Blinded (21 page)

“Then I’ll call her and tell her that I’m not convinced he’s dead. And she should be careful. Can you get her someplace safe to stay?”

“Let’s say that offer is on the table.”

Again he grew quiet for a few seconds before he said, “I hate situations like this. I hate ’em. The exact same woman who wouldn’t let her kid walk out the front door to ride a bike without a damn bicycle helmet won’t take the simplest step-the simplest step-to keep her own head from getting bashed in by some guy she’s sure loves her. I hate those situations.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say. Silently and involuntarily my brain was busy translating “to keep her own head from getting bashed in” to a pidgin Spanish version containing
cabezas
and
hachas
. Silently but totally voluntarily, I cursed Diane.

“By the way,” Sam added, “I forgot to tell you: The tip the police got on that judge’s husband? About the cocaine? It came from inside the DA’s office. That’s all I could find out. Hope it helps.”

Helps? No, not exactly.
All that meant to me was that Jim Zebid, if he learned the same facts that Sam had just disclosed to me-which he most likely would-would have more reason than he already did to believe that it was indeed I who had leaked the information about Jara Heller’s husband’s cocaine problems to Lauren, who had in turn acted on it through some colleague in the DA’s office.

Great.

My second attempt to get out of the office ended almost the exact same way the first had ended: My vibrating pager interfered just before I made it to the door. Once again I dumped my things on the desk. Once again I recognized the phone number on the pager screen.

Gibbs was breathless. She answered before I was certain her phone had even rung. “She just left. Just now! Two minutes ago! How could you? How
could
you? I trusted you!”

“Gibbs,” I pleaded. “Slow down, slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She just left. I can’t believe you told her!”

“Who is ‘she,’ Gibbs?”

“Reynoso. That-that-”

“What is it you think I told her? I haven’t spoken with her since Saturday. I didn’t even know she was still in town.” My defensiveness was too reflexive; I was getting frustrated about the repeated accusations from my patients about my indiscretions with their secrets. And it was showing.

Half a beat passed. Hesitation? A pause to reload? I wasn’t sure. But Gibbs’s fury was turned down a notch when she resumed. “You’re saying you didn’t tell her about the other women? You didn’t tell her what I told you this morning?”

It was apparent from her voice that she wasn’t particularly predisposed to believing that I hadn’t spilled the beans.

I, too, hesitated. The “other women” could have been the ones that Gibbs told me Sterling had slept with during their marriage, or they could have been the ones she told me he had killed. But a quick review convinced me that I hadn’t told Carmen Reynoso about either group of other women. I replayed the events in my head thoroughly enough to convince myself that I hadn’t even known about either group before that morning’s session with Gibbs.

Then I remembered that wasn’t exactly true. I had known about Gibbs’s concern about other murder victims for most of a week; I just hadn’t known details until that morning. But the reality was that I hadn’t revealed the facts of Gibbs’s concern to anyone. I was certain of it.

I said, “No, not a word.”

“You didn’t talk with her today?”

“No, Gibbs. I’ve been here at the office since this morning’s appointment with you. I haven’t shared the information you told me this morning with anyone. I wish you would give me permission, but until you do, I won’t share that information with anyone.”

“Well, I’ve never told anyone but you about these other women. How does she know?”

Damn good question.

Damn good.

Gibbs said good-bye after she asked me to change her regular appointment time on Tuesday. I offered her a slot that had just opened up on Wednesday.

I left my things on the desk and wandered around my office.

It wasn’t a small room, nor was it palatial. Fifteen by twenty-two feet, maybe. Space enough for a chunky desk, a file cabinet, a seating area, and a couple of bookcases. Three windows and a solitary French door brought in abundant light. Double doors-not side by side, but back to back-one opening in, one opening out, provided security and soundproofing to the interior hallway that Diane and I shared. We’d spent a bundle during remodeling constructing the interior walls of offset studs and had even set the extra-sound-retardant Sheetrock in channels, all in an effort to reduce noise transmission from the office to the hallway and from office to office. The entire back hallway was separated from the waiting area by a door with a deadbolt lock. After an intrusion years before, Diane’s husband had installed a sophisticated alarm system in the building, too.

