“What was Caroline hoping to achieve by these sessions?”
“Her goal was to prove a support system was a positive method of therapy for patients suffering from blocked memories. She believed those in the group would come together for each other, and the overwhelming support would assist them in healing faster.”
“Sounds honorable enough, but you’re right—it was risky.”
“I wasn’t against her finding new avenues to explore. It was the way she went about it that I disliked.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Each session focused on a single patient while the others offered support and empathy. The patient was given tea before they began, which contained a drug taken from the ayahuasca vine. It’s a natural plant found in the Amazon. But natural doesn’t mean safe, and while it’s grown in Australia and isn’t illegal, the extracts taken from acacia plants and mixed with the vine are.”
“Did you tell Caroline how you felt about her using it?”
“A few times. I wanted her to cut that part out of her experiment. She didn’t listen.”
“What does the drug do?” I asked.
“It alters a person’s state of consciousness. For some, it has only a little effect. For others, it’s far more severe. The user hallucinates, which can last up to six hours. The main problem I had with it is there’s no way to predict how a person will respond to it. In my opinion, she could have tested her research without the use of it.”
“You gave her your opinions, but you didn’t do anything to stop her.”
There was a long pause.
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I regret it now, just as she regretted the tragic death of one of her patients.”
“Do you know what happened to Evan Hall in his session?”
“I don’t have all the details. Caroline was so distraught over how it went, she wouldn’t really talk about it.”
“Was his session the first one she did?”
“It was the second. A woman was the first, and from what Caroline told me, it went very well.”
“I believe the other man in the group ended Caroline’s life. He blamed her for Evan’s death.”
There was another pause.
“Mr. Palmer,” I said, “are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here. Caroline did mention something about him, the patient she didn’t get to. She said he was far worse off than the other two.”
“In what way?”
“Normally, we wouldn’t break the patient’s trust by talking about their sessions. We only did it because of my expertise in the area she was researching.”
“And what did she say about him?”
“She told me he could be delusional at times, blending past with present, reality with fiction. Other times, he was highly functional and intelligent. Because of this, I warned her to exclude him from the first test group and to use individuals who would accept the treatment more easily, but Caroline felt confident she could help him.”
“Do you know anything more about him? Did she ever give you his name, or say anything that would help me locate him?”
“She said his name once. It was an accident. She was talking too fast, and it just slipped out. It’s John.”
John.
A common name that could take a lifetime for me to figure out the rest, and I still wouldn’t have it. They’d used fake names, according to Evan’s mother.
“I was told the patient’s real names weren’t used during their sessions.”
“That’s right, but I helped her select the candidates for the first round, and as far as I know, the names I was given were their actual given names.”
“You don’t remember John’s surname?” I asked.
“It sounded familiar like something I’d heard before: Falston or Falster, maybe.”
It only took a second for my brain to kick in. “Could it have been Falstaff?”
“Yeah, you know something? I think that’s right.”
The answer to the killer’s identity had been in front of me all along, wrapped in pretty packaging, teased and paraded before the police and the local paper, and yet we’d all been oblivious to it. Even I was at fault. But now I had something no one else did yet—clarity.
I ended the call and rushed out the door, running straight into James.
“I was just on my way to see you,” he said.
“And I was on my way to see you,” I said.
He threw his arms around me, gripping me tightly, a gesture I didn’t fully understand. I broke from the embrace and stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“Talking to Grace. This morning she came to me, and we went over everything one more time from start to finish, without anything left out this time. She asked if Tommy pushed Hugh because he was trying to protect her, how could he be saved from going to the bad place.”
“So she admitted it wasn’t her after all?”
“She will if we can help keep him from going to prison.”
“Do you think the story she told you this morning is accurate?”
“It’s as accurate as we’re going to get. She’s still confused about what happened. Tommy is too. But we’ll do our best to help them both through it no matter what happens.”
“I hope it works out for the best for both of them,” I said. “I need to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“I have a name. John Falstaff.”
“Are you saying ...”
I nodded. “Yes, I am. I believe he’s our killer.”
There was one John Falstaff living a short drive from the city. As the police focused their efforts on heading to the house to confirm if he was the man, I took another approach. I believed they’d confirm they had their killer, but I also believed he wouldn’t be at home when they arrived. He would have anticipated they were getting closer to discovering his identity, and today he’d go out of his way to make sure he remained a step ahead of the rest, just like he always had.
James walked me to the car. “I was hoping you’d hang around here this morning until we get back from the police station.”
“You know I can’t do that. I have my orders.”
