“Is there someone I can talk to about Dr. Silva, Ms. Vosk?”
“Dr. Silva?” Her brown eyes widened in surprise. “Is it about an appointment? Never mind. No, it wouldn’t be, would it? Or it could; I don’t know. I’m rambling. Sorry. It’s the badge and . . .” Vosk’s eyes landed on the gun at Foster’s side. “Not every day we get a visit from the police.”
Suddenly self-conscious, Foster readjusted her jacket to conceal her service weapon, hoping to put Vosk at ease. “It’s not a raid. I just need some information.”
“Right. Yes. Information. You’d have to talk to Dr. Norton, then. He’s in charge of the clinic. But unfortunately, he’s with a patient right now. Would you like to wait? I don’t think I can interrupt him. Sometimes sessions can get intense, and he—”
“How long?”
“He just started, so it’d be fifty minutes.”
Foster looked over the waiting area, finding three people sitting in cushioned chairs, a television mounted to the wall tuned to a game show with wheels and buzzers and excited contestants jumping up and down. No one was paying her the least bit of attention. She turned back to the receptionist and lowered her voice. “How’s Dr. Silva to work with? You like her?”
The questions seemed to catch Vosk off guard. “My impressions? Oh, um. Fine, I guess? She’s very serious. She doesn’t spend a lot of time out here in reception. Any, as a matter of fact.”
“Meaning not friendly, standoffish?”
The woman cast a look toward the hall presumably leading to the office area. “She’s . . . efficient. But you really need to talk with Dr. Norton. I don’t think I should discuss staff members to . . . you know.”
“Understood.” Foster plucked one of Dr. Norton’s business cards from the card holder on the counter. She eyed Silva’s there, too, and took one of hers as well. “Email and direct line. Great.” She smiled. “All right. I’ll call back and talk to Dr. Norton. Thanks.”
Vosk nodded, her eyes burning with curiosity. “She hasn’t done anything . . . illegal, has she?”
“Would it surprise you if she had?”
The woman took a moment to think about it. “I’m not sure. Maybe?”
Foster stepped closer to the counter, lowering her voice even more. “You’re not sure if it would surprise you?”
“Well, she hasn’t been here that long.” Vosk bit her lower lip. “But she hasn’t made things easy.”
Foster waited for more, but that was all there was. Vosk busied herself with the papers on her desk, moving them nervously from one side of the desk to the other. There was more she could say, Foster was sure, but she was also sure she wouldn’t get anything else. It wasn’t a crime to be difficult or unliked, even if she had found Silva a bit off putting and arrogant. And still the same questions rattled around in her head. Why had Silva come here? Why was she so tied up with Bodie Morgan? Why had she fallen off the map for a year?
“Have a nice day,” Foster said, moving away.
Vosk rolled her chair forward now that she was going. “Sorry. I’m so afraid of guns. I can’t imagine carrying one around all day. How do you do it?”
Foster pulled the jacket closed again, this time buttoning it. “You get used to it.” She rapped her knuckles on the counter once. “Thanks again.”
Out front she stood on the stairs, checking her phone again. Nothing from Li. She felt around in her pocket, working the odd assortment of paper clips, pushpins, and thumbtacks around in her fingers, counting them absently, feeling them, pricking her fingers a little. Each tiny thing represented a small victory, a move forward. When she felt that strength move through her again, she pulled her hand away.
Foster was about to push off the stairs when a white man, about thirty, walked up and stood by her, rocking on a pair of battered white running shoes, a Westhaven staff ID pinned to his blue polo shirt. “Heard you asking about Dr. Silva,” he said. She took a step back, turned her gun side away. His ID read John Aarons. “They’re never going to tell you anything in there. They cover for each other.” His grin revealed a set of uneven teeth stained by nicotine. “Kinda like cops, right?”
Another cop basher. Now on alert but also pissed off, Foster took a full assessment that started at Aarons’s greasy widow’s peak and ended at his frayed pant cuffs. Threat? Low. Irritation factor? High. She slid her sunglasses on, turned away from him. There was work to do. “Good day.”
“I mean, they’re never going to tell you no one here likes Silva. She’s a witch. Maybe a real one, for all I know. What do they call them? Wickers?” Aarons slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, lit one, and then offered another to her, which she rejected with a headshake and scowl. “She thinks she’s too good for the place—that’s the deal,” he continued. “She treats everybody like they’re servants, like we’re all here to make her life easier. Like I said, witch. But they’re not going to lose their jobs ratting her out. Not even that gasbag Norton. If you didn’t get anything out of Gershon, the head gasbag, you won’t get anything out of him either. Codependent. That’s what they are.”
“But losing your job’s not a concern for you?”
“Nah, I hate this job and this whole place. Too many locked doors.”
“What is your job?”
“Clinic assistant. Glorified bouncer, more like. The lithium wears off and they lose it, I help the staff get them in a chair and calmed back down. But I’m already halfway out the door.” He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. “You like being a cop? I hear you guys get a decent benefits package. Vision and everything. I’ve been thinking lately I might try to get on.” A man with a briefcase passed between them, heading inside, giving them only a passing glance. Aarons didn’t appear to notice.
“Tell me more about Dr. Silva,” Foster said, “since you appear to know a lot.”
“She’s been here a year or so, and nobody’s had a moment’s peace since. She barks orders, throws her weight around. The doctors don’t even like her, but I think it’s mostly because she tries to snag all the hard-core cases. She goes through the files picking the ones she wants, like she’s filling her stable with champion horses or something. Prima donna, that’s what she is. And there’s gossip.” Aarons grinned, seemingly proud of himself for having the inside scoop. “Something happened with her in Baltimore. Don’t bother asking me what, because I don’t know. Somebody heard Gershon say that if it wasn’t for this place, she’d be no place, you know what I mean? They’re thicker than thieves, those two.”
Aarons took a drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke out slow. “Scuttlebutt is all. For sure nobody’s got the balls to ask Silva about it to her face. She’s not the kind of person you want to be on the bad side of.”
Foster glanced out over the grounds, the lot, her car parked in it. Could Baltimore account for the missing year, the unexplainable exit from Mayo? “Anything else, Mr. Aarons?”