by Lisa Gardner
“I don’t know, Bobby. Sounds to me like you remember Catherine better than you think. Sounds to me like she made quite an impression.”
“Not at the cocktail party,” he countered harshly, “not when you were with me.”
Susan had always been smart. “Oh God, Bobby, what exactly was it that you saw on Thursday night?”
Chapter
24
Catherine didn’t know what started to spook her. She and Nathan were downstairs in the family room. It was nearly ten o’clock, well past Nathan’s bedtime. He didn’t seem to want to head upstairs, however, and she didn’t have the heart to make him. He lay on the floor amid a mound of pillows, only his head visible above the pile. She’d put in his favorite movie, Finding Nemo. So far, he’d watched it twice.
Catherine spent too much time glancing at the clock, wondering when Prudence would be home.
Finally, just to keep busy, she started messing around in the kitchen. Nathan wasn’t allowed chocolate. Instead, she heated up a mug of vanilla-flavored soy milk. He accepted the mug wordlessly, his eyes glued to the TV.
“How does your stomach feel?”
He shrugged.
“Are you hungry?”
Another shrug.
“Maybe you’d like some yogurt.”
He shook his head, pointedly staring at the TV.
Catherine retreated once more to the kitchen. Now that she was paying attention, they desperately needed groceries. Soy milk was low, soy yogurt, too. Nathan ate a special gluten-free bread, nearly gone. His organic peanut butter, almost wiped out as well. She started working on a list, then remembered that they had an appointment with the new doctor tomorrow afternoon and paused.
She headed back out of the kitchen, past the bar, and stepped down into the sunken family room.
“Nathan, we need to talk.”
Reluctantly, Nathan turned his TV-glazed stare onto her.
“Dr. Tony can’t be your doctor anymore.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, fully planning on telling the truth, then looked at his drawn face and lost her courage. “Dr. Tony thinks you need a special doctor. A super-duper doctor. One with superpowers.”
Only four years old, Nathan gave her the look of a born skeptic. God, why wasn’t Prudence home yet? Sure, she had the whole day off, but did she have to stay out all night too? Didn’t she know how much Catherine might need her? Catherine tried again.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to see a new doctor. Dr. Iorfino. His specialty is little boys just like you.”
“New doctor?”
“New doctor.”
Nathan looked at her. Then he very deliberately held up his mug of soy milk and poured it out onto the carpet.
Catherine took a deep breath. She wasn’t mad at Nathan—not yet—but she felt a growing, displaced rage toward Prudence, who had abandoned her, thereby forcing her to handle this scene.
“That wasn’t very nice, Nathan. Only bad boys dump their milk on the rug. You don’t want to be a bad boy.”
Nathan’s lower lip was starting to tremble now. He jutted it out, nodding furiously. “I’m bad! And bad boys don’t go to doctors!”
He had tears in his eyes. Big, unshed tears, that hurt a mother even worse than angry sobs.
“Dr. Iorfino’s going to help you,” Catherine insisted. “Dr. Iorfino is going to get you well. Make you a big kid, so you can play with all the others.”
“Doctors don’t help! Doctors have needles. Needles don’t help!”
“Someday they will.”
Nathan looked her right in the eye. “Fuck doctors!” he said clearly.
“Nathan!”
And then, “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said in a sly, nasty voice she’d never heard before. “You’re trying to kill me.”
Catherine’s heart stopped in her chest. She headed back into the kitchen, hoping Nathan wouldn’t see how badly her hands were trembling. You’re in control now, she kept telling herself. This was the true consequence of Jimmy being dead. No more excuses, no more escapes. Buck stopped with her now. She was in charge.
She got a roll of paper towels and returned to the family room. Nathan looked a great deal less certain. His chin was tucked against his bony chest, his shoulders were up around his ears.
He was waiting for her to hit him. It’s what Jimmy would’ve done.
She held out the roll of paper towels. After another moment, Nathan took it.
“Please wipe up the milk, Nathan.”
He remained hunched.