“I know what Miller wants. I still wish you would wait a bit longer, though.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Everything will be okay. I won’t be alone. I have the unmarked police car behind me, and two officers assigned to watch my back. GPS devices, blah, blah, blah. I’m covered.”
He sighed because he knew he had no choice other than to relent.
“I still don’t have to like it,” he said. “Let me know when you get there, all right?”
I slipped inside the car and started the ignition. “You go take care of Grace, and I’ll see you all later.”
He nodded. “I’m holding you to that.”
Ever since I could remember, men had always tried to protect me—from my father, from an abusive boyfriend, from myself. And while their hearts were always in the right place and I’d admired all of them for it, what they failed to realize was that sometimes I needed to validate myself, stand up for myself, on my own two feet, and figure out for myself what was right. I’d risked my life on several occasions, and I’d continue risking it on several more. I’d been smart and stupid, rational and flat-out reckless. One of my favorite modern-day poets said:
see things for what they are
don’t waste time pushing through
smoke only to get to a dirty mirror
you’re too clean and shiny
and bright for that
And I supposed when I looked back on my life, it summed me up well.
I found a balding, heavily wrinkled Robert Falstaff weeding the garden in front of his house. He wore a loose, white tank top under a pair of overalls and was an elderly, thin slip of a man, who looked like he lived on nothing but the smallest rations of rice. I introduced mysel
f and said I wondered if I could ask him some questions about his son. He agreed and suggested we talk in the house, and I countered, commenting on what a nice day it was before asking if we could remain outside. I wanted to keep things out in the open, where I had more control of the situation.
We walked to a table on his front deck and sat down.
“Was your son named after a character in Shakespeare’s plays?” I asked.
“He wasn’t. I didn’t even know there was a character with his name until John was about seventeen years old and played a small role in the high school’s version of Hamlet. One of the other kids in the play asked John if he knew his name was the same as the guy in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and John said yes. From then on, he told everyone he was named after the man.”
“Can I see a photo of John?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I suppose.”
He went into the house, returning with an old, tattered photo album. I flipped through it, seeing a boy who appeared shy and frail, but moderately happy, until we reached the pictures of him in his preteen years. His expression had changed. The innocence was gone and had been replaced with an empty, withdrawn look. The photos were still too young for me to make a positive ID, but the features were similar to the man I’d spoken to on the road.
“Do you have any photos of John that are more recent?” I asked.
“Well, I might have, but I’d have to do some digging around. My boy was never big on pictures, especially as he got older. You still haven’t told me why you’ve come here asking about him.”
“Were you aware your son was in therapy with a woman who died recently?” I asked. “Caroline Ashby?”
“I’d heard she died, but he didn’t tell me he was in therapy again.”
“Again? Was he in therapy when he was younger?”
“He hasn’t gone for years now, but he saw someone when he was a kid, and again for a short period of time in his twenties.”
“Why was he seeing a therapist?” I asked.
“The first time it was because his mum died. He was depressed. He wouldn’t eat, and he often woke up in the middle of the night screaming for her.”
“What happened to his mother?”
“Helen? Well, she ... umm ... she killed herself. Overdosed on prescription pills and passed out in the pool. Hard to know whether she drowned herself or whether she just passed out. Either way, she died, and he found her.”
“That must have been horrible for him.”
“Yeah, he blamed himself.”
“But he was just a kid. How was it his fault?”
“There were other circumstances involved. My brother Frank had just died, and Helen and Frank were close. Helen didn’t take Frank’s death well.”
There was a fair amount of confusion in what he’d just said, and I felt like there was a huge gap in the story that he was purposefully leaving out. I decided I’d circle back to it later.
“The second time he went to therapy, what did he go for?” I asked.
“After Helen died, John never fully recovered. He lived in a fantasy world at times, I guess you could say. He was a smart kid, had the highest aptitude test in high school. He could have gone anywhere and had any career.”
“What did he end up doing?”
“He was in medical school for a while. He was fascinated with the human body. He enjoyed watching doctors perform surgeries. I thought he’d become one himself.”
Bingo. We had ourselves a knife-wielding winner.
“Why didn’t he finish med school?”
“When he dropped out, I asked him why, and all he said was he wasn’t interested enough in saving people’s lives to pursue it.”
He wasn’t interested in saving them, because he was far more interested in taking them.
“What does your son do as a career now?” I asked.
“He makes sauces and dips.”
“Does he have a business here in town?”
He shook his head. “He sells most of his stuff directly to some of the local markets. A few of the grocery stores carry some of his stuff too. He doesn’t need a storefront. The locals just love his food blog.”
“His food blog?”
“He posts recipes on there a few times a week along with links on how to purchase the sauces and dips he makes.”
