Don't Look In (Gus Young Thrillers Book 1)

by Tom Saric

  They sat there staring at me, and I was able to hold their eyes in a moment of mild hypnosis.

  "Deal?" I said.

  Their hands dropped back onto their laps and they looked at me with uncertainty.

  "Sorry, Doc, what?"

  "Do we have a deal?" I said. "For the shock therapy."

  Lorna nodded, and Joe followed.

  "What I need you to do is go home." I took a deep breath, and for a moment I had a second thought about going through with it, but decided to press forward. "And fuck like animals."

  Lorna gasped and Joe started laughing nervously. They exchanged glances. This was the first time I had seen them look at each other in session.

  "I'm serious," I doubled down. "You rip her clothes off. You spank him. You both scream so loud the neighbors wonder if you're okay. Pull each other's hair. Whatever you're into."

  Lorna was laughing a bit now. I was tapping into her underlying desires.

  "Be the animals you are."

  I smiled, and the two of them gazed at each other, their eyes filled with desire.

  "That was very inappropriate," Lorna said, still smiling.

  "Unexpected," Joe added.

  "It's shock therapy. That's what it's supposed to do. I'll see you next week."

  After they left, I sat there, hoping Lorna wouldn't report me to my licensing body for being a sexually deviant quack. I'd have a hell of a time explaining what just happened, but I felt that a mild hypnosis was necessary. Lorna had such inhibitions that a bomb was required to break that dam.

  And it was urgent, because their marriage was hanging by a thread. The two of them staying together was best for everyone. Including Wanda.

  I was finishing the last few lines of my notes on the session with the Barringtons in their blue notebook, which was the shadow file. Each entry started on a new page, and the notes ranged anywhere from a few lines to a few pages. My colleagues had often criticized me for keeping bare-bones notes, but I wanted to record as little information as possible. I treated my notes as little jogs for my memory rather than a transcript. In the event that my notes were ever stolen, they would be close to unintelligible to anyone else. It helped ensure my patients' secrets were safe. But I had been keeping more details lately because of my patchy recollection.

  A knock at the door. Sheila poked her head in.

  "Sheriff Weagle is here to see you."

  "He wants more therapy?"

  After his sheepishness last night, I sensed that Ernie probably wanted to work something out. Therapy often went like that. Rather than a single episode, people required a few rounds of treatment before they got resolution.

  "No, he said it was police business."

  I put down my pen, thinking of the kettle and my episodes. Did Herman tell them about having to rescue me in the woods? The last thing I needed was for them to demand I take cognitive tests. A fire in a small town was always a big deal. The sheriffs normally spent their time catching drunk drivers and settling property disputes. An investigation into a fire could be the most exciting thing they did all year.

  "Sure, let him in."

  Ernie stepped inside, followed by Debbie Parks. They both carried notepads. Ernie chewed gum. Debbie looked even more serious than usual. I shook their hands and invited them to sit down.

  "Is my house okay to enter yet? To get my stuff?"

  Debbie and Ernie looked at each other. Debbie said, "We don't know. We haven't been in touch with the firefighters."

  "We can look into it," Ernie said.

  "Do you need more information about the fire? I can try to go through what I remember ab-"

  "Dr. Young, we're not here because of the fire," Debbie said. Her voice was sharp.

  "No?"

  "Wanda Flynn," Ernie said.

  I grunted. I wouldn't acknowledge that I knew Wanda, but I wondered what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into.

  "A patient of yours."

  "I can't tell you one way or the other. Confidentiality."

  "We know she's a patient of yours."

  I shrugged. I wouldn't let my body language betray my oath.

  Ernie leaned forward, chewing his gum aggressively. "She was found in front of her home early this morning. Shot dead."

  9

  I shot up so fast I nearly tipped over my armchair. I put my hand on my forehead and paced behind Ernie and Debbie before steadying myself against the wall. The walls seemed to pulsate around me, and nausea bubbled in my gut. I blocked out everything around me.