I assured myself that there was no way someone could eavesdrop on a psychotherapy session in my office.

What about someone in Diane’s office? Could they have eavesdropped? No, that wasn’t possible. During the course of an average day the only sound I heard through our acoustically deadened adjoining wall was an occasional burst of Diane’s sharp laughter. I couldn’t recall a single instance of overhearing one of her patient’s words. The tones of normal conversation just didn’t make it through the walls.

I plopped down on the sofa and reviewed my day.

No matter from what angle I examined it, I couldn’t remember a solitary indiscretion on my part regarding Gibbs’s admissions to me about the other women. I hadn’t written any of the data in my case notes. And I hadn’t spoken a word about it to anyone.

Not even Sam? No, not even Sam.

Which meant one thing: The cops were developing the same information on their own.

What other conclusion was possible?

The answer to that question would come, unfortunately, soon enough.

Before I left their home, the Wolf sisters invited me to come back in a few days for Thanksgiving supper. They explained that they usually deep-fried a turkey for the large group of family and friends that gathered in their home, but this year they were planning to slow-roast something they called a turducken for the first time, and thought that I would be a perfect addition to their holiday table.

“You deep-fry your turkey?” I said. When I’d first heard about people preparing their birds that way, I thought it was an urban myth, like jackalopes. Then the Boulder Fire Department started answering calls for turkey-fryer fires, and I accepted that it was a real thing, though I still couldn’t figure out what people did with all the leftover oil.

Mary Ellen said, “It’s the best way to do it, absolutely. Moist? Oh, Mr. Purdy. But we’re going to try something new and finally do a turducken this year. Mr. Prudhomme, Mr. Paul Prudhomme from New Orleans”-when she spoke the name of the Louisiana city, it was only one word, and it was absent the
w,
and when she spoke Mr. Prudhomme’s name, it was with a reverence customarily reserved for heroes or saints-“recommends a very slow oven, so we’ll actually have to start roasting that delight before we go to bed on Wednesday evening. The house should smell like the Lord’s own grandmother’s kitchen when we awaken Thursday morning.”

Mary Pat was the one who recognized the ignorance in my eyes. “A turducken is a Cajun treat, Mr. Purdy. Oyster dressing and andouille sausage and a few other goodies are stuffed into a chicken that is then stuffed into a duck that is then stuffed into a turkey. More dressing is added between each bird during the assembly. It’s all boneless. It’s all delicious.”

I tried to imagine the cascade of flavors that Mary Pat was describing, and I was momentarily lost in the fantasy. My hand crept up the contours of my tummy until my thumb found the lower edge of my sternum. Sculpted in place, my hand could have been a monument to my ambivalence: Part of my hand-the part caressing my gut-honored my usually indulgent appetite, part of it-the thumb on my sternum-honored my cardiologist’s admonitions.

“And you roast this… thing for how long?” I asked. “It must weigh most of a ton.”

“We are doing a large one. Fourteen hours should bring it close to perfection. Then it will need to rest a while to stitch the flavors together before we carry it to the table.”

With a smile as warm as apple pie, Mary Pat said, “And you haven’t had a real Thanksgiving supper until you’ve tasted my sister’s gravy, or her cornbread.”

Mary Ellen savored the compliment. “Red pepper,” she explained. “Our mother’s secret. Abundant red pepper.”

“Can I let you know?” I asked them. “My plans for Thursday are still a little up in the air.”

“No need to call. You just come by if you can. We’ll have a place all set at the adult table for you, and you can be certain that the good Lord willing there will be no shortage of food beneath this roof on the day we give thanks. Mary Ellen will start carving right around two.”

