The Borrowed and Blue Murders (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (13 page)

Because—I fumbled for an answer. Because she’s old now. And probably passive—she’s been institutionalized for thirty-some years. And authorities have determined that she’s no longer criminally insane.

None of that convinced me. The jogger’s gaping wounds reappeared in my mind, almost exactly duplicating those inflicted by my former patient.

But wait, I reasoned. Even if she still wanted to, Bonnie Osterman couldn’t overpower a lithe young jogger. Bonnie wasn’t fit or strong enough. And, most important of all, the dead jogger hadn’t been pregnant—whoever killed her had opened her up, but not to get a baby. The killer had pulled out her intestines. Searching not for a baby but for drugs.

No matter what I told myself, though, I was unnerved. I worried about Kimberly, Troy, Henry, Olivia and the others—those patients, without care and supervision, were likely more dangerous to themselves than to others. But Bonnie Osterman. She was unlike any patient I’d ever worked with. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t relate to her, could find no common ground, no vulnerability, no empathy for others. Her art projects included tangled, sinuous abstract distortions, detailed but minuscule, lost in emptiness of indifferent space. She seemed, even at her best most- medicated times, to be a monster. And now, she was among us.

I read the list of names again and again, thinking about Bryce. He’d been determined to tell me something, and now he was lying in a coma. Was there a connection? I replayed the hit-and-run in my mind, trying to recall the driver. Could it have been one of the patients? Kimberly? Troy? Henry? Bonnie?

Of course not. How would any of them have known that Bryce would be on the corner of Fifth and South streets at that exact time on that date? They couldn’t have. None of them. Unless the driver had been following Bryce. But why would a patient—any patient—want to follow Bryce Edmond? Bryce wasn’t involved with patient care. He was in administration. The patients probably didn’t even know him.

But they knew me. All of them. What if the driver had been following not Bryce but me? I closed my eyes and saw it again, the car plowing over the curb, charging right at me—and Bryce pushing me away. It was possible, maybe even likely, that I had been the target. But who had been behind the wheel? I tried to remember, to picture the driver, but saw only Bryce’s body flying at me followed by a great commotion of motorized steel.

Again, unbidden, Bonnie Osterman popped into my thoughts. “You’re beginning to show, aren’t you?” Her questions had made me queasy. “You want a boy, honey? Or a girl?” She’d eyed my belly, pursuing me even as I ignored her, guiding her attention back to her art project. But she’d persisted. “Is it moving? Can you feel it kicking?” Whenever she’d been in art therapy, I’d felt her creepy gaze following me no matter where I went, even as her fingers worked.

Oh Lord. Wasn’t that the same creepy feeling I’d been having lately? Of somebody watching me? Oh my God. Could Bonnie Osterman be stalking me?

Impulsively, quickly, I closed the e-mail and pushed delete, erasing Bryce’s message and Bonnie Osterman’s name from the screen, if not from my mind. I got up, stood at the window, paced the office floor, as questions too horrible to articulate began to hammer at me. Had I been sensing Bonnie’s presence? Had she been obsessed with my pregnancy? Planning to come after me to steal my baby? Had she been driving the car that hit Bryce?

Oh God. In a heartbeat, I ran from the room, sped up the stairs, found Luke safe in his crib. I didn’t care if he woke up. I grabbed him and held him close. And then, watching the street outside through the window, I sat in the rocking chair, holding on to him for the rest of the night.

F
IRST THING
T
UESDAY MORNING,
I called the hospital to check again on Bryce. His condition had not changed. I told myself it wasn’t my fault he’d been hit, even if the driver had been a patient. I hadn’t released anyone from the Institute. I hadn’t told Bryce to chase me. Still, guilt hounded me, and I spun through the morning, unable to rest.

Before the others were awake, I took Oliver out, congratulating him for performing his business in the bushes, only to realize when we came back inside that he’d gnawed the backs off yet another pair of Molly’s sneakers. I searched the hall closet and finally found her old blue pair, as yet unchewed, and put them up on a dining room chair, safe from his jaws. I fixed a pot of coffee for Nick and the brothers. I fed Luke. I kept moving as if being busy would protect me from thinking, but it didn’t. No matter what I did, the events of the night stayed with me. There was no escape. I needed to go someplace quiet to think, to sort things out. Of course. A shower.