  Wanda lived on the edge, but not so close that anyone would want to kill her. And she was turning her life around. I immediately thought of her last visit. Wanda had been fearful of her brother, worried he might seek revenge. I reassured her that it was safe. I pressed and pressed her to resolve matters with him. She trusted me. And now she was dead.

  "We're sorry, Gus," Ernie said.

  I still didn't respond, partly because my oath of confidentiality lasted beyond the grave. Partly because I was still thinking about how a brother could bring himself to kill his sister.

  "We need information from you." Debbie stood and walked over to me. "Her brother, Randy, was released from prison recently. She testified against him in his trial; it was the final nail. Did she ever talk about him?"

  "Maybe you should find him."

  "We already have him in custody," Ernie said, still sitting on the edge of his seat, his back to me. He was smacking his gum. "He says he has an alibi for last night; we're checking that out. So if he's innocent, we have an open case on our hands."

  "Did Wanda ever say anything about anyone she was close to? Did she talk about anyone she was frightened of? I mean in her line of-"

  "I'm not sure you two understand," I said, walking around the chairs so I could look at both Ernie and Debbie. "I keep confidential anything people talk about in here. That includes the identity of my clients. If one of you was a client of mine, I'm sure you wouldn't want me spilling your secrets."

  Ernie stopped chewing.

  "You do know that if we get a warrant," Debbie said, "you would have to hand over your case notes?"

  Debbie was technically correct. By law, upon presentation of a warrant, I would be required to hand over my notebooks. This was the reason that I intentionally kept vague notes, using language that provided very little in the way of substantive information. If anyone ever got hold of Wanda's official record, they would conclude little except that Wanda was seeing me for relationship problems.

  But the shadow files contained more details. These included my observations during sessions, links that I made between a client's present problems and their past relationships, and observations of my own feelings and reactions during sessions. It was sort of like a psychological diary. Courts have been inconsistent at best at forcing therapists to hand those documents over.

  "That's fine," I said.

  "Gus," Ernie said, making eye contact again. "We respect what you do here, but there is a fairly good possibility that Randy, her brother, has an alibi that will check out."

  "Which means that someone else shot her. Dr. Young, we don't just want your notes. We were wondering if we could enlist your help?"

  I realized then why Ernie and Debbie had come to see me so quickly after Wanda's death. The victim's shrink isn't typically the first person that the sheriff visits in an investigation. I wanted to shut down right then and retreat to my cabin. But I also wanted to know if Randy killed Wanda.

  "We know that you used to work big cases that included profiling work. We're a tiny detachment here, so if you could help, maybe make a profile of who could have done this, we’d have somewhere to start."

  I had been a hired gun. In my last few years at the institute, while my star was still rising, ruthless defense attorneys enlisted me to help get their clients off or earn early releases. I was mired in debt at the time. I never lied, I never stretched the truth. But I was convincing and confident.

  And I was wrong once
.

  "If you know that about me, then you know my track record is spotty."

  "Even if you could come to the crime scene, see if you have any insights. It'll help us get whoever did this."

  I nodded but didn't say anything. I wasn't sure I could be impartial on this one. I stared at the Barringtons' notebook on the side table.

  Ernie rose and motioned for Debbie. "Think about it, Gus."

  My eyes lingered on the coils of the blue notebook. Something Ernie had said prompted a memory.

  "What time was she shot?"

  "The best estimate is sometime before two a.m. Why?"

  I looked down at the notebook. "No reason. Just wondering."

  After they left and the door closed, I opened the Barringtons' blue notebook to today's entry. I scanned the page, stopping at something Lorna had said.

  Last night Joe left and didn't return until three in the morning.

