Straw Men (11 page)

“He didn't have to. But he's been there ever since, eight years now. That's what matters to me. Why are you smiling?”

Christensen shook his head. “First impressions are so, I don't know. Used to think I was a pretty good judge of relationships. But once you get beyond the obvious, you realize how complicated they are, and how wrong your first take can be. People are always trying to figure out my relationship with Brenna, but not many ever get it right. I think I did the same with you and David.”

“You got it wrong?”

“I think I got it wrong.”

She seemed to relax. He'd found common ground, and she was starting to trust. “It's solid,” she said. “Now, anyway.”

“Can I go back to something you said before? About the pressure? What else was going on at the time?”

She sipped her water. “With us?”

“Whatever.”

Teresa sipped again. “What wasn't going on, is more like it. Things were a mess.” She kept her eyes down. “The Tidwell investigation was heating up, and David was all caught up in that. Things weren't all that swell for me at work, either. It was just, everything was piling up on itself.”

Christensen scribbled a few notes and waited. Only trust would move her from vagaries to specifics. He couldn't rush that.

“Young and stupid, like I said.”

“We all were once.”

Her lips stretched into a thin, difficult smile. “I'd had this, this
thing.
I won't even call it an affair. Just this angry, desperate thing with somebody at work. He was married at the time, too. I understand it now. Hell, I un­derstood it then. It was payback for what David was putting me through. Cops are the worst gossips. I figured he'd find out. I wanted him to.”

“Did he?”

She nodded. “That's when he moved out. It was what he needed to justify it to himself, but we both knew it was already over by then.” She paused. “This is sort of ancient history, isn't it?”

“Maybe,” Christensen said. “Some people say the past is prologue.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Except people can change. David did. You'd have to live through what I did to appreciate that. But he loves me. I know that now. He's shown it a million ways in the last eight years.”

By elaborate arrangement, she'd come here to talk about the night she was attacked. That was the dark core of it, the memory that mattered. But for fifteen minutes now she'd been talking about her marriage. Christensen jotted a note to himself. The mind is a labyrinth, and he expected Teresa's journey back to that trauma to be long and difficult. But these were her first steps on that journey, and he wondered if maybe they were significant.

“Jim Christensen calling, Chief,” he said into Kiger's voice mailbox. “Please call me when you get a chance. I'm at my private office for the rest of the afternoon.”

He poked at line two. “Hey,” he said.

“So, how'd it go?” Brenna asked.

Christensen sipped from his Coke. He needed to draw a very clear line. “Bren, don't start, OK? You know the deal. What goes on here stays between me and Teresa.”

“Fine,” she said. “Gotta go.”

“Don't be like this, please.”

“I understand.”

“You're mad. I can tell. Please don't put me in that position.”

“You're getting the kids?”

“Bren—”

“See you at home, then. I'll be late.”

Christensen lifted the last bite of hot dog to his mouth and listened to the dial tone. Lynn's voice broke in the second he hung up.

“Jim, Mrs. Donegan's been waiting.”

Colleen Donegan, blond and buff, was dressed as usual in the workout clothes of a high-maintenance trophy wife. Even that wasn't enough to keep Christensen's mind on his work. The more his interest in post-traumatic memory deepened, the more his interest waned in the lucrative part-time counseling practice he'd worked so hard to build. Compared to his research work, which allowed him to explore the maze of human memory, the idea of straight-ahead counseling was fast losing its appeal. Many of his clients were simply self-absorbed and bored, he'd decided, but the last thing they want is a psychologist who says, “Just deal with it.”

So he tried to follow the ongoing saga of Donegan's life, nodding without judgment as she recounted, again, the sexual inattention of her husband, the parking-garage magnate. Christensen was briefly engaged when she announced her plan to “audition” new partners, including her regular masseur at the Fox Chapel Sporting Club and maybe the general contractor who'd been overseeing the work on her new deck. But mostly Christensen's thoughts were elsewhere, so much so that he asked her to repeat her question when she casually gauged his interest in an audition, then and there.

