21

The day after the adventure in Kit’s bedroom, the bruises had begun appearing. Today, they looked even worse, but fortunately, they were all hidden by her clothing. She knocked on the heavy green door and went in without being asked. Broussard was sitting up in bed with a bottle of clear liquid in a rack overhead, connected to his arm with transparent tubing. Phil Gatlin was sitting on a small vinyl sofa by the window; Leo Fleming was seated in a chair on the opposite side of the bed.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“Well enough to leave,” Broussard replied. “But I’m supposed to stay a few more days. Kit, I want to apologize. . . .”

“For what?”

“For what happened . . . for nearly gettin’ you killed.”

“Nonsense. You had nothing to do with it, or the others. And if you persist in thinking so, you’ll be giving Brooks exactly what he wants. Actually, his coming after me was a compliment.”

Broussard’s brow furrowed.

“He only did it because he believed you were . . . well, fond of me.”

Fleming and Gatlin sat straighter in their seats, interested in what Broussard would say to this.

Falling back on the dodge he’d used at the reception, he looked away, but there was Gatlin. Above his beard, Broussard’s cheeks grew pink and there was a trapped look in his eyes that made Kit think he might tear out his IV and run for it. She had him now, but since he wasn’t well, it didn’t seem fair.

“I brought you something,” she said, setting the Forensic Academy tote bag she’d brought onto the bed. The look of relief in his eyes changed to pleasure as she put the glass bowl of lemon drops from his office on the nightstand.

“I’m sure this is forbidden, too,” he said testily, thrusting his chubby hand into the bowl. He put a lemon drop in his mouth and folded his hands over his belly.

“Now I want some answers,” Kit said. “How did you know it was Brooks?”

“I got a bone to pick with you about that myself,” Gatlin said, getting up and moving to the foot of the bed. “Why’d you let me make an ass of myself with Harvey if you knew it wasn’t him?”

“I didn’t know for sure who it was until one o’clock Friday mornin’. That’s when the phone call I was waitin’ for came.”

“Who was it?” Kit said.

“Gene Ochs, the cardiologist in the Heartbeats.”

Kit shook her head. “I’m lost.”

“When Brookie first arrived at the hotel, he gave me a picture taken of himself and Susan at a party celebratin’ their twentieth anniversary. The drummer in the photo you got from the paper looked a lot like one of the faces in the background at Brookie’s party.”

Kit groaned. “Ochs was Waldo.”

“I’m still lost,” Fleming said.

“It was all a brilliant game of cat and mouse engineered around two photographs,” Broussard said patiently. “Brookie gave me one of them the day the meetin’ started. To get the other one, the picture of the Heartbeats, Kit had to solve the riddle of the Scrabble letters and the newspaper pages Brookie left on his victims. If she hadn’t figured out that the clue was in the little score-keeping numbers and not the letters, we’d never have found the second picture in the paper.”

“We can thank Grandma O and Teddy LaBiche for that,” Kit said.

“So, now we had both pictures but had no idea they were related,” Broussard continued. “I’d been lookin’ at the picture of Brookie and Susan quite a bit over the last few days and had noticed that one of the faces in the background resembled Gene Ochs, the drummer in the Heartbeats. But I didn’t think anything of it until that singer, Merryman, gave Kit the envelope containin’ a page from a Find Waldo book.”

“Which Merryman got from Brooks,” Fleming said.

“Yeah, but most likely not directly from him.”

Gatlin nodded knowingly.

“Coupled with the hairs Brookie also left on the victims to tell us the killer was a forensic colleague, I began to see the light. But I wasn’t sure the drummer in the Heartbeats and the guy in the picture of Brookie and Susan were the same person. I wanted to believe they weren’t, that Jason Harvey really was behind it all as it first appeared and that the Heartbeats were involved only because they constituted a Harvey team. But I had to check. So when Kit and Phillip went to find Merryman at the museum, I caught a ride with them back to my office and looked up the drummer, Ochs, in my specialty directories. He lives in Carmel, California, but when I called, his answerin’ service said he was out of town until late that night. I left a message for him to call me no matter what time he got in. We were lucky he was conscientious enough to check his messages so late. When he reached me, I asked if he’d been at Brookie and Susan’s twentieth anniversary party. He said he had, and that was all I needed.”

“How did they know each other?” Kit asked.

