Dry Ice (19 page)

    "Yes?" Kirsten said.

    "It makes no sense," I said. "But there has to be a link between them."

    It wasn't what she was hoping to hear. "Do either Sam or Lauren know that this guy in the barn is the same patient who was covered with blood in your waiting room?"

    "I told Sam that one of my patients had been bleeding in the waiting room. And he's already guessed that the suicide victim is one of my patients. He doesn't know they're the same guy, yet. He'll put it together, though. Sam's good."

    "Which means that Sam—who has already tied his missing grand jury witness's purse to your office—is now going to tie this suicide victim to your office. Which gives him a nexus between the grand jury witness and the suicide in the barn."

    "How? I don't follow you."

    "The blood on your shoe, remember? Purse at your office? Blood in your office? Dead patient in the barn? If it turns out there's the same blood everywhere, Sam will connect those dots."

    She was right. "I didn't tell the police about the bandanna, Kirsten."

    "Or Lauren?"

    "Or Lauren."

    She shrugged. "Because there is no bandanna, right?"

    "There was."

    "I suspect you're going to have a hard time convincing anybody of that now. It's going to sound contrived." Her voice grew soft, almost tender as she added, "They're going to think you made it up."

    "I should have told them right away."

    "It wouldn't have made any difference. They still would have thought it was contrived."

    "I had no reason to think the bandanna would disappear. I intentionally didn't touch it."

    "I know," she said. I felt more relieved by that than I should have—the fact that my lawyer believed me wasn't really much of a victory.

    "It's hard to describe what I felt when I looked back over there and the bandanna was gone. After the shock, and then after the anger and frustration were gone, I had this feeling of . . . almost admiration. Michael McClelland is setting this up beautifully."

    "Yes," she said. "Alan?"

    "Yeah?"

    "Just what is it he's setting up?"

    I thought about it for a moment before I said, "I don't know. Something ugly."

    My lawyer shivered as though she had a sudden chill.

MY CELL rang. I checked the screen. Sam. He knew I was inside Adrienne's house talking with my lawyer. We'd walked right past him as we crossed the lane.

    To Kirsten I said, "This will take just a second." Into the phone, I said, "Yes."

    "I'm at the door. I need to ask you something."

    Dangerous ground.
Did my friend want to ask me some
thing, or did the police detective want a free shot at me?
I could think of only one way to find out.

    I covered the microphone and said, "It's Sam." Then I lifted my thumb and said, "My attorney's sitting right beside me, Sam. She can hear what you want to ask?"

    "I got no problem with that."

    I nodded for Kirsten's benefit before I said, "The door's unlocked. Come on in."

    "He has a question," I said to Kirsten. "He's fine asking it in front of you."

    "As though he has a choice," she said without any apparent attitude. She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. "I'm allowing him in because I want to hear his question, not because I want him to hear your answer. Do you understand the difference?"

    I nodded. I was listening for the sound of Sam opening the door. It hadn't happened.

    Kirsten said, "This death is the sheriff's, not Sam's. It's county, not city. He's here as a courtesy, probably fishing for more evidence that ties this back to your office and that damn purse."

    The door opened. Emily leapt up and raced toward the front of the house. She wasn't barking—she knew it was Sam.

    Kirsten reached up and touched my face, turning my chin toward her. She waited until I was looking in her eyes. "When I say that's it, that's it. You shut up. Yes?"

    "Yes," I said.

    After Sam was done greeting Emily at the front door he found us in the kitchen. He had his notebook in one hand, a pen in the other. "Counselor," he said to Kirsten.

    She flattened her mouth into a replica of a smile. "Detective," she said. "You realize that this ends when I say it ends. We're on the same page?"

