“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 w
T
as 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 w
r
ho 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.
twenty-five
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.