A Perfect Obsession

by Heather Graham

  Mike perched on Marty’s desk; Craig stood by as Marty opened his computer screen to show him the calls that Kevin Finnegan had made from his cell phone.

  “There—that would be Jeannette Gilbert’s private number,” he said. “Calls to and from Kevin Finnegan start about six months ago and end the day before her disappearance was announced. I’ve got transcripts of the voice messages she left him. Last message is right here. ‘Love you, Irish. Miss you every time we’re apart. We’ve made the six months mark—six to go, and I guess we’re the real deal. Listen, if something good comes up in the next few weeks, take it. Oswald has a cool idea for publicity. I may be really busy. Know that I’m thinking of you.’” He paused a minute and looked up, flushing.

  “There’s more?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then, go on,” Craig said.

  Marty flushed, sighed and turned back to his computer screen.

  “‘I’ll be thinking of you hot and wet and naked...and thinking of how hot and wet I’m going to be when we meet up again. Okay, that was to tantalize. I do love you, Irish.’”

  “Poor Kevin,” Mike murmured.

  “So, that Westwood guy was full of it, huh?” Marty asked.

  “I’m thinking so,” Mike said.

  “I mean, unless she was into a lot of guys,” Marty said. “She never gave that impression, though. You know how so many pop stars faked... Well, you know, that thing what’s her name did on that music awards show that was so slutty and dirty. Kids watch that stuff, and she got down and kind of grossly sexual. Jeannette wouldn’t have done that. Gotta admit, I go to a lot of movies and music venues and...yeah, I read the entertainment mags. You never got anything like that about Jeannette Gilbert. She was sensual, you know? But classy. That’s how she came across. Man, you fell in love with her.”

  “I’m sure that’s what you were thinking,” Mike teased.

  Marty flushed again. He was a nerd, a great one, but very shy, and he didn’t date often.

  “You’re missing the point. You really did kind of fall in love with her in a more ethereal way. To be crude, hell, yeah, most guys would want to bang her. That doesn’t sound right for the office, but...best way I can explain it. But with her...you kind of admired her, too. You’d want to bang her and then bring her home to Mom.”

  “I guess that’s a little more charming,” Mike said.

  “What about Sadie Miller?” Craig asked. “Any calls on Kevin’s phone to her?”

  “Nope. A ton to Finnegan’s, to his siblings, to his agent, to a music director, to his actor friends. That’s it.”

  “Seems like Kevin is telling the truth and nothing but the truth,” Mike said.

  “Give me a printout, will you, Marty? I want to make sure that Larry McBride has this. I don’t want him to think that anyone in the office is protecting anyone in the Finnegan family,” Craig said.

  “You got it,” Marty promised him.

  Craig pulled his phone, and Mike lifted an eyebrow to him.

  “I’m calling Oswald Martin. I want to know just what his publicity plan had been—whatever it was that Jeannette was talking about when she called and left that message for Kevin.”

  * * *

  “I can really get them back? You think that I can really get my children back?” Susie Grace said, a smile beaming across her entire face.

  The worn-looking young woman had been seeing Kieran for six weeks.

  The man with whom she’d been involved would remain locked up for at least a year on a drug charge.

  Susie had been in a rehab facility. The court had determined—through her medical doctor and therapy—that Susie deserved another chance. She’d failed at beating her addiction because she’d fallen for the man who’d supplied her and made sure to give her a push back down every time she’d gotten clean.

  Susie had thought she’d met a great guy—a doctor, a man to adore her eight-year-old twins and a man who took her to nice places for dinner. No one knew the real man, until his ex-wife told them his sexual tastes had included a few practices considered deviant by most. Susie hadn’t been aware of what he did to her once he’d drugged her to sleep, not until she’d screamed in a waking haze and one of her daughters had dialed 9-1-1.

  She was a sweet woman whose husband had died while serving in the military. After losing him she’d been like a babe in the woods, susceptible and easily manipulated.

  It really could be an ugly world. Of course, Kieran realized, she had chosen to work with ugliness when she had signed on with Fuller and Miro, with their work on criminal cases.

  But there were good things in this kind of work, too—like seeing Susie’s face when she said, “You’re really going to get your kids back. Dr. Miro spoke with your caseworker at Child Services this morning. You know the terms of your probation. You have to remember to go to your meetings, and you have to see me once a week for the next six months. You’re going to be able to do that, right?” Kieran asked her.

  “Oh, Kieran, no problem, no problem whatsoever!” Susie promised. She fell silent. “And...I really don’t hear voices anymore.”

  The drugs in her body had caused Susie to believe that she was hearing the furniture talk to her.

  “I’m glad. You know that you were never crazy. Hearing voices can be the result of many of the drugs he had you on.”

  “I know,” Susie said. She shivered suddenly. Then she laughed. “Well, I am a scaredy-cat. I got it in my head to better myself and get to know the city better during my time of seeing you and straightening out. I took a tour of the East Village.”

  “Nice. I live there. I love the East Village.”

