He swears that who I am, what I’ve done, none of it makes a difference. He says—‘I love you.’ I clutch those words to my heart.
L. I.
"IT'S BEEN AWHILE. We’ve missed you, Natalie. Haven’t we, Jakey?” Anna Coscarelli tousled her grandson’s dark curly hair as the four-year-old hovered close to her leg. His brown eyes were fixed on Nat, but there was no smile. No greeting. No confirmation that she’d been missed. She felt a wrenching of her heart. She’d definitely been gone too long.
“You didn’t see my play,” Jakey said petulantly. “I was a superhero. ‘Superkid.’ The strongest, toughest superhero in the world. Even stronger than Superman. ’Cause I’m littler than him but just as strong, so, like my dad says, that means I’m really more strong.”
No more lisp when Jakey said s-words. He was growing up. And Nat was missing it. But then, what right did she have to be part of this child’s life? She tried to swallow down the lump in her throat. “Wow,” was about all she could manage.
“It was at nursery school,” Anna quickly elaborated. “And you know very well, Jakey, that only family members were invited to the performance.”
Her explanation only saddened Nat more, reminded her how much of an outsider she was. Had Leo asked Suzanne to attend the play? Nat glanced over at him, but he busied himself at the kitchen counter, dishing out heaping servings of his mother’s fabulous lasagna.
Nat knelt down to Jakey’s level. “I have an idea. How about if, after lunch, you introduce me to Superkid?”
It took a few seconds for Jakey to grasp what she was saying, but then his eyes lit up. “I have the whole costume. I can go put it on right now—”
He was already dashing across the kitchen as Anna called out, “How about we eat first, Jakey?”
“Superkid needs the lasagna, Gramma. That’s how he stays so strong,” Jakey shouted back.
Anna beamed. “He’s something, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Nat said, the lump still lodged in her throat. Again her gaze slid over to Leo. This time their eyes met, but Leo looked distinctly uncomfortable and only held her gaze for a couple of seconds. Nat was wishing now she hadn’t agreed to this family get-together. It only brought the writing on the wall into sharper focus.
Good thing Jakey slipped into his Superkid persona at the start of lunch, because they didn’t get to finish their meal. A few bites in, Leo got a call that Harrison Bell had been picked up at the pain clinic.
Nat wanted to be in on the interrogation but only managed to get the okay from Leo to observe the interview through a oneway mirror.
She’d been watching for close to a half hour. Bell had gone from looking irate and dismissive, to haggard and frightened as time wore on. He was sitting next to his lawyer at one side of a long wooden table. Bell’s legal counsel was a young woman by the name of Helen Katz. Nat didn’t know her personally, but she knew that Katz worked for one of the top criminal-defense firms in the city. In contrast to her client, Ms. Katz had the polished, calm appearance of a woman in control of the situation. Nat wasn’t sure whether Bell found his lawyer’s demeanor all that comforting, because he was smart enough to realize the potential for things to slip out of control in the blink of an eye.
“Let’s go through it one more time,” Leo said. He and Oates were sitting directly across from Bell and Katz. A video camera affixed to the wall and angled down at them was taping this session.
Bell looked plaintively over at his attorney, but she merely nodded.
He sighed wearily. “Yesterday afternoon, Claire . . .” He winced, as he had done each time he’d had to say her name. “She told me she’d gotten a call from someone who identified himself as Mark Berman, a nurse at Westwood Manor in Brooklyn. He said that my mother, who’s a patient there, had taken a turn for the worse—sadly, my mother has had several strokes over the past couple of years.
“Anyway, as I’ve already told you, I left the clinic as soon as I was finished with the patient I was treating and drove straight to New York. I got tied up in rush-hour traffic on my way into the city so I called the nursing home for an update on my mother’s condition, only to discover that she was fine . . . Well, as fine as she had been the day before. They said they had no one by the name of Mark Berman in their employ, nurse or otherwise. I was befuddled, irritated, and yet, obviously, relieved that my mother was actually okay.”
“But Claire Fisher wasn’t okay,” Oates said.
Bell rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. “I didn’t know what had happened to Claire.”
Leo took a swallow of tepid coffee. “It was reported on the radio by eight p.m.”
Bell’s cup of coffee remained untouched. “I didn’t have the radio on. Besides, I doubt it would have been on the news in New York. I had no idea. I still can’t believe it. Why would anyone—?”
“And again, you used a pay phone to place that call to the nursing home,” Leo interrupted.
“Yes. I’d forgotten to charge my cell phone. So I pulled off the road and made the call from a pay phone, then continued up the road a bit and got myself something to eat—”
“This was somewhere in Rye, New York? Just off of I-Ninety-five?” Oates interrupted this time.
“Look, if I’d thought I’d need an alibi, I’d have paid closer attention. It was a diner. Well, not exactly a diner. Just one of those crummy luncheonette-type places in a strip mall. I got a burger and fries, a Coke.”
“And you paid cash?” Leo queried.
“It came to seven dollars and change. I plunked down a ten-dollar bill and left. I started driving back home but I began finding myself nodding off. I’d been through an emotional roller-coaster ride. I’d thought my mother was on her deathbed, for chrissakes. ” “You can confirm the phone call he placed to the Westwood Manor at approximately five forty-five p.m.,” Ms. Katz said with just a hint of irritability.
Leo leaned back in his chair. “Yes, that’s true, Ms. Katz. The problem is, the call could have been placed from anywhere.” He focused back on Bell. “So you called your wife at—what time was it again?”
“I don’t know precisely. Around nine p.m.”
“And you waited that long because—?”
“I thought she already knew what had happened. I’d asked Claire to phone Carol and let her know about my mother. I don’t for the life of me know why Claire didn’t make that call. Maybe she forgot. Or maybe she called and Carol wTas out.” Bell wiped his damp brow with the back of his hand.
“Wouldn’t she have left a message on your answering machine, then?” Oates asked offhandedly. “Or maybe that one got ‘accidentally’ erased as well.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Helen Katz put her hand on Bell’s shoulder. “Take it easy. The detective’s just on a fishing expedition.” She looked over at Oates as she added, “But he has no bait, so he’s not going to catch anything.”
Oates appeared unperturbed. As did Leo.
“Let’s go over the message you say you left for your wife last night. It was around what time again?”
“Around nine-thirty, nine forty-five.”
“And you were in Providence, Rhode Island, at this point?”
“Approaching Providence.”
“And you made this call from—?”
“A gas station. Where I filled up my tank. You’ve got the receipt, for chrissakes.”
“And why exactly didn’t you drive straight back home?”
“I was beat. I figured I’d better call and let Carol know I’d probably crash at a motel for the night and drive back in the morning.”
“And when you stopped for the night, at this Holiday Inn, you didn’t think to give your wife another call, let her know where you were?”
“I told you,” Bell snapped, slamming his hands down on the table. “When I got into my room, I was exhausted. I lay down on the bed, fully clothed, meaning to just rest for a minute and then call home. The next thing I knew, it was almost eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“You always sleep that late?”
“My God, I was exhausted. I haven’t slept well in a week.” Guilty conscience, Nat was thinking.
“Okay, so you got up at eleven.”
“I missed my first two appointments. I was late for my third—”
“You didn’t call your office to let them know?”
“I called several times, but the line was busy. So I ran into the shower, dressed back in yesterday’s clothes, and drove straight over to the clinic. I was planning to phone Carol from my office as soon as I got upstairs. I never got upstairs. Two cops strong-armed me, dragging me from my car before I’d even switched off the fucking ignition.”
“Let’s get back to the journal,” Leo said.
“Dr. Bell has already told you,” Katz interceded. “He knows nothing about a journal. You can ask him until kingdom come, and his answer will be the same as it’s been for the past hour. Let’s face it, Detective, you have absolutely nothing upon which to base a murder charge against Dr. Bell. So, if there’s nothing else, I’d like to take my client home.”
Leo leaned forward. “I just have two more questions for you, Dr. Bell. Exactly when did your affair with Claire Fisher end? And who ended it?”
Bell flinched. As if he’d been sucker punched. “What? Who told you—? It’s a lie. We were never— I don’t know who told you that, but they were lying. I swear—”
Carol Bell was in the hallway outside the interrogation room, waiting for her husband to be released. She was pacing back and forth nervously, checking her watch intermittently. She came to an abrupt halt when she spotted Nat approaching.
“Have you seen my husband? What’s happening? I’m going out of my mind here.” Her eyes were bloodshot, and as Nat watched her anxiously smooth her hair away from her face, she saw that Carol’s nails were ragged. They’d been perfectly manicured the last time Nat had seen her.
“Why don’t we go get a cup of coffee?” Nat suggested. Again Carol checked her watch. “I need to pick Josh up at school in twenty minutes. He’s got a dentist appointment. He didn’t even want to go to school today. Neither did Billy. Fortunately, Daphne’s too young to realize what’s happening. But it’s been all over the news: their father wanted for questioning in the murder of his nurse. It’s a nightmare. A total nightmare.” “Why don’t I drive you to Josh’s school? You don’t look like you’ve had much sleep, and driving back to Newton—”
“Boston.”
“What?”
“Josh is in private school. Brigham Academy. Still,” she paused to check the time yet again, “there could be traffic. I should get going.”
A little explosion went off in Nat’s head. Wait, Brigham Academy. Brigham Academy was no more than a couple of blocks from the pain clinic. In the statement Carol Bell made to confirm her husband’s alibi that they were on the phone together when Lynn was attacked, she’d told the police she’d called from a pay phone across the street from her son’s school.
At the time she made that statement, they’d been concerned only with verifying Harrison Bell’s alibi.
But what about Bell’s wife?
Carol Bell’s statement put her within two blocks of the crime scene.
Suddenly Nat was looking at Carol Bell in a whole new, and altogether alarming, light. Now she was seeing her as a betrayed wife. A protective mother appalled by her husband’s cheating ways. A humiliated woman fast losing her husband, not even to another woman, but to a transsexual.
