At the Stroke of Madness Page 3

  “What are you saying, Gwen? That you think this man may have done something to her?”

  Silence again. Maggie waited. Was Gwen finally realizing that perhaps she was overreacting? And why was she being so overprotective with this particular woman? Maggie had never known Gwen to baby-sit her patients. Her friends, yes, but not her patients.

  “Maggie, is there some way you could check on her? Someone you might be able to call?”

  Maggie looked at Tully again. He had finished his lunch and now pretended to be watching out the window, another group of recruits down below in sweaty T-shirts and jogging shorts snaking through the woods.

  Maggie picked at her own lunch. Why had Gwen suddenly decided to become this patient’s caretaker? It seemed like a simple case of a grieving woman shutting herself away from her world for a while, perhaps even finding solace in a friendly stranger. Why didn’t Gwen see that?

  “Maggie?”

  “I’ll do what I can. Where was she staying?”

  “The funeral was in Wallingford, Connecticut, but she was staying at the Ramada Plaza Hotel next door in Meriden. I have the phone numbers and addresses right here. I can fax over some other information later. All I know about the man she was meeting was that she called him Sonny.”

  Maggie’s stomach gave a sudden flip while she took down the information. All the while she kept thinking, “Not Connecticut.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Sheriff Henry Watermeier shoved his hat back and swiped at the sweat on his forehead.

  “Fuck!” he muttered, wanting to walk, to pace off his frustration, but reminding himself to stand in one place. And so he did, hands on his belt buckle, waiting and watching and trying to think, trying to ignore the stench of death and the buzzing of flies. Jesus! The flies were a pain in the ass, miniature vultures, impatient and persistent despite the plastic tarp.

  It wasn’t the first body Henry had seen stuffed into a strange and unusual place. He had seen more than his share during his thirty years with the NYPD. But not here. Crimes like this weren’t supposed to happen in Connecticut. This was exactly the kind of stuff he had hoped to escape when his wife talked him into moving to the middle of nowhere. Yeah, sure, Fairfield County and the shore got its share of this kind of thing all the time. There were always plenty of high-profile cases—big fucking cases—like that stupid publicist driving her SUV over sixteen people, or even the Martha Moxley murder that took decades to solve, or Alex Cross, Connecticut’s very own preppy rapist. Yeah, there were plenty of crimes on the shore and closer to New York, but in the middle of Connecticut things were quieter. Crap like this wasn’t supposed to happen here.

  He had instructed his deputies to set up a wide perimeter, having them string up yellow crime-scene tape. It was going to take a hell of a lot of tape. He watched two of his men stretching it from tree to tree, Arliss with a fucking Marlboro hanging from his lips and that kid, Truman, screeching like a banshee at any of the outsiders who dared come within ten feet.

  “Arliss, make sure your butts don’t end up on the ground.” The deputy looked up, startled, as if he had no idea what his boss was talking about. “I mean the damned cigarette. Get it out of your mouth. Now.”

  Finally, a look of recognition crossed Arliss’s face as he grabbed at the cigarette, stubbed it out on a tree, started to fling it but stopped with his hand in midair. Henry could see the red start at his deputy’s neck as he tucked the rest of the cigarette under his hat and over his ear. It almost made Henry as mad as if Arliss had flung it. First major crime scene as New Haven County sheriff, maybe his last major crime scene of his career, and these goddamn screwups were going to make him look like a fucking idiot.

  Henry glanced over his shoulder, pretending to assess the scene when all he really wanted to know was if Channel 8 still had their camera on him. Should have known, the fucking lens was still pointed at his back. He could feel it like a laser beam slicing him in two. And that’s exactly what it could do if he wasn’t careful.

  Why the hell had Calvin Vargus called the goddamn media? Of course, he knew why, and he didn’t know Vargus except by reputation. The son of a bitch was living up to that reputation in spades, flapping his yap to that pretty little reporter from Hartford even after Henry told him to shut the fuck up. But he couldn’t make Vargus shut up. Not without locking him up. Although that wasn’t entirely out of the question.

