“I’m sure.” Eric didn’t mention the press on his front lawn. His troubles were nothing compared to hers.
“We picked out Renée’s casket, can you imagine. My daughter’s casket. I will bury my beautiful daughter, and knowing what they do to her body in the autopsy, that makes it so much worse.”
“I’m sure.” Eric could feel her agony.
“Well.” Peg straightened in her chair, seeming to summon her strength. “I know you’re wondering, I mean, I called you because I wanted to talk to you like a person, without lawyers or police, or anything like that. I’m not the kind of person to fall apart, or just do nothing, it’s not my way. I feel as if it’s a mother thing, maybe. Mothers, they take care. They act. They keep going, for Renée. You understand, as a dad.”
Eric nodded. “Yes.”
“So, I hoped that I could talk to you, parent to parent, and also with us both in the medical profession, I mean, I think we understand each other. We both want to help people, we take care of people, that’s what we do, right?”
“Yes, right, exactly.” Eric managed a smile that he knew looked pained, because that was the way he felt.
“Anyway, I know I’m not that coherent, I’m just so tired out.” Peg rubbed her face with her index finger and thumb, leaving pinkish welts on her fair skin.
“I saw you on TV, and they showed you in front of the police station, and we saw everything that happened at the mall last night.”
Eric didn’t say anything, waiting for her to finish.
“And of course we followed everything else that the Upper Merion Police said, and Captain Newmire.” Peg hesitated. “Anyway, the more I think about it, it doesn’t make sense to me that you would kill Renée.”
“No, of course not.” Eric felt a wave of relief. “I didn’t, I promise you. I did not harm your daughter. I would never do such a thing. It’s absolutely out of the question.”
“You didn’t know her, did you?”
“No, I did not know her.” Eric looked over as a young waitress approached, at the least opportune moment. “I’ll just have a Diet Coke, that’s all.”
Peg looked over, unsmiling. “Me too, that’s it.”
The waitress nodded, getting the message. “Thanks, folks. Sorry to interrupt. Be right back.”
Peg waited until the waitress was out of earshot, then picked up where she had left off. “Right, sure, that’s what I thought. I mean, that would be the least likely conclusion to draw, that you killed her. I asked around about you, I talked to people at work. They’ve heard of you, they say you’re very respected, a nice man, a good psychiatrist. You have no reason to kill Renée. Obviously, I think it’s much more likely that it was Max, and you’re Max’s psychiatrist, and that you know information, he told you something about her.”
Eric listened to her talk, her voice deep and calm, and though he sensed where she was going, he didn’t interrupt her. In any event, he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to give her the answer she wanted, if she asked him directly. So he was in absolutely no hurry to get there. It was as if he had to break her heart, in person.
“I’m going to be totally honest with you. Renée told me, rather she told my husband while they were running, that she thought Max had a crush on her. She liked him, too. Not in that way, but she told her father that Max definitely had a crush on her, she knew it from the first time he tutored her.”
Eric said nothing, just told himself to listen, not react.
“She was never really worried about Max, she never thought he would do her any harm, but she was young, naïve. My husband and I, we’re guessing he hid it pretty well. That all the time, he was planning to kill her.”
Eric forced himself not to respond.
The waitress approached with two Diet Cokes, which she set down on the table. “Here we go. Feel free to let me know if you want anything to eat. Thanks.”
Eric nodded at her. “Thank you, we will.”
