CHAPTER 14 - Rita

CHAPTER 14RitaI’M NOT THE MOST PATIENT PERSON IN THE WORLD. AND POLICE WORK has gotten so paper-heavy, so weighted down with documentation, that I sometimes have a hard time just sitting at my desk when I know bad guys are running around while I’m typing at my computer. I take a sip of coffee and keep plowing ahead.After about ten minutes, I lean back in my chair and take a deep breath. The Bradley case is moving slowly. There’s lots to dig through and few clues. It’ll take a while to talk to all of the patients Dr. Bradley saw in recent months. And the lab has eliminated all of the knives removed from the Bradley residence as the murder weapon, so either the killer took it with him, or it’s hidden somewhere else on the property, so we don’t have that.Officer Lauren Broderick knocks on my door frame, and I glance up from my notes.“Got an initial report on Dr. Bradley’s computer.” She’s our smartest cop, really. She turned down a scholarship to MIT to attend the police academy. Lucky us. Dedicated and driven, she’s presently a detective-in-training; unfortunately, she’s slated to be someone else’s partner. But Chase has grown on me since Bob paired us up last fall. I’ll just miss Lauren’s help when she’s a full-time detective with cases of her own.“Come on in.”She settles on the chair across from me, flicks her long braid back over her shoulder, and reads from her laptop. “He mostly had articles copied into files. Background research, I think. Not much else on it other than pictures, e-mail, family stuff. But he’s got a file titled Book.”“Creative,” I say. “How far did he get on the manuscript?”Lauren shrugs. “Not too. About thirty pages.”“You read it all?”“Yup.” Of course, she did. “Last night.”“And?”“The working title is Abnormal Psychology and the Criminal Mind. He was writing about how lots of criminals have antisocial personality disorders.”“I could’ve told him that.”“And he makes the point that the more violent or perverse the crime, the more severe the disorder seems to be. And how environment, difficult home life, and other stressors might trigger criminal events.”“Give the guy a Nobel Prize,” I say.Lauren looks up, grins. Her unruly brown hair, despite its braid, has sprouted little curls around her face, which is youthful, fresh-scrubbed, and sans makeup. Lauren is a no-nonsense girl in the beauty department.“Sorry. I’m sure Dr. Bradley had some new theories to add to that particular subject.” I lean back in my chair, prop my feet on a wooden slat that runs under my desk. “He name anybody in particular?”“No. You think one of his patients killed him? I can’t see that he really rocked anybody’s boat in his book so far. There’s nothing really damning. He doesn’t name names. And the perp probably would’ve taken the computer if he was worried about that.”“Hard to tell at this point. We’ve got one more friend to interview. A guy he had lunch with a couple days before he died. Maybe he can throw some light on all this.” I hope so. We need something.Lauren bites her bottom lip and clicks the keys on her computer. I flip the pages of my notebook, which lies open on my desk, settling on the interview with Dr. Westmore in her office. I can’t resist adding some bubbles to the sketch of the blue fish.Lauren peeps over her laptop screen. “Why do you draw in your notebook, Rita?” she asks quietly, as though I might bite her head off. I don’t know why these young cops think I’m so intimidating. I’ve explained a time or two over the years when someone’s asked. No big deal.“It helps me think when I’m questioning a subject. Slows me down. And it seems to unnerve some of them, which can be helpful.” I chuckle.“Did you always draw?”I take a deep breath. “Yeah. Since grade school, I guess. Didn’t win any art contests or anything, but it helps me make sense of things sometimes.”When I was a kid, I was a tomboy, climbing trees, running around the neighborhood, getting into fistfights with the local kids. When Ma called us in for supper, I was often sporting a split lip or scraped knees. She would look at me with a soul-weary expression, turn and whisper under her breath, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I don’t want to know.” After raising eight other rambunctious kids, I guess she hoped that I, number nine and the last of the McMahon children (she’d had a hysterectomy after I was born, just to make sure) wouldn’t drive her to an early grave. My third-grade teacher, Miss Hanson, suggested I needed a hobby. A quiet hobby. I was a little too rambunctious in school too. She sat me down in a corner of the classroom one day while the rest of the kids were silent reading, which I never could quite take to, and plunked down a piece of sketch paper and a handful of colored pencils and told me to draw a tree. That was the start. I could do that. Drawing was active but quiet. It took concentration, and I found I liked the process. I continued to draw at home, at school, on the bus, anywhere I needed to slow down and be quiet for a while. I never got great at it. No one was going to suggest I go to art school or think about a career in it, but I was pretty good, just the same. It’s carried into my work in law enforcement, complementing my notes, giving me time to think and pauses for interviewees to stew, if need be.