“It did?”
“Yes.”
“It helped with trust?”
“No. We had trust going in. Honesty. Respect. That never wavered.”
I was perplexed the way I’m perplexed by Stephen Hawking. The words he uses are English, but after one or two paragraphs I feel like I’m reading Armenian. Same thing right then with Holly. The arithmetic of the coupling was simple enough. Two plus two equals four. I shouldn’t have been so mystified by the equation. But I was.
“Trust?” I said again, and then I sighed away some of my exasperation. “I wish I understood it better. I really do. It seems that… with you being… and him… I just don’t quite get it. I’ll think about it some more, though. I will.”
“I appreciate that. I appreciate that you try to understand. Some people don’t. Most people don’t.”
“Artie?” I said.
She laughed. “Artie, indeed. Have a happy Thanksgiving, Detective. I’d invite you to join us for supper, but under the circumstances…”
“Of course, of course. Artie wouldn’t be happy I was there. You, too, Holly, you have a good holiday, too. Don’t let Artie ruin it for everybody.”
I pivoted to leave but stopped and looked over my shoulder. She was still at the door.
“Would Mark have been okay with Sterling? As a sexual partner for you? Just curious.”
The face she made was rueful. “No. No, he wouldn’t. Sterling is… firmly on the wrong side of the Brad Pitt line. That’s where Mark’s comfort level stopped. At the Brad Pitt line.”
She leaned out the door, took a step toward me, and touched her lips to my cheek. That was good-bye.
Carmen waited for me to get settled, pull my seat belt on, and start the engine before she said, “Holly seems like a nice girl. I’m sorry I got off on the wrong foot with her.”
I smiled at the irony. “She is a nice girl. My mother maybe wouldn’t think so, but she is. She’s nice.”
Carmen didn’t want anything to do with my comment about my mother. Wise on her part. “Did you get what we needed?” she asked.
“To decide if Holly’s in danger? I don’t know. How about we’ll decide that together? Let’s go someplace, and I’ll tell you what she said, and we’ll put our heads together and decide if we should spend Thanksgiving hanging around South Bend waiting for Sterling or whether we should spend it doing something else.”
“Do you want to go back to the Days Inn? We can talk there. There’s some kind of coffee shop on the corner.”
“Nah. I don’t think so. Where’s the campus from here? I’d like to see that. That way you can tell your dad you’ve been there, and… anyway, I’ve heard some interesting things about the basilica.”
FIFTY-FIVE
ALAN
Dawn broke on Thanksgiving with a cold front blowing furiously over the Divide. The pressure change was preceded by winds that caused the big panes of glass in the living room to hum ominously. I wasted a few minutes standing on the warm side of the humming glass watching the morning sun light up the sky and reflect off the quartz crystals embedded in the granite planes of the Flatirons.
Special.
I’d awakened with a plan. My plan was to make a plan. I tracked down an index card, no lines, and listed all the things I had to do that morning. Most of the items on the list were domestic-Grace, bath! Dogs, walk-or culinary-Turkey, clean amp; dry.One was fantasy-Bike ride??And one was business-Gibbs?
Although I wasn’t usually a list-making guy, I felt better knowing that I had a battle plan for the day, which promised to be convoluted, and enjoyed a flash of empathy for my old college roommate, who had always carried an index card with a to-do list in his shirt pocket. When each list’s tasks were completed, he would immediately grab a fresh card and scrawl a single line at the bottom:Start a new list.
With Diane’s admonition about hurdling in my head, I began to leap over the items on my list one by one. I’d made a good head start on the day’s complicated kitchen preparations before Grace announced, loudly, that she was ready for her holiday to begin.
Midmorning Lauren joined Grace and me in the kitchen. Lauren had managed a few hours of sleep after her pool-playing marathon, and her mood was softer than I’d seen since the previous weekend. I could see my wife reemerging from the nefarious cocoon of Solumedrol in which she’d been imprisoned. It felt great. She sipped some juice and coffee and offered a couple of gentle suggestions about my cooking techniques, and our little core-family-size turkey found its way into the oven just about on time.
That’s when my pager informed me that someone had left me a message at the office. I picked up the phone and checked my voicemail.
Gibbs. The number she’d left was for her cell.
I excused myself from my girls and called Gibbs back from the living room, adopting an office demeanor before I spoke my first words. The wind had quieted to less than gale force, and the glass had ceased humming. The sky was as clear as my daughter’s conscience, and the mountains were close enough to touch. I said, “This is Dr. Gregory.”
“Hi, it’s me. Gibbs. Thanks for calling back. I’m up in Vail.”
At that moment I was gazing vaguely southwest toward Vail. Fifty miles of mountains and one imposing Continental Divide stood in the way, but I was pretty sure I was looking almost exactly in the right direction. Between here and there, cake-batter clouds seemed to be shadowing all the high valleys. “You’re safe?” I asked. It wasn’t a great question, but it was better than my first impulse, which had been to ask “Was it windy up there this morning, too?”
“I wanted someone to know where I was. In case something happens. You know, in case Sterling shows up.”
