Phobia KDP (10 page)

Herne watched Betty Emmert silently. She carried a little extra weight around her middle, made noticeable by her ill-fitting shiny polyester blouse, an odd garment choice for a well-to-do retired woman. Her slick black hair, peppered with streaks of gray, had been pulled back from her face in a severe ponytail.
It’s a look designed to repel men,
Herne thought.

They sat in her sleek, modern kitchen, where stainless steel appliances glinted in the sunlight. She offered coffee to Tucker and Herne, and they sipped the vile brew politely from their mugs. Herne tried to keep his face expressionless as the bitter liquid coated his tongue.
She may have the latest appliances
, Herne thought,
but she can’t make a decent cup of coffee
.

“He left for an early round of golf with his buddies,” she said between sniffles. “The four of them get together for golf every Saturday.”

“Why did you wait so long to report his disappearance?” Tucker asked. “It’s Tuesday.”

Betty squared her shoulders and met Tucker’s stare. “I thought he was with his mistress.”

“Your husband has a mistress?”

She nodded, her eyes dry. “He’s had one for years. Before the kids were even out of the house.”

“Do you know who she is?” Herne asked.

Betty shook her head. “He could have more than one, I guess. Emmert enjoys a very active sex life. He used to constantly be at me, asking me to pleasure him.” She pursed her lips. “Frankly, I had no interest. It was my duty to give him children, which I fulfilled. I couldn’t stand his constant badgering for sex so I permitted him to take a mistress.”

“Does he often leave for days without telling you?” Tucker asked.

“No,” Betty admitted. “But sometimes he stays out all night without calling me. I don’t keep tabs on him. He’s never been away for this long, though.”

“Does he have an address book? Something that might tell us the identity of his mistress?”

She nodded and went to fetch a Rolodex, the round spindle packed with business cards and phone numbers. She handed it to Tucker when she returned.

“Is it The Healer?” Betty’s eyes were wide with fear. The newspapers had already dubbed the killer his chosen name, and it had spread through town like an uncontrollable pandemic. “Did The Healer kill my husband?”

Herne remained expressionless. “We don’t know, Mrs. Emmert,” he said. “It’s possible your husband is just fine and dandy. Maybe he’s been busy with his, ah, friends and just hasn’t had time to call.”

“Have you seen anything out of the ordinary lately? Any strange cars or unusual people?” Tucker asked.

Betty shook her head. “No,” she said cautiously. “But our house is set off the street and mostly surrounded by trees. I don’t see much of what goes on in the neighborhood.”

“Have you noticed a silver SUV near your home?” Herne asked.

Betty shook her head again. “No, nothing like that.”

As they prepared to leave, Betty started crying again.

“Despite what you gentlemen might think, I do love my husband,” she said. “I want him home.”

Herne paused at the entrance to the Emmert’s house, his hand on the doorknob. “Out of curiosity, Mrs. Emmert, does your husband have any phobias or intense fears?”

“Why, yes,” she answered. “Charles is a classic claustrophobic. He has an intense fear of tight spaces, like elevators. Once, when his SUV broke down, I went to pick him up in my Toyota Prius. He refused to get in the car. He called a limo service instead.”

Claustrophobic
. Herne thought about the photo The Healer had sent. The pine box in the middle of the woods. His heart thumped in his chest and he inhaled deeply, struggling for air, as he gripped his hands into fists to control the tremble of his fingers. Another murder. Another death.

“Was he being treated for this phobia?” Tucker asked.

“He’s been seeing Peter Lochhead, the therapist in town, for years. But as far as I can tell, he hasn’t made any progress.”

Herne arrived at Lochhead’s office just as the psychologist was locking up for the day. Tucker had gone back to the police station to organize the volunteers for a search as Saxon followed up on Emmert’s Rolodex and golfing buddies.

Herne wasn’t sure another visit with Lochhead would reveal any information. But, at the moment, he was their strongest lead.

“I cannot share any information with you about my patients,” Lochhead said, his tone final. The therapist glanced at the window. “I have an appointment I have to keep this evening, so if you could wrap this up quickly, I’d appreciate it.”

“One of your patients has been killed. Another is missing. There’s a killer out there that calls himself The Healer. You can see why our attention has turned to you, Doctor.”

“I have nothing to hide,” Lochhead said. “And harassing me won’t get you any information. I’m bound by my ethics to protect patient confidentiality.” His fingers twitched, and he juggled his car keys in his palm. “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to close.”

“You don’t work very late, do you?” Herne asked. “It’s only four o’clock.”

“I find most people with psychological problems prefer to schedule their sessions during the day,” Lochhead replied. “By the time evening arrives, people start self-medicating with booze or drugs.” His stare seemed to penetrate Herne again, as if he knew the truth of Herne’s own addiction.

Not a particularly amazing deduction,
Herne thought.
I smell like a brewery.

“You leave this office empty for a lot of hours, especially hours when other businesses in this building are still open. Does anyone else have access to your files?”

“Of course not. Not even my secretary sees the patient files. I keep them locked in a file cabinet.”

“May I see the cabinet?” Herne asked.

With a deep sigh Lochhead led the way to his inner office. Inside stood a plain locked metal file cabinet, available at any office supply store. A monkey with a nail file could have opened it.

“Any other questions?” Lochhead asked.

