by Tom Bierdz
“Yeah. The fire is in an environment that you control. Did you feel any satisfaction when you took out that lighter and were about to set the fire?”
“It’s hard to remember every moment, but I think I did.”
I glanced at the clock. It was time for my next appointment. “We need to stop but I think we made a major leap today. What do you think?”
“Yeah. I feel okay where I am. Visualizing mom as flypaper helps put things in perspective. I can’t get too close and let her trap me or part of me dies.”
I couldn’t have put it any better. I told Greg I’d see him next week.
At the end of the day Detective Rollins finally returned the call I made to him first thing this morning and we set up an appointment for the following day.
45
“Colby called me last night,” Carrie said, a sparkle in her eyes. She sat with a cup of coffee on my office couch waiting for Detective Reginald Rollins to arrive. “He saw us at O’Reilly’s, asked me out.He thought we were an item.”
“You and I?” The warm cup felt good in my hands. “We are, but not in the way he meant.” I sunk down into the other end of the couch. “Are you going?”
“Of course. We’re going to dinner tonight.”
I liked seeing the glow return to Carrie, her usual MO. She had been mired in a low-level depression since the abortion.
Detective Rollins strolled into the office. “Coffee. Good! I could use a cup of Joe,” he said, slipping off his coat and throwing it on a nearby chair. “This better be good, bringing me out on a Saturday morning.”
When I got up to get him his coffee, he sat in my spot. “You kept it warm for me, Doc. Add a splash of cream to the Joe.”
I padded to the kitchen area to get his coffee, pissed at his bluster. He was the one who suggested Saturday. I had hoped to see him yesterday. But I needed to get him on board and would kiss his ass if I had to. Momentarily, I felt a need to skip back into the office to protect Carrie since I hadn’t warned her about Rollin’s disfigurement and didn’t know how she’d react, before I realized that as a criminal lawyer she had dealt with some of the dregs of society and didn’t need my help. The two of them seemed to be conversing normally when I returned. I gave Rollins his coffee.
“Thanks, Doc.” He wore a bulky, gray sweater and blue Dockers and looked better in his casual clothes that fit him appropriately. “I have to say this is a surprise. The renowned shrink who works at avoiding me, invites me to a meeting.”
“You make my day, too, Detective.” I gestured toward Carrie. “Do you know my attorney Carrie McBride?”
“We’ve met.” He sipped his coffee, did a little bobble-head thing where he minimally shook his head. “I’ll try to forget you’re a criminal lawyer who gets murderous scumbags free...”
“I resent that...”
“Don’t give me any of those bullshit rationalizations about protecting the innocent because for every innocent man you save you get another ten free to kill again–“
What side of the bed did he get up on? I broke in. “That’s enough Detective. I didn’t call you hereto insult my friend.”
“Should I focus on you, a doctor who abuses his patients?”
“Stop it!” Carrie shouted. “Can we get down to business now that we’ve dismissed with the formalities and social niceties?
That broke the tension. I couldn’t help but laugh. I noticed Rollins was also amused.
Carrie opened her attaché case, took out her smoke-sucking astray and lit a cigarette.
“Carrie!” I muttered, shaking my head.
Her smoking gave Rollins permission. He took out a cigar butt and re-lit it, fogging the room.
I opened the window. A light rain fell and a cool breeze moistened my window sill, still a better alternative to breathing in second-hand smoke. “What say you drop the insults? You’re not the only detective in town. There are other homicide detectives I can call.”
His smile was condescending. “There are other detectives that work homicides. I can get you a list if you like, but all the rest consider Sasha’s death a suicide. If your serious about getting her, I’m your only hope.”
“That can’t be. What about the evidence?”
“What evidence? I assume you shared this with your attorney.” Addressing Carrie, he said, “What about it, counselor? Will it stick?”
“No. Circumstantial at best.”
Rollins softly blew on his coffee to cool it. “The Seattle Police Officer Guild is another reason the others are not eager to dig further. Months ago, Miss Wilshire donated $100,000 to this fund. That’s huge. Biggest single contribution previously was $10,000. The fund helps cops suffering from injuries or a life threatening illness, and for families of officers died in the line of duty.”
“You don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Carrie said. “Talk about premeditated.”
“We’re dealing with a very savvy woman. We don’t want to underestimate her.” Rollins set his cup down, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Looks like we might both be on the same side, Doc. So what do you have for me?”
“I still don’t know if Megan killed her sister because it doesn’t fit the pattern–“
”–Pattern?”
“I believe Megan is a serial killer. She kills psychiatrists, apparently shrinks who sexually abused their patients.” I told him about what I discovered on my trip to Chicago.
Rollins had been taking notes between puffing on his smelly cigar. He was considering the situation. His distant gaze slid off my face and found the ceiling before returning “You believe she killed both of her husbands, Collingsworth and Pennington, but you have no proof and they went down as heart attacks, and no investigation has ever been opened.”