That thought gave me a chill.
“Safe House is open on holidays, Gibbs. I’m happy to make a call for you.”
“The nice hotels were all sold out. I’m in a crappy place by the highway. Do you hear the noise? The trucks going by? Sterling would never look for me here.” She giggled. “Never.”
Just for the record, I thought it was important to remind myself that crappy hotels in Vail aren’t exactly like crappy hotels in Baltimore or Detroit. I told myself to imagine a cheap cabin on an expensive cruise ship.
“You’re okay?” I said.
“Yes, I am.”
“I appreciate that you checked in with me. We’re set for Monday morning, right? Same time?”
“Sure, yes. I’ll be there. Do you know where Detective Purdy is? Is he coming home for the holiday? I haven’t heard from him. I’d feel much better knowing he was close by.”
The purpose of a psychotherapist is not-is not-to provide information to a patient that is unrelated to her care. The fact that Sam was in South Bend was definitely unrelated to Gibbs’s care.
“I can’t help you with that,” I said.
“If you hear from him, would you ask him to call me? His cell phone isn’t working. I can’t reach him.”
“It’s not an appropriate role for me. To deliver messages to people for you. If I’m going to prove helpful, it’s important to recognize the unique nature of our relationship.” My voice was even, but I was thinking,I’m not your damned errand boy.
I caught myself. Why was I so annoyed? Was this high school revisited? Was Gibbs playing Teri Reginelli, wondering if I knew where she could find my friend Sean?
And was I reacting now the way I reacted then, by being a spurned fool?
If that’s what was happening, that was countertransference. Textbook countertransference. It was not a pretty picture.
She huffed, “I’m not asking for a big favor, Alan. Just pass along the message, please.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
Clinically, I was standing on solid ground. Communicating with a patient about the location of one of my friends was not an appropriate therapeutic role. But experience had taught me that when countertransference melded perfectly with what appeared to be appropriate treatment, danger often ens
ued.
“Youwon’tdo that,” she corrected.
“Okay, I won’t do that. It’s not an appropriate role for me. That you’re asking me to do it might be important in terms of understanding some of the issues we’ve been discussing in your therapy. We can talk about it more during your appointment on Monday.”
“Am I being dismissed? Is that your way of telling me that you and I are done talking for now?”
“Gibbs, I’m glad you’re safe. But I think anything that is not an emergency can wait until we meet on Monday morning.”
“If Sterling shows up and knocks on my door, I’ll call you. That would be an emergency, right? My murderous husband at my door? You’ll be able to find a couple of minutes to chat about that, right?”
She hung up.
I thought,That went well.
Forty minutes passed before I realized what I’d missed. I’d completed one basting cycle with the turkey and was about to go back for the second when it hit me out of the blue, even though I hadn’t spent the interim consciously thinking about either Gibbs or her phone call.
The important clinical issue wasn’t that Gibbs wanted my help tracking down Sam, that she apparently wanted to alter the nature of the therapeutic relationship so that my status devolved from helper to mere errand-runner.
No, the issue was that she was so desperate to find Sam at all.
Why?
“Are you going to baste that thing or just stand there letting all the heat out of the oven?”
I turned. Lauren had bathed and put on some makeup, and what was much more important was that she’d put on a smile. She was limping, but she wasn’t carrying the walking stick.
I closed the oven door and said, “Hi.”
FIFTY-SIX
SAM
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart was a monument to something. Had to be. I spent ten minutes walking around inside the giant church like a tourist at some midwestern Vatican, but I couldn’t decide precisely what the pompous shrine was intended to honor. God? I came from a tradition of simple prairie churches with inadequate heat in the winter and nonexistent air-conditioning in the summer. I wasn’t raised to pray to a God who sat around in heaven with His saints counting His cathedrals and basilicas like Midas counting his gold; a God who cared whether the glass in His windows was stained or the bronze on His altars was gilded.
Certainly not a God who gave a hoot whether Notre Dame beat Michigan. My old man once told me that if God cares who wins a football game while people are starving in Africa, we can all just give up. That hell on earth is just around the corner. My old man was not a genius, far from it, but he got that right.
Carmen was an observant lady. Being observant, she didn’t waste any time before she asked why I seemed so interested in the massive pipe organ inside the basilica. I told her it was a thing I had, a fascination with organs and organ music. The truth was, I didn’t know a division from a manual or a pipe from a stop. But it didn’t make a whole lot of difference what I knew or didn’t know: Carmen liked disco. I figured arguing musical taste with the woman would be about as fruitful as trying to teach a dog to gargle.
All that mattered to me at that moment was that the precise location where Holly and Sterling had had their profane tryst was going to remain their secret, and mine, and maybe God’s-that is, if during their coupling He hadn’t been too occupied watching the Notre Dame-Michigan game or hadn’t been totally blinded by the quasi-Gothic glitz of His Indiana basilica.
Memory told me that one of God’s commandments to Moses had to do with coveting thy neighbor’s wife, so I was assuming that He maintained some interest in marital fidelity and duly noted the fact that Sterling and Holly had fornicated in front of His fancy pipe organ.
