In His Thoughts, page 8
The man was growing agitated, his fists balling beside him as he flushed with rage. He caught himself this time and forced himself back into the sofa cushions with a few deep breaths.
“It’s not fair,” he said, “But nothing’s fair. So it goes.”
“In other news,” said the anchor in a lighter tone that meant he was going to cheer up the viewer, “Local piano prodigy twins Eric and Simon Garret are scheduled to perform at the White House next month after their audition tape wowed judges of American Talent. Members of Callo County are invited to a charity concert next week before the boys leave for their rocket ship tour of the United States, where the Garret twins will perform selections of Mozart, Liszt, and Beethoven. All proceeds will be split between the Garret Boys and the Callo Foundation for the Arts. Don't miss out!"
The channel cut to a video of two boys no more than ten years old seated at identical grand pianos. The children were hammering out a complicated piece of classical music with soul-crushing beauty and accuracy. The camera shot cut in close on the boys' faces, panning back and forth to show just how identical the twins were. The music stirred sorrow from the man's soul – sorrow that, once it surfaced, quickly oxidized and fermented into rage.
The news station transitioned to an interview with the boys' father, a mustached man whose eyes sparkled with pride as he talked about the innate interest his sons had displayed in music.
The man, who had picked up the first sheet of sandpaper, now crumpled it brutally in his fist. He rose slowly to his feet, his chest heaving with the force of his loathing.
“That,” he grunted, letting the sandpaper fall to the floor as he stretched out a finger to point at the television screen, “That’s really not fair.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
At 7:55 the following morning, Eve and Thompson were in the office of Dr. Duquesne. The office was plush and richly furnished. A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf covered the southern wall behind the desk, and a massive window looked out over a maintained lawn to the north. The desktop clock ticked away the seconds on a thin, spindly gold hand.
The doctor was not in.
The agents had arrived early, well before the suite of medical offices were scheduled to officially open. Getting inside had been no problem. All Eve had to do was show her badge to the janitor pushing his cart through the lobby, and they were ushered politely and somewhat fearfully through the darkened offices. The janitor had told them that the medical staff usually arrived around eight, but the offices didn’t open until nine.
The agents waited in the doctor’s private office, silent, preparing to ambush the unexpecting physician. Dr. Duquesne – or Dr. Absolem, or whoever this person turned out to be – might turn and flee upon finding the agents in her office, Eve thought. Only running on a few hours of unsettled sleep herself, Eve hoped there wouldn’t be a chase.
The second hand described another circle around the clock. The agents waited in perfect silence. The tension in the office was palpable.
“Do you think she’ll show?” Thompson asked, turning to glance at Eve over her shoulder. “Maybe the janitor tipped her off that there were a couple of feds poking around her office. Who knows how big this illegal pharma ring is.”
“You may have a point,” Eve replied, steepling her fingers thoughtfully in front of her lips. She was seated in the doctor’s chair behind the desk, leaning on her elbows with her eyes trained on the door. “Still, if this Dr. Absolem-Duquesne person is somehow involved in the pill scheme, this office would be her home base. I think we should wait it out a little longer.”
"You think she'll come in shooting like Cartwright did?" Thompson asked, fidgeting subconsciously with the flap of her blazer as her hand itched towards her weapon.
“Don’t get jumpy,” Eve warned, eyeing her partner’s hand, “Remember, this woman’s a doctor and we’re in a medical office. If she does own a gun, I’d bet that it’s right…here,” Eve grunted as she pulled open the right-hand desk drawer, then smiled with satisfaction as her eyes fell on a small pearl grip revolver. She held it up for Thompson to see.
“Curious thing to find in a doctor’s office,” Thompson commented.
“Not if she’s writing dirty scrips," Eve said, checking the safety before carefully slipping the pistol into her own pocket and shutting the drawer again. "She's got to have some kind of defense in case an addict comes after her at work."