Herne shook his head. Then he fixed his gray eyes on Lochhead. “If Charles Emmert turns up dead and we could have saved him with your cooperation, you’ll have to live with the consequences,” he said.

“You have no legal recourse,” Lochhead replied. “The law protects me in that case.”

“I’m not talking about legal consequences,” Herne said. “I’m talking about the blood of a dead man on your hands. The kind of blood that never washes away.”

Lochhead simply stood, his lips pressed tightly together, as Herne walked out of the office.

Inside the elevator, Herne called Saxon on his cell phone. “This is a long shot,” he said, “but tell Miller and Johnson to check out anyone who might have access to Lochhead’s office and files. They need to do a background check on the secretary and the cleaning service. There might be a janitor or handyman here, too.”
It’s probably useless,
he thought. A man like The Healer—a man who planned so meticulously—would be unlikely to have a criminal record.

“Does the chief know about this request?” she said. “I take orders from him.”

“Do we have to go through this song and dance, Saxon? Trust me when I say that Rex is going to want this information, too.”

There was silence on the other end. Herne almost spoke into the phone, wondering if the connection had been lost, when she said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Any news on that last quotation from The Healer?” Herne asked.

Saxon exhaled a heavy sigh of annoyance, and Herne had to stop himself from an impatient remark. “Yes. It’s attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

“Maybe our man is a poet,” Herne said.

He hung up his phone and, obeying the growl in his stomach, entered The Sandwich Station. His hangover had dissipated and his stomach was crying out for food. Herne couldn’t remember his last meal. He suspected it might have been a handful of peanuts at a downtown Carlisle bar.

The clerk in The Sandwich Station was tidying the cold case. “I’m closing up, but I can get you something fast. How about today’s sandwich?” he asked when he saw Herne perusing the menu items.

“What is it?” Herne asked.

“Peppered goat cheese, sundried tomatoes, prosciutto, and baby greens on a baguette.”

“Sounds great. I’ll take two.”

Herne felt the clerk’s eyes on him as the man went through the motions of preparing the sandwiches. Herne met the curious glances of the clerk with a full stare. He’d been ogled a lot since The Healer case was splashed across the news, and he always responded to those surreptitious peeks with an open gaze.

As the clerk wrapped the sandwiches in waxed paper, he said, “I read about you in the newspaper. You’re the investigator working on The Healer case, aren’t you?”

Herne nodded.

The clerk assessed Herne critically. “The picture in the paper makes you look younger.”

“It’s an old photo,” Herne said, subconsciously rubbing his bald scalp with a calloused hand. His head had been shaved clean in the newspaper photo, too. But back then, fewer wrinkles had lined his face.

“They say Amanda Todd was a patient of Dr. Lochhead. So she must have visited this building. How thrilling!”

Herne wasn’t surprised to hear the hint of enthusiasm in the clerk’s voice. Certain types of individuals seemed to get excited by sensational crimes rather than frightened. It was a reaction Herne understood. A reaction he felt himself. “You never saw her in the building?” Herne asked.

The clerk shook his head. “I guess she never bought a sandwich here. I take a thirty minute break after the lunch rush around three o’clock, but other than that I never leave the shop, so it’s not likely I would have passed her in the hallway.”

“Too bad,” Herne said. “I think she was the type of person who would have ordered your sandwiches.”

“You think so?” The clerk brightened. “Anyway, good luck catching her murderer. It’s scary to think we have a killer loose in Hurricane.”

Yes, it’s
s
cary
, Herne thought as he carried his sandwich to the car. The wrenching of his gut—the same twisting pain that accompanied all of his homicide investigations—reminded him that fear was the emotion that drove him to hunt down murderers.

Fear. And excitement.

CHAPTER NINE

Sadie and Champ, Buck Yarley’s prize bloodhounds, tugged at their leather leashes, urging him faster. Buck knew every tree of the woods—had started hunting in them at just six years old, when he’d been barely strong enough to handle a .30-06 rifle. The leaves and branches became his friends, offering the comfort of gentle movement while he waited for a deer to cross his path.

These days, Buck was known in Hurricane mostly for his ability to track a wounded animal for miles. But it wasn’t
his
talent that gained him that recognition. It was the skill and persistence of his dogs. Now they tugged again at the leash, anxious to move his creaking knees through the woods. He heard the footsteps of other searchers walking across the leaves and twigs. Their voices seemed loud among the silent trees. He didn’t bother to look for deer. They’d already scattered and hid from the humans invading their home.

Most of the other searchers were local firefighters and working men. Many were hunters like Buck, familiar with the woods and the culture of the trees. They moved with ease through the brush, their heavy boots treading solidly on the dirt and rocks.

Buck knew they searched for a man named Charles Emmert. But when the Chief of Police said Emmert was “lost in the woods,” Buck noticed him swallow hard, like a man swallowing a lie.

He didn’t know Emmert personally, though he’d seen him a time or two at Shady Hill Diner. To Buck, Emmert looked like the type of man who would have had no qualm about buying and selling the souls of the working men who now searched for him.

Buck had ventured a good distance from the camp set up by some women, mostly wives of searchers, where they prepared iced tea and cold country ham sandwiches to revive the tired rescuers. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but Sadie urged him faster, her muzzle pressed to the ground and twitching at every odor that reached her sensitive nose. Champ threw back his head, his ears flopping on his back, and bayed long and hard. They had caught a scent.