“Ochs is the son of Brookie’s sister. He was home visitin’ her when the party was held. So he tagged along to pay his respects. She probably sent Brookie a copy of the article on the Heartbeats when it first appeared.”

“I guess Brooks thought that since Ochs didn’t live in the city, nobody would bother to quiz him about the band,” Fleming said.

“That’s the way I see it,” Broussard said. “Anyway, it was a few minutes after I hung up before I realized the rest of it—that he was after Kit. Lookin’ back, it was so obvious, I should have known. . . . He practically handed it to me the night we all went to Felix’s. He made two mistakes that night, one on the way over and one comin’ back.”

“I was there,” Kit said, “and I didn’t notice anything.”

“Remember when we were decidin’ where to eat and Charlie suggested Tortorici’s? Well, Brookie said they were closed. But they were open, because Hugh Greenwood said he’d eaten there Monday night. Of course, they were closed Saturday night. We saw that for ourselves when Leo and I ran into you and Teddy. So Brookie wasn’t tellin’ the truth when he told me Monday mornin’ that he’d just arrived. The other mistake—and this one was huge—was when you and he were talkin’ on the way back from dinner Tuesday night. I was right in front of you and I heard you talk about Lucky bein’ poisoned. Brookie referred to Lucky as a little dog. When I mentioned your dog to him at lunch on Monday, he said he didn’t know you had a dog. And in our conversation, I never said what kind of dog it was or how big it was. So how did he know it was little?”

Kit felt her jaw drop. “Jesus, he was the one who poisoned Lucky.”

“So there’d be no barkin’ when he came for you. After Lucky was gone, he probably returned while you were workin’ and checked out the room arrangement, makin’ plans for later.”

Kit’s thoughts went to the Mace in her nightstand and she knew that had she tried to use it, she would have found it empty. Then . . . “I remember now the night we all went to Felix’s, he maneuvered the conversation around to the vet I was using. I bet he called him to make sure Lucky wouldn’t be home. And it almost worked, because you were about a minute too late. If he hadn’t stumbled against the footstool in my bedroom, I might be dead.”

“I’d say we both got your money’s worth from the footstool,” Broussard said.

“Why’d he kick the stool?” Fleming asked. “If he cased your house, he should have known it was there.”

“Because it wasn’t there when he was. Lucky had thrown up on it after being poisoned and it was away being recovered.”

“Like I told you,” Broussard said, “it’s not the big thing that sends you over the cliff, but the untied shoelace. Too bad the shoelace works both ways. Did you get a visit from a police car a short while before everything happened?”

“Yes. Did you send it?”

“Soon as I realized what Brookie was up to, I tried to get hold of you, but there was no answer. I called nine-one-one and told them to get to your house right away. For all I knew, it was already too late.”

“Brooks cut the phone line,” Kit said. “They repaired it yesterday. Apparently when a line is cut like that, it still sounds like it’s ringing to someone calling in.”

“Well, it sure worried me,” Broussard said. “Those cops were supposed to stay with you until I got there to explain and see that you stayed the night someplace safe. Obviously, things didn’t go as planned. Fortunately, they didn’t for Brookie, either.”

Kit turned to Gatlin. “So Brooks was the one who put the key under Harvey’s mattress.”

“Yeah, we finally got him talking late yesterday,” Gatlin said. “He told us he did it one night when he and Harvey and some others played bridge. After playing for a few hours, he suggested they go down to the bar for a drink. When they were all out in the hallway, he pretended to remember a call he had to make and asked Harvey if he could use his phone, knowing everybody’d stay in the hall to give him privacy. The whole Harvey ploy was just to keep us looking in the wrong direction.”

“Clever of him to mention the Harvey team to Leo rather than come to us with it directly,” Kit said.

Fleming’s mouth drooped in disgust. “And like a sap, I came runnin’ right to you.”

Gatlin looked at Broussard. “Andy, Brooks said it was you who let him know we took the bait.”

“When was that?”

“At the reception.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You didn’t say anything about wheels turning when he asked you about Harvey?”

“Well, I might have.”

“He took that to mean he had us. So he went from you right to Harvey and told him to watch his step. He thought we’d search Harvey’s room only as a last resort and that we’d probably tail him instead. But if he let that occur, Kit might have stayed up all night keeping tabs on what was happening. He had to make sure it was resolved early in the evening so Kit would go home and turn in. Given Harvey’s personality, he figured Harvey’d confront us and force our hand.”