“Right.” I thought about Norma Pennington’s blunted efforts to get her husband’s body exhumed.
Rollins rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth, intensely stared at me. “It would be a bitch to get Chicago to exhume the bodies, and it’s probably too long ago anyway. Even if we knew they were poisoned, we still couldn’t prove Megan did it. We’d be in the same situation we are in now with Sasha.
We know the drugs killed her but we can’t prove who did it.”
“And we think Grant is in line to be Megan’s next victim,” Carrie added.
For the first time Rollins’ showed a bit of compassion when he looked at me.
“There’s more. Megan may have run down Isley Hodges.”
“You think that why?” Rollins questioned. Instinctively, he bent forward to be sure not to miss a single word.
“She traded in her Mercedes SUV.”
“You’re telling me now? He was killed weeks ago.”
“I didn’t make the connection before.”
Smoldering, he tried to regain control of himself. “Tell it to me straight, from the beginning”
Setting my cup down, I leaned forward. “First of all, Hodges is...was...a psychiatrist and he raped a sixteen year old in Texas. So he fits the pattern - sexually abusing psychiatrist. The last time I decided to move in with Megan, I noticed her SUV wasn’t black like before but a color like Bing cherry. To me it looked identical. I asked her about it. She said it was the new model. The other was last years. And we suspect Hodges was hit by a dark SUV.
“Goddamnit!” Rollins slammed his hand on the coffee table. “We need to find her trade.” He held up his hand. “I know it’s been detailed and probably sold but there still might be something incriminating on it. It’s amazing what our forensic team can find. Get me the name of the dealer. I’ll get on it right away.” He tossed his cigar butt in the coffee cup. “It appears as if we have ourselves a serial killer but we’ll never convict her without proof.”
“That’s why we invited you, detective,” Carrie
said, rising and stepping away from the sofa. She refilled her cup from the coffee thermos I had brought from the kitchen and placed on my desk. “You’ve been working on this for some time. We hope you’d point us in the right direction.”
“Wish I had an ace up my sleeve, but I’ve told you everything. All we got are the bruises on Sasha’s arms and the presumed murder weapon, the pill container without prints. And we can place Megan in the house somewhere around the time of death. Now the SUV might lead somewhere and then again, it might not.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll give you all the assistance I can, but I’m counting on you...”
“Can you give Grant police protection?”
“That’s not necessary...” I interjected.
“Yes, it is Grant. You’re a marked man,” Carrie said.
“Have you been physically attacked or threatened?” Rollins inquired.
“No.”
“Until you are there’s nothing we can do.”
Carrie noisily exhaled, took a cigarette out of her pack and holding one end, waved it at Rollins like a teacher with a ruler scolding a class. “We’re not just going to sit around with our fingers up our you know what while Grant is a sitting duck. We need to do something now.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “I’ve got to see her, get her to confess.”
“How?” Carrie asked.
“I’ll wear a wire.”
“That’s too dangerous!”
“Unless Megan blunders, that might be our only option.” Rollins said, “Let me run down the SUV first. See if that leads anywhere. If not, I think we should consider Grant’s offer. We can minimize the danger to her discovering the recorder. The technology’s improved we can now get a wireless read on her.”
“That still doesn’t protect Grant from the Black Widow.”
Black Widow, right! I hadn’t made the association of the female spider that ate the male after mating. I remembered the movie where Theresa Russell played the black widow, a gold digger who married wealthy men then killed them. “If Megan is a black widow,” I interjected, “I don’t think she kills for money. The inheritance from her parents was substantial. She probably raked it in from her husbands who were well-established professionals, but she certainly wouldn’t gain much from me.”
“If you remember that’s what I said first time I came to see you,” Rollins said. “One of the reason I thought you might be in on it.”
I nodded. “Male psychiatrist is the common denominator except for Sasha Kovich.”
“Psychiatrists guilty of sexual abuse,” Carrie added emphatically.
“I may be knit-picking,” I said, “but I don’t consider what I did with Megan sexual abuse.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Carrie said. “What matters is how Megan considers it.”
“She’s right,” Rollins added.
They made their point. “That still doesn’t explain Sasha’s death,” I said. “She’s not like the others.”
“I’m baffled, too,” Rollins said, “but knowing is not going to change anything. We need proof. And, if I can’t get it from the SUV, you’re going to have to get her to make an admission and record it.”
“Well, I guess that does it,” Carrie said to the detective. “We won’t do anything until we hear from you. But hurry, I don’t like having Grant exposed. I think the spider is very hungry.”
46
Up early, I had just poured a cup of coffee and turned on the living room TV when I saw the blazing fire. Dawn was breaking and a female reporter stood in the forefront of the burning building as thick, black smoke billowed into the air competing with the red-orange, lapping flames. The hood of her jacket protected her from the steady rain that seemed to have no impact on the fire. ‘Breaking News’ was the caption at the bottom of the screen.