“Do you think any of that would make you happier?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

“I wouldn't be half as cranky,” she answered.

He didn't have a ready comeback for that, so he cut the session short and asked Donegan to think about healthier forms of affirmation. She was barely out the door when he was back on the phone to Kiger, who'd returned the call while he was in session.

“Got my reasons,” the chief said. “I'm keeping this on a need-to-know basis, even with the D.A. This is a new investigation,
my
investigation, with a fresh witness. She comes up with somethin', that's when we take it to Dagnolo. 'Til then, the lid's on, understand?”

Agitated, Christensen began flipping absently through the notes he'd taken during his conversation with Teresa. “I think her husband needs to know I'm involved.”

“It's my decision, sir. I assume you'll respect that.”

Christensen's eyes fell to something he'd written, but he postponed the thought.

“You could've at least told me you were keeping him out of the loop. She seemed confused by it, and I looked like an ass because I didn't have an answer. We're dealing with a very strong and bright woman here, but we're also dealing with something incredibly delicate. Trust is the key. She feels there's some agenda other than helping her sort out what happened, I think she'll balk. She does that, it's over. You lose. She loses. We all lose, because then we may never know.”

“It's my decision,” Kiger said. “You can tell her that.”

“We're in this together now, supposedly. She mistrusts you, she mistrusts me.”

“I'll take that chance.”

“It stinks.”

“So noted. Anything else? I'm late for a meetin'.”

Christensen glanced at his notes, then underlined a reference on the second page. “She mentioned something today, just in passing. We were talking about things going on in her life just before she was attacked. Pressures. She referred to something, a ‘Tidwell investigation.' Know anything about that?”

The silence was long enough that Christensen sat forward. “Hello?” he said.

“I'm here.”

“Something wrong?”

“Not at all. There's just no easy way to answer your question. It was a personnel matter, and you know's well as me that stuff's not public record.”

“Is it relevant to any of this? That's all I'm asking.”

“You tell me, sir. What was the context?”

He checked his notes. “We were talking about pressures at the time.”

“On her?”

“Her. Her husband. Their relationship. She was dealing with certain things. She said the Tidwell thing was something David was dealing with at the time. But then the conversation moved on and it didn't come up again, which makes me think it wasn't all that significant. I want to follow up, but I'd rather not take that detour if—”

“This something she wanted to talk about? Or something you pulled out of her?”

Interesting reaction. Christensen sat back. “I'm not a dentist, Chief. I don't do extractions. I let people talk and try to understand what they're saying beyond their words. Sometimes the things they choose to talk about, and when they choose to talk about them, are more important than what they actually say.”

“So she brought this up on her own?”

“Yes.”

“Interestin'.”

“So you think it's relevant?”

“Didn't say that. As y'all know, personnel matters are not—”

“Public record. Come on, help me out here. I just want to know—”

Suddenly, Christensen was on hold, listening to something Henry Mancini-ish. A full minute passed before Kiger returned. He didn't explain or apologize, just said, “I'm late for my meetin'. Anything else?”

“Forget it,” Christensen said. “I'll do my own research.”

Kiger sighed into the phone. “Admire your enterprise. When y'all meet next?”

“Again tomorrow. After hours this time. She has to work these sessions around her husband's work schedule, which is another reason why he should be in the loop.”

The conversation ended with a definitive
click!
Christensen brought down the handset with more force than necessary.

He checked his watch: four-twenty. He had an hour before he needed to get the kids. He picked up the phone again. “Lynn?”

“Still here.”

“I'm clear now, right? No one else coming in?”

“You were supposed to call the Pitt Counseling Office for a consult with Marie.”

“Damn. What time?”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“Can it wait?”

“Already called her. She didn't seem upset. Just said she'd track you down tomorrow.”

Christensen wrote “mea culpa!” on his Day Runner in the space under tomorrow's date, then Marie Frick's office number. “Take off, then. I'm just tinkering here for a while longer.”

