Danny sat for an hour in a stairwell before he paged Dr. Gordon and asked for an emergency session. Gordon told Danny he’d be at his office as soon as he could. Danny beat Gordon there by twenty minutes and Gordon arrived to find Danny sitting on the floor outside the locked suite.
They went inside and Danny quickly unloaded on his doctor. He told him about the breakup with Vinny, which seemed like good news compared to what he’d learned from Fiona. Gordon just listened with the same passionless expression he always had.
“Do you feel your father had something to do with her death?” asked Gordon.
“He lied,” said Danny. “He covered up the death with a friend of his, a doctor. He consciously got another man to commit a felony.”
“That’s not an answer,” said Gordon calmly.
“My answer is no,” said Danny, “but that don’t change the fact that something is wrong. I’m going to find out why she died. He’s going to tell me, or I’ll—”
“What?” asked Gordon.
Danny calmed himself and let his grief subside. He loved his father and he would never do him any harm. Besides, Danny thought, Robert Cavanaugh could probably still take him.
“I just need to know the truth,” said Danny. “All of it. My father was in that house punishing himself each day and there has to be a reason for it. A man doesn’t do that kind of thing unless he’s got sin in his heart. I know, believe me, I know.”
“You think interrogating your father will make you feel better?” Gordon asked. Danny got the feeling that this question was more for Gordon than it was for himself.
“My mother is gone. I’m never going to see her again.” Danny took a long pause, fighting all the things he was feeling. “I have to know why.”
Danny shifted in the chair and felt like a child in the principal’s office. Gordon knew every embarrassing thing in his life, and now he knew his mother might have been killed and his father involved in some kind of cover-up. Danny knew there was a doctor-patient privilege, but he always wondered if it was kept.
“My life is falling apart,” said Danny. “My father…Vinny…and I’m no closer to catching the killer of the Bakers and Olittah Reese than I was yesterday. I got nothing. Asking my father what really happened is all I have right now.”
Gordon put down his pad and looked directly at Danny, something that suggested he was no longer his doctor at this moment.
“Do you think that your problem with Vinny is the same as your concerns about your father?”
“How?” asked Danny urgently and with a little anger in his voice. “How are those two things the same?”
“You have to find that out,” said Gordon. “All I know is you seem to be drawing from the same pool of emotions for both problems. You’ve reacted to the loss of your mother and Vinny in the same manner.”
Danny didn’t argue with Gordon. He was a smart man and had helped him immensely since he’d started coming to him. Gordon was trying to be objective, to lead him to what he thought the problem was.
“I can see that, I think,” said Danny. “They are so much alike, those two. I was the only one who could see it.”
“If that’s the case, then how does that make you feel about talking to your father?”
“Like it’s maybe the place to begin to solve all of my problems,” said Danny.
“Normally, I would never ask a patient to explore these matters without supervision, but I confess that this is new to me, and you—” Gordon stopped as if he were trying to choose his words carefully. “—you’re a unique man.”
Danny talked for a few more minutes then left Gordon’s office. He stepped out of the office complex into the coolness of the night air. He had been with the doctor for a long time and night had fallen. Danny was thinking that he’d faced many dangerous situations in his life, but nothing seemed as frightening as the prospect of knowing what had driven his mother to her death.