    Sam put the pen and the notebook into his left hand and rubbed his right eye with the knuckles on the back of his right hand. I'd seen him do it many times before and it always seemed he did it with enough force to cause pain. "Yeah," he said. Then he yawned. I thought that the yawn was editorial until he contorted his face trying to stifle it. When he recognized that his effort to kill the yawn was futile, he just went ahead and leaned into it. After it was over, he looked up at the ceiling before he looked at me.

    "As far as the work I'm doing is concerned our friendship has become toxic." He paused to let the final word sink in. "The purse in the yard, the forensics from your office, this guy hanging dead in your neighbor's barn. It's all too much for the DA to ignore. She knows you and I are friends, and she's ordered me to stand down temporarily so that our friendship doesn't compromise the . . . investigation. I got permission to come in here to tell you that myself. That's why I'm here."

    "I appreciate that. Thank you." I wasn't surprised that Sam was being sent to the bench. I was surprised that he was telling me about it in person.

    Sam lowered his voice. "Now that I'm here there's something else I want to say."

    I glanced at Kirsten in time to watch her raise her eyebrows.

    "The rafter the vic is hanging from?" Sam said. "It is eighteen feet, six and three-sixteenths inches—give or take—above the floor of the barn."

    "If you say so," I said.

    Kirsten touched my arm. It was a caution.

    "You didn't happen to move anything when you were in there?" Sam asked.

    I opened my mouth. Kirsten squeezed my wrist. Her fingernails found flesh. "Don't even think about answering that," she said. "Move on, detective. You know better. I'm not predisposed to let this continue."

    Sam bit his lower lip. I knew him well enough to know that he'd done it to keep a grin from erupting. Kirsten might not be predisposed to let him continue, but she hadn't stopped him. In his mind he was up one goal. In Sam's brand of hockey that's a good lead.

    "I apologize," he said.

    "Go on," my lawyer said.

    Sam closed his eyes for a couple of seconds while he shook his head in slow motion. I could tell he was trying hard to be nice and that being nice to a defense attorney in the current circumstance was requiring a monumental effort. I also knew he was taking a risk with me right then, and I was more inclined to feel grateful than suspicious.

    Kirsten's sharp nails were telling me that she didn't share that bias.

    "Okay, I'll try again. This is shaky ground. It is, Ms. Lord, isn't it?"

    Kirsten didn't respond. Where this kind of adversarial waltz was concerned she was an experienced dancer and saw the moves Sam was planning before he made them. He was going to have to try harder to get her to misstep.

    "Assuming, Alan, that you didn't move anything when you were in there, like"—at that point he suddenly sped up his cadence, rushing to finish his thought before Kirsten could voice an objection—"let's say, a very long ladder that's currently hanging on a couple of big hooks just below the windows on the wall. Assuming you—"

    "Detective Purdy, I—"

    "Assuming you didn't do something like that—then how in the hell did the vic get up to that rafter in the first place to tie off the rope before he jumped?"

    I looked at Kirsten. She was torn on how to counsel me. She kept her eyes on Sam as she thought it through, but eventually she said to me, "Don't answer that one either."

    I think she chose it because it was the default option.

    Sam stared at my befuddled face. Kirsten turned toward me too. It didn't take a genius to know that I didn't actually have a ready answer to Sam's question.

    He nodded at me with satisfaction in his eyes. He had either just learned exactly what he had hoped to learn by intruding on my meeting with my attorney, or he'd received an unexpected bonus.

    Sam's question was something I hadn't considered, and it was much more intriguing to me than the duel I was witnessing between him and Kirsten.
So how the hell,
I was wondering,
did
Kol get up there?

    "If there's something you're not telling me, Alan, now would be a good time. A very good time," Sam said.

    My lawyer stood up from her chair as though she were popping up from behind the defense table to announce a particularly strenuous objection. She took a step forward, placing herself physically between me and my best friend. "This interview, or whatever it is, is over," she said. She compressed an impressive amount of authority into her voice.

    Sam put his pen and pad back into his shirt pocket. He hadn't written a single word during our meeting, had probably never intended to. The implements were props.

