Nat nodded. Everything Oates was saying made sense. All the pieces of the puzzle fit, and yet the picture as a whole somehow didn’t look quite right.
“Nat, you sure you want to go through with this? We can put an undercover cop—”
“You can’t use one of your people. This isn’t even sanctioned, Mitch.”
“So, we lay the plan out to my chief and have him—”
“And if your chief says no? If he vetoes the plan altogether?” Oates sighed. He knew she was right, even if he was still very uneasy.
He eyeballed her. “You scared?”
“No.”
“Liar. I’ll be ten feet away, girl. Right behind that bathroom door. You’re gonna do fine.”
“You too, Mitch.”
thirty
There is nowhere to turn, no one to turn to. My ability to trust, never my strongest suit, has now deserted me completely. In an odd way, this is a relief.
L. I.
NAT HAD ALMOST forgotten about her cell phone until its jarring ring reminded her it was still on in her tote bag, which she’d stashed in the drawer of the bedside table. She quickly jerked open the drawer and nervously retrieved the phone. Oates had the bathroom door open, anxiously watching to see who it was. Nat was hoping it wasn’t Leo. She wasn’t the world’s best liar.
“Nat. It’s Hutch. Where are you?”
“I’m . . . having dinner. With a friend. Is something wrong? Something happen at the center?”
“No. Listen, I need to get hold of Coscarelli. I keep calling his precinct and they keep telling me he’s unavailable.”
“Why do you need to reach him?”
“I just got back from seeing Melissa Raymond, Father Joe’s housekeeper.”
“If it’s about someone being with Father Joe the day of Lynn’s—”
“It’s not.”
“What, then?”
“It’s Melissa’s daughter. Emily.”
“What about her?”
“Melissa says Emily saw someone leaving the rectory in the middle of the night a few hours before Father Joe was found . . . dead.”
“What? Who? In the middle of the night? A five-year-old?”
“Look, I don’t know all the details, Nat. That’s why I wanted to get ahold of Coscarelli. I have a feeling you’ll have an easier time than me getting through to him. Maybe it’s nothing, a kid’s bad dream, the shadow of a tree mistaken for a person, I don’t know what, but maybe Coscarelli can get somebody, a shrink or something, to talk to the kid, get to the bottom of it.”
It didn’t sink in at first, the implication of Hutch’s words. Maybe because Nat was still grappling with her sense of guilt about having helped drive a man—a priest—to suicide. She’d tried to rationalize her guilt by reminding herself that Father Joe was a rapist if nothing else. But she’d never fully been able to accept this as absolute fact, despite Suzanne’s confession. Nat couldn’t let go of the possibility that Suzanne had been mistaken. And now a new, more distressing possibility intruded. What if Suzanne had lied? What if she’d intentionally misled them?
But why would she lie? And if it had been a lie, why would Father Joe commit suicide?
And that was when Hutch’s words sank in. What if Father
Joe hadn’t killed himself? What if someone had set it up to make it look like a suicide? What if the housekeeper’s little girl had seen the killer?
Nat gave Hutch Leo’s cell-phone number. “Call him right away. ”
It was nearly midnight, and a distressing feeling of claustrophobia was settling in. The bandages were only part of it. The narrow hospital bed, the dark room, the silence marred only by the occasional footfalls in the hall. Doctors walking past, Nat imagined, since the nurses and orderlies all wore rubber-soled shoes that made no sound as they scurried about, taking care of their patients. Well, not so much scurrying now. Most of the patients were asleep.
Nat wondered if Lynn Ingram was asleep. She actually had been moved out of the ICU. She was now in a private room on the sixth floor. Listed under the name Maureen Riley. Lynn didn’t know this. There was no reason for her to know.
Nat wanted to believe that once the perpetrators were caught, their capture would help Lynn regain her memory of the assault. She knew from articles she’d read on PTSD and memory loss, that remembering was a vital part of healing the trauma. It would be a long time before Lynn was physically healed. Maybe her emotional healing could proceed at a faster pace.
Nat closed her eyes. No fear that she might fall asleep. Far too much adrenaline raced through her veins, not to mention a serious overdose of caffeine. No, she closed her eyes in hopes of seeing things more clearly. Because, try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her vision had been hazy up to now. She pictured all the disparate pieces of all the events that had taken place, starting with the violent attack of Lynn Ingram in the alleyway. She thought about Father Joe, Suzanne, Claire Fisher. She thought about Carol and Harrison Bell, Rodney Bartlett and Jennifer Slater, Beth and Daniel Milburne. She cast one pair, then the next, then the next in each of the scenes.
