Body of Lies (3 page)
For one brief second her gaze settled on Zach. He'd stood when she did, a testament to his upbringing. For the last few minutes, she'd felt his gaze on her. His face now bore the expression of a man who knew he knew someone but couldn't figure out exactly who they were or how he knew them. Fine. Let him figure it out at his leisure. She was out of there. She strode to the door and let herself out.
Once outside with the door shut behind her, she leaned her back against the wall and dragged in several long breaths. She did not need this, not any of it. Not now when she'd just gotten her life back on track. Not when she'd finally gotten rid of all the old hurt, the old guilt, the old self-doubt and self-recrimination. Finally, she was herself again after being part of the walking wounded for half her life. She didn't need to see him again, nor did she deserve to have the men in the room believing she'd had the opportunity to influence a killer and passed it up. Even if she'd seen Thorpe, there was no guarantee she'd have been able to stop him. No therapist held that much power.
She would check the logs as soon as she got back to her office, but she doubted Alice would have neglected to inform her Thorpe called. But the question that nagged at her was, if Thorpe hadn't called her, who had?
Three
As the door closed, Zach settled back into his seat, dismissing from his mind the woman who'd just walked out. It had been a hell of a day already and it was only one o'clock in the afternoon. He'd been in court that morning, doing his damnedest to get some son of a bitch named Brady Anders locked up for trying to molest a kid, while the defense attorney tried with some success to prove that Zach had it in for his client.
To some extent it was true. Anders had been picked up three times for preying on children in the area where he lived. Each time he'd been arrested, his lawyer had found a way to get him offâeither he found some technicality to negate the evidence, or the kids were too scared to testify. Zach hadn't intended for that to happen another time.
As Zach saw it, Anders had made two mistakes in his life. The first was being a pedophile. The second had been moving into the Bronx neighborhood where Zach lived.
One of Zach's neighbors told him one of the kids in Haffen Park had been approached by some Rastadude looking for a lost puppy. The kid had been smart enough not to fall for the ruse. He'd run off to tell his mother, but before she could find him, Anders had run off.
Given the boy's description, it wasn't hard to pick out Anders as the culprit. Anders was over six feet tall, had a jagged scar on his left cheek and sported waist-length dirty and matted dreadlocks. Anyone looking at him could tell his elevator stopped short of the top floor. That's probably what earned him representation from some Let's Feel Sorry for Sickos society in the first place, rather than some overworked soul out of the public defender's office.
Zack had alerted the local precinct, but considered Anders his own personal mission, spending every free moment tracking his whereabouts. He'd become a fixture in the park, either playing basketball with the older kids or as a spectator at the Little League games. When he noticed Anders trailing one of the kids into the bathroom, Zach had followed, too. In that short space of time, Anders had made his move.
Had he gone too far in surveilling Anders as his lawyer asserted? Maybe, but no one made his client try to fondle that kid. Okay, Anders had made three mistakes. He hadn't noticed that in his haste to get to the bathroom the kid had forgotten to drop his bat.
Zach's phone had rung almost the instant he'd walked out of the court building. His captain was on the other line, informing him that he'd been “volunteered” for a task force set up to hunt this killer no one knew about until he picked on the wrong victim. Or at least the public at large knew nothing. Even the papers hadn't covered the story much, figuring their readership wouldn't be all that interested in a bunch of dead hookers.
“They want the best minds in the business on this one,” his captain had said, probably to mollify him more than anything else. Zach knew how these task forces went. Those who signed on early got to sort through all the shit, running down every lead, dealing with the crazies and the press. Then when it looked like someone might actually get pulled in for the crime, everybody wanted to be in it for the takedown.
So now the pursuit was on full tilt. It wasn't the first time politics motivated police work, but it always irritated him when it did. Nine times out of ten, interference from higher-ups meant some case that deserved more attention got shunted for one that carried less urgency to anyone except the people involved.
Truthfully Zach looked forward to bringing in this particular scumbag, so it was all the same to him. Although the party line said different, nobody got too upset over someone having at it with a few hookersânot cops and definitely not citizens. They didn't belong where they were, anyway. They annoyed the neighbors by emptying their bowels and bladders on their property, brought unsavory types looking for action. They shot or snorted their poison of choice and left their garbage wherever it pleased them. No one cared how they left, as long as they were gone.
