Authors: Jeremiah Healy
“Marek. She had the … she thought he was attractive.”
“Anything ever come of it?”
“Don’t think so, but I’m not too good at guessing that kind of thing. She never let on that they did, and I think she would have, just by the way she’d talk or look, if it happened.”
“You said she gave Marek a ‘moony’ look.”
“Yeah, but it was, I dunno, more an ‘I want you’ than a ‘wasn’t it great’ kinda look. You gotta remember, Lainie wasn’t real subtle about that kind of thing usually.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I think Lainie really felt something for him. Something more’n just physical.”
“Did Jennifer feel the same way?”
“What, about Marek?”
“Yes.”
Linden thought a minute before answering. “Not exactly. I’d say Jennifer looked at him more with—what did Jimmy Carter call it—‘lust in the heart’?”
I remembered the super in Marek’s building seeing Jennifer there much earlier than group session. “You have any evidence of it?”
Homer thought some more, scratched his head. “No.”
“Back to that night, before William came in. Did Marek say anything?”
“I think all he said was maybe we should get started. And oh, yeah, he said Lainie should move.”
“Lainie move?”
“Yeah. It was just because of the way we were sitting. We always took the same chairs every session. It’s supposed to establish some kind of comforting environment for the one to be hypnotized. Well, Marek suggested Lainie should move because with Jennifer and William not being there, there were two seats empty between Marek and Lainie.”
“I don’t get it.”
Linden got up. “Let me show you.” He crossed to a cluttered little desk off in the corner and waded through some running magazines and time charts until he found a pad and pencil. He came back and sat down next to me. Though I assume he’d been exercising when I arrived, he had no body odor at all.
“This,” he said, drawing, “is where Marek would sit. At the medicine table.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“And here are all our chairs. There are more chairs in the room than these, but that’s because our group is a little smaller than some he runs. Anyway, here’s the layout for us, and this is where each of us would sit if we weren’t the one going under that night.” Linden made little squares for each chair and wrote the first names of each member through his or her seat. He pointed to the two next to Marek. “These were William and Jennifer’s, and he said to Lainie, ‘Why don’t you move over,’ meaning closer to him. And she said, ‘No, I’m fine where I am.’ ”
“Didn’t you think that strange?”
“How so?”
“That Lainie, who was ‘mooning’ over Marek, didn’t want to sit closer to him?”
“Well, she said no with that saucy look she has … had, so I figured it was just kind of her way of flirting with him, you know?”
“Marek ever ask anyone to move before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What did Marek do when Lainie refused to change chairs?”
“He gave her one of his phony toothpaste smiles and just said something like, ‘Well, why don’t we all just talk, then,’ and that’s where William came in on us.”
“Did Marek do anything different with William?”
“No. I mean, William was all hepped up about Jennifer. Course, we didn’t know that then, but he was all jazzed up about something, so Marek tried to calm him down.”
“Then Marek injected him?”
“That’s right. But like I told you last time, it didn’t seem to do much good.”
I looked down at Linden’s sketch. “Show me where Marek would stand when he gave the injection.”
“Well, right here,” said Homer, pointing in front of the center chair.
“So William, in the center chair, would have been between you and Marek.”
“Right.”
I paused for a minute. “And also between Ramelli and Marek.”
“Squarely between Don and the doc, right.”
“So you couldn’t actually see Marek put the needle into William. And neither could Ramelli.”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
“I know this isn’t to scale, but I want you to concentrate on the way it was that night in the meeting room. From Lainie’s regular chair, could Marek have blocked her view of him injecting William?”
Linden looked down at the sketch, turned it to a different perspective, like a road map when you want to head south instead of north. “Hard to say for sure, but no, I don’t think he could have.”
“And if she had moved?”
“To the other chair, you mean?”
“Yes.”
He studied it again. “Yeah, if she’d been in the other chair, he’d have been between her and William.”
I stared at the sketch.
Homer Linden said, “Boy, you okay?”
I looked up at him. “Sort of.”
