He and Flack were seated in chairs across the desk from Paul Sunderland, psychologist. Sunderland was white teethed, athletically built, and only his slightly gray close-cropped hair suggested that he was over forty.
The usual degrees were mounted on the wall near the door where they couldn’t be missed. The photos on the other walls were of Sunderland in shorts and helmet, with one hand on a bicycle that, Flack was sure, had to cost more than a thousand dollars.
Sunderland had a small blue ball in his hand. He kept squeezing the ball and from time to time switched hands.
“Yeah,” said Sunderland. “I know him. Adam Yunkin.”
“How about Patricia Mycrant, James Feldt, Timothy Byrold?” asked Flack.
Sunderland hesitated and looked at the two detectives.
“Patricia Mycrant’s mother told us she was seeing you,” said Flack.
Sunderland nodded.
“Patricia, James and Timothy are dead,” said Flack.
“Murdered.”
“We think Adam Yunkin did it.”
“Murdered?” Sunderland repeated.
“And sexually mutilated,” said Mac. “Patricia Mycrant was seeing you because she was a sexual predator.”
“Yes,” said Sunderland. “Court ordered.”
“And the others?” asked Flack.
“Others?” Sunderland repeated, seemingly having trouble taking in what he was being told. “They were all sexual predators. My specialty. Adam isn’t court ordered. He came in to see me on his own.”
“Did they know each other?” asked Mac.
“Yes,” Sunderland said. “We have…had a weekly group session here, in the next room.”
“Anyone else in the group?” asked Flack.
“Yes, one more person. Ellen Janecek.”
“I know that name,” said Flack. “She’s the teacher who seduced a thirteen-year-old student.”
“Fourteen,” said Sunderland. “He’s sixteen now I think. She spent nine months in prison. Now she’s out and fighting a relapse.”
“Relapse?” asked Flack.
“She still wants to be with the boy. They’re all dead?”
“Yes,” said Mac.
“And Adam did it?” said Sunderland.
“Ellen Janecek,” Mac reminded him.
“She’s not making much progress,” said Sunderland. “Normally I wouldn’t be telling you all this about a patient, but—”
“Her address,” said Flack.
Sunderland nodded and pulled a thick leather-bound notebook from his desk drawer.
“I’ve got everything on my computer but I keep the computer in an alcove, right behind those doors.”
He nodded toward the doors to his left.
“Patients don’t talk as easily with electronics of any kind in the room. A computer is particularly intimidating. Here.”
He handed Mac a sheet of paper on which he had written the addresses of Ellen Janecek and Adam Yunkin.
“What can you tell us about Adam?” asked Flack.
“Quiet. Hard to get him to talk. Close to impossible. Strange.”
“Why?” asked Mac.
“He voluntarily joins the group and then says almost nothing. I’m going to…was going to give him another month or so and then tell him to either start participating or to see me on an individual basis. That he did not want to do.”
“The limp,” said Mac. “How did he get it?”
“War, he said, but he didn’t say which war and I think there was something else. Something he didn’t want to talk about.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Mac, rising.
Sunderland nodded in understanding. “I hope you find Adam before…This is horrible, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Mac.
“You must see a lot of horrible things, people traumatized?” asked Sunderland.
Flack had now risen as well. He felt a twinge in his chest. Not quite pain. He resisted the urge to wince or touch the jagged surgical scar on his chest.
“I’m afraid so,” said Mac.
Sunderland reached across his desk and took a handful of business cards from a shiny steel rack.
“I also specialize in dealing with people who have suffered extreme mental trauma. I treat many relatives of nine-eleven victims.”
Flack looked at Mac, knowing that Mac’s wife had been one of those victims, wondering if Sunderland had figured it out as well. When Sunder-land held out the cards, Flack took them.
“If you come across any crime victims who could use my help…” the doctor said.
“We’ll keep that in mind,” said Mac.
Sunderland came around the desk. He accompanied the two detectives to the office door.
“This is horrible,” he repeated, opening the door for them. “You think the media will—”
“Yes,” said Flack.
“They’ll find me,” said Sunderland. He paused, considered this.
“Maybe that could lead to more referrals,” said Flack.
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Sunderland said defensively.
“Right,” said Flack.
10
THE LIGHTS HAD BEEN turned off and the shades drawn in the classroom that had been the office/laboratory of Alvin Havel. Danny and Lindsay moved slowly, scanning the floor, tabletops, and desk with hand-held ALS devices.
“He took it with him,” said Lindsay.
“Or put it back,” said Danny.
“Back in the closet?”
“Back in the closet,” said Danny.
“Good news is they’re alive,” said Devlin, standing at the edge of the pit. “Bad news is it looks like it’s going to come sliding down on them sooner than we thought.”
“How soon?” asked Stella.
“Don’t know,” said Devlin, taking off his helmet and wiping his soot-darkened face with his sleeve. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”
“What are you going to do?” Stella asked.
