The Path of Silence (22 page)

“Your old friends know you well, sir. It would be wise to keep up appearances.”

“He would certainly have the connections—and the detailed knowledge it takes…” His voice trailed off. I knew whom he meant.

“You gave us one month, sir,” I reminded him.

“How certain do you feel…”

“I’m not a gambler but it would be a safe bet.”

“It’s hard to believe… I just can’t imagine… Not like this…”

“It’s not hard to believe. The world is made of wheels within wheels. All such activity runs on money. The stakes must be very high, that’s all.”

“What are the stakes? It can’t be prestige and power. There’s plenty of that where he is.”

“Maybe not as much as he would like.”

“I just can’t believe…” He shook his head and clenched his jaw, as if grinding the words he’d left unsaid.

“Who’s your greatest enemy these days, sir, businesswise?” I asked. He flinched.

“Congressman Gerold Appleby, the Chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services has been a real pain lately. He must have a lot of free time, because he’s embarked on a personal crusade to check our internal accountability regarding the release of funds available for withdrawal. His platform is that the banks have been stretching the legal limit and in many cases, exceeded it, to increase their profits. He’s really eager to expose financial crime. He’s also charged up about predatory lending.” He shook his head, to banish what I knew had caused him many sleepless nights.

“It’s comforting to hear that Congressman Appleby strives to earn his pay,” I remarked. “However, how would you feel, sir, if at the touch of your fingers, you could send Congressman Appleby the same kind of greeting card as the one you received in your suite? And how would you feel, if you knew that the next set of numbers you could tap on your phone pad, would see Congressman Appleby lying prone, wherever he happened to be, his chest looking like a lawnmower had run over it?”

“Powerful?” He spoke the word with impact, as if firing a bullet into his archenemy.

“More than that,” I said in my closing argument tone. “In control.”

Chapter 27

I
t was three o’clock in the morning. Field drove. None of us felt like talking. Tomorrow, we would have to go visit the Mongrove psychiatric facility. Field would come too but first he had to understand the connection between Blank and the psychiatric facility. I didn’t have the energy to brief him now.

I told Ken to call Brenda.

“It’s late. She’ll be asleep,” he murmured.

“Do you know where she is and where’s she’s taken my kid?” I asked.

He nodded.

Brenda was a practical woman. She was in my house, waiting to pick him up. Ken’s Malibu hadn’t been returned yet.

Brenda must have been watching for us from the living room window.

“She’s asleep,” she said, as she came down the steps to greet us. “She’s into drawing family trees. I couldn’t even interest her in a TV show. I’ve never seen a child so keen on homework.” She laughed and went to hug Ken.

I introduced Field and they shook hands. He’d parked the car on the street so Brenda could get her car out.

“Thanks,” I told her as she collected her purse and keys.

“Any time I’m free.”

I watched them leave and was about to wish Field good night, when he cleared his throat. “I’m too tired to talk about work. I need to get some sleep,” I said.

“So am I,” he intoned.

“I’m also too tired to think of anything else,” I said, sharpening my tone.

“So am I.”

I laughed. “I gather that you’re too tired to drive.”

“It’s a long way back to the waterfront.”

“I have a guest room,” I capitulated.

“Great. I would have settled for the porch if you didn’t.”

“You used to.”

“Only because your roommate was a dragon.”

“You haven’t changed.”

“No. I never gave up hope.”

“Guest room!” I turned and headed inside. As he walked behind me, I heard him murmur. “A month ago, I would have never dreamed that I’d be sleeping in your house.”

Chapter 28

M
rs. Tavalho arrived at seven o’clock. She awakened Jazz, fed her breakfast and had her ready and waiting for the school bus before she woke me up.

“An overnight guest, a colleague,” I murmured lamely, motioning at the closed door of the spare bedroom where she slept on overnight stays. She smiled, briefed me on the state of my child and her readiness to depart and said she would fix breakfast—for two.

I rapped hard on the door, fervently wishing that the man had changed. Fate did not oblige.

“Field, wake up!” I had to grab his shoulders and roll him over, just like the good old days. Once I’d run through the exhausting, ancient morning ritual of trying to get him up—tapping his head, flicking his ear, pulling his toes—and was about to smack his ass, he stirred.

