Hello, Darkness (33 page)

Paris checked her wristwatch. She’d been waiting outside the CIB for over an hour. Dean’s attorney, whom she recognized from the day before, had arrived. He’d disappeared through the doorway and into the department. Beyond that, she knew nothing of what was going on. She didn’t know if they’d begun Gavin’s lie detector test or not.

Lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with her. She leaned her head against the wall behind the bench and closed her eyes, but still she couldn’t rest. Haunting thoughts crowded her mind. Janey Kemp was dead. A sick, twisted individual had killed her, but Paris felt partially responsible.

As Stan had so tactlessly reminded her, Valentino had been motivated by the advice she’d given Janey. If only she hadn’t aired Janey’s call-in that night, Valentino wouldn’t have heard it.

But tragically, he had. Once he’d issued his threat to punish Janey, what could she, Paris, have done differently? What could she have said to prevent him from taking the final step and killing her?

“Ms. Gibson?”

She opened her eyes. Before her stood a petite woman who was evidently in distress. Her face, though very pretty, was drawn. She was holding her handbag in a death grip. The skin was stretched so tightly across her knuckles, they looked like bare bone. Anguish had reduced her from dainty to frail. Although she was putting up a brave front, she looked about as stalwart as a dandelion puffball.

Paris immediately tried to ease the stranger’s apprehension with a smile. “Yes, I’m Paris.”

“I thought it was you. May I join you?”

“Of course.” Paris made room for her on the bench and the woman sat down. “I’m sorry, I…Have we met?”

“My name is Toni Armstrong. Mrs. Bradley Armstrong.”

Paris recognized the name, of course, and immediately understood why the woman was discomfited. “Then I know why you’re here, Mrs. Armstrong,” she said. “This must be awfully difficult for you. I wish we were meeting under pleasanter circumstances.”

“Thank you.” She was hanging on to her composure by a thread, but she did hold on, and that earned her Paris’s respect.

“When the police searched our house, they overlooked this.” She removed a CD from her handbag. “Since they confiscated Brad’s computer, I thought I should hand this over, too. It could have something important on it.”

A confusing thought caused Paris to frown. “Mrs. Armstrong, how did you recognize me?”

Even with all the news coverage the story of Janey’s disappearance had generated, Paris’s picture had been kept out of it. Wilkins Crenshaw had personally intervened and put pressure on the local media to not use her photograph. Paris had no delusions: He wasn’t concerned for her. He wanted to protect the reputation of the radio station. In any case, the local media had agreed to extend that professional courtesy. She wasn’t sure how long their largess would last.

Toni Armstrong nervously wet her lips and ducked her head. “This CD from Brad’s computer was only the excuse I gave myself for coming to see Sergeant Curtis. The real reason is that I didn’t tell him everything yesterday.”

Paris said nothing, her silence inviting Toni Armstrong to continue.

“Sergeant Curtis asked me if Brad ever listened to late-night radio. I said yes, sometimes. He went on to ask something else and never came back to that subject. Your name wasn’t mentioned, so I didn’t volunteer that we—Brad and I—had known you from Houston.”

Her eyes were imploring, almost as though willing Paris to remember on her own so she wouldn’t be required to recount the circumstances under which they’d become introduced.

“I apologize, Mrs. Armstrong. I don’t remember ever meeting you.”

“You and I never actually met. You were Dr. Louis Baker’s patient.”

Suddenly Paris’s memory crystallized. How could she not have remembered his name? Of course, Armstrong was an ordinary name. Neither Curtis nor Dean had mentioned that their suspect Brad Armstrong was a dentist.

“Your husband’s a dentist?
That
dentist?”

Toni Armstrong nodded.

Paris inhaled a swift breath. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t owe me an apology, Ms. Gibson. What happened wasn’t your fault. I didn’t blame you. You did what you had to do. Brad felt differently, of course. He said that you…that you had flirted with him, led him on.” She smiled sadly. “He always says that. But I never thought for a moment that you had encouraged him to do what he did.”