Not wanting to wake up Nick, I used Molly’s bathroom down the hall. Hot water cascaded over me like guilt about Bryce, suspicion about Sam. I thought about what to say to Nick. Should I tell him about Sam’s gun? Would he laugh at me as Tony had, dismissing my concerns because of “blood”? Would he scold me for snooping? Defend Sam’s basic right to bear arms? Probably. And what about the Institute patients? Nick would no doubt reassure me, tell me not to worry about them. But he had never met Troy Dunbar or Kimberly Gilbert, didn’t know how off-kilter they could get. He didn’t know Bonnie Osterman, had never seen the mocking evil glint in her eyes. Nick would remind me that I could do nothing for patients who’d been released, and that, surrounded by three strong men, the kids and I were perfectly safe.

With steamy water pouring over my head, I could hear Nick’s comments almost as if he’d actually spoken them. What was the point of talking to him, I wondered, if I already knew what he was going to say? Did I really know him so well? I soaped myself, smiling, thinking about Nick. About how, in a few days, we’d be married.

Married? I stopped washing, stood stock-still. In just four days, it would be the weekend. The weekend of our wedding—there. I’d said it: our wedding. I said it out loud, again and then again. Somehow, with all the upheaval that had been going on, the w word had become less threatening. Under hot water, I pictured the ceremony, candlelight and roses. My white-haired father, elegant in his tux. Molly, angelic in her flower girl dress. Susan, glamorous as matron of honor. Nick—but at the thought of Nick, something surged in my chest, and I actually felt dizzy, had to put a hand on the tiles to steady myself. Oh God. It was really going to happen. Nick Stiles was going to be my husband.

My husband. What was it about that word that made my knees buckle? What would
husband
mean with respect to Nick? Would he and I be different next week after the wedding than we were now? What would change? And I would be a wife again. Thoughts of last time, my last marriage, swirled in my head; I closed my eyes, ducked my head under the faucet, trying to rinse them away. No. Michael, my ex, was not welcome in this shower. Not today. Not ever. My new marriage would be different. This one was about respect. And love. But wait—hadn’t I loved Michael, too? Stop it, I scolded myself, re-soaping my body. You’re older, more mature. Plus, Nick is different from Michael. You can trust—

But I stopped right there, mid-thought. Trust had been an issue between Nick and me, a big one. I’d come to terms with it, though, accepting that Nick was secretive by nature. Plus, as a cop, he kept the truth close and under his control, sharing only what he had to. Trusting Nick didn’t mean thinking that he would always be open with me or even that he’d always be truthful. Trusting Nick meant having faith in his intentions, believing that he would never willingly hurt me. See that? I turned, letting hot water flow down my back. I’d learned a lot since Michael. I was more mature now, had more realistic expectations.

Besides, it wasn’t just us. Nick and I had Molly and Luke. We were a family; the wedding would make it official. Nick would be my husband, I his wife—

Somebody knocked on the bathroom door.

“Yes?” I thought it was Nick. “Nick?”

No one answered. I shut off the water, squeezed my hair, stepped out of the shower, grabbed two towels, one for my body, one for my head. Wrapped in terry cloth, I opened the door, glanced up, then down the hall. Nobody was there.

I peeked in on Molly, but her alarm wouldn’t go off for a few more minutes. She was still asleep. Luke gurgled in his crib. Nick snored softly, undisturbed. Obviously, Tony or Sam had come upstairs. One of them had knocked on the bathroom door.

I dried my hair and, by the time I was finished, Molly and Nick were awake. The day, our normal routine, had begun. But no matter what I did or where I went, I felt as if someone unseen was watching me. I spent the day off-balance, as if surrounded by secrets. As I made Molly’s lunch or took Oliver and Luke for a walk, my thoughts ricocheted, bouncing from Sam’s hidden gun, to plans for my wedding, to Bryce’s condition, to the possibility that a psychotic former patient was stalking me, and as I met with Anna to finalize the musicians’ contracts and selections, my emotions continually seesawed between terror and joy.

A
LITTLE AFTER NOON,
Nick surprised us, coming home unexpectedly, bearing cheese steaks from Pat’s. Just the way I liked them, with grilled onions and mushrooms. We ate at the dining room table, right off the white wrapping paper. No plates. A can of soda or of beer. Lots of ketchup. Neither Sam nor Tony had eaten these Philly specialties before, but they dug in with the same gusto I did. In minutes, the steaks had been inhaled in silence; no one had stopped chewing long enough to make conversation. But when we were finished, Nick straightened his back, folded his hands on the table as if calling a meeting to order.