“I know you’re awake. You’ve had more than five hours of sleep. That’s all that a working FBI ace deserves. We have another hellish day ahead of us,” I said, giving him his daily horoscope. My memory slipped. I made one tiny mistake. I didn’t jump back.

His arm shot out, encircled my waist and all but slam-dunked me down beside him.

“Fine. I can brief you lying down,” I snorted, knowing it was useless to fight his strength, especially in the morning.

Those turned out to be my last words for a long time.

“Field, for God’s sake!” I gasped, when he gave me a chance to breathe. “I have to see my kid off to school.”

“So this is what fatherhood’s like,” he groaned. I laughed, freed my hand to be able to motivate him into releasing me and slid out of his unwilling arms.

Jazz was still on the porch, sitting on the steps, hugging her knees.

“Sorry I overslept.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I know you’re tired. Is he here?”

“Who?”

“Field, from your work.”

I was about to open my mouth to explain, when his voice sounded from behind me.

“Good morning. Sorry I had to cut dinner short last night. The Laserquest offer still stands.”

She lifted her head, grinned at him and said that her friends would be happy to hear that. We saw her off to the bus and then went inside to a royal breakfast spread.

Mrs. Tavalho went to do the laundry and I briefed him on everything, from our visit to Patterson in Mongrove, to our interview with Daniel Kane. He reached for the phone while I was still speaking. I served him a “What now?” look.

“Olsen. District Attorney’s office. We need a legal document, a court order, to avoid nasty confrontation in the facility.”

“What for?”

“To obtain Patricia’s case file and medical records.”

“Good thinking.”

“Do you think this Patterson could be Dr. Martin?” he asked after he made the arrangements. The question froze my hand as it reached for my coffee cup. The unruly blond shag whipping with authority as Patterson shook his head, sculpted in my mind even as I considered Field’s question.

“He’s too young, Field, surprisingly so to be a Chief Resident doctor in such a large State facility. Besides, a company staff physician would be a general MD, not a specialist. Patterson has to have quite a few letters and titles after his name. Clinical psychiatrist would have to be one of them. He didn’t give us his business card but he has to be qualified to hold that job. A general practitioner, a mere MD, would not get that position.”

“Quite a few company doctors have several specialties, including industrial and accident therapy and quite possibly psychiatry, or at least mental rehab. The nature of our stressful work environment these days demands it,” he said.

“Maybe so but Patterson’s just too young to be such an accomplished specialist.” Patterson’s slate gray eyes, sparking with youthful vitality, bothered me. So did that voluminous shag. Youth, verve, irreverence, defiance—those would be the words I would use to define Dr. Patterson.

Dr. Martin, sight unseen, sat in my mental window like a solid, middle-aged stone. Well dressed, well groomed, well versed in corporate lingo, I saw him as an epitome of ambivalence. That would have been his primary motivation for taking a boring and mostly administrative job as a company staff physician. Was I stereotyping because it was the easiest route? Had I already fallen into a dangerous mindset, a gouge in my imagination that would enlarge, as I grew older, to where everything had to be compartmentalized, fit a precise pattern?

But patterns were what a detective’s job was all about. Especially criminal behavior patterns that gave rise to categories used in profiling. Then again, this criminal mastermind had opened up a new category and he was its first and only member. His motives could be easily categorized but the nature of his crime was unique. He implanted his victims with a deadly device that only he could activate whenever it suited his purpose. This meant that even if he’d tagged a victim with an explosive pacemaker, if the killer didn’t need to eliminate him, the victim could live out his life naturally and not even know he had a bomb planted in his chest. Would such a person still be considered a victim? Wouldn’t he be on the same level as someone born with an undetected heart defect that could kill at any time—or equally could let the person live out his life naturally? Did this unique method of control make the killer the true keeper of the dead? Is that how he saw himself—the ruler of the underworld, holding the life-leashes he could cut at any time? And did this image fit Patterson? Being the Chief Resident at a huge stage psychiatric facility meant he was ambitious but did his ambition stop at this healthy level or did it grow, like a malignant plant shooting its roots in all directions, seeking control?

Wild and outrageous theories used to thrill me. The impossible and improbable used to be exciting, new challenges, not roadblocks.

