The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (13 page)

“How does it work?” asked Kyle, adjusting his wire rims.

“Simple. Give the rat some floetazine, and he keeps swimming on the second day. Behavioral despair is gone.”

“That’s it? A rat in a tub of water?” Jake seemed skeptical. “What the hell does that have to do with humans?”

“A legitimate question,” Sky agreed. “The forced swim test just happens to be selective for depression.”

“Huh?” Axelrod blinked at Sky with his owl eyes.

“Every known treatment for depression – all drugs, electroshock, transcranial magnetic stimulation – all of them have an immediate effect on the forced swim test. The rat always swims longer."

“Why?” Axelrod said.

“Floetazine changes your brain chemistry. It increases serotonin. Let me draw you a picture.” Sky pulled out the green golf pencil and drew a figure on the back of Professor Fisk’s article.

“Looks like a croquet mallet,” Axelrod said.

Sky corrected him. “This is a nerve cell in your brain. When you take floetazine, all of the serotonin in this nerve cell pours out.” Sky scribbled a dozen tiny globs along the outside rim of the mallet head.

“Floetazine increases serotonin activity by blocking reuptake. These globs stay here, in the synaptic cleft,” she pointed to the area around the mallet head, “instead of getting sucked back into the nerve cell.”

Kyle studied the primitive drawing. “Not enough serotonin? That’s why we get depressed?”

“It’s dated. But it’s still a popular theory.” Sky shrugged. “Very twentieth century.”

“Yeah?” Kyle gave her a pained look. “So what’s very twenty-first century?”

“There’s the link between depression and neurogenesis of the hippocampus.” Sky reached up and touched Kyle’s head, just behind his left ear. “This part of your brain. Critical for forming new memories. Some researchers are studying a class of proteins that help neurons grow and survive. Trophic factors, they're called. Chronic stress inhibits their release. Long story short, depression may be a function of atrophied brain cells.”

“Depression is a withered brain?” Kyle seemed doubtful.

“It’s a theory. Floetazine may work because it helps these cells recover their vigor, form new connections.” Sky pointed to the globs of serotonin in her drawing. “Floetazine increases your serotonin levels as soon as you begin taking it, but it takes four to six weeks before your depression starts to lift. The withered brain theory explains this latency.” Sky looked at each detective in turn. “In other words, no one really knows. Anyone who tells you they understand the biology of depression is full of shit. Count on it.”

Jake gave the drawing an indifferent wave. “Give me something I can use. Like a description of the killer.”

All three detectives leaned almost imperceptibly toward Sky.

“Heterosexual. Male. Caucasian. Physically strong. Educated. Socially facile.” Sky folded the note she’d found tucked in the book of magic spells. “A planner. A control freak, even.” She fastened Nicolette’s note in her journal with a paperclip. “He’s a collector,” she added, thinking about the patch of skin cut from the small of Nicolette’s back. “Something probably happened to him, just before he murdered Nicolette. Financial trouble, a problem at work, maybe. Some kind of stressor.” Sky listened to the clock ticking on the wall. “One more thing,” she said. “Bullough’s Pond, the morning of the Boston Marathon? That was a deliberate choice. It’s his sense of humor. He thinks leaving a dead body in the middle of town is clever.”

The detectives stared at her.

“He’s laughing at us,” she explained, “like we’re the village idiots.”

The men bristled visibly at this piece of analysis. Sky could almost smell the testosterone in the room.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Remind me, sugar. Why didn’t you marry me?”

Fresh from an aggressive performance of Hey Joe, the last song of his first set, Ellery Templeton stood in the basement office of Genuine John’s Tavern on Harvard Avenue, dressed in black leather, nursing a whiskey sour, eyeing Sky with undisguised delight.

Despite the intervening decade, Ellery seemed remarkably the same. Same guitar style, magically edgy, ornate and smooth all at once, Johnny Winter meets Stevie Ray Vaughan meets Eric Clapton. A bit fuller in the face, maybe. The only real change, Sky decided, was the hair. Ellery’s pony tail was gone, his head was completely shaved. Each ear lobe was circled with a gold hoop, giving him the exotic appearance of a pirate.

On Ellery, it looked good.

Ellery, for his part, was studying Sky the way a painter might study his model. “I guess you’re one of those women who just gets more beautiful.” His brow knotted, as though he did not quite approve of this state of affairs. “Heard you were dating a cop.”

