Chase stood and walked over to the board.
“So Weston wants to keep Veronica quiet, presumably about Thomas, but also about Neil, because he doesn’t want this business about his son seeing a prostitute to come out. Makes sense. But I still feel we’re missing something. What’s the connection between Chris and Thomas?” Chase said.
“The high school connection.”
Chase shook her head.
“I don’t buy it. What happened back then that would take twenty plus years to surface?”
Drake shrugged.
“There’s still the psychiatrist and the teacher to interview,” he said, his eyes moving across the board. “And the other Smith’s.”
“Fat chance of that happening.”
Drake reluctantly agreed.
“Any word from Detectives Simmons or Yasiv?”
“Not yet. Should be checking in soon,” she sighed. “I’ve got a press conference to get ready for. You going to go talk to Dr. Kruk?”
Drake grimaced.
“No,” he said flatly.
“Well too bad, I’m in charge. Go check him out, see if you can get any information about Thomas from him. Make it brief; as I said before, he’s likely to jump into the confidentiality speech faster than you can fold rockets with four to a flush on board. But maybe you can startle him with your knowledge of Thomas seeing the high-price call girl,” she shrugged. “I don’t know. Just try. If nothing comes out of that or the interview with the teacher, we’ve got nothing that will satisfy Rhodes.”
Drake blew out of his mouth, making his lips vibrate.
Fucking psychiatrists.
“Fine,” he said petulantly.
Chase slapped him on the back, and he winced as new pain shot up from his bruised, probably broken ribs.
“Cheer up, we’ll have all night to chat, remember? We’re relieving Detective Gainsford at ten.”
Drake did remember, and he wasn’t happy about that either. If he was with Chase, he was going to have to remain relatively sober.
“Yeah, sure, good times.
“What about the girl?” Chase asked.
“Let her go,” Drake said. “She’s not going to help us here. Maybe the whore will grow a conscience and talk to us later on.”
“Sure, and I’m Monica Seles.”
CHAPTER 41
“A loss of any loved one—a child, a spouse, a parent, a friend—is always difficult. If you also work with this person, things can be even more difficult. When a parent dies, say, your instincts might be to head back to work, to use work as a vehicle to take your mind off the loss. Clearly, this won’t work if your job reminds you of your loved one. When this happens, I think it’s best to ask yourself why you want to go back to work. And remember, Drake, everything you say here is confidential. But it’s more than that, this place is also a judge free zone. I’m here to help you recover from this terrible loss, nothing more. So please, be honest with me, but most importantly be honest with yourself.”
Drake closed his eyes, not bothering to wipe away the tears that started to stream down his cheeks.
“I want to do right by him, by Clay. He deserves as much.”
“Can you be more specific, Drake? What do you mean by do right by him? Remember to be honest.”
Drake’s breathing hitched.
“I want to make sure that his death wasn’t in vain.”
He heard the psychiatrist scribble something on her ubiquitous pad of paper.
“Can you be more specific? Be honest.”
“I mean, he was dedicated to taking murderers off the street.”
“More specific, be honest.”
“Clay would want me to stay on, to continue in his memory.”
“Specific. Be honest, Drake. Be honest.”
“He was a—”
“Be honest, Drake. Honest. Be honest.”
“I—”
“Honest, Drake, be honest. It’s important to be honest… honest. Be honest!”
“It’s—”
“HONEST! BE HONEST! BE FUCKING HONEST!”
“I want to catch the fucking bastard that killed Clay! I want to find him and I want to put a fucking bullet right between his goddamn eyes!”
Drake was overcome by sobs, the word honest repeating over and over in his mind.
“I want to kill him.”
More scribbles.
“But you did kill him, Drake. You killed the man who murdered Clay Cuthbert. His name was Peter Kellington and he was the Skeleton King. Clay was his eighth victim.”
Drake’s eyes snapped open and he caught sight of his reflection in the rearview mirror. His cheeks were soggy with tears, his eyes bloodshot.
“It wasn’t him,” he sobbed, his hand reaching for the glove box. He popped open and he pulled the miniature of Johnny out. “It couldn’t have been him. I saw someone else there.”
Drake snapped the top off and finished it in one swallow. Then he wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand.
Then he closed his eyes. An image of Clay’s face—Bearded NYPD Homicide Detective is the Skeleton King’s final victim—flashed, and his eyes flew open again.
Startled by the vividness of the image and the messy collaboration of fact and fiction with respect to his interview with the NYPD psychiatrist, Drake ground his teeth and pulled himself out of the car.
The pain that shot up from what he was positive were broken ribs was actually a relief; at least that pain had a tangible source, a physical injury that had caused it.
Something that he could focus his efforts on, distract his mind.
Squinting, he made out a plain white sign amidst many colorful others—Booster Juice, Subway, Audex Accounting of all things—which read: Dr. Mark Kruk, Psychiatry.
Drake made a hard right into the parking lot, and then pulled his Crown Vic close to the white sign out front of the very last unit of the seven or eight-unit strip mall. After another quick look in the mirror—he still looked terrible, the right side of his face turning a sickly gray, punctuated by a smattering of red from burst blood vessels—Drake stepped out into the failing sun.
