to nails that have been driven into the wall. Her bottom half's kind of sitting on the back of Tamsin's rolling chair. There's a wadded-up doctor coat stuck under the wheels to keep the chair from moving.”

I couldn't think of anything to say to that.

“I wonder if one person could fix her that way. Seems like it would take two,” Firella said thoughtfully.

“I guess if one person had enough time it could be done,” I said, so she wouldn't think I was shucking her off. “That's a lot of preparation. The wedge to keep us out until the scene was set, and the coat to keep the chair from moving.”

“I'm worried about Tamsin,” Firella said next.

“Me, too.” That was easy to agree with. I was wondering if Tamsin was in the therapy room. I was wondering if she was alive.

“Janet, help is coming,” I told her, not at all sure she could hear me or understand. “You hang on one minute more.” It was true that I could hear sirens. I didn't think I'd ever been happier to know they were coming.

 

I hadn't talked to my friend Claude Friedrich in a while, and I'd just as soon not have talked to him that night. But since he's the chief of police, and since it was a murder scene in the city limits, there wasn't any way around it.

“Lily,” he greeted me. He was using his police voice; heavy, grim, a little threatening.

“Claude.” I probably sounded the same way.

“What's happened here tonight?” he rumbled.

“You'll have to tell us,” I said. “We got here for our therapy group—”

“You're in therapy?” Claude's eyebrows almost met his graying hair.

“Yes,” I said shortly.

“Accepting help,” he said, amazement written all over him. “This must be some doing of Jack's.”

“Yes.”

“And where is he, tonight?”

“On the road.”

“Ah. Okay, so you were here for your therapy group. You and these women?”

“Yes.”

“A group for…?”

A very tall African American woman appeared at Claude's shoulder. Her hair was cut close to her scalp. She was truly almost black, and she was wearing a practical khaki pantsuit with a badge pinned to the lapel. A pale yellow tank top under the jacket shone radiantly against her skin. She had broad features and wore huge blue-framed glasses.

“Alicia, listen to the account of this witness. I know her, she's observant,” Claude said.

“Yes, sir.” The magnified eyes focused on me.

“Lily, this is Detective Stokes. She's just come to us from the Cleveland force.”

“Cleveland,
Ohio?
” Cleveland, Mississippi wouldn't have been surprising.

“Yep.”

Alicia Stokes would have to be classified as a mystery.

Focusing on the more pertinent problem, I explained to Claude and Detective Stokes that we were a group composed of rape survivors, that we met every Tuesday night at the health center, that we were led by a woman who was missing and might be somewhere in the building.

“Tamsin Lynd,” said Stokes unexpectedly.

I stared at her. “Yes,” I said slowly. “Tamsin Lynd.”

“I knew it,” the detective said to herself, so swiftly and in such a low voice that I wasn't sure I'd understood her correctly.

Stokes turned to a man in uniform and gave him some quick orders. He stared back at her, resentment all over his face and in his posture, but then he turned to obey. I shook my head. Stokes had her work cut out for her.

She caught the headshake and glared at me. I don't know how she interpreted my reaction, but she definitely didn't want sympathy.

Claude made a “go-on” gesture, so I went on to explain how we hadn't been able to get in, had finally managed to do so, what we had found. I was glad to see the ambulance team taking Janet out, before I'd finished my account.

Stokes, who was at least four inches taller than my five foot six, said, “Do you know the victim?”

“No.”

“Did any of you know her?”

“Ask them.”

Stokes clearly was about to come down on me like a ton of bricks when I caught sight of something that made me weak-kneed with relief. The officer Stokes had sent into the building was leading Tamsin Lynd out, his arm around her, and Tamsin appeared to be in good physical shape. She was walking on her own. She was crying and shaking, but she seemed to be unhurt. Not a drop of blood on her.

Following my gaze, Stokes and Claude saw her, too.

“She's your missing counselor?” Claude asked.

“Yes,” I said, relief making me almost giddy. I strode over to her and didn't even think about the other two, right on my heels.

“Lily, are all of you okay?” Tamsin called, pulling away from the officer to grip my arms.

“Except Janet,” I said. I told her Janet had gone in the ambulance.

“What on earth happened here?”

I became aware that the audience had grown quite large around us, listening to this exchange. One glare from Stokes sent them scattering, but she and Claude flanked me.

And at that moment, looking into Tamsin Lynd's eyes, I remembered the phone calls and the slit throat of the squirrel, and the fear she lived with. I had been very upset, deeply upset, but in that second I drew myself under control. “There was a dead woman in your office,” I said, after a little pause to let the two cops stop me, if they would. “Where were you?”

Only someone who'd witnessed at least part of Tamsin's problem would have understood her reaction.

“Oh, my God,” she moaned. “Not again!”

“Again?” I repeated, because that hadn't been quite what I expected. Then, I said more harshly, “
Again?
You've found women killed in your office more than once?”

“No, no. I just mean…the whole cycle. You know, I called you about the squirrel being left hanging on my front porch,” she said tremulously, her shaking hand pointing to Claude.

“I know about your past problems,” Detective Stokes said curtly. Claude rumbled, “I'd gotten a sort of outline picture.” Tamsin nodded. She made an effort to control her ragged breathing and tears.

After a moment, she went on. “I was hiding in the therapy room,” she confessed. She looked at my face as if it were up to me to absolve her of this piece of self-preservation.

“Saralynn got there early so I could give her my little orientation speech. I said hi to her and then I remembered I'd left some papers in the therapy room, so I went in there to fetch them, and while I was in there, I heard…I heard…”

“You heard the woman being killed?”

Tamsin nodded. “And I shut the door,” she said, and shuddered and gasped. “As quiet as I could, I shut the door and then I locked it.”

That was hard to swallow. We had ventured into a building we thought contained danger, to help Tamsin. But from her own account, Tamsin wouldn't open the door to try to save a woman's life. I made myself choke this knowledge down, shove it aside. Fear could make you do almost anything: I had known fear before, and I was willing to bet this wasn't Tamsin's first experience of it. “Didn't you hear Janet come in?” My voice was as even as I could make it.

“That room's pretty soundproof,” she said, pushing her dark hair out of her eyes. “I thought I heard someone calling down the hall, but for all I knew it was the same person who'd killed poor Saralynn, so I was too scared to answer. That was Janet, I guess. Then, later, I heard other sounds, other people.”

I'd have said we'd made enough noise to establish our identities, but it wasn't my business. Now that I knew the situation was more or less under control, I would be glad to leave, if Claude would give me a green light. I was finding that the idea of Tamsin cowering in a safe, locked room—while one woman was killed and another popped over the head—was not agreeing with me.

I had opened my mouth to ask Claude if I could go when another car pulled into the parking lot, toward the back where the police cars weren't as thick. Cliff Eggers sprang out as though he'd been ejected. He hurried to his wife.

“Tamsin!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

“Cliff!” Our therapist hurled herself into the big man's arms and sobbed against his chest. “I can't stand this again, Cliff!”

“What's happened?” he said gently, while Stokes, Claude, and I stood and listened.