“OK, Miss Freud, I think our session is over.”
***
A muffled creak signaled the failure of the deadbolt lock as it yielded to the pry bar. The door slowly opened, and the masked figure focused a flashlight toward the desk and file cabinet. A small amount of jimmying with a wood chisel, and the file cabinet was breached. A beam of light entered the window from the street and flashed across the pictures of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, sending the burglar diving to the floor before it became apparent that the light was the result of a car passing through the parking lot on its way to the local McDonald’s.
The spot of light moved from folder to folder, illuminating the name on each tab in turn. When it reached the name Jameson, Franklin, the folder was extracted and placed on the desk. The beam then continued its mission until it settled on Radcliffe, Sylvia.
Next the desk drawer surrendered to the chisel. A paper desk calendar lay at the top of the drawer. The burglar tore off the current month’s calendar sheet and stuffed it into one of the two selected folders. He then rolled the folders into a tube and absent-mindedly tapped the tube of data on various objects in the office while exploring the remainder of the room.
Another set of car headlights illuminated the office; this time they didn’t pass across the wall but stayed focused on the picture of Freud. Sigmund seemed to glow with an alternating red and blue cast, causing the burglar to once more dive for the floor and crawl to the window. There, his worst fears were realized. A Pennsylvania State Police car sat in the parking lot, its headlights and colored roof lights bouncing off the side of the building. The burglar stashed the rolled files in his jacket and ran to the door before the trooper was out of his car.
***
Lieutenant Peirce took his Sig Sauer P226 in its abbreviated leather holster from his top desk drawer and fitted it into the waistband of his trousers. He pulled on the side of his belt and noticed how loosely the holster fit. As of this morning, he had lost eighteen pounds. He tightened his belt two notches, slightly bunching the waistband of his trousers to ensure that the holster would stay secure.
“It’s about time you had that suit tailored,” Holloway said from the doorway of Peirce’s office. “Either that, or a box of doughnuts will fix the problem.”
“C’mon in,” said Peirce. “Have a carrot.”
“No thanks, I’ve had my limit for the day. I just heard a call come in for a silent alarm in an office building near Church Street.”
“I’m sure robbery will take care of it. We’re homicide, remember?”
“Well, I just thought you might be interested since it’s that tall lady-shrink’s office.”
“Dr. Klein?” asked Peirce.
“That’s the one.”
Ten minutes later Peirce was pulling into the parking lot of 29 Office Park Place. The burglary could have been random, but he doubted it. Dr. Klein had been nosing around, trying to get more information about the Sylvia Radcliffe murder. Maybe she struck a nerve with someone—someone besides him.
The state trooper who had responded to the silent alarm met Peirce at the door.
“The office was empty when I got here, Lieutenant. I guess he got what he wanted and left.”
“Any clue as to what was taken?” Peirce asked.
“It looks like he may have taken some files from the file drawer. We won’t know which files until the doctor comes in and checks them out,” the trooper said. “We left several messages for her, but so far she hasn’t called in.”
Peirce furrowed his brow. It seemed unusual that a doctor wouldn’t pick up her calls promptly, but then Dr. Klein wasn’t your usual doctor. Peirce walked around Ruth Klein’s office, inspecting the premises for any clues the state police might have missed. He dialed Dr. Klein’s office number and waited for the answering service to respond. He questioned the operator at length as to the whereabouts of Dr. Klein but could get no answer other than “the doctor is not in.” Sam thought about the last time they spoke. He had reprimanded her for interfering in his investigation and told her to “butt out” of his business. He’d suggested she take a vacation. Peirce had a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach that something wasn’t right. Could she have, for once, taken his request seriously and left town? Maybe, but why wasn’t she answering her calls? He needed to find her, and he needed to find her soon.
