Sidney Sheldon's the Silent Widow

by Sidney Sheldon

  ‘I’m telling you, Lou,’ Johnson groused, ‘the good doctor’s in this shit up to her pretty little neck!’

  Goodman rolled his eyes. ‘No, she isn’t.’

  ‘You don’t think the therapist lady could be involved, Lou?’ Bobby Hammond asked, taking a contemplative sip of his Corona. ‘I mean, Mick does have a point.’

  ‘And what point is that?’ Goodman demanded.

  Bobby shrugged. ‘A lot of people close to her do seem to be droppin’ dead.’

  ‘Starting with her husband,’ Davey Rae chimed in. ‘Let’s not forget him.’

  ‘That was an accident!’ Goodman almost shouted. What was this, the conspiracy theorists’ association annual drinks party?

  The fact was that, ever since the ME found those bizarre ‘dead cells’ under Lisa Flannagan’s fingernails, the entire homicide department had become hooked on the ‘Zombie Killings’. Most of these detectives’ regular cases involved either gang shootings or over-zealous domestic battery, or drug deals turned sour. Few if any had the glamour of this one: a beautiful shrink-to-the-stars, her young black protégé, and her patient – a billionaire’s model mistress. Add to that the mysterious zombie DNA found on the first victim, and you had a full-on thriller on your hands. It wasn’t right for Goodman and Johnson to keep the thing solely for themselves.

  ‘I hate to be the boring grown-up here and rain on your parade with the cold hard facts,’ Goodman drawled. ‘But the facts are: a) Nikki Roberts had no motive for either murder. None whatsoever. And b) she’s five foot three and can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. Treyvon Raymond was six two and a hundred eighty-six pounds of solid muscle. You’re telling me she overpowered, kidnapped, stabbed and dumped that boy? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Maybe she had help,’ said Johnson. ‘Maybe she hired someone.’

  ‘Yeah, and maybe Angelina Jolie’s about to walk in and ask you out on a date, Mick,’ Anna Baines observed wryly as she drained her beer. ‘Theoretically possible, but not exactly likely.’

  There were snorts of laughter all round.

  ‘Lou’s right,’ Anna added. ‘You got nothing on this shrink woman.’

  Johnson stood up, pushing his chair back with an angry clatter.

  ‘Not yet I don’t,’ he snapped at Anna. ‘But I will. She’s got no alibi, and I think she’s lying through her straight white teeth. So you can all go screw yourselves.’ And with that he stormed out.

  ‘Jeesh.’ Anna turned to Goodman, open-mouthed. ‘What’s with him?’

  ‘I was hoping you guys could tell me,’ Goodman sighed. ‘You’ve all known him longer than I have. Mick’s obsessed with Dr Roberts. He hates the woman’s guts, but he won’t tell me why.’

  ‘I might have an idea,’ Pedro Sanchez said quietly.

  Sanchez was a man of few words, unlike his partner Anna Baines. He rarely offered an opinion, but when he did it was usually worth listening to.

  ‘The Roberts woman used to get called as an expert witness from time to time.’

  ‘She gave psychiatric evaluations, you mean?’ asked Goodman.

  ‘Right. Usually on narcotics cases,’ said Sanchez. ‘She and her husband were involved with the junkies downtown – needle exchanges, counseling, all that shit. They were big-time bleeding-heart liberals.’

  Mick is ex drug squad, Goodman thought. ‘Did she testify in any of Johnson’s old cases?’ he asked Sanchez.

  ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. But I do know the lady wasn’t a big fan of the force in general, which wouldn’t have endeared her to Mick. You know what he’s like with holding grudges.’

  Without another word, Goodman left a twenty on the table and ran outside after Johnson. What Sanchez had told him was interesting, but it was another thought entirely that had just occurred to him.

  ‘Mick!’ he called into the darkness.

  Johnson turned around. Thankfully, he’d got no farther than the parking lot, where he was swaying drunkenly in the breeze, waiting for his Uber.

  Goodman cut straight to the chase. ‘Let’s say Dr Roberts is involved.’

  ‘She is,’ Johnson slurred. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But what if it’s not in the way you think. What if the Doc was the intended victim?’

  Johnson rolled his eyes. ‘Not this again. We’ve been over this.’