And now Claire Fisher was dead. Another of Harrison Bell’s lovers.
“What is it?” Carol asked Nat. “You look like something’s wrong. ”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Nat said quickly, not about to give away her hand.
Carol looked less than satisfied with Nat’s empty response. Her eyes narrowed.
Nat flashed on that vile drawing she’d received and felt a shudder of fear. What if she was right about Carol Bell and Carol suspected she was on to her? Nat had more than giving away her poker hand to worry about.
“Slow down, Natalie.”
They were sitting in Leo’s car outside Horizon House. “Granted, it’s all guesswork at this point, Leo. But you have to admit, theoretically—”
“Theories are all the fuck I do have. Fine for you to go latching on to one suspect after another, but Fve got to mount some kind of a case—”
“Fm not latching on to suspects,” Nat said defensively. “Is it my fault that there’ve been several very viable candidates here?” “And now you’ve dug up yet another,” Leo said wearily, but he managed a faint smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat. You did good. Maybe I’m just jealous. If it does turn out to be Carol Bell, you’ll deserve a medal.”
“I don’t want a medal, Leo. I just want to get to the bottom of this mess. Have it over with.”
He took her hand. “Me too.” He hesitated. “Look, Natalie, I know we’ve got some loose strands that need to be tied up—” “Father Joe’s suicide being one of them?” The priest’s death was still weighing heavily on Nat’s mind.
“Yeah,” Leo said, fixing his eyes on her. “But I was mostly thinking about Suzanne.”
Yeah, that’s a problem all right. Thinking too much about Suzanne, that is.
Nat kept the disturbing thought to herself, but she eased her hand from Leo’s. “Some strands don’t tie up so easily,” she muttered.
Leo sighed. “Well, right now I guess we should focus on
where Carol Bell was between five and six-fifteen last night. See if she has an alibi for the time of Claire Fisher’s murder. But right now, my money’s still on the husband. Remember, he’s the one who knew about the journal, not his wife.”
“Maybe he told Carol it was found.”
Leo gave Nat a dubious look. “Why the hell would he?”
Nat sat quietly for a few minutes, trying to sort it all out. The pieces started to fit together. She looked over at Leo. “What if Harrison Bell knew?”
“Knew what?”
“That his wife attacked Lynn. Think about it a minute, Leo. Take that phone call Harrison and Carol both swear they were having about their son while Lynn was being attacked down in that alley. What if it not only never took place, but what if Carol and Harrison concocted the phone call between them? Creating what they believed would provide an alibi for both of them?” “You’re losing me, Natalie.”
“Let’s say it was Carol out there in that alleyway lying in wait for Lynn. Bell told me Lynn ate in the same restaurant most days. Carol would have known where, and approximately when, Lynn ate lunch. Remember, it was raining that day, so Carol could pretty much count on Lynn’s taking the shortcut through the alleyway.”
Nat could see by the way Leo was looking at her that he was beginning to see the picture she was drawing. Whether or not he was buying it, was another question.
“Harrison could have headed out of the building and started through the alleyway to go meet Lynn at the restaurant, only to catch his wife in the act of stabbing Lynn. His wife. The mother of his children. Is he really going to turn his own wife in? See his family destroyed? Not to mention have his infidelity exposed?
On the front page of every tabloid: ‘Pain Doctor in Sex Scandal with a Transsexual.’ Besides,” Nat added, excited by how much sense her new theory made, “on some level, he’s got to feel responsible.”
“Yeah,” Leo said dryly, “he was the one who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”
“And then—”
“Problem.” Leo cut her off. “The clerk who was coming back to the office from lunch? The one wrho saw Bell and Lynn in the alleyway? She didn’t see Bell’s wife.”
“Carol could have ducked behind the Dumpster before the clerk saw her,” Nat was quick to say. “And then Claire unearths the journal. Harrison must have shit a brick. Probably because he was panicked that he’d really be on the hot seat now. One thing to cover up for his wife, another to take the rap for her.” “So you think he called Carol, told her she better do something about the journal?”
“Yes, Leo, that’s precisely what I’m thinking.”
“I like it. Now all we need to do is prove it,” Leo said glumly.
No comment.
Dr. Harrison Bell (statement to press after Lynn Ingram assault)
FOR THE SECOND time in one day, Natalie Price found herself sitting in an airless room in front of a one-way mirror. On the other side of this mirror, in the adjoining windowless interrogation room, sat Leo Coscarelli and Mitchell Oates across from two men. The older of the two men, heavyset and gray-haired, was wearing a priest’s collar. He identified himself as Bishop Edward Michaelson of the Boston Diocese. The younger man, sallowskinned, rail-thin, tugging nervously at the cuffs of a navy cardigan, identified himself as Alan Forest.
“I’d like you to repeat the statement you made to me a short while ago, Mr. Forest,” Oates said.
Forest anxiously glanced over at the bishop, then stared down at the scarred wood table. “I was with Father Joe Parker on Thursday, September twenty-seventh,” he mumbled.
“A little louder, Mr. Forest,” Oates said.
Forest repeated the statement, this time adding that he’d arrived at the rectory that day at a little before noon and left shortly after two o’clock.
Nat caught a quick glance between Oates and Leo. Leo sat up a bit straighter in his chair.
The bishop leaned forward, clasping his hands together, fingers intertwined. “Alan arrived at my office at approximately two-thirty that same afternoon, telling me that he had come directly from a meeting with Father Joe.”
Leo scowled. “Why didn’t Father Joe tell me about that meeting when I questioned him as to his whereabouts on the twenty-seventh?”
“He couldn’t tell you,” Alan Forest said grimly. “I went there for him to hear my confession.”
“A two-hour confession? Man, you must have had a hell of a lot to get off your chest,” Leo said sardonically.
Forest flushed scarlet, his head dropping so that his chin was practically resting on his chest. “Until September twenty-seventh, Detective, I was a priest. I confessed to Father Joe that day that I had committed a mortal sin. I confessed that I had been having an affair with one of my parishioners.” His head, somehow, managed to drop even lower.
Bishop Michaelson remained remarkably poised. “Alan came to me that day and told me that, after a lengthy and soul-searching conversation with Father Joe, he had decided to leave the church.”
Nat caught another shared glance between Leo and Oates.
“Why come forward now?” Leo asked.
“I would have come forward sooner had I known the Father was in need of an alibi for that time.” Forest had lifted his head and was looking directly at Leo. “When I read in the paper that Father Joe had committed suicide, there was nothing in the article about him being a suspect in a criminal investigation. I merely thought he was depressed. I even worried that Pd contributed to that depression. I had no idea until today, when the bishop came to see me in Waltham, where I’ve been staying with my mother—”
The bishop interrupted: “I arrived back from a weeklong conference in Washington last night. As is invariably the case, there was a pile of messages on my desk waiting for me upon my return. As it turned out, half a dozen of them were from Melissa Raymond.”
Leo scowled. “Father Joe’s housekeeper?”
“I phoned her first thing this morning. I’ve known Melissa since she was a child. She was extremely distraught. She told me this fantastic story about Father Joe having been accused of brutally stabbing a woman nearly to death—I couldn’t believe it.” Leo cocked his head. “You knew he’d hanged himself.”
The bishop nodded. “Priests are not immune to severe depression, Detective Coscarelli. I wish to God I had known what was troubling him.”
Nat felt herself stiffen with anger. She could certainly give the bishop an earful. Despite this affirmation of Father Joe’s innocence regarding the September 27 attack on Lynn, raping her when she was in prison gave the priest plenty-enough reason to feel troubled. Or maybe the only thing that really had troubled Father Joe was that, thanks to Suzanne, they were on to him. The bishop continued after a brief pause. “I checked the date in my daily diary and saw Alan’s name penciled in for the twenty-seventh. I remembered that exceedingly emotional meeting we’d had and phoned Alan. He agreed to give a statement to the police and asked if I would accompany him. So here we are.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to remember,” Lynn said earnestly. “But it’s still a total blank.”
Carrie Li came into the room, greeted Nat warmly, nodded at Leo, then stepped over to her patient’s bed.
“How are you feeling?” Carrie asked, tapping two capsules from a tiny paper cup into Lynn’s palm.
“Still a little dizzy.” Lynn popped the pills into her mouth while Carrie picked up the plastic glass of water, deposited a fresh straw into it, and brought the straw to Lynn’s chapped lips.
“What are those pills for?” Nat asked.
“One is for pain, the other’s for anxiety,” Carrie said.
“Maybe the drugs are making her dizzy,” Leo suggested.
And, Nat was sure he was thinking, keeping her memory cloudy.
“It’s possible. Dr. Madison did cut back on the pain meds yesterday. And I have a call in to Dr. Varda who prescribed the Zoloft to see if he wants to reevaluate the dosage.”
Lynn shut her eyes. “Dr. Varda’s been trying to prepare me for how I’ll look when . . . when the bandages finally come off. I keep telling myself I can handle it. I have to keep reminding myself I’m lucky even to be alive. Dr. Madison says it’s a miracle I pulled through. So ... I won’t be . . .” She stopped, her lips trembling as she fought back tears. “. . . Pretty . . . anymore. Big deal.”
She managed a faint smile, her eyes opening, coming to rest on Nat. “Women. We’re so vain.”
Carrie Li rested a hand lightly on Lynn’s shoulder. “It’ll take time, Lynn, but you do remember that Dr. Madison told you a lot can be done with plastic surgery. Of course, you’ll have to go through a long series of ordeals—”
“I’ve already been through the worst ordeal,” Lynn said hoarsely. “And I don’t mean what’s just happened to me.”
Nat stepped a little closer to the hospital bed. “Are you talking about your time at Grafton, Lynn?” she asked softly.
“I’m talking about before that. Before prison. Even before Matthew. The worst ordeal was having to live most of my life in the wrong body. Nothing can be worse than that. I’d rather live the rest of my life as a hideously disfigured woman than be imprisoned in a handsome man’s body.”