  He needed to concentrate. Vargus was the least of his worries. He lifted the tarp and forced himself to look at the body again, or at least at the part sticking out of the barrel. From what he could see the blouse looked like silk with French cuffs. The fingernails were once professionally manicured. The hair may have been dyed—the roots were a bit darker. It was hard to tell since it was now matted and caked with blood. A shitload of blood. Definite death blow. Didn’t have to be a forensic scientist to know that.

  He dropped the tarp and wondered again if this poor woman was a local. Was she some bastard’s mistress? Before he left the station he had run the list of missing persons, highlighting those in New Haven County, but none of them fit the preliminary description. The list included a male college student who had skipped out on classes last spring, a teenage drug addict who had probably run away from home, and an elderly woman who supposedly went out for milk one morning and hadn’t been seen since. Nowhere on the list had Henry found a fortysomething-year-old female with long hair, an expensive silk blouse and manicured fingernails.

  Henry took a deep breath to clear his mind, to help him think. He looked up into the cloudless blue and watched another flock of geese. Lucky bastards. Maybe he was getting old and tired. Maybe he was simply ready for that fantasy retirement of endless days fishing off the banks of the Connecticut River with a cooler full of Budweiser and a couple of smoked turkey sandwiches with salami and provolone. Yeah, a sandwich, but not just any sandwich. One with the works from Vinny’s Deli, wrapped all neat and tight in that white paper that Vinny used. He could go for one now.

  He glanced at the barrel again. The flies were sneaking under the tarp, their buzzing amplified instead of muffled. Goddamn vultures. They’d be swarming the moist areas and taking up residence before the M.E. arrived. Nothing worse than flies and their fucking offspring maggots. He’d seen the damage they could do in a matter of hours. Disgusting. And here he was thinking about Vinny’s sandwiches. Well, hell, it took a lot for him to lose his appetite.

  His wife, Rosie, would say it was because he had become “jaded.” Jesus! She actually talked like that, using words like jaded. Henry claimed instead that he was simply pissed dry, burned out. This short stint as New Haven County’s sheriff was supposed to help him make some sort of transition. It was supposed to help him ease his way from the head-banging stress of New York to the laid-back routine of Connecticut to finally the peace and quiet of retirement.

  But this…No, he hadn’t signed up for this. He didn’t want or need a messy unsolved murder to screw up his reputation. How the hell were he and Rosie going to retire here if he had to listen to the stories, the second-guessing, the snickers behind his back?

  He glanced at Arliss again. The goddamn idiot had some crime-scene tape stuck to the bottom of his shoe, a stream of it following him like toilet paper and fucking Arliss completely unaware.

  No, this was definitely not the way he wanted to end his career.

  CHAPTER 5

  R. J. Tully watched O’Dell sort through some file folders stacked on her desk.

  “So much for vacation,” she said, her good mood put on hold.

  He thought her mood had changed because of the phone call from Dr. Patterson, but O’Dell seemed to be ignoring the fax machine behind her as it spit out page after page of details about Patterson’s missing patient. Instead of retrieving and examining those pages, O’Dell was searching for something already lost in her stacks. Perhaps a case she had planned on taking home with her to peruse during those backyard digging breaks. What was one more if she added Dr. Patt
erson’s?

  Tully sank into the overstuffed chair O’Dell had managed to cram into her small but orderly office. It always amazed him. Their offices down in BSU—Behavorial Science Unit—were Cracker Jack boxes, yet hers included neatly stacked bookcases—not one errant hardcover squashed on top. Now that he had a closer look, he could see they were categorized. And alphabetized.

  His office, on the other hand, looked like a storage closet with stacks of files and books and magazines—not necessarily each in separate piles—on his shelves, on his desk and guest chair and even on the floor. Some days he was lucky to find a path to his desk. And underneath his desk was a whole other matter. That’s where he kept a duffel bag of running shoes, shorts and socks, some of which—especially the dirty ones—never managed to stay put in the bag. Now that he thought about it, maybe that was the mysterious smell that had recently begun to take over the room. He missed having a window in his office. In Cleveland he had left behind a corner office on the third floor in exchange for a Cracker Jack box three floors underground. He missed the fresh air, especially this time of year. Fall used to be his favorite season. Used to be. Back before the divorce.

