The Stranger You Know

by Andrea Kane

  Suzanne’s lips had tightened at Casey’s statement, but the fear in her eyes didn’t fade. “That’s hearsay,” she replied. She’d been well-coached, but Casey could see that she didn’t believe a word of her own denial.

  “No, that’s fact,” Casey told her. “Not hearsay and not supposition. But that’s not the issue. As of now he’s been linked to additional homicides. I wasn’t present for those. So I want to do some information-gathering, to make sure we get the most comprehensive picture possible, without being influenced by last year’s events. That includes not just the facts, but the nuances. We want to paint an accurate picture of your husband and his state of mind. Will you give us that chance?”

  Suzanne balked. Obviously, Casey’s psychological approach had found its mark.

  “The police are already here asking questions and rifling my apartment.” Suzanne was waffling in her decision. “What could you add that would have any positive impact?”

  “Nonprocedural elements. We can probe areas that the police don’t feel are important. We can concentrate on your perceptions, on your assessment of your husband and his activities. Claire, for example, is an intuitive. It’s possible she can sit in a room or handle specific objects and pick up on your husband’s energy—what he was thinking or feeling. That might help us humanize him. And humanizing him could turn out to be the only way to soften the hard-core evidence the police have uncovered.”

  Suzanne turned to Claire, gazing at her with the typical expression of curiosity that Claire had come to expect. “You’re a psychic?”

  “In a matter of speaking, yes,” Claire replied, opting to bypass the accurate definition of an intuitive.

  “Bottom line,” Casey continued, “the evidence is stacked against your husband. You can’t hurt him by speaking to us. You might even be able to help him,” she repeated. “If there are mitigating circumstances, details that have been overlooked or a personal perspective that didn’t come out in court the first time, now is your opportunity to rectify that.”

  A long pause ensued.

  Finally, Suzanne gave a reluctant nod. “Okay. Come in.” She stepped aside so they could enter.

  The three of them walked in. Casey glanced around, making a quick assessment of the apartment. Hardwood oak floors. Modern furnishings. Lots of space. More or less what she’d expected.

  The detectives were going through the desk, drawer by drawer. Hutch was perched on the edge of a swivel chair, reading over bank statements, his eyes narrowed in concentration. His head came up at the sound of Casey’s voice, and he briefly met her gaze, his lips twitching at the realization that she’d talked her way in. Unsurprised, he went back to his work.

  “Can we sit down somewhere and talk?” Casey asked Suzanne.

  “Why don’t we take a few kitchen chairs and go into Glen’s study?” Suzanne replied. “The police have finished going through it. The place is a mess, but it’s comfortable. And we won’t be interrupted.”

  That choice piqued Claire’s interest. “Did your husband spend a lot of time in his study?”

  “Yes. That was his sanctuary. He spent long hours there, doing work or just thinking.”

  “Good. Then I’ll have the best chance of connecting with him in that room.”

  The study was a richly paneled room with a wall of bookshelves, a traditional desk and swivel chair, and a window ledge of potted plants. Although there were quite a few disconnected wires, the components of a state-of-the-art computer system remained on the desk and printer stand.

  Casey got the immediate sense that Fisher kept things in strict order. The books were alphabetically arranged on the shelves, the plants were lined up equidistant from one another and the desk was in the exact center of the room.

  “A total control freak,” Marc muttered behind Casey.

  She gave a curt nod, then sat down on one of the chairs they’d moved in from the kitchen.

  “Is there anything you’d rather Claire not touch?” she asked Suzanne.

  That particular psychology worked well on people. It put the ball in their court, gave them control of the process. This way, they relaxed, and Claire wouldn’t have to worry about setting them off if she picked up some off-limits treasure.

  Sure enough, the guard-dog look vanished from Suzanne’s face.

  “I’m fine with you touching whatever you choose to. We have no valuables in this room.” She seated herself behind the desk in an unconscious attempt to erect a wall between herself and the FI team.