  I drove southwest out of Bridgetown, into Maine's wooded interior and toward Wanda's house along the 112. Somehow managed to get myself turned around, so to save time I decided to cut through an old logging road. White pine, red spruce, and birch formed a corridor along the washed-out gravel road filled with deep mud puddles. The rain had turned to mist, but droplets still clung to branches like honey. The sun was trying to break through the blanket of clouds that hung low over the treetops. Black bears and moose lived here and were foraging this time of year, using these old roads as thruways. This was the area where I'd spent my childhood summers. Every August the institute shut down and the other analysts headed to Cape Cod or the Hamptons. My mother would load up our blue Ford Galaxie and drive up to Harmony, population nine hundred and thirty-six, where she had grown up.

  I came to Bridgetown mainly for nostalgia and to escape. My mother had developed Alzheimer's three years ago and insisted on being put in a home near Harmony, so in Bridgetown I was close to her in case she needed anything, but my visits were few and far between.

  My truck lurched over the holes and bumps in the road, dug out by logging trucks driving over soft dirt. Rocks rang off the wheel well as the truck swayed back and forth.

  Wanda said that she planned to go public with Joe's affair after his no-show at the bar. She was a loose cannon, but she had also developed the ability to calm herself quickly. So I would be surprised if she really did go through with it. But even so, I couldn't see Joe shooting her point blank.

  Joe looked rested in session. No bags under his eyes, clean-shaven, no added tension in his face. Joe was a narcissist, but only a true psychopath could kill his mistress and eight hours later show up to marriage counseling like nothing happened.

  Wanda was a project of mine. The world was stacked against her. She was given no chance in life, but she had a spirit that I felt I could unleash if given enough time. Maybe that was my own issue: I wanted to be her savior.

  I had no sexual desire toward Wanda, but I had an affinity for her beyond what I had for most clients. I needed to see her overcome her demons.

  Up ahead, three fallen fir trees blocked the road. I stopped the truck and tried to lift one, but like a vise around my waist, my back tightened before I managed to drag it an inch. My shortcut wouldn't pan out. I got back in the truck, five-point turned on the narrow path, and headed back to the highway.

  A phone call came through on Bluetooth.

  "Good morning," Renee said when I answered. "How was the hotel?"

  It was good to hear her voice, temporarily making me forget about Wanda.

  "Lumpy mattress, stale coffee, scratchy towels."

  "Lovely," she said as my truck bottomed out over a boulder the size of a basketball. "Your kitchen is out of commission for a while. So I was thinking maybe I could take you out for dinner?"

  I was approaching the highway. A sheriff's cruiser was parked at the intersection, blocking the path.

  "I'd love that," I said, nearing the cruiser. "I've got to go, but how about I pick you up at seven?"

  "It's a date."

  I stopped and threw my truck in park, but left it running as I slowly got out. Light rain was still falling. I approached the cruiser’s passenger side. The window rolled down, and Debbie Parks leaned over from behind the wheel.

  "Lost, Doctor?"

  "I was, um, just trying to cut across this old road. To get there."

  "To the Flynn trailer?"

  I nodded.

  "The home is over that way." She pointed with her thumb in the opposite direction. She seemed to be looking for a reaction, but I didn't take the bait. Then she offered, "It's easy to get turned around back here. Come on, follow me. I'll get you there."

  I tailed Debbie's cruiser down two empty single-lane highways lined by thick woods and broken by gray lakes. The only signs of civilization were mailboxes spaced miles apart. They stood at the edges of driveways that weaved through the forest into cabins hidden from view.

  I saw the blue and red lights ahead. Three cruisers and an ambulance were lined up, blocking the road. One officer patrolled the perimeter while three others wearing rubber gloves milled around Wanda's property. Paramedics waited beside the ambulance. Behind the cruisers, yellow police tape cordoned off the highway between the drainage ditches. A white sheet covered a body in the middle of the road. A medical examiner in a white jumpsuit and booties knelt down and placed yellow numbered markers beside the body.

  Wanda's trailer was more run-down than when I had last driven past. Last summer, after she had no-showed for two appointments in a row, I decided to drive by her place to check on her. She was hunched over, pulling weeds from her flower garden filled with peonies, gladiolas, and daisies. She didn't notice me, and I was satisfied she was safe, so I drove away.