“Do you know if there’s a photo of your son on his blog?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’m not on there all that much. I get all the stuff for free, you see, being his father and all.”
“Do you know the name of the blogging site or what he calls his business?”
“The Secret’s in the Sauce.”
I took out my phone and googled the name. The site popped up at the top of the page, and I clicked on it. It was visually beautiful and clean, just like I expected it would be. I scanned the top of the page for the About Me link and clicked on it. At the top was a black-and-white photo of a man, side profile. His face was shaded from the camera. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.
I stood up and looked at Robert. “Can you excuse me for a moment? I need to make a phone call.”
The secret was no longer just in the sauce. The secret was out. And although the photo of John Falstaff wasn’t front-facing and was shadowed, one item he was wearing really clinched it for me. He wore a fedora—the same, exact fedora I’d seen him in.
I called Miller, confirming the man whose name I’d given this morning was the same man whom I’d spoken to along the road. He was grateful for the tip and responded in kind, telling me they were sifting through things at John Falstaff’s house, which Tommy had confirmed was the place he’d been taken. John wasn’t there, and it seemed he had no plan to return. He had left a note on the table stating as much. Concerned he had a runner, Miller sent officers to the airport, anticipating John was about to leave the country and go off the grid.
I agreed John was going off the grid, but I felt he’d stick much closer to home, finding a way to blend in, possibly even reinventing himself. Cairns had a well-known, friendly backpacker community and was a place every type of person visited from a myriad of countries. All John had to do was make a few changes to his look, and he’d fit right in.
When I walked back to the table, Robert was sitting there, patiently waiting.
“What is it you think my son has done?” he asked.
“It may be hard for you to take.”
He shrugged. “My life has been hard to take, but here I am, still living. Go on now and just say it.”
For all the times in the past when I couldn’t put the brakes on my nonstop blathering, I found myself wanting to spare him the details of what his son had so violently done.
“I believe he murdered Caroline Ashby and Adelaide Wiggins,” I said. “And he tried to murder Senator Ashby.”
“How do you know? What evidence do you have to prove it?”
The way he said it gave me the impression he was curious, but not startled by what I’d said.
“I met your son,” I said. “I didn’t know his name at the time, but he confessed what he’d done to me.”
“And you’re sure you have the right man?”
I nodded.
Robert drummed his fingers along the table, thinking. “I see.”
I crossed my arms. “You don’t seem shocked to hear about what your son has done.”
“I’ve always known what he was capable of, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“My son can be ruthless at times, that’s all.”
Only it wasn’t all. Just looking at him, I could tell. He knew things, dark things I imagined he didn’t want to talk about, and I wondered if he’d known of his son’s character flaw because there had been a time when he’d struggled with the same one himself. Sitting in front of me now with heavy bags under his eyes and a crooked back, it seemed time had made him a different man than I imagined he once was.
“My son is not a bad person,” he said. “He r
eally isn’t. He’s just been troubled from time to time. I blame myself for it.”
“How is it your fault?”
“I didn’t know how to deal with his pain and suffering after Helen died, and I wasn’t around a lot. Looking back now, I can see he didn’t have the support he needed. It was a different time then. People didn’t talk through things like they do now. We just shoved it down so far inside ourselves, it never had the chance to come up again.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you what’s happened. The police are at John’s place now, going through his things. He knew they were coming and left a note saying he wouldn’t return. Any idea where he might go?”
His father bowed his head and remained silent for a time. I waited. The conversation hadn’t been easy. Not for me, and not for him. The least I could do was to offer whatever patience I could. After a minute, he pushed his chair back and stood.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I need rest.”
“I understand. Would you be willing to answer my question before I leave?”
“I just can’t talk about this anymore,” he said. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I just ...”
As his words trailed off, his eyes began to roll back into his head. He tried to take a step forward and stumbled, crashing down on the deck below. I dropped to my knees next to him.
“Mr. Falstaff? Are you all right?”
He didn’t respond.
I ran out of the yard, waving my arms in the air at the police sitting in wait nearby. “Something’s wrong with John’s father. Call for an ambulance.”
Robert Falstaff had suffered a stroke, but it was minor, and he would recover. He’d been picked up and transported to the hospital for testing. I walked to my car and got inside, feeling a tremendous amount of guilt over the role I felt I’d played in what had just happened to him. I thought about all I’d said, wishing I would have listened to my inner voice and held off on telling him his son was a barbaric killer. But not telling him wouldn’t have done him any favors. He would have found out either way.
Smoke and Mirrors (Sloane Monroe Book 8) Page 16