Paris had gone to Dr. Louis Baker for some dental work, but when she arrived at the clinic, she was informed that he’d been called away on a family emergency. Her choice was to reschedule or let one of his partners treat her. The appointment had been postponed twice, she was already there, so she opted to see the other dentist.

She remembered Brad Armstrong as a nice-looking man with an engaging manner. Since she was scheduled for several procedures, some of which might be uncomfortable, he’d suggested using nitrous oxide to help her relax.

She’d agreed, knowing that “laughing gas” had no lasting effect as soon as one stopped inhaling it and that it was safe when administered in a clinical environment. Besides, if a numbing shot was required, she would just as soon not know when it was coming.

Soon she was feeling completely relaxed and carefree, as though she was floating. At first she thought she had only imagined that her breasts were being touched. The caress had been featherlight. Surely it was only a false physical sensation brought on by her state of euphoria.

But when it happened a second time, the pressure was distinctly firmer and applied directly to her nipple. There could be no mistake. She opened her eyes and, shaking off her lethargy, removed the small mask from her nose. Brad Armstrong smiled down at her, and the leering quality of his grin convinced her that she had imagined nothing.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it,” he’d whispered. “Your nipple is still hard.”

Even reclined in the dental chair as she was, she came off it like a shot, knocking over a metal tray of implements and sending it crashing to the floor. An assistant, whom he had sent out on a trumped-up errand, came rushing back into the treatment room. “Ms. Gibson, what’s wrong?”

“Have Dr. Baker call me at his earliest convenience,” she told her before storming out.

The dentist had called her later that day, expressing his concern. She reported what had happened. When she finished her story, he said with chagrin, “I’m ashamed to say that I thought the other woman was lying.”

“He’s done it before?”

“I assure you, Ms. Gibson, this will be the last time. You have my utmost apologies. I’ll take care of it immediately.”

Dr. Armstrong had been dismissed. For several days afterward, Paris had shuddered in repulsion whenever she thought about the incident, but after a time it had faded from her memory. She hadn’t thought any more about it until now.

“I assume your husband blamed me for getting him fired.”

“Yes. Although he’s been forced out of other practices for similar incidents since then, he’s always held a grudge against you. While you were still in Houston, he turned off the television set anytime you appeared. He called you ugly names. And when your fiancé got hurt, he said you deserved it.”

“He knew about Jack, the accident?”

“And Dr. Malloy. He theorized that it was a love triangle.”

Paris exclaimed, a soft “Oh.”

“When we moved here and Brad discovered you were on the radio, his resentment flared up again.” Mrs. Armstrong lowered her head and twisted the straps of her handbag. “I should have told Sergeant Curtis about this yesterday, but I was so afraid they would think Brad was involved with this missing-girl case.”

“She’s no longer missing.” When Paris told her that Janey Kemp’s body had been discovered, Toni Armstrong finally lost her valiant battle against tears.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A
nytime John Rondeau crossed paths with Dean Malloy, he went out of his way to be nothing but pleasant. But Malloy treated him with patent animosity. Curtis had noticed. Rondeau had overheard him asking Malloy what the problem was. Malloy had replied with a gruff, “Nothing,” and Curtis hadn’t pressed him.

As far as Rondeau was concerned, Malloy could glower at him until hell froze over. It was Curtis he wanted to butter up, not Malloy. The psychologist had the higher ranking, but it was Curtis who could recommend Rondeau for CIB.

As for Malloy’s kid, he had him right where he wanted him, which was scared out of his skivvies. The results of the lie detector test had been in his favor and had basically cleared him of suspicion. So, one might wonder, why was he still so fidgety?

He was sitting in a chair near Curtis’s desk, his shoulders hunched in a self-defensive posture. A bundle of nerves, he couldn’t sit still. His eyes darted about fearfully. He looked like he would disintegrate if somebody said “Boo!”

