Silva was upset. “Wasting it, you mean.” She gathered her things and met Li at the door. “He’s hiding them now,” she said, “but soon he won’t bother.”
“We’ll stop this long before that happens,” Li said.
Silva lingered for a moment. “You sound confident.” The insult in her tone was impossible to miss. Li opened the door wider and stepped back for Silva to walk through it. “One more thing,” Li said. “Did Morgan ever mention lipstick?”
It was information, another detail that seemed to feed Silva, as expected. “Lipstick,” Silva repeated. “I need context.”
“On the bodies,” Li said. “Sorry, I can’t get any more specific.”
“You’re being deliberately vague, Detective. You think you have time for games, but I assure you, you don’t. This very minute, he’s out there choosing his next victim. This is time you’ve wasted, time you’ve forced me to waste. How can I possibly help you if you won’t trust me?”
“You’ve helped us already, Dr. Silva. You’ve given us a lead we didn’t have before. We appreciate that.” Li nodded to a uniform to walk her out and watched as Silva left. Then she went to get her phone to call Foster and let her know Silva was on the move.
CHAPTER 51
Foster’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and she slid it out to see who was calling. A text from Li. Silva had just left her. Time was short. She slipped the phone back and smiled at Dr. Emil Gershon, Westhaven’s director, who stared at her with ferret eyes, his thin fingers laced together and resting on his executive desk. He seemed a little stuffy, rigid, not someone prone to flights of fancy. The herringbone suit with a vest and a stiff brown bow tie hinted as much. It was as though he’d stepped out of another era and staunchly refused to update himself to this one.
Coming in, she’d noticed that Westhaven was a lot smaller than she’d envisioned, though it stood resolute, cold, and imposing from the street, like a gray stone fortress, minus moat, keep, and turrets, a place no doubt easier to get into than out of. It was only as she drove through the gate and parked in the side lot that she noticed the cracks in the facade, the chipped front steps. The serene grounds, though, looked inviting enough, well suited to self-reflection. It had been the bars at the ground-floor windows that pulled her up short. The locked gate with the guard stationed in his small guard box didn’t help assuage fears of being confined, even voluntarily.
“Sorry about that,” she said to Gershon. Foster did the math in her head. From the station to the hospital’s front gate, if Silva was on her way back, she had maybe forty-five minutes, no more, to get what she needed.
His dark, beady eyes scanned the room as if looking for a safe place to land. “The police. I don’t understand. What has Dr. Silva done to come to your attention? Westhaven has an unblemished reputation; our staff and clinicians are . . .”
She stopped the sales pitch with a raised hand. “I’d just appreciate a little background, Dr. Gershon. As much as you can tell me. Please.”
“You said homicide. What could Dr. Silva possibly have to do with a homicide?”
“Actually, we were hoping to enlist Dr. Silva’s help. We have a very difficult situation at the moment. You’ve watched the news. We’re dealing with a disturbed individual. Dr. Silva has the experience, and Westhaven has an excellent reputation.”
Most people responded to a little ego stroking; Gershon appeared not to be an exception. “How did you hear of us . . . I mean, of her?”
Foster held his look, then told a lie. “I don’t know, Dr. Gershon. I go where I’m assigned to go. My task is to find out if Dr. Silva can assist us in running this dangerous person to ground.”
“You’ve come to the right place, then. We may be a smaller facility, but we employ only the best. Dr. Mariana Silva is highly regarded and has quite an impressive history with decades of clinical work under her belt. I should know; I vetted her myself.”
“Westhaven is lucky to have her,” Foster said.
A pompous smirk joined the beady-eyed stare. “I see it the other way around. She’s lucky to be here.”
“You vetted her yourself, and you obviously found nothing untoward. But Westhaven isn’t Johns Hopkins or the lecture circuit in Lucerne. So with all due respect, sir, either you punched up and won the lottery, or there’s some reason Silva punched down and landed here. Which is it?”
“Blunt,” Gershon said with a sneer. “Painfully.”
“No offense, Doctor, but things are moving fast. We need to know what we need to know, and we need to know it now.”
“All right. Standard procedure. We needed another staff psychiatrist and put the call out, and Dr. Silva expressed an interest. I could hardly believe our good fortune. I conducted my research, contacted her previous employers, thoroughly reviewed her resume. I knew her by reputation, of course. She’s authored numerous articles in all the top medical journals and magazines, consulted everywhere. Now we have her, and as a result, Westhaven has a deeper bench.”
“And the patients Silva treats?” Foster asked.
“They’re often classified as apex predators. Lions in the jungle, the top of the food chain. Though their disorder cannot be cured, per se—and there is no magic pill or long-term course of treatment—they can be taught skills to help manage their toxic tendencies. Here, though, we mostly treat depressives, mild personality disorders, PTSD. Actually, I had a fear that Dr. Silva would find us rather boring compared to the more dramatic cases she’s encountered over her long career, but she has tucked right in.”
“What was Dr. Silva doing just prior to joining Westhaven?”
“Why is that important?” he replied.
“Just getting a complete picture, Dr. Gershon.”
“She was on sabbatical, I believe. Working on a personal project. A book. She’s written several. We all step away on occasion to publish or teach. Psychoanalysis is a constantly evolving field. I’ll save you some time here, Detective. Shall I? Dr. Silva is the best there is. Period.”
Foster checked her watch, stood, and placed her card on Gershon’s desk. “Thanks for your time. I hope we can double back if there are other questions?”
Gershon beamed, a Cheshire Cat in herringbone. “Please do.”
The hall outside his office was empty except for her, but she could hear activity somewhere—murmured voices, feet shuffling along the floor, doors slamming shut. The soft soap PR pitch from Gershon felt a little suspicious. She’d met the woman. She’d sat across from her and looked into her eyes. She wasn’t as she seemed. There was something there, and she needed to know what that something was. Next move? A deeper dive. That missing year.
Maybe Li had already found it. Foster sent her a quick text for an update on her way to the car. As she passed the entrance to the outpatient clinic, she stopped and turned back, giving her watch a quick glance to check for time. If she hurried, if she got in and out, she would miss Silva.
The stout blonde woman sitting at the front desk paled when Foster presented her badge and identified herself; then she slowly rolled her chair away from the counter a few inches, as though Foster might lunge over and slap on cuffs. She read the nameplate on the desk. Ellen Vosk.