The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (10 page)

“Hear that?” Zach glanced at Sky. “Not a good sound. They’re cute as hell but they’ll take your finger off.” He stepped away from the basin. “They belong to a buddy of mine, a graduate student in the psych department. He’s doing environmental enrichment experiments.” Zach gave the tiny alligators a wistful look. “They have a heated pool, a little beach area with some stones and sand. Vegetation hanging down. Very cool.” He arched his small black eyebrows. “Know what has the biggest effect on their behavior?”

The hissing caiman still had eyes on Zach.

“Food?” Sky ventured.

“Nope.” Zach shook his head. “Ice. Toss in a chunk of ice, the little devils move closer to their heat source.” He grabbed the handle of the rat cart and pushed it through an inside doorway. “Ironic, isn’t it? I mean, that ice would be the thing to stimulate a cold-blooded creature’s behavior?”

Zach pushed the cart down a corridor with large stalls staggered along either side. Sky heard the faint rustling of caged creatures, disturbed. She followed Zach, looking to her right and left. Two spotted roller pigeons cooed at her. Mice the color of Dobermans nested in shredded shavings. A brown rabbit with massive ears sniffed the air as she passed. Tiny sparrows jockeyed for position along a perch.

Zach maneuvered the cart into the last stall on the left and lifted a white rat out of a carrying box. He placed it in a numbered metal chamber and grabbed something out of a nearby barrel. “Purina rat chow.” He held up a brown block the size of a domino. “Each rat gets exactly three.” He counted out the blocks and dropped them into the chamber.

The rat grabbed a pellet with pink paws and sat back on its haunches, nibbling as it turned the chunk this way and that. Sky had forgotten how dainty a rat could look when it ate.

Zach silently repeated this ritual until all eight were housed and fed.

“Where is Nicolette’s body?” he asked.

“Morgue, most likely.”

“Look, Doctor Stone. I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t be here with two homicide detectives unless …” He paused. “Got any suspects?”

“Depends, Zach. Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts at the midnight show? And after the show?”

“I don’t know.” His brow furrowed. “I think Carl was asleep when I got home from the movie.”

Sky smiled. “Then I have one suspect.”

She left Zach to his rats and found her way back to the holding room. The basin of tiny crocodiles was gone. In its stead, someone had deposited a cage of ferrets. Sky could feel their masked eyes watching her as she walked through the room and out the door.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sky briefed the detectives on Zach Rosario while they sat in traffic on Memorial Drive.

“He’s low man in the lab hierarchy. Does the grunt work while the professor hands Nicolette the plums. Including first authorship on their next publication. Which the professor announced at Friday’s lab meeting.” Sky watched two crew teams racing boats on the Charles River through white-capped waves, oars slicing in tandem. “Zach is one big bundle of envy and resentment. He hates Nicolette. But he’s sexually attracted to her.”

“This is why we love the doctor. She always gets the goods.” Kyle glanced at Axelrod in the rear view mirror. “You think Master Rosario would’ve confided that shit to me? Not bloody likely.” He shrugged. “She makes them relax. Lulls them into spilling their guts.”

“He’s got no alibi.” Sky pictured Zach’s fleshy face and pudgy hands. “But I wonder if he has the strength to strangle someone to death.”

“Don’t let looks deceive, darling,” Kyle gripped the wheel of the Crown Vic with one hand and took a greedy hit of his cigarette with the other. “Zach Rosario looks like every wrestler I ever knew in high school. Those lumpy specimens can cold cock you in a New York second. Ever seen a Sumo?”

Sky thought about Zach’s curious mixture of hatred and sexual attraction. Was that a man thing? Years ago she’d read about a fighting dog, a Chow Chow named Bobby, bred and trained to attack any dog on sight, regardless of sex. One day Bobby rushed to attack a female in heat, but turned into a different animal when he got close to her. Instead of attacking, he successfully copulated for the first time. After that, Bobby never attacked any bitch, whether or not she was in heat.

The interplay between violence and sex was complicated when it involved a dog. How much more so for a man, who could say?

“Tell her about the professor,” Axelrod said.

“Another case of no alibi.” Kyle pointed to the research packet lying on the seat. “He wrote his address down. Lives alone in a Brookline apartment on St. Mary’s Street. Walking distance from the lab.” Kyle glanced at the river. “Last night he picked up dinner at Taco Bell – the one on Commonwealth, around the corner from his office – and walked home alone. Watched Masterpiece. No alibi after seven.”

