Murder Suicide (19 page)

"It ended everything between her and my dad," Lindsey went on.

"How can you know that for sure?"

"His cell phone.  Kyle went on-line and figured out how to look at the outgoing calls.  He didn’t call her once after that day."

"I guess you got done what you were looking to get done."

Lindsey shrugged.  "I guess she finally went through with it," she said, without much emotion.

Passing the ‘suicide note’ to Reese might really have set wheels in motion that ultimately resulted in John Snow’s death — and Grace Baxter’s.  But Lindsey didn’t seem particularly remorseful.  "I’m glad you told me," Clevenger said.  "It takes a lot of courage to admit something like that."

She brought her knees up to her chest, like she had in his truck, rested her head on them.  "I feel so comfortable with you," she said.  "I could tell you anything.  Do you make everyone feel that way?"

"Not everyone," Clevenger said.

"I guess it’s sort of like a chemistry thing.  I mean therapy is a pretty intimate relationship."

"This isn’t therapy."

"What is it?"

Clevenger didn’t answer.  He wasn’t Lindsey’s psychiatrist, but he had invited her to the office.  Maybe that had been a mistake.

"Who do you tell stuff to?" she asked.

Clevenger felt her trying to further blur the boundaries between them.  Now she wanted to be
his
therapist, or something more.  When you have a father who seems to hold out the possibility of complete union, you can end up chasing that illusion everywhere you go, with every surrogate father you can find.  "I wouldn’t burden you with my ‘stuff’," Clevenger said.

"I don’t mind."

"You don’t need to worry about me," Clevenger said.  "I’ll be okay."

She looked at him even more warmly.  "I bet you don’t have anyone to lean on.  You’re a loner.  You listen to other people’s secrets, but you don’t let anyone in on yours."  She caught her lower lip between her teeth.  "Am I right?"

In that moment Clevenger realized how psychiatrists sometimes lose their way.  Because what Lindsey Snow was saying about him was partly true.  It felt good to hear it, to be understood, even by an eighteen-year-old.  And even with her being eighteen, it would be easy to forget the psychological dynamic making her say it — the transference to her father.  It would be easy to believe the two of them really did have a special bond.  "Any therapist would be wrong to talk about himself with..."

"But I’m not your patient."

"No.  Not exactly."

"Okay, then.  So...  What am I?"

"You’re the daughter of a man who died yesterday.  I’m investigating that event.  If I can be helpful to you, I’m glad to be, but..."

"Listen to you.  Round and round and round.  It’s all circular logic.  I can’t be your friend, but I’m not your psychiatrist, but if I can help you.  Blah, blah, blah.  You sound like Dad, the way he used to spin his wheels talking through physics problems.  No way you’re gonna let yourself
feel
your way through anything.  It’s all by the numbers."  She let go of her knees, slowly straightened up in her chair.  Then she stood up, joining her hands over her head and arching her back like a cat.  Her sweater rode up past her pierced navel, over the slopes of her perfect abdomen.  She finished the stretch, shrugged.  "I’ll be okay, too.  Thank you."

"Did you drive here?  Can I call you a taxi?"

"Careful.  You don’t want to start worrying about me, either."  She turned around and headed out of the office.

Clevenger watched her leave the office, then the building.  She walked over to a lapis blue Range Rover, climbed inside and drove off.  And he was struck again by how quickly she seemed to have tucked in the loose edges of her sadness and guilt.  Was that because, underneath it all, she really did want her father to pay with his life for his transgression — for essentially cheating on her?  Was her rage that much in ascendance over her conscience?

Then Clevenger had another, even more troubling, thought.  What if her story about George Reese wasn’t true?  What if she had found Grace Baxter’s suicide note and kept it until she or Kyle Snow had the chance to leave it by Baxter’s bed, after one or both of them made her pay for stealing their father?

"If looks could kill," Kim Moffett said from Clevenger’s door.

He turned to her.

"I’d not know what you told that girl, but she definitely does not want to be my friend, anymore.  She looked at me like I stole her honey."  She smiled, cocked her head to one side.  "Honey."

"She’s dangerous.  Keep that in mind."

She touched her forehead, winked.  "Good night."