Only Rondeau knew why the boy still looked so scared, and he wasn’t telling. Neither was Gavin. Rondeau was confident of the kid’s silence. He had frightened him sufficiently that he wasn’t about to tattle on him. Brilliant to think of threatening his dad, not him. That had done the trick. It was crowded inside Curtis’s cubicle, where they’d all gathered for a brainstorming session. Curtis was there, of course. Malloy. Gavin. And Paris Gibson.

Rondeau welcomed any opportunity to share space with her, though it was hard for her to notice him with Malloy stamping around repeating ad nauseam that he feared she would be next on Valentino’s to-do list.

Rondeau had stumbled on to this meeting when he came to report to Curtis what he’d found on the CD Mrs. Armstrong had hand-delivered to Paris. It wasn’t all that earthshaking, but he grabbed any opportunity to impress Curtis and bump up his chances of getting into the CIB.

Paris—innocently, of course—had stolen his thunder before his arrival. What Toni Armstrong had withheld from him while he was searching her house, she had imparted to Paris—her husband had fondled Paris when she’d been his patient.

Had Mrs. Armstrong shared this with him and he’d been the one to bring it to Curtis’s attention, it would have been a real feather in his cap. As it was, he’d have to earn that feather by some other means.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this guy,” Sergeant Curtis was saying of the dentist. “Has he contacted his wife today?” he asked Paris.

“She says no. All her attempts to reach him have been unsuccessful.”

“If he called her from his cell, we could place him using satellite,” Malloy remarked.

“I’m sure that’s why he hasn’t done it,” said Rondeau, hoping he’d made Malloy sound like a fool. His neck was still sore from Malloy’s squeeze yesterday. He and Malloy were never going to be friends, but he didn’t consider that any great loss.

“Have you checked out his phone records?” Malloy asked.

“Working on it,” Curtis replied. “It’ll look really bad for him if he’s made repeated calls to the radio station.” Turning back to Paris, he asked, “Mrs. Armstrong didn’t recognize his voice on the tapes?”

“She’s listening to them again, but I’m not sure how reliable her input will be. She’s very upset. When I told her about Janey, she underwent an emotional meltdown that I think had been brewing for days.”

“Would you recognize Brad Armstrong on sight?”

Paris frowned. “I don’t think so. The incident happened a long time ago. I saw him only that one time, and I was high on nitrous oxide.”

“Would a photograph be helpful?” Rondeau asked, nudging Malloy aside and wedging himself into the center of the enclosure.

“Possibly,” Paris said.

He produced the CD that Toni Armstrong had brought from home and given to Paris. “Apparently Brad Armstrong scanned photos and burned them onto CDs. The ones we found during the search had porno shots taken out of magazines on them.

“But this last one has family photographs on it. I brought it back so it could be returned to Mrs. Armstrong, but it may be useful now. May jiggle your memory, Paris.”

“Can’t hurt to take a look,” said Curtis. He booted up the computer on his desk, then stepped aside so Rondeau could sit down. He was aware of Paris moving in close behind him to get a better look at the monitor screen. He caught a whiff of a clean scent, like shampoo.

He executed the necessary keystrokes and within seconds a snapshot filled the screen. The family of five was posed in front of an attraction at a theme park. Parents and kids were wearing American clothing and American smiles, living the American Dream.

Rondeau turned toward Paris. “Look familiar?”

For several moments, she studied the man in the photograph. “Honestly, no. If I had spotted him in a crowd, I wouldn’t have immediately recognized him as the man who fondled me. It was too long ago.”

“You’re sure you haven’t seen him recently?” Malloy asked.

“If he resented you as much as Mrs. Armstrong indicated, he might have been stalking you.”

“If I have seen him, it didn’t register.”

Curtis, who was still studying the Armstrong family snapshot, said, “I wonder who took the picture.”

“Probably he did,” Rondeau said. “A guy who has a scanner and makes a CD photo album—”