But she didn’t stop him when he left a few minutes later. Even though she wanted to.
twenty-seven
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?”
twenty-eight
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.