“There’s a conflict all right,” he said tightly. “But it isn’t mine.”
He rose slowly to his feet. “I’m going outside and talk to Suzanne some more. This
is
my case, Natalie. If you can’t handle that—” He stopped, his expression softening. “Sorry. I know you’re upset.”
“We’re both upset,” Nat said.
He touched her cheek. She placed her hand over his. “How about after I finish up with Suzanne, we go grab some Chinese and have it over at your place?” Leo suggested. “Sound good?”
Nat hesitated, dropping her hand from his. Since Suzanne’s transfer to Horizon House, and the Coscarelli family’s biweekly visits, Nat felt a growing strain when she and Leo were together. “Why don’t we see how . . . ? ” „
Leo drew her to him, silencing the rest of her words with a brief but potent kiss. “Do I have to arm-wrestle you next?” he teased.
Nat smiled. “No. I give.”
“Good.” His gaze lingered on her, his expression turning serious. “I want this to work, Natalie. We have something here. I don’t want to let it slip through our lingers. ”
“Neither do I,” Nat said. But she also knew that wanting something not to happen didn’t mean it wouldn’t.
Jack was on his way into Nat’s office as Leo was exiting. The two men merely nodded in passing, neither a fan of the other. Leo deliberately left the door open as he exited. Jack deliberately shut it.
Nat merely shook her head.
“You catch the latest news flash?” Jack asked.
“What?” she asked, suddenly anxious.
“Heard it on the radio driving back here. Some reporter got to Jennifer Slater.”
For a moment Nat drew a blank. Then it came to her: Matthew Slater’s widow. How could she forget? During Lynn Ingram’s trial, Jennifer Slater had made headlines in the tabloids and was on TV almost daily. Nat remembered the widow as a striking, rather than beautiful, woman in her late thirties. A tall, elegant brunette with catlike eyes who oozed fine breeding and wealth. Matthew Slater, a working-class boy from South Boston,
had married well.
\
At no time dining those stressful days following Matthew Slater’s murder and, almost seven months later, during Ingram’s five-week-long trial, had Nat ever observed Jennifer Slater lose her poise. Of course Nat had no idea what took place when the cameras weren’t around. Not that Jennifer Slater volunteered much in the way of interviews. On the few occasions when she did make a statement, she vehemently maintained the position that her husband had been not only a victim of cold-blooded murder, but of a perverse and unwanted seduction.
“What did Jennifer Slater have to say in the interview?” “Basically that Ingram asked for it.”
“Asked
for it? Asked to be mutilated? Nearly killed?”
“I don’t think there’s any love lost between those two women,” Jack said facetiously.
Nat sighed. “I have to say I felt sorry for Jennifer Slater during the trial. Bad enough when a victim gets dragged through the mud, but when members of the victim’s family get dragged along as well, it’s horribly unfair.”
“I imagine it doesn’t do a hell of a lot for any woman’s selfimage to discover that her husband’s having an affair, not to mention with a transsexual. I’m sure Jennifer Slater took it especially hard. According to the reporter’s run-in before the Slater news bite, the widow’s become something of a recluse since her husband’s death. Spends most of her time at the family compound in Martha’s Vineyard. Apparently her social life’s pretty much nil. She’s still involved in charity work, but when an appearance at a fund-raiser or banquet is required, she usually sends her kid brother.”
Nat recalled the brother, Rodney Bartlett, a tall, thin-to-the-point-of-gaunt young man who had been Jennifer Slater’s constant companion throughout the trial. Bartlett was always trying to run interference for his sister with the media. But, as Nat recalled, he rarely succeeded. Nat never saw him without a scowl on his face. A scowl that deepened when the verdict was handed down. Both he and his sister made it clear they would have been happy with nothing less than the death penalty for Lynn Ingram. Certainly a second-degree manslaughter conviction was a far cry from what they considered justice.
“Sounds like Jennifer Slater’s still very bitter,” Nat remarked thoughtfully.
Nat was on the phone to the hospital when Sharon Johnson rapped on her door and popped her head in. Nat motioned for her to step into the office.
“Thank you, Doctor. Yes, give me an update anytime. Day or night.” The receiver felt oddly weighty as Nat set it back in its cradle.
“How is she doing?”
“Still unconscious. Still listed as critical.”
