What Comes Next (26 page)

Adrian pushed himself out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He walked as quickly as he could back to where he’d last seen the man.

From the street he could see the beige car. But there was no sign of the sex offender. There was just a single, older building. It was a stately wooden-framed, white clapboard two-story house that had been cut up into offices. Adrian could see a main entranceway where once had been a front door and he walked over. He told himself to assume the man was inside somewhere, but where, he didn’t know.

Adrian stepped inside. On the wall by the door was a single sign, delineating six different offices. It was all beneath the heading: VALLEY EMOTIONAL HEALTH SERVICES.

Three MDs and three PhDs.

It was quiet in the lobby. A single sound-deadening white noise machine hummed in a corner. A couch where people could sit was arranged across from a few chairs, making the whole vestibule into a waiting room. Adrian saw that three offices opened onto the ground floor. Three were up a single flight of stairs. There was no receptionist. This was typical of places for therapy. People knew when their appointments were, rarely arrived more than a few minutes early, and weren’t made to wait long.

So,
Adrian thought,
one of six.

There was, he imagined, no way to determine which of the six offices the man had gone into. But Adrian still turned to the wall where the names of the therapists were located. It was a small town, and he suspected he would know most of them.

But there was one he’d met only once: that was Scott West.

“So,” Brian said smugly, whispering into Adrian’s ear, as if he’d known all along what Adrian was going to find inside the building, “Jennifer’s mother’s boyfriend is treating a known sex offender. That’s a curious connection. I wonder if he bothered to mention that to Detective Collins when she questioned him the other day?”

Adrian didn’t turn to his brother. He could feel him hovering right behind. Nor did he say,
Where were you when I called for you.
Instead he nodded, then replied hesitantly.

“He could be in one of the other offices.”

“Sure,” Brian said. “He
could
be. But I don’t think so. And neither do you.”

23

When Detective Collins looked up she was surprised to see Adrian Thomas standing in the doorway to the detective bureau. He was accompanied by a uniformed officer, who shrugged and gave her the
I didn’t have a choice
look as he pointed the old man in her direction.

Terri had just gotten off the phone with Mary Riggins, who, in her constantly teary distraught, hesitant way, had told her that she had just received a call from Visa security that her lost credit card had been returned to a bank in Maine. “And it had been used,” Mary Riggins said bleakly, “to buy a bus ticket to New York City.”

Terri had dutifully taken down the information and the contact number for the credit card security. She was unsure how the card had managed to travel in one direction when the ticket was headed in another. This was illogical. But it had given her the start of a new time line, and she was searching for the phone number for the Boston police bus station substation when she saw Adrian.

Her desktop was cluttered with documents and stray bits of information concerning Jennifer’s case and she rapidly collected it all into a pile and turned it facedown. She guessed that the professor had seen her do this and would recognize it for what it was, and so she readied a response that would deflect any inquiry without being rude. She wasn’t going to mention anything about the Visa card. But Adrian, without greeting, simply asked, “Have you obtained a current list of patients from Scott West? I remember you asked for that.”

She was slightly taken aback. She hadn’t thought he had been paying that much attention when she had met with Scott and Mary in their home.

Adrian filled the momentary pause with a second question: “He said he would give it to you, and he scoffed at the idea that anyone he’d ever treated would have any connection to Jennifer’s disappearance, didn’t he?”

She nodded. She waited for another question from the professor but he merely bent forward and fixed her with a look that she suspected had been reserved for wayward, ill-prepared students in decades past. It was the
try another answer
look.

She shrugged. She remained noncommittal.

“He is supposed to bring that list to me tomorrow. It will be confidential, professor, so I would not be free to share any information with you.”

“What about a list of known sex offenders? I thought I made it clear that was the next step.”

Adrian was being forceful in a way that Terri had not seen before. She was put off. She had thought that the professor wanted to work in the gray areas of speculation, theory, and supposition. She had expected a tweed jacket, leather arm patch, pipe-smoking sort of academic, happy to sit in an office surrounded by books and learned papers, occasionally chiming in with an observation or an opinion—just as he had when he’d lectured her about Myra Hindley and Ian Brady and the Moors Murders. She had not expected that he would ever arrive at her office. He seemed different, like a baggy shirt that had shrunk to tightness in the wash. The same but barely recognizable.

“I have been looking over those lists, professor. And I have read a great deal about the British case back in the sixties that you referenced. But concretely connecting these things to Jennifer’s disappearance might seem obvious to a university professor, but to a police officer…”

This was spoken in the practiced tones of a cop who wants to reply without saying anything. He interrupted her swiftly.

“Does the name
Mark Wolfe
mean anything to you.”

She hesitated. The name had a little electricity to it, like a minor charge of current. Something that buzzed in the back of her memory. But she did not immediately place it.

Adrian spoke without waiting.

“Convicted sex offender. A serial exhibitionist with a particular predilection for teenage girls. Lives not far outside of town. Does that help you?”

The buzzing increased. She knew that the name was on one of the sheets of paper she had concealed from Adrian’s eyes on her desktop. She nodded, while inwardly she was trying to sketch a picture of the man.
Glasses.
Thick black-rimmed eyeglasses. She remembered those from a mug shot.

She rocked back in her chair and motioned Adrian toward a nearby seat. He remained standing. She thought he seemed rigid, and she wondered where the distracted, eyes-wandering,
I’m someplace else
look had vanished to.

“I saw him today.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes. And—”

“How did you happen to know who he was?”

Adrian reached inside his coat pocket and removed a sheaf of crumpled-up papers. He handed these over and Terri saw that they were printouts of local sex offenders available to anyone who knew how to do a simple Web search.

