Drake stumbled out the front door, tears streaming down his face.
And yet despite the anguish that crushed his soul, his detective mind hadn’t shut off.
Not quite.
Something Suzan had said struck a chord with him, and it wasn’t until he had peeled away from the modest Cuthbert home that he realized why.
Empty shell…
He had heard someone say something like that before.
It had been Dr. Mark Kruk.
This picture? It’s much like everything else in the image we portray to others: just an empty shell.
There was a click deep within Detective Damien Drake’s brain, and he yanked the steering wheel to the left and pressed the accelerator.
He remembered what the psychiatrist had said, and he also remembered one of the files he had seen on the man’s desk when he had spoken to him.
MARCUS SLASINSKY.
Chapter 66
Chase’s phone buzzed and she used the heel of her hand to wipe her eyes and nose before answering.
“Adams,” she said softly.
“It’s Simmons. I interviewed the teacher again… Mr. Urso?”
She cleared her throat.
“Yes? And?”
“Yeah, you were right—just a little pressure and he broke. Said that Chris, Tim, Neil, and Thomas used to bully the Slasinsky boy to no end. Somehow they found out about his mother, about how she had committed suicide and the whole butterfly in the mouth thing. When it came time for the class trip to the Butterfly Gardens, Slasinsky had been granted an exemption, but the other boys tricked him into coming along. They goaded him into the center of the garden, just before the butterflies were released. He started to cry, and they mocked him. When the butterflies came, he lost it. Started screaming and thrashing on the ground before eventually going silent. Fell into a coma. Mr. Urso said he called the police, but when he arrived the Smith clan was already there. They gave him twenty grand to keep his mouth shut, and he thinks that the officer might have been paid off as well. Urso says he took the money, because there wasn’t much to do anyway. What with the kids just bullying Slasinsky, it’s not like they could press charges or anything. I mean, back then bullying was just a part of life…”
Chase chewed the inside of her lip. At the time, nothing legally could be done to random boys, but to these kids in particular, especially Thomas Smith, their reputation was everything. And considering his past—with the auto theft and assault charges—maybe there was a lot that could be done.
“Did he say what happened to Marcus Slasinsky after he came out of the coma?” Chase asked.
There was a short pause.
“No—says he isn’t sure. He went to visit the boy in the hospital, but wasn’t allowed to see him. There were rumors that Slasinsky had hit his head and couldn’t remember much about what happened. Last Mr. Urso heard was that he changed his name and then left New York.”
Only to come back again, she thought with a chill. Who are you now, Marcus?
She was beginning to consider that Tim Jenkins wasn’t so much a suspect as a potential victim.
Just as Drake had suggested.
“So we know that the abusive father was out of the picture and that Marcus’s mother committed suicide. Dunbar said that he got a hefty insurance settlement from his mother’s death, but that was… what? Eight years before he fell into the coma? Seven? Ken Smith must have set him up as well.”
“Right, that’s what the teacher thinks, too. But how are we going to trace that money?”
“We can’t,” Chase responded quickly. Even if they could break into the fortress that was SSJ and find out where the money that Ken Smith had given Marcus Slasinsky went, which was unlikely, she was going to have to go through Rhodes first. And that wasn’t going to happen, even if it led to them figuring who Marcus was today.
Because they paid Rhodes off then, and they continue to pay him off now.
“I think I’ve gotten as much out of Mr. Urso as I can—there’s not much more to know. He actually seems genuinely sorry for the boy, and remorseful for not doing more to help him when he could. Do you think that this Marcus kid is the Butterfly Killer? Or should we still focus on Jenkins?”
Chase paused.
“Let’s stay on Jenkins. Either way, he’ll help us break this open, I’m sure of it.”
“Sounds good,” Detective Simmons replied.
“Good work, by the way. Now go home, get some rest. We’ll reconvene in the morning. Same time.”
Chase was met with only dead air.
“Simmons?”
“Are you sleeping at all, Detective Adams? Perhaps—” Simmons said cautiously.
“I’m fine. Go home, Simmons,” Chase replied quickly, then hung up the phone.
A quick glance at the clock showed that it was coming up to seven PM, and although she wasn’t supposed to relieve Detective Yasiv until ten, she thought that maybe she would let him go home early, too.
***
Twenty minutes later, she pulled up behind Detective Yasiv’s Blue Toyota and then got out of her car.
The crescent sun was bright as it dipped below the horizon, and she was forced to lower her over-sized sunglasses to deflect most of the glare. As she neared the vehicle, she made out the outline of a person leaning against the door.
Fearing the worst, she rushed to the door and tried to pull it open.
It was locked.
Inside, Henry Yasiv’s forehead pressed against the glass. His eyes were closed, and his mouth hung agape.
He was motionless.
“No!” she cried and tried the door again. There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Henry’s mouth, and her heart skipped a beat. “No!” she shouted, convinced that at any moment the head of a caterpillar would poke out from between his pale lips.