  ‘Lisa Flannagan was wearing her coat when she left the office that night.’

  ‘According to her,’ muttered Johnson. ‘Look, I was excited as you about that raincoat being a lead, but we’ve found nothing. All we have is Dr Roberts’ word for it.’

  ‘Yes, and why would she lie about something like that? Admit it, you can’t think of a reason.’

  Johnson grunted. It was true, he couldn’t. Yet.

  ‘It was dark. It was raining. Lisa was leaving Dr Roberts’ office, wearing her coat. They’re the same height. Same hairstyle. If the killer approached from behind …’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Johnson wearily. ‘I get it.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ insisted Goodman.

  ‘Fine. It’s possible. But what about Treyvon Raymond? Your theory doesn’t work so well with him, now does it? Six foot two, male and black as your hat?’

  ‘Maybe Trey was killed because he was close to Nikki,’ said Goodman. ‘She used to testify on drug cases, didn’t she? That must’ve made her a lot of enemies. Her, and her husband.’

  Johnson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you about that?’

  ‘I’m a detective, dude,’ Goodman dodged. He didn’t want to land Sanchez in it. ‘I find shit out. Maybe a disgruntled dealer, someone Dr Roberts testified against, killed Lisa accidentally, thinking she was the Doc. And maybe Trey figured out who that dealer was.’

  Johnson raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘He was a detective too?’

  ‘Come on,’ Goodman urged. ‘It’s possible, isn’t it, Mick?’

  Johnson brooded silently. The last thing he wanted was to re-frame Nikki Roberts as a victim. But he had to admit Goodman’s theory was at least possible.

  ‘Can we keep an open mind on this? That’s all I’m asking,’ Goodman pleaded.

  ‘OK,’ Johnson conceded grudgingly. ‘But open minds gotta work both ways.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that we don’t know Roberts wasn’t behind this. She’s still a possible suspect,’ Johnson insisted. ‘How about this scenario? Roberts secretly hated Lisa Flannagan.’

  ‘Why?’ Goodman asked, genuinely baffled.

  ‘Lisa was a gold digger. A homewrecker. Maybe Roberts disapproved of her lifestyle.’

  ‘Come on, man,’ said Goodman. ‘That’s weak.’

  ‘Is it? We know Lisa aborted Baden’s baby. Roberts can’t have kids, remember?’ Johnson went on. ‘That’s a big deal for women.’

  ‘In your vast experience of female emotion,’ Goodman quipped.

  ‘Maybe she’s so jealous, so mad about the baby thing it drives her over the edge,’ said Johnson, ignoring him. ‘Makes her crazy. Homicidal.’

  Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Goodman decided to end the conversation before Mick’s conspiracy theories got completely out of control. ‘OK, OK, open minds on both sides. What do you say tomorrow we start talking to Dr Roberts’ patients? I’ll take half, you take half?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Johnson’s car finally pulled up. Goodman waited as he heaved his unfit frame into the back of the Toyota.

  Deciding to strike while the iron was hot in this rare moment of accord between them, Goodman stuck his head through the open window.

  ‘One last thing, Mick. Is there any personal history between you and Nikki Roberts?’

  Johnson grinned. The question seemed to amuse him.

  ‘Anything I should know about?’ Goodman pressed.

  Leaning back in his seat, Johnson closed his eyes, an amused smile still playing on his alcohol-flushed face.

  ‘Goodnight, Lou,’ he said, closing the window. ‘Sweet drea
ms.’

  Nikki drove for a long time after she left the police station.

  She didn’t want to go home, but she didn’t know where else to go, so she took the 10 freeway all the way down to the ocean and cruised blindly up the coast. Memories of Trey played through her head on a continuous loop.

  The first time Doug brought him home, whippet-thin and as dirty as a stray dog, shivering from withdrawal. Nikki’s heart had gone out to him right away, just as Doug had known it would.

  ‘Hey, Nik. This is a friend of mine, Treyvon. D’you think the chicken can stretch to three?’

  From the beginning, Trey had drawn Doug and Nikki even closer together, their common compassion for this poor, broken boy strengthening their love bond and cementing them as a team.

  She thought back to Trey’s graduation ceremony out in Palos Verdes, after he’d completed his full sixteen-week detox program, dancing with Nikki to Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’.

