“None whatsoever.”
“When were you first called into this, Doctor?”
“On September twenty-seventh last year. After Sarah tried to kill herself ”
“By allegedly slashing her wrists with a razor blade.”
“Allegedly? She did, in fact, slash her left wrist.”
“You saw the results of this suicide attempt?”
“I did.”
“Her left wrist was cut?”
“It was.”
“She was bleeding when you examined her?”
“No, her mother had put an adhesive bandage on the wound. It was only a superficial cut.”
“Did you remove the bandage to look at the cut?”
“I did.”
“And saw the cut?”
“Saw it, yes.”
“Did you see the razor blade as well?”
“No, I did not.”
“Do you know what happened to that razor blade?”
“I have no idea.”
“Was it given to the police?”
“Why would it have been?”
“Dr. Helsinger, when I was visiting Sarah, I saw no scars on either of her wrists. I looked for them, and there were no—”
“As I told you, she managed to cut herself only superficially.”
“Mrs. Whittaker called you first, is that correct? Her daughter was bleeding, but she didn’t call a general practitioner, she called a psychiatrist instead.”
“A Band-Aid took care of the cut. I’ve told you several times now that it was merely superficial. Her daughter had just attempted suicide, Mr. Hope, and suicide is not the act of a so-called normal human being. It seemed obvious to Mrs. Whittaker that a psychiatrist was needed. In the same situation, wouldn’t you have called a psychiatrist?”
“You said a delusional atmosphere had undoubtedly existed before her father—”
“I said it must have existed.”
“That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“It’s a reasonable assumption based on the usual development of delusional patterns. The physicians treating her at Knott’s would be able to tell you more about the origins of her disease.”
“But when you examined her—”
“Yes?”
“Did you then conclude that this delusional atmosphere had existed?”
“I considered it a definite possibility. In terms of my personal experience with such cases.”
“Had you ever examined Sarah before then?”
“No.”
“No one had called you to say that Sarah was hallucinating or hearing voices or in any way exhibiting symptoms of delusional perception?”
“No.”
“Had you ever treated or consulted with any other member of the family?”
“No.”
“Then Mrs. Whittaker just picked you out of the phone book, did she?”
“I’ve been a friend of the family for a good many years now,” Helsinger said. “Mr. Hope, you will forgive me, but I’m expecting my next patient in ten minutes, and there are still some calls I have to return.”
“Just a few more questions, Dr. Helsinger, if you can spare me the time.”
He looked at his watch again.
“Well,” he said, and sighed.
“When you examined Sarah for the first time — was she hearing voices?”
“She was manifestly exhibiting many if not all of the first-rank symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, yes.”
“Which was what convinced you that it was necessary to sign a certificate for emergency admission under the Baker Act.”
“The need for admission to a mental facility seemed indicated, yes.”
“On the basis of the one and only time you saw Sarah Whittaker in a professional capacity?”
“Mr. Hope,” Helsinger said wearily, “I am a trained psychiatrist. I do not have to be run over by a locomotive to recognize schizophrenia when I encounter it.”
“you’d encountered it often before, is that true? Before that evening?”
“On innumerable occasions.”
“You mentioned earlier that you’d known Sarah before that evening, known the family, and, I believe you said, were — and are — a longtime friend of the family?”
“That’s true.”
“On any occasion — when you saw Sarah socially — did she seem mentally disturbed to you?”
“No, she did not.”
“Then the first clue you had to her illness was on the evening you saw her for the first time professionally. The evening of September twenty-seventh last year.”
“Yes.”
“And you were sufficiently alarmed that evening to sign a certificate for emergency admission and to deliver it personally to the Public Safety Building.”
“I was not ‘alarmed,’ Mr. Hope. I had examined a young woman who was manifesting many of the first-rank symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia — a woman, moreover, who had just attempted suicide. It was incumbent upon me to seek emergency admission. Now, Mr. Hope, I think you’ll recognize — as a fellow professional — that I’ve given you more than enough of my time, and that I’ve sat through your inquisition with more courtesy and patience than I might have were I in a court of law, under oath. I do have some calls to make, so if you’ll forgive me...”
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Doctor.”
I rose and started for the door.
When my hand was on the knob, Helsinger said, “Mr. Hope?”
I turned.
“Yes?”
“Leave this alone,” he said gently. “Sarah is really an extremely sick person. Believe me,” he said. “Please believe me.”
5
I had occasion only much later to see the file on the Jane Doe who’d turned up in the Sawgrass River. I wish now that I had known earlier what course Bloom’s investigation was taking. But Calusa is a fair-size city where accidental meetings are rare, and I did not run into Bloom again after that meeting in his office on April 15. In reconstructing the investigation after the fact, it seems to me now that knowledge of it at the time might have spared everyone a great deal of grief.
The file consisted of photographs, bank statements, laboratory, forensic, and Detective Division reports, and verbatim transcripts of interviews in the field. When I finally saw the file, Jane Doe had long since been identified as Tracy Kilbourne. The folder was so marked: TRACY KILBOURNE. Recovered photographs of her, obviously taken while she was still alive, showed a tall blonde woman with light eyes and a slender figure. In all of the photos, she was smiling radiantly into the camera. When I saw her folder, it was still in the “open” file, which meant the case had not yet been solved.
On the morning of April 16, while I was in Dr. Helsinger’s waiting room talking to the man expecting rain, an assistant ME named Timothy Hanson was engaged in the gruesome task of examining Jane Doe’s corpse in an attempt at (a) identification and (b) establishing the cause of death and the postmortem interval.
The red dress the girl had been wearing had already been sent to the police laboratory for testing. She had been wearing no undergarments — neither panties nor brassiere — and no shoes. If she had drowned herself, she had either taken off her shoes before entering the water, or else the action of the river had washed them from her feet and deposited them somewhere else. A third possibility was that the alligators had eaten both her feet and her shoes. Hanson did not consider this a likelihood. Alligators are not sharks.
The body was badly decomposed.
In forensic pathology, a rule of thumb regarding the rate of postmortem decay equates a week in the air with either two weeks in the water or eight weeks in the soil. Even at a glance, Hanson could tell that this body had been in the water for a very long time. The head hair was entirely gone and marine animals had nibbled away the flesh around the lips, eyes, and ears. The action of the water itself had stripped away macerated flesh from the face, the hands, the arms, and the legs, but some of the fingers and one thumb were still intact.