Chase rapped her knuckles hard on the glass and Henry suddenly started.
He peeled his head away from the glass and rolled down the window.
Chase put a hand on her chest, and gaped, still trying to catch her breath.
“Chase?” Henry asked, wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
Chase’s eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses.
I thought you were dead, she wanted to say. I thought that you were the Butterfly Killer’s fourth victim.
“I’m here to relieve you,” Chase said flatly. She was pissed that he had fallen asleep, but her relief at him being still alive forced her anger away for the time being.
Detective Yasiv nodded nervously.
“It’s ughh—it’s a little early, isn’t it?”
Chase flipped up her sunglasses and glared at him.
“I think it’s plenty late for you, don’t you?”
If his face had been red with embarrassment before, it was bordering on crimson now.
“Yeah, I just, ugh, I have a newborn and, uh, the—”
“Go home, Hank. Go home and get some sleep,” Chase ordered.
“Yeah, I just—”
“Go home,” Chase repeated more sternly as she made her way back to her car.
No sooner had she slipped into the cream leather seats of her BMW, the tail lights of Hank’s Toyota flicked on. A second later, he was gone and Chase was alone.
Chapter 67
Drake hung up his phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat.
No answer.
He had called Dr. Kruk three times, and all three times it had gone to voicemail.
He sped toward the strip mall that housed his psychiatry office with purpose. If anyone knew who or where Marcus Slasinsky was, it would be him. Drake was sure of it.
After all, he had a notepad with the boy’s name on it on his desk when he had arrived.
Drake pulled into the parking lot and his heart sunk when he saw that the lights to the office at the end were off. In fact, the entire lot was empty. He took the empty parking spot directly in front of the office and jumped out a split sec
ond after jamming his car into park.
He tried the door first, but found it locked. Without much hope, he made a fist and banged on the door.
“Dr. Kruk? Dr. Kruk, I need to speak to you,” he said loudly.
Come on, come on. Please be here, please be here…
He knocked again and again.
The way Drake saw it was that he had two options: to call in for a warrant or to wait until Dr. Kruk arrived to work next.
Getting a warrant was a laughable prospect; even if he hadn’t been booted off the case, and if for some reason Rhodes hadn’t sent out a patrol to arrest him for obstruction, there was no way a judge would facilitate a warrant.
As for waiting for the doctor to arrive? It was Friday evening—the doctor wouldn’t be in until Monday at the earliest.
No, Drake couldn’t wait, either.
There was of, course, a third option, Drake thought as his eyes drifted to the trunk of his car where he kept a crowbar. Just as he made a move toward his Crown Vic, he heard a lock disengaging, and the door opened a crack.
It was the secretary he had met a few days ago.
“Is Dr. Kruk here?” Drake asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.
The woman, who was in her mid-sixties with a shock of pitch black hair, eyed him suspiciously.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Drake flipped out his detective shield.
“Detective Damien Drake, I was here yesterday, remember?”
Drake was growing impatient. If Dr. Kruk was in his office, then he had to speak to him immediately. The man could use as many abstract analogies as he could muster, but Drake would get him to reveal who and where Marcus was.
He had to; he had to before someone else was murdered.
The woman’s eyes suddenly widened.
“Ah, yes, I remember now. I’m sorry, Detective, but Dr. Kruk hasn’t been in today.”
Drake swore under his breath.
“I—I need to come in,” he said.
The woman’s brow furrowed.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said hesitantly. “Dr. Kruk is—”
Drake shook his head.
“It’s important. I left something here,” Drake said, thinking quickly. He knew that in this instance, his red eyes and disheveled appearance might come in handy.
And he also knew that what he was about to do would not only put the nail in his proverbial coffin, but would also toss the first few shovelfuls of dirt on his career.
Fuck, they might even forgo the coffin altogether and bury him alive.
But that didn’t matter.
“I left something about a very important case… forgot it in his office. I’m sure you know which one I’m talking about?”
The woman looked confused and then suddenly extended a finger at him. As she did, the door opened a little more and Drake leaned in to make sure she couldn’t close it again.
“The Butter—”
“Shh, don’t say it. I mean, I’m in so much trouble, I just need to get the file back.”
She shrugged.
“Tell me what it looks like and I’ll see if I can find it for you.”
Drake shook his head emphatically.
“I can’t… it’s about the case and if…” he let his sentence trail off, grimacing the whole time.
The woman offered him a wan smile in return.
“Okay, come on in. But please, be quick. Dr. Kruk is fairly particular about people being in his office without him being present.”
Drake suppressed a smile. When the secretary opened the door, he quickly pushed by her and went straight to Dr. Kruk’s office door. He tried the knob.
It was locked. He jiggled the knob, confirming that it was a flimsy, brass-coated piece of plastic.
Worst case scenario he could break it off.
“Do you have the key?”
The woman looked a little apprehensive now.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Then please, do you mind? I mean, you can watch me in there if you would feel more comfortable. I’m just looking for my file, that’s all.”
