Chapter 9 #2
There was also no getting around that he was a deeply troubled man. He had admitted to being hell-bent on getting lethal vengeance for what he believed was the murder of his wife.
During her interview with Bowie, he’d told her there’d been no evidence that Angela’s death was a homicide. But in the two years since, Mitch had refused to accept that she had chosen death over the life she shared with him and Andrew.
As a clinician, Dylan knew that he must come to terms with it, or the prospect of a happy future for him and his young son was improbable.
Healing from a loved one’s suicide was an arduous, complex struggle that, in addition to mourning, involved self-blame and even anger over the selfishness of the individual.
That struggle would be doubly hard for Mitch because he didn’t acknowledge either the suicide or that he was in need of healing.
But Dylan was confident she could help him. Which was why she must stay focused on his struggle, and resistant to his appeal. She wouldn’t be struck by lightning for anything that had transpired tonight, but she had definitely entered a danger zone.
Before something absolutely prohibited happened, she would be wise to tell John Bowie that she wasn’t the therapist Mitch needed after all and recommend a reliable colleague.
But on a personal level, she wanted to see Mitch through this.
If she turned him away, he might refuse therapy, despite Bowie’s mandate, and continue along his path of self-destruction.
Could she live with the guilt of having failed a patient because of her sexual attraction to him? She didn’t think so.
Giving up now wouldn’t be unfair to Mitch solely, but to herself as well. In the wake of George’s death, she’d had to work diligently to get her life back on an even keel and under control.
She liked her life just the way it was, without drama and chaos. Her highs were moderate, her lows not too deep. She couldn’t allow Mitch Haskell, the man, to interrupt her carefully reconstructed life.
At their next session, she would lay down some guidelines that he could not cross. She would make clear to him that if he so much as tested the boundaries, he would face serious repercussions from both her and John Bowie. As for herself, she could resist a grin, for heaven’s sake.
She would.
She must.
Roland Malone made one last circuit around the main dining room, bidding good night to the last of his customers as they straggled out into what had become a rainy night. For a Monday evening, Ristorante Italiano had catered to a satisfactory crowd.
But crowd size was irrelevant except for show. It was who came in on any given night, not how many. Tonight, deals had been made, plans laid, payoffs collected. The safe in his office contained more cash than it had earlier in the evening. Oz would be pleased.
As soon as all the customers were gone, work lights came on and staff began cleaning up and laying place settings for tomorrow’s lunch crowd. Roland was headed for the kitchen to discuss tomorrow’s seafood specials with the chef when he got a call.
He took his phone from his pocket and saw that it was the call he’d been anticipating all day. His mole in the Auclair PD had come through late last night by texting him the list of proposed therapists for Mitch Haskell. He hadn’t heard anything since.
He answered with, “Talk to me.”
“Mitch Haskell and John Bowie had another quarrel this afternoon over Haskell going to therapy.”
“Did he go or not?”
“Did.”
“Which therapist?”
“Her name is Dylan Reede.”
Roland went very still, then began turning his ring around his finger. “If he went, what was the quarrel about?”
“I think Haskell thought it would be a one-and-done, but Bowie insisted he keep his next appointment, which is scheduled for Thursday. Haskell dropped an eff bomb and stalked out.”
“Then it probably was a one-and-done.”
“Just the opposite. He didn’t wait till Thursday. He went tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“They met alone in her office after hours.”
Roland pulled a chair from beneath the nearest dining table and sat down to think over this unexpected development and its possible implications. He didn’t like any of them.
He knew his informant at the other end of this call would be gauging his reaction, so he was careful to conceal it.
He had instilled a fear of reprisal if ever there was a screwup in their delicate arrangement.
He didn’t want to reduce the potency of that fear factor by giving off any sign of weakness, indecision, or doubt.
He asked, “Any scuttlebutt as to why Haskell chose that particular therapist?”
“He told Bowie he had picked her at random, sight unseen.”
Maybe, Roland thought. But maybe not. Maybe not would be worrisome. “Keep me updated.”
“Yes, sir.”
He disconnected but remained seated at the table, rotating his ring around his finger, lost in thought, until one of his custodial employees came near him with a vacuum cleaner.
He got up, went into the kitchen, and was listening to the chef’s proposal to remove Dover sole from the menu because of its inflated price, when he noticed that several of his kitchen staff had collected at the rear door.
He held up a hand to halt the complaint about the cost of fish. “What’s going on back there?”
The chef glanced over his shoulder. “They’re giving leftovers to the homeless.”
Roland just stared at him, expecting a punch line and a burst of laughter, because surely he was jesting. When he realized the man was serious, he stepped around him and walked the length of the kitchen until he reached the group of workers.
“Move.” Immediately they parted, clearing the doorway for him. He stepped out into the alley behind the restaurant where a ragged pack of homeless were huddled under the eaves to get out of the rain.
Roland pulled a carry-out carton of food from the grubby clutch of the man nearest him, opened it, took an appreciative sniff, and then emptied the aromatic contents onto the grimy pavement of the alley.
“Get the hell away from my door. If you come near my place again, I’ll exterminate you like the vermin you are.”
He hadn’t even raised his voice, but they had gotten the message.
They scuttled away, moving off in both directions down the alley.
Roland turned and reentered the kitchen, where his employees were standing stock still.
Even a faucet continued to run because no one had had the courage to move in order to turn it off.
He walked over to it, stuck his hands into the stream, and washed them with disinfectant soap, then lifted a fresh towel from the shelf above the sink. He took special care to dry around his signet ring and polished the red stone with the towel before folding it and setting it aside.
He turned off the faucet, then faced those who depended on him for their livelihoods and, in many cases, for their lives.
“You know what happens when you feed a stray? It keeps coming back. You never get rid of the fuckin’ thing. You think my clientele want to wade through human garbage to get to the entrance? You want to ruin my business by performing good deeds?”
He picked up a meat cleaver. “If I catch any one of you giving my food to those bums, you’ll be fired… after I cut off your hand.” He made a vicious chopping motion with the cleaver, then set it down on the metal countertop so gently it didn’t make a sound.
“Do you understand me?” There was a unanimous nodding of heads. “Good. Now get back to work before I get mad.”
Outside in the alley, one of the homeless shuffled along behind a few others as they made their way in the opposite direction of Esplanade Avenue.
He’d blended in with the other “vermin” so well, Roland Malone never would have suspected that he’d taken the food carton from the hands of Mitch Haskell.