After the waitress had left, Peg continued, “We heard Captain Newmire say that you have information about who killed Renée and that you are not giving them the information because you have to keep your patient-doctor privilege.” Peg paused, keeping her washed-out eyes on Eric and folding her hands in front of her. “I understand that that’s the kind of concern you have in the hospital. I mean, I know, I’m employed by a system, too, but this is an exception. This isn’t corporate or legal or anything like that. This is between us parents, and that’s why I called you. I wanted to meet with you, and ask you, and really beg you, beg you, do you understand what I’m saying? I’m begging you, from one parent to another, to tell me what you know. You need to tell me what Max told you about Renée, and why he killed her. She didn’t reject him, he never asked her out. She was nice to him, she was nice to everybody. She never did anything wrong. She didn’t deserve to die like that, she was too young, too good.” Peg’s eyes filmed. “I want to know all of it because I’m going to get justice for my child. Anthony says justice can’t bring her back, and I know that. But justice can be an end in itself. I want Max to pay for what he did to my daughter, and my family.”
Eric sighed inwardly, not knowing where to begin. “Peg, I wish I could tell you what you want to know, but I can’t. You know I can’t. There’s no way in the world I can tell you. But I will tell you something important, I will tell you that I’m not sure that Max killed Renée. You and the police could very well have the wrong suspect.”
“What are you talking about?” Peg’s tone darkened, but she kept her anger in check. “I know that he had a crush on my daughter, and so do you. I believe that he was planning to kill Renée, and so do you. I know that the police found her phone in his bedroom. Respect me enough to be honest with me. I’m an adult, I see life and death every day. I can take it. Tell me what you know.”
“I can’t tell you what I know, but I spent this morning—”
“Stop. You will answer me.” Peg spat out the words, her blue eyes hardening like ice. “I know that Max killed her. You know how I know that? Because I read what they said about your whereabouts. That you went to Swirled Peace, that you talked to Renée, that you followed her home, that my neighbor saw you sitting on the street, right out front of our house. Why were you doing that?”
“I can’t tell you, I can’t answer.”
“You don’t need to, because I’m not stupid. I say to myself, there are two possible reasons that you would be doing that.” Peg counted off on her index finger. “The first reason assumes that you have some relationship to Renée, that you’re stalking her, and that you’re trying to kill her. As I told you, I don’t believe that. Not from what I know about you, and I see doctors like you every day in my hospital. They’re healers. Even if they’re arrogant, and so many of them are, they chose the profession to heal, not to do harm.”
Eric swallowed hard, hearing a new note of certainty in her tone.
“The second possible reason is that you were protecting Renée. I think that after Max went missing, you were worried about Renée’s safety. So you went where she worked, which you knew from Max, and then you followed her home, to make sure Max didn’t hurt her.”
Eric listened, knowing that she had enunciated a theory that made perfect sense, a lot more sense than the police-Svengali theory, but it still wasn’t the truth. He hadn’t gone to protect Renée, he had really gone to find Max, but he couldn’t tell her that.
“Then, when my neighbor saw you on the street and told you to leave, you went home that night and went to bed. You let your guard down. You couldn’t find Max, but Max knew just what he was doing. He found Renée. He got to her the next morning. He must’ve known she walked the dog in Pickering Park in the morning before school. She always did it. She loved the dog, she talked all the time about the dog, and she probably told Max that in one of their tutoring sessions. He murdered her there, in the park. He choked the life from her.” Peg leaned over, her palms flat on the table, but pressing down so hard that her knuck
les turned whitish. “You were worried about that, Eric. You tried to prevent it, but you failed. Tell me I’m right. Tell me the truth.”
“The truth is that I think Max may be innocent.”
“Really.” Peg blew air through her lips, a little puff of disgust, then leaned back in the booth and folded her arms. “You think he’s truly innocent?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me why, or better yet, go tell the police why you believe that. Because the police think he did it, and if he really didn’t do it, then all they’re doing is wasting their time trying to make a case against him, when they could be going after the real killer. Either way, you have to go tell them. You have to tell them what you know. You have to tell them why you think Max is innocent, then. You cannot just sit back and do nothing. My daughter is dead. Your daughter is alive. You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“I am so very sorry for your loss, believe me, I am so sorry, but you have to know I haven’t been sitting on my hands.” Eric decided to be open with her, as tactfully as possible. “This morning, I was on my computer, did some research, and came up with a list of people who were close to Renée.”
