Shades of Eva, page 42
Anna shook her head. “I’m not sure at this point. I just remember Eva talking about her. Virgil wouldn’t discuss her. This always angered Eva, and I can understand why. Dorothy was quite a bit older than Eva, so I presumed Mr. McGinnis was married before. But I’m not sure.”
“She might have given Elmer a nice home,” I offered. It was all I thought of to say.
Anna agreed. “When was the last time you saw your brother, Ben?”
“1954. He cut us off without so much as a goodbye.”
“I’m sorry about Fred. I truly am.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure what to say. She made it sound as if my brother was dead. I gave her a look of gracious misunderstanding. In my heart he was always only missing.
“I mean I’m sorry about all of this,” she clarified. “Surely, you must have thought Eva’s issues were resolved. I’m sorry about what this has done to your career and your reputation, but I might add it doesn’t take away from who you are. This isn’t you, Ben. I wouldn’t ride yourself too hard over things. You were young, you and Eva. Young people are full of passion. You went separate ways.”
“Eva was home for a weekend just prior to Halloween,” I began. “I was home alone. I loved her, Anna. I really did. I swore, though, that I’d never use her in that way. I had promised her just after she was taken here that I’d show up with a car and a suit and a ring someday and bust her out. We’d run away and be happy together.
“Eva and I made love. She was home on a weekend pass. She was sixteen. I told her to hold on, that I was going to come back for her like we always talked about—like I’d always promised. But it didn’t happen. Things went downhill. She became pregnant. I got scared, and when her baby was taken, I was terrified.
“The days turned to months and then years, and it all changed. I felt sorry for her. I felt guilty, and I felt…pity. But above all else she frightened me. I just needed to run...and she let me run.”
Anna let out a deep sigh that sounded like relief. I think she finally understood. At least she seemed to, and that’s what I needed. I needed someone to understand me and why it was that I did what I did to Eva.
Anna didn’t judge me, just as Eva never judged me. Instead Anna thanked me.
“Thank you for saying what you’ve said, Ben. I too betrayed Eva—out trust and even our friendship, if I can admit to such a thing. She was a friend. She wasn’t a patient. She was more than that.
“I should have fought her father more than I did. He wanted every inkling of her disease destroyed, every artifact of her art and her imagination erased. It was as if he were talking about a stain or something we could just wipe away. And I went along with it.”
Anna was shaking her head, disappointingly.
“She deserved to keep her child, Ben. At least I did one thing for her while she was here. I told attendants in the neonatal unit and the orphanage to keep the doors unlocked. There were a few moms on campus who had babies while in here, children their families didn’t want, babies who were going to be moved to a different institution, like Elmer. I always thought that the cruelest of reactions—taking a child away from its mother. It wasn’t as if Eva was a threat to her son. She loved him.”
“What do you mean you kept the doors open?”
“Eva was given some latitude with respect to visiting Elmer. Virgil ordered Eva and Elmer separated. Thought it would make the break easier on her if she wasn’t allowed to see him until he could be transferred. Again, I thought that cruel. But I allowed Eva access to her baby. She could visit him during the day, and at night we kept the doors to the tunnels unlocked.”
“The tunnels?”
“There are tunnels beneath the Institution that connect one building to the other. These are supply pathways, mostly—for laundry, maintenance personnel, what have you. She was rooming in the Hypnology Center—the rehabilitation center out back—where Brad is staying now. There’s an underground tunnel connecting the Main Hospital to the Center. Eva had access to the tunnel…and ultimately to Elmer. She was allowed to take her baby each night from neonatal back to her room. She’d keep him with her. It was good for her and good for the baby.”
“Anna, tell me about the night Elmer was taken.”
“That night Eva had used the tunnels to bring Elmer to her room. That was confirmed by the neonatal unit staff. This was about midnight. We aren’t sure what happened after that. We go by what Eva told us, and what Ully has told us.”
“What did Eva tell you?”
“That she was assaulted very badly. And she was. She was beaten unconscious, or had passed out, one of the two. She said that sometime in the early morning your brother entered her room.”
Anna paused. She was giving me time, I think, to react to that. And she was also reacting, herself. I suppose she felt guilty in a way. The same open door policy that gave Eva so much happiness had left the door open for certain evil. I nodded understandingly, and encouraged Anna to go on.
“Your brother, according to Eva’s statement, was surprised that Elmer was with her. He wanted sex. She wouldn’t cooperate with him, and he attacked her. She says he hit her and she blacked out momentarily. When she came to, Fred and Elmer were gone. She looked out the window and says she saw him disappear down the ravine carrying something.”
“Did she say what he was carrying?”
Anna shook her head. “No. She couldn’t make it out. She thought it was Elmer.”
“And what did Ully say?”
“Originally, he said that his sister was right in her accusations. That your brother raped her, and that Ully made some money off of that.”
“And what about the night Eva said Fred took her baby?”
“Ully denies being involved with that, now. Now he says he was home asleep.”
“But originally? Did he admit to something different?”
“Yes, when he first arrived here, he said that he was with Fred that night, and that Fred coerced him into bringing him here for one last night of sex with Eva. He said that he waited by the ravines for Fred, and that he came out in a few minutes carrying a red toolbox.”