Carrie Li smoothed a damp strand of Lynn’s hair from her forehead. “You won’t be hideously disfigured,” she said with a professional assurance. “I’ll stop by later.”
“Carrie?” Nat called out as the nurse started to exit the room. “I was wondering if Harrison Bell has phoned or dropped by again.”
“No,” the nurse said. “He hasn’t.”
Nat looked over at Lynn, saw the flash of disappointment on her face. Or was the feeling deeper than disappointment?
“Leo, why don’t you see if you can track down Dr. Madison?” Nat said. “Find out when she plans to move Lynn out of ICU?”
Nat was prepared for an argument, but she didn’t get one. Maybe Leo realized she stood a better chance talking alone with Lynn.
When the two women were alone, Nat pulled up a chair beside the bed. She noticed that Lynn’s eyes were beginning to take on a glassy look. The medication was taking hold of her. Pretty soon she’d be out like a light.
“I saw Harrison today, Lynn. Maybe he hasn’t called, but I know he’s very concerned about how you’re doing.”
“Is he?” she asked weakly. “Tell him . . . Tell him I’ll be fine.” “Do you want to see him?”
She shook her head. “No. Not like this. Not the way I look now.”
“Are you afraid he won’t want you now that you’ve been injured?”
Lynn didn’t respond.
“You’re in love with him.”
“No.”
“Did you break it off with him because his wife found out?” “I’m sleepy.”
“Lynn, you do remember ending the affair. In Harrison’s office. The two of you were overheard. He was very upset, Lynn. You do remember that.”
“I didn’t want to hurt him. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right.”
“His wife knew, didn’t she, Lynn? Did she threaten you? Was it Carol Bell that day in the alleyway? You need to remember, Lynn. Try. Please try.”
Lynn closed her eyes. She was silent for several minutes. Nat thought she must have fallen asleep.
“He asked me to marry him. He . . . begged me. But I said no. I said, ‘No, I can’t.’ I told him I didn’t love him. He wouldn’t believe me. I kept trying to make him understand. But he wouldn’t listen. He got so angry. I know I hurt him. I’m sorry. Please tell him I’m sorry.”
“Lynn—”
“No. No more. Please go away. Please. I need to sleep. Please.”
Suzanne stood at Nat’s office door, nervously clutching her arms, her gaze skidding back and forth between Nat and Leo. She looked like hell. Dark circles under her eyes, hair not only unwashed but uncombed, her beige blouse wrinkled. She had on a pair of slippers, not even having bothered to put on shoes.
“What did you want to see me for?” Her voice had the husky sound of someone who’s just been awakened, yet it was six-fifteen at night. Nat had already had reports by a couple of her officers that Suzanne had been spending much of her time sleeping since she’d been confined to the house. A typical symptom of depression. Nat wondered when the antidepressants Varda had started Suzanne on would kick in.
Leo walked over to her. “We need to talk, Suzanne.” He took firm hold of her shoulder—nothing tender in his touch now— and steered her into the room, shutting the door with the heel of his shoe.
Suzanne looked taken aback by his gruffness. And even more nervous.
“Please sit down, Suzanne,” Nat said, her tone deliberately softer in an effort to quell the inmate’s anxiety. Leo might think he could browbeat her into talking, but Nat didn’t agree. Suzanne was scared. Coming down hard on her would only make her retreat more.
Leo didn’t give Suzanne the opportunity to comply on her own with Nat’s request. He practically pushed her into one of the chairs facing Nat’s desk, then remained standing over her.
Nat wanted to tell him to sit down as well, but she thought he’d bite her head off.
“Okay,” he said, his eyes boring into Suzanne. “Let’s start with Harrison Bell. You knew he and Lynn were having an affair. Lynn told you.” He deliberately made these points as statements, not questions.
Susanne stared down at the floor, hands clenched tightly on her lap.
“He asked her to marry him. She told you about that, too.”
“Is that right, Suzanne?” Nat asked, annoyed with Leo’s drill-sergeant tactics. “Did Lynn tell you Harrison wanted to marry her?”
“He’s already married,” Suzanne mumbled, eyes remaining downcast.
“You got that right, Suzanne. He’s already married,” Leo repeated harshly. “So I guess he’d have had to dump his wife if he was going to marry Lynn. Now, how do you think Carol would feel about that? Getting dumped for someone who wasn’t even really a woman?”
Suzanne’s head popped up. She cast Leo an angry look. “Lynn is a woman. She’s every bit a woman.”
“Yeah, you roomed with her so you know,” Leo came right back at her. “You know plenty about Lynn. Because you were friends, right? I mean, granted, you looked the other way when Father Joe raped her in the joint. But then, you and the priest had a special relationship.”
Suzanne flinched, her already-ashen complexion going whiter.
“Leo, take it easy,’’ Nat said.
He ignored her, Suzanne’s silence only fueling his anger and frustration.
“I suppose you know we had the priest pegged for carving up your roommate. But guess what, Suzanne? Father Joe had himself an alibi. Not that it’s doing him much good now that he’s ten feet underground. Or should I say, now that he’s in hell? Because taking your own life, according to Catholic doctrine, is a mortal sin. You know that, Suzanne. A priest who commits suicide doesn’t go to heaven. But then, he wouldn’t have gone anyway, since Fd say rape is pretty high up there on the mortal-sins list.” Tears were gushing down Suzanne’s face. “Stop,” she shouted as she started to spring out of her chair, looking desperate to get away. But Leo shoved her back down.
“I know, Suzanne. Right now, you’d like a nice big shot of H to chase all your troubles away. Then you could just float, huh?” Suzanne had tears running down her face but she stared defiantly up at him. “You’re fucking right, Leo. That’s just what I want.”
“And what I want is some answers.”
“I don’t have any,” she screamed at him.
Nat got up, walked around her desk, moved a chair next to Suzanne, and sat down beside her.
“Suzanne, we think we know who’s responsible for what happened to Lynn. And for what happened to you.”
She looked searchingly at Nat.
“Did Lynn talk to you about Carol Bell?”
Suzanne continued eyeing Nat, but didn’t respond.
“Was she scared of Carol Bell?” Nat persisted.
Still no response.
Leo angrily slammed his hand down on the desk, causing both women to jump. “Damn it, Suzanne. She can’t hurt you in here. No one can hurt you in here. Just tell me and I’ll protect you. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I swear—”
“You don’t get it. You just don’t get it.”
“Then help us understand, Suzanne,” Nat said softly. Suzanne put her hands up to her face as wrenching sobs erupted. “I can’t. I can’t.”
Leo knelt in front of her, his fury dissipated. “Okay, Suz. Okay, take it easy. I’m sorry I came down so hard on you.” He gently stroked her hair. “Shhhh,” he soothed, pressing her against his chest.
Now it was all Nat could do not to spring out of her chair and run from the room. But she knew there was no running away from this. No escape from the truth of Leo’s feelings for Suzanne.
Not that either of them would have noticed if she had left. They both seemed oblivious to her presence.
I ask him, “Why does it have to be so difficult?” And he answers, “Let me help you. ”
L. I.
"ARE YOU GAME for a gallery opening tonight?” Sharon Johnson asked.
Nat looked up from the overflowing case file of an inmate from Norton who’d been okayed for transfer and was due at Horizon House in two days. “Is it Ray’s work?”
“Well, she’s got a couple of paintings in it. It’s a group show. All women of color. It’s in Cambridge. Lots of free champagKeJ Maybe you’d like to ask Leo to join us.” *!
Nat’s expression must have been answer enough, because Sharon quickly said, “Forget Leo, then.” I wish:
“Come on,” Sharon coaxed. “It’ll be a girls’ night out.”
Nat looked back down at the backlog of reports and files on her desk that she still needed to review—monthly employer evaluations and program updates on current residents, several files on inmates who had been recommended for prerelease, and two more files on already-approved transfers.
“I know,” Sharon said. “But you need to put a little fun in your life, girl. Besides, Raylene misses you. She thinks they’ve got you hermetically sealed in here.”
“The problem is I haven’t been here enough. I’m so far behind it isn’t funny.”
“No, life hasn’t been a barrel of laughs for you lately, has it? Any progress on the Ingram attack?”
Nat told her employment counselor her theory about the Bells. “And, honey, a woman scorned is a dangerous woman,” Sharon mused. “We’ve both seen enough of them serving time. Usually they do in the cheating husband. But plenty of them throw in the home wrecker for good measure.”
Nat was staring at Sharon, her mind racing.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I wonder if that’s what Carol’s planning.”
“What? To finish off her husband? I don’t know,” Sharon said. “Without him to cast suspicion on, she’d have to worry the focus of the investigation would shift to her.”
“Yes, but that’s just it. If Harrison Bell gets backed into a corner and thinks that he’s going to end up taking the heat for his wife’s crimes, he might very well come clean. And Carol can’t r-jsjt that. She’d counted on the alibis she’d concocted for him, but now that the police have shot holes in those alibis—”
“You’d think she’d have been a bit more clever,” Sharon said. “Come up with alibis for him that couldn’t be so easily disputed.” ,-c
“Yeah, that does bother me a bit,” Nat admitted.
Sharon shrugged. “I bet Ross Varda would say in typical shrink fashion that on some level Carol wanted Harrison’s alibis to be challenged. Wanted him to be suspected. To suffer. After all, if he hadn’t cheated on her, she wouldn’t have been driven to take such violent action.”
Nat nodded, but something still wasn’t sitting right. She just couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
“So,” Sharon said, “will you come?”
“What?”
“To the show?”
“I’d like to, but really, I’ve got to catch up on all this.” Nat reached for her briefcase and started stuffing in reports. “I should just camp here for the night and get through the whole lot, but I’ve got to go home and feed Hannah and give my starved-for-attention pup some quality time. I’m sure she’s feeling abandoned.”
And Nat knew just how she felt.
“Hannah? Here, girl.”
A disquieting sensation of deja vu hit Nat when her dog didn’t make an appearance. Had Rachel had another falling-out with Gary? Had she shown up here again and decided to take Hannah out for a walk?
