Mirror Image

by Dennis Palumbo

  Just then, behind us, the door opened and Noah stood on the sidewalk. In his hand was a Louisville slugger.

  “Do I gotta start bustin’ skulls or what?” he said, raising the baseball bat over his head. I realized with a start that he wasn’t kidding around.

  “Sorry, Noah,” I said.

  “I run a nice place here. If you shrinks can’t behave yourselves…”

  “I mean it, we’re outta here.”

  Garman looked as though he were about to explode, but Noah had already turned and shuffled back inside.

  I glanced over at Riley, leaning against the wall. The lower half of his face sagged, and the handkerchief he held against his mouth was soaked with blood.

  “Look, Riley, I’m sorry. We both acted like jerks. And then I—hell, I should’ve known better. Okay?”

  “Not okay.” He was breathing heavily but evenly. It wasn’t the alcohol talking any longer. “You’re toast, Rinaldi. I’ll have your license. I’ll sue you for assault. Then I’ll figure out some ways to really fuck you up.”

  He pushed himself off from the wall, legs unsteady beneath him. He squinted hard at Garman.

  “You and Elaine go celebrate without me.” His voice was thick with grievance. “I’ll grab a cab home. I couldn’t chew that lobster now anyway. Thanks to Muhammad Ali here, I’ll be drinking through a goddam straw for a week.”

  Garman and I stood in silence, watching Riley head toward the parking lot. Behind, from somewhere downriver, you could hear the sound of a tugboat churning the black waters on its way past the Point.

  “By the way,” I said finally, without turning, “what are you celebrating?”

  Garman gave me a sidelong look, equal parts amusement and exasperation. “Not that it matters much at the moment, but I just closed a deal with UniHealth. They’re acquiring Ten Oaks and plan on making it the flagship for a franchise of private clinics.”

  “Franchise? Sounds like McDonald’s.”

  “Not now, okay, Dan? I’m getting enough grief about it from the staff. Nancy and the others.”

  “My sympathies.” I held out my hand. “Thanks for your concern though. Before.”

  His look at me was frank. “Kevin Merrick was your responsibilty, not ours. Our weekly peer reviews are merely a courtesy, extended to therapists who used to work at the clinic. Ten Oaks is in no way directly connected with, nor liable for, Kevin’s treatment.” He smiled, and only then shook my hand.

  “Thanks for clearing that up. For a moment there, I almost forgot who you were.”

  “That would be a big mistake.” Still smiling, he turned toward the parking lot. “I better join Elaine and get going, or we’ll lose our reservation. Corner table.”

  “Look, about Riley…”

  He shrugged. “Truth is, something about you has always pissed him off. I guess he sees you as some kind of maverick. You know his type. Philly mainline, marinated for eight years at Harvard. Hidebound, judgmental. Knows everything.”

  His pale eyes narrowed. “I’d say you’ve made yourself a real enemy, Dan.”

  With that, Albert Garman tightened the knot of his scarf and walked off into the night.

  Chapter Eleven

  The gray walls of the Old County Building loomed ahead in the darkness, ablaze with unaccustomed lights at this hour. Above, the full moon floated like a pearl in oil, clouds threading its glow. I pulled into the lot.

  It was nine p.m. Time for my meeting with the cops.

  I found an empty space, parked, and went into the main lobby. Then I took the elevator up to the Police Bureau’s Central Office on the third floor.

  The first person I met there was Angela Villanova. A short, stocky woman in her mid-fifties, she had shrewd but kind eyes, a lacquered cloud of gray hair, and the walk of someone who’d just gotten off a horse.

  Though she’d probably never even seen one. City girl, to the core. Born and raised in East Liberty, she’d plowed up the ranks to make lieutenant, before accepting the new post of Chief Community Liaison Officer five years ago.

  “Danny,” she said, spreading her hands. Her voice was breathy, conspiratorial. Something was definitely up.

  Angie gave me a quick hug. I smelled her perfume. My Sin. She’d been wearing it since she was twenty, when my dad paid her ten bucks an hour to tutor me in math.