“A red toolbox?”
“Yes. He was specific about the color, and what it was.”
“What did he and Fred do with it?”
“He said that Fred had stolen it, but had gotten scared that he took it and that he decided to bury it.”
“Bury it?”
“Yes, bury it. Out back of the grounds here.”
“Elmer wouldn’t have been in there, would he?”
“I don’t know. I asked Ully. He didn’t know. He said he did not think so, but wasn’t sure. Now he just simply denies he ever said that.”
“What do you make of that?”
“I’m not sure. I think Ully recanted these statements because police identified Abigail Angstrom. I think the manhunt for her has given him the nerve to recant, as well as turn his nephew in. But I can’t say for sure if he was telling the truth about all this, or if he was coerced into saying these things by Mitchell and Abigail. After all, they were trying to take him for over a million dollars.”
I was listening to Anna ramble on, but my mind was stuck on something else she’d said. “Anna, does the institution keep records on maintenance equipment? A lost and found record? A record of thefts, for instance?”
“Yes, of course.” Anna must have thinking what I was thinking. As she was answering, she’d opened her desk drawer and retrieved a small notebook. She flipped to a certain page and then picked up a telephone and dialed.
She spoke into the phone. “Yes, it’s Dr. Norris. Listen, I need you to come in and open up records. I’ll make it worth your while.” A pause. “Equipment losses.” There was another pause. “1954. Looking for a missing toolbox. It’s urgent, alright? Thank you.”
“I’m not sure which version to believe,” Anna said as she hung up the phone. “We’ll look into the maintenance records. If what Ully said was true, then there should be a report somewhere that a toolkit was lost.”
“Anna, I know this sounds bazaar, but police told me they found a strap saw on the premises here, and that a black oak tree was cut down. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And now someone’s faxed in some DNA reports comparing my DNA to the alleged DNA of Eva’s baby.”
“You’re thinking they didn’t just chop a tree down,” Anna said, leaning forward, excitedly.
“I’m saying they might have found Elmer’s remains. I think you are right. I think that Ully seeing Abigail’s picture on TV gave him a little backbone, a little courage to recant.”
I asked Anna point blank, “Could Elmer have been smuggled out of Eva’s room in a toolbox, or do you think something else happened to him?”
“I think Ully knows more than he’s admitting to. I don’t think Eva was lying, either.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“What I know is that I have a few more hours with Ully, and after tonight, I think we’ll have our answer.”
I was stunned. I was angry. I was horrified at the idea that Ully could have been keeping—was still keeping—such a terrible secret. How could he betray his sister—his nephews—in that way?
And then again, why hadn’t I confessed to police my true relationship with Eva. The answer was something I had been telling Mitchell all along: like him, I was just a boy, and so was Ully. We were, after all, just kids.
“Eva was frantic after that,” Anna continued. “She made a lot of threats. She also blew some whistles. She told administration that I’d allowed her access to the tunnels, and that she wasn’t the only one. I was suspended after that, and almost lost my job. Eva never forgave me for not protecting her baby. I’ve always felt slightly responsible for what happened.”
“Your heart was in the right place,” I told Anna. “Sometimes kindness can backfire on you.”
“Ben, this place…this profession…it has a lot to atone for. One of the ways we do that is by staying connected to the people who’ve come through here. I try and stay connected to my patients. I visit them. I attend their weddings. I attend their funerals, as many as I can. I send them cards when they have children, and I try and visit those children. I used to visit Eva and Brad when they lived on Maple. I met Mitchell this way. This is how I met Abigail Angstrom.”
“You’ve met Abigail?”
“Yes. Several times. She was just a little girl the first time I met her. She and her mother were attending an aunt’s funeral. This aunt was a patient here. Her name was Emily. She was a friend to Eva. She fell in love with one of our doctors, with her psychiatrist. She was enigmatic. She was poetic, yet she killed her own husband. She poisoned him. She poisoned him because when he was sick, he wasn’t cruel to her. It was an accident, but not a coincidence. She told me something once, this Emily, shortly before she died in here. She said there were no such things as coincidences.
“Ben, it’s not a coincidence that you’re here. If Abby or Mitchell hadn’t have approached you, I would have called you, because one way or the other we have to know.”
Here, Anna grew very solemn and leaned forward in her chair. She was looking me directly in the eyes. “I want you to go and see Brad. He is in the rehabilitation center out back. I’ll get you a pass. Staff will give you directions. I’ll be over shortly to talk with you both. You need to make amends, Ben—you and Brad. I’ve told him the same thing. You’ve each loved and lost in similar ways. This place needs your forgiveness as much as we need hers. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
The Asylum—like any human being—had made mistakes. It was not the Asylum of old. The old way was gone, and like an aging convict whose committed a crime in her youth and paid for it in a thousand different ways, she deserved forgiveness.
***
Chapter 46
Mitchell
Abby told me that Christian had put a GPS homing device on the undercarriage of Ben’s car, a wiretap on his home’s landline, and a few audio-surveillance bugs about his house. If Ben was withholding his brother’s whereabouts from police, for any reason, then three things were likely to happen: he’d try and telephone Fred, visit him personally, or perhaps discuss the truth with his wife. In the end, he discussed the truth with his wife, but he truly didn’t know where Fred was.