  Nikki had caught Doug’s eye over Trey’s shoulder and smiled. Doug smiled back, and she’d felt so happy, so full of love for him and the miracle he’d helped happen for this sweet boy he’d come to love as his own.

  It was a beautiful memory. But it had been ruined by what had happened since, slashed and mutilated and destroyed, just like Trey. And Lisa.

  A million tiny cuts. Then one, final, fatal stab to the heart.

  Doug’s death, and the shock of everything she’d learned afterwards, had been the final stabs to Nikki’s heart. So deep, so wounding, she’d believed for a while that she wouldn’t survive them. But she had. She’d survived, and picked herself up and carried on. And she was still carrying on, even in the midst of this new nightmare.

  Torture and terror.

  Murder and lies.

  I ought to call Trey’s mother, Nikki thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her own grief was still so raw, so real, she couldn’t cope with anyone else’s. Perhaps that was selfish, but it was the truth. She knew her own limits.

  She drove on for a long time. By the time she got home it was late, very late, and she couldn’t remember where she’d been. That was happening a lot lately. The driveway lights were on, triggered by a timer, twinkling merrily as if all were right with the world. Locking her car, Nikki walked up to the key panel by the front door and was about to tap in her code when she noticed that the door was ajar.

  She froze. Today was Monday. Her housekeeper, Rita, came on Mondays. Had she forgotten to close the door properly when she left? It had never happened before. Not once in six years. Rita was extremely reliable.

  Someone must have broken in.

  Nikki’s heart pounded.

  What if they were still inside?

  She contemplated getting in her car and driving away. Calling the police. Asking for help. But then an unexpected emotion took over: anger.

  This is my home. My sanctuary. I’m not going to be afraid here. I refuse.

  Pushing the door open wide, she turned on the hall lights. ‘Hello?’ she called loudly. ‘Is anybody here?’

  She walked from room to room, making as much noise as she could, like a hiker hoping to scare away mountain lions. ‘Hello?’

  After a few minutes, she exhaled. No one was here. And as far as she could tell, nothing had been taken or touched. In fact, the house looked spotless. It must have been Rita after all.

  Pouring herself a large nightcap from the whiskey bottle in the pantry, Nikki went up to bed, proud of herself for not having given in to her fears. Only once she was undressed and slipping between the sheets did she notice.

  Her wedding photograph.

  The silver framed picture of her and Doug she kept propped on her nightstand, despite the pain it caused.

  It was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LANA

  Lana Grey tossed back her Titian hair and gave Anton Wilders her signature smolder as she delivered the last line.

  ‘Because I said so, Rocco.’

  Lana leaned forward, her ample bosom threatening to spill over the top of her Victoria Beckham dress at any moment and into Anton’s lap. ‘Because. I. Said. So.’

  ‘Scene,’ a bored voice called from behind her as the stage lights went back up. Lana didn’t care about the bored voice, or the ennui on the faces of the USC interns hanging around the set, hoping against hope that the great director would remember them.

  He won’t, Lana thought triumphantly. He’ll remember me. I nailed that audition. Anton Wilders is going to relaunch my career with a bang.

  What a struggle it had been, to get Wilders to see her! Lana’s agent, Jane, had had a terrible time getting past his people, the Rottweilers that surrounded him, as they surrounded all the big-name directors.

  ‘Lana Grey’s too old to play Celeste,’ Wilders’ right-hand man, Charlie Myers, told Jane bluntly. ‘The casting note clearly says twenty-two to thirty-two. Lana’s, what, forty-five?’

  ‘She looks twenty-five,’ Jane had insisted. She was a good agent, Jane. Just the right amount of push. ‘She was born to play this role. Let me speak to Anton.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I won’t stop calling.’

  ‘Please do, Janey. She’s too old!’

  Screw you, Charlie, Lana thought now, smiling at Wilders as he walked onstage and enveloped her in a lingering, distinctly lecherous hug. He wants me. I’m going to get this part.

  ‘Lana. Darling. Bravo!’

  She could feel Anton’s warm breath on her neck, and his left hand snake down onto her pert ass. All the twenty-something USC girls hated her right now. Bad luck, ladies.

  ‘You were incredible.’

  ‘Thank you, Anton.’

  I was incredible. I knew I was. I’ve still got it.