“Do you think she could be a suspect in Selma Vishni’s case?” Thompson asked, her eyes still trained on the desk drawer where the gun had been. Eve thought about it for a moment, then shook her head.
"No, both Macey and Vishnu were strangled," she said, "The bruising to the neck suggests large hands, probably masculine. That gun is designed and shaped for a small-handed person and probably a last line of defense for somebody with an otherwise non-violent disposition – hence the 'prettying-up' of the pearl grip. She doesn't like to look at the gun and dreads the idea of using it, but is too afraid of her circumstances not to keep it around. This is somebody who will probably try to outwit us or flee before she opts for violence.”
“I’m glad you feel so confident,” Thompson said, sounding less assured.
“Shh!” Eve hissed suddenly, her ears pricking up and her muscles tensing. Through the door of the office, the agents could hear the soft, repetitive squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the floor of the hall.
The agents held their breath, rooted to the spot, as the doorknob of the office turned. The door opened, and a salt-and-pepper-haired woman wearing a knee-length white medical overcoat and half-moon spectacles came into the room, her nose buried in the pages of a manilla file.
Before Eve could do anything to stop her, Thompson pulled her Glock from the holster under her arm and leveled it at the doctor. The safety was off, and her finger was on the trigger.
“Hold it right there, Doc,” Thompson demanded, brandishing the gun at the woman’s astonished face, “No sudden movements. We’ve got you covered.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Okay!" Eve planted her hands on the desk, raising her voice to the tone of command she'd only ever used in the Marine Corps, "Nobody moves! Everybody just takes it easy."
The room froze. The eyes of both Thompson and the doctor were fixed on Eve. Eve turned her stare back and forth between the doctor and Thompson.
One heartbeat passed. Eve grimaced at the two.
“Close the door,” Eve said.
The doctor obeyed, moving like a marionette on tangled strings.
“Who…” the doctor stammered, stooping to pick up the file she’d dropped and glancing back and forth at the two suited women in her office. “Who are you?”
“Doctor Absolem?” Eve asked.
“You’re not…” the woman started, taken aback by the name. “Who told you where to find me?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Eve replied, shifting her eyes to Thompson, who was still holding her pistol with white-knuckle intensity. “Thompson, holster your weapon.”
Thompson looked at Eve as if she were speaking a foreign language.
“Now,” Eve implored, raising her eyebrows.
Slowly, as if waking up from a dream, Thompson lowered her Glock.
“Of course,” she said, shaking her head and muttering as if speaking to herself, “Of course, of course.”
She tucked the Glock away in the holster. Eve cocked her head at her partner but refrained from commenting. She turned her stare on the doctor, who was standing like a petrified statue with her back against the door.
“I’m Special Agent Hope,” Eve said, standing up slowly and coming around the desk. “This is my partner, Special Agent Thompson. You, I presume, are Doctor Duquesne.”
Now, the woman pinned the door and looked double disoriented.
“Who…Who are you?” she asked again, squinting back and forth between the agents.
“FBI,” Eve answered, “And I think you’ve got the answers we need. Here, why don’t you take a seat?”
Standing aside, Eve gestured to the chair she herself had just vacated – half because it would put the doctor at ease to sit in her own chair and half because the desk would separate her from the door.
With the same halting, jerky motions, the grey-haired woman moved to her desk and sank into her chair. She placed her hands palms down on the surface of the desk as if testing that it was still real.
“What…what can I do for you?” the doctor asked haltingly.
“Answers, Doc,” Eve said, “We need answers. You’re not going to like giving them to us, but we need them anyway.”
“What’s this about?” the doctor asked nervously, “Is this about one of my patients? Or my practice?”
“You tell us,” Thompson said, pulling one of Vishni’s pill bottles out of her pocket and placing it on the desk in front of the frightened doctor. "Do you know the name on this prescription label?"