“You’re a visual learner,” Lauren says.I glance up at her. “Yeah, I suppose so.” I’ve always thought in pictures. I guess that’s what they call people like me nowadays when everybody’s got a label or a collection of labels. Whatever.Lauren stands, juggles her laptop in her arms.“Oh, did you get a look at their social media?” I ask. “The Bradleys and their friends?”Lauren leans against the door frame, a furrow between her eyebrows. “Yeah. Typical stuff for the Pearsons and the Ferrises. Scott Westmore has a website for his business, but that’s all. Dr. Westmore and Dr. Bradley have no social media that I could find. Just a business website and LinkedIn. But I think that’s typical for their occupations. They wouldn’t want any of their patients stalking them, you know?”I nod. “Seems prudent.”“But the funny thing is Mrs. Bradley.” Lauren shifts the laptop to her other hip. “She’s relatively young. Women in her age group typically have Facebook at least. Her friends have an extensive social media presence. But not her. Not a trace.”“Huh.” Even I’ve got a Facebook page under my maiden name, although I hardly ever post anything. One of my nieces cajoled me into it a few years ago when she had her first baby and wanted me to see pictures. I guess no one actually prints them out and sends them anymore.“Seems odd,” Lauren says. “Like she’s hiding from the world maybe.”* * *Mrs. Bradley answers the door, looking thin and peaked, washed out. She’s wearing an oversized pair of gray sweatpants and a man’s flannel shirt that looks like it’s been pulled from the bottom of a laundry basket.She leads Chase and me down the hall and into the kitchen. The party mess has all been cleared away, I notice as we sit at the table. The house smells of lemon and bleach and seems to echo in its stillness.“We want to bring you up to date on the investigation, Mrs. Bradley.”“Do you have any leads?”“Not yet.”She nods. “When can I have my phone back?”“Soon. We’ve got a lot to process, but it’s a priority.” How times have changed. Cell phones are the number one thing people want back after a crime.I open a file folder. “The autopsy is complete, so we’ll be releasing your husband’s body later today.” She stares at me with round, blue eyes that look like they’ve been bruised in a prize fight, but that look is typical too.“I’ll need to arrange a service,” she says almost to herself.“It would be appropriate to go ahead with those plans.” I wonder if she’s up to it. Hopefully, she’s got family who can make the arrangements because this woman doesn’t look like she could handle planning a trip to the grocery store.“How are you holding up, Mrs. Bradley?” Chase asks, his eyes searching her face. “Are you staying here alone?”“Yes,” she says quietly.“Do you want one of our officers to drive by while on patrol tonight?”“Yes. Please. Someone told me they could do that.”“I’ll make sure.” Chase squeezes her hand, then inputs notes on his phone. He seems a little taken with our widow. He spent ten years as a patrol cop, and while they see lots of carnage, deal with dangerous situations, they don’t tend to spend the time with the victims that detectives do. They don’t have an opportunity to develop a relationship with the people they serve, and that can sometimes get tricky for a detective. Professional distance is a must, even if that means being a little distant.That thought takes me back to when I was a young cop in Boston. One hot summer night, my partner and I were called to a nice neighborhood where someone had reported shots fired. We entered an upscale home to find a man sobbing and cradling his dying wife in his arms. Blood covered his shirt, and he mumbled about a man with a gun who had broken in the back door. I was so caught up in the husband’s apparent grief that I missed obvious signs that he was, in fact, his wife’s killer. Later a veteran cop sat me down for a talk, set me on the right road. People are great at projecting the emotions they want you to see. Lesson learned.“Mrs. Bradley,” I say, “the autopsy revealed that your husband was killed by a single neck wound. Otherwise, he appeared to be a healthy man. Nothing else of note was found.”Her gaze is on the table, and she makes a noise in her throat, and I’m afraid she’s going to cry, but she holds it together. “Who would do that to Jay, Detective? Everybody loved him.”Not everybody, apparently, but I don’t say so. I shuffle through my notes. “Was your husband talking to anyone about what he was writing? You think he might have interviewed anybody for his book?”