“What you’re seeing is the burning of the old abandoned Madison Warehouse. Fortunately, Peggy, no one has used the warehouse for several years so we don’t expect any casualties. However, according to the fire chief, there’s always a chance a homeless person or runaway youth could have found his or her way into the building. That’s a detail we won’t know until the fire is extinguished and the building is searched. The fire department is speculating arson since gas and electric have been shut off and they don’t believe the building contained any incendiary agents...”
Couldn’t be! I almost spilled my coffee. The Madison Warehouse abutted the alley behind Greg’s group home, in the area he considered setting to fire. But we just had a session where we met the fire-setting head on with insight, and I thought moved a step beyond. Had I been snookered? People relapse, regress, but it just didn’t feel right that Gregory would start the fire.
My phone rang. “Hello.”
“Grant, Carlos here. Is Greg with you?”
“No. Why?”
“He’s missing. Gone AWOL. Went for a walk yesterday eve after supper. Never returned.”
“You know about the fire?” I asked, my eyes still glued to the TV.
“Yeah. The wind’s blowing the smoke this way. Looks like a sauna outside through my window. I have to notify the police. You have any suggestions?”
“No. None at all.” I was stunned by this bizarre turn of events. My voice must have dropped off.
“Come again. I didn’t hear you.”
“No. I’m stunned. Lost for words. We just had a session where he reached out to me, fearful of his impulse to start a fire. I thought we handled it. You think Greg set the fire?”
“It’s in the neighborhood. Either him or some relentless dragon.”
I didn’t appreciate the humor. “Did you hear from his mother yesterday?”
“No. Wait. Not her specifically, but a neighbor or friend called on her behalf....” I heard the shuffle of papers.“...Said she was Karen Smith, a lawyer representing Mrs. Liendecker. Wanted to know when Greg would be coming home. I referred her to Bertha. It just didn’t compute with me. She wasn’t listed in the yellow pages. Greg didn’t know if his mother had Karen Smith as her attorney. What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know. Let me know when you know anything. I’ll do the same.” I hung up. The discussion with Greg could have stirred him up, but it just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t believe he started the fire, yet he was the prime suspect.
I hiked to the office, once again, questioning my judgment. I singled Greg out for special attention. We hit it off, fostering more than the typical therapeutic relationship. He needed a father and I needed a replacement for Kevin. I truly believed I had made a difference in his life. He was making good strides and had come to me when he was most vulnerable to acting out, wanting help with his impulse to start a fire. Usually, after such an insightful interview, Greg could be expected to harness his acting out for a period of time. How could he set the fire the very next day?
All through the day whenever the phone rang I thought it was Greg calling me, but he never did. I pushed Rollins to issue an Amber Alert. He declined, referring me to the juvenile division who sent out an APB instead to apprehend Greg as an arson suspect.
“Thank you for coming in,” I said to Mrs. Liendecker who sat stiffly on the edge of my sofa, her knees pressed together. Blessed with pretty features, the road map on her face from the sun or excessive smoking, coupled with the heavy rouge, made her appear more like Greg’s grandmother than his mother. Short and underweight, her burnt almond, hair hung straight to her shoulders. She appeared frightened.
“I can’t pay you,” she pleaded, nervously fidgeting with her hands.
“There’s no charge. This is community service.” I smiled. I needed to get the fee question immediately off the table so we could concentrate on Greg. I thought it must be hard for people who are barely scraping by, to forever have this affordability factor weighing in on
everything they did, and the accompanying embarrassment when having to acknowledge it with others. I felt sucked in by her demeanor and wanted to help her out financially. I understood how her ‘Oliver-esque’, pauper-like plea effectively served her and blasted the guilt onto Greg. “Have you heard from Greg?”
Her lips quivered and she began to cry. “He’s set a fire and runaway. It’s all my fault. I’ve pressured him to come home. I shouldn’t have.”
I offered her a tissue. When she ceased crying, I asked, “Who is this Karen Smith who called Mr. Gutierrez?”
“She’s nobody. I made her up. Had a friend call.” She forced a smile, revealing yellowing teeth. “If I wasn’t so desperate.”
I pushed back the anger that rose within. Would Greg have runaway if that friend hadn’t called? “I know how hard it must be for you to worry about where your next dollar might come from. I can appreciate that. It can make people do desperate things. But you can’t rely on Gregory to provide that for you. You have to rely on...What’s your first name?”
“Mary.”
“You have to rely on Mary.”
“But Mary isn’t very reliable.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She’s made a mess of her life. Her husband left her. They took her son away. She didn’t even finish high school.”
“How old are you, Mary?”
“Forty.”
She was young at forty. One could make a case for how much I’ve accomplished at thirty-five. Yet, I was also making a mess out of my life. And at the moment I couldn’t imagine how my life could get any messier. “You have your whole life ahead of you yet.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
I smiled sympathetically. “I don’t know you very well but I can see where you have several issues