Dr. Mark Kruk’s unit was the only one in the building with the blinds drawn.
Drake walked up to it and grabbed the door handle, but hesitated and took several breaths before pulling it wide. For some reason, he felt a strange foreboding sensation wash over him, as if he was going to see the NYPD psychiatrist—Dr. Stacey Weinager—standing in the entrance, her beady eyes wide, her mouth twisted in a scowl as she shouted in his face.
“BE HONEST! BE HONEST! BE HONEST!”
How she had passed him, he would never know.
Maybe it was his indubitable charm. Or maybe it was because he slept with her.
Even though there was zero chance that he was going to do the same with Dr. Mark Kruk, his heart fluttered in his chest nonetheless. He just couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he was a blind mole entering a den of vipers as he pulled the door open and stepped inside.
CHAPTER 42
“Adams,” Chase said as she adjusted the buttons on her blouse. The reply on the other end of the cell phone was muted. “Detective Simmons? That you? I don’t have much time to talk now. Going live in five. You got something for me?”
The connection was poor, and she had to concentrate to hear what the man was saying. A uniformed officer popped his head into the dressing room told her that the press was waiting for her.
She waved him away briskly.
“Frank, you’re breaking up. Speak clearly.”
“…hold on a sec…” Detective Simmons replied.
As Chase waited for him to return, the uniform reappeared.
“Everyone’s out there, Detective Adams. Rhodes is—”
Chase covered the mouthpiece of her cell phone.
“Just give me a damn minute!”
The man’s face went red and he left the changing room.
One minute… is that too much to ask for
?”
She brought the phone back to her mouth.
“Frank you really have to—”
“Detective Adams,” Frank said, his voice clear now. “I’ll be quick. The first two teachers, Mrs. Plouffe and Mr. Swanson barely remember Thomas and Neil. They remember Chris because he was a twin, and only then because they thought it was strange that they never met the brother—he must have gone to a different school. Mr. Urso, on the other hand, he remembers all three of the vics well. Taught ‘em math. Says that they got into some trouble, but nothing serious, just ‘kid stuff’.”
Chase’s heart sunk. Another dead end.
“Okay, thanks Detective Simmons. I have—”
“But there is one thing that you should know about. It’s Mr. Urso’s car.”
Chase perked up.
“Yeah? What about it?”
“I’m not sure if it means anything, and if it weren’t for Henry, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. I want to—”
“Frank, spit it out. I have to go!”
“Okay, okay, sorry. It’s just that Mr. Urso had a new Audio S8 in his driveway.”
Chase’s eyes widened.
“An S8? You sure?”
“Pretty sure. Henry knows about cars more than I do. Says with the sport package he has on it, it must have cost at least six figures.”
Chase thought for a moment.
A retired high school math teacher driving a one hundred-thousand-dollar car?
Her mind turned to the envelope that Drake had seen Weston pass to Raul, which later found its way to Veronica.
“I think that—”
“Gotcha, Frank. I’m thinking the same. I’m going to head to the news conference now, and then Drake and I are relieving Detective Gainsford. Take the rest of the day off, get some rest. We’ll meet again tomorrow in the AM.”
~
“We appreciate all the help that the public has provided, and we are working diligently to investigate each and every one of the tips that has been made to our call line,” Chase squinted into the warm afternoon sun, which cast the reporters outside 62nd Precinct in gold halos. “We would like to extend our deepest condolences to Neil Pritchard’s family. Like Thomas Smith, Neil was also a pillar of our community, creating and establishing many jobs for fellow New Yorkers.”
Chase paused and as expected, a reporter filled the space with a question.
“Is this Butterfly Killer now considered a serial killer? Why—”
It was a power play, and she held up a hand to silence him. Unfortunately, Sergeant Rhodes, once again standing to her right, felt the need to step in and speak for her.
“Please hold your questions until the end.”
Chase shot him a look. So far her time at the NYPD exceeded every expectation. When she had first transferred from Narcotics in Seattle to Homicide in NYC, she had expected that it would take two to three years before heading a major investigation. From there, she hoped that it would only be a couple more before she could get some eyes in the FBI profiling department to give her a look. But it hadn’t taken her years; her first case was the Butterfly Killer, which was starting to garner national news. Chase wasn’t naive; she knew that this was mostly Drake’s doing, or, more appropriately a result of his undoing, but that didn’t matter. People had underestimated her before, had put her in positions where she couldn’t possibly succeed.
And yet she had.
Her presence on the podium at this very moment proved as much.
“Right now we are treating Neil Pritchard and Thomas Smith’s murders as related. At this juncture, I would like to avoid using buzzwords like ‘serial killer’. We ask that the media and general public be respectful of the privacy of the families and realize that they are mourning the loss of their loved ones.”
She cleared her throat.
“I will now answer just a few questions.”
Every one of the twenty or so reporters raised a hand. Some even raised two, Chase saw. She felt something like a teacher posing an easy question to her students and having every one of them grunt “oh, oh, oh,” and stretch their arms so high that they were dangerously close to dislocating.