This seemed to calm her nerves, as she nodded and then fetched a single key from the top drawer of her desk.
Some security system, Drake thought.
When she came over to him, he quickly took it from her hand.
“Allow me,” he said with a smile. As Drake fiddled with the lock, he added, “I can’t thank you enough for this. Seriously, without—” the door unlocked, and he opened it.
He turned back and looked at the secretary for a moment.
“You’ve really helped with the investigation,” he said. And then, before she could get a word in edgewise, Drake entered the room, slamming the door and locking it behind him.
“Hey! Hey Detective!” the woman shouted from the other side of the door. Drake ignored her and took a deep breath.
Then he looked down at the single key still clutched in his hand.
What’s done is done, he thought as a strange sense of calm fell over him. Now it’s time to find a killer.
Chapter 68
Chase pressed her forehead against the driver’s side window, her breath fogging the glass with every breath.
She had been staring at Tim Jenkins’s house for an hour now, but it felt as if it was twice or three times as long.
Mostly because nothing happened. Not so much as a light had flicked on within his residence. In fact, it was so quiet that Chase was beginning to doubt what Detective Yasiv had told her; that Tim had been dropped off by Wes Smith and had remained inside ever since.
Had he snuck out the window, as Drake had caught him doing yesterday?
Chase supposed it was possible, but why would he leave? He must know, Butterfly Killer or not, that the police would be watching him.
Did Weston Smith give him instructions to lay low? To stay out of sight?
It made sense. Anything that linked back to them, to the Smith reputation and family name, had been silenced to this point. Despite the deep-seated anger toward the Smith clan, Tim had secrets in his past that he wanted to keep buried as well.
Like being part of a group of bullies that put a young, troubled man in a coma.
Tim had been so distressed by what he had done, so affected by it, that he had foregone a prosperous career like the ones held by Thomas and Neil to work at the very place that they had nearly killed Marcus.
A sort of penance for his crime.
It was on his face when Chase had spoken to him back at the station, further corroborated by him clamming up as soon as he mentioned Neil.
Chase had been getting close, and Tim couldn’t deal with it. No matter how much Tim loathed Wesley Smith et al, his guilt over what he had done to Marcus far outweighed his anger.
So, yeah, if Wes told him to stay low, maybe threatened to reveal Tim’s involvement back then, he might just listen.
But was he a killer?
She was beginning to severely doubt it.
Chase sighed and closed her eyes. But any concept of peace and quiet from her thrumming mind was shattered when she saw Clarissa staring at her from behind her lids, her mouth twisted into a snarl.
He froze everything! Every last dime I have, he froze. I have nothing now! Absolutely nothing!
“Fuck,” she whispered.
After all, she had put the woman through, she was no closer to finding her husband’s killer.
Chase took another deep breath and tried to force the images from her mind.
To force everything from her thoughts.
Chapter 69
Drake ignored the woman’s pleas from the other side of the door and set to work immediately, scanning the man’s desk where he had first seen the notepad with Marcus Slasinsky’s name on it.
Only it wasn’t there.
There were other folders emblazoned with names he didn’t recognize, but not one with Marcus written on it.
“It was here,” he mumbl
ed to himself, as he continued to scan the desk.
There was a folder with Tim Jenkins’s name on it, which he thought odd. But when he opened it, it was empty and he tossed it aside.
“C’mon,” he nearly moaned.
He pulled open the top drawer of the desk and a dozen pens rolled to the front. There was a pad of yellow lined paper in the drawer as well, but after flipping through it quickly, Drake realized that it was completely blank. He checked the second drawer next, but there weren’t any patient notes in there either.
And definitely no notepad.
Where would he keep patient notes? He wondered, hoping that Dr. Kruk didn’t keep them in an off-site location.
His eyes drifted to the bookshelf next, but there were only books on the dark wooden shelves. There was no sign of the dark green notepad he had seen.
Dr. Kruk’s secretary knocked on the door again.
“Detective? Did you find the file? I really think that you should go. I think—”
“Still looking!” he shouted. “I’ll only be a minute. I’m so sorry for this, but it’s confidential, as you can probably understand.”
And he figured that he only had a few minutes before the woman got fed up and called the police. Desperate now, Drake dropped to his knees, looking first under the desk, then under the two chairs facing each other on the other side of the room.
Still nothing.
Shaking his head in frustration, he looked around again, trying to quiet the swirling thoughts in his head, the ones that suggested that maybe the doctor took the notebook home with him for the weekend.
“Nowhere! There’s nowhere—”
But then he fell silent.
There was nothing beneath the two blue chairs, but there was something slightly off about the one on the right. He dropped to the floor again and took another look.
The bottom of this chair sagged lower than the other one. It made sense that this chair was the doctor’s, and the other the patient’s, given the proximity of the former to the desk, but Dr. Kruk had been a slight man.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 27