“I don’t think so. Maybe Elise would know about that. If he talked to anybody about his work, it would be her.”I pull a planner from my satchel.“What’s that?” she asks.“Your husband’s social calendar. Last year.”Her eyes narrow. “Where did you get it?”“His office in town.” I open the notebook to December, and she leans over to look. “He, Josh, and Cal go to the pub often?”“Once in a while.”“What about him meeting Laken Ferris at the spa on the ninth?”She shrugs. “He might have gone in for a massage. I seem to remember that. He’d tweaked his back doing yard work about then. Why is this important?”“May not be. Just trying to get a sense of what was going on in your husband’s life leading up to his murder.” I push the calendar closer to her. “What’s this about?” I point to Saturday, December 28, which bears the notation “window.”“Oh. Jay drove up to our mountain house in Mountclair, New Hampshire. A little ways past Manchester. He got a call that a couple of kids were throwing snowballs and had broken one of the windows. He went up to fix it.”“Okay. What about this on December 30?” The appointment at the prison.She leans forward again, purses her lips. “I have no idea what that’s about.”“He never mentioned it to you?”She shakes her head. “I’m sure it was work-related or had something to do with his book maybe, Detective. I have no idea.”“Okay. One more.” I close the book, slide it back in the bag, and retrieve the other planner. I open it to the first page. “What about this?” I tap my finger on the square in question. “Lunch with Hayes. Who’s he?”She blinks her eyes. “My boss at the bookstore.”“You didn’t know about this either?”“No.” She looks truly baffled.“Why would your husband be talking to your boss?”“Well, they’re friends too.”“He wasn’t at the birthday party?”She shakes her head. “He couldn’t make it. But we see him regularly.”“But you don’t know why they were meeting last week two days before your husband was killed?”“Maybe they were just having lunch, Detective.” Her voice rises an octave. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” Tears gather in her eyes.Chase heaves a deep breath. “It’s okay, Mrs. Bradley. We’re just trying to gather everything we can to help you.”She grabs a paper napkin from a holder on the table and presses it to her nose. I slip both planners into my satchel, give her a minute.“Just one more thing.”She nods and grabs another napkin.“Dr. Bradley see much of his dad?”She clears her throat. “His father? No. He passed away last year. He was eighty-one. He and his wife had Jay when they were older.”Shit.I was hoping Dr. Bradley might have confided in his dad. Maybe there would have been something to glean there. Oh well.She glances up at me. “He was a detective.”“We’ve heard that.” I collect my notes and stash them in my satchel. “If you need anything, Mrs. Bradley, please call.”She stands and walks us to the foyer. “Thanks,” she says, as she closes the door behind us.* * *A frigid wind has picked up. The mild weather of a couple of days ago is gone, and we’re back to typical winter temperatures. I pull the lapels of my jacket up around my ears as we get into my van. The engine takes a minute or two to catch, and Chase throws me a look.“We’re fine,” I say, as I rev the motor.“Don’t you ever worry this old thing is going to go tits up, Rita, and leave you stranded someplace?”“I’ve got triple A, son.”He laughs and searches through his phone. My old van is my home away from home. I like being able to have the things I might need in the course of an investigation. Tools, waders, extra clothes. I drive it only on routine calls, knowing that if I need to chase a suspect, he’d leave me in the dust. Still, Chase has never been comfortable in my old vehicle. He’s a pretty tidy guy, and my van—well, keeping it spick-and-span isn’t a priority.We stop at André’s Café for a late lunch. Neither André nor Collin is here today. The counter is manned by a teenage girl with jet-black hair and a colorful sleeve full of fairies on her bare left arm. We take our trays to a round table that sits by a plate-glass window.“So what are you thinking so far?” I ask Chase. He and Lauren are still learning, and I enjoy pushing them along. After being the baby in a big family, I get a charge out of being the older, smarter one when I can.He shrugs and rubs his chin. He’s let a little stubble grow. “Well, I don’t think it was a stranger since he left the laptop sitting on the desk and the doctor’s wallet was in his pocket. I think a lot depends on what his patients have to say, don’t you think?”“Yeah. If it was a patient. But maybe it was someone he met doing research for his book. Someone his wife and friends don’t know about.”“Are we going out to the prison he noted in his planner?”I nod. “Yeah. Just waiting for them to get back to me. He met with an inmate.” I’d learned that much when I’d called.