It seemed highly unlikely, but Nat wanted to believe in this scenario. Because any other scenario was too upsetting to contemplate.
Nat pulled open the drawer of the entry table where she kept Hannah’s retractable leash. The leash was gone. She didn’t exactly feel relieved, but the missing leash supported her hypothesis.
She walked down the hall to the kitchen, went straight to the phone, and dialed Rachel’s number.
It was picked up on the third ring. Nat was heartsick when she heard Rachel’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Rachel, it’s Nat. You haven’t by any chance got Hannah over there?” Nat could hear the edge of panic in her voice.
“Of course not. Why would I—?”
“She’s gone.” Nat’s panic was starting to bubble over.
“Where would she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about Leo? Maybe Leo came by—”
“Right,” Nat cut her sister off, feeling a surge of optimism. “Leo. Thanks, Rach. I’ll talk to you later.” She was already seeing it in her mind’s eye: Leo coming over to her place because he knew how upset she must be after once again witnessing him embrace Suzanne. Not finding her home yet, he took Hannah out. It not only made complete sense, it buoyed her spirits about their faltering relationship. Maybe there was some hope for it yet.
She dialed Leo’s cell-phone number, picturing him reaching for it while he was holding on to Hannah’s leash with his other hand.
When he picked up, she heard mostly static. Where the hell was he walking Hannah?
“Leo, where are you?”
“This moment? Going through an overpass on the Mass Pike. In about ten minutes I’ll be in Newton.”
She made out every other word or so through the static. “You’re in your car?”
“What’s the matter?”
“You don’t have Hannah with you, do you?” Her optimism was fading fast.
“What?”
“Hannah,” she practically screamed into the mouthpiece.
“No. What—?”
His voice broke up completely. Nat hung up, feeling close to having an emotional breakdown.
She rushed back to the front door, inspecting both the doorjamb and the lock. Only Rachel and Leo had keys to the apartment. Anyone else would have had to break in. But there was no sign of any forced entry. She ran around the house, checking the windows. All locked. She’d been extra vigilant since getting that drawing. How had the cfognapper gotten in here?
The phone rang. She snatched it up on the first ring.
It was Leo calling back. The line now was, thankfully, static-free.
“What’s happened to Hannah?” he asked immediately.
“She took him. Or he did. I don’t know how the fuck either of them got in here but it’s got to be one of them. If they harm so much as a hair on Hannah’s head, I swear I’ll fucking kill them.”
“Calm down. You’re talking about the Bells, right?”
“They must realize I’m on to them. I was warned, and now they’re letting me know I’m going to pay the price.”
“Look, Oats and I are going to be at the Bells in a few minutes. If they’ve got Hannah over there—”
“What do you expect? That Hannah’ll come loping down the stairs and greet you at the door?”
“Hannah sheds like nobody’s business, Natalie. If the dog’s been in that compulsively spotless house, we’ll see hairs. Sit tight. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
“Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“I love—”
“I know, Natalie. Me too.”
Were they both talking about Hannah?
As the minutes passed, Nat became jittery with apprehension. She started pacing the apartment. Every time she passed a phone she willed it to ring. The silence was intolerable. A piercing reminder of Hannah’s absence. She tried to tell herself it was out-of-hand, this intense attachment she’d formed to a dog. It was one thing if it had been a child—her child. God knew, she’d ached for a child for a long time. She would have happily become pregnant soon after she was married. But Ethan kept saying he wasn’t ready for the responsibility of parenthood. Even when he begrudgingly gave in, he seemed relieved each time she got her period. Nat still found it ironic that he’d left her for another woman whom he’d gotten pregnant.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes when her phone did ring.
“Leo?”
“You’ll find your dog in the trunk of your car.” The voice was a husky whisper. Nat couldn’t even distinguish if it was male or female. It was certainly in no way familiar. “She’s still alive. But you’d better hurry.”
Before Nat could respond, the line went dead.
She didn’t wait for the elevator. Too slow. She bolted down the stairs, flight after flight, her heart pounding. Breathless and frantic, she threw open the door to the underground garage. The parking space she owned was at the far end of the garage, close to the entrance from the street. She was racing toward her car— she couldn’t have been more than thirty yards from it—when she pulled herself up short.
What the hell was she doing?
Suddenly, her addled mind started to function again. She’d driven into this garage not twenty minutes ago. Whoever had managed to get into her apartment and take Hannah, had to have stuck the dog in the trunk sometime after Nat had parked her car and gone upstairs. Sometime within the last twenty minutes.
Whoever it was, he, or she, could very well still be lurking down there this very minute. Lying in wait for her.
And Nat, like a complete idiot, had blithely obliged.
The shrill sound of a car alarm abruptly going off had her practically jumping out of her skin. A short distance ahead of her, a car’s headlights began flashing on and off, on and off, as the nerve-shattering beep, beep, beep of the car alarm echoed through the garage.
One beep sounded sharply louder. Nat wasn’t sure if she realized the alarm blare was synchronized with a gunshot before or after the windshield of the car she was standing closest to shattered upon the bullet’s impact.
Even as she instinctively lurched in the opposite direction, looking for cover, she was thinking that the shooter was clever. Car alarms were heard going off all the time. If the owner of the car wasn’t nearby to shut it off, people ignored the blare, knowing that it would automatically click off within a few minutes. No one would come to investigate. Not that anyone would come running if they heard gunshots, but at least then someone might call the police.
Too far from the exit back into the building, Nat dodged for cover behind a black Jeep. Right now she was damning the enormous number of lights down there that all the condo owners, herself included, had insisted upon having installed in the garage. For safety!
Another shot rang out, again synchronized with another beep of the alarm. The bullet pinged into the metal inches from where Nat was squatting. She dove under the car. Curling herself into a fetal position, she was stricken with panic and dread. There was no escape.
Even as she was literally preparing to die, to be shot in cold blood, a car came roaring into the garage and pulled up short in front of the car whose alarm was continuing to blare.
Seconds later, silence. Merciful silence.
And then, after a few more moments, a man’s voice. “Russo calling in. Everything’s A-OK with the Mercedes. No sign of tampering.”
A security patrol. There couldn’t have been more than one car in a hundred that actually had an alarm system hooked up to a security company. Exhaling her first breath in probably a minute, Nat was overcome with relief. She crawled on her belly toward the front of the Jeep.
“Please,” she called out hoarsely, “help me.”
“Here,” Mitchell Oates said gruffly, handing Nat a plate on which were a couple of slices of toast heavily sprinkled with sugar.
“I never figured you for the domestic type.”
Leo’s partner didn’t crack a smile, but Leo grinned. “His wife would second that,” Leo said.
“Eat it,” Oates said gruffly. “You’ll feel better.”
Despite the detective’s surly demeanor Nat detected an actual hint of concern for her. She found this so remarkable—Oates had never impressed her as feeling anything but irritation toward her—that she obediently bit into the sickly sweet concoction. To her surprise, after a few bites, she did start to feel less jittery.
“A stiff shot of bourbon would go good with that. Got any around?” Tony Russo asked.
Leo glanced over at the guard from Commonwealth Security whose timely arrival in the parking garage had thankfully scared off the shooter. Although he’d given his statement to the police over twenty minutes ago, the burly thirty-something guard was still hanging around, being very solicitous to Nat.
“In the buffet.” Leo pointed across the room. “Left-side cupboard. Make it scotch.”
Russo arched a brow. “I see you know your way around this place, Detective.”
“Don’t you need to get back on duty?” Leo asked pointedly.
Russo merely grinned. And, to Nat’s amazement, Oates actually cracked a smile. He dropped it when Leo caught his eye.
Russo brought Nat a double shot of scotch, watched her take a sip. “How’s that?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Leo answered for her.
Oates walked over to Russo, dropped a hand on his shoulder. “You can take off, man. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions. ”
Russo nodded reluctantly. He slipped on his blue windbreaker with his company’s emblem. Oates accompanied him to the front door. Pausing before he exited, Russo looked back at her.
“You be careful, Nat. And don’t you worry too much about your dog. I just got a gut feeling she’s okay. And that she’ll turn up.”
“I hope so,” she said, fighting to keep the quiver from her voice. To no one’s surprise, least of all Nat’s, Hannah hadn’t been in the trunk of her car. The dog was still missing. And as much as Nat desperately wanted to believe Russo, she was starting to hold out little hope.
Oates opened the front door and started to steer the security officer over the threshold.
“Tony,” Nat called out.
He looked back over his shoulder.
“Thanks. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. You saved my life.”
The far-from-unattractive security guard beamed. “Anytime. I mean that now, Nat. You got my card. Home number’s on the back. You need anything, you call. Day or night. I live alone so you don’t have to worry about waking anyone else up.” He winked to make sure she’d got the message.
Oates bit back another smile as Russo exited. Oates followed him out, leaving Leo and Nat alone.
She set her drink on the coffee table. “So, what do you think, Leo?”
“About the shooter? All we know for sure is the two bullets we recovered in the garage are the same caliber as the bullet that was lodged in Claire Fisher’s chest.”
Shivering, she quickly retrieved her drink and took a long swallow.
“And neither Carol nor Harrison Bell were at home when you got there.” She repeated what Leo’d told her earlier.
“Josh said his parents went out for dinner.”
“But he didn’t know what restaurant they went to. Bullshit,” she said. “Parents don’t leave their kids at home without letting them know where they can be reached in an emergency.”
“I made that same point to the kid. He said he could always call his dad on his cell phone.”
“But when you rang his cell-phone number—”
“Yeah, I know. Bell didn’t pick up.”
“He was too busy firing shots at me. Or too anxious waiting outside in his car while his wife was doing the dirty work.”
“Natalie—”
“I know what you’re going to say, Leo. It’s all supposition. Just like it’s ‘supposition’ that they took—” Her voice cracked. “Do you think they killed Hannah?”