“I’m going to go down there and get them out.”
Stella wanted to say “no,” but she couldn’t. Hawkes was in that hole.
“The man who blew up this building is down there,” she said. “He may have a gun. I’m a detective. I should go.”
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that.”
“What would you do when you got there?” he asked.
“Whatever you told me to do to get them out,” she said.
“No. You find killers and bombers. We go into burning buildings and flooded pits,” said Devlin, waving at another fireman across the rubble.
“You win. Be careful,” she said.
“I’m trained to be careful,” he said. “Want to hear a crazy and totally inappropriate question?”
“Why not?” she said.
The fireman Devlin had waved to was on his way, carrying an armload of equipment and a rope coiled over his shoulder.
“When this is over, will you have dinner with me?”
Stella smiled. “Save my partner,” she said. “Then we’ll talk.”
They had decided to split up.
Flack headed for the address Sunderland had given them for Ellen Janecek. Mac headed for the address for Adam Yunkin.
Adam Yunkin wasn’t home. There was no home. The address he had given Sunderland was a phony, a gourmet food store on Lexington.
It got worse. When he got back to his office, Mac ran the name through more than a dozen databases. He came up with one Adam Yunkin, fifteen, Newark. Adam Yunkin was dead, a suicide. Hanged. Reason unknown.
A dead end except for one detail. Adam Yunkin had killed himself on June 16. Today was June 16.
Whoever was calling himself Adam Yunkin needed one more victim before midnight, one more sexual predator, into whose thigh he could carve that last M to spell “Adam.”
Ellen Janecek was at home, a one-bedroom apartment in a subdivided Brooklyn brownstone. She opened the door when Flack knocked.
Flack remembered
seeing Ellen Janecek on television during her trial and in the media interviews. Pretty, very pretty, long, straight blond hair, near perfect figure. On television she always appeared with a pleasant smile and a far distant look. That was the look that met Flack when she opened the door. She was wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt. She was even prettier than she looked on television, but the look was not a seductive one.
“Miss Janecek,” he said, showing his badge.
She held the door open and continued to smile blankly. He stepped in. She closed the door.
“I haven’t been in touch with Jeffrey,” she said.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
The room they were standing in looked like an ultraclean movie set. Bright flower-patterned sofa and two chairs, polished walnut dining room table with four chairs lined up. Flack was sure that if he measured the distance between them and their distance from the table, it would be exactly the same for each chair. There were color photographs on the wall, three of them, framed, about two feet by three feet. All three were of Ellen Janecek.
In one she was wearing almost exactly what she wore now. She smiled at the camera, thumbs tucked into her front jeans pockets. In another she wore a sleek, form-fitting red dress. Her hair tumbled across one eye. In the third, she sat in a chair, book open in her lap. She wore a prim skirt and white blouse and looked at the camera over her round, rimmed glasses.
“Nice photographs,” he said. “Jeffrey like them?”
She didn’t answer.
“Adam Yunkin,” he said. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I’m going to ask you to pack some things and come with me so Adam Yunkin won’t come here and find you.”
“Why would he?”
“Because we think he may have killed the other three people in your therapy group, the one run by Paul Sunderland.”
She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to absorb what she had been told. “But…”
“It looks like he’s going after people in the group. You’re the only one left.” He didn’t add that by “one” he meant “sexual offender.”
“No,” she said.
“I’m afraid it’s true,” Flack said.
“No,” she said. “I mean I’m not the last one. There’s another one.”
“Another one?”
“Yes,” she said. “Another sexual offender. Paul Sunderland. He was arrested twice when he was twenty for allegedly molesting an eight-year-old boy. He wasn’t charged or convicted.”
“How do you know this?” asked Flack.
“He told us,” she said.
“He’s a psychologist. He couldn’t—”
“He’s a psychologist,” she said, “but he’s also a predator like the others. He doesn’t have a license anymore. The others felt comfortable with a fellow offender, someone who knew how they felt. Join-ing the group was not mandatory. It was uncomfortable, but my lawyer said I should do it. I’m not a sexual predator, Detective.”
“You’re not?”
“No,” she said. “I had a relationship with a fully developed young man. I didn’t hurt Jeffrey and he was more than happy to be with me. As soon as he’s old enough, we plan to be married and I’ll work while he goes to school. Does that sound like a predator to you?”
“I don’t make the laws,” said Flack.
“Maybe you should,” she said dreamily. “Maybe you should.”
Flack flipped open his phone and speed-dialed Mac Taylor.
Outside a clap of thunder could be heard in the distance.
At least, thought Flack, the rain had stopped.
“Officer Maddie Woods, Brooklyn,” Maddie said when she finally got put through to Danny Messer.
She had asked who was in charge of the Alvin Havel murder. The first person she talked to said she should call back tomorrow. The whole department was out dealing with looters, small disasters; assaults; the aftermath of an assault by nature.
Maddie hadn’t given up. She pushed.
Finally she got Danny.