Damn, he sounded cynical, even in his own mind. When had his thoughts taken on such an edge? Maybe it was just the damn trial this morning, but he doubted it. In truth, he'd been at this a long time, maybe too long. Maybe he was starting to be one of those cops counting down their twenty, measuring their time not in years served but in how many left before they could retire.
McKay's words snapped Zach out of his reverie. “By a show of hands, how many think the Ice Princess is hiding something?”
Zach focused his attention on the other man. Zach wasn't exactly sure what he'd missed, but from what little he saw of the woman he couldn't agree with McKay's assessment of her character. She'd seemed cool and professional with her stark-white business suit and hair swept up in some kind of bun. If anything, he'd describe her as self-possessed.
That is, until she'd given him that parting look. For all he knew, she was some woman he'd bedded and she was pissed at him for forgetting who she was. It wouldn't be the first time.
From the grumbles of dissent around the table, obviously the others didn't agree with him either. Zach didn't know what kind of tear McKay was on, but apparently he was the only one on it. That wasn't too surprising. Although Zach hadn't had much contact with the man, he disliked McKay, who always looked like he'd had prunes for dinner. The look was exaggerated now as McKay leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, as if to defend himself from the others.
“Lighten up, John-boy,” Denton Smith, known as Smitty, said. Smitty was rumored to be older than dirt and to have worked homicide since God was in short pants. “You got her down here on false pretenses, treated her to chiller theater for no purpose I can gather, then accused her of at the least aiding a criminal. Were you really expecting her to tell you anything?'
“I wanted her to know exactly what that bastard's done. You know how these shrinks are, more concerned with their patients' rights thanâ”
Smitty cut him off before he had a chance to finish. “Don't you even know who you're talking about?”
McKay sputtered and his complexion mottled red. “Why don't you enlighten me? Us?”
Zach wouldn't mind being enlightened himself, since no one had bothered with an introduction. He knew her from somewhere, though he couldn't say how or why. So it didn't completely surprise him that Smitty looked directly at him before speaking.
“She's Sammy the Bull's daughter.”
For an instant, everything inside Zach seemed to freeze over. The woman who had been here, in this room with him, was Alex? His Alex? He had no right to think of her in that way, but he did. Unconsciously, he turned his head toward the door, the way she'd left, as if he expected to still find her standing there. Part of him wanted to go after her, but there would be time for that later. He'd wondered about that look she cast him before she left, part expectation, part condemnation. He had more to answer for than not recognizing her after all these years.
Then again, the Alex he'd known had been a shy, sensitive girl whom on his better days he credited himself as having helped coax out of her shell. She'd exhibited none of the confidence or command that the woman who'd sat at this table had. He'd seen little of the beauty or grace he'd seen today. The years had been good to her, much better than he had been.
Now he understood why Smitty had looked at him and why now he was the focus of all of them. Sammy “the Bull” Yates had been his training officer years ago when he'd first come on the force, green as a blade of grass and eager to prove himself. Sammy had been a legend long before any mobster coopted his nickname. There wasn't a man in the room who wouldn't know Sammy by reputation or that the man had died in Zach's arms felled by the only gunshot he'd ever taken.
“Shit,” he heard one of the men say, voicing his own sentiments as well.
“You know her then?” McKay asked.
Zach didn't like his tone, or the avidity in his gaze when he asked the question. Had he not been in a roomful of men, who were probably equally curious as to why he hadn't mentioned knowing her, he would have asked exactly what McKay was implying. Maybe Alex's last unguarded look hadn't gone as unnoticed as he'd thought.
“In a manner of speaking,” he said finally.
“She's your problem, then,” McKay said flippantly. “Find out what the doctor knows and maybe we can get some place.”
Zach sat back in his chair, disgruntled. Maybe they'd get some place if McKay employed some actual police work instead of innuendo. Whoever claimed they needed the best minds had picked from the wrong end of the barrel for that one.
Still, McKay's words echoed in his head.
She's your problem.
McKay couldn't know how right he was.
She's your problem.
McKay couldn't know how right he was.
Four
The first thing Alex did when she got to her tiny office at the corner of the building was to strip out of the power suit she'd worn to her encounter with New York's finest. She never wore such formal attire here.
Unfortunately, McKay and maybe some of the others had decided against her before she'd gotten one butt cheek on a seat. Who knew? Maybe they were right about her. Maybe if she'd seen Walter Thorpe's true character she could have saved a few dozen women their misery. Maybe she was misjudging him again. She couldn't have a clue without interviewing him and even then she couldn't know for sure. She could only render an opinion.