“Turns out our jogger was penetrated.” He announced it just like that. No introductory phrases to prepare us for the topic. No segue or transition from food to forensics. “Both vaginally and anally.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. All eyes were on Nick.

“So she was raped.” Sam picked something from his teeth.

“Well, that’s still a question.” Nick leaned back, crossed his legs. “There were some pretty brutal rips and bruises, but no DNA, no semen, no definite proof that the motive was sexual. The penetration could have been for the same reason as the disembowelment—”

“In other words, they were searching for something.” Sam mirrored Nick’s posture, executives at a conference. “Looking for drugs anywhere she could stash them.”

“That’s one theory.”

One theory? “What do you mean, ‘one theory’?” Were there more?

Nick sighed. “They’ve just released this. They’ve got an official ID on her.” He stopped, building the dramatic effect.

“Really.” Sam leaned forward. “Who was she?”

“Her name was Jennifer Harris.” Nick paused. “She was a federal agent.”

Sam and I spoke at once. “No shit,” he breathed while I asked, “You mean a narc?”

“No, technically, she wasn’t a narc. They’re DEA. Harris was Homeland Security.”

Wait. What? I tried to digest what I’d just heard. The dead woman had a name, an identity. Jennifer Harris. Jennifer Harris must have had friends, family. People who would mourn her loss. Maybe a boyfriend or a husband, maybe a child.

“Homeland Security?” Sam’s eyes were popping. “So what does that mean? What was this Jennifer Harris doing on the patio— hunting terrorists?”

Oh God. Good question. Homeland Security agents tracked terrorists, didn’t they? Did Jennifer’s presence here mean that there was a cell in our neighborhood?

Nick took his time answering. “It’s not clear what she was doing. The feds don’t give out a whole lot of information. In fact, since she’s one of theirs, they’re trying to lift the case. But there’s some talk going around. Not to be repeated, okay?”

We all nodded. Okay.

“The talk is that there might be links between drug traffickers and certain terrorist groups. There’s a lot of money in drugs, and terrorists need a lot of funding. I doubt they’d be picky about where the cash is coming from.”

“So if she tracked the drugs, she might find the terrorists.” Sam snorted.

“If it’s drugs.” Tony hadn’t said a word during the whole conversation. Now, he stood, began pacing. “But they’re not sure it was drugs. I mean, are they?”

“No. The feds aren’t telling us what she was doing, and nobody else is sure of anything.”

“What else could it be?” Sam growled. “I mean there’s not much room in your average—” He stopped and glanced at me, cleaning up his language. “Um, orifice.”

“Whatever is the size of a suppository or a condom would fit. Could be a weapon of some sort. Or a piece of one. Something biological, maybe.” Nick spoke casually, discussing disasters.

“But drugs are still a possibility, right?” Tony sounded hopeful.

“I guess. But I think the feds would tell us if she’d been carrying drugs. Drugs are passe’. They’re everywhere. There would be no reason to withhold that information. In my opinion, whatever the killer was looking for, the feds probably know what it is. But they aren’t telling.”

Sam reached for another beer, popped it open. “Christ. What could it be?”

The brothers began to hypothesize, brainstorming about what would fit in a woman’s intestines or private spaces. Vials of a virus or other biological weapon. A tiny atomic bomb or part. A toxic chemical agent. Some kind of poison gas. A secret formula for a lethal or destructive compound.

The list went on, got vaguer and raunchier, but I was considering a completely different possibility: Bonnie Osterman. I told myself that it was unlikely that she’d killed Agent Harris. It had to be just a coincidence that the agent’s murder had so closely resembled those committed by my former patient. And just a coincidence that the agent had been killed so soon after Bonnie Osterman’s release. Bonnie Osterman, in all likelihood, was no threat to anyone anymore, just as the Commonwealth had determined.

The brothers were still theorizing about what Jennifer Harris might have been carrying. Embryonic cloned cells. Engineered mutant cells. Robotic self-reproducing killer cells. I crumpled up the wrappings from the cheesesteaks, rolled them into a wad, went to the kitchen and tossed them into the trash.