Content is the aphrodisiac of psychotherapy. For a therapist, it’s so tempting to get caught on the wave of the story, to get lost in the facts and the promise and the details of the narrative. What suffers when the therapist succumbs to that seductive lure?
Process. And process-what is going on in the room-is almost always where the truth hides. I forced myself to be a therapist. I returned my attention to the process.
“Why did you decide to tell me all this, Bill?”
“I didn’t know what you’d already figured out. I actually thought you might know too much. That would be a whole new problem for us.”
“Us?”
“Me and Walter.”
“I don’t quite understand,” I said. But I did.
Bill’s voice was almost apologetic as he said, “I’ve just tied your hands, Alan. You can’t tell anyone what I told you. It’s confidential, now. I can’t afford to have anyone know what I’ve done. Walter can’t either. So, just in case-for some insurance-I’ve sealed your lips.”
Was Bill right?
In his reading of the law, and of my professional responsibilities, yes.
In his reading of me, no. He had no way to know, but I was more than ready to say “screw it.” Was I angry? A little. Less than I would have anticipated. “Doyle knew everything,” I said. “He may have-”
“Doyle’s dead, remember?”
“Did you-”
“Kill him? No. God, no. I would have liked to, I might even have been willing to, but… no.”
“Did your boss?”
“He’s probably capable of it. Walter’s in Vegas now trying to find Rachel. To see if Mallory’s with her. We have to keep her under control. He and I are in the same boat on this one. Our families are both at risk.”
“Rachel knows about the orthodontist?”
“She’s my wife; of course she knows. I don’t have secrets from Rachel.”
I stated the obvious. “You’re desperate, then. You and… Walter?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Why did he go to Vegas?”
“One of us had to get to Rachel. I couldn’t-the press might have spotted me. They’re everywhere.”
I’d noticed. “Do you think Mallory’s there?”
“I hope she is.” His despair about his daughter was palpable. “The alternatives are so horrifying that I can’t even…”
My cell phone rang. I checked the screen: Raoul. Thank God. “I need to get this,” I said. “It’s an emergency. There may even be some news that affects Mallory.”
“Go ahead then,” Bill said.
“Raoul?” I said. “Any news?”
“I’m at the hospital with her. She’s okay.”
Diane? “Hold on a second; I’m with someone.” I covered the phone and turned to Bill. “Could you please go out to the waiting room while I take this?”
Reluctantly, I thought, he walked out of my office and down the hall. I kept my hand on the phone until I heard the waiting room door open and close.
67
“She’s really okay?” I said.
“She’s safe. She held my hand. We talked. She had a little food. Now she’s sleeping.”
“Where has she been? What happened?”
“I was sure Canada had Diane, or he could lead me to her. I had it all wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“None of Canada’s people have seen Rachel since Tuesday. Turns out Canada’s had me on a leash since I got to Vegas. He’s been watching me, concerned I’d be causing him more trouble with Rachel, later on hoping that I’d lead him to her.”
“I don’t understand. How did you find Diane?”
That’s when he took a deep breath and slowed his voice and began relaying the long story about the ratty cab and doing dead time in the Airstream and about the old VW bug and Tico, and about playing the echoes with Canada.
Before dawn on the morning after Raoul met with Canada in the walled house in the scruffy desert outside of the city, Tico fired up the VW and drove Raoul into the desolate mountains west of Las Vegas. Raoul recalled seeing a sign for Blue Diamond near their destination-so wherever that is, that wasn’t too far from where they ended up. Just as it was beginning to get light Tico stopped the bug on a mountain curve, and asked Raoul if he was up for a little hike.
“This is where the accident was?” Raoul asked him, recalling Canada’s story the night before.
“The guy’s driving too fast,” Tico said, pointing down the road. “Way too fast, and he comes around the curve-that one-and sees a guy standing in the road with a.45 pointed at his windshield.” He held up both hands. “This is what I hear. The man in the road fires a shot-you know, to warn the guy-a little bit over the top of the truck. Driver doesn’t handle it good. Freaks.” Tico then pantomimed a dive off a cliff before he kicked off his flip-flops and began pulling an ancient pair of orange high-top Keds onto his bare feet.
A moment later Raoul followed him down a scruffy hillside covered with nothing but scree and big boulders. They went down a hundred feet or more into a narrow wash that had been invisible from the road above. A battered, crushed, bronze Silverado with Colorado plates rested upside down on a rock that was half the size of Tico’s VW. Inside was the body of a man. The stink was horrific.
Tico said, “That’s the guy, the guy in the picture with Howard, the guy who met your wife in the Venetian. You want me to check for ID?” Raoul wasn’t able to come up with an answer for him, but Tico pulled on some work gloves and crawled into the overturned truck. A minute later he handed Raoul a Colorado driver’s license.
The name meant nothing to Raoul. “What’s farther up the hill? Where was he going?” Raoul asked.
“A couple of old cabins. Might be important. To you, anyway.”
“But not to you?”
“This… accident? It happened before Rachel lost touch with the boss. We weren’t too interested in what was up there. Not our business, you dig. We stay out of things that aren’t our business. That’s one of the boss’s rules.”
“Can we look?” Raoul asked him. “At those two cabins? Now?”
Tico said, “I got a little time.”
The second cabin they checked, the last one on the road, was where they found Diane. Raoul went in alone and found her cuffed to an iron bed. She’d been there a long time. She was delirious, almost unconscious.
Tico used his mobile phone to call somebody down in Vegas, asked them to send help. Then he told Raoul, “I gotta go before, you know… And my man? The police don’t need to know about the Silverado. That’d be better for everybody.”
Raoul told him he understood and he promised to come up with a story for the police.
Fifteen minutes later people started showing up to help Raoul save his wife.
I briefly relayed to Raoul most of what I’d told Lauren the night before. I told him about the tunnel and the car that had left Doyle’s garage right around the time Mallory disappeared. I told him that Doyle Chandler wasn’t Doyle Chandler, and that whoever he really was, he was dead.
“Are you coming home?” I asked.
“As soon as they clear her to travel,” he said.
“Can you tell me who the guy in the Silverado was?”
“Does it make a difference?” he asked. “I promised I’d be discreet. The cops didn’t find it. It needs to stay that way.”
“I think I know.”
“Who?”
The irony didn’t escape me: Raoul was protecting secrets, too. I gave him the name he already had: “Guy named Walter.”
His voice grew tight. “You’ve known about him for how long?”
“This afternoon. Just now.”
“He was a bad guy?”
“He had something important to hide. He was afraid Diane might have learned what it was from Hannah.”
“When I get back we’ll have a beer, you’ll tell me how you know all this.”
“I’m looking forward to that, Raoul. Listen, I’m with a… patient. Call me back when I can talk with Diane, okay? Please?”