Kyle steered the cruiser onto John F. Kennedy Street. “I have to call my wife. But first, I need a beer.” Without waiting for consensus, he double-parked on JFK.

They headed for Grendel’s Den, a pub set back from the street. The pub’s logo, a grim troll wearing a dragon costume, announced the entrance. Down a flight of steps, into the belly of the beast they trooped. Sky appreciated the aptness: Grendel, the monster from Beowulf who feasted on human flesh, descended from biblical Cain. The first murderer.

The detectives got draughts at the bar while Sky picked out a table near the back. She ordered black coffee from a waitress in cargo pants and thought about Kyle’s erratic detours. The detective’s taste in women ran to the high strung, the kind who had a phone attached to her ear 24/7. The kind who liked to know where her husband was at all times. Poor Kyle.

Sky sipped her coffee and looked around. Brick walls, a low ceiling, a fire in the hearth, it all made for a cloistered, medieval atmosphere. Harvard was just a block away, after all.

A young couple carrying backpacks took the table next to Sky’s, choosing to sit side by side. Lovers, she decided. The girl, a gangly brunette with shiny bangs, whispered something to her young man and they both laughed. The intimacy of the act stung Sky. How long had it been since she’d laughed like that? Who was she to feel sorry for Kyle, anyway?

“You two chew on these while my wife chews on me.” Kyle tossed a bowl of pretzels on the table and slumped in a chair. He drained his beer in two gulps, belched loudly, and punched a number on his cell. Sky could hear a female’s manic greeting followed by a barrage of unintelligible chatter. Kyle simply listened.

Axelrod sat down across the table from Sky and stared at her with owl eyes. “You don’t look much like your father.”

“No,” Sky agreed. “I favor my mother.”

“Is she in law enforcement?”

“No. She’s an archeologist. Excavating a site in Turkey.” Sky tried to imagine what her mother was doing this very moment. Probably hunched over some ancient mosaic with a watercolor brush in one hand and a dental pick in the other.

“An archaeologist and an FBI agent? That’s unusual parentage.” Axelrod blinked at her with earnest curiosity. “Do you mind if I ask how they met?”

Ordinarily, Sky evaded this sort of request. Maybe it was the isolation she felt, watching the lovers at the next table. Any contact at all, even if it was only answering this rookie’s nosy questions, was better than nothing.

“My parents met in South Dakota. Pine Ridge Reservation. Monk flew in by helicopter during a dust-up with the American Indian Movement. My mother happened to be there doing field research. Contemporary pottery styles of the Oglala Sioux.”

“You grew up in South Dakota?” Axelrod seemed confused.

“Sort of. I lived on the reservation with my mother while she did research. Monk’s parents lived in Iowa City, my folks had a house there, too. So I lived there part of the time. Summers and Christmases were always spent in Boston. With my maternal grandmother.”

Sky watched Axelrod absorb this information. She could practically see the gears turning in his head.

“A nomadic childhood.” He nodded, as though adding to some internal dossier. “Do you have siblings?”

“No. I spent a lot of time with the grandson of my mother’s source on Pine Ridge. Elwood Two Dogs. He and I … well, we’re close.”

Sky thought about Elwood. They’d come of age together, learned how to smoke cigarettes together, even hotwired an abandoned car one spring night to prowl the reservation’s dirt roads. “Elwood is family,” she added.

“Native American influence.” Axelrod nodded. “Interesting.”

Sky found the rookie’s intensity a bit unnerving. “Eat a pretzel, Axelrod.” She pushed the bowl toward him and noticed that he hadn’t touched his beer. He really was a boy scout. Maybe that explained why she’d told him about her childhood. She wasn’t usually so forthcoming with virtual strangers.

Talking about Elwood brought on a sense of longing so sudden and intense that Sky surprised herself by standing up.

“I have to see someone,” she announced.

The detectives just stared at her.

“I’ll meet you guys at Madeleine Fisk’s place in one hour. Don’t be late.” Sky left the startled men behind and walked out of Grendel’s.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sky crossed JFK and doubled back to buy a fifth of Stoli at DOMA before heading east toward Harvard University. She clutched the bottle of vodka under her arm like a football and hunched into a biting headwind. The trench coat twisted and snapped around her legs.

Purple clouds scudded across a gray sky. She crossed Winthrop Street and pushed past Raven Used Books, past the Red Line subway stairs in Harvard Square.