“Honestly?” Leo said. “No. There’s nothing to be gained by doing away with Hannah. It’s not like whoever it was wanted you to suffer the loss of your beloved dog. You were meant to die down there in that garage, Natalie.” He winced as he made that statement.
“So where is she, Leo?”
“Maybe Hannah was turned loose on the street. We’ll check with the pound, see if she was brought in. We’ll find her, Natalie.”
But his promise lacked assurance. And brought little comfort. Nat felt she’d lost Hannah forever. Just like she always seemed to lose everyone she loved.
“I can stay—” he started, but Nat shook her head.
“Don’t push me away, Natalie. If nothing else, you need a shoulder to cry on,” he said softly.
“Your shoulder’s already occupied.”
Leo heaved a sigh of frustration. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Natalie.”
“Neither does feeling like a third wheel.”
He looked at her long and hard for several moments. “This is no time to get into this. You’re upset over Hannah. I know how much you love that dog.”
Tears spiked Nat’s eyes.
“I’m gonna find her, Natalie. Just. . . hold on.”
She nodded tremulously, letting Leo fold her in his arms. Letting herself cry on his crowded shoulder after all.
But she didn’t stop him when he left a few minutes later. Even though she wanted to.
When I get out, when I am finally free, hopefully I’ll be able to reclaim my life, my soul.
L. I.
THE NEXT DAY, Nat was in her office at nine a.m., feeling exhausted. The media had quickly gotten wind of the shoot-out in her parking garage last night. Although she’d unplugged her phone after word got out, she didn’t sleep a wink. This morning, she’d needed the help of a couple of uniforms to dodge reporters gathered both outside her building and in front of Horizon House. Her knight in shining armor, Tony Russo, on the other hand, had been only too happy to share the story of his daring rescue of the superintendent of Horizon House with anyone who would listen.
Jack had heard about the attack on the eleven o’clock news
the night before and got hold of her by calling her carefully guarded private cell-phone number. He wanted to come over immediately and bring her back to his place. She’d told him that it wasn’t necessary. That she wasn’t alone. She was sure Jack assumed Leo was with her. But it was only the two officers Leo had assigned to watch over her.
Nat had spent a tortured night praying her dog was still alive and that she’d get her back. Nat didn’t pray very often. And when she did, she didn’t honestly know who she was praying to. But she hadn’t known what else to do. She still didn’t.
Her clerk, Paul LaMotte, had been spending the morning fielding calls since seven that morning. The only two Nat had returned so far were to her worried sister and Warren Miller, the commissioner of corrections. She’d assured both of them that the risk to her life had been greatly exaggerated, knowing that only a lie would keep her sister from panicking and the commissioner from ordering a forced “vacation” for her.
Not ten minutes after she hung up with the commissioner, her door burst open. Hutch rushed in. “We have a situation.”
Nat was already out of her chair and heading for the door. “What?”
“Suzanne. She’s barricaded herself in her room. Says if we break in she’s gonna jump out the window. We could call the fire department—”
“No, let me try to talk to her first,” Nat said, rushing out of the office. Jack was just coming into the center. She called out to him, “Get Varda over here. Now.”
Hutch and Nat continued up to Suzanne’s room. It was the first time Nat had been alone with her head CO since their confrontation over Father Joe. It was not only that Hutch had been deliberately avoiding her; she hadn’t exactly made herself available lately. Was he still planning on asking for a transfer? Nat kept expecting—and dreading—the request to come across her desk. She didn’t want to lose Hutch. Great officers were hard to come by. Good friends even harder.
“How long?” she asked when they got to her floor.
“Burton and Flynn just came on their watch fifteen minutes ago. Got the thumbs-up from the night shift that Suzanne was still sleeping. Then they heard noise coming from her room, went to check, and couldn’t get the door to budge. They think she’s got a chair wedged under the doorknob. When they started to use muscle to get the door open, she threatened to jump.”
Flynn, the older and burlier of the two uniforms on watch, was standing by Suzanne’s door, nervously eyeing Nat and Hutch approach.
“Burton’s gone outside. Planted himself under her window. I've been trying to talk to her, but she’s not responding,” Flynn told her. “I don’t get why those windows aren’t barred,” he groused.
“Honor system,” Hutch snapped. Not that he hadn’t had plenty of misgivings about the openness of the center. But the truth was, except for the Walsh escape the previous year—and he’d taken off from the hospital, not the center—there’d been no incidents of escape from Horizon House. And it wasn’t as if there was no security. While the windows weren’t barred, the place was locked down tight at night, and there was a very effective alarm system if someone decided to try a getaway via a window.
Suzanne, however, was not planning a conventional escape. She wouldn’t care if every alarm in the place went off.
Nat rapped lightly on the door. “Suzanne, it’s Natalie Price. I’d like to talk to you.”
Silence.
“I know you’re very upset, Suzanne. You have every reason to be. Leo came down hard on you yesterday. But he did apologize, Suzanne. I think you know how sorry he was. I think you also know why he acted the way he did.” Nat was aware of Hutch’s eyes on her. She tried not to meet his gaze, afraid she’d embarrass herself by getting teary. “He cares deeply about you, Suzanne. He doesn’t want anything to happen to you. That’s why he wants you to help him nail this monster. So you’ll be safe. So you’ll have a second chance. The . . . The two of you. ”
Her gaze strayed to Hutch despite herself. She was almost done in by the look of sympathy in his eyes. She looked away quickly.
“Suzanne, please open the door. Let me come in.”
Still no response.
“We could get it open in three seconds flat,” Flynn whispered.
Nat shook her head. She didn’t know how close Suzanne was to the window. And she was afraid the frantic young woman inmate would carry out her threat to jump if they used strong-arm tactics.
“By the way, I saw Jakey yesterday. Did you know he was in a nursery-school play the other day? He played ‘Superkid.’ He was sad that you weren’t able to be there. He misses you, Suzanne.” Nat swallowed hard, thinking how sad Suzanne would be if she knew that Jakey had never mentioned her name at all. Of course, if he knew she was his mother, it might be different. It might be different for all of them. And for Nat.
She heard a faint sound filtering through the door. She pressed her ear against the wood. The sound of crying. Suzanne was crying.
Nat pressed on. “Jakey wants to wear his Superkid outfit next time he comes to visit you. I know you haven’t wanted visitors recently, but I know you must miss your little boy, Suzanne. Maybe I could call Anna and have her bring him over sometime today.”
“No,” she screamed. “Keep him away from here. Do you hear me? Keep him away.”
“Okay, Suzanne. When you’re ready.”
“Leave me alone. I just want to be alone.”
“I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stay right here and wait for you to let me in.”
Hutch pulled up a chair for her. “Take a load off, Nat. I think it’s gonna be a while.”
She nodded, grateful for his kindness. Maybe they would be able to work things out between them.
Jack came hurrying down the hall a minute after she’d sat down. “I got a hold of Varda. One piece of good luck. He was already on his way over to see Suzanne. He’ll be here any minute.”
“Suzanne, it’s me, Dr. Varda. Please open the door.”
Hutch, Jack, Flynn, and Nat waited with bated breath beside him.
“Suzanne? I’m waiting.” Although the psychiatrist looked strained and exhausted, his tone was not only firm but stern. He might have been a no-nonsense father addressing his misbehaving daughter.
There was no response, however, from the “daughter.” Then, just when Nat was certain Varda would have no better luck than she’d had, she detected a scraping sound from the other side of the door. Like a chair being dragged across the floor.
Varda put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and the door opened easily.
“Give us a few minutes,” he said to Nat.
“After I make sure she’s okay,” she insisted.
He nodded and she followed him into the room. Suzanne was standing by the window. She was still in her pajamas, her hair even more snarled than yesterday, her eyes bloodshot, her face tear-streaked. She was staring out into the street.
Nat felt a flash of panic. Could Suzanne get that window open and jump out before either Nat or Varda could stop her?
But Suzanne stepped away and walked over to the bed closest to the window. Lynn’s bed. It was unmade. Had Suzanne begun to sleep in her hospitalized roommate’s bed? Surely there must be some psychological significance to such an act.
Varda walked over and sat down beside Suzanne. “Bad night?” he asked gently.
She clutched herself, nodding.
“Did you take your Zoloft before you went to bed?”
“No,” she muttered. “It makes me have bad dreams.”
“Did you have bad dreams anyway?”
“Yes.”
“What did you dream about?” Nat asked.
Varda gave her an angry look. She was stepping on his toes here.
“Father Joe. I... I dreamt about Father Joe.” Suzanne folded over at the waist and began rocking. “We were in hell . . . together. It was so awful. But then I woke up and . . . and I’m still in hell. I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t. I can’t. I just want it all to stop. Please, please . . . just make it stop.”
Her rocking had accelerated and her head was practically touching her knees.
“Getting all worked up like this isn’t helping you, Suzanne.”
Mat was taken aback by the sharpness in Varda’s tone, but Suzanne did abruptly stop rocking and straightened up, so what did she know?
“Good,” Varda said, more gently now. “Have you eaten any breakfast?”
Suzanne shook her head. “I’m not hungry. I can’t eat.”
“Yes, you can.” He looked over at Nat. “Do you think you might have one of the officers bring in something for Suzanne to eat? Maybe some orange juice,, coffee, a muffin.”
Nat’s eyes strayed to the open window. Varda followed her gaze, rose from the bed, walked over to the window, and shut it firmly.
“You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping well, either,” Nat said when Dr. Varda joined her in her office a short while later.
“I can say the same for you. Is it true that someone tried to gun you down last night?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“And your dog was kidnapped?”
Nat didn’t trust herself to speak. Just thinking about Hannah might reduce her to tears again.
“Detective Coscarelli phoned me last night,” Varda said. “He told me he was stationing an unmarked police car outside my building, and that if I heard or saw anything that was alarming I should turn on my bedroom light and the officers would make a beeline up to my apartment. He didn’t tell me what had happened to you—I didn’t hear until this morning on the radio— but I suspected something must have occurred for the police to step up security.” He stared off into space, looking more bewildered than afraid. “Where will it end?”