“You know what? You do half, I’ll do half. We’ll do it together.” She took the roll back, briskly ripping off sheets. After another moment, he did the same. She got on her hands and knees. This intrigued him enough to emerge from his cocoon of pillows. She started blotting. “See, it comes right up.”
Slowly but surely, he followed suit.
When they were done, she took the pile of soggy paper into the kitchen and threw it away. In the family room, Nathan ejected the movie. He sat in the middle of the soy-stained rug, still looking small and forlorn.
It was bedtime. Both of them stared at the dark shadows looming at the top of the stairs.
“Mommy,” he whispered, “if I go to so many doctors, why don’t I ever get better?”
“I don’t know. But someday we’re going to figure it out, and then you’ll get to run around just like all the other kids. Come on, Nathan, it’s time for bed.”
He reached up his arms. She gave in to his silent request. For a split second, he hugged her hard. For a split second, she hugged him back.
And then, at that moment, she knew what was wrong.
The draft of air. Very cold, very crisp, very outside air drifted down the stairwell. It ruffled Nathan’s fine brown hair. And it carried with it the unmistakable odor of death.
For a change, Bobby wasn’t asleep. He’d given up on it. Fuck sleep, fuck healthy foods, fuck moderate exercise. He’d taken everything Dr. Lane had told him to do and tossed it out the window. Now he was pacing his family room on exhausted, rubbery legs, gnawing cold pizza, guzzling a liter of Coke, and working himself into a state.
He had messages on his answering machine. A lot from reporters. A few from his team. Bruni invited him to dinner again. Two guys from the EAU asked if he wanted to meet. Everyone calling to check up on the psycho shooter cop. He should be grateful, appreciative. Once on the team, always on the team, that’s what they said.
He was resentful. He didn’t want their calls, he didn’t want their attention. Frankly, he didn’t want to be the psycho shooter cop, the unfortunate sniper who’d discharged his weapon in the line of duty and now was screwed for the rest of his life. Fuck the team, fuck camaraderie. None of the rest of them had their butts on the line.
Yeah, he was feeling good and sorry for himself now.
He thought about calling his brother in Florida. Hey, Georgie boy, it’s been what, ten, fifteen years? Just thought I’d give you a ring. Oh yeah, I blew some guy away the other day and that reminded me of something. What exactly happened with Mom?
Or maybe he’d call Dr. Lane instead. Good news, I haven’t had a drink today. Bad news, I fucked up everything else. Say, if you have a chance to save yourself by ratting out someone else, should you do it? Or is that the kind of thing that’ll just drive you insane?
He couldn’t stand himself in this kind of mood, so edgy he felt as if he were going to burst out of his own skin, so ragged he could barely think. Honest to God, he needed to shoot something.
Instead, his phone rang. He picked it up and he wasn’t even surprised anymore.
“This is Catherine,” a husky female voice whispered straight out of his dreams and into his ear. “Come over right away. I think someone’s broken into my house. Please, Officer Dodge, I need you.”
Then the phone went click and the sound of dial tone filled Bobby’s ear.
“Intruder, my ass,” Bobby muttered, but then he shrugged. Th
e call solved one problem for him. Now he had an excuse to get his gun.
Driving by the Gagnon residence, Bobby expected to feel a creepy sense of déjà vu. He didn’t. Thursday night it had been all lights, cameras, action. Now, nearly midnight on a school night, the dignified brick neighborhood was quiet, discreet, a proper lady gone to bed with curlers in her hair.
He looked around for a patrol car and was slightly surprised none were about. He would’ve bet money Copley was having the BPD keep close tabs on Mrs. Gagnon.
Bobby parked twelve blocks away, at the movie theater by Huntington Ave. He made a note of the late shows and when they started. The cool, detached part of his mind found it interesting that he was already building an alibi.
