said gently, “Dr. Perkins, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Ana Watkins was found dead yesterday.”
Perkins sprang from his chair as though it were suddenly electrified. “Oh, dear me!” he cried, wringing his hands. “Oh, dear me—poor girl! What happened?”
“She was drowned,” Butts replied bluntly.
Perkins stared at him, took one enormous gulp of air like a stranded fish, then paced in front of the fireplace, wringing his hands and muttering, “Dear me, oh dear me!” Once again, Lee was struck by the theatricality of his gestures. It was like watching an actor in a performance rather than a real human being in distress.
“Dr. Perkins,” Butts said, “if you wouldn’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course,” Perkins said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help—anything, I assure you.”
“Right,” Butts said, making a notation in the little notebook he always carried with him. Lee knew that sometimes the detective scribbled in it just to intimidate a suspect—often there was nothing on it but doodles. “Hey, is this an oil lamp?” Butts said, pointing to an old-fashioned-looking lantern in the foyer.
“Yes, it is,” Perkins answered irritably. “And in answer to your question about whether she displayed suicidal ideation—no, not at all. In fact, I have rarely had a patient who was more connected to life. She had everything to live for, and was in fact making rapid improvement when she—” He stopped, but not out of grief so much as embarrassment, Lee thought. “How did she—I mean, do you think she took her own—?”
“She was found in the Harlem River yesterday morning,” Butts replied. “There was evidence of foul play.”
Perkins stopped pacing and looked at them in alarm. “Surely you don’t think I—”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” Butts reassured him. “We’re just talking to people she came in contact with to try and piece together enough about her to, you know, try and figure out what happened.”
“Dear me,” said Perkins, looking frightened. If he had an idea who killed Ana, Lee thought, he might be worried that person would come after him.
“Miss Watkins had expressed the fear that she was being followed,” Butts continued. “Do you have any idea who might have been following her?”
Perkins put an elegant finger to his mouth and chewed on it. “I suppose it can’t do any harm, since she’s dead. I may as well tell you that she had recently had a breakthrough in her therapy, and had come to realize that she was the victim of childhood abuse.”
“Yeah?” Butts said, in a voice that said, So tell me what else is new.
“Yes,” Perkins went on, completely missing Butts’s sarcasm. “She had been struggling with demons in her past, until finally, under hypnosis, she recovered long-buried memories of sexual assault when she was a child.”
Butts exchanged a glance with Lee, who kept his face impassive. He didn’t want to spook Perkins. They were just closing in on the truth—assuming he would tell them the truth, of course. But Lee suspected that Perkins was as easy to read as a mediocre actor would be. If he was lying, he was sure to telegraph that to his audience.
“And who committed this sexual assault?” Butts asked him. Lee could tell he was doing his best to keep his voice even.
Perkins twisted the signet ring on his pinky finger. “Alas, I wish I could say, but we hadn’t yet reached the point in therapy where she could make out the face of her assailant.”
“Let me get this straight, Doc,” Butts said, disdain leaking into his voice. “Under hypnosis, she gets a memory of being—assaulted—as a child, but somehow she can’t see who’s doing it?”
“Well, yes,” Perkins said, his tone prickly. “These things are very complex, Detective. Sometimes the memories don’t come all at once, and sometimes they don’t ever come. We were just beginning to make progress, and I have no doubt that, after a few more sessions, poor Ana would have unlocked the door to her past and truly had a breakthrough in her therapeutic process.”
“Ah, her ‘therapeutic process'—I see,” Butts said. Lee decided it was time to rescue this interview before Butts pushed Perkins into being totally uncooperative.
“So you don’t have any idea who she thought might be following her?” he asked quickly.
Perkins raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I wish to God I did, truly I do. But she never actually saw anyone following her.”
“Did you think it might be connected to this ‘therapeutic breakthrough'?” Butts asked.