“Polish is all he talks,” she said. “But we found a translator.”
“And?” asked Danny.
“He says his son was diddling one of his students,” Maddie said.
“He say which one?”
“Doesn’t know,” she said. “He says he tried to talk his son into stopping. Dark story. He says his son threatened the kid with a failing grade. She wasn’t a virgin and Alvin was a good-looking man, but that was his father speaking. You know what I mean. Was he?”
“Good looking?” said Danny, imagining the dead man with his face in a pool of blood on his desk and red pencils sticking out of his neck and eye. “Not the last time I saw him. Does Havel’s wife know her husband was having an affair with a student?”
“Waclaw, the dad, doesn’t know,” said Maddie. “Want me to talk to her, see what she knows?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“She know her husband’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take Waclaw home and talk to the widow.”
“Thanks, Woods.”
“Nothing,” she said. “It gives me an excuse to get out of this office and see the damage. I’ll call you if I find anything.”
“Anything,” said Danny.
“Right down to the victim’s shoe size,” she said.
A row of thick, empty glass containers that looked like test tubes with flat bottoms were lined up in the storeroom at the back of the chemistry lab. The containers were empty, waiting for an experiment that might never take place.
Danny and Lindsay began by lifting every container from the shelf and inpsecting it with their ALS units. Less than ten minutes later Lindsay held up something that looked like a clear, thick-walled peanut butter jar with a heavy base.
“This could be it,” she said.
Danny moved over to look. Turning the light on the jar they saw the telltale dark dots that signaled blood. Small. The killer probably thought he’d wiped off all the blood. He was wrong.
Holding the jar at the bottom, Lindsay unscrewed the top and inserted her fingers inside. She turned the jar upside down and they both examined it. The bottom was rough, chipped, with traces of blood.
“Used the jar like a hammer,” she said.
“Some glass had to get on whoever drove that pencil in his eye,” Danny said.
“Maybe even blood,” Lindsay said.
“Get that back to the lab,” Danny said. “See what you can find. I’ll bring the representatives of the future of our country back for tea, cookies and more conversation.”
“Anything else we should be looking for? If there is I’d like to find it before I have to make another trip.”
Danny stepped out of the storeroom and stood next to Lindsay, who had placed the jar in a evidence bag and marked the time, date and location on the label.
“We spend half our time just driving from scene to scene and to the lab,” Danny said. “That’s a fact. There was a study. Mileage was checked. Travel time was checked. Half our time.”
“That’s a fact?” she said.
“That’s a fact,” Danny said, deadpan. “Would I lie to you, Montana?”
“Never,” she said.
“That’s why our evidence kits keep getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “So we can run more tests in the field and don’t have to do as much moving evidence to the lab.”
“And I thought it was about new forensic technology,” she said.
“We live and learn, Montana.”
“I’m enlightened,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Give me a call if you find something.”
“It’s been bad for Keith,” the woman said into the phone.
“He and Adam were close,” Mac heard a man say on an extension.
Both Eve and Duncan Yunkin sounded as if they were at least seventy. Mac knew that they were both fifty-three, but i
t had been a hard fifty-three years.
“If Keith were here when Adam—” she began.
“He couldn’t have been,” said Duncan. “He was out of his mind for more than a month. The leg.”
“The leg,” Eve Yunkin said. “Shattered.”
“They cut it off,” said Duncan.
“How did it happen?” asked Mac.
“He was working in Africa,” she said. “Security work for Klentine Oil. They’re British.”
“He was a mercenary, plain and simple,” said Duncan.
“His Jeep turned over,” Eve said.
“He ran into a wall,” Duncan said impatiently.
“Spent four months—”
“Five, almost six,” he said.
“In rehabilitation. When he got out, there was some trouble.”
“Trouble? He beat up three men in a bar,” said Duncan. “Almost killed two of them. He said they were homosexuals who tried to pick him up. He went to prison for it. One year.”
“Do you know where your son is?” asked Mac.
“Adam is dead and buried,” said Duncan Yunkin. “Dead and buried. He killed himself.”
Mac could hear the man’s wife sobbing.
“I meant Keith,” said Mac.
“Who knows? We haven’t heard from him in more than nine months.”
“Eleven months and one week,” his wife said.
“Did he and Adam stay in touch?”
“Adam wrote,” Eve said. “They would tell each other things they’d never tell us.”
“Last question,” said Mac. “The three men he attacked in the bar. What did he use on them?”
“His fists,” said Duncan.
“And the little knife,” she added.
“And the knife,” Duncan concurred.
“What kind of knife?” asked Mac.
“Army Ranger knife,” said Duncan. “Stainless steel, fit in the palm of his hand, opened with a flip with either hand. Keith was always fascinated by knives. I don’t know why. He showed it to us. Is he dead too?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mac.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Your son has murdered three people, Mac thought. And I think he’s about to try to kill a fourth.
“Why did Adam kill himself?” Mac asked.
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