“How do you know who’s close to my daughter or not?”
“From Facebook.” Eric slipped a hand into his shirt pocket and pulled out his handwritten list. “Todd Schuler, Hudson McAllister, or one of her girlfriends, and Julia Clackney, Mindy Choretz, Gabi Mateille, and Cate—”
“Are you serious?” Peg recoiled. “You looked on my daughter’s Facebook page? That’s private. I set her privacy settings myself when we set up the account.”
“Her page is private, but not all of her friends’ pages are private. Most of the girls’ are, but not the boys’, but I couldn’t tell which of the boys was her boyfriend—”
“You looked at her friends’ Facebook pages?” Peg’s lips parted in disbelief. “And what boyfriend? She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“She doesn’t?” Eric remembered that Max had told him in therapy that Renée had a boyfriend, that she had cried once after a fight with him. Eric realized that Peg didn’t know Renée had a boyfriend, so he couldn’t disclose it.
“No, she used to see Todd Schuler, but they broke up a long time ago. We didn’t like him and—” Peg scowled, catching herself. “This is none of your business! What are you talking about? What are you doing, looking up her Facebook friends?”
“Peg, I’m just trying to exhaust the possibilities. The police have the wrong person and they aren’t looking for the real killer. If her murder wasn’t an act of random violence, which is always possible, then it had to be someone she knows—”
“How dare you!” Peg frowned, her eyes flashing like polished steel. “Are you trying to tell me that you think her friends killed her? They’ve been best friends since elementary school, some of them. They can’t stop crying since she died.”
“I’m just saying that the real killer is still out there—”
“You think that her friends strangled her with their bare hands? You think that’s likelier than your crazy patient Max doing it? Your troubled, damaged, whack job patient, who was dangerous enough to hold children hostage at gunpoint and threaten the lives of everyone at the mall?” Peg pursed her lips tightly, leaning forward. “Now you listen to me. I asked you nicely, I even begged you, and now I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do, if you don’t tell me or the police what you know. I did some research myself and I asked a few psychiatrists I know, and they told me about a case called Tarasoff, and under that case, if a psychiatrist thinks that a psychiatric patient is going to kill somebody, he is legally obligated to tell that person or the police.”
Eric felt the blood drain from his face.
“You knew that Max was going to kill Renée, and the proof is that you followed her to protect her that night. So if you don’t come forward and tell the police everything you know, my husband and I are going to sue you. We have the money and will spend every last cent of it to sue you blind. You are going to lose everything you have. You will never work at a major hospital, or any hospital again.” Peg spoke so vehemently that her words picked up speed, fueled by anger, pain, and grief. “I am not going to stop until I get justice for my daughter. I am not going to stop until I see that Max is punished to the fullest extent of the law. So if you value your own hide, you best get your butt to the police.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t—”
“Then so be it.” Peg got up abruptly from the table, jostling the sodas, then she grabbed her purse, turned away, and stormed off.
“Peg, wait!” Eric rose to go after her, but he stopped himself and sat back down. He had upset her enough already, and Peg was entitled to every emotion she was feeling. In her position, he would’ve felt the same way. But in view of what she had said, he wanted to follow up to see if Renée’s boyfriend was Todd Schuler.
Eric took a sip of his Diet Coke, slid his phone from his pocket, and searched Facebook until he reached Todd Schuler’s page. It was public, with none of the privacy settings engaged, and Eric scanned it with a critical eye. Under In A Relationship it read, It’s Complicated. Eric realized if Todd was her boyfriend and Renée’s parents didn’t know about it, then Todd couldn’t very well say it on Facebook. Eric would guess that Renée’s relationship status was single, because she couldn’t blow their cover, either. Todd didn’t show as Renée’s Facebook friend, which was why Eric hadn’t found him before. She must have unfriended him, like Caitlin did, maybe to fool her parents.