She changed into a pair of beige wool pants and a cream-colored sweater before taking a seat behind her desk to examine Thorpe's file for the second time that day. Before she got the cover to the file open she heard a cough from her open doorway. Roberta stood at her doorway, her hands braced on either side of the jamb. Roberta was the youngest of the three of them and also the most cynical, for what reason she had never made plain. She usually wore her black hair in a single long braid that hung nearly to her waist. Today her hair was unbound and she actually had on mascara and blush applied in a way that flattered her Mediterranean features.
“How'd you make out in cop land?” Roberta asked. “You don't look much worse for wear.”
If Roberta expected her appearance to go unnoticed, she was mistaken. Besides, Alex needed a distraction. She didn't relish reliving that meeting. “Are we expecting a visit from the mayor or has hell frozen over already?”
Roberta rolled her eyes. “So, I'm trying to impress a certain young lawyer. What's it to ya?”
Alex shrugged, chuckling. “Nothing. It suits you. Let me know when you want to venture into lipstick. I've got a color that would suit you.”
Roberta came forward, plunked herself in one of Alex's visitor chairs, and crossed her legs so that one ankle rested against the opposite knee. “I'll have to remember that. But don't think you're going to duck out of my question. What did the boys in blue want?”
“Nothing. It was the men in black, detectives. They seem to think one of my patients is the Amazon Killer. Walter Thorpe.”
“The flasher turned rapist?”
“One and the same.” Thorpe had first come to her under court-ordered counseling after he'd received probation for flashing a group of schoolgirls on their way to St. Catherine's Academy, a Catholic high school off Pelham Parkway, from the confines of his car. The girls had gone inside the Catholic school and returned with two nuns and a lay teacher in tow. The women stood guard until the police showed up.
When arrested, Thorpe claimed he'd been living out of his car and was in the process of taking a leak into an empty gallon milk container. He hadn't known the girls were there until they'd started shrieking. Nobody, not even his own court-appointed lawyer, had believed him.
In session, his story never varied, but his explanation of why he was picked up swung from self-blame to the fact that others were out to get him. Either he was a good guy wronged or he was a bad man who deserved to be punished. His affect swung from an odd sort of euphoria to bursts of anger directed at her, the girls who'd accused him, and society in general to bouts of anxiety about his future all in the span of minutes. Her initial diagnosis was BPD, borderline personality disorder, even though the disorder was more common by far in women than in men. He'd come for three of the mandated sessions before the police arrested him for the series of rapes on the other side of the Bronx.
“If that's true, that's one hell of a slippery slope that boy is sliding down.”
“Mmm,” Alex agreed. It wasn't uncommon for sex offenders to start out small, either peeping at the neighbors or flashing, then graduating to other, more damaging crimes. Like an addict they needed a bigger fix, or a more lasting one. But often this occurred over a longer span, sometimes a lifetime. If Thorpe was the Amazon Killer, that would mean he'd gone from flashing to raping young women almost simultaneously, and if she had the timeline right, he'd morphed into a killer within a month of being released from prison.
It wasn't impossible, but she knew she didn't want to believe it, either. Thorpe's guilt would be an additional defeat when she could little afford one. Life was supposed to be on the good side now. She'd earned that, hadn't she? Maybe not, but for now she wanted to think of something else, anything else.
To Roberta, she said, “I've got to get ready for a session in fifteen minutes.”
Roberta didn't miss her cue. She stood, brushing her pants legs back into place. “Anything I can do?”
Alex read the sympathy in her friend's face but didn't want it. “Let me know if someone tall, dark, and dangerous shows up.”
Roberta's eyebrows lifted. Before she could ask the obvious question, Alex forestalled her with the lift of her hand. “I'm figuring one of those detectives will show up here looking for information.”
Roberta's hopeful expression deflated comically.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You're worse than I am when it comes to men,” Roberta said, shaking her head.
“Well, we do see so many fine specimens of masculinity in a day. No wonder our heads are so easily turned.”
“Amen to that,” Roberta said, her usual cynicism showing.
After she left, Alex copied the phone number and address for Thorpe's sister she had on file, intending to call Detective McKay with the information she'd promised. She buzzed Alice to ask her to check the logs for last May, a month before the Amazon Killer became active, to see if any calls came in from Thorpe. None had.
Alex grabbed her notes for the next session, a group of sex addicts in various stages of recovery, locked her office, and headed for the appropriate treatment room. By the end of the day, Zach hadn't shown up. An odd jumble of emotions accompanied that knowledge, the foremost of which was self-doubt at having miscalculated again. She put on her coat and headed home.
