“Oh, hi ⦔ Girl's voice. Breathy. Sweet. “Paddy? Is that you? It's Tracy. I've missed you.”
Molly's eyes widened. Really.
She got through three more demands for interviews, two having to do with Patrick's contretemps with the cops, before she got her second surprise.
“Hey, man, this is Scott. You comin' over or what? Amber's here and we're headin' for some action. Ya know?”
There were three others, people Molly didn't even realize Patrick knew. She was going to have to ask. Pry in Patrick's affairs even more and see if these were people she should worry about. She was pulling out a mug when the last message beeped.
“Uh ⦠hello ⦠are you ⦠are you there ⦠?” Molly spun around, the mug shattering on the floor. “Just checking in, Pat. I haven't talked to you in a while.”
Molly froze. She'd just said she couldn't take any more. Stupid, stupid her.
Suddenly, she remembered what she should have seen. What she'd put down to wishful thinking.
It hadn't been. My God, oh God, it hadn't been.
He's real handsome now, isn't he? Real smart.
She'd thought Kenny had just made his assumptions about Patrick after seeing him on the news. Maybe in the distance as he'd waited to plant his bones. But he hadn't. He'd known because he'd talked to Patrick. The hang-ups on her answering machine hadn't all been the press. They'd been Kenny looking for somebody to talk to.
Evidently he'd found somebody.
Molly stumbled over the broken crockery to get to her phone.
“Homicide,” Rhett answered on the second ring. “Detectiveâ”
“Rhett?” Molly interrupted frantically. “He's been calling here. He's been fucking
calling
here!”
“What?”
“Kenny. He's been talking to Patrick. I've got to get over to Sam's and find out about it, but I'm telling you I've got Kenny on my goddamn answering machine!”
“I'll be right there.”
“Don't be stupid. I have the Super Bowl of videocams out here. I'll call you from Sam's.”
Molly barely got the phone hung up before spinning for the door, her heart hammering, her palms sweaty. She realized she was running when she got a look at the reporters doing recon at her fence edge. Deliberately, slowly, she opened the gate and yelled to them that she was going to visit her friend and leave the old guy alone, please. Then, as if that was really what she was doing, she knocked on Sam's back door.
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“I didn't know!” Patrick cried, standing in Sam's bazaar-decorated living room like an innocent at a witch hunt. “My God, Aunt Molly,
he's
the guy who's been ⦠he's been leaving those
eyeballs
?
That's
who John is?”
Molly stood nose to nose with him, shaking as hard as he. As frightened, more outraged. Even more unsure. “How long has he been calling you?”
Patrick threw off a shrug like a wrestling move. “I don't know! I've only talked to him a few times. He seemed ⦠I don't know ⦔
If he said harmless, Molly was going to have to kill him.
“What did he talk about? What did you say?”
Sam took her by the arm. “
Taibeleh
, hush. You're both screeching like owls. That won't settle anything.”
“Settle?” Molly screeched at him. “This isn't about settling, Sam! That bastard's been calling my nephew. My God!” She actually had tears in her eyes, she was that furious. “He's been insinuating himself into my house like one of the family!”
“Shush, shush,” he soothed, guiding her to a couch, settling Patrick a safe distance away. “Calm down and maybe Patrick can offer you something you need. He didn't know who the man was.”
“I'll tell you anything, Aunt Molly,” Patrick offered, his posture as rigid as an embassy guard's. “But he didn't ⦠you know, say anything. Certainly nothing that made me think he was a serial killer, for God sakes. Don't you think I would have told you?”
Molly struggled for sanity. She just didn't know what she thought anymore. Except that she just wanted to stay in Sam's house, with its comfortable furniture and capricious, gypsy-caravan decor. Forget serial killers and marginal teens. She just wanted to curl up amid those ugly tchotchkes and bright silk pillows like Alice at the end of a long day in the rabbit hole and sleep.
“Has he been here?” she asked. “Have you met him?”
“No. Only over the phone. I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“I mean it,” Patrick said, leaning closer. “I'll tell you every word I remember. I know I've disappointed you, Aunt Molly. I know I've hurt Sam, but I swear I never meant to!”
He was the picture of anguish, self-condemnation. A week ago, Molly would have hurt for him. Now, she was afraid.
“Then tell me,” she demanded.
He couldn't seem to meet her eyes. “John never said who he was or I would have told you. I'm sorry. I really am sorry. I'll do anything to make it up to you.”
Molly looked at his impatient hands and fought the urge to hold them. She was so damn tired. So pulled and frightened and outraged. And she was most afraid that she just couldn't trust Patrick's promises anymore.
“I have to call Officer Butler,” she said, winding her fingers together to keep them still. “I want you to tell him everything you know. And I want the truth.”
Patrick looked up, his mouth open for rebuttal. Molly didn't say a word. She saw the flush that shot up his neck and wondered what he really wanted to say.
“Okay,” was what he did say. “Whatever you want.”
They talked for at least a couple of hours, and in the end, Molly knew nothing more than she had before. KennyâJohnâPeter had simply told Patrick about work, about knowing Molly. He'd asked Patrick about himself. They'd never met. They'd never planned to meet. It had begun as a call about a patient Molly had seen and continued in complacent friendship.
“What patient?” Molly asked her suddenly tongue-tied nephew. “You didn't tell me.”
Another shrug, Patrick's only currency tonight. “I ⦠he said not to worry about it. That he'd catch you at work. I thought ⦠I thought he did.”
