“Raul Delgado… the Smith’s housekeeper… is he a suspect in the case?”
The question caught Chase completely off guard. Raul had been at 62nd precinct only an hour ago, and they had been discrete about his presence—the cab that had taken him back to the Smith residence had tinted windows and had picked him up from the underground parking lot.
To her left, she could feel Rhodes’s angry gaze and heard him start to fidget.
Now would be a good time to step in, Sergeant.
But he didn’t, and Chase realized that she had made a near fatal error by hesitating.
Trying desperately to recover, to not tip her hand, she said quickly, “At this time we do not have any official suspects. We are, however, investigating several persons of interest that may have been with or saw either Neil Pritchard or Thomas Smith around the time of their deaths.”
“What about Veronica Wallace? Is there—”
The follow-up question floored her.
Veronica Wallace… how the hell did he even know her last name?
Chase herself hadn’t even known it.
“Uh,” she stammered, feeling her face flush. The sun, which had been beautiful as it started its celestial descent toward the horizon, now seemed sinister, its orange glow like spears thrown between skyscrapers. “Right now, we only have persons of interest. That will be all the questions for today.”
Chase quickly turned, deliberately avoiding looking at Sergeant Rhodes.
“Detective Adams, is the Smith family involved at all? Is Weston Smith…”
Her lips twisted into a sneer, and she felt her heart thud in her chest. She tried to move her legs fluidly, to not let the sheer fury at once again being scooped by the media extend to the way she walked.
And yet she couldn’t help but feel as if she was moving like a robot whose joints desperately needed lubrication.
How could they know about Veronica? About Raul?
As Chase and Rhodes passed several uniformed officers standing with their arms crossed over their chests, their faces pinched as if daring the media to rush toward them, she grabbed the one closest to her.
“I want to know who that man is,” she seethed. The man startled, but Chase let him go and continued toward the front doors of 62nd precinct before he could get a word in.
The door had barely closed behind her when Sergeant Rhodes started to shout.
“Detective Adams I want you in my office now!”
Chapter 43
Dr. Mark Kruk was tall and thin with a beak-like nose and light brown eyes that peeked out from behind a set of thick-framed glasses. He smiled warmly at Drake from behind a large desk and politely stood when Drake approached.
“Dr. Kruk, I’m Detective Damien Drake with NYPD Homicide,” Drake said, glancing around nervously.
There was no couch in the room as there had been in Dr. Stacey Weinager’s office. Instead, in the spot where Drake thought a couch might go were two comfortable looking chairs placed across from one another. The sight of the chairs caused a visceral reaction in him, and he quickly turned back to the doctor. Behind the man was a massive, built-in floor to ceiling bookshelf, which was nearly full of spines from books that were as drab as the content Drake assumed they were filled with.
“I know who you are,” the doctor said softly. He reached over the desk and held out his hand. “I’m very sorry to hear about Thomas Smith.”
Drake shook his hand, but not without hesitating.
This wasn’t the response he had expected; he had anticipated the man feigning ignorance before spewing the party line of not being able to share patient information like some sort of robotic deluge.
“You knew Thomas, Dr. Kruk?” Drake asked, getting right to the point. He noticed several small red marks on the back of the man’s hand as he released it.
“Please, call me Mark. If you insistent on calling me Dr. Kruk, then I will refer to you as Detective Damien Drake, and this conversation will take much longer than either of us might want,” he said with a smile.
“Fine, Mark it is. And just Drake for me, please. As you were saying… you knew Thomas Smith?”
Dr. Kruk nodded.
“Yes, he was a client of mine.”
Drake opened his mouth, but Mark tilted his head to one side and continued before he had the chance to speak.
“I can tell by your expression that you expected something different… a different answer, am I right?” Again, he didn’t pause long enough to allow for a reply. “Look, Drake, we are both busy men and neither of us has time to waste. The fact is, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that Thomas was a patient of mine. Truth is, I expected you sooner.” Mark squinted, and Drake knew better now than to try and answer. “Ah, yes, and you also know that Clarissa was a patient of mine—I saw them both as a couple.”
Drake nodded, his anxiety slowly starting to fade. The man’s straightforward nature was unexpected.
Unexpected, but also refreshing.
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Seeing them as a couple, then Thomas individually?”
The man shook his head.
“No, not at all. If anything, such an approach helped me understand their issues better, speed things up, if you will.”
Drake scoffed at this, and Mark smiled.
“We—psychiatrists—are not bad people, Drake. Quite the contrary. In fact, I look at my profession as synonymous to a gardener. A gardener keeps the lawn nicely cropped, disposes of refuse, keeps the garden watered to ensure plants bear the healthiest and heartiest fruits and vegetables. Every now and again, however, they encounter a weed. Any good gardener knows that you can’t just yank the top off a weed—you have to get down to the root, make sure you remove every last trace of it, else it might return. And if it does, it often grows larger and bears more spines than the previous iteration. If it regrows a third time, it might be impossible to remove. So look at me with no less or more scorn than you would a common gardener.”
