Sorrel used his car phone to call the state trooper manning the front desk at the station house. The trooper assured him the local police patrol was due to check in, and Officer Chapel would not be allowed to escape until the senior BCI investigator arrived to take a shot at him.
Fifteen minutes later, Sorrel was seated at his desk in the second-floor makeshift squad room. The place was deserted. Everyone else was out on assignment, and the civilian secretary was not at her post.
Officer Phil Chapel was standing at attention. He was very young and had the look of a guilty child; he knew he had done something wrong, but hadn’t a clue as to what that might be.
“What about the cleaning lady?” Sorrel barked; Chapel flinched.
“She’s more like general help, sir. She cooked and—”
“Where’s her statement?”
“She won’t be back in town till the day after Christmas, sir.”
“You didn’t want to disturb her while she was on vacation. How sweet. You don’t even have a name for this woman, do you, Chapel?”
“Ah, no, sir. The neighbor on the west side never mentioned it. The hired woman didn’t take anything from the house, so I didn’t—”
“And the old lady who died? What about her family?” Sorrel held up the single, uncompleted page of the incident report. “There’s nothing here to say they were ever notified.”
“I thought the chief was going to take care of that, sir.”
“Charlie Croft says he told
you
to do it.”
“I guess he did, sir. But you see, her regular doctor was on vacation. So without—”
“Never mind, Chapel. Let’s get back to the hired woman. You think the neighbor knows where we can reach her?”
“No, sir. She takes her vacation the same time as the old mushroom lady. But she never says where—”
“The old
what
?”
“The
dead woman,
sir,” said Chapel, perhaps thinking he had messed up with the informality of a nickname.
“You said
mushroom
lady.”
“Well, the whole house was full of mushrooms, sir. Little statues, drawings. All those books with mushrooms on the covers.”
“Son, did you see an actual, edible mushroom?”
“No, sir, not a damn one.”
“How could you let my uncle go home?”
“Oh,
now
you’re concerned.” Myles Penny talked out of the side of his mouth, never looking up from the desk as his pencil moved across the open pages of his appointment calendar. “It wasn’t my decision to send him home. That was Mortimer’s call.” He pushed the papers to one side and tapped his pencil on the blotter, indicating that he had more pressing business to get on with, and that Ali Cray should get out of his office—this minute.
“Myles, the man just had a heart attack.”
“Well, no he didn’t. Your uncle had a massive
anxiety
attack. It all fits—the vision problems, the buzzing, the chest pain. Probably couldn’t catch his breath, and that brought on the blackout.” He shrugged his shoulders to say,
Enough
?
“When I saw him, he looked about two inches away from death.”
“Well, he’s
not
.” Myles was more irritable now, and she could guess why. Her worries would not ring true, not after her performance in the sickroom. The doctor was an excellent judge of character.
“After I talked to Dr. Lorimer, I got a second opinion—your uncle’s. Old Mortimer diagnosed his own symptoms. Nobody in town’s better qualified. He’ll live a good long while if he stays on the medication William prescribed.” And something in his eyes said,
Not that you care.
“Can’t you reach William?”
“Wouldn’t know where to try, Ali. Now Dr. Lorimer’s a good man. He always covers William’s heart patients, and he hasn’t lost one yet. Trust me, the diagnosis is sound. He’ll be miles more comfortable at home—if you wanna be a good sport and not tell the cops where to find him. You don’t really think he’s involved in this, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she lied. “I’m sorry about the way I acted.” Another lie.
“Ali, if there’s nothing else I can do for—”
“Doesn’t William’s service have a number where he can be reached?”
“I wish they did. Every time William leaves town, it’s hell around here. Every damn one of his patients knows the day he’s gonna leave town. And then the perverse little bastards start calling in every ache and pain you could imagine. Now I told you, Lorimer is a good—”
“I believe you, but I was thinking of something else. Maybe you can help me. There’s a question I forgot to ask William the last time I—”
“Is this about Susan Kendall?”