“How’d he know for sure Harvey’d be at the meetin’?” Fleming asked.

“He hasn’t missed one in twenty years,” Broussard said.

“And Brooks saw his name on an advance copy of the program,” Gatlin added.

“Who gave Phyllis Merryman that envelope?” Kit asked.

“An actor,” Gatlin replied. “From one of the talent agencies in town. Brooks said that even with makeup the guy didn’t look exactly like Harvey, but Merryman would have seen him only briefly a month earlier. He didn’t think she’d remember how they differed. And the whole charade only had to hold up for a short while.”

“I don’t understand his choice of weapon,” Fleming said. “A knife meant he had to find victims who were thinly dressed. And that’d be possible only if the weather was mild, which it has been this year. But I understand that sometimes it’s a lot cooler here in February. If he planned this months ago—and it’s obvious he did—why make the whole thing dependent on warm weather? What would he have done if it had turned chilly and people bundled up?”

“When he came after me, he also brought a gun,” Kit said. Then to Gatlin, she added, “What was that deodorant can on it, a homemade silencer?”

“Yeah, packed with sheet rubber. Pretty neat job. The whole thing was light as a feather. He had another one with a silencer in his room. They were his backup. He took one with him each time he went out in case things went wrong. And if the weather turned . . .”

“Why not use a gun from the beginnin’?” Fleming asked. “Be a lot simpler.”

“He wanted Kit to die by a knife,” Gatlin said. “He believed that would have made Andy even more miserable. I don’t know exactly what he meant. . . .”

“It’s a rare woman who doesn’t fear a knife more than a gun,” Broussard said. “The night we all went to dinner, he got Kit to say that’s how she felt. The whole conversation on that issue was for my benefit. ’Course I didn’t realize the significance at the time. In usin’ a knife on the other victims, he had us all thinkin’ and talkin’ knives, so it was a natural topic to bring up. If the weather’d turned, he’d have still gotten the job done. Not with the same continuity, but with the same results.”

“But if he’d used a gun, there wouldn’t have been any white fibers,” Fleming said. “The fibers are what helped put you on to the fact he was a forensic expert. And he did want you to know that.”

“The fibers were redundant and most likely left by accident,” Broussard said. “The hairs were to be the clue he was in forensics.”

“We didn’t locate any pieces of morgue pad in his room because he got rid of them right after that meeting where we discussed the fibers left on the first victim,” Gatlin said. “He didn’t want you finding any of those fibers on his clothing.”

“Why do you suppose he left the knife on the third victim?” Fleming asked.

“Not planned,” Broussard said. “And also redundant. Just somethin’ he decided to do to thumb his nose at me. Like puttin’ those eyelids in my slide tray.”

“I guess if he’d gone with his backup instead of knives in the briefcase at the Y, we’d have found one of the guns,” Kit said.

“Give one up, keep one,” Gatlin said. “He thought of most everything. We also found a black wig and a phony mustache in his room.”

Kit’s eyebrows lifted. “So that was him the cop at the third murder saw crossing the street.”

“Tryin’ to look like Harvey, I guess,” Fleming said. “Couldn’t have been a very close resemblance, though, seein’ how much taller he is.”

“He didn’t have to look a lot like him,” Gatlin said. “Mostly, he just had not to look like himself; anybody else’d do. But while he was at it, why not take a crack at Harvey? Witnesses never agree on anything—black hair, black mustache. If two people had seen him, one probably would have said he was a dwarf. Found the scalpel he used on the eyelids, too. Had it rigged to a penlight.”

“What was the point in takin’ eyelids?” Fleming asked.

“More subterfuge,” Kit said. “To make it look like something it wasn’t.”

Gatlin turned to Broussard. “Where’d he come by his expertise with a knife?”

“Not sure,” Broussard said. “But he was an officer in the army reserves. Might have picked it up there.”

“The time it must have taken to plan this,” Kit mused.

“Brookie always was a planner,” Broussard said. “Phillip . . . how is he?”

“Quiet . . . cooperative. Speaking of shoelaces, we took his away from him and his belt, too, so he couldn’t harm himself.”

Broussard looked at the sheets and shook his head. Then he turned to Kit. “By the way, sorry about your front door.”