Hesitatingly, Dr. Duquesne picked up the orange plastic pill bottle and studied the label. She frowned, thought for a moment, then shook her head. It was a pretty good performance, Eve thought. Almost convincing.
“No,” said Dr. Duquesne, setting the bottle back down on the table with a gentle but definitive click. “Sorry, I don’t know her.”
“You’re sure you don’t know Selma Vishni?” Thompson pressed.
“No, I don’t know her,” the doctor snapped, “Is that a crime?”
“That prescription came from your books, Dr. Duquesne,” said Eve, “The dealer you supply with black market pharmaceuticals sold Xanax to Selma Vishni. Now she’s dead.”
“Dead?” the doctor gasped, “Christ! What happened?”
Eve and Thompson looked at each other.
“She was murdered,” Eve said. The look of horror on the doctor’s face looked genuine.
“By whom?”
“We’ve got her drug dealer in custody, but he claims that he was with you the night she died.”
“I don’t know any drug dealers,” said Dr. Duquesne. “If the prescription from my book, it must be either stolen or counterfeit. I run a clean business.”
“You answered to the name Dr. Absolem,” Eve said, studying the woman’s expression carefully, “That’s an interesting moniker – Absolem. That was Lewis Carroll’s all-knowing, hookah-smoking caterpillar, right? Almost as famous among the drug scene as the White Rabbit, isn’t it?”
“How do you know that name?” the doctor asked. She hadn’t admitted that she was Dr. Absolem in so many words, but Eve knew from the expression on the woman’s face that it was her.
“We got it from a friend of yours – a Mr. Floyd Cartwright. Does that name ring any bells?”
The doctor turned a pale shade of green.
“He might be a patient of mine,” she said carefully, “Doctor-patient confidentiality forbids from saying.”
“We didn’t ask for his medical records,” said Thompson, “Anyway, Cartwright already told us everything.”
“Of course, that was after he tried to kill us for snooping around his shed,” Eve added. “The game is over, Duquesne. There are no more moves left to make. You've got a dead customer, your dealer squealed on you, and now you're surrounded. If you help us with our investigation, your case can go a lot smoother."
“Ah, well, I knew I couldn’t outrun this forever,” she said. There was a curious note of resolve in the woman’s voice that made Eve’s skin prickle.
Something was about to happen.
In a flash, Eve realized her mistake. She’d ushered the doctor into her own seat, where she thought the pearl grip revolver was in her reach. Threatened as she was now, she just might do something rash.
Eve saw the fingers of the doctor's right hand drumming nervously on the desktop.
“So, you want to know how I knew Floyd Cartwright?” she asked. The drumming fingers came to a sudden stop.
Don’t do it, Eve thought silently. This isn’t going to work out for you.
The doctor did it anyway. With a sudden yell, Duquesne wrenched open the right-hand drawer of her desk, throwing herself out of the chair as she reached inside and found…
Nothing.
The drawer came out of the desk with a crash, sending pencils and sticky notes flying across the room. Thompson jumped back and yanked her gun out when the doctor made the sudden lunge, pointing the weapon at the prostrate woman, who now held the emptied drawer in both hands with a look of supreme confusion and defeat painted across her aging, careworn face.
Tsk, tsk. Eve clicked her tongue reproachfully, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the pearl grip revolver as she sauntered casually around the desk to gaze down at the trembling doctor. She held the little gun aloft, dangling it from her finger. The light glinted off the white inlay of the handle.
“Looking for something?” Eve asked.
“The hell with you,” the doctor hissed from the floor, “The hell with both of you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Eve walked out of the interrogation room with a sigh, letting the heavy door swing shut behind her. She hadn’t spent long in the room with Dr. Duquesne. She hadn’t needed to. Once the handcuffs were locked and reality started to sink in, the despairing doctor had come forth with details about the whole operation.