I
LEFT
L
INDEN’S HOUSE
with his sketch in my inside coat pocket.
It was hours till Clay would come onto his tour, and I didn’t feel like risking my tenuous relationship with O’Boy by pressing for Clay’s home address. Then I reflected for a minute. Cops in Boston never list themselves in the phone book. No reason to invite harassing calls or twisted retribution. But maybe in Calem?
I found a pay phone and a directory for Boston Suburban West in a drugstore in the center of town. There were two Clays listed, both with first initials only. I couldn’t remember if I had ever heard Clay’s given name. Listing number one turned out to be a renter who’d never heard of Officer Clay. I tried number two.
“Hello?” said an older, female voice.
“Hello. My name is John Cuddy. I’m a detective from Boston and I’m trying to reach a Calem police officer named Clay.”
“I’m afraid Harold’s not listed in the phone book.”
Harold. No wonder I hadn’t heard Clay’s first name before. “Is this Mrs. Clay?”
“Yes, I’m Harold’s mother. Try him at the police station here. He’ll be there a little before four this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Clay”—thinking back to something O’Boy said when I first met him—“but I tried the station already, and there’s something wrong with the lines there. I found you by going through the directory.”
“Oh, they’ve been having trouble with their phones for weeks. I’ll tell you what, though. If you’ll give me your number, I’ll call my son and have him call you right back.”
“It’s important that I reach him as soon as possible.”
“Well, the sooner you give me your number, the sooner you’ll be able to speak with him.”
I gave her the pay phone number.
“Why, that’s our exchange. You’re calling from here in Calem, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you could just as easily drive to the police station here and ask them, couldn’t you?”
“Ma’am …”
“What did you say your name was again?”
“John Cuddy.”
“You’re not really a policeman, are you?”
“No, Mrs. Clay, I’m a private detective.”
“And you thought you could trick me into giving you my son’s number, didn’t you?”
“Ma’am, I wasn’t trying to trick—”
“Good day, Mr. Cuddy.” She hung up.
I felt like a ten-year-old caught with a forged hall pass. I could see where Clay got his cop instincts.
I held down the receiver lever, got a dial tone, and called my service. A message from Mariah Lopez, giving me the name and telephone number of a professor at Boston University Medical School who was a hypnosis “buff.” Also, a message from Sam Creasey, asking me to telephone him at the television station.
I hung up to call Creasey, but the pay phone rang before I could dial. I answered it.
“Hello?”
“You really are an asshole,” said Harold Clay’s voice.
“Can I explain?”
“First you job my partner, and then you try to jive my mother, and I’m—”
“Give me two minutes to explain, then you can hang up if you want. Okay?”
He didn’t reply.
“Clay?”
“I’m looking at my watch.”
I told him I’d spoken with Linden, tried to find his number in the directory, and reached his mother that way.
“So you figured I was stupid enough to maybe list my own phone number? And then you try to slide one past my mother?”
“I need the answers to a couple of questions. You’ve got every right to be pissed at me, both over what I said to Bjorkman and what I tried to do to your mother. My guess is that you would have done the same if you were in my position.”
“Not for some ghetto stud who—” Clay stopped. “Sorry, that was George talking. Bjorkman, I mean. You ride with a guy for a while, you pick up parts of him.”
“The night Jennifer was killed, you and Bjorkman responded.”
“That’s right. It’s all in the report.”
“Did you guys have William Daniels’ blood tested for drugs?”
“No. Not George and me, that is. That would have been the detectives’ side of it. Talk to O’Boy about it.”
“When you and Bjorkman first saw Daniels, did you examine him in any way?”
“Examine him? We sure as hell braced him to see if he had any knives or other weapons.”
“Did he appear drugged to you?”
“No. Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at here. He seemed completely in control of himself. No indication at all of being under the influence.”
I tried to sound soothing. “I’m not trying to put him in for insanity. I just need to know. Did you look at his arms for tracks?”
“Black kid in this town? Sure, first thing I checked after we sat him back down.”
“And?”
