Mirror Image (3 page)
I went over to my desk and jotted down some notes about the session while it was still fresh in my mind. I’d need ammo if I was going to present Kevin’s case again next week at Ten Oaks.
Though I was still smarting from Riley’s criticism, I usually got valuable insight and support from most of the others there, and I felt I needed it. Especially now, in the wake of these latest revelations. The road ahead was going to be tricky.
I glanced at my desk clock. I had plans for dinner, having promised to meet my cousin (and accountant) Johnny Manella at a restaurant in nearby Shadyside. Figuring dinner traffic and rain, parking in the newly gentrified district would be hell. I knew I better get going.
I got up and locked Kevin’s case folder in the filing cabinet. Then I checked my voicemail. Three calls, nothing urgent. One even announced good news. A former patient, who’d been raped four years ago, had since married, and had now delivered a baby. In a happy, astonished voice, she promised to send me a photo of mother-and-child, doing fine.
I couldn’t help smiling. Nice message to get, especially at the end of a long, hard day. Grabbing my briefcase, I locked the waiting room door behind me and padded down the narrow, carpeted hallway.
Ahead of me, Lenny Wilcox, building maintenance, was backing out of the storage room, balancing an armload of boxes. He was in his fifties, with smooth black skin and the build of an SUV.
“Hey, Lenny,” I said, holding open the door with my foot. “How ya doing?”
“Not bad.” An eyebrow went up. “By the way, Doc, I saw you on CNN the other night. A show about that kidnapping in Miami. You ain’t gettin’ famous, are ya?”
“Hardly. They just needed some talking heads for a panel on trauma. The after-effects on the victims. Since I’d been consulted on the Florida case—”
He shook his head. “Man, I don’t know how ya do it. Those poor kids…what they went through…”
“Yeah,” was all I said. Lenny didn’t know the half of it. And like the rest of the public, hopefully never would.
We exchanged brief good-byes, then I took the stairs down to the parking garage. The stairwell was damp and concrete-cold. My footsteps echoed, a hollow sound that only emphasized the silence as I descended to parking.
Briefcase in one hand, jacket in the other, I shoved the heavy metal exit door open with my shoulder. A blast of cold air hit me as I stepped into the near-vacant garage.
The dim, cavernous structure was criss-crossed with shadows and damp from the rain. Shallow puddles had formed here and there on the uneven concrete.
Then I saw it.
Or thought I did. A flicker of movement, a shadow flitting against the far wall…
I tensed, senses alert. A surge of adrenaline. I peered into the darkness. Nothing.
I glanced over at the attendant’s booth near the exit, though I knew he’d be gone for the day. And he was. His little overhead light was out.
I looked around. Not a thing. Probably never was. I’d had a long day, my brain was fried. And yet…
Ignoring my every instinct, I started walking. Most of the other tenants kept banker’s hours, so it wasn’t unusual for me to be the last one out. I was used to walking across the deserted parking structure, past no more than a dozen remaining parked cars, to get to my assigned space.
So why this prickling at the back of my neck? This sense of foreboding?
“Jesus,” I said to myself, aloud. “Get a grip.”
My voice echoed off the slab pillars and the scalloped ceiling, absorbed by the deep shadows. I headed toward my car that was parked around the corner, hidden from view by a double column. As I approached the turn, walking briskly, I heard—something.
Some
one
. Crying out. Choked, guttural, in agony.
I dropped the briefcase and coat, took another step—
And heard something else. Behind me. A staccato beating of footsteps, running fast to my left.
I whirled in time to see another access door, at the far wall, closing. It clanged noisily.
I turned back in the direction of the cry. At first I saw only my car, a green reconditioned ’69 Mustang, half in shadow, parked in its usual spot. In the space next to it was a beat-up looking Nissan.
As I approached the vehicles, I heard the sound again. I broke into a run, looking wildly about.
Where the hell—?
He was in the darkened space between the two cars. Body crumpled on the cold asphalt. Covered in blood.
It was Kevin Merrick.
Panic tore through me in a fluid rush, as though my heart was pumping ice water. For a moment I couldn’t move. Or breathe.
Forcing myself, willing each step, I came toward him, crouching beside him. I reached down and lifted his head, cradling him…for the second time that day.
His eyes were wide, white with horror. His mouth moved, lips trembling, trying to form words. Only a scarlet foam trickled out.
I looked down at his chest, at the spreading rivulets of blood. My mind raced blindly, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
He’d been stabbed. Repeatedly. Savagely. The blood was…everywhere. Seeping, lava-like, wet and dark. Pooling beneath us.
