“Do the police have her appointment calendar?” I asked.
“Hannah just used initials, same as us. They would have to cross-reference the calendar with her billing records or her clinical files to find out who she was seeing. Cozy is handling the cops for me, and he’s not going to let them see anything confidential.”
“Anything else important in Hannah’s records?”
“Not really. Closing her practice has been routine. I’ve done a few one-time visits with her patients to check for decompensation or acute reactive problems to her… death. I decided to pick up a couple of her cases. Oh, and did I tell you I’m going to see the woman who was at her office that day, the day that Hannah died?”
“The woman with the hair?” And the Cheetos. “You’re seeing her for treatment?”
“I am. She’s having a lot of trouble. I guess it’s not too surprising, considering. She’s coping by becoming a little Nancy Drew, trying to solve the mystery of what happened to her therapist.”
“Isn’t it kind of odd seeing her? Given what happened.”
“You don’t think it’s a problem, do you?”
I wasn’t sure. Psychologists are prohibited from treating people with whom they have another existing relationship. It means, for instance, that I couldn’t treat Grace’s preschool teacher, when Grace gets around to having one. But I didn’t know if the fact that both parties had been present when a possible murder victim’s body was discovered really constituted a preexisting relationship. The issue had never come up before in any of the ethics discussions I’d had.
I didn’t want to make Diane crazy, so I immediately resolved my ambivalence by saying, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Good. Anyway, I’ve referred a few of Hannah’s other patients to other therapists in town. Don’t be hurt. I’m not ignoring your talents-they all wanted female therapists, baby. But most of them decided not to continue for now. I’m still having her office phone lines forwarded to my number. The hardest part of the whole thing has been letting people who hadn’t heard what happened to her know that she is dead. And, you know, how she died.”
“I can imagine.” We took two more steps. “Is it possible you spoke with her?”
“With whom?”
“Mallory.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it possible she was one of the people who called who hadn’t heard about Hannah’s death?”
“Oh my God.”
“Well?”
“It’s possible. I had a couple of difficult calls… a woman asked… she was young-I guessed a CU student-wanted ‘Dr. Grant.’ I’m not sure I ever got a name. I told her what had happened and she… hung up. Oh my God.”
“When was that call?” I asked.
“Last week. Maybe Monday. Oh my God, I may have talked with her.”
“Do you remember what you said?”
“I’ve been upset,” Diane said, her voice suddenly hollow. “I might not have handled it well. When Hannah’s patients asked me how she died, I…”
“Suggested the possibility she’d been murdered?”
“It’s not just me, Alan. Everybody-the papers-I’m not the only one…”
I touched her. “It’s okay.”
“The kid was really upset. I offered to meet with her, but she hung up.”
What did it mean that Diane might have talked with Mallory a few days before she disappeared? Maybe nothing. But it was possible that Mallory walked away from the conversation believing that her therapist had been murdered.
“What about the other call? You said there were two difficult calls.”
“The other one was from a man. Wanted to know what would happen to his therapy records. I assured him I had custody of them and that they’d stay confidential. He wouldn’t give me his name, either. He asked how he could get the records. I told him. He didn’t want a referral. He was almost… belligerent.”
I didn’t reply right away. Diane wanted to move on. “Speaking of records, Hannah’s attorney-the guy who drew up her will-called me a couple of days before Christmas and asked if she had left any records that would allow final bills to be prepared.”
“For her patients?”
“Yes.”
“That’s rude. Who’s the attorney?”
“Guy named Jerry Crandall. I don’t know him. He’s a general-practice guy, doesn’t do much divorce work.” Diane did do a lot of divorce and custody work; she knew all the family-law attorneys in town. “But that’s what I told him, too, that it was kind of cold. He said he had a fiduciary responsibility and that Hannah’s accounts receivable are an asset of her estate.”
“Fiduciary responsibility aside, I’m not sure I’d like to get a bill from my dead therapist.”
“He’s a lawyer. Can I finish?” Diane didn’t wait for me to say yes. “I told him I’d take a look and get back to him. While you guys were up skiing I checked through Hannah’s practice calendar and matched things up with her recent process notes, gave him a list of unbilled sessions. When I compared all her records I realized that the session with this kid wasn’t in her calendar, didn’t have any notes, and had never been billed. It was the only one not in her calendar.”
“No other sessions without notes?”
“None that I found. Hannah was Hannah.” Loud exhale. “What do I do, Alan?”
“In a word, nothing. Hell, Diane, you’re not even sure it was Mallory. I think the kid is entitled to confidentiality, so you can’t reveal what you know from the session.”
“It was her,” Diane said.
I ignored that. “Any hint of abuse during the consultation?”
“No.”
“You can’t tell anyone then, including the police.”
“What if the police knew Mallory had been kidnapped? If the parents got a note, or a ransom demand. Would that change things?”
I thought about it for the length of time it took to try, and fail, to pass three young mothers pushing strollers wheel hub to wheel hub on the bricks of the Mall. It was the pedestrian equivalent of trying to drive past some recalcitrant semis that were rolling side-by-side on the highway.
“Sure. Then it would be a whole different ball game. By definition a kidnapped kid is a kid who’s being abused, and abuse changes all the privilege rules. If you thought you knew something that could aid the investigation into her kidnapping-once the authorities decided it was a kidnapping-you would have an ethical and legal responsibility to divulge it to the police because of the child-abuse exception.”
Diane said, “But the police say she ran. As long as that’s the current theory, I can’t play the I-think-she’s-been-kidnapped card.”
The holiday lights that were strung on the trees on the Mall began snapping on block by block, and within seconds snakes of twinkling dots wrapped the skeletal forms that stretched out in front of us. Diane and I both watched the spectacle develop for a moment.
“That was pretty,” I said. “Sorry, your hands are tied.”
Hers may have been figuratively tied; mine were literally going numb from the cold and the weight of the shopping bags I was carrying.
“I suppose this means that I probably shouldn’t prepare a bill for the intake and send it to Mallory’s father.”
Diane’s last comment was intended sardonically, but I recognized some fuzzy edges at the margins; the ramifications weren’t as clear as she might have expected. “It’s an interesting point, Diane.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you were looking for a way to tell her father that you know something, sending him a bill would probably be an ethically acceptable excuse for letting him get a toe inside the consultation room door.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“I’m not sure you would. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say you believed that what you learned from Hannah’s consultation might help track down Mallory.”
“And if I did believe that…”