‘When you say you saw her,’ I said, ‘do you mean in here? For a session?’
She nodded. ‘We met for an hour.’
Lucy was getting increasingly restless.
‘Before you get into that,’ I said, ‘could you give us as much of her background as possible?’
‘Absolutely. And by the way, I have dates and times for her appointments, if you need all that. I’d been seeing her on and off for three years.’
‘Off and on?’ Marino asked as he sat forward in the deep seat and starting sliding back into its deep cushions again.
‘Claire was paying her own way through school. She worked as a waitress at the Blockade Runner at Wrightsville Beach. She’d do nothing but work and save, then pay for a term, then drop out again to earn more money. I didn’t see her when she wasn’t in school, and this is where a lot of her difficulties began, it’s my belief.’
‘I’m going to let you guys handle this,’ Lucy said abruptly. ‘I want to make sure someone’s staying with the helicopter.’
Lucy went out and shut the door behind her, and I felt a wave of fear. I didn’t know that Lucy wouldn’t hit the streets alone to look for Carrie. Marino briefly met my eyes, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing. Our agent escort, Ginny, was stiff on the love seat, appropriately unobtrusive, offering nothing but her attention.
‘About a year ago,’ Dr Booth went on, ‘Claire met Kenneth Sparkes, and I know I’m not telling you something you’re not already aware of. She was a competitive surfer and he had a beach house in Wrightsville. The long and short of it is they got involved in a brief, extremely intense affair, which he cut off.’
‘This was while she was enrolled in school,’ I said.
‘Yes. Second term. They broke up in the summer, and she didn’t return to the university until the following winter. She didn’t come in to see me until that February when her English professor noticed that she was constantly falling asleep in class and smelled of alcohol. Concerned, he went to the dean, and she was put on probation, with the stipulation that she had to come back to see me. This was all related to Sparkes, I’m afraid. Claire was adopted, the situation a very unhappy one. She left home when she was sixteen, came to Wrightsville, and did any kind of work she could to survive.’
‘Where are her parents now?’ Marino asked.
‘Her birth parents? We don’t know who they are.’
‘No. The ones who adopted her.’
‘Chicago. They have had no contact with her since she left home. But they do know she’s dead. I have spoken to them.’
‘Dr Booth,’ I said, ‘do you have any idea why Claire would have gone to Sparkes’s house in Warrenton?’
‘She was completely incapable of dealing with rejection. I can only speculate she went there to see him, in hopes she might resolve something. I do know she stopped calling him last spring, because he finally changed to another unlisted phone number. Her only possible contact was to just show up, my guess is.’
‘In an old Mercedes that belonged to a psychotherapist named Newton Joyce?’ Marino asked, adjusting his position again.
Dr Booth was startled. ‘Now I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘She was driving Newton’s car?’
‘You know him?’
‘Not personally, but certainly I know his reputation. Claire started going to him because she felt she needed a male perspective. This was within the past two months. He certainly wouldn’t have been my choice.’
‘Why?’ Marino asked.
Dr Booth gathered her thoughts, her face tight with anger.
‘This is all very messy,’ she said finally. ‘Which might begin to explain my reluctance to talk about Claire when you first began to call. Newton is a spoiled rich boy who has never had to work but decided to go into psychotherapy. A power trip for him, I suppose.’
‘He seems to have vanished in thin air,’ Marino said.
‘Nothing out of the ordinary about that,’ she replied shortly. ‘He’s in and out as he pleases, sometimes for months or even years at a time. I’ve been here at the university for thirty-some years now, and I remember him as a boy. Could charm the birds out of the trees and talk people into anything, but he’s all about himself. And I was most concerned when Claire began to see him. Let’s just say that no one would ever accuse Newton of being ethical. He makes his own rules. But he’s never been caught.’