Finally, as if tearing myself from a dream, I laid him back down on the asphalt and rummaged in my pockets for my cell phone. I found it and dialed 911.
After leaving the address and confirming that an ambulance had been dispatched, I turned back to Kevin.
But it was too late.
Crouching again, I peered down into sad, lifeless eyes. Only his blood, forming an ever-widening circle on his chest, was moving.
I sat back on my heels, stunned. I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t think. I just sat there in the awful concrete silence, staring down at him.
Then, through a fog of pain and shock, I became aware of something. Noticed something for the first time.
Kevin was wearing my jacket.
Sergeant Harry Polk, a beer keg in a wrinkled blue suit, stared at me as I sipped strong, hot coffee. He had the opaque eyes and dour expression of your basic middle-aged civil servant, a man who’d long accepted that most things in his life weren’t going to get much better.
I met his gaze through a cloud of steam rising up from the mug. He then glanced at my hands, now washed clean. Only an hour before, amid the chaos of the parking garage, I’d stood in a taped-off corner, numb as a stone, while a Crime Scene tech wiped Kevin Merrick’s blood off my hands and deposited the swabs in a plastic evidence bag.
The memory flickered in my mind. Patrol units with flashing lights. A crime lab van with blackened windows. CSU techs in jump suits. An ME wagon, whose bored driver leaned against the hood, listening to blaring hip-hop music. His partner, equally bored, zipping Kevin’s body into a large plastic bag.
Polk was openly staring at my hands, with a cop’s interest. I’d wondered when he’d notice the purple marks, the discoloration around the knuckles.
“You box?” Surprise etched his florid, drinker’s face.
“Golden Gloves. Pan Am Games. A million years ago.”
“You any good?”
“Coulda been a contender.” My voice had an edge. Not a conversation I wanted to be having right then.
“Why’d ya quit?”
I shrugged. “Marriage. Grad school. Life…Now I just fool around a little in the gym.”
He digested this in silence. I guess the picture didn’t quite fit the frame. I get that a lot.
Polk nodded at the cassette recorder on the table between us. “Ya mind?” he asked.
“I know the drill.”
“Nothin’ to worry about. You’re a witness, not a suspect. Got a consultant’s contract with the brass.” An insincere smile. “Hell, you’re practically family.”
It was going to be a long night. I rubbed my neck, feeling the tight knots like lug nuts under the skin.
Polk and I sat across from each other in a cramped, windowless interrogation room. There were four such rooms sharing the top floor of the old precinct house. A century of brutal Pittsburgh winters had etched huge worry lines in the face it showed the world.
I thought of the rooms below us, the pallid faces of the uniforms on night-shift, the morgue-like ambiance. Old coffee, leftover sandwiches, fading careers.
“Sorry you caught this one,” I said to Polk.
A shrug. “Luck of the draw.” He looked at his watch. “Where the hell’s Lowrey?” His partner, I assumed.
The closeness of the room was stifling. The pea-green walls, water-stained ceiling tiles, linoleum floors. The smell of sweat, cigarettes, and fear.
I glanced at the thick mirror to my left. One-way observation window. Were we being observed? Hard to imagine the precinct captain and some Assistant DA coming down here in the middle of the night. Kevin Merrick was a poor college student with a psychiatric history and no family of consequence in the area. Nobody but a homicide detective on night shift, like Polk, would get out of bed for that. If the victim hadn’t been white, I doubted whether even Polk would’ve shown.
“Fuck Lowrey,” Polk said. He turned on the recorder. “This is a preliminary interview with Dr. Daniel Rinaldi regarding the murder of Kevin Merrick, Case File Number 772-33. The time is 12:30 AM, Tuesday, October 12th.”
His voice had become oddly stilted, formal. Being on tape made Polk nervous, I noted. After all his years on the force.
“The victim was in treatment with you, Dr. Rinaldi?”
“Yes, he’d been referred to me by Angela Villanova.”
“The Chief Community Liaison Officer.”
“That’s right. She refers crime victims to me when there’s concern about the person’s mental well-being.”
“And what were you and Kevin Merrick working on? I mean, what was the problem?”
“Sorry. Villanova referred him, so that’s already in the record. Beyond that, I can’t talk about it.”
“Patient confidentiality, eh?”
“In a situation like this, it’s called privilege.”
His voice hardened. “Yeah? Well, in a situation like this, a trial judge can revoke that privilege.”
“Fine. Let me know when one does.”
He swore under his breath and stopped the tape. “What the fuck’s up? This is a goddamn murder investigation.”