“How’s Suzanne?”
“She’s a bit calmer now that we’ve talked.”
“What did you make of her dream?”
“About the priest?” He sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pressed her so hard to tell you about him. Her guilt is weighing heavily on her. Especially since she learned about that nurse’s murder.”
“Someone has come forward with an alibi for Father Joe during the time of Lynn’s attack. It seems pretty airtight.”
Varda looked deeply troubled by this information.
“I don’t even know if it was a man, Ross.”
He frowned. “A woman?”
“Come on, Ross. Lynn had to have talked to you about Carol Bell,” she said impatiently. “I think she told you Carol found out about her affair with Harrison. I think she told you she was afraid of Carol. I think she also told Suzanne. And that Suzanne probably told you as well.”
Varda’s face reddened.
“You think the Bells are all that confident that you won’t break your vow of confidentiality?”
“You think they’re both involved?”
Nat told him precisely what she thought.
He didn’t look particularly shocked. And Nat was not at all surprised about that. If anything, it confirmed her theory about the doctor and his wife.
“And if I broke confidentiality and confirmed that what you say is true . . . ?” Varda countered defensively. “Fm not a police officer or a lawyer, but I do know that my corroboration would prove absolutely nothing. So Lynn was afraid of Carol Bell. So what? Does that prove the woman lay in wait for Lynn in that alleyway? viciously cut her up? Does it prove her husband witnessed the attack and is abetting his wife? Does it connect Carol Bell with any of the crimes that followed Lynn’s assault? No,” he said angrily. “The only thing it does is put me in even more danger. And frankly, Superintendent, I’m already at my limit.” Nat had only to look at the haggard psychiatrist to believe him on that point.
“That leaves us Suzanne and Lynn,” she said. “We need one or both of them to provide an eyewitness account.”
“Suzanne says she was grabbed from behind. That she never saw him. Or her.”
“What if she’s lying? What if Suzanne did see the person who overtook her in the storeroom of the boutique?”
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s the only explanation for why she’s so afraid.”
“If that’s true, she would have told me,” Varda said.
Which was precisely what Nat had hoped. So much for that wish.
“Maybe not,” Nat said, having to rethink her theory. “Maybe Suzanne didn’t want to put you at risk. Maybe she was warned that you’d be harmed if she told you.”
A line of sweat broke out across Varda’s brow. “Harmed? You mean . . . killed.”
A heavy silence hung in the air.
“I think you should encourage Suzanne to come forward, Ross. And I also think you should reconsider hypnotizing Lynn,” Nat said finally.
“Let’s say I do hypnotize Lynn and she does name her assailant. How can you be sure the police will be able to move quickly enough? Have you calculated the risks—to all of us?”
I think, in the end, I’ll destroy this journal. I started it because I thought it would help to put it all down, but it’s too painful. Too much like reliving it. If only I could block it all out.
L. I.
DR. VARDA WAS late. After his initial reluctance yesterday, a reluctance understandably born of fear for his own well-being, he’d agreed to meet with Lynn that morning and explore the idea of hypnosis with her. He’d explained he would need her full compliance; otherwise there was no hope of putting her under. And he was not sure if she was ready for this emotionally charged step.
Leo was there as well. If Lynn agreed to be hypnotized, the psychiatrist would proceed without delay. They were all feeling the pressure of time slipping by. Not to mention that everyone’s nerves were frayed, especially Suzanne’s. Although she’d settled down somewhat after her session with Dr. Varda the previous morning, she’d spent much of the rest of the day pacing in her room or smoking out on the front porch. Of course, every time she stepped out of the building, the two officers assigned to her also stood outside on guard. Talk about frayed nerves—theirs were plenty ragged.
So were Nat’s. And they were getting more ragged with each passing minute.
Leo poured himself a refill of coffee as they waited in the doctors’ lounge up in ICU. “You sure Varda said nine a.m.?” Nat checked her watch. It was nine thirty-five. Varda told her he planned to come there straight from home and then go on to Grafton for an eleven a.m. therapy group he was running.
Where the hell was he? Of all people, you’d expect psychiatrists to be punctual.
Shortly after nine, Leo got in touch with the two officers posted in an unmarked car outside Varda’s building. They had not yet seen Varda exit. Okay, so he was running a bit late. But now Nat was starting to feel increasingly uneasy.
“Maybe he had some kind of emergency,” she said. “He mentioned something about his sister being sick. I don’t know how serious it is, but she could have been rushed to the hospital.” “Let’s see if he left.” Leo phoned the officers on duty again. “Phil. Do me a favor. Take Lenny and run up to Varda’s apartment. Check if he’s there.” He hesitated briefly before adding, “And if he is, that he’s in one piece.”
The first thing Nat saw when she followed Leo into Dr. Varda’s apartment was the red stain on the psychiatrist’s beige carpet. There were a few splatters of red, as well, on the khaki sofa just above the carpet. Bile rose up in her throat, burning its way back down as she swallowed hard.
Mitchell Oates and another plainclothes detective stepped out from the bedroom. Behind Nat and Leo, two Boston crime-scene investigators entered the front door.
“What have we got?” Leo addressed the question to Oates, who was walking over to the crime-scene pair.
“It’s what we don’t got that’s the problem,” Oates answered dryly. “We don’t got the shrink.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Nat said. “It means Dr. Varda might very well still be alive.”
Oates shrugged. “Maybe.”
Leo pointed toward the bedroom. “Anything in there?” “Bed’s unmade. Looks like the shrink slept there last night. Alone,” Oates added. “No sign of any struggle.” He looked over at the red stain on the carpet. “No blood’s turned up anywhere else in the apartment from what I’ve seen.”
“Front door was unlocked?”
Oates nodded. “No sign of any tampering. I’d say the doctor let whoever it was in. There’s half a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Still warm. Timer was set for seven a.m. Two mugs in the drain board. I got them bagged and tagged, but I don’t think we’ll get much from them. Unfortunately, our shrink is very tidy. Washed the mugs rather than stuck ’em in the dishwasher.”
“So,” Leo said, “somebody shows up sometime this morning. Varda lets him or her in, they have coffee, sit around, shoot the breeze, then something happens. Now we’ve got bloodstains and a missing shrink.”
“What about the two officers posted outside?” Nat asked. “They never saw Varda exit.”
“There’s a service entrance. Locked from the outside so my men didn’t worry about someone getting into the building that way. ”
A uniform came into the apartment and made a beeline for Oates.
“The neighbor across the hall says she saw a woman ringing Dr. Varda’s doorbell sometime around eight-thirty this morning. Neighbor’s name is Gloria Weber.”
“Mrs. Weber, I wonder if we could nail down the description of this woman at the doctor’s door,” Leo said.
Mrs. Weber looked very put-out by the intrusion. “I’ve already done the best I could. Her back was to me. And 1 only glanced out my peephole. It couldn’t have been more than a second or two. I had no idea I was looking at a ... a criminal.” “We don’t know that it was a criminal, Mrs. Weber,” Leo cautioned.
“Really, this is very upsetting.”
“I wonder if you’d like a cup of tea, Mrs. Weber?” Nat asked. The woman smiled at her. “Now, how did you know I was a tea drinker and not a coffee drinker?”
Nat pointed to the collection of teapots in her china cabinet. “Very observant, my dear. And thank you for your offer, but I only have one cup in the morning.”
“You impress me as being very observant as well, Mrs. Weber. Could you please try to describe the woman again?”
“Well, let me see. She was a blonde. I did say that, didn’t I? And I believe her hair was long. A rather tall woman. Not fat. No, I wouldn’t say fat. Big.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A coat. A plain black coat. Oh, yes, and sneakers. They were black, too. But I’m pretty sure they were sneakers. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Please,” she pleaded. “Keep your voices down. My little girl is home sick.”
“Is she upstairs in her room coloring?”
Carol Bell gave Nat an edgy look.
“We have an eyewitness that places you at Dr. Ross Varda’s apartment this morning at approximately eight-thirty,” Leo said. “No, that can’t be. I... I wasn’t there.”
“But you know who Dr. Varda is.”
She blanched. “Harrison’s mentioned him. I... I know he’s Lynn’s psychiatrist.”
“You’d better call a baby-sitter to come over, Mrs. Bell,” Leo said grimly. “I’m bringing you to the precinct to participate in a lineup.”
Carol Bell swayed. Nat grabbed hold of her as she tried to steady herself. “Oh, God, I never should have gone there. It’s true. But. . . But he phoned me at seven o’clock this morning. He . . . He told me he had important information that would clear me and Harrison. He asked me to meet him at his apartment. I was supposed to be there by eight, but I explained I had to get the children off to school, and he said I should get there as soon as I could.”
She looked wanly from Nat to Leo. “But I was too late. He was already gone.”
“How do you know that?” Leo asked.
“He never came to the door.”
“Curious, that you haven’t even asked us why we are questioning you about this visit,” Leo said.
“I, I. . . assumed something must have . . . happened to him,” she answered starkly. “Is he . .. dead?”
“I think you know the answer to that better than I do.”
“No. I swear, I have no idea.”
“What about my dog?”
She gave Nat a blank look, but then her expression darkened. “I want to call my lawyer. I’m not saying another word until she gets here.”
“Don’t bother. We’re leaving. But you can tell her that chances are damn good you’ll be needing her services real soon.”
Leo and Nat stopped for lunch in Brookline, and they were just about to give their order to the waitress when his cell phone rang.
Even from across the booth Nat could hear a woman crying hysterically on the other end of the line.
“Mom, Mom,” Leo pleaded. “Calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying. ”
Nat couldn’t make out Anna Coscarelli’s words, but she had only to look at Leo’s expression to know something terrible had happened.
I keep praying Jakey just wandered off. . . that he wasn’t taken. But I guess when your daddy’s a homicide detective there’s always a risk.
Cindy Shaeffer, PlayDays School teacher, in a TV interview
LEO WAS TEARING ass down Beacon Street, his foot flat on the accelerator.