“You look lousy,” Sharon said, but there was a note of clear affection in her voice.
“I feel worse,” Nat confided. A big admission for her. And one that she probably wouldn’t have made to anyone else on her staff. As a superintendent who was both female and not yet thirty-five, she felt compelled to present herself as a person in control of her emotions when she was at work. Away from work, too; only it wasn’t so easy in either case.
“I’m just about to leave for the day,” Sharon said. “How about coming back to my place? Raylene’s making her signature frittata foi; dinner. And she’s just finished this incredible painting, a self-portrait, that she’d love to show you.”
“How about a rain check? I already made plans for tonight.”
“With Leo?” Sharon asked, a half-smile on her full lips. “I saw him outside on the front porch having a powwow with Suzanne.”
“I asked him to remove himself from the case.”
Sharon gave a little laugh. “Let me guess what his answer was.”
Nat rolled her eyes.
“He’s not going to get much out of Suzanne,” Sharon said.
“He thinks he can.”
“Which is what’s eating at you.”
Nat gave her employment counselor an angry look. “If Suzanne can tell us anything that will give us even a miniscule clue—”
“That’s not what I meant.” Sharon cut her off. “You got this love triangle thing going, Nat, and it’s ripping you apart.”
“It’s not easy,” Nat admitted.
“When is it ever?”
“Did anyone ever tell you, you should be a shrink?”
“Speaking of shrinks, have you heard from Dr. Varda?” “He’s at the hospital. I spoke to him briefly before talking to the surgeon. He’s pretty shaken up.”
“I hope you mean Varda,” Sharon teased. “We don’t want a shaky surgeon.”
Nat managed a weak smile.
“Did Varda say anything? About who might have attacked Lynn?”
“Anything Lynn might have said to him was told under doctor-patient confidentiality.” Nat understood Varda’s position. Even respected it. But still, she found it excruciatingly frustrating. Varda might very well know the identity of the assailant. Or he might, at least, be able to make a solid educated guess. It would give them a lead. Someplace to begin looking.
“And I gather you haven’t found anything in Lynn’s room that might give you a clue.” Sharon asked.
“Hutch did the search himself. Nothing.”
“No .. . scribblings? A diary, maybe?”
“No. Why?”
“Just that a couple of times I saw Lynn writing stuff.”
“In a diary?”
“No. It was on loose sheets of paper. She told me they were letters.”
“That makes sense,” Nat said. “Doesn’t it?”
“I suppose. But I never spotted any envelopes. And one time I saw her slipping a piece of paper she’d been writing on into a kind of a loose-leaf binder. She caught me observing her, and she got all flustered. Told me she’d run out of stamps. I don’t know. There was something . . . furtive . . . about her behavior.”
“If they were letters,” Nat mused, “who was she writing to? When she was at Grafton, the only person she maintained any regular correspondence with was Harrison Bell. And she wouldn’t need to write to him now. She’s with him at work every day.”
Nat checked in with Hutch on her way out. Although he was officially off-duty, her head CO had opted to hang around for part of the night shift because of the undercurrent of tension in the house—a direct result of the assault on Lynn Ingram. There was the feeling among the inmates that it could have been any of them. It was the rare con who could say he or she had no enemies on the outside. Nat certainly had never come across one.
Hutch had been in charge of the search of Lynn’s and Suzanne’s room. Nat asked him if a loose-leaf notebook had turned up in the search.
“Nope. Just a Bible and a card. There was an inscription inside the Bible: ‘To Lynn, May God’s blessing be with you always, Father Joe.’ ”
“And the card?” Nat asked.
“It was a birthday card. I checked her record. Ingram turned thirty-one on June seventeenth. So she must have got the card while she was still in IU at Grafton. I thought it was interesting she took it with her when she came over here.”
“And it’s from . . . ?” Nat asked impatiently.
“From the doc.”
“Harrison Bell?”
Hutch shook his head. “The shrink. Varda.” He smiled wryly. “Interesting, huh?”
“How did he sign it?”
A shadow of disappointment fell across Hutch’s broad face. Nat knew her CO didn’t think much of the psychiatrist. Espe-daily after that testy intake meeting on Ingram. “Nothing very juicy,” he admitted. “Just, ‘Best wishes, Dr. Ross Varda.’ ”
“I’d like to see the card. Did you confiscate it?”
