Projection (26 page)

I thought about that.  "I don't have a lot to settle.  I've traveled pretty light lately."  Then I thought about it a little more.  "There is one thing.  My mother lives at Heritage Park on the Lynnway.  We don't have much to do with one other.  Partly, my trouble with drugs.  Partly, a lot of other garbage.  If I don't make it, let her know that... with all of it, I...  Just tell her ‘goodbye’ for me."

"I'll tell her both things."

"Thanks."  I lifted the middle arm between our seats, and Cynthia moved close.  Then, like a hiccup from my unconscious:  "I wish I had a brother."

She sat back a bit.  "What?"

"Nothing.  I don't know where that came from."

"You wish you had a brother?"

I held up my hands.  "It's foolishness.  Forget it."

"No."  She looked annoyed.  "Why would you have wanted a brother?"

"I think my life might have been different.  That's all."

"That's a lot.  Different in what way?"

I shook my head, thinking back to Louie and Harry in the Hopkins ER.  "I think I might have been able to deal better with some of the crap that came my way as a kid if I'd had a partner from the beginning.  Maybe everything wouldn't have hit me as hard.  When you're an only child, you're destined to be alone, in a certain sense, your whole life."

"I know what you mean.  I'm an only child."

"But of course," I said.

She laid her head on my shoulder.

I closed my eyes.  There was nothing I could do in the air to change what was awaiting me on the ground in Boston.  I let myself doze off.

The chirping of my beeper woke me.  I looked at my watch.  2:20
P.M.
  Cynthia was still asleep by my side.  I pressed the button to light the beeper's numeric display and saw Matt Hollander's direct number at Austin Grate.  I grabbed the airphone, slid my VIAS through the slot on the receiver, dialed and waited.

"Frank," he answered.

"Yeah.  I'm on a flight back.  What's up?"

"I've heard from Kathy."  His voice sounded unsteady.

I figured Hollander must be taking Kathy's arrest pretty hard.  I was glad he hadn't confessed everything and been hauled off to jail himself.  "I'm surprised Hancock allowed her a phone call," I said.

"She's making as many calls as she wants.  She's free."

The blood left my head.  "What?"

"She got away from Hancock."

"Got away?  How?"

"I don't know when, where or how.  But I have to admit, as terrible as it is to say it, I'm enjoying the irony."

"Enjoying?  Matt, she's a killer.  There's no telling..."

"That's not our fault.  You need to remember that.  We had her locked down tight.  Then the law decided to intervene, presumably in the name of public safety.  It seems to have gone rather badly."

"What did Kathy say?"

"She said she just wanted me to know she'd do the right thing.  Whatever that means.  I tried to coax her back here, but it was no use."  He paused.  "It's bound to be a bad scene down at the police station.  You may be in store for an unpleasant welcoming party.  If Hancock's there, tell her I said, ‘Great work, Ms. Commissioner.’"

I hung up.  The fact that Hollander was gloating over Kathy's escape made me sick to my stomach.  Then fear began mingling with my feelings of horror and disgust.  My exploration of Trevor's past, the intimacy I had achieved with his life story, could make me the next magnet for Kathy's jealous rage.

Cynthia stirred.  "Are we almost home?" she said sleepily.

"Almost," I said.  For better or worse.

*            *            *

The jet touched down at Logan.  In the chaos of people grabbing their bags to deplane, I grabbed a package of heroin from my boot and used a few pinches to steady myself for the next couple of hours.

There were no cops waiting to arrest me at the gate.  I took Cynthia's arm and nervously scanned the crowd for Kathy.  We walked as quickly as we could to the parking garage.

I worried about a roadblock at the airport exit, but it was smooth sailing right onto Route 1A North.  I coursed out of Revere and into Lynn.  I was beginning to believe I'd make it all the way to Lynn State Hospital when a siren began blaring in back of my truck.

I checked my rearview mirror and saw Sam Keane's well-weathered face.  He was a distinguished street cop at the tail end of his career.  We'd worked a few cases together.  He'd always done right by me.  At least I could thank Hancock for sending a friend to bring me in.  "Looks like this is as far as it goes," I said to Cynthia.

"I'm sorry," she said.  She started to cry.

I summoned enough false cheer to wink. "You had nothing to do with it."  I pulled into the breakdown lane, got out and walked toward my fate.

