Confidential(97)

This was one of the women who had no social media, so I hadn’t known until I saw her how attractive she was, which was plenty. Any man sitting in a room with her an hour a week would have some impure thoughts. Dr. Baylor must have had some untoward impulses that he resisted.

So why those three? What about Flora, Greer, and Lucinda was so irresistible to the guy?

That I’ll never know.

But I know I did the right thing, not going into those records. Not doing something unethical for the greater good. Who am I to determine the greater good? Rules exist for a reason. You start deciding which ones you want to follow and which ones you don’t, and it’s a slippery slope. You slide down, you can become Michael Baylor.

That’s what I’ve come to think about him, after everything I’ve been able to learn and all I have to guess: He bent rules and he justified. He took one step, and then another, and he was in deep. He lost his moral compass, he lost his way, and maybe part of his rationalization was all the other times that he’d done the right thing by other people, by other women, even other good-looking ones. Almost every other time, he’d resisted. Why not just this once? Hadn’t he earned it with all his other good deeds?

I don’t know if that’s how he thought. I don’t conveniently have some journal of his, and he didn’t have good friends who could tell me. Flora, Greer, and Lucinda might have been the closest people to him, and unfortunately, anything they tell me is colored by self-preservation. Even if they think it’s true, it might not be. It’s not just the guilty who are scared, it’s the ones who might look guilty. And all three of them look guilty as hell.

I can get all tormented about my failure to solve the case, or I can be glad that I didn’t do anything unethical, that I don’t have to cover my tracks and look over my shoulder. I can learn from Dr. Baylor’s mistakes.

From my limited vantage point, he was no monster. He was a man who lost control of his emotions in a profession where he was helping people gain control of theirs, and what’s that corny saying? He paid the ultimate price. Corny but true.

Part of why I hate not finding his killer is because of my ego; I hate to lose. The other part is that I came to feel a strange responsibility to him, a sort of kinship. Not that I’ve ever crossed the line with any women professionally; I’ve never slept with a suspect or anything like that. But in my personal life, I’ve cheated and I’ve lied. I’ve paid the price—not the ultimate, but a high one. I still miss my wife. Every day, if I’m not careful.

And I get what it is to be a man in over his head with various women, trying to be what they want him to be. I think of all that stuff in his Consent to Treatment about how he’ll be whatever you need, all he asks is that you give him a chance. That’s a man spilling his guts on the page. That’s a man who’s painfully trying to overcome his lack of self and his inadequacies after having spent his life tending to his narcissistic mother.

Yeah, I can do armchair psychology. And don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I think that shit’s true.





CHAPTER 80





FLORA


Old habits die hard. Once a stalker, always a stalker.

No, this was purely an accident. Or fate, maybe. I’ve got only a week left in the Bay Area, and I’m in the Westfield, kissing this particular retail promenade goodbye, when I see her from behind. That blowout with just a hint of wave worked back into it, the diaphanous clothes, and she does live in the city. Even from a floor above, given the rotunda architecture, I know that it’s got to be her. We must have found ourselves under the same shopping dome for a reason.

I’ve put aside so much of my anger, nearly all of it, over the past few months. Greer is my test.

I curve my way down to her, dodging the other shoppers. She stops to look in a store window where baby clothes are on display. As she rubs her belly in that subconscious and unmistakable way, I think how long Michael’s been gone, and the time line fits.

Other things fit, too. Like how standoffish she was at dim sum. Now it makes sense. She didn’t want to believe anything we were saying; she was already in deeper than I’d ever been.

Better her than me.

But even as I think that, what I feel is hurt. Even from beyond the grave, he can stick the knife in. Because while I hate him, I can’t help loving him, too, and it comes back up on me sometimes as if it’s all present tense and I might see him around a corner and I don’t know if I want to kiss him or slap him and I think that when he said he would always have love for me, it was the truth. Or maybe I just don’t want to believe that it was all lies, that I got taken on a two-year ride. I can’t know anything for sure, because I can never ask him another question, and if I had been able to ask him more questions, would I ever have believed another word out of his mouth?

She’s walking inside the upscale kids’ boutique. I watch her lift onesies with this sweet—dare I say maternal?—smile on her face, and I just can’t hate her, not that I ever did. Really, I hated him. And loved him. And still do.

It’s been rough, and I imagine Greer would know what I’m talking about.

She looks up and sees me. I don’t want to admit it, but pregnancy suits her. In addition to the smile, she’s got that fucking glow, and she can use the weight.

Her expression becomes uncertain, probably mirroring my own, and it’s that kinship that pulls me inside. Also, I don’t want her to see me running away.