Chase pointed at a young man in the front row.
“Did Neil and Thomas know each other?” he asked.
“At this time, we are moving forward with the assumption that they at least knew each other during their childhood. It is unclear whether they have associated since.” She pointed at a woman in the middle of the throng next. “Yes?”
“What about Chris Papadopoulos? Is he really the Butterfly Killer’s third victim?”
Chase cringed internally at the mention of Chris’s name, but when she answered her voice was even as ever.
“Right now, we are working on solving the two murders here in New York city.”
“But is he related? Is the FBI—”
Chase expertly deflected the follow-up question by pointing to a man wearing a k-way jacket off to one side.
“Raul Delgado… the Smith’s housekeeper… is he a suspect in the case?”
The question caught Chase completely off guard. Raul had been at 62nd precinct only an hour ago, and they had been discrete about his presence—the cab that had taken him back to the Smith residence had tinted windows and had picked him up from the underground parking lot.
To her left she could feel Rhodes’s angry gaze, and heard him start to fidget.
Now would be a good time to step in, Sergeant.
But he didn’t, and Chase realized that she had made a near fatal error by hesitating.
Trying desperately to recover, to not tip her hand, she said quickly, “At this time we do not have any official suspects. We are, however, investigating several persons of interest that may have been with or saw either Neil Pritchard or Thomas Smith around the time of their deaths.”
“What about Veronica Wallace? Is there—”
The follow-up question floored her.
Veronica Wallace… how the hell did he even know her last name?
Chase herself hadn’t even known it.
“Uh,” she stammered, feeling her face flush. The sun, which had been beautiful as it started its celestial descent toward the horizon, now seemed sinister, its orange glow like spears thrown between skyscrapers. “Right now, we only have persons of interest. That will be all the questions for today.”
Chase quickly turned, deliberately avoiding looking at Sergeant Rhodes.
“Detective Adams, is the Smith family involved at all? Is Weston Smith…”
Her lips twisted into a sneer, and she felt her heart thud in her chest. She tried to move her legs fluidly, to not let the sheer fury at once again being scooped by the media extend to the way she walked.
And yet she couldn’t help but feel as if she was moving like a robot whose joints desperately needed lubrication.
How could they know about Veronica? About Raul?
As Chase and Rhodes passed several uniformed officers standing with their arms crossed over their chests, their faces pinched as if daring the media to rush toward them, she grabbed the one closest to her.
“I want to know who that man is,” she seethed. The man startled, but Chase let him go and continued toward the front doors of 62nd precinct before he could get a word in.
The door had barely closed behind her when Sergeant Rhodes started to shout.
“Detective Adams I want you in my office now!”
CHAPTER 43
Dr. Mark Kruk was tall and thin with a beak-like nose and light brown eyes that peeked out from behind a set of thick-framed glasses. He smiled warmly at Drake from behind a large desk, and politely stood when Drake approached.
“Dr. Kruk, I’m Detective Damien Drake with NYPD Homicide,” Drake said, glancing around nervously.
There was no couch in the room as there had been in Dr. Stacey Weinager’s office. Instead, in the spot where Drake thought a couch might go were two comfortable looking chairs placed across from one another. Th
e sight of the chairs caused a visceral reaction in him, and he quickly turned back to the doctor. Behind the man was a massive, built-in floor to ceiling bookshelf, which was nearly full of spines from books that were as drab as the content Drake assumed they were filled with.
“I know who you are,” the doctor said softly. He reached over the desk and held out his hand. “I’m very sorry to hear about Thomas Smith.”
Drake shook his hand, but not without hesitating.
This wasn’t the response he had expected; he had anticipated the man feigning ignorance before spewing the party line of not being able to share patient information like some sort of robotic deluge.
“You knew Thomas, Dr. Kruk?” Drake asked, getting right to the point. He noticed several small red marks on the back of the man’s hand as he released it.
“Please, call me Mark. If you insistent on calling me Dr. Kruk, then I will refer to you as Detective Damien Drake, and this conversation will take much longer than either of us might want,” he said with a smile.
“Fine, Mark it is. And just Drake for me, please. As you were saying… you knew Thomas Smith?”
Dr. Kruk nodded.
“Yes, he was a client of mine.”
Drake opened his mouth, but Mark tilted his head to one side and continued before he had the chance to speak.
“I can tell by your expression that you expected something different… a different answer, am I right?” Again, he didn’t pause long enough to allow for a reply. “Look, Drake, we are both busy men and neither of us have time to waste. The fact is, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that Thomas was a patient of mine. Truth is, I expected you sooner.” Mark squinted, and Drake knew better now than to try and answer. “Ah, yes, and you also know that Clarissa was a patient of mine—I saw them both as a couple.”
Drake nodded, his anxiety slowly starting to fade. The man’s straightforward nature was unexpected.
Unexpected, but also refreshing.
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Seeing them as a couple, then Thomas individually?”
The man shook his head.
“No, not at all. If anything, such an approach helped me understand their issues better, speed things up, if you will.”
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