  Easing herself out of his embrace, Lana fluttered her eyes coquettishly. ‘I knew I was right for this part. As soon as I read the script, I said to Jane, “This is me. It’s me.”’

  ‘It is you,’ Anton agreed. ‘And I wish I could cast you, darling, I really do,’ he went on, still smiling and staring longingly at Lana’s tits. ‘I know you’d rock it. But I’m in a bind. The studio want Harry Reeves as Luke. I only heard this morning.’

  Harry Reeves. The nineteen-year-old Disney star, without a decent film credit to his name? Harry Reeves?

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ Lana felt her jaw locking as hope and happiness left her body. ‘Is that definite?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Wilders’ hand was back on her backside. ‘You’re so gorgeous, baby, but with the best will in the world, I can’t cast you as Harry Reeves’ girlfriend.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lana saw two of the USC girls sniggering.

  Leaning in closer, Wilders whispered in Lana’s ear, ‘I’ll cast you to suck my dick, if you’re interested. I’m staying at the Standard.’

  Lana kissed him politely on the cheek and reached for her coat. ‘You’re sweet, Anton,’ she smiled. She wasn’t going to give those bitches the satisfaction of seeing her humiliated. ‘Some other time.’

  ‘You can name your price!’ the director called after her cruelly as her borrowed Louboutins clack-clacked across the floor. Lana heard open laughter now, and a bored ‘Next!’ from the stagehand.

  A familiar feeling of rage flooded through her veins.

  Screw you. Screw all of you. I hope you all die in a fire.

  Outside on Cahuenga Boulevard, Detective Lou Goodman sat in an unmarked car a few yards from the theater. He watched Lana Grey emerge onto the street, take a few steps and then double over, gripping her knees and panting as if she’d run a marathon, or been punched in the stomach. It was a crowded sidewalk but, Hollywood being Hollywood, nobody stopped to help, or even to look.

  Goodman glanced at Lana’s file, open on the seat beside him. Nikki Roberts handwrote her patient notes, in the sort of beautiful cursive you never saw these days. Each new client’s file began with a summary, followed by dated and detailed session notes. Like so much else about Dr Robe
rts, Goodman was impressed.

  ‘Grey, Lana: forty-five years old, divorced,’ Lana’s opening paragraph read. ‘Actress. Initially presented with acute anxiety and panic attacks. Fear of aging, loss of career – self-worth issues.’ In the margin, Nikki had written ‘Financial worries??’ which she’d later underscored in red. ‘Divorced 2005. Subsequent abusive relationship, ended 2011. Lost both parents, 2012/13. Run for the Hills ended 2009, no steady work since.’ And then the final three words of the summary, stark and unexplained: ‘Sexually compulsive. Angry.’

  Lana straightened up and appeared to take two deep breaths. She was still a strikingly attractive woman, with her trademark mane of red hair, long, coltish legs and a face that Goodman had always thought of as having a rather old-fashioned beauty. Like most teenage boys of his generation, Goodman had followed Run for the Hills slavishly growing up, and had always admired Lana Grey’s brand of retro-glamour. Red lips, lacquered hair, big boobs and a sassy comeback for everything. She’d been so sexy back then. Every man in America wanted her.

  Must be tough to get older when you’ve had a youth like that.

  Pulling out her phone, Lana gazed down at the screen. Her fingers began moving deftly across it in what Goodman recognized instantly as a Tinder swipe. Really? Lana Grey used a hook-up app? Talk about the mighty fallen. After a few minutes, she put the phone down, apparently settled on a mate, got into her car and drove away.

  Lou Goodman followed.

  Three hours later, Nikki Roberts listened intently as Lana Grey sat in her office, leaned back on the couch, and poured her heart out.

  And what was pouring out of Lana’s heart was rage. Lava-hot, toxic rage, of a kind that was painful to listen to. But that was Nikki’s job. Reactionless, she let it flow.

  ‘He put his hands on me. His stinking, disgusting hands.’ The words flew out of Lana’s mouth like bullets. ‘Asked me to suck his dick, like I was a prostitute. Offered to pay me, with all these pathetic, twenty-something little bitches standing there laughing. Like it was the funniest thing for him to humiliate me like that. I wanted to stick my hand down their throats and pull their non-existent hearts out. Have you ever felt like that?’