Drake stared curiously at the man, realizing that he might have jumped to conclusions about the man’s straightforward nature one jumbled analogy too soon.
If he starts talking about healing stones and incense, I’m out of here, no matter what Chase will say.
As if reading his thoughts, Dr. Kruk chuckled.
“But no, Drake, to answer your question, I never saw them at the same time. I saw Thomas and Clarissa as a couple first, and then Thomas alone after the joint sessions had already run their course.”
Drake nodded, his eyes leaving the man’s face and continuing around the office. He was hoping that the man might have been so careless as to leave Thomas’s file open on his desk, perhaps with a paragraph about someone who was stalking him highlighted.
But Drake had never been very lucky. Amidst the piles of medical/psychiatry journals there was only a small square notepad with the name Marcus Saslinksy written on the front.
“Your personal experience with psychiatry may not have been pleasant, Drake. And, given the circumstances, I’m not wholly surprised. But have you ever given thought to continuing—”
Drake’s eyes whipped back.
“What do you know of my experience?” he demanded harshly. He was starting to think that when Dr. Kruk had told him that he had expected him sooner, he hadn’t just been sitting around idly waiting for him.
Mark waved a hand dismissively.
“I remember the newspaper articles about the bearded detective, your partner. The exposé in the Times.”
“His name was Clay,” Drake snapped. “Clay Cuthbert.”
The smile on Dr. Kruk’s face faded.
“Yes, of course. I apologize if I offended you in some way, Drake. I only mean to be courteous, but perhaps I’ve come off as sounding self-serving by espousing the benefits of my own profession.” He gestured with his long fingers to the chairs. “Would you like to sit? Not for a session, of course, but to be more comfortable when you ask whatever questions you might have?�
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Drake shook his head.
“No, I won’t be long. I just have a couple of questions about Thomas.”
The smile returned to the doctor’s face.
“Of course, but despite my candor, I must remind you that even in death I bound to confidentiality.”
Ay, there’s the rub, Drake thought glumly. “I wondered how long it would take for you to say that.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that with respect to these rules I am fairly predictable, unfortunate as that may be for your cause. That being said, I am quite adept at speaking in abstraction. Perhaps you would be interested in some of the more common themes that I might encounter on a daily basis in my practice?”
Drake raised an eyebrow and stared at Dr. Mark Kruk.
He’s trying to help, Drake realized after a moment. He’s trying to give me information without breaking confidentiality.
Drake doubted that this approach would hold up in court, that circumventing the rules in this manner wouldn’t be blown apart even by one of the fresh out of NYU slobs in the DAs office, but he wasn’t about to question that now.
After all, it wasn’t his place. Drake was no gardener. He was the lawnmower that the gardener kept in the shed.
“Okay,” Drake began hesitantly. “What would cause Thomas… err, why would a couple to come see a psychiatrist in the first place?”
Dr. Kruk answered without hesitation.
“In my practice, I would estimate that ninety percent of my couple client base has issues revolving around infidelity of some sort. Care to guess what the other ten percent is?”
Drake smirked.
“Money?”
Dr. Kruk nodded.
“Love and money rule our lives these days. And haunt us, too, I suppose.”
This last part struck a chord with Drake.
His memories had been haunting him ever since he followed Clay into Peter Kellington’s house.
Is he still trying to recruit a new client? Drake wondered. This was quickly followed by, Focus, Drake, focus on Thomas and not your own issues.
He tried to imagine the scenario that led Clarissa and Thomas to Dr. Kruk’s office in the first place.
Did Clarissa find some of Veronica’s underwear? There were so many of the damn things draped all over apartment 12-6, that Drake didn’t think if Thomas slipped a pair into his pocket that they would be missed. Or maybe Veronica gave it to him. That wasn’t out of the question either.
Either way, Clarissa finds out about the affair, but based on what Chase told him, the woman is reluctant to file for a divorce, fearing that everything would be taken from her. Maybe big ol’ Ken Wannabe-Mayor Smith swoops in and encourages them to stay together, makes sure that divorce court proceedings don’t sully the Smith name. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he has meddled in his son’s affairs.
So Clarissa and Thomas arrive here and talk it out… and from all accounts get over it after just a few sessions. And yet Thomas isn’t done yet, he’s the one who comes back for more.
Thomas has more weeds to pull.
Drake cleared his throat.
“How often do you think these problems get resolved? In your experience, of course.”
“Which problems?” Dr. Kruk asked.
“The infidelity.”
Dr. Kruk tilted his head to one side and appeared to ponder this for a moment.
“I think that most people can be cured of their addictions, be them infidelity or other,” he said with a chuckle. “Money problems, not so much. Drake, have you heard of a trigger event?”
Drake nodded.
“Sure. Like seeing an object or doing something that reminds you of the past. A heroin addict might remain clean while in a ninety-day in-treatment program, but if they happen to pass an alley on the way home, on day ninety-one, and there’s a junkie sitting on the ground, thumb on the plunger, I’d reckon it might roll them right back to before treatment.”
Dr. Kruk nodded.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself. Provided that my patients avoid triggers, impossible as that may be over time, then I peg the success rate at a generous, and also very arbitrary, eighty-percent.”