  We were related, evidently; her father’s sister had married my third cousin. Or something. That’s the trouble with Italian family trees. There’re so many branches, you can get lost trying to trace your way through the foliage.

  As we headed down to the main office, I asked the obvious question. “Angie, why—?”

  “Why am I here? I guess the suits figure having a friendly face in the room will make you more cooperative.”

  “I sure as hell hate the sound of that.”

  She shrugged. “First off, I’m really sorry about your patient. I mean, for you. Finding him that way…”

  “Thanks. But I’m okay.”

  “Bullshit, but we’ll let that pass.” A brief smile. “Anyway, the thing is, this murder has heated up all of a sudden. We’re in total siege mode.”

  “What the hell for?”

  I was confused. Sure, cops always want to clear murders fast. Mostly for pragmatic reasons. The trail turns cold after the first 72 hours. Plus, high clearance rates make department heads happy, which is always good news for homicide cops. Usually the only kind they ever get.

  “Listen, Angie. I don’t know how much they told you, but the detectives on this case figure the killer was after me, and got Kevin Merrick by mistake.”

  She waved a hand impatiently. “Christ, that’s old news. Homicide’s working a whole new scenario now.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since we found out the victim’s name isn’t Kevin Merrick.”

  Chapter Twelve

  District Attorney Leland Sinclair pointed to a chair across from his at the conference table.

  “Take a seat, Dr. Rinaldi. This thing’s rolling downhill, and we don’t have much time to get you up to speed.”

  Unlike most public figures, the DA looked the same in person as he did on the evening news—like a senior tennis pro. Well-connected and ambitious, everyone knew he wanted to be governor one day. And probably would be.

  Sinclair turned and introduced me to Lt. Stu Biegler, from Robbery/Homicide. He was probably in his forties, but looked ten years younger. Pale. Male-model thin. His glance at me was narrow-eyed and suspicious.

  Polk stepped in behind Angie and me, nodded once to Biegler, his boss, and moved down along the large oval table to where his partner Eleanor Lowrey sat making notes.

  We were in the main conference room, sequestered from the maze of cubicles and offices beyond its paneled walls by reinforced double-doors. The mood had seemed pretty tense from the moment I came in, and was ratcheting up fast as we all awkwardly found seats. The pockmarked table was littered with papers, folders, and Styrofoam cups.

  Then, before anyone could say a word, the door opened again behind us. The latecomer was tall, blond, wearing a silk blouse and a short, tight-fitting skirt, and was easily one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.

  She had a dancer’s body, with firm breasts and long, very smooth legs. I must have gaped, because I could sense Angie’s gaze on me. Felt the chill of her disapproval.

  “Sorry I’m late,” the woman said to Sinclair, pushing a strand of hair from her forehead.

  Sinclair and I got back to our feet. Nobody else did.

  “No problem. We’re just getting started.” He turned to me. “Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, this is Casey Walters, one of our rising Assistant District Attorneys.”

  “Right. Until the next time I fuck up,” she said cheerfully.

  I felt her frank appraisal like a searchlight on my face, so I distracted myself by returning the favor. I liked what I saw. High cheekbones. Pale pink lipstick on full lips. The hand that reached to shake mine was strong, sure, with long fingers
and short, frosted nails.

  Then her glance went to Polk and Lowrey.

  “By the way,” she said, “I’m late because of the Paula Stark case. Thanks to you two, I just got beat up by her public defender, which does great things for my image.”

  Polk glared at her. “Are you shittin’ me? We got enough to put Paula upstate for a deuce, easy. What about the phone calls to her brother, and the witness?”

  “Oh, yeah. The homeboy who swears he saw Paula club the grocer with a wrench from her purse. Before she empties the cash register and escapes to the South Side on the bus. Guys, I can’t make a meal out of that.”

  “It’s what happened,” Polk said testily.

  “Get me the wrench. Get me the damn bus driver. Get me something.” She spread her hands.

  “That’s enough,” Sinclair said sharply. “All of you.”

  Polk folded his arms on the table. Pouting.

  Shaking her head, Casey took the seat across from me, giving me a brief, wry smile as she settled in.