  “Oh, I know! It’s the way you talk about it that made me want to go. You made it sound so artsy. I know that you live there, but did you know that the East Village was once a farm that had been deeded to Peter Stuyvesant?”

  Kieran did know, but Susie’s enthusiasm was great, and she let her keep talking.

  “It was also known as Little Germany at one time. I learned so much cool old history. And new history. Can you have new history? I guess today is history tomorrow. But, anyway, I did love the tour. It was so interesting. Writers and artists flocked there and...” Susie’s voice suddenly faded, and a worried frown set into her brow.

  “And?”

  Susie lifted her shoulders and grimaced. “I took a ghost tour—shouldn’t have. It included stories about Stuyvesant, Joe Papp, Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. By the time I left, I thought I heard someone moaning at one point!” She shivered. “Oh, I shouldn’t have told you that! Really, I’m not hearing voices. I just creeped myself out.”

  “Don’t worry, Susie, you should tell me everything and anything,” Kieran said. “And don’t worry. I’ve turned the wind into moans in a few places, too. And I live above a karaoke bar. Talk about moaning.”

  Susie managed a real smile.

  “Honestly,” Kieran continued, “I know how much you love your children. I don’t believe you’d even want them home with you again if you weren’t ready.” She stood up from her desk. “A ghost tour is one thing, Susie. If you hear voices in your head when you’re having your morning coffee, call me right away.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  Susie hugged her fiercely, and Kieran returned the embrace but quickly told her, “Hey, I’m just the therapist. Thank Dr. Miro. She’s the one who decided that you’re really ready.”

  With tears in her eyes,
Susie nodded and headed out of the office. She caught Dr. Fuller in the hallway, coming to Kieran’s office.

  He hadn’t been her doctor, but she hugged him anyway and he wished her well.

  He walked into Kieran’s office, smiling. “Susie loves you, Kieran. She really loves you.”

  “She loves you, too,” Kieran said.

  He grinned and took the chair in front of the Kieran’s desk that Susie had just vacated. “We’re really so happy to have you, you know.”

  “I’m happy to be here.”

  “You have another appointment?”

  “Paperwork for the state. Our assessments on three cases.”

  “Oh, good.” He settled in as if that meant she had no work.

  “I just keep thinking,” he said. “Well, we’re going to have a meeting this afternoon with the Feds. They’ve sent a behavioral scientist up from Quantico to go over our notes with us. I think that Assistant Director Egan was afraid we’d be offended. Of course, we’re not. Just as you need every cop and agent out there, you can use every scientific mind available. Oh, sorry. I’m talking the Jeannette Gilbert case, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “How did you stumble upon that other victim?” Dr. Fuller asked her.

  “You just said it. I stumbled.”

  “But...how did you know where to go?”

  “I didn’t. I was looking at cemeteries and graveyards. Danny is a tour guide. He told me about the Huntington mansion, and that, actually, there are grave sites all over the city we don’t really know much about.”

  “And tons that we do know about,” Dr. Fuller said.

  “They’re asking all the religious heads around the city to check their catacombs, crypts and graveyards,” Kieran told him. “And the groundskeepers and directors at all the nondenominational cemeteries and grave sites.”

  “Good, I think it’s going to be important. What’s disturbing me now is...well, that poor young woman who’s missing. The more time that passes, the less chance she has of being alive. If only we knew... You don’t know more than I do, right?” he asked.

  “About what in particular?”

  “The dead women. Do they know if they were killed right when they disappeared?”

  She shook her head. “I only know that the medical examiner believed Jeannette Gilbert to have been dead ten days to two weeks before she was found. The most recent victim—the young woman from yesterday—was almost mummified in a strange way. I doubt they’ll be able to pinpoint the exact time of death.”

  “I just can’t stop thinking about this case,” he said. “Of course, every other minute now, a station is showing the life of Jeannette Gilbert. The girl was famous before, but now...well, she’ll always be young and beautiful, right? What’s so sad, too, is that it seemed she was lovely in every way, kind and generous. I’ve read the files on the other two known victims. Kind, compassionate, smart young women, as well. Not that you want anything so horrible to happen to anyone, but it’s truly tragic that such wonderful people should be lost so young. Well, anyway, Dr. Miro and I are headed over to the FBI offices soon. I keep feeling that I should be able to put my finger on something—identify what this person is after with a clearer picture. There’s something at the back of my mind I just can’t clearly define. Well, we’ll see. Three heads will be better than one. Oh, listen, we won’t be back in. And with all you went through this weekend, feel free to leave after your last appointment.”

  He smiled and left her office.

  Kieran turned to her paperwork. She should be happy. It seemed she had made someone’s life better.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Sadie Miller.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  “I DON’T MIND IT, per se—this profiling. I mean, hell, bring on the mediums and the séance people. Whatever works. I’m just not a big believer in criminal profiling. The FBI helped us once years back, told us the killer would be a white male of a certain age and of a certain intelligence, probably a blue-collar worker. Turned out a jealous woman was stabbing her friends,” Larry McBride said, shrugging. “Now, Ms. Finnegan, I don’t mind her around. Or, for that matter, that Dr. Fuller.”

