Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect Read Online Free Page B

back out. It was early June, and the scent of the climbing rose that wound through the railing and up the side of the brownstone perfumed the air. I leaned over, looked down.
    Below me on the street, Cleo emerged, stood in front of the building and lit a cigarette, her gold lighter flashing in the sun.
    Cleo worried me.
    No one who did what she did for a living, who had been with so many men, who had made money having sex with lonely—or worse, with disturbed or sexually addicted—men could remain as untouched and blasé as she appeared.
    Despite how long it had taken for us to get to the heart of her problem, I didn’t feel manipulated. I didn’t see any deception. I didn’t feel—in that intuitive way a therapist sometimes has—that she had been holding back. She just needed more time to open up. So then, what didn’t I trust?
    My own preconceived notions of what someone who did what she did for a living must feel?
    I had other patients who were prostitutes. None, however, who had their own businesses or got paid what Cleo did.
    One day a week I did my duty and visited women behind bars to counsel them so that when they were released they would stay off the street. And pigs can fly and there is a Santa Claus. But occasionally I did help. And for that one patient a year who didn’t go back to where she’d just come from, I could give up fifty-two days.
    Cleo had never even been near a prison. And to look at her, you would believe that. With her lustrous hair, refined clothes and shining eyes, she presented a very pretty picture. I knew better than to assign personality traits based on appearances. But there was a real guilelessness about her. Were her defencemechanisms so strong that she simply did not allow the reality of her life to bruise her?
    Or was she disturbed in a deeper way? How buried were the fissures and flaws? How long would it take us, working together, pulling and pushing, to find them? Was she just an excellent actress playing one role with her clients, another with me? I didn’t think so, and I knew a little about actresses. My mother had been one. Not a very famous one, though. She never became a bright star, except for a short time in one little girl’s eyes.
    My machine beeped and another message started.
    “Dr. Stone, this is Officer Tom Dignazio from the Twentyfourth Precinct,” the somber voice said. I stiffened. This was the last message, the one I had ignored while Cleo had been in my office.
    “Someone who we believe was a patient of yours has been found. A young girl you were seeing earlier this year when she was in prison. I’m afraid she’s been murdered. And we need you to identify the body.”
    He rattled off his phone number and requested I call him as soon as possible.
    The body?
    Which one of those girls I’d been seeing was now just
the body?
I knew I would call him back, but not yet. Not that fast. I was too stunned.
    Below me, Cleo was still standing on the stoop smoking her cigarette. Two men, walking east from Madison Avenue, slowed just a little as they approached, watching her standing there in the street having her cigarette. She must have smiled at them—her back was to me—because one of the guys’ faces lit up as if he’d been anointed. The other just stared. It would have been rude if his expression hadn’t been filled with admiration. They passed her. Then one turned back for a last look.
    Cleo took one more puff and threw the cigarette down on the sidewalk, stamping it out with that high-heeled shoe that showed just enough toe cleavage, then she started to walk west, away from me. Just as I was about to turn back to my office, I noticed a third man in the shadows of the building across the street, a bulky briefcase by his foot. He gripped an umbrella with a shining silver handle despite the sunny day.
    Clearly, he was watching Cleo.
    He stood, unmoving, just watching until she was almost to the corner, and then he began walking in her direction. He moved