  Funny, but that was how he kept track of time these days—before the divorce and after the divorce. Before the divorce he had been much more organized. Or at least he hadn’t been such a mess. Since his transfer to Quantico he hadn’t been able to get back on track. No, that wasn’t true. It had little to do with the move. Ever since his divorce from Caroline his life had been a mess. Yes, it was the divorce that had caused this nosedive, this spiral into disorganization. Maybe that’s what bothered him right now about O’Dell’s attitude. She really seemed to be taking this finalization of her divorce as a form of liberation. Maybe he envied her just a little.

  He waited while O’Dell continued her search, still ignoring the wheeze of the fax machine. He wanted to say something to retrieve her good mood, something like, “What? No color-coded filing system?” But before he could say it he noticed the files she had pulled out of the stack all had red tabs. He rubbed at the beginning of a smile. For as predictable as his partner was, why couldn’t he figure out what the hell she was up to most of the time? Like, for instance, how long did she intend to taunt him with that last doughnut? She had brought it down from the cafeteria with her, still wrapped in cellophane, untouched and now sitting on the corner of her desk—yes, sitting on the edge of her desk, tempting him.

  Finally she slipped the file folders into her briefcase and turned to collect the faxed pages. “Her name is Joan Begley,” O’Dell said, looking over the information as she put the pages in order. “She’s been a patient of Gwen’s for more than ten years.”

  Gwen. Tully still hadn’t allowed himself to call her by her first name. To him she was Dr. Gwen Patterson, D.C. psychologist, best friend to his partner and sometimes consultant to the FBI and their boss, Assistant Director Cunningham. Usually the woman drove Tully a little nuts with her arrogant, know-it-all psychobabble. It didn’t help matters that she had strawberry-blond hair and nice legs.

  He and Dr. Patterson had gotten carried away on a case last November. Exchanged a kiss. No, it was more than that. It was…it didn’t matter. They had decided it was a mistake. They had agreed to forget about it. O’Dell was looking at him as if expecting an answer, and only then did Tully realize he must have missed a question. Patterson’s fault.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “She was up in Connecticut for her grandmother’s funeral and no one’s seen or heard from her since late Saturday.”

  “Seems odd that Dr. Patterson would be so concerned about a patient. Is there a personal connection?”

  “Now, Agent Tully, it would be highly unprofessional of me to ask Dr. Patterson that question.” She looked up at him and smiled, which didn’t prevent him from rolling his eyes at her. O’Dell might be organized, but when it came to protocol and procedure or sometimes even common courtesy, she conveniently forgot to look at whose toes she might be stepping on. “Actually, just between the two of us, I think it’s a bit odd, too.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I told her I’d check it out, so I guess I’ll check it out.” But O’Dell sounded nonchalant about it. “Do you know any law enforcement officers in Connecticut I could call?” she asked him, her attention already on another red-tabbed file folder she had missed on her desk. She picked it up, opened it for a quick glance, then added it to her briefcase.

  “Where in Connecticut?”

  “Let’s see. I know she told me.” O’Dell had to flip through the faxed pages, and Tully wondered why she didn’t remember the basic details from the phone call. Or was her mind simply already focused on her backyard retreat? Somehow he doubted that. His bet was that she was focused on the contents of those red-tabbed file folders, stuffed safely in her briefcase. “Here it is,” she finally said. “She was staying in Meriden, but the funeral was in Wallingford.”

  “Wallingford?”

  O’Dell double-checked. “Yes. Do you know anyone?”

  “No, but I’ve been through that area. It’s beautiful. You know who might be able to tell you who to call? Our buddy Detective Racine is from there.”

  “Our buddy? I think if you know where she’s from, she’s your buddy.”

