Jemimah parked her car in the short-term lot at the airport in Albuquerque. She picked up her ticket and boarding pass at the counter and boarded the Southwest Airlines flight, which lasted seventy-five minutes. Arriving in Denver, she rented a car and drove north on Interstate 70 toward Grape Street. She turned into the visitors’ lot and walked up the brick pathway toward the air-conditioned lobby. The hospital grounds were pristine, the lawn trimmed short. Rows and rows of perennials ran along the edge of the sidewalk. Not a one was wilted.
As she entered the building, a security guard directed her to the receptionist, a pleasant woman who said Dr. Garland would be with her shortly. Five minutes later a man in a white coat walked toward her.
“I’m Dr. Garland.” He gave Jem a firm handshake and directed her to his office. She sat in the brown leather chair facing him. Framed diplomas and certificates lined the walls. A faux Ficus tree in a large green pot occupied one corner. Even in this room, a strong antiseptic smell permeated the air.
“My name is Jemimah Hodge.” She handed him her card. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
Dr. Garland was light-haired, tanned, and muscular—a poster boy for fitness. His voice was soothing, like a psychiatrist should be, she thought.
He took a chair behind his desk and propped his feet on top. “Dr. Hodge, you said you wanted to talk about Brenda Mason?”
“Yes,” she said. I’m a forensic psychologist working on a case with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department in New Mexico.”
“And how does that concern Brenda?” He thumbed through a manila folder on his desk as if he knew he was not going to get a specific answer.
“We’re investigating the disappearance of a number of women around Santa Fe. Brenda is a person of interest. I’m looking into her background to determine if we might need to consider her a suspect at this time. I’m primarily interested in the reasons you saw her as an inpatient.”
“I’ve gone over her file to refresh my memory. Brenda attempted to assault a woman sitting in a restaurant with her former boyfriend. I believe she was arrested for disorderly conduct and spent a few days in jail before being arraigned. The judge sentenced her to either ninety days at our facility or six months in jail.” His glasses kept sliding down his nose as he talked. “As you know, she opted to spend the three months with us.”
“What can you tell me about her without breaching your doctor-patient relationship?” Jemimah asked.
He peered at her through his horn-rimmed glasses. The furrows on his forehead deepened. He well knew the type of person Brenda was. She was a Class A sociopath. His dilemma was how to respond to Jemimah’s questions without putting the hospital in jeopardy.
“Not a lot I can say, you understand. But I can point you toward the boyfriend. He’s a local fellow, and perhaps he’d be willing to speak with you.” He removed his glasses, adjusted the nosepiece, and put them back on. “Brenda was a textbook case with a number of issues. As you’re aware, those cases follow an established pattern.” He spoke generically, but Jemimah realized he was giving her the straight info on Brenda.
“She refuses to take any blame for a particular incident or for many other events in her life. If a suitor breaks up with her, she may stalk him, turning up at his place of employment, sporting events, restaurants. If he appears in public with a girl, whether she is a girlfriend or merely an associate from work, she accosts them and creates a scene. She will declare she loves him and can’t understand why they broke up, conduct which under ordinary circumstances might be considered shameful.”
“I see.” Jemimah sensed that Dr. Garland was going to talk—despite his protests about not being able to offer much—as he suddenly lapsed into calling his theoretical patient by name.
The doctor swung his chair around and put his feet down. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a spritzer bottle and a tissue and proceeded to clean his glasses. Carefully and meticulously, he weighed each word as he spoke.
“Brenda was completely oblivious to the breakup. We often discussed her tendency to deny the obvious. Quite frankly, it’s my opinion she suffered from a form of paranoid attachment syndrome. I’m sure you’re familiar with that—an individual’s incapacity to distinguish between someone who could actually care for them and someone who they think will care for them.”
“Was she on any medication while she was a patient?” Jemimah asked.
He walked toward the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “We tried various medications, Novoclopamine for one. I’ve had great success with patients suffering from psychotic episodes, which Brenda had exhibited. But she was a difficult case. Quite honestly I couldn’t tell if she was really making progress or just play-acting. By the time she left here, she had turned into a model patient. She showed up for her scheduled appointments, participated in group therapy. My staff decided she was ready to move on. They had far more exposure to her than I did, and made the ultimate recommendations that she was capable of returning to society.”
“Do you have any record of her family?”
Jemimah said.
“She spoke very little about her parents.” He sat down again and thumbed through the file. “It says here they were divorced. The mother remarried a couple of times and had another daughter. For years, Brenda had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals in California and more recently here in Colorado. As a child, she craved attention, good or bad. After her mother divorced her father, she remarried a man with a son about Brenda’s age. Brenda became infatuated with him, believed he loved her, and after her mother divorced again, Brenda was devastated, more at the loss of her step-brother than anything else. She began to exhibit symptoms of severe depression and periodically landed in the hospital for treatment.
“That’s about all we know. Brenda was narcissistic to a great degree, but could easily come off as thoughtful and caring. Nonetheless, I detected a heart of pure stone.”
“Did she say where she was going once she was released?” Jemimah was scribbling notes as fast as she could. This guy was a gold mine of information. She no longer feared the whole trip might turn out to be a wild goose chase.
“Well, as I recall, she mentioned New Mexico,” he said. “Brenda was very intelligent. She scored high on all the standard tests. In addition, she exhibited all the classic traits of an addict—drank, smoked, did crystal meth, anything and everything. But she had the uncanny ability to function as though she was clean. It was the kind of behavior researchers love to write about.”
He looked up as the grandfather clock in the corner chimed eleven. Jemimah was surprised that the morning had progressed so rapidly.
“Just a few more questions, Doctor. What about violence, did she have any additional episodes after she came here?”
“Not that I witnessed. The meds probably helped with that. But there’s no doubt in my mind she was capable of it. She either kept it in check or never encountered an occasion where she felt it was necessary. She was also acutely aware that misbehavior would extend her sentence.”
“Have you heard from her at all?” she said.
“No, I haven’t. If you wait here a few minutes, I’ll get the boyfriend’s number for you.” He returned to his desk, scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to her.
Jemimah thanked him and walked out to her car. She dialed Jimmy Fernando’s number and made an appointment to see him later in the day. She had a few hours to kill, so she called Robin Pierce, an old college roommate, who was now a curator at the Denver Art Museum. They met for lunch in the Museum’s restaurant.