Less than a mile from the twins’ home I stopped on the shoulder of a fallow field of what I was still guessing had been cotton and called Alan Gregory to catch him up on what I was up to in Georgia, and then I called Gibbs Storey to tell her that I thought it was premature to assume her husband was dead.

“He’s alive?” she replied, of course. What else would she say?

I’d told her I thought that was a premature conclusion, too. But I suggested prudence might be warranted, and counseled her to temporarily move someplace where her husband couldn’t easily find her.

“Sterling won’t hurt me,” she said.

“If I had a dollar for every time a woman’s told me that in the past twenty years, I’d be driving a Lincoln.”

She sighed at me and told me she’d think about it.

“Trust me, Gibbs. You’re not thinking straight. After what you’ve been through…”

“I’m fine.”

It’s what I expected. I’d done what I could do. I folded up my phone and started driving again.

An hour later I was on the outskirts of Albany, Georgia, trying to decide between two adjacent motels for a place to spend the night when Lucy paged me using our personal code that indicated an emergency. At full arm’s length I could barely read the code: 911 followed by the phone number. Imaginative, no. But it worked for us.

I picked the motel that wasn’t a national chain and finished checking in before I used my cell to return Lucy’s call. The motel room was full of my grandmother’s oldest chenille, the air was musty, and the background smells in the shadowy room were born of burnt tobacco and constant humidity and were as unfamiliar to me as the accents of all the people I was meeting in Georgia.

Lucy had left me her own cell number, not her office number. I figured that was important.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Hi, Sammy. I really miss you. You okay?”

“Later, what’s up?” She didn’t 911 me to ask me how I was doing.

“Listen, you’re not going to believe this, but Crime Stoppers-yeah, I’m serious: Crime Stoppers-got a tip, anonymous, of course, that Sterling Storey may be responsible for as many as four murders. All women, all in towns where he’s worked over the years. He travels around producing sporting events on cable.”

“I know about his job. Does the story check out?”

“At least one piece of it seems to. There’s a woman in Indianapolis who went missing in the same circumstances that the tipster reported. She’s the same general description as Louise Lake-single, attractive, late twenties-and she worked where the guy said she worked. Donald and I have just started putting it together. There are other teams tracking down all the other women, but I haven’t heard anything about their progress.”

“You have a name?”

“Julie Franconia. She worked in PR or marketing or something for the Indiana Dome or-”

“It’s the RCA Dome now, I think. The Colts play there. Peyton Manning. Good kid.”

“Whatever. She disappeared in 2000. Late March, I think. Just a sec… yeah, March twenty-third, 2000.”

“Remains?”

“We just got on this.”

“Circumstances?”

“She told her co-workers she was going to meet some girlfriends for a drink after work. Disappeared.”

“No body?”

“That’s what we’re trying to confirm. It was dumped on us as a typical without-a-trace, but a local cop told me he doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, that they have it as a cleared homicide. We’re waiting to hear back from the homicide guy. You know what it’s like with the holidays coming.”

“Is the press on this?”

“Nobody’s called me personally, but I think yes, probably.”

“Four? You said four?”

“Four total, including the California murder.”

“Where are the other two?”

“Augusta, Georgia, and West Point, New York.”

“That would be, what, the Masters and… I don’t know, the Army-Navy game?”

“I guess,” Lucy said. Other than occasional Broncos football, she didn’t pay much attention to sports she didn’t participate in, and she didn’t apologize for it.

I asked, “Any progress on the river search down here? Did Storey’s body show up today? Tell me yes. If you tell me yes, maybe I’ll come home.”

“I wish I could tell you yes, Sam. They’re still looking, but nobody seems hopeful about finding the body. The search is winding down. Oh, and in case it matters, you were right about Storey. He is, or was, a swimmer-a star on his college water polo team.”

“Water polo? Didn’t play that a lot when I was growing up in Minnesota.”