  “It’s just another tool, and, honestly, it often helps,” Craig told him.

  “As I said, maybe,” McBride said. He was sitting across the table from Craig and Mike as they awaited the arrival of Professor Digby. “Gut—it’s what cops have worked on forever. And you’d be a liar if you were to tell me anything different. Besides, so far, I can’t see how they’ve told us anything we hadn’t figured already. Obviously, no grease monkey is doing this—the girls are too clean. They’re quickly killed. They’re laid out gently.” He shook his head. “I can already imagine what they’re going to tell us. He’s between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-eight. He lives alone—or with an incapacitated parent or someone he looks after. He probably has access to his own basement. Where else would he hide girls once he’s taken them until he’s laid them out?”

  Craig was only half listening to McBride.

  The detective was frustrated. So were they all.

  The case was going nowhere.

  True to his word, Oswald Martin had sent over his notes on his upcoming plan for Jeannette Gilbert. There had been nothing in it about a disappearance. Oswald had been making arrangements for Jeannette to start a reading program at a number of hospitals in the tristate area. He wanted to show her as a leader in the community, in a different light as she used her celebrity to make a positive impact. There would have been little time for her to do anything else in the busy days he’d booked, and she’d no doubt have had the press dogging her all the way—which was, of course, the plan. But until it happened, Oswald Martin had been keeping it secret.

  Kevin Finnegan hadn’t lied; Oswald Martin hadn’t lied. When the complete plan had arrived in Craig’s email, he’d had Marty verify every appearance that had been planned.

  There was no way out of it. Finding this killer could take days, months, years.

  The thing was, a young woman was still missing.

  And they’d take any help they could get to track her would-be killer. Including profilers.

  Craig rose when he saw a young agent escorting Digby into the room. He appeared to be bewildered.

  But, then, Digby often appeared to be bewildered. Maybe it was simply the way he looked.

  “Thank you for coming down, Professor,” he said.

  Mike and McBride had risen, as well.

  “Well, sure,” the professor said, taking the chair they indicated for them. “You fellows should have just come to the site. Other folks who might remember things are there all the time. Roger Gleason must think an old pair of nerdy professors are suddenly going to go off with his fine wines or something, because he’s there every day. Willoughby is a historian—he has things in his head that would never occur to me. A virtual volume of information, he is. And John Shaw, of course. John found Ms. Gilbert. Even the grad students. Pretty good crew we’ve got working on this.” He offered a weak half grin to them. “Don’t make a lot of money, you know, investigating the past, documenting the dead and old death practices.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to have you all together. Sometimes it’s good to see if you can remember things that aren’t in the collective mind,” Craig said. “I’m just curious as to why the place bothers you so much. You do go into work every day, right? But we see the others chilling out with a beer or a drink or having some food at Finnegan’s. They say you head right home.”

  “Yes, I do,” Digby said solemnly. “Maybe it’s the rats. Maybe it’s the walls themselves. Maybe it’s still the idea
that poor Ms. Gilbert was there. I don’t know. I don’t like the place. I know that every day Gleason is up there in his office. I know that Willoughby comes and goes. He has meetings with all his uptown blue bloods now and then, which is a good thing. Without some money going into it, no one would care about our precious past. But as for me...”

  “What?” McBride asked.

  “You can’t go telling the others. I’ll be a laughingstock,” Digby said.

  “This is for this office, for our ears only,” Craig assured him.

  “Like I said, I hear things all day down there. The crypt is a big one, stretches out pretty far. There are rows in it of what is basically shelving or something like bookcases for the dead. And you have the tombs that line the floor, back walls and side walls. When I’m moving down the lines or that shelving, recording data, I don’t like it. You know that thing people say—you get a shiver when someone is walking over your grave? I feel that way when I’m down there.”

  “I visited the catacombs in Paris,” McBride told him. “My wife wanted to go. Me? I see enough dead. But I know what you mean.”

  “Except that I’m always in places like the catacombs of Paris, and I’m usually fine,” Digby said.

  “Where have you traveled most recently, Professor? Have you been in the country for the last year or so?” Mike asked, making it sound more like an interested, work-related question than one that would be voiced in an interrogation.

  Digby’s face lit up. “No, funny that Detective McBride mentioned Paris. The university sent me out there to investigate an unbelievable site—the discovery of what we believe to be old bones and artifacts from the Hundred Years’ War. Carbon testing is still going on, but it was unbelievable! Story has it that one side or the other massacred a whole village. History! It’s told by the victors, so they say, and it’s for us to tell the truth.”

  “Sounds wonderful, Professor,” Craig said. “How long were you there?”

  “Almost a year. Just made it back about a month ago,” Digby told them. “The university was wonderful about it, but then, of course, the prestige of having a professor involved in such a find is quite something in the academic field—not to mention, of course, what I’ll publish when the results are in.”