Sky pulled her cell out and scrolled to Elwood’s number. It was always a throw of the dice, trying to get in touch with Elwood. After a stint in Iraq with special ops, he’d come back something of a loner, traveling around the country as opportunity allowed. She punched Elwood’s number. On the thirteenth ring, he answered.

“Big Sky.” Elwood’s warm voice wrapped around her like a hug. “What’s up, little sister?”

“Nothing. I just needed to hear your voice.” Sky bumped into a woman in front of the subway kiosk, prompting the woman to shove a shredded newspaper in Sky’s face and scream a curse.

“What’s all that yelling? Where are you?”

“Harvard Square.”

“Hub of the universe, huh?” Elwood’s tone conveyed mild disdain. “I don’t know how you put up with all those people. Guess I lost my taste for humanity.”

“Are you back on Pine Ridge?”

“I was, for a while. Unci’s getting old, you know.” He pronounced it “oon-chee”, referring to his grandmother. “I had to leave. Me and some buddies got drunk one night and raised a little hell. A guy got hurt. Some prick tried to blame me. Pawnee,” he added, as though that explained everything. “So I beat tracks. Got a new job.”

“Where? Doing what?”

“Caretaker. Five hundred acres in northeast Vermont. Virgin forest, Sky. Not too many ghosts. I like that.”

“What do you do all day?”

“There’s a nice pond. Lots of catfish and pike. Some small mouth bass. Decent hunting,” he added. “Cross bow, of course. I like a fair fight.”

“This guy hired you to fish and hunt?” Sky was dubious.

“Not exactly. Some assholes from Barre and St. Albans were running a meth lab on his land. He hired me to run ‘em off, keep an eye on things.” Elwood grunted. “Guess he liked my military background.”

“How long will you be there?”

Elwood said something she couldn’t understand. The audio turned static and the call terminated unexpectedly. Sky tried again but it wouldn’t go through. She made a mental note to call later, find out exactly where in Vermont he was living. Talking to Elwood made her feel a little better. It was reassuring to discover he was in a neighboring state.

Despite the raw conditions, two chess players faced off across a table near Au Bon Pain. The chess master, sporting a beard and a white fedora, gnawed on a cigar and waited for his young opponent to make a move. Over in the Pit – the name locals gave the sunken area in the center of the square – two gangly boys in Goth black shivered as they smoked cigarettes and tried to look dangerous.

On an impulse, Sky entered the Coop, a Harvard bookstore, and purchased an absurdly long wool flannel scarf, crimson, with two vertical white stripes running through it. Then she crossed Massachusetts Avenue and entered Harvard Yard at the southwest corner, cutting a diagonal path.

On a massive marble pedestal in front of University Hall, the bronze figure of John Harvard slouched in his bronze chair. An African woman in a bright yellow head wrap stood grinning in front of the monument while a young man snapped pictures. More tourists milled in a line that was forming just behind the photographer. Being the only sculpture in the Yard made John Harvard popular. On his lap, a book lay permanently opened, permanently unread. The bronze head gazed westward with a preoccupied look. He certainly wasn’t studying. Sky always thought he looked like he was thinking hard about his next drink. Well, John Harvard’s father had been a tavern owner, after all.

Sky reached the Science Center and veered right on Kirkland until she came to William James Hall, the white skyscraper that held Harvard’s psychology department. It was easily the ugliest building on campus. No Doric columns, no golden marble, no red brick, just a giant concrete slab with windows. Legos had more charm than this building. Bicycle racks along the front added an authentic proletariat touch. Sky stepped inside and faced a bank of elevators. Tucking the scarf and Stoli close, she took the first available car to the seventh floor and walked down a dim hallway to Room 740. The door stood slightly ajar.

Sky pulled a battered book from her coat pocket and read the cover: Hypnosis by Dr. A.V. Gudzenko. She stared at the copperplate script for a long minute before she called out. “Alexei?”

She peeked inside the doorway.

“Sky?” A doubtful tone. “Is it really you? Come! Come!”

Alexei Vladislav Gudzenko – therapist, physician, poet, writer – came around his desk with arms outstretched in a gesture of welcome. Impeccably dressed in his signature gray wool suit – including a vest – Alexei was Old School. With his bushy eyebrows and full, close-clipped gray beard, he looked remarkably like Sigmund Freud.