  “Thank you.” Casey gestured for Claire to get started. Meanwhile, her own mind was already on the process at hand.

  Marc lowered himself into the chair beside Casey’s, draping one arm across the back in a relaxed position. The less formidable he appeared, the better. As it was, Suzanne kept edging nervous glances his way.

  “What can I tell you?” she asked, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “Let’s start with how and where you and your husband met,” Casey suggested.

  An innocent enough question—one that was usually greeted with some sign of tenderness or nostalgia.

  There was none in Suzanne’s reply. It was almost as if she were reciting a well-memorized speech. “We met eleven years ago in a pharmacy right here in midtown. We both had the flu and were hunting down medications to make us less miserable. We ended up comparing notes on home remedies. Glen was charming, even with a fever. I gave him my telephone number. He called a week later to see how I was feeling and to ask me out to dinner. We dated for about five months. Then he proposed. We were married a month after that.”

  “Wow.” Casey’s brows rose. “You planned your wedding in record time.”

  “We didn’t have a traditional wedding,” Suzanne explained. “Neither Glen nor I have any family. Nor are we religious. So we went to a justice of the peace and said our vows.”

  “I hope you at least had a honeymoon.”

  “We took a cruise.” Once again, Suzanne tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It was lovely.”

  Clearly not. The woman was so strung out when she spoke about her husband and their relationship that it screamed dysfunctional. Suzanne’s body language was a manifestation of fear. No surprise, given the monster she was married to.

  “I heard that you teach piano,” Casey continued, still sticking to safe ground. “Are your students adults or children?”

  “Both. Mostly children.” A hint of a smile. “They’re challenging. It’s hard to make Mozart cool. But I love watching their reactions when they get it right.”

  Mission accomplished. Suzanne had relaxed.

  “You’re obviously good with kids,” Casey noted. “What about your husband—does he like children, as well?”

  The mask snapped back into place. “He has no problem with them. But he’s not the paternal type, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Time to abandon that subject.

  “What about music? You’re clearly into classical. What about Glen?”

  “He’s not a huge music fan.” Suzanne shifted in her seat. “He spends most of his time on his clients. Since accounting is not my strong suit, I don’t ask too many questions.”

  “Different interests can be good for a marriage,” Casey said. “What things did you do together?”

  This time Suzanne flinched, ever so imperceptibly. “We watched movies. Glen did crossword puzzles. I read. We were homebodies. Nothing too exciting.”

  Homebodies? Casey suspected that Suzanne was more of a prisoner.

  Casey went in a little deeper.

  “Was Glen an easy man to live with? Was he good to you?”

  Suzanne was on her guard again. Her gaze flicked away from Casey’s. “I realize Glen hurt you. I’m not stupid. But, in his defense, he’s a complicated man. He doesn’t talk much about his past, but I know he lost his mother when he was six and his father when he was eight. His brother, Clark, was ten years older, so he kept Glen out of the foster care system and basically raised
him. Clark got married when Glen was in college. Not too many years later, Clark and his wife were killed in an automobile accident. That left Glen on his own. I know what that feeling is like. It’s frightening. It changes you. It changed Glen. I’m sure of it.”

  Casey was sure it had made him angry, introverted. But it hadn’t turned him into a psychopath. That sickness had been with him all his life.

  She glanced down at her notes. “You mentioned that Glen had no family. What about his nephew, Jack? As I understand it, he lived with Glen after his parents died in the accident.”

  “He did.” Suzanne swallowed. “Glen thought of it as a chance to give back. Clark took Glen in when he was young and alone. Glen did the same thing for Jack. He became his legal guardian.”

  “Yet you didn’t mention him before. Had he moved out by the time you and Glen married?”

  Suzanne’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “On paper, he lived with us for a few years after we got married. But he didn’t spend much time with us. Jack was a typical teenager. Wild and reckless. He was always with his friends. He took off when he was sixteen. He didn’t stay in touch.”