Sky gave a noncommittal shrug.

“You still love champagne?” he asked.

“I do.”

“You still love Bach and the Beastie Boys?”

“Yes.”

“You still have that fairy on your shoulder blade?”

Sky nodded.

Ellery gave a lazy laugh and pulled a fresh pack of Camels from the pocket of his leather shirt. He rapped the pack against his palm, five sharp hits. It was an old habit, one Sky knew well.

“You still love the cop?” Ellery grinned.

Yes, Sky thought, Ellery really was the same. Same wicked guitar licks, same startling blue eyes, same superstar smile.

She decided to dispense with the small talk. “Nicolette Mercer’s dead body was found sixteen hours ago.”

The color drained from Ellery’s face and he gave Sky a helpless, drowning look. His blue eyes seemed, suddenly, to have infinite depth, as though Sky were looking into another dimension. She’d seen these eyes before, on other faces, other investigations. Death shock, Sky called it, this shattering effect that death inflicted on the living.

“Talk to me, Ellery.”

He slumped in a chair behind the desk. “I saw Nicolette Saturday night. Here. In Genuine John’s.” He drained his drink and called upstairs on the desk phone for another whiskey sour. “Make it a double.”

Ellery pulled a cigarette from the pack of Camels. “Nicolette came to the gig late that night, maybe one fifteen. Usually, she’s here for two or three sets, but Saturday she didn’t show until just before closing.”

He paused, like he was trying to get the details right.

“I saw her from the stage – that red hair made it easy – she stood at the bar, waiting while I finished the last set.” Ellery lit the cigarette and took a hit, holding it between thumb and index finger, like he was smoking a joint. Smoke streamed from one side of his mouth. “I packed up, talked to the owner for a few minutes about a Fourth of July booking.”

A rap sounded on the door and an efficient-looking brunette with bright orange lips swooped in carrying a highball and a cocktail napkin. She leaned across Sky and handed Ellery his double.

“You’re a doll,” he told her with conviction.

“My pleasure, Ellery.” The orange lips delivered the words with a predatory purr. “My number’s on the napkin.”

The flirtation hung in the air but Ellery was concentrating on his drink. The whiskey sour was gone in three gulps. Ellery wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Pursing her orange lips, the barmaid shot Sky a nasty look and slammed the door on her way out.

Ellery continued. “I planned on driving to New York right after the gig, but Nicolette insisted I walk her home. Fine, I said. It’s a few blocks from here, there was a spectacular full moon that night. It was real cold. But you could smell spring coming. We were standing in front of Nicolette’s apartment, right there on Comm Ave, when she told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. Just like that. Out of the blue.”

“Did she say why?”

“Blamed it on her dissertation. Said she had to concentrate, finish her doctorate.” Ellery shrugged. “One of my weaknesses, I guess. Educated women.”

“How did you feel about the break-up?”

Ellery considered the question a few moments before answering. “Relieved.”

This was not the response Sky was expecting.

Ellery seemed to register her surprise. “Nicolette was needy. Always asking, Did I like her hair? Did I like her shoes?”

The two whiskey sours were having their effect. Ellery’s speech began to thicken, his motions grew exaggerated.

“She got clingy. It was a real bait and switch, Sky. We’d been going out for about a month when she started with the wild accusations, the temper tantrums. Accused me of sleeping with other women.”

“She was jealous?”

Ellery nodded. “I consider myself something of a connoisseur, when it comes to the ladies. I’ve known women all over this planet.” He pointed a heavily ringed finger at Sky. “There aren’t many like you." His blue eyes moved over her body. “So sure of yourself. So comfortable in your own skin. God, I miss that.”

“Focus, Ellery.”

“I didn’t kill Nicolette, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he insisted. “She was sweet. A little whacked, maybe. You know me, Sky. When it comes to women? I love ‘em all.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “I might as well confess. I’ve been seeing someone else, on the sly. A model. I met her in London last winter, on tour. Fiona Thatcher.”

Smoke drifted from his mouth as he spoke. “Fiona flew into town about four days ago, for a fall spread in Vogue, at Faneuil Hall. She’s crashing at my place.”

“Fiona?” Sky said. “Fiona hasn’t seen you for two days. Fiona told me to tell you to go fuck yourself. You better forget Fiona.”

Ellery winced. “I told her I was driving to New York Saturday night after the gig. She must have forgotten.”