“Yes. I know it was a long time ago, but when he filled in for Howard Chainy—”
“You’re wondering why a top-ranked surgeon took on the job as acting medical examiner? He owed Howard a favor, Ali. They go back a long way.”
“No. I was thinking about the test for the monozygotic twins. He needed a blood sample from each child to prove that, didn’t he? Did the parents consent to—”
“No, my brother did
not
ask the parents if he could blood-suck their only remaining child.”
“So how did he manage the test?”
“No idea. Unless he kept a blood sample from the previous winter. William stitched Rouge’s finger back on after an accident. Now when was that? I guess the boy was nine years old.”
“I was there,” said Ali. “He took a fall on the ice, and another skater ran over his hand.”
“Well, the priest brought him straight here in a car. Smart man, even if he is a damn pervert. Didn’t wait for our crack ambulance crew that can’t find its way from one end of town to another. The boy’s finger was almost severed. Now William is one fine surgeon, no matter what part of the body he’s stitching. In fact, he was probably the only doctor for fifty miles who could’ve done an operation that delicate. The human hand is a major surgical challenge, tricky as hell. But afterwards, the boy’s finger had full mobility. A real nice job.”
“Did Susan come in with her brother?”
“Are you kidding? We couldn’t pry the twins apart. It was William’s idea to let Susan stay for the operation. Oh, I know, he comes off as a self-important twit. But he’s very sensitive to every kind of pain. He was planning emergency surgery with a local anesthetic, and I guess he figured one twin would calm the other.”
“You think that’s when William suspected they were monozygotic?”
“I’m sure they piqued his curiosity. Except for the haircuts, the Kendall kids were identical. I’ve seen a fair share of twins, but nothing like that pair. Let me tell you the eerie part. Susan was in pain too, and showing symptoms of shock. None of that psychosomatic bullshit. She was
feeling
pain. I gave Rouge the local anesthetic while we were prepping him for surgery. The nurse was gowning and masking Susan—so the little girl never saw that needle. But the anesthetic also worked on her. It was like treating one child with two bodies.”
Ali wondered if Rouge had felt pain while his sister was dying. Could he have known the moment when her neck was broken? Had the little boy experienced a sympathetic death?
Myles stood up, and this time there should be no misunderstanding that he meant to throw her out. Charm had never been his forte. She lifted one hand in a listless goodbye and left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.
She had told Arnie Pyle not to wait for her, but there he was, seated in the clinic reception area, half concealed by the fronds of a potted palm. His black eye was hidden by the spread pages of a newspaper, perhaps to dodge the queries of patients and visitors. Arnie had not volunteered any explanation for the dark bruise. She had decided it must be a sore point, something he took no macho pride in, and tactfully, she left it alone. But when he stood up and emerged from the palm fronds, she was startled anew.
There was something very wrong here.
The other day, she had thought nothing of the smirk; it fit so well with his sarcasm. But now he still smiled with only half his mouth. There had been several years of angry distance between them, and Ali truly could not remember if he had always smiled in this odd way. In a disturbing flight of fancy, she wondered if he could have picked up this mannerism during that year of living with her, as though this mirror image of her own twisted mouth might be the result of close association—a contagion of damage.
The smile evaporated quickly. Perhaps he was embarrassed —caught with a genuine emotion. The agent jammed his hands into his pants pockets and made his stand in the center of the room. “Gonna tell me what you and Dr. Penny talked about? I always share with you.”
“Sure you do.” She intended to walk past him, but he moved to block her way. “All right, Arnie. It was a consultation.”
“For the scar? Cool. So, it isn’t hereditary, is it? Like maybe you had a gigantic mole removed? I’m just thinking about our kids, Ali. But I guess we could always adopt.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to picture baby drunks staggering around the house and throwing up on the carpet.” Did that sound bitter? She hoped so.
His half smile was back. “I cleaned your carpet, Ali—on my hands and knees. You forget these little things.”
He moved toward her, and she took two steps back. It was the same old dance. “You’re right, Arnie. And the time you vomited on my shoes, you bought me new shoes.” To hell with tact. She pointed to his black eye. “How did you get that?”