  “Come on, O’Dell, I thought you two made nice…or at least called a truce.” The D.C. detective and O’Dell clashed like night and day, but on a case almost a year ago, Julia Racine ended up saving O’Dell’s mother. Whatever their differences, the two women now seemed to have what he’d call a healthy tolerance of each other.

  “You know my mother has lunch with Racine once a month?”

  “Really? That’s nice.”

  “I don’t even have lunch with my mother once a month.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  O’Dell frowned at him and went back to the faxed pages. “I suppose I could just call the field office.”

  Tully shook his head. For a smart woman his partner could be annoyingly stubborn.

  “So what was this Begley woman seeing Dr. Patterson for?”

  O’Dell looked at him over the faxed pages. “You know Gwen can’t tell me that. Patient confidentiality.”

  “It might help to know how kooky she is.”

  “Kooky?” Another frown. He hated when she did that, especially when it made him feel like he was being unprofessional, even when she was right.

  “You know what I mean. It could help to know what she’s capable of doing. Like, for instance, is she suicidal?”

  “Gwen seemed concerned that she may have gotten involved with a man. Someone she met up there. And that she might actually be in some danger.”

  “She was there for how long?”

  O’Dell shuffled through the pages. “She left the District last Monday, so it’s been a week.”

  “How did she get involved with a man in less than a week? And you said she was there for a funeral? Who meets someone at a funeral? I can’t even pick up a woman at the Laundromat.”

  She smiled at him, quite an accomplishment. O’Dell hardly ever smiled at his attempts at humor. Which meant the good mood lurked close to the surface.

  “Let me know if you need any help, okay?” he offered, and now she looked at him with suspicion and he wondered, not for the first time, if Dr. Patterson had confided in O’Dell about their Boston tryst. Geez, tryst wasn’t right. That made it sound…tawdry. Tawdry wasn’t right, either. That made it sound…O’Dell was smiling at him again. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He got up to leave. Wanting her to believe his offer had been genuine, he added, “I’m serious, O’Dell. Let me know if you need any help. I mean with any of your cases, not with the backyard digging. Bad knee, remember?”

  “Thanks,” she said, but there was still a bit of a smile.

  Oh, yeah, she knew. She knew something.

  CHAPTER 6

  Wallingford, Connecticut
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  Lillian Hobbs loved her Mondays. It was the one time she left Rosie alone during the busy rush hours, steaming milk for lattes, collecting sticky quarters for cheese Danishes and the New York Times. Not a problem. According to Rosie, the busier, the better. After all, it had been Rosie’s idea to add a coffee bar to their little bookstore.

  “It’ll bring in business,” Rosie had promised. “Foot traffic we might not get otherwise.”

  Foot traffic was just the thing Lillian had dreaded. And so at first she had revolted. Well, maybe revolted was too strong a word. Lillian Hobbs had never really revolted against anything in her forty-six years of life. She simply hadn’t seen the wisdom in Rosie’s side enterprise. In fact, she worried that the coffee bar would be a distraction. That it would bring in the gossipmongers who would rather make up their own stories than purchase one off their shelves.

  But Rosie had been right. Again. The coffee crowd had been good for business. It wasn’t just that they cleaned them out of the daily New York Times and USA TODAY. There were the magazine sales, and the occasional paperbacks that got picked up on impulse. Soon the regular coffee drinkers—even the mocha lattes with extra whipped cream and the espresso addicts—were browsing the shelves and wandering back into the store after work and on the weekends. Sometimes bringing their families or their friends. Okay, so foot traffic hadn’t been such a bad thing, after all.

  Yes, Rosie had been right.

  Actually, Lillian didn’t mind admitting that. She knew Rosie was the one with a head for business. Business was Rosie’s forte and books were Lillian’s. That’s why they made such excellent partners. She didn’t even mind Rosie rubbing her nose in it every once in a while. How could she mind when she was allowed to revel in her own passion every single day of the week? But Mondays were the best, like having Christmas once a week. Christmas sitting in a crammed, dark storage room, soothed by her cup of hazelnut coffee and armed with a box cutter.