When the doctor was through explaining CSC’s mission Tal told him that he’d come about the Whitleys. “Were you surprised when they killed themselves?” Tal found his hand at his collar, absently adjusting his tie knot; the doctor’s hung down an irritating two inches from his buttoned collar.
“Surprised?” Dehoeven hesitated. Maybe the question confused him. “I didn’t think about being surprised or not. I didn’t know Sam personal, yes? So I can’t say—”
“You never met him?” Tal was surprised.
“Oh, we’re a very big organization. Our counselors work with the patients. Me?” He laughed sadly. “My life is budget and planning and building our new facility up the street. That is taking most of my time now. We’re greatly expanding, yes? But I will find out who was assigned to Sam and his wife.” He called his secretary for this information.
The counselor turned out to be Claire McCaffrey, who, Dehoeven explained, was both a registered nurse and a social worker/counselor. She’d been at the CSC for a little over a year. “She’s good. One of the new generation of counselors, experts in aging, yes? She has her degree in that.”
“I’d like to speak to her.”
Another hesitation. “I suppose this is all right. Can I ask why?”
Tal pulled a questionnaire out of his briefcase and showed it to the doctor. “I’m the department statistician. I track all the deaths in the county and collect information about them. Just routine.”
“Ah, routine, yes? And yet we get a personal visit.” He lifted an eyebrow in curiosity.
“Details have to be attended to.”
“Yes, of course.” Though he didn’t seem quite convinced that Tal’s presence here was completely innocuous.
He called the nurse. It seemed that Claire McCaffrey was about to leave to meet a new patient but she could give him fifteen or twenty minutes.
Dehoeven explained where her office was. Tal asked, “Just a couple more questions.”
“Yessir?”
“Do you prescribe Luminux here?”
“Yes, we do often.”
“Did Sam have a prescription? We couldn’t find a bottle at their house.”
He typed on his computer. “Yes. Our doctors wrote several prescriptions for him. He started on it a month ago.”
Tal then told Dehoeven how much drugs the Whitleys had in their blood. “What do you make of that?”
“Three times the usual dosage?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“They’d also been drinking a little. But I’m told the drug didn’t directly contribute to their death. Would you agree?”
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly. “It’s not dangerous. It makes you drowsy and giddy. That’s all.”
“Drowsy and giddy both?” Tal asked. “Is that unusual?” The only drugs he’d taken recently were aspirin and an antiseasickness medicine that didn’t work for him, as a disastrous afternoon date on a tiny sailboat on Long Island Sound had proven.
“No, not unusual. Luminux is our anti-anxiety and mood-control drug of choice here at the Center. It was just approved by the FDA. We were very glad to learn that, yes? Cardiac patients can take it without fear of aggravating their heart problems.”
“Who makes it?”
He pulled a thick book off his shelf and read through it. “Montrose Pharmaceuticals in Paramus, New Jersey.”
Tal wrote this down. “Doctor,” he asked, “did you have another patient here... Don Benson?”
“I’m not knowing the name but I know very little of the patients here, as I was saying to you, yes?” He nodded out the window through which they could hear the sound of construction — the new CSC facility that was taking all his time, Tal assumed. Dehoeven typed on the computer keyboard. “No, we are not having any patients named Benson.”
“In the past?”
“This is for the year, going back.” A nod at the screen. “Why is it you are asking?”
Tal tapped the questionnaire. “Statistics.” He put the paper away, rose and shook the doctor’s hand. He was directed to the nurse’s office, four doors up the hall from Dehoeven’s.
Claire McCaffrey was about his age, with wavy brunette hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had a freckled, pretty face — girl next door — but seemed haggard.
“You’re the one Dr. Dehoeven called about? Officer—?”
“Simms. But call me Tal.”
“I go by Mac,” she said. She extended her hand and a charm bracelet jangled on her right wrist as he gripped her strong fingers. He noticed a small gold ring in the shape of an ancient coin on her right hand. There was no jewelry at all on her left, he observed. “Mac,” he reflected. A Celtic theme today, recalling Margaret, Dr. Sheldon’s somber step-dancer.
She motioned him to sit. Her office was spacious — a desk and a sitting area with a couch and two armchairs around a coffee table. It seemed more lived-in than her boss’s, he noted, comfortable. The decor was soothing — crystals, glass globes, and reproductions of Native American artifacts, plants and fresh flowers, posters and paintings of seashores and deserts and forests.
“This is about Sam Whitley, right?” she asked in a troubled monotone.
“That’s right. And his wife.”
She nodded, distraught. “I was up all night about it. Oh, it’s so sad. I couldn’t believe it.” Her voice faded.
“I just have a few questions. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, go ahead.”
“Did you see them the day they died?” Tal asked.
“Yes, I did. We had our regular appointment.”
“What exactly did you do for them?”
“What we do with most patients. Making sure they’re on a heart-friendly diet, helping with insurance forms, making sure their medication’s working, arranging for help in doing heavy work around the house... Is there some problem? I mean, official problem?”
Looking into her troubled eyes, he chose not to use the excuse of the questionnaire as a front. “It was unusual, their deaths. They didn’t fit the standard profile of most suicides. Did they say anything that’d suggest they were thinking about killing themselves?”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly. “I would’ve intervened. Naturally.”
“But?” He sensed there was something more she wanted to say.
She looked down, organized some papers, closed a folder.
“It’s just... See, there was one thing. I spent the last couple of days going over what they said to me, looking for clues. And I remember they said how much they’d enjoyed working with me.”
“That was odd?”
“It was the way they put it. It was the past tense, you know. Not enjoy working with me. It was enjoyed working with me. It didn’t strike me as odd or anything at the time. But now we know...” A sigh. “I should’ve listened to what they were saying.”
Recrimination. Like the couples’ lawyers, like the doctors, Nurse McCaffrey would probably live with these deaths for a long, long time.
Perhaps forever...
“Did you know,” he asked, “they just bought a book about suicide? Making the Final Journey.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” she said, frowning.
Behind her desk Nurse McCaffrey — Mac — had a picture of an older couple with their arms around each other, two snapshots of big, goofy black labs, and one picture of her with the dogs. No snaps of boyfriends or husbands — or girlfriends. In Westbrook County, married or cohabitating couples comprised 74 percent of the adult population, widows 7 percent, widowers 2 percent and unmarried/divorced/noncohabitating were 17 percent. Of that latter category only 4 percent were between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five.