  “Let’s not forget why we’re here, people,” Sinclair said calmly. Then, turning to me: “Dr. Rinaldi, Sergeant Polk and Detective Lowrey reported the details of their interview with you last night. Including the conclusion you all came to regarding the killer’s intended target.”

  “Me,” I said. “Right?”

  “A reasonable assumption, given the evidence. And believe me, we’re not ruling that scenario out.”

  “That’s right,” Biegler said. He rubbed his thin nose. “But there’s also a second possibility, which I think we ought to keep on the table.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “That’s the one where I’m the killer.”

  Sinclair smiled patiently. “We have to look at everyone, Doctor. That’s how it works.”

  “Then maybe I ought to shut up and call a lawyer,” I said evenly. “That’s part of how it works, too.”

  Sinclair and I exchanged cool looks. I got the feeling he figured there was room for only one alpha male in this particular patch of jungle, and he was it.

  Angie reached over and tapped my arm. “Cool it, Danny. Nobody here seriously thinks you did it.”

  “Not too seriously, anyway,” Polk grumbled. He sat glumly under a “No Smoking” sign, meticulously tearing an empty Camel pack into tiny pieces.

  Lt. Biegler shifted nervously in his seat. “Listen, we’re getting off the friggin’ track here. Right now, the killer isn’t the problem. It’s the victim.”

  I looked from Biegler to Sinclair. “Speaking of which, I hear my patient’s name is not Kevin Merrick…?”

  Casey Walters spoke for the first time since sitting down. She aimed her blue eyes at me.

  “His name may very well be Merrick. At least, that’s what he’s called himself for years.”

  She checked the file folder she’d just drawn from her slender briefcase. “It’s the name on his driver’s license, credit cards, everything. Maybe he even had his name legally changed to Merrick. But if so, it wasn’t in this state. We’re on that already, though it’ll take some time. The point is, Merrick wasn’t the name he had at birth, or when he was growing up in Banford.”

  “So what was his name?”

  “Wingfield. Same as his father’s.”

  I started, letting the name sink in. “Now you’re going to tell me—”

  “That’s right. Kevin’s father is Miles Wingfield, founder and CEO of Wingfield BioTech. Cutting-edge genetic research, facilities worldwide. Real media magnet, too. Covers of Time, Newsweek, you name it. CNN devoted a whole hour to him. Personal worth conservatively estimated at six to seven billion.”

  “Jesus,” Polk said, though it was more like a moan.

  “Yeah,” Lowrey said wryly, “but is he really happy?”

  Biegler snorted. “I’d say goddam ecstatic. Guy’s sixty-five years old, he goes through supermodels like Kleenex. Throw in the dozen houses, fleet of jets, and his very own island, and I’d say, yeah, definitely feeling pretty damn good about life when he gets up in the morning.”

  “All right, children.” Sinclair shook his head. “Now that we’ve genuflected before Wingfield’s wealth and celebrity, let’s not lose sight of the real issue. Namely, the cost of having him as an adversary.”

  I could guess what was coming next.

  “He’s putting the pressure on to find Kevin’s killer.”

  “Pressure?” Biegler grimaced. “Like Def-Com Four. Wingfield hears about it on the news, realizes it’s his kid, and starts making phone calls—”

  “Which is how we found out who your patient really was,” Casey explained to me.

  “Wingfield called the White House, for God’s sake,” Angie said. “Then the Governor’s mansion. He woke the mayor up at five this morning.”

  “Who called me at 5:15,” Sinclair said. “More hungover than usual, but lucid enough to realize his ass is on the line. As are all our asses, I might add.”

  “Give the guy a break. It was his son,” Lowrey said, looking at the white men around the table as though we were all clueless bastards. Maybe she wasn’t far wrong.

  “Bullshit,” Biegler said. “They were estranged. Hadn’t seen each other in years, since before the old man got rich. Nobody close to Wingfield even knew he had a kid.”

  “Except for the people in this room,” Sinclair said, “and the people he called last night, nobody still knows.”