Nat blinked rapidly, trying to take this in. “Someone at the school must have seen where he went. Who . . . Who he went with. They don’t just let children wander off. Or turn them over to perfect strangers. They don’t—”
Leo wasn’t listening. Nat stopped talking. As upset as she was, she could only imagine what must be going through Leo’s head. His child was missing.
First her dog, then Varda, now Jakey. It was crazy. Insane.
But then, whoever was behind all this madness very likely was insane.
There were three Boston blue-and-whites parked in front of PlayDays Nursery School when Leo screeched to a shuddering stop. He bolted out the driver’s-side door, not even bothering to shut off the engine. Nat turned the key, pocketed it, then hesitated as she reached for her door handle.
She was worried that she’d only be in the way. She worried more that Leo would rather she wasn’t there. She was no relation to him, to Jakey. She was an outsider.
If anyone should be there, it was Suzanne. Jakey’s mother.
Nat’s chest constricted. Suzanne. How would she take the news of her son’s disappearance? If she was already feeling burdened with guilt, finding out about Jakey could prove her breaking point.
No sooner did Nat think that Suzanne mustn’t find out, than two more-potent thoughts hit her like a sledgehammer: Suzanne had to know who’d taken Jakey. And Leo knew that Suzanne knew.
Anna Coscarelli was inconsolable. The physician used by the nursery school and called to the scene shortly after Anna’s arrival obtained Leo’s permission and gave Leo’s mother a shot of Valium. One of the teachers offered to drive her home and stay with her for as long as necessary. The teacher looked like she could use a tranquilizer herself. Everyone at the school did. Leo most of all.
He was laying into the teary-eyed and badly shaken young teacher who’d been on duty outside with the children when Jakey had disappeared.
Leo was right in her face: “ ‘Vanished out of thin air’? Nobody vanishes out of thin air. Some fuck came and took my kid. And you were—what, daydreaming about your fucking boyfriend or what the fuck you were gonna cook for dinner?—”
Cindy Shaeffer put her hands up to her face and broke down in sobs. “One minute ... he was . . . right there . . . and the next . . . minute he was . . . gone. I was just. . . having a word . . . with one of . . . the parents. And then . . . your mother . . . came and I. . . looked around . .. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Her words, stilted and muffled, were etched in despair.
A plainclothes cop walked over to Leo. Put a hand lightly on his shoulder. Leo jerked away, glared at him.
“Detective Coscarelli, please. You’re upset—”
“You bet the fuck I’m upset. My kid is gone. And somebody at this fucking school is going to come up with some answers, or I swear I’m going to fucking—” He stopped abruptly, a wrenching moan escaping from his lips, as if the impotence of his fury had finally taken hold of him.
He turned away, caught Nat’s eye for the briefest of moments as she stood by the classroom door, then strode briskly across the room, going right by her and heading out of the building. A man on a mission. And Nat was pretty sure she knew exactly what that mission was.
“Leo,” she called out, rushing to catch up with him.
“This isn’t some dumb-assed dog now. This is my kid,” he snarled.
Nat had never seen Leo this ugly. But then, how ugly would she be if it were her child who’d disappeared?
Before anyone—Nat, Jack, Hutch, even the two cops in the hall—could stop him, Leo stormed into Suzanne’s room and slammed the door behind him. Nat tried to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge. She was guessing Leo probably wedged the same chair under the knob as Suzanne had yesterday.
The four men beside Nat all offered to break the door down. Any one of them, no doubt, could have managed the task on his own. But she rejected their offer. It was too late now to stop Leo, and it would only cause a futile confrontation. At this point Nat could only hope that Suzanne would quickly tell Leo what he wanted to know. Then all Nat could do was pray that the cops could get to the bastard before Jakey was harmed. If he hadn’t been harmed already. Or worse.
Nat didn’t have to be in the room to hear Leo and Suzanne. Their voices, especially Leo’s, could be heard clearly out in the hall. There were only a couple of other female inmates on the floor at that hour—a recent transfer who’d not yet started her work assignment and one resident home with the flu. They’d both come out of their rooms during the commotion, and Nat disbanded Jack and Hutch to escort the pair down to the visiting room. She told the two cops to go have a smoke. They reluctantly shuffled off.
Nat stayed put, listening—
“No, no. It can’t be true.” Suzanne was crying.
“Do I look like I’m fucking lying,” Leo roared.
“It’s all my fault. But they won’t hurt him, Leo. They won’t.”
“ ‘They’? Who are we talking about? The Bells? Is that who—?”
“Don’t. Oh, God, I’ve been terrified of this happening the whole time. Don’t you see, Leo? That’s why they took him. To stop me from talking. If I talk they’ll kill him, Leo. Don’t you get it? I hold our son’s life in my hands. If you ever hope to see him alive again, you’ll stop trying to make me tell you.”
“So what do we do, Suzanne?” Leo’s voice had gone from fury to anguish. “They—whoever the fuck ‘they’ are—are blackmailing you into keeping silent by holding our son. So how do I get him back?”
“Damn you, Leo,” Suzanne screamed. “You should have let me get that abortion! You shouldn’t have ever let Jakey be born. I knew it would only lead to heartache. I knew even then—”
“Where is he?” Oates asked as Nat slid into a booth across from him in a coffee shop near the precinct house. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon.
“Leo stormed out of the center after his fruitless confrontation with Suzanne, got into his car, and drove off like a bat out of hell.”
“He didn’t go to the Bells’ house. I have an unmarked car over there. No sign of him.”
“As wildly upset as he is, he’s not going to risk Jakey getting hurt by barreling in there. I think he went back to the nursery school.”
“Romero’s not gonna be happy to see him,” Oates said.
“Romero?”
“The detective assigned to the kidnapping.”
“He can’t blame Leo for wanting to be in on the investigation.”
“We don’t even know that the boy’s still alive, Natalie.”
Nat winced at the thought, then attacked it. “No, they know that as long as Suzanne can be assured Jakey’s alive, she’ll keep her mouth shut. It’s their only hold over her. She was meant to die from that OD. When that failed, it was too hard to get at her. So they used Jakey as a threat, somehow got a message to her that they’d harm him if she talked. But they must have worried she was close to the breaking point, and so they took it to the next step.” She looked wanly across at Leo’s partner. “I’ve got to believe Jakey’s okay.”
Oates leaned forward, reached a hand across the table, and rested it over hers. Nat was taken aback by his solicitous touch and the even more solicitous expression on his face.
Nat was just pulling out from the curb in front of the coffee shop when she heard a loud thump on her trunk. She slammed down on her brakes and the next thing she knew, Oates was yanking open her passenger-side door.
“The Bells’ house in Newton. Let’s go.”
A flood of possibilities rushed through her mind, but they were all so potentially awful, Nat couldn’t bring herself to voice them aloud.
When they got to the Bells’ house, they saw Leo’s car. It was half on the Bells’ manicured lawn, his car door open. So was the door to the house.
Nat’s heart was in her throat. Had they found Jakey? Was he alive?
Oates and Nat were just dashing out of her car when two uniforms emerged from the house with a raging man, arms pinned behind his back, wrists cuffed. They were heading for the cruiser.
Nat froze in place. The man being dragged from the house was Leo.
Oates yanked out his ID, waving at the cops as he rushed over to his partner. Leo was acting like a madman. The cops were doing their best not to roughhouse him as they tried to get him into the back of the cruiser. They must have known they were dealing with a police officer because one of them called him “Detective.”
“Jakey’s jacket,” Leo gasped hoarsely. “It was in her car. They’ve got him, man. They’ve got my boy. I’ll kill them. I’ll fucking kill them—”
“I’m on it, Leo. I’ll find him,” Oates said fiercely.
An unmarked car pulled up to a screeching stop just as the uniforms managed to get Leo into the cruiser.
The plainclothes detective Nat recognized from Jakey’s nursery school, and whom she presumed was Detective Romero, got out of the car. He held up a hand to stop the cruiser from taking off. Oates and the detective had a brief powwow, then the detective opened the back door of the cruiser and slipped in beside Leo. He was in there for a couple of minutes. When he got out, the cruiser took off.
Nat rushed over to Oates. “They’re not going to arrest Leo, Mitch. They can’t.”
“Take it easy, Nat,” Oates said. “Leo needs a little cool-down time.”
The detective, Eric Romero, approached them. “Leo was at the school when one of the parents who was picking up her kid told us she saw a red Subaru Outback racing past the school. She noticed it because she was upset the driver was speeding in a school zone. The instant Leo heard the make of the car, he was off and running.”
“Who could blame him?” she said hotly.
“Not me, believe me. But he shoulda let me go. He was in no condition—and I’m still not saying I blame him, because I don’t—but still, he should have left it to cooler minds. Instead he went on a raving rampage, tore up half the house, roughed up Carol Bell—”
“She’s lucky he didn’t kill her,” Nat said fiercely.
“No, Nat,” Oates said pointedly. “Leo’s lucky.”
Helen Katz entered the interrogation room where Carol Bell sat near the point of emotional collapse. Across from her was Mitchell Oates and Eric Romero.
Nat found herself once again sitting in a room next door, watching through a one-way mirror.
Katz rushed over to Carol, gasped audibly when she saw her bruised cheek. She glared across at Oates, but he raised his hands in a gesture that said, Not my doing.
Once Katz found out it was Leo, Nat was sure she was going to push for Carol Bell to press charges against him. Right now, though, the criminal lawyer had other, more pressing concerns to attend to. Her two clients—Harrison Bell was in an interrogation room across the hall—were about to be charged with the kidnapping of four-year-old Jacob Coscarelli.
Carol grasped the lawyer’s sleeve like it was her lifeline. And it might well have been. “I keep telling them, I don’t know how that jacket got in the car. I never saw it before in my life. Anyone could have put it there. I’m always forgetting to lock the car. Harrison’s forever scolding me—”
“You shouldn’t have said anything until I got here.”