But mostly she thought about Jakey. She loved Leo’s little boy. She desperately wanted him to be unharmed.
Oh, Jakey, where are you?
Suddenly, her breath caught in her throat. Jakey. Oh, God, the missing piece of the puzzle. The key to the solution. How could she have been so blind? Now that she saw the whole picture, it all made absolute sense. Every piece fit. Every piece could be explained. Well. . . almost everything.
Nat shot up in the hospital bed. She had to tell Oates—
It was at that precise moment that the hospital room door opened. Nat dropped back down on the bed, her breath held, as a figure in a white lab coat slipped in. Nat lay there, silently berating herself for not having figured it all out sooner. She might have prevented so much of it. The attack on Suzanne, Claire Fisher’s murder, and what she now felt certain was the faked suicide of Father Joe Parker. So now, instead of feeling guilty for driving him to kill himself, Nat would have to live with the knowledge that she might have prevented his murder.
She closed her eyes, her pulse pounding in her ears. Footsteps approached, audible enough to know they were not rubber-soled.
She moaned softly to let her intruder know she wasn’t fully asleep.
“Lynn?”
“Mmmm.”
“Are you in a great deal of pain?”
She emitted a weak groan.
“It didn’t have to be this way, you know.”
She tensed as she picked up the scent of stale breath. The intruder was looking down on her.
“I still love you. I’ve only loved two women in my entire life, Lynn. And do you know what hurts the most? No one else, no one, sees you wholly as a woman. No one else but me. That alone should have made you realize I was the right one, the only one. ”
She moaned again. .
“It’s all right, my love. I’ve come to put you out of your pain. It’s my final act of love. You’ll just feel a little prick and then peace. Eternal peace.”
“And what about you, Ross? Will you ever feel peace after all you’ve done?”
Ross Varda’s shock was so complete, the hypodermic needle dropped from his hand. As the glaring light from the opening bathroom door fell on the psychiatrist, he thrust his white-sleeved arm across his eyes.
“It’s over, Varda,” Oates said harshly, the barrel of his gun lined up with the psychiatrist’s head. At this range, there was no question Oates could easily blow Varda’s head off. But Oates wouldn’t do that. They needed Varda alive. Badly. Because they needed him to tell them where he had put Jakey.
“You were the one who asked Lynn to marry you,” Nat said quietly. “When she told me about a proposal, I assumed she was talking about Harrison Bell. But it was you. And she turned you down. She didn’t love you. She was in love with Bell. You couldn’t bear it. You wanted to make her ugly, so he wouldn’t want her. I don’t think you intended to kill her at first. It’s only that she saw you. You must have come up behind her and she had the terrible misfortune to hear you approach and turn around to face you.”
“That beautiful face.” Varda’s anguished voice was muffled by his sleeve, his arm still across his eyes. Then he slowly dropped his arm to his side, meeting Nat’s gaze. “You weren’t surprised.” “It was Jakey,” Nat said. “You were the only one who knew that Jakey was Suzanne’s child. The only one who knew that if her child was taken, she’d keep quiet about the truth. And once I realized it wasn’t the Bells, I remembered that you were in the office with me when Claire Fisher called about the journal. I stupidly told you—” Nat’s voice caught. She fought for control. “And you were the one who forced Suzanne to lie about the priest. We have an eyewitness, Ross, who saw you in the rectory the night Father Joe supposedly hanged himself.”
There was absolutely no sign of remorse or shame on the psychiatrist’s face. If anything, he seemed mildly impressed by Nat’s analysis.
“Where’s the boy, Varda? Where’s Jacob Coscarelli?” Oates barked impatiently.
Varda’s gaze remained fixed on Nat. “I love her. You have to understand, I love her. Even now. No matter how she looks. That’s the difference. I love her inner beauty.”
Nat shivered. He was mad—Dr. Ross Varda was truly mad.
Physician, heal thyself.
But, of course, he was long past that option.
Oates glared at the psychiatrist in utter disgust. “You’re going down, man. At least do one decent thing: Tell us where the boy is.”