Keane leaned against the front grille of his cruiser and crossed his wasting, bill still-muscled arms over one another.  As I got closer I saw that his eyes were bloodshot.  His expression was somber.  I stopped three feet from him.  "Glad I was the one to find you, Frank," he said.  A hint of Irish brogue had survived fifty years in Lynn.

"What's up?"

"Who you traveling with?" he asked, nodding at my truck.

I followed his line of vision and saw that Cynthia was watching us through the rear window.  "Her name's Cynthia."

"Very pretty girl.  You always have a pretty girl."  His facial expression grew even more bleak.  He ran a hand through his silver hair and stared out over the expanse of marsh on the opposite side of the road.  "I don't know how to deliver news like this," he said.  He shook his head.  "I guess there's no sense beating around the bush."  His hand fell to his waist, his fingers resting where a set of cuffs dangled from his belt.

"You know me, Sam.  I like mine straight up.  Just tell me."

He pursed his lips, nodded to himself and faced me.  "Commissioner Hancock is dead."

I staggered back a foot.  My skin went cold.

"She was found lying next to her Jeep two and half hours ago, out back of the old Rowley Box Factory, up 95 North.  She'd been shot once in the head."

"God, no."

"There was another body found nearby, a couple yards into the woods, with a wallet full of I.D.  A twenty-nine-year-old white male named Scott Trembley, from Newburyport.  He was shot twice in the back.  A gun registered to him was at his feet."

It took me a few seconds to remember that Trembley was the counselor at Austin Grate who Matt Hollander had let go. He must have somehow followed Hancock's car and tried to free Kathy.  That bit of gallantry had cost him his life.  I pictured him running into the woods after Kathy had murdered Emma.  Obviously he hadn't run fast enough.

"There's something more," Keane said.

"I stood there.

"It's bad."

"Tell me."

"Your initials were at the scene... painted... smeared onto the windshield."  He paused.  "The killer used Emma's blood."

I bent over and held my stomach and chest to keep from vomiting.

Keane grabbed me and held me up.  He waited until I seemed steady on my feet.  "Somebody obviously wanted to send the department — and you — a message.  But we don't know anything else yet.  Not a blessed thing.  We don't even know where Emma first ran into trouble.  No one had spoken with her all morning."  He paused.  "If we're dealing with this copycat psycho, he's changed his weapon of choice."

I was breathing too fast and knew it but couldn't stop.  Everything looked wavy.  "What now?" I said.

"We've got all available men working it.  You're welcome aboard anytime.  But I know the state guys are waiting on you up at the hospital."

In the past Kathy had only targeted lovers of Trevor and mine.  Now her violence had exploded outside that circle, like a cancer metastasizing to other tissues.  Who else, I wondered, would die at her hand?  Keane didn't know me well enough to know I had lived with Kathy.  "Look for a Kathy Singleton," I said.

"Huh?"

"Kathy Singleton.  Blonde hair.  Green eyes.  Slim build.  Five feet six.  Thirty-two years old.  She used to work at Atlantic Hospital.  She's an obstetrician."

"That's where Dr. Lucas worked.  You think the copycat is a doc, too?  Was this a lead you and Hancock were checking out?"

"Yeah.  Hancock and I."

"We'll get right on it.  You'll be OK alone?"

I nodded.

He reached out and squeezed my arm once.  "I know you and Emma were close."  He turned and walked away.  He climbed into the cruiser and sped off.

I walked back to my truck, numb.  I got in and stared through the windshield at nothing.  The image of my own initials, written in blood, made me rub the heels of my hands into my eyes.

Cynthia was still in tears.  "I wanted to tell you," she said.  "I tried to tell you."

My thoughts were too jumbled to generate any words.

"Calvin said I could be charged as an accessory to the crime.  I didn't understand why you'd done what you did.  I was scared."

I turned and squinted at her.  An unfocused, unwieldy anger began to take hold of me.  "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't want to take his money.  He threatened me.  He said I could go to jail."

Cynthia obviously thought Sam Keane had just tipped me off to the fact that I'd been sold out.  "You told Calvin Sanger about Lucas not being guilty, about me hiding the killer?"

"I told him she was somewhere she could get help."

My fists clenched.  "How much did he pay you?"

"I'm screwed up," she wept.  "I don't know why I do the things I do."