Sky pictured the beautiful Fiona, standing in the doorway of Ellery’s place in Charlestown, reeking of pot.

“Why did you go to New York?”

“Picked up a new guitar. A Sunburst ’57 Fender Strat. Came with the original, single page mimeographed instruction sheet. Signed by Leo Fender himself.” He raised both hands in a gesture of incredulity. “Mimeographed!”

Ellery stubbed his cigarette out in the empty cocktail glass. “I paid more for that guitar than I paid for my ’57 T-Bird last year. Way too valuable to ship.” He gave Sky a brooding look. “Remember my guitar collection?”

When Sky first met Ellery, before the tours and the recording contracts, he attended Berklee and inhabited a fourth floor efficiency in Kenmore Square. Tuesdays and Thursdays, after she ran roller pigeons on a color discrimination trial at Northeastern, she would walk to the apartment and make love to him on pale green sheets, beneath a triptych of electric guitars that hung on the wall above his double bed. Afterwards, Ellery, naked save for a thick tribal tattoo wrapped around his left bicep, would lift one of the guitars from the wall and lecture a drowsy, sated Sky on the relative merits of that particular instrument.

She remembered his guitar collection.

“Gibson Firebird, three pick-ups, considerable surface area for a solid body,” she recited from memory. In her mind’s eye, Sky saw the guitar’s Picassoesque, trapezoid shape.

“The second guitar: Les Paul Junior, TV model, single pick-up, blonde. A little trebly.”

Sky moved on to guitar number three. “Gibson ES 335, semi-hollow body, warm sound. Shaped like a woman.”

Ellery grinned. “That’s my girl.”

“New York. Is that where you got those hickies?” Sky was looking at two oval-shaped marks, speckled deep russet on Ellery’s neck, just below his jaw.

“Because they look fresh,” she added. “Newly sucked.”

“You got me again, sugar.” Ellery reddened. “Went for steak tartare with the guy who sold me the Strat. We met some girls at Pastis, in Manhattan …”

Sky pulled her journal out and turned to a clean page. “What’s this guitar seller’s name? Address? Do you have a phone number? E-mail? Something we can verify?”

Ellery shook his head. “The dude left for Amsterdam the day I drove back to Boston. I took him to the airport on my way out of town. I’ve got his e-mail address somewhere.” He pulled a wallet from his back pocket.

Strains of a bass guitar reverberated from the floor above, in single notes. Someone was tuning up.

“Time to work. I’ll get that address to you later.” Ellery stood. “What’s my next move, sugar?”

“Get a lawyer,” Sky said. She found a pen on the desk and wrote a name on Ellery’s cocktail napkin. “Call her. Tonight.”

Ellery stuffed the napkin in his back pocket. He escorted Sky up some stairs and through the saloon to the entrance, where Kyle waited, frowning like a spurned suitor. Axelrod stood next to Kyle, patting his cowlick and staring at the guitar player.

Sky had one more question for Ellery. “What was that song you played, just before Hey Joe?”

“A new piece,” he said. “Something I wrote. Pretty basic. G triad over an A bass note.”

“It’s beautiful,” Sky said.

“You still love the tension, sugar.” Ellery gave her a heartbreaking smile. “No release until the end of the progression. You haven’t changed a bit.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Just one nightcap, darling, what’s the harm?” Kyle parked the cruiser in front of Kildare’s Pub and stepped hard on the emergency brake. “By the way,” he poked a bony finger at her. “Interviewing that guitar player on your own was a foolish risk.”

“Templeton is attracted to you,” Axelrod said matter-of-factly from the back seat.

“The rookie’s right, for once.” Kyle frowned. “Templeton was eyeing you like you were his next meal. Hand me that gun, Axelrod.” Kyle took the baby Glock from the rookie’s hand and slipped it into the holster under his left arm.

“Ellery Templeton didn’t kill Nicolette,” Sky said, dabbing lip-gloss on her mouth. She was tired. And sober. And her lips were chapped.

She offered the detectives an abbreviated history of her relationship with the musician. “Ellery’s reaction when I told him about the murder, that can’t be faked.”

“Darling, ordinarily I would trust your instincts. But you’re too close to this guy. Until Templeton gives us an alibi, he’s prime suspect.”

Sky snapped the lip gloss lid shut. “Kyle, someone is tailing us.”

“No way.” Kyle laughed and pushed the car door open. “Who tails a cop?”