Making the dozen-block hike to Back Bay, the saner part of his mind tried to reason with him. What was he doing? What did he honestly think was going to happen? He didn’t buy Catherine’s intruder story for a minute. Instead, he was thinking of what Harris had told him. She’s going to call you again. She’s going to tell you that you’re the only hope she has left. She’s going to beg you to help her. It’s what she does, Officer Dodge; she destroys men’s lives.
Would she try to seduce him? Did he care if she did? His career was already in the toilet. He’d had his first drink in ten years and just this evening he’d officially ended things with the woman who was probably the best damn thing that had ever happened to him.
He was footloose and fancy-free. He was feeling reckless, and yeah, more than a little self-destructive. A sordid rendezvous sounded just about right. He could already recall the warm, cinnamony scent of her perfume. The way her fingernails had felt, raking lightly across his chest.
It didn’t take too much for his mind to fill in the rest. Her long, pale legs wrapped around his waist. Her strong, lithe body writhing beneath his own. He bet she moved like a pro, moaned like a pro. He bet she was the type of woman who’d do just about anything.
So Harris had been right all along—Jimmy’d been dead only four days, and Bobby already couldn’t wait to fuck his wife.
He walked into the neighborhood, head down against the cold, hands thrust deep into the front pockets of his down jacket. A dozen bad seduction scenes ran through his mind, each more sordid than the last.
Then he looked up, saw the fourth-story window, and felt the air freeze in his chest.
Holy shit!
Bobby started to run.
Catherine was downstairs in the lobby. She was curled up at the base of the townhouse’s elevator, Nathan pressed tight against her chest, his face buried against her neck. Bobby barely had time to register the irony of it—that this is how Catherine and Nathan had looked on Thursday night, that every time he met this supposed child abuser, she was cradling her son—then he was vaulting for the stairs to her second-story unit, gun in hand.
“You hear gunshots, get out. Head straight for your neighbors’, bang on the door, and tell them to call the cops.”
He didn’t wait to see if she nodded, but bounded up the stairs.
Bursting low and fast through the open front door, he came to an immediate crouching halt beside a fake ficus tree, breathing hard, realizing he was moving too fast, too heedlessly, and now trying to regroup. Face-to-face confrontation was really no different than sniping. The winner was usually the guy who could control his adrenaline the best.
Bobby took another deep breath and steadied his nerves. He’d never been inside the Gagnons’ townhouse. Four stories, he’d been told on Thursday night. The Gagnons occupied the top four stories of a five-level townhouse, with the top story being converted to cathedral ceilings.
So he needed to head up.
He gazed around the marble-tiled foyer, identifying what appeared to be a formal parlor to his left and a vast, open expanse of family room and kitchen directly ahead. His back pressed against the wall, two hands holding his nine-millimeter dead center against his chest, he approached the parlor first.
He led with his gun, ducking in low and sweeping the dark, shadowy space. Finally satisfied that it was empty, he departed, closing the door, then moving the fake tree in front of it: he didn’t want someone doubling back behind him.
He hit the family room and kitchen next, though he was relatively sure that area would be secure. Too many lights, too much vast, open space. If someone was still in the townhouse, they wouldn’t hide here.
For protocol’s sake, he cleared the pantry, the walk-in closet, and the laundry room. That left him with the stairs.
He could smell it now. Wafting down the dark, shadowed space. No lights here. Just steps leading to a thicker gloom, and thanks to the unmistakable odor, a bitter, unhappy end.
His heart was pounding again. His palms sweating. He turned his focus inward. Part of the moment, but outside the moment. A predator on a trail. A calm, well-oiled machine doing what it was trained to do.
He drifted up the stairs silently, patient footstep after patient footstep. He came to a small, dark landing. Closed doorway to his left. Open doorway straight ahead. He went through the open doorway first, the smell noticeably fading as he entered the room. He didn’t snap on the overhead light—the sudden rush of illumination would leave him exposed—but instead used the dim light seeping through two windows to make out his surroundings. It was a small living suite: bathroom, bedroom, playroom. Nathan’s space, judging by the murals of cowboys and bucking broncos decorating the wall. He checked the closet, checked the shower, even thought of the toy chests.
