Gaits of Heaven

led me to go online with the notebook and update the virus definitions before slipping the CD into the drive and scanning it for infection. It was clean.
    All my guesses about its contents were wrong. I expected music, a movie, or maybe pirated software or games. My hope, of course, was that in preparing to transfer files to the new computer he’d been demanding, Wyeth had backed up his documents on the disc and that somewhere in his files there’d be something—anything—about Eumie’s murder. The notion now seems nuts. Wyeth was about as likely to keep an intimate diary as he was to pen sonnets or to execute delicate watercolor paintings of flowers. Still, there was an off chance that he’d taken an English course that had required him to keep a journal and that he’d continued the habit of making entries. In fact, the files on the disc weren’t Wyeth’s at all; rather, they were what I quickly recognized as a therapist’s notes about patients. I opened and quickly closed several files after reading only the first few sentences. To my shame, I then read one brief file in its entirety.
     
Youngman, Quinn. Initial interview. Psychiatrist, psychopharm. Pt. grew up in small town in Montana, conservative family, sent to college to become minister. Attended U. of Mont., superstraight Young Republican, no sex, drugs, alcohol. Took science course, encountered evolution & scientific method. Result: internal revolution. Switched to chem, biology, physics. Excelled. Applied to med schools in East. Went to Cornell, where he rewrote his past, now seen by self as embarrassing and absurd. Recast self to peers as having been radical outsider among political conservatives and religious fundamentalists at home. Now complains of sense of fakery and emptiness, with false presentation of self that in own opinion impedes ability to form genuine relationships.
     
    “Rowdy,” I said to my most trusted confidante, “I have done a bad, bad thing. I have learned things I have no right to know.” Therapists are taught to be nonjudgmental. If a patient is on the verge of murdering someone, the therapist is obliged to warn the intended victim. But in most instances, no matter how despicable, rotten, disgusting, irritating, boring, or unlikable the patient, the poor therapist is supposed to listen and help rather than to judge. Such idealism! I ask you, just how capable is even the most highly trained and self-disciplined professional of squelching inevitable human feelings? It’s possible, I suppose, that Psychotherapy 101 includes a unit on keeping a poker face, and I’m sure that skilled, experienced therapists manage to keep their judgments from leaking into their behavior with patients, but imagine the effort! In contrast, consider dogs, all dogs, any dog, Rowdy, for instance, dog of dogs, primus inter pares, he of the deepest dark eyes, the most heartily wagging of heavily furred white tails, he of the heavy bone, the massive muscle, and the oldest of souls, he who knew all my sins, judged not, and effortlessly loved me with all his heart. “What,” I asked him, “am I supposed to do now? These notes weren’t made by Ted Green or Eumie Brainard-Green. That’s not where Wyeth got these files. Quinn Youngman is Ted’s psychopharmacologist, and he was Eumie’s. He isn’t Ted’s patient, and he wasn’t hers. Those break-ins up the street? That’s where this disc came from. Quinn Youngman and all these other people whose records are on this disc are patients of one of those therapists. So, take a wild guess about who broke into those offices. Absolutely. Wyeth Green.”
    I got down on the floor and wrapped my arms around Rowdy’s neck. In his profoundly nonjudgmental opinion, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Consequently, I can’t actually say that he sympathized with my moral dilemma. He did, however, respond to my hug by lying down and presenting his belly in the hope that I’d rub it, as I did. The interchange isn’t, I hope, typical of therapist-patient interaction unless, of course, one or the other is a dog. But being a dog, Rowdy was extremely helpful. “Yes,” I said. “About Quinn, what I do is nothing. The information isn’t mine and therefore isn’t mine to pass along. Wyeth? What I don’t do about Wyeth is turn him over to the police. Or I don’t rush into doing that, anyway. Maybe what I do is talk to Rita. Because, you know what? Once in a while, human therapists do have their