“I know.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Look, I want to nail the bastard who did this more than you do. And there
are
things I can tell you that might help. But most of the content of Kevin’s work with me has no bearing here. Not that I can see. Family stuff, childhood stuff.”
“The usual therapy bullshit, eh? No offense.”
“None taken. But—”
“Look, Doc.” Polk’s face flushed with anger. “I know a judge who’s a real night-owl. How ’bout I call him and get a phone authorization to revoke privilege? How ’bout I do that before I bust a blood vessel or some fuckin’ thing?”
Before I could respond, the door swung open and a tall, well-built black woman in a gray suit entered. She was very pretty, with close-cropped hair and violet eyes. Without a glance in my direction, she slid into the empty seat next to Polk and handed him a file folder.
As Polk flipped through the pages, the woman extended her hand across the table. Her handshake had a lot of muscle behind it.
“I’m Detective Eleanor Lowrey,” she said, with a quick, business-like smile. Her lips and nails were painted the same shade of burnt red. “Sergeant Polk’s partner.”
“Where you been?” Polk said to her, eyes scanning the folder’s contents. Papers, plastic pouches, clippings.
“Forensics. The ME’s. Lieutenant Biegler’s office. Ya know, just screwin’ around.” She regarded him coolly. “It’s a slow night, murder-wise, so we caught a break. Fast turnover in the lab.”
“Yeah, some break.” But Polk’s face had tightened. Slowly he closed the file and lay it next to the legal pad.
“You’ve been holdin’ out on us, Doc.” He was smiling.
“No shit. I think I told you why.” I was tired, and Polk’s attitude was wearing a little thin.
He tapped the file. “Says here the victim was wearing eyeglasses, but the lenses were just clear glass. Crime scene photos show his beard looks kinda like yours. Same with his jacket. Funny, too, about the jacket. About three sizes too big. Lab also found
this
in his pocket—”
He tossed a thin plastic envelope on the table between us. Inside was a monogrammed pen. The initials
DR
, in gilt-edged gold, were visible through the plastic.
“Yours, I assume.” Polk was enjoying himself.
“Yes. Kevin took it. During the session. He often…took things like that. Personal things of mine.”
“Like the jacket?”
“Maybe. His was hanging next to mine on the coat rack. Though he may have taken it by accident. I didn’t realize till I saw his body that the one I was carrying was
his.
In my rush to get out of the office, I just grabbed the jacket hanging on the rack and left. I assumed it was mine.”
“Jesus,” Lowrey said, with such quiet intensity that Polk and I both turned to her. “You know what this means?”
I knew only too well.
“
I
was the killer’s target, not Kevin Merrick.”
Polk shrugged. “The kid’s about your height, with a beard and glasses, wearin’ your jacket. He’s walking through a dark parking garage toward his car—”
“Which is parked next to mine. So it looks as though Kevin is in fact me…”
Lowrey cleared her throat. “The ME reports multiple stab wounds with a long, thin blade. Knife, ice pick, no way to tell. Brutal, vicious.”
She looked at me.
“What pathologists call a ‘pattern of rage,’” I said.
“It’s just the preliminary autopsy report,” she went on. “Gonna take another couple days to get a drug panel, hair and fiber, the works.”
Polk angled back in his chair. “So the killer jumps Merrick, starts slicin’ and dicin’. Even if he realizes by then that he’s got the wrong guy—”
“He has to finish the job,” Lowrey said quietly.
No one spoke for a full minute. Meanwhile, Polk began spreading the crime scene photos before us. I forced myself to look. Kevin’s dead, sad eyes stared up at me from the blood-soaked asphalt.
The two detectives seemed to fade from my field of vision. I picked up one of the photos, staring now myself, as though to burn the image of Kevin Merrick into my brain.
“Arrogant…”
Riley’s words echoed in my ears. There had been a real psychological risk in allowing Kevin to identify so intensely with me. He’d so hungered for a model, a paternal image to relate to. I’d reasoned that we’d work through the identification, give him the confidence to let go of needing to be like me. In time, he’d be able to claim a more authentic sense of himself.
In time
. Except that he’d run out of time. By becoming me, he’d intersected with a part of my life neither one of us knew about. By becoming me, he’d died the horrible death that was meant for me.
Lowrey sensed my thoughts. Her hand touched my forearm. “Whoa, you can’t blame yourself for this.”
I met her gaze. Then I pulled myself out of my chair, looked down at the two detectives.
“Where you think you’re goin’?” Polk said.
“Out. I need some air.”
