The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series) (3 page)

“We moved from Uptown about four months ago— why, with a year-old baby, I’m not sure. Well, yes, I am. We fell in love with the house.”

“Ah. You’re a real estate junkie.”

“We used to just look—but this place got us.”

“I love Creole townhouses—I’d like to do what you’re doing, restore one.”

“You do need a therapist.”

T They both laughed a little nervously, as each party contemplated the segué from pleasantries to the business of the hour. Finally, Boo said, “How can I help you?”

“Well, I’ve been depressed. Do you know any jokes?”

Boo smiled, acknowledging the stab at humor.

“I had a couple of real bad things happen at once. I lost my partner …”

Boo gasped. Most of her clients had relationship problems.

“And I went after the asshole who killed him.”

She paused so long Boo prompted. “He got away?”

“It would have been better if he had.”

Is she saying what I think she is?
Boo waited.

“I found him. And he tried to kill me. And I shot him.”

Boo nodded, trying not to show emotion. “You did what you had to.”

“He had a seven-year-old daughter.”

“My God.”
What would it do to Joy if something happened to her father? Or me? How would she possibly cope with it?

The young cop told the story in detail, her green eyes troubled, and as she talked, Boo developed an affection for her, a respect that she often felt when hearing a client’s story, seeing her suffering laid out as if on a gurney. It was amazing what the human mind could cope with, how it could wrap itself around a problem and find a way out.

But the woman before her had killed a man in front of his wife and child, and she had no previous experience to help her through it, no psychic armor to protect her.

I wish I could build her some. I wish I could mend the hole in her.

She was a big woman, at least six feet tall, and a little overweight—twenty pounds, maybe. But the weight looked good on her; gave her substance. Her brown hair was wild and curly—Boo thought she must wear it up on the job.

She was young—probably slightly over thirty—but she gave the impression of strength and intelligence. Boo was willing to bet certain men were threatened by her, probably some of her colleagues included.

Her eyes were what impressed Boo the most—those green, compassionate, troubled orbs that looked as if they had seen too much.

I want to make her smile. I want her to be happy.

It was her weakness and she knew it—as a human being that is, because she gave too much; but in her job, it was her strength. She could not rest until she saw the glint of laughter return to her clients’ eyes.

“I don’t know what to do,” Skip was saying. “Being a cop is my identity; it’s my life. It’s the only thing …” She stopped.

“Go ahead, tell me.”

“I was going to say the only thing I’ve ever loved.”

Boo waited.

“But that isn’t true. I love my friends and the children, my best friend’s children … and …”

“And?”

“My boyfriend, I guess.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Oh, of course I’m sure. Sure I love him. I’m just insecure.”

“Is there a reason to be?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded impatient. “Could we get back on the subject?”

“Whatever you like.”

“Well, I don’t know that I did love anyone before I had this job.”

“Not your parents?”

“I guess, but that’s another story. What I mean is, this job sort of solidified things for me. It made me … I don’t know—it made me want to live, I guess.”

“Ah.”

“Well, I hate to sound clichéd, but I guess I mean I get my self-esteem from it.”

“Do you think that’s still true?”

“Maybe not. Maybe it isn’t, but it’s still my life.”

“Of course.”

“What would I do if I didn’t have it? I can’t even think about that.”

“I don’t think you have to. You still have it.”

“Not for now I don’t. I’m on leave for six months.” She brought a hand down on her thigh. “What am I going to do all day?”

“What do you want to do?”

She sat back, and Boo thought the pain in her eyes was searing. “I don’t know.”

“Do you ever find that sometimes you know things you don’t know you know?”

Irritation flashed across Skip’s face: Don’t give me that shrink-talk. And then her expression smoothed into thought. Finally, she said, “Maybe. What are you getting at?”

“You could look at this as an opportunity.”

This time she didn’t bother to conceal her annoyance. “Well, I don’t.”

I guess I’d feel the same
, Boo thought. She said: “What would you think of doing a little exercise with me?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Okay, get comfortable. Now close your eyes and leave the morning behind you.” She spoke slowly, to induce a light trance. “Let go of the past and the future, and take a breath …”

She led Skip, in imagination, to “a beautiful place where all things are possible.”

“See if there’s anyone there,” she said.

“Yes. There’s a woman wearing a diaphanous gown. A muse or something.”

“Good. Ask her to give you what you need.”

Skip was silent for a while. “I’m not getting anything.”

“Okay. Let’s go deeper. To your left, find a path that leads downward. Follow the path and tell me who you meet…”

Almost instantly, Skip gave a little gasp and a jerk. She kept her eyes closed for almost a minute, and then let them fly open. “I did get something.”

“Good.” Boo was a little taken aback. She’d planned to lead her client gradually back up the path to consciousness, ever so nurturing and gentle, but Skip had taken matters into her own hands.

“It’s not what I expected. It’s the last thing I expected.” She was shaking her head. “It was Errol Jacomine.”

“The mayoral candidate?”

Skip nodded, licking her lips, excited. “This worked, you know that? There really is something I care about— I just forgot about it, that’s all. I mean I didn’t think I could do anything, but I have all this free time.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What do you know about Jacomine?”

“Just that he’s the minister of a multicultural church. He seems to have done a lot for drug addicts and people down on their luck—I mean, really a lot. My impression is, he’s a real grassroots, serious kind of guy who puts his money where his mouth is.”

“My God.” Skip was shaking her head, a hand over her mouth in horror. “I think that’s what most people think.”

“And what do you think?”

“He’s a psychopath. He’s dangerous as hell.”

She was so adamant Boo started to wonder if this was a projection. Was there more to Skip Langdon’s emotional state than she’d thought?