  “So he and your husband weren’t close?”

  “They were fine. They got along. As I said, Jack wasn’t around much. So, even though Glen was Jack’s guardian, Jack didn’t factor heavily in our lives.”

  “I understand.” Casey’s eyes shifted, ever so briefly, to Claire, who was standing at the edge of the desk, her fingertips resting on top of a Newton’s cradle. Her fingers slid down the wires of each ball, lingered on the metal sphere at the bottom, then slid back up to the base.

  Her expression was intense, and she was visibly recoiling from something she was sensing.

  Casey turned her attention quickly back to Suzanne. She had to keep her engaged, so that her focus was not on Claire. When Claire was locked into whatever energy she was picking up on, her emotions were written all over her face.

  “I can see that you believe in your husband,” Casey concluded. “Is that because you love him or because you think he’s innocent?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that.” Suzanne was staring at the carpet. “I know what the evidence says. I know Glen made a confession. I believe that confession was coerced—not only by you, but by the police. I think Glen was intimidated. I don’t think he realized what he was saying. That’s all I think.”

  Another memorized speech.

  Interesting that Suzanne hadn’t responded to the question about loving her husband, only about her doubts concerning his guilt. And even those responses had been halfhearted.

  “Mrs. Fisher, was there ever a time when your husband hurt you?” Casey asked the question as gently as possible. But she needed to get a total read on this woman.

  “Never.” The pulse beating at Suzanne’s neck said otherwise. “Glen has a temper. Sometimes he yells. But nothing more than that.”

  “Does his yelling frighten you?”

  “No.” Her pulse beat faster, and her reply was blurted out much too quickly. “I know he’d never act on his anger. Most of the time, he’d work out his feelings by going out for a long walk. That always calmed him down. He’d come home in much better spirits.”

  I’ll bet he did, Casey thought. After raping and killing another woman.

  “He’s a good man, Ms. Woods,” Suzanne said, defending her husband to the last. “Yelling is hardly a crime. Every marriage has its challenges.”

  “I agree.” Casey watched Suzanne shove an invisible strand of hair behind her ear—clearly a habitual gesture and a glaring tell. “Do you visit him in prison?”

  “Almost every Sunday. I don’t teach on Sundays. So I drive up to Auburn on Saturday night and visit Glen the next morning.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’m sure your visits are the highlight of his week.”

  “I hope so.”

  The woman looked completely unstrung. Casey’s verdict was that she was afraid of her husband, but that, at the same time, she needed and admired him. It was classic battered-wife syndrome—pretty much the assessment Casey had expected to come away with.

  Marc slanted a sideways glance at Claire, who had picked up a handsome silver ballpoint pen and was rolling it between her fingers, studying it. Abruptly, she dropped it onto the desk, pulled away her hand as if she’d been burned and took a step back from the desk. “I’m very sorry for what you’ve had to go through, Mrs. Fisher,” Marc said, speaking up for the first time and trying to stall so Claire could compose herself. “First the trial and conviction, and now a bunch of detectives rummaging through your home. I’m sure it’s upsetting to have to go through all this again.”

  “It is.” Suzanne was visibly puzzled. She clearly felt she should be hating the FI team, but was finding it exceedingly difficult to do so.

  Which meant they were doing their job. The more ambivalent Suzanne Fisher was about Forensic Instincts, the more likely they were to get her cooperation later, should they need it.

  “I appreciate your consideration,” she said. “It’s...unexpected.”

  Marc shot another swift glance at Claire, who had pulled herself together. She met his gaze and nodded, telling him that she was okay and that she was finished.

  He took her cue and stood up. “On that note, I think we’ve kept you long enough.”

  “I agree.” Casey—having picked up on all the same signs Marc had—rose to her feet, as well.

  Abruptly, Suzanne turned to Claire. “Did you sense anything?”