Carmen and I moved back outside and stood for a moment beneath the vaulting spire that dominated the front of the basilica. I said, “I hope God cares what happened to those four women, and I hope He cares what happens to Holly Malone and to Gibbs.”
She touched my hand. “Feeling philosophical, Sam?”
I couldn’t tell whether my hand was cold and she was all heat or vice versa. But the thermal contrast between her flesh and mine had all my attention. I said, “Kind of, I guess.”
Carmen had listened carefully to my edited version of Holly’s story-I transformed it from an X-rated melodrama to a suggestive PG-13 and totally omitted any reference to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart-on the way over to the Notre Dame campus. I was ready to hear her thoughts on how we were going to spend the rest of our day.
“Is she in danger?” I asked. “What do you think?”
“Maybe.”
I laughed. The campus, deserted for the holiday, chewed on my guffaw and spit it back at me in fractured echoes.
“Well,” I said, “that settles it.”
Carmen laughed, too.
Our hands were still touching. The top of my hand rested against the side of hers. It was either an accident, or it wasn’t. I figured that was just the way we had planned it. Total deniability. Know this: Cops are better at deniability than just about anybody but politicians and corporate executives.
Carmen grabbed two of my fingers and tugged me away from the church. When I chanced to return the pressure, she pulled away and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat. I did the same.
Didn’t mean a thing.
She yanked us back to the work we were doing. “Let’s assume that the way Sterling met Holly is similar to the way he met the other women. Can we do that?”
“Not Louise, the stewardess.”
“Flight attendant.”
“Don’t get me started. I liked stewardesses. I liked waitresses. Turns out I’m not so fond of flight attendants and servers. Why is that? Sterling met Louise on a flight she was working, right? Isn’t that the story? And he met Holly on the Internet, right? But I don’t think it really matters. I don’t think the meeting-them part is as important as the sex-with-them part.”
“You’re probably right. He met them. By chance, socially, at work, on the Internet-whatever. He met them. He made a point of meeting them. And he had sex with them.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said. “The sex with Holly wasn’t… pedestrian. She made it clear that that was important. Not only to her but to him, too. He wasn’t just into infidelity, he was into… sexual adventure. He was into women who might be as adventurous as he was.”
“This another interest of yours, Sam? Like pipe organs?”
With the tease, her voice tingled a little.
“Don’t make this more difficult than it already is for me.”
“Holly’s that adventurous?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I said. Not only did I not want to violate Holly’s confidence, I didn’t want to have to repeat her story out loud to another human being. Especially not another human being of Holly’s gender.
Carmen could tell. She Cliff-Noted the thing for us. “He met them, he gauged their interest, and he joined them on some sexual adventure. So why are four of them dead?”
“We know some things about Louise and Holly, right? We know they both survived their first sexual encounters with Sterling. Can we assume that the other women did, too? That there was an initial encounter-mutually satisfying-and that he went back a second time, or a third or fourth, and that’s when he killed them?”
We covered a good chunk of dormant Notre Dame turf before Carmen answered. “Yes, for now we can assume that. We almost have to.”
“That means that Holly’s now in danger. Pure and simple.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Maybe?”
“Sam, nobody was looking for Sterling when he killed these other women. He had the cover of anonymity. Now? He has to assume that we’re after him.”
“Is this devil’s advocate time?”
“The risk factor has changed. He has to think that some cop-somebody like you and me-doesn’t believe he drowned. If I’m him, I’m lying low.”
“Why? The Georgia cops think he’s dead. My guess is that your superiors have already suggested you go home, too. Or even ordered you back to work.” Her eyes confirmed my supposition. “I bet you’re using vacation days right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
She could have lied to me. Would’ve been easy. I said, “Sterling might think he’s home free, Carmen. That this is like a free play in football, you know? After an offsides call?”
“We still don’t know his motive, Sam. And we don’t know where Brian Miles fits.”
She was right about that. We certainly didn’t know where Brian Miles fit. But the possibilities concerned me. I said, “Half the collars I get I never understand what the idiots were thinking, Carmen. Criminals are goofy.”
“Goofy? Is that a Colorado word?”
“Nope. Minnesota.” Intentionally, I said Minnesota the natural northern way, accentuating the “so” syllable so that it became “soooo.”
“That’s what that accent is? Minnesota? That’s where you’re from?”
“The Iron Range. That’s up north.”
“Interesting,” she said.
“Not really.”
I wasn’t sure she was going to let it rest there.
She did. I was impressed.
Ten more steps. I asked, “Do you think they call this the Quad?”
“Don’t know,” she said.
On the way back over to Holly Malone’s neighborhood, Carmen said, “Since I left San Jose, this is the most time I’ve spent with another cop without being asked why I left town without my pension.”
“Some things are personal.” I was thinking about Sherry and me, but I was also thinking about Alan and that bug in his office, and about Sterling and Holly and their time down near the pedals of the pipe organ. Secrets? They don’t mean shit. “You want to tell me what happened before you changed jobs, that’s cool. You don’t, I understand completely. I’m sure you had your reasons.”
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