***
Ruth lifted Emma’s head from her lap and moved to one side as she gently placed the sleeping child to rest on the sofa. A kiss on the forehead and an adjustment of the patchwork quilt covering Emma, and Ruth was off to check for messages from her service. She pushed the second button on the keypad of her cell phone and waited for the familiar voice to ask for her access code. She tapped her foot, then stopped and tiptoed to the door and stepped out onto the porch. She dialed again. “Damn,” she said. “Has everyone taken a long weekend?” Ruth studied the phone’s screen and noticed not a single bar of signal strength. She held the phone up as high as she could and began to walk away from the porch, turning the cell phone from side to side and occasionally shaking it just to make sure it was paying attention. The forest was uncommonly still. A beam of moonlight cast fingers of shadow from bare tree branches that beckoned her to the hill at the end of the path.
Ruth thought that the top of the hill might be the best place to find at least a few measly bars of signal strength. She walked along in the shadows, following the beam of moonlight that illuminated the crest of the hill. A sound, like the crack of a twig, caused her to stop and listen. Nothing. She felt a slight breeze begin to blow. It made faint moaning sounds as it passed through the branches of the trees and rustled the ferns along the path. Maybe it’s time to go back to the cabin and check for messages tomorrow, she thought.
Ruth never liked to give in to any emotion, particularly fear, and it was a beautiful night. There probably wasn’t another soul—other than Emma—within ten miles, and you never knew when there might be an important message from a patient. She decided that she would continue. If she still couldn’t get a signal at the top of the hill, she would go back and quit for the night.
Another sound. She stopped and listened. This time it was the faint rumble of distant thunder. Ruth looked at the moon and saw wisps of dark clouds pass below it, obscuring its lower half. She picked up her pace; she might not have much time. As Ruth walked toward the hill, the clouds increased. Now the moon was blinking in and out of view, sending the forest into total darkness each time a cloud passed. Soon Ruth only occasionally glimpsed the moon between the total eclipses caused by the ever-increasing banks of clouds. “OK, I think that’s enough for tonight,” she said out loud.
The forest was now extremely dark. Ruth turned to face the way she had come and waited for the next passing cloud to allow the moon to reveal the direction of the path. The rumbles of thunder were getting louder. Ruth held up her phone and pushed any button to light the screen, thinking it might afford a little bit of light. Suddenly something struck her head and became tangled in her hair. She heard a rustling sound and felt something rough scratching against her shoulder. She shrieked and threw up her arms to protect her head. Her hands struck only leaves from a low tree branch, but the force of her protective action caused her to lose her grip on her phone, sending it into the low brush. “Crap!” she cried. Ruth knew that within a very short time the screen on the phone would go black and her hope of finding it would be gone. She dropped to her knees and waved her arms at the bushes, searching for the light of the screen. A flash of light just a few feet away guided her in the right direction just before the light extinguished.
Ruth crawled through the brush, feeling the ground, in the last known direction of the light. She jumped as she touched something soft that slithered away. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her breath was coming in gasps, but she kept moving forward. Luck was with her. As her hand bumped the phone, the screen again lit up. She grabbed the phone and scrambled to her feet. “That was fun,” she said i
n a quivering voice. Now it was time to get out of these woods and back to the cabin. Ruth turned to her left and then to her right. During the mishap with the phone, she had lost her orientation. The night was now completely dark, and the forest began to take on an eerie feel. The path had melted into the surrounding darkness, and nothing looked familiar.
A bolt of lightning startled her as it lit the sky. This time the thunder was only five or six seconds away. The storm was approaching fast. Ruth waited for the next lightning bolt. This time she would be ready to make a decision and choose a direction while the flash of light lasted. “Come on, come on,” she said as she waited. The sound of the thunder had come from in front of her as she walked away from the cabin. She decided that she would turn so that the lightning and the sound of the thunder were at her back. That should get her home. “Come on, come on—there!” she cried as a bright moment of daylight flashed directly in front of her. “Damn, I’m going the wrong way,” she swore. As she turned, she thought she saw the silhouette of a person standing about twenty feet away just before the darkness returned. A second bolt of lightning and an almost instantaneous clap of thunder caused her to close her eyes and cover her ears. Ruth opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the apparition just before the lightning flash abated. The figure was gone. It probably was never there at all, she thought. She had studied the human mind long enough to know how fear could cause the imagination to invent all kinds of boogeymen. It was probably just a tree branch blowing in the wind.