“Just the one fresh needle mark. A couple of other, faded ones, but the shrink—Marek—said those were from the other times the kid was under the stuff, the drug he gives them to loosen them up for hypnotizing.”
“You looked at both arms?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding impatient.
“And just one fresh mark.”
“Yes. That do it?”
“Just two more questions.”
“What are they?”
“Last night, at Lainie Bishop’s house, could Homer Linden have gotten there by picking up your radio call?”
“Jesus, you’d have to hear the tape log to be sure, but yeah, if he knew radio code he could figure out what happened. Her address would have come over in the clear.”
“Has he ever responded to any other calls over the years that you know of?”
Clay said slowly, “Yeah. I can think of two. An armed robbery attempt at the liquor store and a fire, maybe half a mile from him.”
“One last question.”
“You said only two more a minute ago.”
“I know, but this one will pin down something for me and save you and Bjorkman a lot of time. It may also piss you off even more at me.”
“For chrissakes, ask it!”
“When you and Bjorkman swung onto the four-to-twelve shift yesterday, was he with you the whole time till Lainie Bishop was found dead?”
I was right about getting him madder. He hung up.
I tried Murphy, but he was out. I called Creasey’s number, and got a secretary, who said he was in a meeting but had told her that if I called, he’d like me to have lunch with him at the television station. She sounded a little harried, so we quickly agreed on twelve noon.
I reached Dr. Douglas Kirby, the professor Mariah Lopez recommended, at his office. He said he could squeeze me in about three-thirty, if it wouldn’t take too long. I assured him it wouldn’t, hoping as I said it that his intrinsic interest in hypnosis would keep his eyes off the clock.
Creasey’s station—or his wife’s father’s station, I guess—lay back from one of those two-lane roads that crisscross Route 128, the major high-tech beltway around Boston. The road had gotten too small to carry the computer commuters comfortably anymore, and I had to wait for a count of sixty and through a deafening barrage of horns from the people stopped behind me before I could make a left-hand turn into the driveway. I passed a utility van with the legend CHANNEL 8 NEWS/MOBILE UNIT #3. The van was parked at an angle on the edge of the parking lot, presumably to get the jump on a breaking story. I edged the Fiat into a VISITOR space and entered the building.
The reception area was disappointingly utilitarian. No autographed posters of anchor, sports, or weather personalities. The receptionist was a little short with me but buzzed a number. A middle-aged woman with the voice of Creasey’s secretary fetched me two minutes later. She tried to make strained small talk as she led me to an elevator, up two floors, and down one corridor. There seemed to be people arguing behind at least two of the closed doors we passed. We stopped at an opened door.
“Is something the matter?” I said.
“The matter?”
“Yes. The atmosphere around here seems kind of uptight.”
She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite bring it off. “I’m sorry, it’s just this licensing fight. They’re really not being fair to Mr. Creasey. Especially after … well …” She changed tone and gestured into the room. “Please be comfortable. Mr. Creasey will be with you in a moment. Please don’t smoke.”
She left me. I felt as though I were entering the Calem Police interrogation room again.
The dining room was hardly ten by ten, with linoleum floor and bare painted walls. Centered on the floor were a table and chairs for four but place-set for only two. A small window let in some light but little atmosphere. There was one daffodil in a thin, plain glass vase at the center of the table. I began to get the feeling that the present manager was not a spendthrift.
I sat down, sipped at a glass of water. Creasey rushed in as I was putting the glass down.
He said, “Don’t get up,” but I did anyway and we shook.
“I’d offer you a drink, but I don’t permit my employees to drink on the job, here or in the field, so I don’t, either.”
“Seems fair.”
A waitress appeared seconds later with two cold deli plates, a small tray of assorted breads, and one iced tea with lemon.
“I don’t take caffeine,” he said.
“They make it without now,” I said, sipping the tea. Strong.
“Yes, I know. I’ve tried it. It tastes … synthetic, unnatural. I don’t like unnatural things.”
“Well, why did you want to see me?”
“Would it be all right if we ate first? I’ve been going at it with the lawyers on this license mess since eight o’clock.”