Chapter 12

Clevenger called Mass General, got put through to the O.R. and learned Heller was still in surgery.  He dialed Mike Coady’s cell phone.

"Yup," Coady answered.

"It’s Frank."

"You back?"

"A couple hours ago."

"How was it?"

He told Coady how unflustered Coroway had seemed, even while being questioned about Vortek.  And he told him that Coroway had confirmed for Lindsey Snow her suspicion that her father was having an affair with Grace Baxter.

"Then you have to think the mother knew, too," Coady said.

"Probably.  But here’s the most important part.  I just met with Lindsey.  She told me she found Baxter’s supposed suicide note — the one you found at the scene.  She quoted it word for word.  That note wasn’t written to George Reese.  It was written to John Snow.  Lindsey found it in his briefcase about a week ago."

"Grace wrote that note a week ago?"

"And either gave it to Snow, or he found it.  Whatever he ended up saying or doing, it must have been the right thing.  She didn’t go through with it — not while he was alive."

"So if Lindsey Snow found the note, how did it end up back with the corpse?"

"Lindsey had her brother deliver it to George Reese.  She obviously wanted to end the affair, once and for all."

"That would do it," Coady said.

"If she’s telling the truth, it looks like Reese put that note at the bedside — after he killed his wife."

"Looks that way."  Coady was silent a few seconds.  "Unless he was scared someone would think he had.  I mean, Baxter did write that note.  She was in pretty bad shape when she came to see you.  He could have found her dead, then panicked and dressed up the scene a bit."

She was in pretty bad shape...  Coady kept wanting to paint Grace Baxter’s death as a suicide.  And Clevenger had to wonder whether he, himself, was equally intent on seeing it as a murder.  Was something clouding Coady’s vision, or was guilt clouding his own?  "I guess that’s possible," he said.

"I’m just trying to think the way his five-million-dollar defense team would think," Coady said.  "But I’ll arrange to have him come in for questioning."

"I’ll look forward to talking with him, again."

"We just got to be real careful with this Beacon Street Bank thing."

"Careful?"

"It’s a major bank.  A major employer.  The stock is gonna tank when the
Globe
runs with Baxter being the focus of the investigation, which should take about four seconds, given the number of reporters on this thing.  I’m gonna hear from Mayor Treadwell, if not the Governor.  They’ll want to make damn sure I don’t have my head up my ass."

"Nobody can say you pulled the trigger too fast.  There are real questions he’s got to answer.  What did he do with that note?  What did he think about his wife sleeping with John Snow?  Where was he at, say, 4:30
A.M.
yesterday?"

"Like I said, I’ll set it up."

"Fair enough," Clevenger said.

"Kyle Snow is all ready for you, too.  He’s waiting at the Suffolk County Jail, anytime you want him."

"He’s in jail?"

"He didn’t like the idea of dropping by the station to be questioned, so I got his bail yanked on account of his dirty urine."

Lindsey hadn’t mentioned her brother being arrested.  "When did you pick him up?"

"About an hour ago.  Maybe you can open him up now that he’s locked down."

"I’ll give it a shot.  I’ll stop by tomorrow morning."

"Let me know how it goes."

"Will do."

*            *            *

Clevenger drove home to wait for Billy and Jet Heller.

It was 9:20
P.M.
   He turned on his computer and slipped in one of the five floppy discs that held files copied from John Snow’s laptop.  He called up a directory, saw the usual Microsoft operating files, along with several other standard program files like Word and Norton AntiVirus.  But mixed in with those were twenty files starting with
VTK
, numbered sequentially —
VTK
1
.LNX
through
VTK
20
.LNX
.  Those certainly looked like files related to Vortek.  He opened the first.  It was pages and pages of what looked like computer code.  Either the files were corrupted, or they were programming lingo Clevenger couldn’t make heads or tails of.  He slipped the next disc in, and the next, with the same results.  There were a total of 157
VTK
files, every one of them indecipherable.

Clevenger picked up the phone, dialed his friend Vania O’Conner at Portside Technologies, up north in Newburyport, close to the New Hampshire border.  O’Connor was a thirty-five-year-old computer genius with a laundry list of Fortune 500 clients who probably never visited his windowless basement office, stacked wall-to-wall with hundreds of resource texts on computer programming and troubleshooting.