“You break it in anytime you feel it’s necessary. Which reminds me, Lieutenant, how did Brooks get in my house twice?”

“Locks only keep out the casual trespasser. The serious ones just get delayed. He used an electronic pick gun. Probably took him only about ten seconds. Gives you the willies, doesn’t it?”

“He’s a man with a lot of talents,” Kit said.

“Doesn’t take any talent to use a pick gun. He waited until your heat pump came on to mask what little noise it makes. It’s probably in your yard, somewhere near the back door. I been meaning to come by and look for it but haven’t had the chance. Also been meaning to tell you to trim that big holly beside the house. That’s where he went over the fence.”

“Say, I really appreciate you all visitin’ me,” Broussard said, “but I’m feelin’ kind of bushed.”

“We’ll get out, then, and let you rest,” Kit replied.

“Leo, you goin’ back today?” Broussard asked.

“Plane leaves in two hours.”

“Thanks for comin’ by and for your help. Glad you weren’t the killer.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“’Course not,” Broussard said unconvincingly.

“We get anything Charlie can’t handle, I’ll have it wheeled up here so you can have a look,” Gatlin said.

“Soon as you leave, I’m gonna have them hide me.”

“Are you going straight home?” Gatlin asked Kit. “I thought I’d come by and look for that pick gun if it’s okay.”

“Sure. Come on.”

Gatlin looked at Fleming. “You need a ride anywhere?”

“Back to the hotel would be nice.”

“Oh, by the way,” Fleming said to Broussard, “I saw Hugh Greenwood yesterday as he was checkin’ out and he said to tell you to quit screwin’ around and get back to work. I didn’t know you two were so close.”

“Good-bye, Leo.”

When they were gone, Broussard’s shoulders slumped and he let his chin drop to his chest. With all that was on his mind, he’d had to force himself to participate in the conversation.

He had prevailed. He had solved the puzzle and the killer was caught. His wound, though serious, would heal. But this time, there was no satisfaction, no warmth in his belly, only brass and the realization he’d been responsible for the deaths of three people—and in the process had also lost one more friend.

And there was Susan. To know he had been in her mind all those years as she had remained in his produced a yawning hole in his center. And now she was gone . . . and he was adrift with no anchor.

It was not good to get too close to people. In the end, they always leave you. How could he have forgotten the deaths of his parents so quickly and allowed Susan in? Then she had taken herself a thousand miles away, and now . . . truly gone. And the friends . . . gone . . . Brookie, gone. What illumination had been able to penetrate his clouds of despair during the chase had been growing steadily weaker. Now, suffocating night rolled in, blotting out hope.

But in the distance, there was light . . . tiny and as yet unseen. In time, possibly a long time, he would see that light and follow it to a new place. Not exactly like the old, but a place where he could live and work and perhaps even be content. But now, he just needed to be left alone.

Outside the hospital entrance, Gatlin and Fleming went one way and Kit went another. Now that she’d seen how well Broussard was doing, she was eager to get home to Lucky and, of course, Teddy, who had come in as usual early that morning and was now busy repairing the damage Broussard had done to the door and the jamb. There was a lesson for her, she thought, in what had happened to Susan Brooks. Susan had let Broussard go and been sorry the rest of her life. Then there was Phyllis Merryman. In waiting for something better, she had passed on Gene Ochs. And now she, too, was sorry. Kit didn’t know exactly what she and Teddy had together, but whatever it was, it was pretty good, and maybe pretty good is all anybody could expect.

When she reached her car, there was a red two-seater with the top down, blocking it. The driver tilted his sunglasses onto his head at her approach.

“How did you find me?” she said.

“Your office said you’d come over here to see Broussard,” Nick Lawson said. “How is he?”

“He’ll be fine in a few days.”

“You know how long I waited near the Praline Connection Thursday night?”

“You weren’t supposed to go over there.”

“Well, I did, and I sat there all night. You lied to me.”

“And you lied to me.”

He smiled and lowered his sunglasses onto his nose. “I guess we were made for each other. When do you think you’ll see that?”

“Does a snowstorm and a pitchfork say anything to you?”

He laughed and started the car. “Kit, my girl, I’m a patient man. And tomorrow is another day.” Then he pulled away, going entirely too fast to make the turn at the end of the lot.