“I met him last year on a case. He was sitting down with eight or ten members of his flock. When he stood, they stood, and I’ve never been so sure in my life that something was badly wrong. I mean
badly
.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“They were obviously under orders to watch his every little move and carry out some prearranged scenario.”

“Every organization has rituals. Especially churches.”

“Maybe you had to be there—trust me, this thing was sinister as hell. And sure enough, I found a disgruntled member who left because he abused her. She spilled something, and he made her wear burlap underwear or some damn thing—which he called sackcloth. And there were sexual things.”

“Rape?”

“More like droit du seigneur. The church ladies were just sort of on call.”

Boo raised an eyebrow.

“So I told the department’s intelligence guy—you know, the one who’s supposed to know about cults? And he said Errol Jacomine’s a good guy, and I should leave him alone.”

“Jacomine’s got a following,” Boo said, trying to keep it neutral. In fact as far as she could tell, he was beloved by those who knew him.

Skip was looking more lively than she had at any time during the session.

Boo asked, “How does all this affect your life?”

“Well, I think it’s preying on me—it’s contributing to my general black, dark mood. And I realize the thing I want most in the world right now is for him not to get elected. I could work on Perretti’s campaign, or Jackson’s …” She stopped. “Uh-oh. No, I can’t. I’m still a police officer. I can’t work on a campaign.” She looked utterly dejected. “For a minute there, I thought I could actually do something useful for once.”

“I’m sure you’ve done many useful things in your life.”

Skip gave her another cut-the-shrink-talk look. They were all like this at first, till they got used to the vocabulary.

And the nurturing.

Boo felt strongly that there wasn’t enough nurturing in the culture, and that most people had a hard time accepting it—but then, perhaps those were just the ones who ended up in therapy.

Still, there was her husband …

Stop that
, she thought.
You’re too smothering, nobody could take it.

Skip was saying something. “Do you think I’ll ever get over this?”

She was so pathetic, this huge, competent woman, obviously so unlike herself right now, that Boo wanted to hug her and tell her that yes, everything would be fine; but she wasn’t sure of that.

Probably Skip would never get over it completely. But she would stop being depressed.

“Of course you will,” she said. “People do.”

It just takes time, and it’s incredibly painful.

“It’s taking so long.”

Oh, God, why can’t I put a bandage on them or something?

“Want to come back Wednesday? We could do twice a week for a while.”

Skip nodded, looking pathetically grateful, this large woman, so defeated in her triumph. If a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do, she had—and now she was flat as a busted balloon.

Boo thought:
We never know what life will bring us.

When Skip had gone, she realized how much the other woman had affected her. She had ways of closing herself off from her clients’ pain—all therapists do—but there was something about this one, something like seeing a wounded lion.

She went to find her daughter. She had ten minutes before the next one.

Chapter Three

THEY WENT TO the burger King on Canal Street because Noel thought nobody else would be there. Torian had heard her mother say that if you didn’t want to be overheard by the people you were talking about, you had to go to Hooters. Burger King was good if you didn’t want to be seen.

Anyway, she preferred it to PJ’s or the Croissant D’Or because she wanted a Coke instead of coffee.

Noel said, “I brought you the poem. May I read it to you?”

Asking her permission.

He was so diffident, so shy with her. She didn’t really know how to respond—nothing had prepared her for this—but she thought it best to accept the role he assigned to her, that of lady receiving her troubadour.

It felt odd. It felt downright absurd.

She was just Torian Gernhard, who had the worst clothes in the class and got tongue-tied when a cool boy spoke to her, and here she was with Noel Treadaway. That in itself didn’t make any sense, but the way he treated her was madness—like a queen, yes, but not the way a king treats a queen, the way a servant does.

Of course it made her uncomfortable, because it was too weird and too unlikely and made her feel like she was in a dream. But in a strange way, it also seemed her due. Usually, she felt rattled, but there were moments when she felt she brought it off pretty well.

She was about to say that of course he could read the poem when he said, “You have no idea how cute you are with those glasses on.”

She felt her cheeks flush and her right hand tear them from her face. She’d forgotten she was wearing them.

“No, leave them on.”

“I’ll put them on later. If you ask me real nice.”

She leaned forward a little, seductively, she hoped, though she hadn’t had much practice at this sort of thing.

He laughed. “What a grande dame.”

How many of her friends even knew that phrase? Her heart swelled with gratitude that this was happening, that he’d noticed her.

She made her neck and spine long and looked haughtily down her nose. “You may read the poem now.”

His hair was gold in the sun, his blue eyes kind right now, but sometimes she thought they would burn a hole through her.

We are the opposites that attract, she thought. Light and dark, tall and short, thick and thin.

Sunny and sad.

But she wasn’t nearly so sad when he was with her. Sometimes she thought he’d been sent from heaven to save her, to give meaning to her life.

They’d known each other four months now, but this magic, this love between them, was new, now going into its fourth week—its twenty-second day, to be exact.

She had wanted him from the first, but that was nothing. She got hardly anything she wanted, unless you counted the occasional Coke.

She had written poems about him. He liked poetry. She’d never in her life met a soul who did, not even Sheila.

Poetry and classical music. It was too much to ask.

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

She nodded slowly, grandly.

Tears stood in her eyes when he had finished. The images were so crystalline, so pure and clean she felt her body tingle, as if she had dived into a mountain stream. They made her wish she lived in a place where there wassnow, wish she could have her own house with her own bowl, in which there would always be carnations.

Wish she could get away from Lise and live with Noel.

She had fallen in love with him long, long before he noticed her, and for months had not gone to sleep without his face in her mind. She’d been beside herself when they started seeing each other.

But the way she felt right now, at this moment, was so much more intense that she thought it threatened to explode her body.

“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“The poem …” How could she tell him it wasn’t the poem, it was him?

“It reminds me of you.”

She didn’t answer.