Before I could recover my senses, she screamed, “Get out!” and tried to push me down the stairs.
I grabbed hold of her shoulders, only to keep myself from falling, which was the wrong thing to do. We both lost our balance and tumbled down the steps together in a violent cacophony of grunts and groans and a tangle of limbs and flesh striking wood and steel. Pain shot through my body, and I thought this might be it, that I would die. Then I struck the asphalt and the world stopped spinning.
For a moment I was paralyzed. I couldn’t breathe and my heart hammered. My skull throbbed. Slowly, groggily, I managed to lift my trembling hand to my scalp.
Blood. There was a lot of it. I groaned in agony and writhed until I rolled over. Somehow, I managed to get to my hands and knees. I didn’t think anything was broken.
Then I threw up.
Pain was everywhere.
I looked to my left and saw Melanie lying facedown on the asphalt. I couldn’t make sense of what had happened. Was she okay?
I was bruised and battered, but I managed to crawl to her.
“Melanie . . .”
I rolled her over. Her eyes were wide open with fright, and I knew immediately that she was dead.
Blind terror slammed into me. I forgot my own pain and searched for a pulse at her neck, hoping desperately that I was wrong. But there was no pulse. I pressed my ear to her chest and heard nothing.
I knew CPR. I thought perhaps I could revive her, but as soon as I pushed her robe open and began chest compressions, blood spurted out of her mouth, and I was horror struck. I fell backward and scrambled away like a crab. Then I collapsed on my back and stared up at the night sky in a daze.
I don’t know how long I lay there like that, beaten, blinking up at the sky. A raindrop struck my forehead. Another hit my cheek . . . my hand. Suddenly it was sheeting down. Cold, hard raindrops woke me from my stupor, and I realized I was shaking uncontrollably. I was in shock. I needed to call 911. I sat up and crawled back to Melanie. Only then did I become cognizant of the fact that she was naked beneath the terry cloth robe, which I had pushed open to perform CPR.
Help me. Please, someone . . .
But if an ambulance came, they would ask what had happened.
What is your relationship to this woman? the police would ask.
I would be compelled to explain that I was her therapist. They would find evidence that we were lovers. The story would make headlines. Caroline would be shocked and disappointed, and I would be fired and most certainly arrested. And Olivia . . . oh no . . . not Olivia. She would learn what I had done, and she would never want to see me again. She would think me the worst villain she had ever known, and her sense of betrayal and hatred would burn deep and without forgiveness.
I sat back on my haunches and began to sob. Why . . . why did this happen? I would go to jail, and everyone would say I deserved it. It was where I belonged. No one would care enough to hope for my release or help me prove my innocence, because I was not innocent. I was guilty. I had done a terrible thing. It was my fault that Melanie was dead.
Suddenly, the world began to spin in dizzying circles before my eyes, and I panicked. Everything was a blur after that. I barely remember carrying Melanie to my car and setting her inside the trunk. Or running back up to her apartment to make sure there was no evidence of our relationship. I only remember that I closed her robe because it was raining and she was getting wet.
When the night was finally over and I crawled into my bed at dawn, I understood that the image of Melanie, lifeless on the pavement in that bright-red terry cloth robe, would haunt me for the rest of my life.
CHAPTER 20
DEAN
New York, 1986
The next few days passed in a blinding haze of shock and fear and guilt and night terrors. I woke up in a sweat on numerous occasions and wanted to call the police. Surely, turning myself in would be better than this—better than the painful, debilitating fear of being discovered. At night, alone in my apartment, I sobbed and cried for poor Melanie. What had I done? I felt nothing but bleakness and doom.
Later that week, Caroline knocked on my office door. She looked concerned. “Two detectives are downstairs,” she said. “They want to ask you some questions.”
I broke out in a sweat. “What about?”
“A former patient of yours,” she replied. “They’re coming up now.”
She met them in the hallway and escorted them into my office. There were two of them. A man and a woman. Caroline left me alone with them, but as she closed the door behind her, she looked displeased, and I suspected she didn’t want other clients to see a crime squad in the building and not feel safe.
I set aside the file I was working on and took a few slow, deep breaths before I stood up to face whatever they had to say.
“You’re Dr. Robinson?” the male detective asked, while the woman glanced around my office as if she were taking an inventory with her eyes.
“Yes.” My heart pummeled the inside of my rib cage, and I felt certain that my face had gone stark white. “What’s this about?”
“I’m Detective Smith, and this is Detective Mason. We’re investigating a missing person, and we were told that she was seeing you for therapy?”
“That’s possible. What’s her name?”
“Melanie Brown.”
I tried to look surprised, then frowned with concern. “Yes. Melanie was a patient of mine, but she stopped coming months ago.”
“Why was that?”
I shrugged, because it happened all the time. “She felt that she’d gotten what she needed out of her treatment, and maybe she was tired of coming. She was busy with school, as I recall.”
“Yes, that’s why it was discovered that she was missing. She was supposed to present a physics dissertation a few days ago, but she didn’t show up. People are concerned.”
Detective Smith watched me intently for a moment, and I was certain he knew everything. Any second now, he was going to tell me I had the right to remain silent.
“Did you feel she was ready to stop treatment?” Detective Mason asked.
I turned to her, then let out a heavy sigh. “Honestly? No. She was under a lot of pressure with school, and she had quite a few personal issues we were working on.”
“Like what?”
I hesitated. “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
Detective Smith nodded, as if he had expected me to say that. “Is there anything you can tell us that might help us locate her? Did she ever talk about a boyfriend, or did she mention a reason she might want to leave town?”
I folded my arms and rocked back on my heels. “I know that she was nervous about presenting her research project. She was worried it wasn’t serious enough.”
“It was about the Bermuda Triangle, is that correct? Planes that go missing? Sounds pretty interesting to me.”
Detective Mason nodded in agreement.
My heart pounded faster because I had Melanie’s typed and bound dissertation at home in my apartment. I had taken it on the night she died because she had thanked me in her acknowledgments and revealed far too much about our relationship. If they were looking for incriminating evidence, that’s where they would find it. I hoped they weren’t in the process of getting a search warrant.
“No mention of a boyfriend?” Detective Smith asked. “One of her classmates said she mentioned a guy once, a few months ago. ‘Lovesick’ was the word she used. She said Melanie was happy for a while, but then she seemed depressed and wouldn’t talk about it. Sounds like something didn’t work out.”