A photograph on the desk caught Drake’s eye and he picked it up. In it was a smiling man with his arms around a girl who looked to be about eight and a pretty woman with long blond hair.
Drake’s eyes darted up and he scrutinized the doctor, who was now smiling even more broadly.
“This isn’t you,” he said, holding the photo out to him.
Dr. Kruk shook his head.
“No, it’s not.”
Drake made a face, and the doctor explained.
“I’m afraid I’m not married nor do I have any children.”
“Then what’s with the photograph?” Drake asked as he put it down on the desk again.
“It makes people feel more comfortable. For whatever reason, humans tend to cling to the notion that you can’t possibly understand something, or god forbid be an expert in something if you haven’t personally experienced it. That’s ridiculous, of course. Can a pathologist understand malaria if they haven’t contracted it? If this were a requirement, then I suspect that the hospital might suddenly have a few extra job openings. Silly as the idea is, however, I’ve found that if I come across as a single man in my late thirties without a wife or kids, my client return rate drops by half. And it doesn’t even matter the status of the client. A family man assumes that I can’t possibly understand his plight, while a single man is convinced that I can’t help them get to where they think they want to be. If I put up this photo up, however, nearly everyone comes back.”
Drake raised an eyebrow, glancing down at the picture again, then back up at Dr. Kruk’s face.
“Seriously? But it doesn’t even look like you,” he said.
“That’s the beauty of it. People know it’s there, but they don’t really look at it,” he shrugged, a depressed gesture. “People only see what they want to see. Our minds are wired in this way—an imago. After all, what we ‘see’ is only an interpretation of the world by our brain. Which, as you know, is prone to both error and experience.”
Drake looked at the man curiously, and he couldn’t help but think that he had a point. But he wasn’t here to discuss reality. He was here to find out about Thomas Smith and if the doctor knew anything that might be able to help.
“All right, now you’ve just jumped from psychiatry to woo-woo philosophy.”
Again, Dr. Kruk chuckled.
“Not a far leap, I might propose.”
“Perhaps. But, back on topic, Thomas and Clarissa come here to discuss marital problems, infidelity—Thomas seeing a prostitute—and then poof their problems are solved. Only Thomas has something else he’s working out, something that he requires more sessions to… how did you put it? To weed. He doesn’t actually stop seeing the prostitute, so I doubt that was his main issue. That issue was the wife’s issue, which I’m guessing he only came to discuss to appease her. That sound about right?”
Drake was staring at the doctor the entire time he spoke, and the man’s expression had remained remarkably neutral throughout.
“This is as specific as one can get,” Mark said evenly, “As I mentioned, I am unable to discuss patient’s personal issues.”
Drake waved a hand dismissively, as if to say no big deal.
“Of course not—I’m just thinking out loud, doc,” he said passively before deciding to change tactics. “Hey, let me ask you something? Did you know Neil?”
The man’s brow twitched.
“Neil?”
“Neil Pritchard.”
Dr. Kruk pressed his lips together.
“Ah, one of the other victims. I can only confirm that I am aware of who he is.”
This response struck Drake as odd.
“You told me outright that you were treating Thomas, so why can’t you tell me about whether you were also treating Neil?”
The man on the oth
er side of the desk sighed.
“You knew Thomas was a patient of mine, elsewise you wouldn’t be here. But with Neil, you’re fishing. Detective Drake, I am all for being helpful, but I have worked very, very hard to build a career. I won’t jeopardize that for a few fishing expeditions, if you follow my meaning. As such, I think that we have come to a natural and fitting end to our discussion, wouldn’t you agree?”
Out of habit, Drake checked his watch. It was after five now, which meant that Chase’s press conference must either be done or nearing completion. He looked up and was surprised to see that Dr. Kruk was holding his hand out in front of him again, and the smile was back on his narrow face.
“I think you’re right, Mark,” Drake said, shaking his hand once more. After two quick pumps, the doctor went to pull his hand away, but Drake held it for a second longer.
“One last question: are psychiatrists good at poker?”
“Well, I suspect they would be; very good, in fact,” Dr. Kruk replied, his smile growing to show a set of perfectly white teeth.
Chapter 44
“Damn it, Adams!” Sergeant Rhodes shouted across the desk. “What’d I say?”
Chase felt her face grow hot, and she found herself wishing that Drake was here with her.
“Huh? What did I say?”
Chase swallowed hard.
“I have no idea how the press found out about Raul… or Veronica. Absolutely no clue. Maybe it was Veronica herself who told them?”
Rhodes scoffed and leaned forward in his chair.
“You’re joking, right? You just finished telling me your theory about her being paid off, then she goes to the press about afterward? What the hell for?”
Chase felt her face tingling now and gave up.
“I have no idea.”
She had hoped that being vulnerable might make Rhodes go easy on her.
She was wrong.
“Yeah, I know. You have no idea, none at all. Just like you have no idea who killed Neil or Thomas or Chris. And, to make things worse, during your press conference you said ‘serial killer’. Literally, you used those exact words.”
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 19