A Fatal Debt

week and seeking the clues that I’d missed. If Harry had planned to kill Greene all along, he’d done a good job of hiding it, or I was incompetent. I preferred a third possibility, although it didn’t reflect well on me either-that he hadn’t known what was on his mind until he’d confronted his victim. That wasn’t much better, but at least it wouldn’t make me feel such a fool.

“You look well. How are the conditions?” I said.

Harry chuckled at the question as if he were holed up in summer camp rather than a jail. “It’s not like being in my own bed, but I’ve made the best of it. The other guys on the tier treat me okay. I’m spending time in the gym.”

This was a change from the Harry of York East. That bed hadn’t been good enough for him although it was the best we offered, yet a jail mattress was fine.

“I wanted to see how you were, after all that’s happened.”

“I’m good. No need to worry about me.”

I was finding the conversation unreal. Not only were we glossing over the fact that Harry had just killed someone, but his mood had changed entirely. An enormous weight seemed to have been lifted from him. He’d been shattered by losing his job, but the likelihood of spending the rest of his life in jail didn’t appear to bother him. I glanced at the officer, but he was looking at the gray sky through the room’s high window and didn’t seem to be listening. All the same, I leaned forward and spoke quietly, my breath misting a patch around the Perspex holes.

“Mr. Shapiro, I must ask … Did you kill Mr. Greene?”

Harry didn’t hesitate or bother to keep his voice down. “I did,” he said, nodding calmly. “I was angry. I lost control. He called me that morning, said we needed to talk about something. I was in the city, but he made me anxious, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I told him I’d drive out there.”

“What did Mrs. Shapiro say about that?”

“I didn’t tell Nora. I knew she’d try to stop me. You’d got her so worried, she didn’t trust me.”

With good reason, I thought. Nora had promised me that she’d keep an eye on Harry, yet she’d let him escape and kill someone. I remembered her telling me in the psych ER that she’d keep the gun out of Harry’s way, the shock and unhappiness etched on her face. She’d said the same thing when I’d asked again in East Hampton. Absolutely, she’d assured me. I’d trusted her, but she’d let me down.

“You met at your house?”

“He said they were taking the Gulfstream away and they weren’t going through with the settlement we’d agreed upon. He was getting heat from Washington, he said. It didn’t look good. He was a coward-he wouldn’t stand up for me. I was mad at him.”

“So you shot him? Just like that?”

Harry rubbed the palm of his right hand up and down a couple of times on the surface of the table, his knuckles flexing. He gazed at me and there was no longer any fire in his eyes, not even an ember. The life that had once been there had died along with Greene.

“I wasn’t acting normally, you know that. Those pills you gave me affected me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was crazy.”

I was shocked by how blatantly he’d just blamed it all on me. He didn’t look ashamed at having fooled me or for having forced me to release him. It was all my fault, was it-nothing to do with him? I felt like reaching across the Perspex screen and shaking him, but his corrections officer loomed nearby.

“But you feel better now,” I said, not bothering to hide my skepticism.

“Much better.”

He leaned back, and I knew that was it. I wasn’t going to get any more out of him. The truth was that I’d never known what was going on in his head, not from the first moment I’d seen him. I’d been blind right from the start. A knot of officers by the cage called time and started to beckon the inmates out row by row.

Harry thrust out his hand. “I don’t know if I’ll see you again, Doctor.”

“I don’t know either.” I took it, feeling his hard, decisive grip.

“Thanks for your help.”

“I don’t think I helped, Mr. Shapiro.”

“Oh, you did,” he said, smiling slightly as he turned away.

When I reached the parking lot, a man and a woman in their forties were waiting by a black sedan. He was ruddy-faced, with plush cheeks, thick shoulders, and a belly that bulged over his belt-a high school football player gone soft. His partner was in better shape: her neck muscles were taut, as if she worked out. Her hair was curly and her face olive-skinned-Greek or Italian, I guessed.

“Dr. Cowper?” she said, halting me as I got to my car and pulled out the key. They had parked next to me- they’d known which one it was.

“Cooper, yes.”

“Okay,” she said in an unruffled tone. “I’m Detective Pagonis and this is Detective Hodge. We’re with Suffolk County homicide. We heard you were here, thought we’d take a drive over. We’d like to ask you a couple of things. You’re Shapiro’s shrink, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

Hodge grimaced but didn’t say anything. Pagonis seemed to be in charge.

“Hey, come on, Doctor. You’ve just been to visit him, haven’t you? That’s what he told us, anyways. It’s all in his statement.”

She reached through her passenger-side window and pulled a sheaf of papers from under the windshield. It was a photocopy of a long document written neatly by hand and signed by Harry on the last page. Pagonis pointed to a passage halfway through.

I received psychiatric treatment at Episcopal hospital from Dr. Ben Cowper. Dr. Cowper was responsible for admitting me to a psychiatric ward and then discharging me on Monday, April 27.

Pagonis pulled the papers away.

“I see,” I said, trying to look unimpressed. “How can I help?”

“Just a few questions at Yaphank. It’s not far-on the way back to the city. Won’t take long. You’re not under arrest.”

I hadn’t considered that possibility until she mentioned it, but the sight of my name inscribed on Harry’s confession made me realize it wasn’t out of the question. Things were starting to crumble around me, and I couldn’t think of any excuse to disobey her.

“You understand I can’t answer any questions about my treatment of Mr. Shapiro. I have a duty of confidentiality.”

“For now,” she said dismissively. “We’ll take the expressway. You can follow us.” She climbed into the passenger seat while Hodge took the wheel.

We turned off the expressway twenty minutes later on a flat road with low buildings on either side. I was concentrating on keeping a safe distance from the back of their car, but I looked up at the surroundings as they turned right into a lot with a two-story building marked SUFFOLK COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT. The Stars and Stripes hung by the entrance, and I saw cops walking through a reception area lit in sodium yellow. I prepared to halt, but Hodge kept going round the side of the building, passing ranks of cars, and parked close to the rear.

“We can go in this way. It’s easier for our offices,” Pagonis said, leading me to a metal freight door at the back of the building.

It was isolated, with no one in sight, and I felt even more like a suspect. Hodge pressed a red button by the door and I could hear the elevator creak into life somewhere inside. He pulled the door open with a screech and we stepped into the metal box, which deposited us at the second floor on a hallway with a biblical commandment written on the wall in large letters: THOU SHALT NOT KILL. I wondered which bright spark had adopted it as the squad’s motto: if everyone obeyed, they’d be out of business.

Why did I agree to this? I thought to myself as Pagonis led me down a hallway and into a narrow room, maybe nine by thirteen, with just one desk, a couple of chairs, and a floor-to-ceiling mirrored wall on one side. An interview room, I knew from a hundred cop shows, and I looked for the voice recorder but there wasn’t one.

“Have a seat,” Pagonis said, unbuckling her gun belt from around her waist and passing it to Hodge. “Coffee?