One Cold Night

on the couch. Bruno joined him, holdingone of the crystal kittens in the meaty palm of his hand.
    Donna stood up and walked over to the leather armchair, in which she sat. She crossed her legs, making sure the robe covered them, and rested her full attention on her visitors. And how does that make you feel? Dave half expected her to say.
    “Lisa Bailey.” Bruno tossed it out like a pebble dropped into a well, then waited, listening for it to hit bottom.
    Donna looked quizzically at Bruno.
    He elaborated: “Your husband’s daughter.”
    Donna sighed and dropped her face into her hands.
    “How much do you know about her?”
    “About a year after we were married, Peter told me he had a daughter he had never met. He had just learned she existed. He was struggling with the idea of finding her.”
    “So did he?” Bruno asked.
    “Not that I ever knew of.”
    “How long were you married?” Dave asked.
    “Just two years. We didn’t have children of our own. Peter wanted to; he was desperate for children—”
    The emphasis on desperate bothered Dave; it sounded like Susan describing him to himself: “You’re desperate for children, Dave, I know. But I’m just not there yet.” What lengths would a man go to, to satisfy his desperation? Adoption, maybe. But kidnapping? For an instant Dave wondered where his own impulses might take him were he to learn he had a child; that somewhere in the world lay the answer to his desperation. He would yearn to know his child, yes, but he would never do anything to frighten her. Could he?
    “— but I could never conceive.”
    “He walked out on you,” Bruno summed it up, “to find himself someone young and febrile.”
    Donna looked bewildered for a moment before indignation swept across her face. “I’m only thirty-two. And I think you mean fertile. ”
    “That’s the one.” Bruno set the kitten down on the coffee table.
    “Peter didn’t leave me,” Donna said. “I wanted him to go.”
    “Would you mind telling us why?” Dave asked.
    Donna hesitated, deciding where to begin. “I’m a psychiatrist, an MD. Peter is an LSW — a licensed social worker. The gap between our degrees was just the beginning, you know, the soil where the seed could grow. When the seed’s putting down roots underground, you don’t see the growth. And then the first little green sprout appears above the soil, and the stalk, and then a flower.”
    Dave could tell she had practiced this speech, maybe just to herself lying in bed late at night, or maybe to friends, or maybe in her own therapy sessions. Everyone created metaphors for their lives, even Dave — everyone.
    “I began to notice Peter’s erratic behavior soon after our marriage,” Donna continued. “But I’m human; he was my husband; I tried to ignore it.”
    Was. They couldn’t be divorced so soon, but clearly she had buried him along with their seed.
    “Eventually it became clear he was bipolar. Do you know what that is, Detectives?”
    Dave and Bruno both nodded; criminals often had manic-depressive tendencies, to say the least. Every bad guy was a genius — master of the perfect, undetectablecrime — until he got caught, and then he was suicidal. Rage and repentance, that was the usual cycle. Dave thought of Peter Adkins’s teenage suicide attempt; he thought of the questionable drowning of his older brother, an excellent swimmer; and he thought of love. From everything he’d learned about Peter, it seemed that love accentuated his volatility and possibly his rage and subsequent remorse.
    “Well, it turned out he’d been medicated for years,” Donna continued. “I know what you’re thinking: How could a psychiatrist marry someone and not know they’re mentally ill? Well, isn’t it the ultimate game to fool your psychiatrist? Even better to marry one, don’t you think? Once my eyes were open, I began to wonder if Peter’s condition might be complicated by schizophrenia. There seemed to be some delusional thinking developing,” Dr. Klein went on. “I urged him to change medication. He did for a while and he stabilized. But then...” Her foot began to shake almost spasmodically. “ Then he decided to have a messiah complex.”
    Again, Dave noted her choice of words: decided. Did people decide to be mentally ill or to think they were God any more than they decided to be moved by love? Personally Dave thought that insanity and evangelicalism were one and the same thing: a lethal fusion of helplessness