Hutch looked over her shoulder toward the front door, where Leo was waiting for her. “Your detective’s got it. And the Bible.”
No big surprise. “Does he have anything else?”
“There wasn’t anything else to turn over.” A little catch in Hutch’s voice put Nat on instant alert.
“So, what didn’t you show to him?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Nothing connected to Ingram.” His gaze again drifted down the hall toward Leo.
“Let’s not play twenty questions, Hutch,” Nat said testily.
“There were some letters. Belonging to Suzanne Holden. From . .
“From Leo,” Nat finished for him. Not that Leo had ever told her he wrote to Suzanne.
Hutch nodded.
“You read them?” Nat’s voice sounded raspy to her own ears. Her throat had gone dry.
Hutch was again looking over her shoulder. Nat glanced back to see Leo heading toward them.
“I didn’t read them, Nat,” Hutch said quickly.
But he’d obviously seen enough to know who had signed the letters. How many were there? How had Leo signed them?
Best wishes
? Nat doubted that.
Love
? She hoped not.
“I just got beeped,” Leo said, approaching them. “My partner. There was a bit of a ruckus over at the hospital. Seems Lynn’s mother showed up, demanding to see her
son.”
seven
I think a lot about my folks in here. Especially that awful day when I finally got up the courage to tell them. My
v
father raged and called me a pervert. But my mother broke down and sobbed,
“I’ve lost my boy,”
L.
L
WHEN LEO AND Nat arrived at the ICU, Ross Varda was conferring with Ruth Everett in the doctors’ lounge. Mitchell Oates, Leo’s partner, was waiting for them in the ICU waiting room.
“She goes by the name Everett?” Leo asked.
Oates nodded.
“And Mr. Everett?” Nat asked.
“She came alone. Didn’t say anything about the husband.”
Leo glanced across the hall at the closed door to the doctors’ lounge. “What else?”
“Like I told you on the phone, the mom was on the verge of
hysteria, and the psychiatrist pretty much took charge. Got her calmed down some.”
“He knows her?” Nat asked.
“I don’t think they ever met before, but he knew her name. Knew who she was right off. I’m guessing Ingram must have talked about the mom in their therapy sessions.”
Leo scowled. “You working on that court order?”
“Yeah,” Oates said. “I told Varda we’re gonna subpoena his records. He gave me a song and dance about being between a rock and a hard place, blah, blah, blah. I told him if he felt that way now, how was he gonna feel if his patient kicked the bucket? Shrinks,” Oates muttered, like it was a curse word.
Ruth Everett’s hands were clutched around a Styrofoam cup of coffee. When Nat and Leo walked into the lounge, she sprang out of her seat, the coffee spilling over the rim. She looked anxiously in their direction, and Nat realized she was expecting them to be bearing news about her daughter. Or as Ruth saw it, her son.
Leo introduced himself and before he could turn to introduce Nat, Ross Varda made the introduction. Ruth Everett only now became aware of the spilled coffee. Varda gently took the cup from her hand and set it down on a nearby Formica counter.
“Then you don’t have any word about Larry?” Ruth Everett’s lips quivered. “I... I mean . . . Lynn.” She said the name like she was speaking a foreign language.
What struck Nat about Ruth Everett first and foremost was that she was an older but no less beautiful version of Lynn Ingram. Even now, under obvious distress, her generous lips pursed, her complexion drained of color, a drawn look around her blue eyes—a shade of blue almost identical to Lynn’s—her beauty showed through. Certainly there were differences. Although the mother was a bit shorter, closer to five foot ten, a bit more slender, and her blonde hair longer than Lynn’s by several inches and threaded with random gray, there’d be no missing the blood relationship between the two.
Leo glanced over at the psychiatrist. “Would you mind waiting out in the visitors’ lounge, Doctor?”
They all knew it wasn’t really a question. Nat could see Varda wasn’t pleased with the dismissal. He was even more distressed when Ruth looked nervously up at him. She clearly wasn’t
v .
pleased either. He patted her shoulder reassuringly.
“We’ll talk again later,” he told her.
Ruth Everett did not look comforted. “I... I can’t stay . . . very long.” Anxiety was etched in each word.
“There’ll be other times,” Varda told her with the soothing confidence of an experienced psychiatrist.
“Will . . . there be?” Ruth clutched her hands together.