“And Wolfe… why did you choose him?”

“He seemed the most logical. From a psychologist’s perspective.”

“And what exactly is that perspective, professor?”

“Exhibitionists live in a curious kind of fantasy world. Often they derive titillation and sexual gratification from exposing themselves and triggering the fantasy that the women—in this man’s case the very
young
women—who witness their exposure will be magically attracted to them as opposed to repulsed, which, of course, is the reality. The act of exposing themselves triggers their imaginations.”

Terri could hear the measured tones of the classroom in every word.

“Yes. Fine and good, but what has he to do—”

Adrian interrupted her.

“I saw him going into Scott West’s treatment office after he finished work this evening.”

Terri did not instantly react. This was Cop 101. Maintain a poker face. Inwardly, she felt an eruption. There were several aspects of the statement that deserved her attention.
How did the professor know it was after work? Why was he following him?
She pursed her lips together and decided to play obtuse. She asked. “Yes, and?”

“This does not strike you as odd, detective? Perhaps relevant?”

“Yes. It does, professor.”

This was a reluctant piece of honesty.

“I recall he was quite adamant that
none
of his current or former patients could have anything to do with—”

“Yes. I heard that as well, Professor Thomas. But you are making assumptions that I would not yet…”

She stopped. She did not want to sound like a fool.

Adrian seemed to narrow his glance, his focus directly on her.

“Do you not think it calls for some investigation?” He said this last word with emphasis.

“Yes. I do.”

There was a momentary pause between the two of them.

“You know, detective, if you won’t look for her, I will.”

“I am looking, professor. It’s not like I just turn over a rock, or open a drawer or look behind a door, and there she is. She’s gone and there are conflicting elements…”

Again she cut off her own words.

She reached under the papers collected on her desktop and removed the flyer that she had prepared. It had Jennifer’s picture at the top under the word
Missing
and it listed all her vital statistics and contact numbers. It was the sort of flyer that is seen every day in police stations and on the walls of government buildings. It was only slightly more comprehensive than handmade missing dog or missing cat flyers that people tack to tree trunks and telephone poles in suburban neighborhoods.

“I am looking,” she repeated. “That has gone out to departments and state police barracks throughout New England.”

“How hard will those people look?”

“You don’t expect me to answer that question, do you?”

“You know, detective, there’s a difference between looking for someone and waiting around for someone to say
I just spotted someone.
”

Terri’s eyes narrowed. She did not enjoy being lectured to by a professor about her job.

“That is a distinction I’m familiar with, professor,” she replied coldly.

Adrian stared at the flyer. He looked down at the picture of Jennifer. She was smiling, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

Both of them knew this image was a lie.

Adrian hesitated. He saw his hand tighten and start to crumple the paper flyer, as if he needed to grip it tightly, otherwise it would slip free.

He took a step back. He could hear odd noises echoing in his head—not the voices he was familiar with but sounds like paper ripping or metal twisting. He felt empty inside, a sort of gnawing hunger, although he could not think of the food he wanted to eat. Muscles tensed in his arms and he could feel his back tighten, as if he’d been bent over in the same position for too long. He felt a runner’s stiffness, a hot day’s overexertion, and he battled against the desire to rest, arguing within himself that he could not stop, he could not pause, he could not shut his eyes for an instant, because that would be the moment when Jennifer would be lost to him forever.

Jennifer, he thought, was just like all the hallucinations in his life. She existed once, and now he had to fight hard to keep her from fading away. She was still real, but only barely, and anything he could identify that gave her substance was a step toward finding her.

The pink baseball cap.
He wished that he hadn’t returned it to Jennifer’s mother. It would be something real, something he could touch. He wondered if he could act like a bloodhound, pick up her scent from the hat and track her.

He was breathing rapidly.

A known sex offender connected to Jennifer’s family.

Adrian believed it had to mean something. He did not know what.

“Professor?”

He would go by himself.

“Professor?”

He would confront the man. Force him to tell him something that would help lead to Jennifer.

“Professor!”

He looked down and saw that he had gripped the side of Detective Collins’s desk, and that his knuckles had turned white.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

Terri watched Adrian’s red face slowly return to a more normal color.

He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry? Is something…”

“It seemed like you were someplace else. And then you were like trying to pick up my desk or something. Are you okay?” she repeated the question.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just old age. And that new medication I mentioned the other day. I get distracted.”

She looked at him and thought two things:
He isn’t that old
and
This is a lie.

Adrian slowly exhaled.

“I apologize, detective. I have become quite engaged with this case of the missing girl. Jennifer. It, ah, fascinates me. I cannot shake the idea that my expertise and background in psychology is useful. I understand that you have procedures, and that you need to follow protocols. These things were once very important in my line of work. Knowledge without established procedures is often useless, no matter how seemingly valuable.”

This sounded once again like something of a lecture to Terri, but this time she didn’t resent it. The old man meant well. Even if he did seem to fade in and out every time they spoke together. And she was certain that it wasn’t simply medication. She stared at Adrian as if by a singleness of gaze she could diagnose what made him so erratic. He seemed to take her stare indifferently shrugging his shoulders.

“If you like, I will simply pursue matters on my own…”

This she did not want.

“You should leave police cases to the police.”

Adrian smiled.

“Of course. But from my perspective this is not the sort of situation that wholly lends itself to a policeman’s approach.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Detective,” Adrian said, “you’re still trying to figure out what crime took place so you can categorize it and follow some established process. I have no such restrictions. I
know
what I saw. I also know human behavior and have spent my life studying identifiable responses in both animals and humans. So
your
behavior in this situation doesn’t actually surprise me all that much.”