With her phone now safely tucked away in her pocket and her arms outstretched in front of her, Ruth began to walk in the direction she now believed would lead her out of this predicament. She did, however, turn more than once to look over her shoulder. Ruth thought, If I get back safely, I’ll never…She caught herself. A foxhole mentality was not going to solve this problem. No one ever did what he or she promised during a stressful moment. Next I’ll probably turn to religion, she mused. Five minutes and several flashes of lightning later, Ruth could make out the shape of a car—her car—and beyond was the light of the cabin window. Ruth breathed a sigh of relief as she pushed into the clearing of the parking area. “Well, that could have been a lot worse,” she said just before the sky opened with a torrential downpour. Amid high-pitched cries, shrill screams, and an assortment of colorful profanity, Ruth half-ran, half-stumbled to the porch of the cabin.
Emma awoke and opened her eyes to the sight of her mother standing in the doorway, mud caked on her knees and arms and several wet leaves plastered to her dripping hair. A small puddle of rainwater slowly grew around her feet.
“What happened?” Emma cried as she sat up and then kneeled on the couch.
“Nothing, nothing at all. I went for a walk, and it started to rain. Nothing to be concerned about,” Ruth said in a matter-of-fact way as she walked toward the bathroom, her shoes making a squishing sound with each step.
28
Sam parked his car in Alicia Goodman’s driveway and bounded into the kitchen, ready for whatever treat Alicia had prepared for dinner. Alicia wasn’t the world’s best cook by a long shot, but three months of grazing on carrots and sprouts for lunch had caused him to look forward to any kind of cooked meal with some sort of meat or fish. Sam sat on one of the wooden kitchen stools, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, preparing to guess what lay in wait within the oven. The smell wasn’t immediately recognizable, but it seemed fruity, maybe a citrus sauce on a roast chicken, or an Asian plum sauce for baby back ribs. He loosened his tie and called out for Alicia. Must be upstairs making herself beautiful, he thought. The red light on the telephone answering machine caught his attention. He pushed the button.
“Sorry, I had to run out. There was an emergency at the hospital. I’ll probably be home late. There’s a salad in the fridge for your dinner. I hope you don’t mind the smell; I had the kitchen stools varnished today. See you when I see you,” said Alicia’s voice.
Sam peeled himself off the stool and sniffed the tacky varnish. Maybe he could pour some of it on his salad. He sighed and walked up the stairs to change out of his suit. He held his sticky trousers in front of him. “Well, that’s one pair that won’t need to be altered.” Sam threw on the pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that he kept at Alicia’s house for just such emergencies and hurried down the stairs. The only thing that would save this evening now was a visit to the Colonel.
Nights like this were generally beneficial to Sam, in spite of the calorie count. He thought very clearly while he was dining alone; extra-crispy chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy and biscuits were all he needed to solve any difficult case.
Minutes later, Sam was sitting at a table in the center of the restaurant, carefully pulling the extra-crispy chicken skin from each of the two chicken thighs and placing the skin in a pile on a paper plate. He opened the mashed potatoes and moved the container of gravy off to the left of the plate of skin.
Sam still felt uncomfortable about the burglary of Ruth Klein’s office. True, it could have been coincidence that a burglar chose her office to rob right in the middle of a murder case involving one of her patients, but Sam didn’t believe in coincidences. He cut a piece of chicken from the bone with the little plastic knife and fork and popped it into his mouth. Sam snapped the button on the top of his pen and laid out the facts he was pondering on a sheet a paper. As he wrote, he unconsciously picked up and nibbled on a chicken bone from his plate.