“You're at Harmony tomorrow?”

“Part of the day. I'll be in here around seven tomorrow evening, though. Go ahead and schedule daytime stuff as usual for the rest of the week. But I'll probably be here after hours the next few nights. No need to schedule that. I'll handle it.”

“Got it. Can I ask you something?”

“You just had a raise.” Christensen laughed. His secretary didn't.

“That woman in here earlier, over lunch,” she said. “Was that Teresa Harnett?”

Christensen couldn't lie. “That's between us, OK?”

“I know. I've just seen so many pictures.”

“This is extremely private, Lynn. No one's to know she's coming here.”

“But doesn't Brenna—”

“No one, Lynn. Understand?”

She sighed. “Your life sounds complicated enough already. Mum's the word.”

“Thanks. See you late tomorrow afternoon.”

Christensen drained the last of his Coke and tossed the cup in the trash. The Tidwell thing might ring a bell with Brenna. He'd be surprised if it didn't. Not much going on in criminal justice in Pittsburgh escaped her notice. But he couldn't very well pick her brain at the same time he was telling her nothing about his conversations with Teresa. She'd want something in return, something he couldn't give.

Maybe he could fill in a few blanks on his own. He turned to his computer. A Web search would probably be worthless. But what about the local newspapers? Their archives were online. It was worth a shot. He moved his chair within typing distance and logged on. Ignoring the waiting E-mails, he searched for the
Pittsburgh Press
Web site. There, he clicked into the archives.

Now what? He had a name, Tidwell, but he didn't know the correct spelling. No first name, either. No context. He typed it the way it sounded and waited, expecting nothing.

“This search has found five stories matching your descriptor.”

He moved his chair closer to the keyboard. Four of the stories involved a bar on the South Side called Lard's. Nothing in the headlines suggested a criminal investigation, or why a search for “Tidwell” brought them up, so Christensen called up one of those stories just in case. Lard's was owned by Reg Tidwell, who'd built his reputation around goofball publicity stunts and a menu featuring unspeakable sandwich combinations—buffalo burgers topped with celery and Tabasco, ostrich steak with purple-cabbage slaw, chipped beef and pineapple chutney. Reg Tidwell was guilty of culinary crimes, but apparently nothing more serious.

The remaining story looked more promising. Christensen called it up and watched it scroll onto his screen.

Christensen clicked the Print button and his laser printer whirred to life. He reread the story on paper, scanning for any mention of David Harnett. Finding none, he tried another search, this time using the full name—Vulcan Tidwell.

“This search has found one story matching your descriptor.”

Christensen called up the same story he'd just read. Apparently, nothing in Tidwell's life had been as newsworthy as his death. He tried one more possibility, typing “Tidwell and Harnett” into the search box.

“No matches found.”

Christensen sat for a while, staring at the computer screen, wondering whether this was a waste of time. Even if David Harnett was somehow connected to the incident, it seemed like the kind of thing cops dealt with all the time. Brenna once told him the more cavalier cops described killings involving drug dealers as “pest control.” Harnett fit the mold. What kind of pressure could Harnett possibly feel from an investigation like that?

Maybe he'd ask Teresa about it tomorrow. Or not. He was walking a fine line. By focusing on specifics like that, he risked skewing their conversations, just as Teresa had done as she worried about telling her husband. That led to a long discussion about their relationship. Was it in any way relevant to the attack eight years ago? Probably not. With DellaVecchio's hearing less than a week away, there wasn't much time for detours. Besides, he was a psychologist, not an investigator.

Christensen looked at his watch. Almost five. He casually checked his Day Runner, saw a forgotten scribble, and panicked. Today was Taylor's five o'clock chess club meeting. Few things in the boy's life so delighted him, and Christensen knew nothing would disappoint him more than missing the meeting.

He ended his online connection and turned off the computer, then swept his Day Runner and the printout into his briefcase. He pulled on his overcoat, locked his office door, and headed for the stairs, hoping Fifth Avenue traffic was light.