Varda looked uncomprehending. His unfocused eyes gazed past Nat an instant before he whirled away from her. But in that instant Nat read something in his look. And she knew. Too late.
Too late even to form the cry of
No, don’t!
into audible words.
When the warning cry did let loose from her lips, it was accompanied by the hideous sound of splintering glass. The psychiatrist had crashed through the window, and before Nat managed to scramble out of bed, before Oates was able to race to the shattered window, Dr. Ross Varda’s body was careening down eleven stories—
No question Malcolm Davis, chief of Boston Homicide, was in a quandary. He was mad as hell at Oates for, as he put it on the phone, pulling this “crazy, not to mention illegal, not to mention dangerous” sting. On the other hand, if they hadn’t staged the sting, the man who’d maimed Lynn, who’d very likely administered a near-fatal dose of heroin to Suzanne, not to mention murdered Claire Fisher and kidnapped Jakey Coscarelli, might well never have been discovered.
Then again, maybe Nat would have sorted it all out in time, realized that if she eliminated all of their possible suspects, there was really only one other person who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit each heinous act. And that one person was Ross Varda. He had constant access to Lynn and Suzanne. He’d been with Nat when she got that call from Claire Fisher. Nat had told him herself that Claire had found the journal. As for getting into her apartment, he’d had any number of opportunities to swipe her house key, make a clay imprint, and have a key made for himself.
Varda had obviously pressured Suzanne into lying to give the police a perfect suspect—Father Joe. Which was another element Nat had frustratingly overlooked. Who knew that Jakey Coscarelli was Suzanne’s child? It wasn’t likely either of the Bells knew;
wholly unlikely when it came to the Milburnes, or Bartlett and his sister.
So now what? It was two o’clock in the morning. Varda’s smashed body had been removed to the morgue. Oates and Nat were sitting in her car out front, feeling infuriatingly impotent. And what did they tell Leo?
We’ve found your son’s kidnapper. The good news: The kidnapper’s dead. The bad news: We still don’t have a goddamn clue as to where he’s hidden Jakey. ”
“Wait.” Nat sprang forward in her seat. “Suzanne kept saying ‘they.’ She couldn’t talk because ‘they’d’ harm Jakey. ‘They.’ More than one. We had all these couples as suspects—the Bells, Jennifer Slater and her brother, the Milburnes—”
“Yeah, but Varda didn’t have a wife. Or a brother.”
Nat’s heart had started racing. “But he does have a sister. He mentioned her to me several times.”
The extent to which Varda ransacked his own apartment was nothing compared to the job Oates, Nat, and four uniforms performed. They were all looking for a clue, something, anything, that would point them to where Varda’s sister lived. But they found absolutely nothing with any information on her whereabouts. Not on scraps of paper, letters, envelopes, address book. . . . Oates had already checked the Boston area phone book. No Vardas. Ross Varda’s home number must have been unlisted, and so, apparently, must his sister’s. Oates had called into the precinct and put a man on the task of checking for any unlisted numbers under the name Varda.
After pitching in for a while, Nat got another idea of how they might track down Varda’s sister, and quickly left the apartment. A short time after Nat made her exit, Oates and his men ran out of places to look. It was nearly four in the morning. Oates, exhausted and despairing, dismissed the uniforms, then leaned against the living room wall, surveying the chaos.
He hoped Natalie Price was having better luck.
“Wait here,” Nat ordered the two uniforms posted outside Suzanne’s door. It was four in the morning. She’d be frightened enough, having Nat come into her room alone and wake her. She’d really freak if she opened her eyes to a sea of cops as well.
Suzanne was in her own bed, the covers pulled up to her neck. Nat left the door cracked open, allowing a thin ray of light from the hallway to slice into the room.
“Suzanne?” She gave the inmate’s shoulder a little shake. “Suzanne, it’s Natalie Price. Please wake up. I need to talk to you. It’s very important.”
She got no response from her. More alarming, no movement. Nat’s heart seized. She flung back the covers and gasped as she saw even in the faint light a pool of blood soaking into the sheets.
“The cuts are jagged and deep. She’s lost a lot of blood. She meant to kill herself, no question about it. She would have bled to death by six or seven this morning.” The ER doc smiled at Nat. “You saved her life, Superintendent.”
“Can I speak to her?”