First, he thought, it was possible that the murderer of Sylvia Radcliffe could still be at large. That’s what Ruth Klein thought anyway. He extracted a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes from the Styrofoam container and swallowed it without chewing. Sam still thought Mortimer Banks was the killer of both Michelle Ackerman and Sylvia Radcliffe. He had evidence to support Banks’s involvement in the Ackerman murder, but there really wasn’t any hard proof he killed Sylvia Radcliffe. He began to wonder if he wasn’t being a little hasty closing the case. He feared he might have been reacting to Ruth’s meddling rather than fairly evaluating the facts. He mindlessly reached into his plate and bit the flesh from the remaining chicken thigh, groped at the stack of napkins, and wiped his mouth with several at once.
Second, there had been two incidents involving Dr. Klein. Someone had attempted to intimidate her by chasing her through the basement of her office building, and now someone apparently was trying to find out how much she knew about the murders by looting her files. The remains of the container of mashed potatoes bit the dust. Little by little it was beginning to look as though someone thought Ruth Klein might know more about the murderer than she did. More importantly, that belief may have put her in danger. This epiphany caused Sam to pound the table and whisper, “That bastard.” A diner sitting near him, startled by the table pounding, dropped his chicken wing into his coffee with a splash. “Sorry,” Sam said, and tossed a wrinkled stack of napkins, some used, onto the man’s table. Sam really needed to find Ruth Klein before she became victim number three.
Sam jumped up from his table and started toward the door. Just before reaching the exit, he turned and looked back at the plates, cup, and napkins littering his now-abandoned table. He was anxious to get back to his office, but leaving the table as it was would not be appropriate. Sam walked back to the table amid stares from other patrons, who now smiled at his decision to return. He acknowledged their smiles and casually chose a piece of chicken skin, dipped it in the cup of gravy, and savored its flavor. With a devilish smile on his face, he picked up the plate of skin and the cup of gravy and ran for the door.
***
Sam turned the corner into the police precinct parking lot at high speed and slammed on his brakes, skidding to a stop just inches behind a car parked in his reserved parking space. He pounded on the steering wheel, cursed, and wrote down the license plate number of the car. Then he parked in a visitor’s space. Normally he would have had the offending vehicle ticketed and impounded, but he had work to do and little time to do it.
Sa
m climbed the steps two at a time and burst through the door from the stairwell into the second-floor homicide division squad room. Sam’s office door was slightly ajar. He pushed on the door, and there at his desk, surrounded by white cardboard Chinese takeout containers, was his loyal assistant, Holloway. He was leaning back in Peirce’s chair holding a blue report folder, his feet resting on the edge of the desk, exposing his orange-and-yellow argyle socks.
Holloway jumped to his feet as Sam entered the room. “I’m sorry, boss. I thought you punched out for the night.” He glanced at the desk and began to wipe a streak of duck sauce from Sam’s desk blotter with his napkin.
“So this is what you do when I’m not here,” Peirce said. “I expect my office, a lieutenant’s office, to be treated with respect. That isn’t your car in my parking space, is it?” Peirce walked slowly around the desk, his brow furrowed.
“I thought you were gone for the night. What can I say? I’m sorry.” Holloway looked like a puppy with a rolled-up newspaper being waved at his nose.
“Well, you’re going to have to pay for taking this kind of liberty with a superior officer’s parking space and office.” Peirce placed both hands on the desk and took a deep breath. “This is going to cost you,” he said. “Now which of these containers is General Tso’s chicken?”
Holloway immediately reached into the oil-stained bag on the corner of the desk and handed Lieutenant Peirce a pair of chopsticks and a napkin, and then pointed at the first container on his right.
People who knew Peirce and Holloway were well aware that this sort of preliminary banter usually proved to be the foreplay to a productive session of evidence evaluation and strategy building. It always seemed to precede a breakthrough leading to progress in solving an important case. With the preliminaries over, Peirce and Holloway settled down to review Michelle Ackerman’s murder.
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