Molly called Rhett with the information and made Patrick sit down and write out every word he could remember. And while he was writing it out, Molly fell asleep on the big red sofa under an afghan of orange and green squares as if nothing else mattered.
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“We've got him!” Rhett crowed the next afternoon when he slammed into the Grace medical records room where Molly was scanning charts.
She shoved the hair out of her eyes and blinked up at him, dazed and confused even before the morning she'd spent culling information about the women who'd had the misfortune to step straight from Grace Hospital to the missing person's file.
Nine matches so far. Five who had notations in John's hand. Other cases would have to be compared to his schedule and workload to see if he had proximity.
“You have him how?” she asked. “I'm not finished here yet.”
Rhett beamed like the only kid in class to get the answer right. “Peter Kenneth Wilson, aka John Martin. Shows up on the rolls of the justice hit list first time at the tender age of seventeen, when he still appeared as Peter K. Wilson. In Akron, Ohio. Assault, weenie wagging, possible arson. Most of them settled, pled out, or arranged for psych counseling and probation. Worked his way up to a sexual assault and battery by twenty-two. Did eighteen months of a three-to-five. Model prisoner.”
Molly rubbed at her eyes and wished Rhett were as sensible as Frank and had brought her food. Maybe she'd go out for it while Rhett continued reciting the life and times of Peter K. Wilson like epic poetry. Hamburgers. Cheeseburgers. Bacon cheeseburgers with fries and onion rings.
For the second time in her life, the thought of food didn't soothe her. That unnerved her almost as much as the brand-new wiretap on her phone to catch Kenny. Kenny who hadn't called again since.
“Oh, yeah, and I forgot,” Rhett said. “Before the felony count, what do you think shows up?” Rhett asked, grinning.
Molly rubbed her eyes. “An attempt at the Army.”
Rhett whistled. “You
are
good. Did a year, less than honorable discharge, alcohol, drugs, and psych problems noted. Did his felony stint at the Ohio farm system and then disappeared off the face of the earth as if he'd never been born.”
“And then popped back up as John Martin?”
Suddenly Rhett looked unhappy. “In Cincinnati. Unfortunately, he didn't do that for five more years. I have a bad feeling we have another alias somewhere with a body count attached. We've already apprised both Akron and Cincinnati that they'd better start rechecking all their missing girls. You can imagine how popular we are with them.”
“What about his parents?”
“Divorced, father dead, mother relocated. We're still trying to track her down. No living sibs.”
“And Kenny has a record as John?”
“Of course. Theft, assault, possible sexual assault, the last at the hospital where he worked in Cincy. Nice, huh?”
Molly just shrugged. “Just the history
I'd
want in a guy I let loose around patients. It's enough to bring him in for questioning. Is it enough for a search warrant?”
“It is if you have some hits for us.”
Molly looked down at the charts she'd set aside. Records of dead women who'd put their trust in her hospital and lost. “Five definites. I'll have to dig for the other four. That good enough?”
Rhett gave her a smacking kiss on the top of the head. “That is so good enough you're my hero. Wanna go watch?”
Molly squinted up at him. “The search warrant?”
Rhett nodded like a puppy. “After this it should take about an hour to put it together. The plan is to pick him up, turn that house over like a scene from
Twister
, and hold a news conference right in front as haz mat hauls the blue barrels with the Soilex and hydrochloric acid out the back door.”
“Can I sit back in one of the cars?” she asked. “I don't want him to know I'm involved yet.”
Since she already knew how he would feel about it. Since she'd spent the night before dreaming of Nam and Johnny and Lilly Trang.
Rhett looked a little bemused, but he dropped her another kiss. “You're the monster killer, you know, Molly.”
Molly sighed and got to her feet. “Remind me of that when I'm spending my hard-earned money getting my nephew counseling because he was chatted up by a serial killer.”
Rhett helped Molly store the hospital records back in the box, collected the ones they would use, and helped her sign them out as they left. “Patrick's that upset, huh?”
Molly shook her head. “The minute he finished talking to you, he clammed up like a Mafia witness and hasn't said a word since. Not even to Sam. I'm really worried.”
Rhett chuckled. “Aw, heck, Molly. He's a teenager. Give him one interview on Larry King and he'll be right back in form.”
He might have been if his father hadn't finally called back. If it had been Molly listening to the frosty disapproval that man had dumped on his son's head, she would have hung up a lot faster than Patrick had.
Molly and Rhett were heading out the emergency door when Sasha intercepted them. “Well,” she said drily. “There are my two favorite people. I hear you've been having assignations down in medical records.”
Molly damn near fell down when Rhett gave Sasha a kiss, too. Only it wasn't the same kind of kiss he'd given Molly. Not the same at all. “You're just jealous,” he assured the blonde, his hand still on her ass.
Sasha scowled. “I'm frustrated,” she said. “All that leather and whipped cream, and nobody to use it on.”
Molly simply shut her eyes and walked past. A serial killer who dismembered his victims was one thing. This was way too weird for words.
“Molly,” Sasha said. “Before you blush yourself into unconsciousness. Did Nancy find you? She heard you were here and went off like a crusader in search of Moors.”
“It's been me and the records kids all day,” Molly said. “Do you know what she wanted?”
“Yeah. Something about a kid both of you saw? Little âlife basketball' by the name of David?”
“Life basketball” being Sasha's quaint term for the kids who got slamdunked on a regular basis. It took Molly a minute to make the connection. When she did, it wasn't pleasant. A small, thin, pale specter of a child with
the eyes of inevitability. A soccer player. The latest contestant to sign in for The Game.