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Zach sat in one of the leather chairs in his older brother Adam's study, nursing a scotch while wondering when Adam would get around to telling him why he'd been invited here in the first place. Dinner, as had been the case since nearly a year ago, had been a somber event; this conversational dessert wasn't much better. Adam stared out the window, lost in whatever thoughts he possessed. Adam had always been a man of few words, but this was ridiculous.
“So, how's work?” Zach asked finally, hoping any question might spur his brother to talk.
Adam didn't answer, but his gaze swung around to settle on him. Adam's expression gave away nothing, but then it never did. “Stevie wants to stay with you a while.”
Zach's eyebrows lifted. His niece rarely paid him much attention except on occasions on which a present was required. “What brought that on?”
“She and my wife aren't getting along.”
When had Adam started referring to the woman in question not as Barbara, but as my wifeâimpersonal? Zach couldn't remember. Maybe it was tonight. He thought back over the course of dinner. He hadn't noticed any particular strain between his brother and his sister-in-law, not that either of them was the most demonstrative person on the planet. Barbara was the most resolute woman he'd ever met; Adam was just Adam.
In an odd way, none of them had been the sameânot him, not Adam or Barbara, not their younger brother, Jonathan, and certainly not their sister, Joanna, since the death of Joanna's husband eight months ago. Ray Haynes had been killed by one of his childhood cronies in an effort to keep secret their part in the death of a priest twenty-five years ago. That same man had tried to kill Jonathan's fiancé, Dana, who had stumbled on damning evidence. Ray had died defending her.
They had always thought they were a strong family. Their parents' premature deaths had made them so. But lately it seemed that everything was falling apart, as if someone had pulled a thread and unwittingly unraveled the whole garment.
Joanna walked around like the living dead. Jonathan, who'd never been around much, was around much less, since both he and Dana served only to remind Joanna of what she'd lost. Now the wondercouple Adam and Barbara were seemingly having trouble.
Not that anybody confided any of this to him. It was simply evident. Not that anybody ever came to him seeking advice or counsel or even invited him for the occasional beer unless they wanted something. He didn't mind having his niece stay with him, but he resented the cursory explanation given him, as if his understanding was unimportant as long as he did as asked.
Just to be perverse, he asked, “What sixteen-year-old girl
does
get along with her mother?”
does
get along with her mother?”
Adam's lips compressed, about the only sign of irritation Adam ever showed. “If you're going to say no, say it already.”
“Of course she can stay with me. What kind of a man do you think I am?” He regretted the question even before he'd finished asking it. He already knew what kind of man his brother thought he was, and Adam didn't approve. Neither did Jonathan, for that matter. The two of them were like bookends, each vying for the honor of Mr. Stoic for whatever the current year happened to be. Or Jonathan had been part of that competition until he'd met Dana. Zach hadn't seen enough of Jonathan since then to gauge if his opinion had changed toward his middle brother. Adam's obviously hadn't.
Zach sighed. “I just figured World War Three had to be going on here if you were willing to entrust your oldest child to me.”
“Things have been a bit strained, lately.”
Even that little bit of an admission surprised Zach. As far as he knew, Adam didn't confide anything to anyone except God. “I'm sorry to hear that,” Zach said and meant it.
Adam shook his head, as if to clear Zach's words from it. “It's only for a couple of weeks.”
“As long as we understand I'm probably not going to be around much. I'm working a new case andâ”
Adam held up a hand to forestall him. “As long as we understand none of your women are to come anywhere near my child.”
Zach almost laughed. Adam made it sound as if he were keeping some sort of harem in his apartment. He didn't. There hadn't been a female in his apartment aside from the cleaning lady since before his divorce became final last year. Hell, he hadn't even bothered to tell Adam that Sherry had finally gotten around to divorcing him after all these years. Good God, he was just as bad as the rest of them.
Disgusted with himself and the conversation, he stood. “I have something to take care of tonight. I'll pick Stevie up tomorrow after work, if that's okay with you.”
“That's fine.” Adam rose to his feet and extended his hand. “Thanks.”
Rather than shake his hand, Zach deposited his empty glass in it. “See you tomorrow.”
For one bare moment, he contemplated telling his brother where he was heading. Like him, both of his brothers were cops. Both of them knew of Sammy; both of them had heard him speak of Alex. But this was his burden. He left with the weight of it fully on his shoulders.
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