Lucy knew me well enough not to respond to my sarcasm. She asked, “You’re not in touch with the local authorities down there?”

“I made a courtesy call when I first got here. They’re looking for a body. I’m looking for something else.”

“You think he’s alive?”

“I’m not ready to think out loud. I assume someone interviewed Sterling’s friend Brian Miles.”

“Georgia State Police talked to him. Miles said Sterling called from Tallahassee and said he was coming to visit but never showed up. The story checks out.” Through the phone I heard an overhead page in the background.

“Where are you right now, Luce?”

“Whole Foods, getting something for dinner. Why?”

“You going back to the department?”

“I’ll be eating at my desk. For now, this case is all computer and phone work.”

“I’ll keep my pager on. Enjoy your dinner.”

“You okay, Sam?”

“I’m meeting some nice people down here. Luce? Send some patrols past Gibbs Storey’s house. Can you do that?”

“Sure. You do think he’s alive?”

“I forgot, one more thing. Is Reynoso still in Boulder, or did she go back to California?”

“Her? None of the above. I heard she was leaving for Georgia to look for Sterling. You haven’t run across her yet?”

“I think I’d recall that.”

She laughed. “I imagine she’ll be trying to find you.”

“We’ll see how good a detective she is. Thanks, Luce. Talk to you.”

I leaned back against the headboard of the motel bed. My mass caused it to crack hard against the wall, and I imagined what a percussive racket an energetic couple could make on this bed. The thought froze me for a moment, as I wondered when the last time was that Sherry and I had rocked a bed. I mean really rocked it.

I couldn’t recall.

Lucy had said that there were suspected victims of Sterling Storey in Augusta and Indianapolis.

Augusta was closer, but I’d be flying blind if I went there. Indianapolis was farther, but at least Lucy would have facts to feed me. What did I hope to find?

I didn’t know. Maybe when I tripped over it, I’d know.

The guy at the desk didn’t use a wheelchair as much as he wore one. It was hard to imagine him without the aged, rusting contraption that was pressing hard against his fleshy hips as he rolled back and forth behind the motel’s counter. A tiny color TV-maybe three inches across-hung upside down on a braided nylon rope around his neck. He was watching a game show, occasionally tipping the little television toward the ceiling and staring down in the general direction of his navel.

Wheel of Fortune?
I wasn’t sure.

I tipped him ten bucks when he let me check out without paying for the few minutes I’d actually used the room.

“The way I see it, you’re not checking out. What you’re doing is unchecking in” was how he put it. “Where you off to in such a hurry?”

“Indianapolis, I think. Got a call, so I gotta go.”

“Never been there.”

“Me, neither,” I said. I turned to leave but had a thought, so I stopped and asked him, “You ever had a turducken?”

“Sure, sure.” He smiled so fast, his cheeks shook and his triple chin momentarily became one. “I have, I sure have. Three years ago. Thanksgiving supper. My aunt Totsy’s-she’s my daddy’s little sister-her place on the Delta. It’s a meal not to be missed, not to be missed.”

“This trip I have to take up north means I’m going to lose what may be my one and only chance to savor a turducken. And I’m beginning to think that’s a minor tragedy. Well, I do hope you have a good Thanksgiving, sir,” I said.

“I’ll be right here,” he said, as a way of letting me know he didn’t expect to enjoy his holiday much or get anywhere close either to a turducken or to a family gathering at his aunt Totsy’s on the Mississippi Delta. When he said “here,” he didn’t point at the office he was in or at his wheelchair.

What he did was, he touched his TV-on-a-rope.

A minute or two communing with Rand McNally left me with the impression that I could get to Indianapolis in ten to twelve hours of hard road time. I planned to drive for six, sleep for six, drive for six more, and then find someplace for lunch close to the RCA Dome.

By then Lucy should know something new.

And I might have a clue what I was doing.