"So now we come to Ellie. I'm not good at describing people so I won't even try. All I can say is that she was beautiful. And gentle and graceful and subtle. I'd been hired to be her psychiatrist, and as such that was the first thing I noticed, the contrast between her soft personality and her hard life. She was a great fan of Debussy and Monet and Emily Dickinson. And yet at night she'd change into this totally different person. The sleaziest bars. Drugs. Alcohol. Every kind of sex you can conceive of. That's why she'd had three abortions before she was sixteen.
"I said that I seduced her. I'm not sure about that. It could well have been the other way around. After I'd seen her three months, I felt a shift in her attitude toward me. Oh, I don't mean she suddenly saw me as this paramour, but I think she did begin to see me as a person. A person she liked. I'm sure you know about transference, how the patient frequently thinks she's falling in love with her doctor. Ellie-the good Ellie, at any rate-seemed to be going through that with me. She'd write me poems. Brings me flowers that she'd picked. She even took me out for pizza one night. I tried to pretend that I was still in charge. Family man. Respected shrink. Wise and knowing sophisticate. Of course I was in charge. That's why, when it happened that first time in my office, I saw it as my doing, not hers.
"But by then it was too late to matter. I'd never been in love before. I'd never been handsome or dashing or anything like that, so I'd always been forced to be with the 'sensible' girls. Ellie was the opposite of sensible, of course. The danger was exhilarating. She taught me so much about making love. I fancied I became good at it. I saw now that I'd never pleased my wife. No wonder she'd had an affair. Or maybe affairs plural, who knows. I became saturated with Ellie. I wouldn't brush my teeth after we made love. I wanted the taste of her to linger as long as it could. When we were apart, I'd put her photograph next to a flickering candle and masturbate. It got so bad, I couldn't not be with her. She gave up the bad Ellie. So we could be together nights. I truly believe she loved me as much as I loved her. And then she told me she was pregnant.
"I spent a whole month pleading with her to have an abortion. We had terrible arguments. She actually wanted to keep the baby.
"I'd come to my senses. I looked at myself in the mirror one day and saw what a tremendous joke I'd played on myself. I was this chunky, nearsighted, rumpled cuckold who'd fallen in love with this beautiful but clinically insane girl who'd been under my care. My God, a quietly unhappy marriage in suburbia was just where I belonged. It was my fate, as the French would say, and I should embrace it. I wanted to be part of the same old monotony again. I'd destroyed my life and humiliated my family. I had to get rid of the baby. I even thought seriously for a time of killing Ellie. I came up with several different creative methods. But I knew I couldn't do it. I wasn't a murderer. I was too weak even for that.
"I kept pestering her, of course. We'd have these terrible arguments in my office. She'd always end up weeping and screaming at me to let her have the baby. My nurse would rush in and remind me that there were patients in the reception area hearing her scream. My whole life was coming apart.
"And then she got in that car wreck.
"By this time, her parents were very suspicious of me. She refused to talk about me to them. So when she died in the car crash-her car suddenly swerved into the path of a semi, whether intentionally or not we'll never know because the highway was very dark and icy-and when they did the autopsy and found out Ellie had been pregnant, all their suspicions were confirmed.
"I tried to lie my way out of it, but the medical tests proved my paternity. My wife immediately went back to Connecticut where her people are. Very wealthy people, too. They found a house for her and the boys. I speak to the boys at Christmastime now. On the phone. Very antiseptic and formal.
"My life was over. At least until I read this magazine article in Esquire about how, if you have the money, you can re-create yourself. A little bit of plastic surgery, a lot of forged documents, three or four forged recommendations, and you are a new person.
"I applied for three or four positions. One institution was about to hire me, but somebody on the hospital staff got suspicious and decided to check out one of my reference letters. I immediately withdrew my application.
"The third time, I got lucky. Here in Brenner. I was now Dr. Williams. Head of my own psychiatric hospital, an honor I'd never had before. And now, thanks to you, Mr. Payne, an honor I will have no longer."
"Quite a story."
"And all of it true."
"Sadly."
"Very sadly."
"The coffee's good, anyway."
We sat in his kitchen nook. The Mr. Coffee had done a decent job.
"I was going to run away."
"I know."
"I have a friend in Mexico. He's on the run, too. Sort of the same thing except it involved money instead of sex."
"Money?"
"He got this elderly woman patient of his to sign over several very valuable pieces of property to him. Which he promptly sold. He's got several federal agencies looking for him."
"You two just might give psychiatry a bad name."
He smiled. "If only you knew what really went on, Mr. Payne."
I said, "I'd consider going to the hospital and telling them the truth and seeing what happens."
"You mean they might keep me on?"
I shrugged. "Beats running and hiding the rest of your life." He sipped some coffee. "I imagine you're disappointed."
"About you not being Renard?"
"Yes."
I shrugged. "Things happen that way sometimes."
"He's alive."
I had been stirring sugar into my coffee. I looked up. "You really believe that?"
"Absolutely. He's been taunting me for over a year."
"Taunting you how?"
"Phone messages. He tells me to go back through his records and look for little details he discussed with his shrink. We inherited whatever records survived the asylum fire, since some of the staff doctors are now employed with us. Whoever he is knows things only Renard could know. Names and dates."
"Why didn't you go to the police?"
"Put yourself in my place, Mr. Payne. You don't go to the police unless it's absolutely necessary. Absolutely. And since Renard-or whoever he was-wasn't hurting anybody that I knew of, I decided to overlook it. I didn't want to give the police any excuse to start nosing around in my life."
"I guess that makes sense." I gulped the last of my coffee. "I'll think about what you said."
"I won't let the hospital know what I found out for twenty-four hours. Give you time to think it over."
"I appreciate that."
I still didn't like him. But at least I didn't hate him anymore.
The suit was Armani, the woman was bulletproof Professional.