“Let’s visit the Mongrove facility and then you can tell me what you think of Dr. Patterson,” I said, abandoning my critical review.

We stopped by our district office. Sven was waiting for us with the court order. The mere fact that he didn’t mention having any difficulties obtaining the document so quickly, told me that the entire BPD had been put on notice.

Bourke would have asked Sven one question. “Is this going to help solve the case—quickly?” Sven was a good cop, smart too. His answer in the affirmative was all Bourke would have needed.

Ken phoned the Mongrove to inform them of our impending visit. I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. Patterson would be prepared. But Ken insisted on following protocol.

The moment I walked out of the small armored cage that was the waiting area at Mongrove and entered the stark, cold expanse of gray-white quarry, I felt something was wrong.

Field kept staring at the nearly vertical staircase sweeping ahead of us and murmured something about mountain climbing. Ken kept shuffling his feet as if wiping them. He wore rubber-soled shoes and still managed to raise an unearthly echo. I felt the ghostly sound was a warning. I’ve seen churches that had soaring ceilings. Such grandeur had always made me want to kneel and bow my head. Here, I wanted to turn and run.

I heard a sound in the distance. It was sharp, precise—like a military march.

This time, Patterson came alone. I saw him when he was still just a tiny figure in this stone temple, indeed a high priest in this severe shrine. The shag whipped wildly around his shoulders. This visual disturbance arrived long before he did.

He shook Field’s hand with a curious greeting. “I’m sorry. Of course, I’m at your disposal.”

I started to wonder whether I should file all my education, training and experience in the “false alarm” drawer and work with my “feelings” as the only reliable tool.

“Social services has looked after all the arrangements,” Patterson was saying, as I quickly banished my reflections. “The funeral expenses as well as the legal requirements. They will post ads in all the major newspapers, asking for any relatives to step forward but according to her file, there were none. She was cremated. I haven’t yet received notification as to where her remains will be interred, though it’s due shortly.”

Patricia Vanier was dead. Perhaps I knew it—felt it—even as I had stepped through the door. Stone was impervious to suffering and anguish but I felt it emanating from the walls. They gave off gloom, as if the tiny pores in the stone matrix could trap misery, justifying their cold, heartless existence.

Patricia had a history of violence and roaming while she was incarcerated in Mongrove. Prior to being committed, she was only prone to worry, fear and anxiety on behalf of her fiancé. This drove her to report him missing, kidnapped, threatened, tortured, or murdered—four times in a span of fifteen months. Mongrove drove her to her death.

“About a week ago, we had a very busy and difficult night,” Patterson said, his voice tinged with fatigue that was not apparent in his military bearing.

He was not a King Cobra today but neither was he in a good mood. He took us to his office. I was surprised to see it was an edifice, not a cage. The ceilings must have been at least fifteen feet tall and once again, as everywhere else in the facility, unspoiled by higher architectural ambition or finishing touches. All the piping and ducts were exposed, though some had been painted a drab gray color to blend in with the rest of the décor. The amount of metal filing cabinets would have filled a surplus warehouse. They looked like tall, cold grave markers and were appropriately colored in smudged newsprint black. I hadn’t seen a wooden office chair in a long time and reflected that it was because any remaining office furniture from the thirties had been donated to Mongrove. Patterson’s office made a loud statement about the financial status of his facility, perhaps louder than his chipped plastic nametag.

“It was the night of the full moon. Even the most docile patients were agitated. Only three orderlies were on duty. Five were missing, for medical reasons. Still, even if we’d been at full staff, ten times that many would not have been enough to cope that night. We had more than thirty patients in the lounge, the quieter cases. It reduced the workload for my staff and freed them to attend to the difficult ones individually. This is an old building,” he swept the office that was three times the size of our largest conference room with his hand and continued. “Patricia was surprisingly quiet. That’s why she was included with the patients in the lounge. There is an old laundry chute opening in one corner, in the wall, low to the floor. We had no idea it was there. There are no plans, no blueprints for this building. She crumbled and chipped away the putty and sealant that were pasted over the opening and crawled into the chute. It was a long slide down but that’s not how she broke her neck.” He tossed his head and sent that glorious shag on a violent dance. It was still settling around his shoulders, wriggling like a nest of snakes, when I heard a click.