Chapter One
The fact that I was sitting with Diane behind Hannah
Grant's office at 6:30 on a mid-December Thursday evening
meant that I'd already lost the argument we'd been having
since she yanked me out from behind my desk five minutes
earlier. She killed the ignition on her Saab and summed
things up for me anyway. "We can't leave in the morning if
we can't reach Hannah. It's that simple."
She was right.
With only nine shopping days until Christmas, Diane
Estevez and I were scheduled to make the short flight over
the Rockies to Las Vegas for a weekend professional
workshop-Diane, I suspected, was pretending to be much
more enamored of EMDR than she really was-and Hannah was
generously providing coverage for our clinical psychology
practices while we were away. Without coverage, we
couldn't go.
Diane had switched our Frontier flight the next day from
noon to the cusp of dawn so that she could cram in a few
additional hours getting intimate with some dice, and
Hannah needed to consent to the slight change in plans.
But Hannah-whose adaptive lassoing of her myriad OCD
symptoms typically dictated that an unreturned phone call
caused her a degree of psychological discomfort equivalent
to the physical distress of a sharp stone in her shoe-had
failed to return three different messages from Diane since
breakfast.
"Is that her car? Do you know what she drives?" I asked.
The only other car in the tiny lot was a silver Volkswagen
Passat.
"Looks like hers." Diane offered the comment with a
slightly sardonic lilt, and I assumed that she was
referring more to the car's pristine condition than to
either its make or model. In stark contrast to the
spotless Passat, Diane's Saab was covered in the gray-
beige film that adheres to virtually every moving vehicle
in Colorado after any slushy late fall snowstorm, like the
one we'd had the previous weekend.
I stepped out of Diane's car and peered into Hannah's. No
clutter on the console. No errant French fries on the
floor. No empty Diet Coke can in the cup holder. In fact,
the only indication that the vehicle hadn't just been
hijacked from a dealer's showroom was a copy of Elle,
still in its plastic sleeve, on the backseat.
The mailing label on the magazine read "H. Grant," and was
addressed to the Broadway office. The code in the corner
indicated that the subscription would terminate the
following April. "It's hers," I said.
Diane had joined me beside the Passat. "Hannah reads
Elle?"
My own reaction was a little different; I was thinking,
Hannah leaves magazines in her car? Shame! I said, "I
think you're missing the point. It means she's inside with
a patient. She'll return your call when she gets a
minute."
"I don't know about that. I'm getting a feeling," she
said. "And not a good one."
"About Hannah?"
"A little, but more about Vegas." Diane's tone was somber.
She took her craps seriously. "Let's go inside," she said.
Hannah was a clinical social worker and her therapy
practice was in one of the old houses aligned on the side
of Broadway closest to the mountains, only a few blocks
from the Pearl Street Mall. The cumulative force of more
than a decade of migration by psychotherapists had allowed
mental health types to usurp most of that particular urban
habitat from sundry lawyers and accountants who had
previously set up shop in the houses-some grand, some not-
in the row. The uprooted professionals had moved to less
charming but eminently more practical spaces in the modern
buildings recently erected to fill parking lots a few
blocks away on Canyon Boulevard.
The back door of the single-story house was locked. Diane
and I followed a flagstone path down the side past a hedge
of miniature lilacs that stood naked for winter. We made
our way to the front of the building and strolled up a few
stairs into a waiting room that had probably been the
home's original parlor. On the far side of the lamp-lit
room a thirties-something woman with an astonishing
quantity of frizzy hair was sitting on a green velvet
settee reading a copy of Yoga Journal while munching from
a bag of Cheetos. I noted that she checked her wristwatch
after she glanced up at us.
I also noted that her fingertips were almost the exact
same color as her hair.
"Which office is Hannah's?" I whispered to Diane. I'd
never been in the building before. Hannah was one of
Diane's close friends; I had no doubt that Diane knew
which office she occupied.
"Down that hall on the left. The one on the right is
Mary's."
"Mary" was Mary Black, M.D., a psychiatrist who without
benefit of fertility concoctions had given birth to
triplet boys only a few weeks before, on Thanksgiving eve.
Both Mary's extended maternal adventure and her extended
maternity leave were in their earliest stages, which meant
that Hannah was without doubt going to be working alone in
the building for a while.
Diane stepped down the hall toward the offices. "Look,"
she said.
Stuck into the jamb of Hannah's office door were four
folded notes. Two were addressed to "Hannah," one was
addressed to "H. Grant," and one was intended for "H. G."
Diane picked the one addressed to "H. Grant." It appeared
to have been written on the back of a page from a daily
calendar of unintentionally humorous quotations by the
second President Bush.
"What are you doing, Diane?" I blurted. "Those are
probably from patients. You can't read them."
Without even a microsecond of indecision Diane rejected my
protest. "Of course they're from patients. That's the
point," she said. She glanced at the first note, handed it
to me, and said, "Look, Hannah missed her one o'clock."
Next, she grabbed the paper that was addressed to "H.
G." "And see? She missed her 4:30, too. How come she's
missing all her appointments if her car's here? Huh? How
the hell do you explain that?"
I didn't know how to explain that.
The other two notes were from patients whose therapist had
stood them up earlier in the day. Hannah had apparently
been missing her clinical appointments since at least nine
o'clock that morning.
The woman with the orange Roseanne Roseannadanna hair
appeared behind us in the narrow hallway. Despite the fact
that she was balancing on tall, chunky heels, she still
had to gaze up at an acute angle to look Diane in the
eyes. "Are you here to see Hannah?" she asked. "I have a
6:15 appointment. Every Thursday. She's never late."
The woman's voice was part annoyed, and part something
else. Concern? Fear? I wasn't sure. But her point about
Hannah's reliability was well taken. Hannah's
obsessiveness was legendary among her friends and
colleagues. She was never late.
Never.
I'd begun tasting acid in my throat; I had a bad feeling,
too. Though, unlike Diane's, mine had absolutely nothing
to do with dice. I tapped lightly on Hannah's office door
with my knuckles. My cautious incursion was apparently way
too timid for Diane; with an NHL-quality hip-check she
moved me aside and grabbed the knob.
The door slid right open.