DR. SNELL’S OFFICE was as quiet as the deep woods on a winter night. The recessed lights dimmed to leave the office in a perpetual dusk. Rath had let himself in, as instructed. He peered around the empty waiting room, looked for a bell or something to get the doctor’s attention. There was nothing. He cleared his throat, the sound loud as the crack of a whip in the dead silence.
“Out back!” a voice shouted from down a hall.
Rath pushed the gate at the reception area open and worked his way down the hall to find Dr. Snell in a spacious, high-ceilinged office adorned with an Executive Mission desk of quarter-sawn red oak and hammered-copper hardware and accents. The bookcases were crafted of the same handsome oak. Pricy, heirloom pieces. Alongside the diplomas on the wall, hung oil paintings of desolate, windswept landscapes with decrepit barns and lonely farmhouses, bringing to mind Wyeth. Rath’s favorite. The paintings weren’t prints. They were originals, each lit from above with a pair of sconced lights set at exact angles. The gilded frames alone must have run a couple grand each.
The place was a long ways from the impression Snell gave of himself to patients, with his Carhartt jeans and flannel shirts and Merrells.
Snell finished buttoning up a smart slate blue tailored shirt, then tucked it into designer jeans held up by a polished, hand-tooled leather belt. He nodded at a chair that looked like a Stickley, all dark oak and sumptuous leather.
Rath sat. Damn, what comfort. He thought he might never want to get up again. The pain in his back vanished. He’d sell the farm for a chair like this. It’d probably cost him that, too.
“Drink?” Snell said.
“Why not?” Rath said.
“Ice? Water?”
Rath always took ice, but he sensed, somehow, such practice was taboo in this office, so shook his head.
“Good man,” Snell said, and pulled down the top of what looked like a small rolltop mail desk to reveal a full bar of top-shelf liquor. Clever. Snell took a bottle of Caol Ila 18 and poured two fingers into a snifter he handed to Rath, then poured the same for himself.
His snifter was solid and supremely balanced in the hand. A regal specimen of lead crystal. Rath took a sip. Fine scotch from a fine glass. The familiar glow spread through him and slowed the world to a more manageable pace.
Snell sat behind his desk, set his drink on the chair’s generous arm.
Rath rested his drink on his knee. He wanted a second sip but decided to hold off until Snell took his.
“So,” Rath said.
“The girl,” Snell said. “Yes.”
“Where’d you see her?” A feeling of insecurity crept down Rath’s spine. Such sensations were foreign to him. Could it be because he sat amid an abundance of wealth and success that, although displayed tastefully, was nevertheless meant to put a visitor in his place? No. He’d interviewed plenty of people who could buy the doctor fifty times over without this reaction. Some were friends. So, what was it?
“I met the girl in a hallway,” Snell said.
“Can you be more specific?”
“The Northern Medical Center.”
Snell put his nose in the snifter, breathed, swirled his glass but did not drink.
Rath kept his glass fixed on his knee. “Tell me,” he said. “Leave nothing out.”
“I don’t plan to,” Snell said. “Leave anything out.” He rolled his glass between his palms. “It’s simply that. While I saw her in a hallway, it’s where she went into that might be both helpful to you, but also . . . Let’s say if circumstances weren’t what they were, I would never—”
“Circumstances are what they are, Dr. Snell. In my business, one thing you learn is to accept circumstances as they are and to recognize that cruel acts are done by the hands of some against the will of others, often only to get supreme satisfaction from the cruelty.”
Snell took a long drink of scotch. “I saw her going into the office of a Dr. Langevine.”
Rath sipped his drink, let the mellow smokiness dissolve into his tongue and further soften the edges of the world. “Dr. Langevine?”
“A general practitioner with a focus in gynecology.”
Rath resisted the urge to stand and pace. “Not so unusual then,” he said flatly.
Snell raised an eyebrow. “True. But. I saw her again, later that day. That’s why she stuck with me. That and she’s quite—” He seemed unsure how to say it, struggled with the implications. “Exquisite. It took me a while to realize she was your girl. That photo you tote around isn’t—”
“I’ve got a better one now.”
“Anyway. I saw her later the same day. Coming out of Family Matters.”
Rath sipped, mulling over what he was hearing, trying to make sense of it. “Are you saying . . .”
“I’m not saying anything. I don’t know anything. Except that I saw her at these two places in a matter of a few hours.”
“What was the date?”
“A few Tuesdays ago. October fourth.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I was down there for a meeting.”
What was Mandy Wilks doing at these places? Was she pregnant? Was this what she shared with Julia? His mind was a hive of theories, each a buzzing bee on a cold morning, twitching its wings and wanting, but unable, to take flight. Yet.
“What time?” Rath said.
“At Langevine’s, anywhere from nine to eleven in the morning. I was in the hallway several times. That afternoon, the best I could say was between two and three.”
It struck Rath that as disparate as all the girls were, they did have one thing in common. It had stared him in the face the whole time, and he’d thought of it just before Snell had called. It had been the thought that had escaped him as the phone buzzed. Regardless of the girls’ upbringings, talents, tastes, or looks, they all had had boyfriends. They could all have been pregnant. George Waters couldn’t know that the girls were pregnant when the girls hadn’t known each other and would have been pregnant at several different times? How would any one person know that? Perhaps a doctor, like this Langevine? Except the girls lived too far apart to share the same doctor, and doctors would have no access to each others’ patients’ files. It made no sense. If true, of course, it would eventually make sense. Logic pulled back the veil of mystery that clouded every crime. Always.
“I hope I was of some help,” Snell said.
Rath finished his drink and stood.
Snell remained seated, as if he might stay there and ponder for some time the cruelty and exquisiteness of the world while he put a good dent in his bottle of Caol Ila.