Eve had done the local authorities the courtesy of taking down Dr. Duquesne’s statement, although the information she needed could be contained in a sentence or two. Dr. Duquesne, AKA Dr. Absolem, had indeed been engaged in a meeting with Floyd Cartwright at the time of Selma Vishni’s murder. Everything else, the pharma ring and malpractice charges – that was all the DEA’s problem.
“Good work,” Thompson said, emerging from the observation theater’s door next to that of the interrogation room to clap Eve on the shoulder. “You cracked her like a soft-boiled egg.”
"Thanks," Eve mumbled, "I could use one of them right about now and a huge cup of coffee too. Come on, let's get some breakfast. I need to think this case over again from the top."
“I’m right there with you,” Thompson agreed, falling into step by Eve’s side. “If Cartwright’s alibi checks out, that means we’re back to square one.”
The diner, one of only four or five restaurants in the tiny town of Callo, was a greasy spoon joint with booths along one wall and a breakfast counter hosting a line of vinyl-covered stools. Eve and Thompson sat across from each other in the corner booth as a waitress placed plates of scrambled eggs and mugs of hot coffee in front of them.
“So,” Thomspon said, lifting the steaming mug to her lips and taking a sip, “What’s our next move?”
“Friends and neighbors,” Eve replied after thinking it over a moment. “We go to the victims’ houses and start poking around the neighborhood, find out if their social or professional lives overlapped in any way. There’s got to be something connecting these women, even if it's something as circumstantial as taking the same bus route or shopping at the same supermarket. One way or another, both of these women somehow crossed paths. Where the victims meet, there we find our killer.”
“That’s quite a strategy,” Thompson said, turning the idea over as she dug into her eggs with the tines of her fork and let them drop to the plate again. “I can’t say it’s what I’d do.”
"Oh?" Eve refrained from sighing with impatience, "And what would your next move be if you were running this case."
“I am running this case,” Thompson said, “and I would recommend digging deeper into what we know rather than plunging ahead into what we don’t. We know that the killer strangled and drowned his victims, but we also know that he over-shocked the water in both pools before doing so. The chemical damage to the skin was bad enough that the coroner made note of it in the autopsies. Don’t you think the killer would have been affected too?”
"That's a good point," Eve nodded, "Although the corpses were exposed to the chemicals far longer than the attacker would have been. In both cases, the bodies had been floating in the water for what must have been hours before they were discovered. The killer would only have been exposed to the Shock-Bright for a few minutes."
"True," Thompson conceded, although she hardly seemed to be listening because she went right on planning her investigative tack. "We could run up a list of local urgent care and walk-in clinics, call them up and see if anybody came in within our timeframe with chemical burns consistent with exposure to shock bright.”
"It's a slim shot, but I suppose it's worth a phone call," Eve agreed. "At least it's something to go on."
Just then, Eve’s work phone sounded a succinct alert. She pulled the large device out of her pocket and unlocked the home screen.
“What is it?” Thompson asked through a mouthful of eggs.
"The lab is finally getting back to me with the analysis of fiber I pulled out of the pool at Lion's Hill yesterday. According to this, the fiber is a patented blend of prima cotton only used in C’est Homme shirts.”
“C’est Homme?” Thompson asked.
“It’s a high-end designer line of men’s professional clothes – suits, jackets, shirts, ties, that kind of thing. I bet that white thread came from a men’s plain white C’est Homme dress shirt.”
“So the killer jumped into the pool wearing his clothes?” Thompson followed Eve’s new intel to the logical conclusion. Eve nodded.
"Yeah," she said, sucking her cheek pensively, "That seems more likely than changing into a bathing suit to commit the murder. The attack took place after hours, and the cameras were long since out of commission, so he wouldn't have to worry about looking out of place in his wet clothes. He probably got rid of them as soon as he got home anyway."
“So we check with thrift stores and charity donation centers,” Thompson said, adding to an ever-growing mental list. “Find out if anybody’s been eager to unload a C’est Homme suit or two that smelled like swimming pool chemicals.”