  Claire was in the hot seat and she knew it. She also knew it was time to put on her game face and to give Suzanne something the woman could live with. Otherwise, the tentative connection she’d so painstakingly established would be severed, and FI would be written off as the enemy.

  Claire wasn’t about to undo all the progress that Casey and Marc had just made.

  Stick to the truth. There’s less to remember.

  “You’re right that your husband is a very complex man,” she replied. “He’s also a very pensive man. He did a great deal of planning in this room. I can feel the intense level of concentration.” Claire gave one of those gentle smiles that lowered the defenses of even the shrewdest subjects. “You understand your husband well. He knows that. He counts on that. And he appreciates that.”

  Her declaration had the desired effect, although, unsurprisingly, Suzanne looked more relieved than she did happy. “Thank you. That’s good to hear.”

  She was a lot more relaxed saying goodbye than she’d been saying hello.

  * * *

  “She’s scared shitless of him,” Marc said as soon as they were outside the building, heading for the subway.

  Casey nodded as she strode, New York City–style, down the street. “I can’t make up my mind how deep the abuse goes. Does he strike her or just manipulate her emotionally?”

  “My guess?” Marc responded, keeping pace with Casey. “He manipulates her emotionally. He’s highly intelligent and shrewd. He can get what he wants through mind games. That would challenge and please him a lot more than physical abuse. She’s malleable. She loves him and fears him in equal proportions. He has a powerful hold on her, even while he’s in prison.”

  “She’s malleable, but she’s not stupid,” Casey said. “She’s found a way to justify her husband’s actions—at least the actions she knows about. It’s the only way she could find to live with herself, or with him. Which leads to the next question—how much of who he is and what he does is she aware of, and how much is she totally oblivious to?”

  “You know how we get that answer, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Casey replied. “We follow her. Patrick is the best one of us for the job. He’s great at tailing people and staying inconspicuous. Plus, Suzanne Fisher has never met him. So even if she does spot him in the crowd, she’ll have no idea who he is or what he’s doing.”

  “We can’t forget the nephew, Jack.”

  “We aren’t. I have Ryan digging into his
background and trying to find his whereabouts. It stands to reason that he was fine for money, assuming that Clark’s inheritance and trust fund filtered down to him after his father’s death.”

  “Yeah, but after seven or eight years, money has a way of running out,” Marc said dryly. “Who knows how Jack’s living now.”

  “Or why he was so eager to get away from his uncle.”

  “Glen Fisher is an evil, evil man,” Claire declared out of nowhere. She stopped walking, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the silver ballpoint pen that had been on Glen’s desk. “I took this. I shouldn’t have, but I did. His wife won’t miss it. If she does, I’ll claim to have taken it by accident, and return it immediately.”

  “It’s significant?” Casey asked.

  “It’s emanating powerful energy.” Claire eyed the pen, still glassy-eyed and unhinged from the enormity of what she’d picked up on in Glen Fisher’s study. “He used this for sketching out his crimes, and for taking notes on future crimes. He’s done unspeakable things. His wife has good reason to be terrified of him—even if he is in prison. He has a way of reaching the outside world even from his cell.”

  That brought Casey’s head up. She’d planned on waiting until they were back in the office to grill Claire. But what she’d just said shot those intentions to hell.

  “What does that mean—he reaches the outside world from his cell? Did you pick up something about whoever he passed the baton to? Who the new offender is? What their arrangement is?”

  “No. Maybe. I’m not sure.” Claire shoved the pen back in her pocket. Ignoring the stream of pedestrians who were muttering as they veered around her, she remained at a standstill, massaging her temples.

  “My brain is about to explode, there’s so much pounding at it right now,” she said. “I need to go home. I need to be alone and think. There are too many stimuli shouting at me. The traffic and city noise doesn’t help. Outside stimuli. Inside stimuli. I need to be in my own private space so I can sort things out and make sense out of chaos. Give me some time.” Her complexion was ashen. “I’ll call you the moment I make sense of things.”