Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

everything in triplicate whenever a controlled substance was prescribed. Clever, I thought, everything appearing to be on the up-and-up when it was anything but.
    Before putting the sheets away, I flipped them over, looking at the pictures of Dashiell and then seeing something else. The earliest pictures on the contact sheets were not of Dash. They were of this end of the park. It appeared that Leon had taken pictures when he got out of Bechman’s office after picking up the copies of Madison’s records, or perhaps on the way in to get them. Because that’s what I was looking at, the very bench where I was sitting, a view of the arch, the comer of the park where Ms. Peach had just been, even a view straight west, as if he stood in the middle of the street to take it.
    There was a homeless man on the comer in that last one. Is that why he took the picture, the man the point of it against the background of opulent buildings? There was something familiar about him, not the face, which I couldn’t really see without a loupe, something about his hands I thought. No, maybe it was something else, not the hands. Maybe it was the way he held his legs, toes pointing out Charlie Chaplin style. Or his shoulders, not exactly hunched, but slightly forward. Whatever it was, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Perhaps he was just one of the men I often saw in the park, no other place to call home. They hung around the chess players, slept on the benches, tried to get the dogs to come over to the fence of the dog run and lick their filthy hands.
    I put the sheets away and slipped the strap of the bag over my shoulder. I could see Ms. Peach through the window, on the phone. And then I saw the next patient coming down the block. The mother was tugging her along, as if it might be the child’s fault that they were fifteen minutes late. The little girl was crying, even before getting her booster shots or whatever other scary thing she was there for. As I got up to leave, I saw the mother pull the child closer and take her by the shoulders in a not so benign way. “Do you have to always make a scene, Sylvia?” she asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, she opened the gate and pulled the little girl along behind her.

Chapter 33

    I’d just gotten home when it occurred to me that even on a day without rain in the forecast, Ms. Peach would have had a difficult time getting up the steps to Celia’s apartment. Too difficult, I thought. Even if she made it, I’d be hard pressed to imagine her a serious threat to anyone but herself.
    The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the image became. It’s not that older women were not credible as murderers. Even after I figured out that Ms. Peach could have self-medicated her pain, rested on the stairs, brandished a gun when she got to Celia’s apartment, there was something still off.
    I could see her as the go-between. I could even imagine how it might have started, Bechman giving her something really strong on a day her pain seemed unbearable, Ms. Peach commenting, in an offhand way, that the stuff was so good, that it helped so much, she bet people would buy it by the truckload, if only they could. Or perhaps she’d said the stuff was so good she could sell it by the truckload. Perhaps he’d said, “If only.” Perhaps they’d had a heart-to-heart about his particular financial need, not that he didn’t make enough money, if one could imagine such a thing in this day and age as enough money, but that he needed money from an untraceable source, money he could funnel to Celia without his wife having a way to catch on. He loved his wife, he might have said. But then there was Celia, and JoAnn, his precious JoAnn, Ms. Peach listening, paying good attention, her mind at work.
    And maybe that sat in the air between them, his need, her willingness and interest, both of them smart enough to put two and two together.
    Maybe he brought it up next. Maybe not. Maybe someone else, someone who could sit on a bench in the park, his persona all the advertising his drug business needed. After all, who in his right mind would think to approach Ms. Peach to buy illegal drugs?
    No, there had to be someone else, even to keep Ms. Peach squeaky clean enough to keep her job. She was only the facilitator, because even a doctor with two families, for God’s sake, wouldn’t keep a drug pusher as his office nurse, would he?
    Someone else.Someone who would fit in at the park. But who?
    That’s