    He ignored Kirsten's admonition about the end of the meeting, as I assumed he would. Good cops, like good shrinks, and good lawyers, run stop signs. "Thing is? Without a ladder somebody who wanted to hang himself would have had to climb up one of those original old barn posts like a telephone lineman, and then shimmy across toward the middle of the gable on one of those big ol' angled beams—I think they're oak; you think they're oak? Whatever, nice old wood—while he was hanging upside down up there like some kind of big monkey. I don't see it coming down that way. Was your patient a circus acrobat or something like that?"

    He didn't wait for a reply from me, or for a fresh admonition from Kirsten. He tipped an imaginary cap to her and said, "I'm sorry for the intrusion."

    I waited until the front door had closed before I said, "He didn't come over here to tell me he was off the case. He knew Lauren would tell me that later. He didn't come over here to ask me what I did in the barn. He came over here to tell me something else."

    "That's what you're thinking?"

    It was apparent that Kirsten didn't share my assessment of what had just happened. I pressed my case. "Sam isn't buying the suicide," I said.

    "I got that. But that wasn't Sam's purpose with this little show."

    "What was?"

    "He was trying to see what bait you were going to snap at."

    "I didn't say a thing."

    "You didn't have to. You should have seen your face when he asked you about the ladder. I've been in the prosecutor's shoes, Alan. I know how it's done. At this stage of the game, a suspect doesn't have to speak in order to answer. He wasn't looking for anything he could use in court; he was looking for a hint on where to look next."

    "He's off the investigation."

    "I barely know the man, Alan, and I know that whether or not he's officially assigned to this case any longer, he's not off this investigation."

    She was right. I said, "I was that obvious?" I knew I had been. With another cop, I would've been better able to keep a therapist's visage. Not with Sam. With Sam, the doors and windows were usually open.

    "When we're all done with this?" Kirsten said. "I have some girlfriends who would love to play a little high-stakes poker with you. For now please, please forget that Sam's your friend. He's a cop. You're a suspect in the investigation of a suspicious death. There are lots of ways for cops to play a suspect. You just witnessed one of them. You said it yourself—Sam Purdy is good. I don't disagree."

    "A suspect?" I'd been struggling with the personal responsibility I was feeling that one of my patients had committed suicide. I had been worried about the effect of Kol's death on the viability of my clinical practice. I'd started worrying about financial liability and the long-term impact on my family.

    Kirsten said, "A person of interest, if you're a fan of euphemisms."

    I hadn't been worrying about criminal responsibility.

    "Read between the lines," she said. "If Sam's not buying suicide, he's talking homicide. I think we can agree to rule out accident unless you have some great news you've been keeping from me about your patient and high-stakes sexual asphyxia."

    I had actually been allowing myself the luxury of believing that Kol's murder—if Sam was right—would absolve me of responsibility for failing to anticipate his suicide. Kirsten was insisting I attend to a much more sinister scenario.

    "Sam knows I wouldn't kill anyone." After a second I added, "Like that."

    Her eyes grew wide. I saw the frailty in my argument instantly.

    "Why would I kill Kol?" I asked.

    She leaned forward. "They know you knew the victim, right? Sam's already guessed he was your patient. Your wife knows that the body was discovered in a building you had no good reason to enter. Sam may or may not know that this guy is the same patient who had the volcanic nosebleed in your waiting room. He will soon."

    "Yes," I said. "That means—"

    She held up a hand and shook her head. "I'll tell you what it means: When homicide is a consideration, the police keep an eye out for perpetrators. Killers. Suspects. Persons of interest. You knew the victim. You found the body. You were here alone around the likely time of death. You had access to the crime scene. Like it or not, Alan, you're on their radar. Currently, the brightest green blip."

    I opened my mouth to argue. I was going to argue motive.

    The cops might have been able to hang me with means, and maybe with opportunity. But what reason could I possibly have for killing my own patient?