O’Connor answered on the first ring.  "Mmm.  Hmm," he hummed, in his trademark baritone.

"It’s Frank.  Sorry for the late call."

"What time is it?"

Clevenger looked at his watch.  "Ten-fifteen."  He wondered why Billy wasn’t back.

"
A.M.
or
P.M.
?"

Clevenger smiled.  He didn’t doubt O’Connor lost track of night and day sometimes, working underneath the house where he, his wife, and three kids maintained a surprisingly normal existence.  And that thought — of O’Connor serving his genius and his family at the same time — made Clevenger question again why John Snow had been unable to.  "
A.M.
," he joked.

"Impossible," O’Connor said.  "It’s our day to bring snack to kindergarten.  Nicole would have been screaming at me hours ago."

Nicole was O’Connor’s magical six-year-old daughter.  "You serve many masters."

"I know this," O’Connor said.  "Let me guess.  You’re calling to figure out why opening an Explorer browser while using an Excel spreadsheet would preclude accessing the monthly forecast function — which is weird, because that’s exactly what I’m working on this very minute."

"Sounds interesting."

"Like hell."

"How long you been at it?"

"I don’t know."

"I hate to interrupt."

"Something tells me you’ll get over it.  What’s up?"

"I have these floppies here with all kinds of files on them.  They came off a laptop’s hard drive.  Some of them look pretty standard, but there are a hundred-and-fifty-seven others that start with the letters
VTK
and end with
LNX
."

"A hundred and fifty seven."

"I opened every one of them.  I can't figure out whether they’re messed up by a virus or written in code.  Either way, they make no sense to me."  He heard the door to the loft being unlocked and headed toward it.

"Do not e-mail them to me," O’Connor said.  "God knows what you’re infected with."

He said it like Clevenger had about a day to live.  "How about if I bring them by?  I promise not to breathe on you."

"Any time."

"Tomorrow morning?" Clevenger asked.

"Before eight-thirty or after nine-fifteen.  Like I said, it’s our turn..."

"To bring snack."  The door opened.  He saw Billy and Heller talking.

"Blueberries," O’Connor said.  "It’s Montessori.  They’re into health food.  Me, I’m into brain food.  I’m on my third box of Hot Tamales tonight."

Billy walked in wearing scrubs and a jeans jacket, followed by Heller wearing scrubs and a black wool, three-quarter-length coat.  He had on his black alligator cowboy boots.

"See you around eight," Clevenger told O’Connor.

"Large, cream, four sugars."

"Done."  He clicked off.  "So how was it?" he asked Billy.

Billy smiled, glanced at Heller.  Heller smiled back at him.  "Awesome," Billy said.  "Completely, totally awesome."

"Stay a while," Clevenger said to Heller.

"Still up for that drink?" Heller asked.  "I think Billy here is pretty tired."

"Beat," Billy said.  He held up a book.  Bedtime reading."

Clevenger read the title. 
Brain and Spinal Cord Structure
by Abraham Kader,
M.D.
   He couldn’t quite believe Billy was holding it in the same hand usually reserved for Marlboros and Eminem CDs.  "That’s a classic," he said.

"Kader is a friend of mine," Heller said.

But, of course, Clevenger thought.

"It’s signed," Billy said.  "
One healer, to another.
"

"That’s why I gave it to Billy," Heller said.  "Could be true again."

"You should of been there," Billy said.  "We close, and, like, thirty minutes later she wakes up in recovery and..."  He glanced at Heller again, who nodded his okay to deliver the punch line.  "She could see," Billy said, reverently.

"That’s incredible," Clevenger said.

"Like I told Billy," Heller said, "we had nothing to do with it.  God gave that woman her sight."  He held up his hands.  "He gave me these."  He let them fall to his sides.  "And if Billy turns out to be a neurosurgeon, that’ll be because he had it inside him all along, just waiting for him to worship that fact."

Clevenger couldn’t argue with the substance of Heller’s soliloquy, but his delivery made it obvious he was still riding the manic wave that had swept him into the O.R.   "Whatever your gift is, you have to respect it," Clevenger told Billy, hearing his words drowned out by the lingering echo of Heller’s.