"How much?" I yelled.  "How much did he pay you?"

"Two hundred dollars."

"Two hundred..."  I let my head fall down onto my knuckles.  Why hadn't I seen this coming?  Was I so desperate to have Rachel back that I had tried to reinvent her in Cynthia?  Had I used her like a drug, to numb my grief?  Or was my problem the old one, the one that had led me to live with Kathy in the first place, the false safety I felt in the arms of a stranger?

Now I knew how Hancock had arrived at Hollander's gates.  Once she learned that Kathy was
somewhere she could get help
she was most of the way toward finding her.  Matt Hollander owned two of the seven freestanding psychiatric hospitals within ninety miles of Lynn.

I remembered Jack Rice telling me that he'd given Calvin Sanger an exclusive to the inner workings of the operation at Lynn State Hospital.  I figured Hancock had made that happen as payment for Sanger sharing what he had learned  about Kathy.

I started the truck and pulled on to the road, keeping my eyes straight ahead so that Cynthia wouldn't even enter my peripheral vision.  There was a subway station less than a quarter mile down the road.  I stopped in front of it.  The blue line ran within a few blocks of the Y.

"I love you," Cynthia said.

My eyes stayed focused on the road.  "Get out."

She sat there.  "I didn't mean to ruin everything."

I didn't respond.

She climbed out and raced toward the platform.

I turned and watched her disappear into the crowd waiting for the train.  A surprising and unwelcome heavy-heartedness invaded my anguish and rage.  "Forget her," I said aloud.  "Do what you came to do."  I stepped on the gas.

As I drove I was besieged by flashbacks:  Trevor brandishing his bloodied stump, showing off the organs he had harvested, ranting about Nurse Vawn being infested by Satan.  Then my initials painted in Hancock's blood appeared again across the windshield.  I jerked the wheel and lurched into the opposing lane of traffic, nearly hitting a pickup that swerved to avoid me.  I barely wrestled control of the truck.  I pulled over.

Emma Hancock was dead.  Kathy was free.  And it was my fault.  My hands shook uncontrollably.  Sweat soaked my clothes.  Twisting aches spread up my lower back and around the curves of my rib cage.  I couldn't separate which symptoms were from grief and panic and which from heroin withdrawal.  I managed to fish one of the tiny plastic bags out of my pocket, snorted a pinch, then another.  That shifted me down a few gears.  The trembling stopped.  My muscles slowly relaxed.  I gave the wave of calm a minute to loosen the knots tied around my spine, then accelerated back on to the road.

I staved off thoughts of what it had already cost to hide Kathy on Matt Hollander's Secure Care Unit and concentrated on what had to be done.  If I could save the hostages, save Nurse Vawn and her baby, maybe I could live with myself.

I took the final turn onto Jessup Road.  The gauntlet of reporters began a full mile from the Lynn State Hospital grounds, but the monotony of twenty hours with no increase in the body count had left them listless, like anemic vampires.  Some huddled in little groups, hugging themselves and shifting foot to foot to stay warm.  Others milled about the litter-strewn canteen areas, the ground now inches deep in coffee cups, paper plates and donut boxes.  I thought I saw Geraldo Rivera pacing back and forth across one of them, kicking up garbage with each step.

I made it about half a mile before a man outside a tent emblazoned with a bright red painted MSNBC logo screamed, "That's Clevenger!" and ran after my truck as if I were escaping with his wallet.  In a way, I suppose I was.  Sometime during the ’90s journalists stopped being truth seekers and started being prospectors, trolling for anything titillating they could peddle to viewers.  You can net yourself decades in prison for selling people drugs or selling them sex, but you can fashion a magnificent career hawking a coward's vicarious high.

I kept my speed around 15 mph as a thicket of microphones formed around me.  So many cameras flashed against the car that its silver paint seemed to glow.  I knew some of the men and women staring through my windows would beat me into an interview if they could get away with it.  At this time and in this place I wasn't a person.  I was a thing, a commodity, an animated character walking the earth.

Three or four cameramen trying to shoot tape while running backward in front of me lost their balance and tumbled to the ground at the side of the road.  One vanished under my front end.  I jammed on my brakes.  The mob crushed in, a dozen or more reporters climbing onto my hood and into the back of the truck.  Lenses and microphones targeted me from every conceivable direction.