Allie Levantle was less than thrilled—to say the least—at the news that her husband of almost forty years had admitted to having sex with my mother forty years ago. Allie must have thought old Ben a virgin when she married him. I had to allow myself a laugh at Ben’s expense. It was a bit more justice for Mom; a surprise to me, but justice nonetheless. Mom finally got the credit—or the discredit she deserved—for being the first to bed Allie’s reticent, hometown husband from the Bluffs.
When Ben began his drive to River Bluff that evening, the device sent a roaming alarm that our computer at the river rental house picked up. It was easy to romanticize the scenario: a psychologist being drawn into a secret past, one hunting for the ghost of a long-forgotten first love. It was easy because that long-forgotten love was my mother. It felt validating, but it was just a romantic notion.
Abby watched the blip representing Ben’s location on the computer screen and commented, “This might be all you ever have from the Levantles, Mitchell.”
And she was right. A hunt, which was all this was at that point, was almost more than I could ask for. Police were looking for Fred Levantle, if for no other reason than to warn him. Abby and I were looking for him, and so was Ben in a way.
The blip stayed in River Bluff for an hour. It was centered inconspicuously on the River Bluff police headquarters. According to Ben’s wiretap, Ben was giving a formal statement to police, to a Detective named Hubert Ramsey. I remembered Ramsey. He wasn’t too happy with me as a child. I wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer his W questions.
About an hour later, the blip began making its way toward a very familiar place to me: my once Maple Street home where I’d grown up.
I had to wonder what Ben was doing there, and furthermore, why hadn’t he bothered to stop at his own childhood home? Abby and I were expecting him to pull up next door once he began his trip our way, so much so that Abby and I had taken the trouble to hide the cars down the street and hang some old sheets in the windows to prevent him from seeing something he shouldn’t see.
It was all for naught, as he never visited his old house.
He stayed at the Maple Street address for about fifteen minutes and then began working his way east toward the Asylum. Abby and I just looked at one another with bemusement.
I stayed locked on the monitor, making sure the bugs in the halfway house, particularly those in room eight where my father was staying, were still transmitting. My hunch was that police had told Ben that my father was rooming at the halfway house and that Ben just might be going to pay him a visit.
“That’s certainly unconventional,” I told Abby. “Most psychologists don’t get that involved, but then again most psychologists aren’t duped in the way Ben was.”
In forty minutes, security let Ben pass and he was walking up the sidewalk toward the administrative complex. I wondered if when he breeched those solid mahogany doors and stepped into that foyer if he’d feel the same ominous discomfort, the same brooding cowardice that I felt when standing in threshold of that place. But cameras don’t lie. Ben strolled casually through the foyer right to reception without so much as batting an eye.
I imagined that Ben was visiting the Asylum with a certain sense of bewilderment, with a certain impending curiosity at meeting the man who, in a way, had taken his place…if that’s what he was doing. My father had done something Ben had failed to do—he gave Mom a snowball’s chance in hell where Ben had simply let my mother melt away.
I was transfixed by the monitors before me, broadcasting as clear an image of my counselor moving through the only course fate seemed to have laid for him. It was eerie and it was satisfying. Whoever he was looking for—for whatever reasons he’d come to the Asylum to investigate—that was not the point. He was there. That was the point, and like me and like Anna and Ully and like my father, he belonged in this eerie family reunion, and to that belongingness I had to nod my head.
Ben walked to the receptionist area and wrapped on the glass to get someone’s attention. He spoke briefly to someone for ten seconds and then made his way down the center hallway toward Anna’s office.
I watched the monitor as Ben was now standing outside of what appeared to be Anna Norris’s doorway. And it was. I could see her emerging half way into the hall. They shook hands.
“She’s up late tonight,” Abby said from across the room.
We had no devices in Anna’s office. It was a regret I must admit. I often wondered what Anna told Ben in that meeting, and vice versa. I would never know. He came out with a different demeanor than he had when he entered, however. He seemed nervous, agitated, unsure of himself, which wasn’t the Ben Levantle I was used to seeing. He didn’t walk with the same confidence he did when entering the place.
I watched him return up the hallway through which he’d come, and leave out the same front doorway, standing once again on her doorstep. He then turned toward the halfway house where Dad was admitted.
I clicked to a menu of locations on the computer, and selected a tab that allowed me to engage the audio-video in room eight: Dad’s room.
“He’s going to talk to my father,” I said to Abby.
She nodded and told me to bring up the audio.
I clicked GO and a separate window opened on another computer screen showing Dad’s room. I clicked the audio GO. The feed came through.
Ben approached Dad’s doorway with a pace suggesting reticence, and then knocked. The audio was loud and clear. “Mr. Rennix, I’m Ben Levantle. You were told I was coming?”
Dad took a seat in a chair near the window. “I know who you are,” Dad replied. “Come in.”
Ben entered and shut the door behind him.
“Interest you in a beverage, Dr. Ben?”