“The perp couldn’t’ve been some guy who was locked up.”“No, obviously. But maybe he knows something useful. Maybe he knows who else Dr. Bradley was talking to, someone on the outside.” Maybe the prison visit will be worthwhile, maybe not. But we’ve got nothing to go on so far.I sip my Coke and watch a woman jaywalk across the street, her red scarf fluttering in the wind. “What do you think the perp was after in the office? That’s the key to this whole thing.”“Don’t know.” Chase leans back, drums the table with his fingers. “But I was thinking . . .” His eyes meet mine. “What if one of Dr. Bradley’s patients told him that he’d committed a crime. Then he had second thoughts.”“Could be.” I take a bite of my tuna on rye. Watch Chase ruminate over his clam chowder.“Psychiatrists have to report criminal behavior, don’t they?” he asks.“Dr. Bradley was a psychologist, but the same rules apply.” I shake chips onto my plate. “They have to report threats of criminal activity. Like, if I tell my shrink I’m going to shoot my annoying new neighbor with my service weapon, he’s legally bound to report it.”“What if it’s an old crime. Somebody’s already dead?”I tip my head. “That’s murkier territory. Doctor-client privilege still exists since no one is going to be hurt if the doc keeps it to himself.”“You think someone might’ve confessed a crime to Dr. Bradley, but then worried he’d tell somebody?” Chase asks. “The perp might not have wanted to trust doctor-client privilege.”“It’s possible. But what was he after in the home office?”Chase shakes his head.My phone chimes. A text has come in from Lauren. “We need to get back,” I say, “so finish your soup.”“What’s the rush?” He lifts his bowl, glances around to see if anyone is looking, and slurps it down.“Lauren said they might have something, and the chief wants to update everyone. She said to hurry along.”* * *You can feel the electricity snap through the station as we walk in. People look up from their desks at me with anticipation. Bob’s standing in his office doorway, a file folder in his hand and his cell phone tucked between his neck and jowls, where it nearly disappears. He catches my eye and motions us toward the conference room. Everyone working the case, which is half the department in one way or another, crams inside the small space.Bob stands at the front, the whiteboard with its photos and red and blue lists and lines behind him. He pulls down a projection screen and nods to a young cop sitting with a laptop balanced on his knees.“Connors just got surveillance footage from the Bradley neighborhood. Hit the lights, Chase.” The room plunges into darkness, and the cop with the laptop starts clicking keys. “So far, this is the only pertinent video we’ve been able to secure. It was taken by a neighbor’s home-security system the night of the incident.”“Which neighbor?” I ask, pulling out my notebook.Bob glances at his notes on the table in front of him. “Two doors down from the Bradley residence.” He draws a deep breath. “Okay, people, I want you to take a good look. Then we’ll send the clip to everyone who needs a copy for further review.” He nods to the kid with the laptop.A grainy shot of the sidewalk and street comes into view in front of a wintery yard. There’s a date and time stamp that counts off at the bottom of the screen. Excellent. One fifteen a.m. Nothing. One sixteen. One seventeen. And then there’s a dim image. We all lean forward. A figure, tall, wearing dark clothing, a hat pulled low. Looks like a man, but that’s not for sure. The video quality is too poor to really make out his features, and the light from a nearby lamppost doesn’t help much. He walks quickly in long, smooth strides. His gaze is straight ahead, moving toward the Bradley residence. There’s something that looks like a backpack slung over his shoulder.The chief signals the kid working the computer, and he freezes the frame with the figure dead center.Bob blows out a breath. “This, people, could be our killer. It fits the ME’s timeline. And why would anyone be walking down that street at one a.m.? There are no other people on the tape.”“Do we see him later? On his way back?” I ask.“No. This is it. He might’ve crossed the road or taken another way back out. We just don’t know.”“Could’ve just been a guy walking home from a bar,” I say, always the devil’s advocate.“Maybe. But there’s not any businesses out that way that would be open that time of night. No bars or restaurants close by.”“What about the gas station on the corner?” I ask.“We’ve looked at their video and didn’t spot anyone who matched up with this guy.”“We have a vehicle anywhere that might be his?”“No. This is all we’ve got so far.”Still, this is something. This could very well be our man. “Can the lab enhance it?” I ask.“Hopefully,” Bob says. “I’m sending it over.”