Eric scrolled down and read the posts on Todd’s page. There weren’t many of them, and it looked as if Todd posted only every three or four days. He scrolled down to Wednesday, the day Renée’s murder had come to light. His post read simply: hrtbrkn 4eva. There was no mention of Renée or explanation of the reference, which jibed with Eric’s theory that they were keeping it under wraps.
He scrolled down to the previous posts and looked at them. There were pictures taken at a party, dimly lit, with lots of young people, red Solo cups, and backwards baseball caps, but in one of the photos, Todd was in a selfie, standing alone with Renée, grinning against some verdant backdrop. The caption said: my bae.
Eric wasn’t completely unhip and he knew that “bae” meant girlfriend. Todd might have been careless in posting it, but he must have known that Renée’s parents would have no reason to go on Todd’s Facebook page. And they hadn’t thought the relationship was current, at least not until now, when Eric had let it slip to Peg.
He checked the date of the picture, which was a month ago. Peg had said they broke up a long time ago, but the picture contradicted that; whether they were boyfriend and girlfriend or not, they were certainly in each other’s lives. He eyed the picture again, which was easier to see in the restaurant than in his office with its panel of windows. He couldn’t tell what was in the background of the lawn, but there were some hedges, then the corner showed some sort of pink object.
He swiped the screen and enlarged that section of the photo, but still couldn’t tell what the object was; it looked like a neon-pink spike of some sort, a color and shape incongruous in nature. Then it struck him, he had seen that incongrous shape somewhere before, in one of the photos. He navigated from Facebook to read the Township website, then looked under Parks and Recreation, and skimmed through the listings to Pickering Park.
He clicked the link, and the phone screen filled with photos from the park: a mulched running trail, a parkour course, and the third photo, which made him gasp. It was of a life-size plastic cow, painted in neon-pink and chartreuse, one of those charity art projects that dotted public places in the area. He enlarged the photo with his fingers, squinted to see the pink tip of the horn, then navigated back to Todd’s Facebook page and compared it with the pink sliver in the upper right-hand corner of the selfie. It was the same cow, from Pickering Park.
Eric’s mouth went dry and he took another sip of his Diet Coke, his thoughts churning. The selfie proved that T
odd had been in Pickering Park with Renée, so clearly he knew about the park. Eric remembered that Peg had said Renée walked the dog in the park every morning, as part of her routine. Eric wondered if Renée had been using the dog as an excuse to meet Todd in the park on those mornings, secretly. Maybe Todd had met her there Wednesday morning and killed her.
Eric thought about it, and it made sense. What if Renée had tried to break up with him and he had killed her? Or if he was jealous about something? The boyfriend was the conventional place to start a murder investigation, but the police didn’t know Renée had a boyfriend and neither did Peg, until now. If Todd had taken her phone when he killed her, nobody would know about him. The police might find out when they got the records, but that was days away. In the meantime, Todd could destroy evidence or vanish.
Eric prayed that Peg was driving home thinking about what he had said, and after she’d calmed down, she went to Todd’s Facebook page and saw the photo he had just seen. He hoped she would see the neon-pink bull’s horn and that she would put two-and-two together. Eric scrolled upward to the most recent pictures, scanning them idly and planning his next move. There were pictures of textbooks with the caption Only thing worse than school is summer school and under that you believe I paid 100 bucks for this effin chem book? Eric checked the sidebar, under Education, and Todd had listed that he was a freshman at Delaware County Community College, Exton campus.
Eric thought a minute. Exton was only fifteen minutes away, and he had no other leads to follow. He wondered what kind of car Todd drove, because then he could find out if the car had been spotted around Pickering Park the morning that Renée was found dead. The neighborhood had an active town watch, so maybe someone would’ve noticed Todd’s car.
Eric slid out his wallet and put a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
And got going.
Chapter Fifty-one
Eric navigated Lancaster Avenue in light traffic, the cell phone to his ear. “Hello, is this the registration office?”