He waved it off. “Oh, the usual thing.”
“A
woman
did that to you?”
“But she didn’t have your touch, Ali. And I never loved her. It was just a fling, a little meaningless brutality on the side.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “Okay, fight’s over. You got anything solid on this sick bastard?”
“You’re breaking the law, Arnie. This is a public building.”
“What’ve you got? Speak up, or I’ll blow a smoke ring—right here, right now. And then I might get a little crazy and drop an ash on the rug.”
“But you don’t like my theories. You said as much in a room full of cops and feds. Why don’t you ask the team from Quantico?”
“You know I don’t let the witch doctors mess with my cases. If you’ve got something on this lunatic, I wanna hear it. Or I could go have a chat with your dear old uncle.” He was smiling again. “You really think he’s treating this pervert?”
“The pervert is a
sadist
. Concentrate on that.” She could not stop staring at his mouth. “He’d get off on sharing the kill with a psychiatrist. It would be a rush for him—immediate gratification.”
Please stop smiling, Arnie.
“It would extend the circle of victims beyond the child and her family. He could draw out the sadism as long as he liked—almost heaven.”
“So our perp tortures the shrink, and the shrink can only unload on a priest.”
“Right.”
Or another psychiatrist.
And now she stopped to wonder why Uncle Mortimer had not taken that route. However, this was not an idea to explore with Arnie Pyle. “But going to a psychiatrist doesn’t mean the pervert is insane, just smart and sadistic—much like yourself.”
“Thank you. But if you’re right about all those other cases, you gotta know this guy is royally screwed up.”
“Tell me if I’ve got this wrong, Arnie. You think he’s mentally incompetent because his fantasy revolves around a little princess. Are
you
crazy because you have wet dreams about a supermodel knocking on your door to ask you for sex?”
“So you’re saying he’s just more
realistic
?”
“It’s all about control.” She stared at the cigarette in his hand and avoided looking at his face again. “That’s why he favors a small target. He has absolute control over a child. In your fantasy, you’re all sweaty and grateful to the goddess. In his scenario, he’s a god.”
“Okay, twisted but sane. So how do you like the death penalty
now
, Ali?”
“My feelings haven’t changed.”
“Oh, come off it. You want this freak dead as bad as I do.”
“When the Russians increased the penalties for pedophilia, the freaks killed more of the children. Call me a fool, Arnie, but I think the parents would rather get the kids back alive.”
And now they realized there was someone standing close to them and listening to every word, quietly, politely waiting until they were done. It was Rouge Kendall, whose sister had not come back alive. He inclined his head to say hello to her. “The woman at the desk told me your uncle was released from the clinic.” He was pointedly ignoring Arnie Pyle.
What had Arnie done to antagonize this man?
“Rouge? Could you keep that to yourself for a while? Dr. Penny doesn’t think my uncle’s up to another interrogation.”
“Sure, no problem. But there’s one more thing—if you’ve got a minute.” The young investigator was speaking to her but looking at the FBI man. Arnie only smiled at him, pretending to be too obtuse to allow them any privacy.
Rouge was more graceful, only
thinking
the word
asshole
, only making this opinion clear with his expression, and thus refusing to engage in Arnie’s favorite game—Two Dogs Barking. The young cop turned to Ali. “Back in the hospital room, you said the pervert takes trophies. That wasn’t in the case notes you gave us.”
“Costello’s idea. He didn’t want the details of the trophies floating around in fifty printed copies.”
“So you have a list?”
Ali nodded. Slipping her arm through his, she led him to the far side of the room and away from the hearing of clinic visitors and the FBI agent. She looked back at Arnie. The command in her eyes said,
Stay
.
“Your man only takes very small items, Rouge. One was a ring. Another child was missing a tiny pin shaped like a flower. Other things—a religious medal, a fine gold chain with a single pearl. Always something delicate.”
“So this wouldn’t fit?” He pulled a piece of silver from his pocket and held it out to her. “This was used as evidence against the priest. It’s my sister’s bracelet.”