  The streaks of algae that clung to the white vinyl siding begged for a pressure wash. One of the teal window shutters hung by a single screw. The rusty storm door wasn't fully shut and creaked as the wind whipped it back and forth. She kept pots of wilted fall mums around the edges of the trailer.

  Ernie Weagle stood on Wanda's driveway, his back turned to me as he spoke to a man. I got out of my truck and followed Debbie. As we approached them, I saw that the other man was Night Hawk Ned.

  "No," Ned said. "I said it was 5:15. Still dark and looked like someone clobbered a deer. And someone has been. This month alone, I scraped off six. Two six-point bucks. Someone's mowing them down, I tell you-"

  "Ned," Ernie said calmly. "Can we stick to what you found at 5:15 a.m.?"

  "That whistleblowing whore." Ned pointed at me. "He knows her. She goes to his back room at Buck's."

  "You found Ms. Flynn."

  "Yup. I rolled her over, was gonna start CPR. I was actually the person who came up with thirty pumps, two breaths. Red Cross stole it from me, ’cause they saw me one day down by the beach pulling this young girl from a rip tide. Next thing you know it's nationwide. Worldwide. And nothing for me. I've sent them a hundred cease and desist-"

  "Did you see anyone else? Any cars, bikes, people, anything?"

  "She's got men coming in and outta here. A big conveyor belt of-"

  "Last night, Ned. Last night."

  "I find her, see she's dead. I call you and then it took FORTY-FIVE minutes for you to come. I could've been dead if the killer was still there."

  Ernie rubbed his forehead. I sympathized with his struggle to rein Ned in enough to get a coherent statement.

  "Debbie," Ernie said, "could you take Ned and get a written statement?"

  Debbie raised her eyebrows and muttered as she walked past Ernie, "You're lucky you outrank me."

  Ned kept talking as Debbie led him to her cruiser.

  "We could use your help, Gus," Ernie said. "I think Randy's alibi will turn out solid and then we'll have no leads. I know you've moved past the forensic stuff and I don't blame you after what happened."

  "I can't give up clinical information. You of all people know how important it is that I keep things hidden."

  "But even if you don't tell u
s anything clinical, could you give us some ideas. Maybe from statements. The body?"

  The thought of seeing Wanda dead turned my stomach. My goal had always been to help her live a full life and thrive. That was ripped away. I decided I needed to see her. I needed to break through denial and know that she was gone. I would channel the anger to find her killer.

  "Okay. I'll help. Limited, though."

  "Let's start with the body."

  I followed Ernie under the police tape toward the white sheet. The medical examiner, a woman in her mid-thirties with blonde hair and wide eyes, stood up as we approached.

  "Could we have a look?" Ernie said. "And a rundown."

  She slowly pulled the sheet back. I felt blood rush up to my face. I regretted agreeing to see the body. The picture of Wanda as the witty, fiery yet soft-hearted woman would be stained by Wanda the corpse. She lay face down on the asphalt, wearing jeans and a white tank top stained dark red. Her legs were splayed wide, one hand by her side, the other awkwardly over her head. Her hair was messy, stained red from the gaping hole in the back of her skull. Through her hair, I could see part of her face turned to the left on the pavement, mouth open. She looked plastic, like a big Barbie scribbled with red Sharpie.

  I took two steps back and turned from Wanda as the medical examiner began speaking.

  "Two shots, one to the back of the head, no exit wound. The second in the middle of her back, exiting through her sternum. Likely severed her vertebrae. Likely died instantly."

  At least she didn't suffer. I could see the eulogy cliché already. But she suffered. Her life was one big exercise in suffering.

  "Bullet?" Ernie said.

  "Actually, I recovered a casing from the ditch." She held it up.

  Ernie snapped on a rubber glove and examined it.

  "Is this, what, a thirty-three?"