“What about Harrison? Can he explain—?” Carol asked.
“My partner Craig Paulson is with Harrison. Let’s focus on you now,” Katz said, sliding into a chair beside her client.
Oates leaned forward. “Give us a blow-by-blow accounting of your day so far, Mrs. Bell.”
Carol glanced anxiously at Katz. Katz nodded.
“I already told Detective Coscarelli about going to Dr. Varda’s apartment at eight-thirty. And that he wasn’t home. Or, at least, didn’t answer my ring or knock. Then I went home.” “Did you tell your husband you were going to see Varda?” She hesitated. “No. I thought he might not want me to go.” “Why?”
“I don’t know. I got the feeling he didn’t like the psychiatrist.” Yeah, Nat thought, I bet he didn’t.
“I drove back home and caught up on some chores. My housekeeper was there. She can tell you,” Carol said.
“She was there the whole morning?” Oates asked.
“Not. . . every moment. She did a few errands. Picked up Harrison’s suits at the cleaners, stopped at the bakery, and got a cake for . . . for dinner tonight.” She looked anxiously at the lawyer. “The children are going to be so frantic. My sister went over there to be with them, but what is she going to say to them?” Katz put a calming hand on her client’s shoulder.
“Let’s talk about where you were from eleven forty-five to twelve-thirty,” Oates said, without a scintilla of sympathy in his voice. Nat was actually amazed he was able to hold on to his temper. He was, after all, sitting across from a woman who very likely had kidnapped his partner’s son. His paitner who was, at that moment, being forced to cool his jets in an unused interrogation room down the hall, with two officers there to make sure he stayed put. Anyone else would have done their cooling off in a jail cell.
“Didn’t you go pick up Daphne?” Katz coached.
Carol Bell blanched. “No. I picked her up early from nursery school because she had a tummy-ache. But she felt better later in the morning, so I let her play with her friend next door. I was just about to go over to get her when . . . when that detective nearly broke my door down and threw me to the floor and started storming through all the rooms of my house, knocking things over, pulling clothes out of closets ... I thought he was crazy. I was never so frightened in my life. He kept screaming— ‘Jakey, Jakey!’ And he had that . . . that jacket clutched to his chest. 1 didn’t know it was in my car. I don’t know how it got there. 1 would never hurt a child. I’m a mother. I’m a mother.” She broke into wrenching sobs.
“You fucking what}”
Whatever cooling off Leo might have managed since they’d arrived at the precinct house was gone the instant he heard that Oates had had to let the Bells go.
The two officers in the room with them were about to grab Leo before he started using his fists as well as his vocal cords, but Oates vetoed the move with a shake of the head.
He tried to encourage Leo to get a grip, but Leo was way past that.
Nat, who’d gotten to the precinct house shortly after Leo’d been brought in, was nearly as beside herself as Leo was. She didn’t give a damn that the district attorney said there was no case yet, that there was not enough evidence even to charge them.
What about Jakey’s jacket? What was that if not evidence?
Nat didn’t want to hear that “anyone” could have dropped that jacket into Carol Bell’s red Subaru Outback. Tell her who that “anyone” could be. Tell her that.
Leo shoved his partner roughly aside and stormed across the room, yanking open the door.
“Hold on, Leo. You’re not going anywhere. Not the way you’re feeling right now,” Romero said.
“Try and stop me,” Leo snarled.
“Leave it, man,” Oates said to Romero. “I’ll keep him under wraps.”
“Sorry. I don’t think anyone’s gonna manage that,” Romero said. Heaving a sigh, Romero reluctantly gave the nod to the two officers who rushed after Leo. They literally had to battle him to the floor in the hallway. It took a third officer pitching in before they managed to subdue him, Leo kicking and cursing a blue streak the whole time.
Oates, looking grim but resigned, and Nat, her expression pure anguish, watched silently from the doorway.
“I don’t know, Nat,” Oates said, sounding less than enthusiastic about Nat’s proposal.
“You have a better idea?” she challenged.
“Give me a little time and maybe—”
“We don’t have time, Mitch,” Nat said.
He knew that as well as she did. “What makes you think it’ll work?”
“She’s the last link. The most crucial one, at that.”
“She has been this w'hole time.”
“But no one could get to her. And the pressure to figure out some way to manage it wasn’t a priority as long as she couldn’t remember. ”
“What if we bring the Bells in? Maybe if Lynn looks them square in the face—”
“Too big a maybe,” she argued. “More time wasted.”
“And Suzanne Holden?”
“You think she’s going to talk knowing they mean to kill Jakey if she does? Come on, Mitch. And she knows they’re not bluffing. Look at what happened to Lynn. To Claire Fisher. To Suzanne herself. This pair is deadly. And damn lucky so far. There’s never enough evidence—”
“I’m still worried. A lot of things could go wrong. You could get hurt, Nat. I think about Leo and everything he’s going through. If, on top of all that, something happens to you, Leo’s never gonna get over it. And he’s gonna blame me. With good reason.”
“I’m thinking about Leo, too, Mitch. That’s why I have to do this.”
“Is this Bill Walker?”
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“It’s what I can do for you, Mr. Walker.”
“Do I know you?”
“We never met. But I listen to your news show on WBBS all the time. I’m a big fan.”
“Yeah, never can have too many of those. Mind telling me who I’m talking to?”
“It’s not important. Here’s the scoop, Bill. Lynn Ingram, the woman who was attacked—”
“The transsexual. Yeah, what about her?”
“She just got moved out of ICU.”
“That’s nice to hear. But not exactly breaking news.”
“That’s because I haven’t told you the best part yet: Her memory’s coming back, Bill. Lynn’s beginning to remember the attack. Some of it’s still a little cloudy. A specialist in hypnosis has been consulted. He’s confident that under hypnosis she’ll be able to identify her attacker. He’s being brought in first thing tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s more like it. Just one question for you: Why are you leaking the story?”
“Sinners have to pay for their sins, Bill.”
“Are we talking about the attacker or the transsexual here?” Sharon Johnson dropped the phone into the cradle. “Okay?” Nat gave a thumbs-up sign. “Perfect.”
“Well, I’m still not one bit happy about this plan.” Sharon shot a dark-eyed look over at Mitchell Oates, who was standing by the closed office door.
“Do I look happy?” he groused.
When Oates walked into the private room assigned to Lynn Ingram on the eleventh floor of Boston General, Carrie Li slipped quietly out. The nurse had willingly put her job on the line for them. She said it wasn’t solely because she felt she owed Nat her life, but because she wanted Lynn’s attacker caught as much as they did. So she got Nat into this vacant room on a floor where she was close friends with the head nurse, and bandaged her up. Oates was putting his job on the line, too, by informing the nurses on the floor that that this was a police-sanctioned maneuver. On his unsanctioned orders, Lynn Ingram had been listed on the hospital roster as being in room 1143.
“Well, it made the six o’clock news,” he said, after giving Nat a rueful once-over.
“Great.”
“Yeah,” Oates said glumly. “What wasn’t great was watching photos of Jakey Coscarelli being flashed on the screen. Or a clip of Leo’s mom sobbing hysterically as she was led into her building.”
“Poor Anna. She must be going out of her mind. I hope she’s not all alone.”
“That's one piece of good news. We moved Leo out of jail and put him under house arrest. He’s home with his mom, along with two uniforms to make sure he stays put.”
Nat sat up in the hospital bed. Not an easy effort, considering she was mummy-wrapped in bandages. Which would be uncomfortable enough, but Oates had insisted on her wearing a Kevlar vest beneath the bandages. He wasn’t taking any chances. Not that Nat wanted to take any chances herself. Which was why she’d also been wired.
“It’s going to work, Mitch. Lynn’s got to be silenced at all costs now, because her identification will be the nail in the Bells’ coffins. And once they know it’s over, they’ll tell us where they’ve got Jakey.” Not to mention Ross Varda and her beloved Hannah.
“We still don’t know for certain it is the Bells,” Oates said. “You know, Nat, someone could be setting them up. The real kidnapper could easily have tossed Jakey’s jacket into Carol Bell’s Subaru. We’ve got to consider that.”
“You’re thinking of Beth and Daniel Milburne?”
“That’s one possibility.”
Nat reflected on her earlier emotional exchange with the councilman’s wife. She’d found herself believing Beth about Daniel Milburne not knowing the truth. And that threatening letter, the intimidating phone call.
“What are you thinking?” Oates asked her.
“I think our real perp was trying to set the Milburnes up. He wanted us to think the councilman knew about his wife’s first marriage because that made him a perfect suspect. With Beth as an accessory.”
“There’s always Jennifer Slater’s brother, Rodney Bartlett,” Oates mused. “Getting revenge for his sister. With her blessing.” “Well, I guess he had motive, but I don’t know,” Nat paused, “he doesn’t seem the type.” Something was niggling at her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She rubbed her eyes, practically the only part of her from her chest up that was exposed. “I wish I could sort it all out. So much has happened so fast. Three disappearances in twenty-four hours. My dog, Varda, then Jakey.” “That’s because our perp, or perps, whoever they are, are getting increasingly more panicked. The closer we get to nailing them, the more desperate they’re becoming. So now they’re racing around trying to cover their tracks. They took your dog to lure you down to the garage and use you for target practice. Varda was a liability right from the start. And Suzanne was reaching her breaking point. They couldn’t get to her so they got to her kid.”
Nat nodded. Everything Oates was saying made sense. All the pieces of the puzzle fit, and yet the picture as a whole somehow didn’t look quite right.
“Nat, you sure you want to go through with this? We can put an undercover cop—”
“You can’t use one of your people. This isn’t even sanctioned, Mitch.”
“So, we lay the plan out to my chief and have him—”
“And if your chief says no? If he vetoes the plan altogether?” Oates sighed. He knew she was right, even if he was still very uneasy.
He eyeballed her. “You scared?”
“No.”
“Liar. I’ll be ten feet away, girl. Right behind that bathroom door. You’re gonna do fine.”
“You too, Mitch.”