  “You want to bet how long that lasts?” Casey shook her head. “Christ, the media will be all over this…”

  I said nothing. It seemed…unbelievable. The Kevin I knew was barely making it, emotionally or financially. He lived on student loans, and delivery jobs after classes. Yet all along he was the estranged heir to billions?…

  I had another thought. If his father left their town in disgrace when Kevin was a kid, how did he change his life so radically, grow into some Fortune 500 heavyweight, the Bill Gates of the biotech world?

  And had Kevin really had no contact with his father all these years? What about Wingfield’s other child, his daughter Karen? Had she?

  A final, darker notion rose in my mind.

  If Kevin’s murder did have something to do with who his father was, did that mean Karen—wherever she was—might be next?

  Unless this whole investigation had begun too late, and she was already dead…

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Hey, Doc!” Polk was staring at me from his end of the table. He wasn’t alone. “You with us or what?”

  “Sorry. Just thinking.”

  Sinclair smiled. “I understand what a shock this is, Doctor. You knew your patient as one person, and now it turns out he was someone else.” He paused, aware of its effect. “Assuming, of course, it is a shock…”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, we need to know as much about Kevin as we can. What was his current relationship with Wingfield, if any? Who were Kevin’s friends, employers? Did they know who his father was?”

  Sinclair’s gaze at me was unwavering. “In other words, was Kevin’s murder a kidnap-for-ransom gone wrong? It’s a real possibility, in light of who his father is.”

  “And I’m supposed to just tell you all this?”

  Angela Villanova turned to me. “Danny, it’s not a violation of Kevin’s memory. Or his rights. Not if it helps to find his killer. You know that as well as I.”

  I waved a hand in surrender. “Yeah, I know. It just goes against the grain.”

  I noticed Casey Walters staring intently at me. In sympathy? Concern? I couldn’t be sure.

  “Besides,” I went on, “the truth is, all this stuff about Wingfield is news to me. You can trash my office, read my files. Stick electrodes in my brain, if you want. But Kevin never mentioned Wingfield. I just knew his father as a small-town banker who deserted his family and never looked back. Kevin never saw him again. He spent the rest of his adolescence in foster care.”

  “And in and out of mental hospitals,” Casey said, referring aga
in to her file folder. “Tough life for the kid. Mother dead, abandoned by his father, battling mental illness. Living on the edge…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I’ll want a copy of that file,” Biegler announced.

  “Copy everyone in this room,” Sinclair ordered. “And nobody outside of it. But we have to coordinate all this. I spoke to the chief just before I got here, and we’ve decided to run the whole show from here.”

  “Hey, it’s our case,” Polk blurted out. I could see from his face he’d just as quickly regretted it.

  Sinclair’s voice was like ice. “Haven’t you been paying attention, Sergeant? Your petty jurisdictional concerns are irrelevant.”

  “I’m just sayin’—”

  Biegler glared at Polk, seething. “You heard the man, Sergeant. They want to run things from downtown, if that’s okay with you. This way, if we screw up, and Harrisburg decides to drop a bomb on us, we’ll all be conveniently located in the same place. You fucking shit,” he added.

  Polk sat down, face a livid red. Eleanor Lowrey, her own brow creased with anxiety, touched his arm.

  Sinclair sighed. “Look, we better wrap this up. The chief and I have to confer with the mayor in an hour. He wants to figure out a game plan for tomorrow.”

  “What happens tomorrow?” I was getting tired of playing catch-up. Or maybe I was just getting tired.

  “Wingfield happens tomorrow,” Sinclair replied. “He’s flying in at six a.m. Breakfast with me and the Mayor. And His Honor is not, shall we say, a morning person.”

  He nodded in my direction. “So. With all due respect to Dr. Rinaldi, and whatever skeletons he may have in his closet, I think we should keep the mistaken-identity theory on the back-burner. Let’s work on the assumption the killer knew who Kevin really was—or, more to the point, who his father was. The motive must lie there.”

  “Besides,” Casey added, her gaze seeming to challenge him, “Wingfield will be more supportive of a line of investigation going in that direction. Don’t you think?”

  Sinclair didn’t answer. Just gave her a look. Not so much in anger as betrayal. But something else, too.