“Love, I have heard, cures all things.”
“The medical term for what ails you is ‘retarded mental development,’ ” she said but she smiled for a moment, then pushed a sheet of paper across her glass topped desk toward him.
He picked it up and read, “Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic.”
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised questioningly.
“I’m on thin ice ethically with this, Peter,” she said. “Please don’t push me. Right now, I’m wondering whether I should have gone to Denny Coughlin with this.”
“I’m glad you came to me,” he said seriously. “Okay, Doctor, tell me more, starting with, is this your medical opinion?”
“No. But I believe it.”
“Where did this come from?” he asked, waving the sheet of paper.
“It was left as a telephone message for me at quarter to two this morning,” Amy said.
“By whom?”
Amy shrugged.
“This woman is a patient of yours?” Peter asked, and when Amy nodded, thought out loud: “Then it obviously came from someone who (a) knew that and (b) was not a relative or family friend—they would have told you—and (c) is trying to be helpful—maybe—without getting himself involved—certainly.”
Amy nodded and said simply, “Yes.”
“You think this happened?” Peter asked.
“Yes.”
“You want to tell me why?”
“Just before I called you, I spoke with Cynthia.”
“And she said she had been . . .”
“I raised the subject obliquely,” Amy said. “Very obliquely. That was enough to send her back to square one. I had to sedate her, and I really didn’t want to.”
“How do you define ‘square one’?”
“Hysteria, drifting in and out of catatonia. The problem here, Peter, is that this is a precursor to schizophrenia. Once that line is crossed, it’s often very difficult to bring people back. That’s what I want desperately to avoid here.”
“In other words, you’ve got a sick girl on your hands.”
“Who—this is where I’m on thin ethical advice, telling you this—was already living with something pretty hard to deal with before this happened to her.”
“You going to tell me what?”
“Peter, this might be, very probably is, a violation of physician-patient confidentiality. The only reason I decided I could tell you is because she doesn’t know I know.”
“Know what?”
“Cynthia Longwood is your typical Main Line Presbyterian Princess. From Bala Cynwyd. Her father is Randolph Longwood, the builder. She doesn’t remember it, but I’ve seen her at the Rose Tree Hunt Club.”
“So, being a very nice girl, the . . . oral rape . . . really affected her?”
“Whose maternal grandfather is Vincenzo Savarese, the gangster.”
“Jesus!” Wohl said genuinely surprised. “How do you know that?”