Finally satisfied that no intruder lurked in the shadows, he picked up a discarded shirt of Nathan’s and hung it on the doorknob as he shut the door behind him.
Closed-door time. A little riskier, but he was finding the zone now, each movement smoother and more controlled than the last. Go low, turn sideways to present less of a target, open the door and slide inside in one fluid motion.
Another suite of rooms, equally dark. Strictly utilitarian now. Queen-sized bed, old eighties loveseat, hand-me-down bedroom furniture. The nanny’s quarters, he’d bet. Functional, but not fancy. He was almost sorry he didn’t find anything here. Because that left only one place. The vaulted fourth floor. The infamous master bedroom.
Very carefully, Bobby headed up the stairs.
The smell was unmistakable now. Sharp, acrid. Bobby’s gun had slipped lower. He wasn’t holding it as tightly. Somehow, he didn’t think he was going to need it anymore. What had happened in the master bedroom was all about presentation. That’s what he’d seen from the street.
The door was wide open. No overhead lights. But candles. Dozens and dozens of flickering little candles, all framing the scene.
The body hung from the rafters in front of where the glass sliders used to be. The plastic had been removed, letting in the breeze. The candles flickered. The body swayed creakily.
Bobby walked around. And the pale, stricken face of Prudence Walker slowly twisted into view.
Chapter
25
“I need to call it in.”
Bobby and Catherine were speaking in hushed tones in the parlor. Bobby had shut up the master bedroom. Then, after a second pass through the residence, he’d escorted Catherine and Nathan back inside; the BPD detectives were going to want to question them at the scene.
Now, Nathan sat in the living room, staring slack-jawed at the TV as his eyelids slowly began to droop. The kid would be asleep in a matter of minutes. Better for him. Better for all of them.
“I don’t understand. Prudence hanged herself?”
“So it would appear.”
Catherine was still bewildered. “Why would she do that?”
He hesitated. “There was a note,” he said at last. “She claimed she was despondent over Jimmy’s death.”
“Oh, please! Pru didn’t give a rat’s ass about Jimmy. And he certainly didn’t pay attention to her. Let’s just say they weren’t each other’s type.”
“Are you saying …?”
“Pru was a lesbian
,” Catherine supplied impatiently. “Why do you think I hired her? Anyone else, no matter how old, always ended up in Jimmy’s bed, if only just for sport.”
Bobby sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. Sighed again. “Shit.”
“There’s more in the note, isn’t there?”
“It says she couldn’t go on living, knowing who really killed Jimmy.” He looked Catherine in the eye. “Her note very clearly targets you.”
Catherine expelled her opinion of that in one simple word: “James!”
“You think your father-in-law killed your nanny?”
“Not personally, of course, don’t be stupid. But he hired someone, or hired someone to hire someone. That’s the way he always works.”
“You’re accusing a judge of murder?”
“Of course I am! You don’t understand. This is perfect for him. The police come, they read the note, and they arrest me. Then James turns up just in time to take custody of Nathan.”
Bobby tried to sound reasonable. “Mrs. Gagnon—”
“Catherine! I am not my mother-in-law.”
“Look, the judge has already started legal action against you. I think we both can agree that given his money and connections, it’s only a matter of time before he wins. Why would he even bother to take a chance with murder?”
“So he can have Nathan tonight.”
“Mrs. Gagnon—”
“Catherine! You don’t know what he’s like. James wants total, utter control. Of the money, of Nathan, of me. Who do you think told Jimmy I was abusing Nathan? Who did you think probably first suggested divorce? The judge has never liked me. Maryanne has never liked me. And now they’re going to take Nathan, and they’re going to get all the money, and I’ll have nothing! I’ll be all alone.”
Catherine’s gaze took on an unhealthy light. He had only a second’s warning, then she was across the room, striding toward him. Her touch was light, yet the minute her thumb came to rest in the open V of his shirt, his body went hard and the air froze in his lungs.
She reached down and very deliberately raked her nails across his thigh.