The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (3 page)

“Did he live on the island? Did he take pictures of me?”

“I don’t know,” Candace admitted.

“Jake had no right.”

“I’m glad Jake did it, honey. He was making sure you were safe. And, frankly, I’d like to know what you were doing all by yourself on that island. For a whole year?”

“Painting,” Sky said. “I was painting and watching soap operas.” On the days she managed to get out of bed, anyway. “Did you know Nikki and Victor are getting another divorce?”

“Painting?” Candace looked confused. “Painting what? Houses?”

“Pictures.” Sky daubed invisible paint on an invisible canvas. “Landscapes, seascapes. A still life once in a while. An Irish woman offered me a job driving a cab,” she added. “I might do that when I get back.”

“That’s using your education, Doctor.” Candace’s look was not sympathetic. “Honey, you and Jake work so well together. You make such a great team.”

“If we make such a great team, why did I have a panic attack when I saw him this morning? A full blown, three-alarm panic attack.”

Candace studied Sky’s face. “You look calm enough now.”

“Probably your tea.” Sky shrugged. No need to bring up the beta blocker binge. “I have to get to the station, Candace.” Sky stood up and gave her old friend a hug. “Thanks for the skullcap and sympathy.”

Outside, a raw wind was whipping the forsythia bush into a sulfurous yellow frenzy. Sky got into the Jeep and pulled the door shut but she could still hear Candace's voice calling to her from the porch.

“Visit your baby’s grave. Say good-bye.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Newton’s police headquarters sat next to the courthouse, identical brick rectangles adorned with American flags. A kid with a black mohawk was enjoying a cigarette on the plaza that connected the two buildings.

Sky parked in the metered lot behind the station. She jogged to the back door marked POLICE PERSONNEL ONLY and grappled the security door open.

The smell of the place, a fusion of scorched coffee, Aqua Velva and floor polish, had a sudden bracing effect. Her boots beat a tattoo against the linoleum as she trotted down the corridor, past the briefing room, past the property room. She shucked her coat, straightened her I.D. tag, combed her hair with her fingers.

Just past the Watch Commander's office was the door that led to the public entrance. Sky cracked it just a bit and looked out over the shoulder of the front desk sergeant.

A plain woman in a car coat sat on a wooden bench munching a soda cracker. Next to her sat a boy hunched over a cell phone. His solid, freckled face squinted in silent concentration under the brim of a Bruins cap. Only his thumbs moved.

A blonde girl squirmed at the boy's side, chattering like a sparrow and poking at the air with a tiny yellow fishing rod. Her denim dungarees and yellow hooded jacket were smeared with mud. She pushed a tangle of curls out of her eyes, cast out her fishing line, and mimed reeling in a fish. A very big fish. Sky watched as the girl hoisted her invisible catch high into the air, her arm thrashing around, her jacket and sweatshirt riding up. She turned to her brother and smiled – a triumphant, radiant smile – revealing two perfect dimples.

A sensation of heat, wavelike and shimmering, enveloped Sky as she watched the girl.

The walls fragmented and disappeared. It was Sky and this child, in perfect silence, the only creatures in a still universe.

"Sky."

Someone was saying her name.

"Sky!" The tone grew insistent.

Sky dragged her gaze away from the little girl.

Detective Kyle O'Toole was frowning at her over wire-rims. Kyle was Jake’s partner. “Are you okay?" Kyle scratched his close-cropped gray hair.

"I'm fine," Sky lied.

"Good." Kyle leaned over and planted a brotherly kiss on her forehead. "Because we need you on this one."

“Need me?” Sky thought she'd misheard him. Homicide detectives, in her experience, didn’t admit to need. Ever.

“Darling,” Kyle took a defensive tone, “you know what Jake's interview skills are like." He looked unhappily toward the little family on the bench. "Jake will scare the shit out of those kids. And they're all we've got right now."

"Scare the kids?” Sky didn’t understand.

"Jake’s fuse was always short, but now?” Kyle shrugged. “He hasn't really been himself since…" his voice trailed off and he adjusted his wire rims.

"It's all right, Kyle. You can say it. Since I lost the baby."

"I was going to say," Kyle's voice softened, "Jake hasn't been himself since you left him."

Sky quelled a tiny rush of concern. Jake was just a little too front and center on this day of firsts. Hard firsts. But with Jake, being the center of attention came as naturally as breathing. It had always been like that. Sky thought back to their very first encounter.

It was a seminar on advanced interview techniques she’d taught at Boston University. A hot July day, the whole city was cranky. Sky arrived early, greeted attendees at the door, gave hand-outs, made small talk, mostly about the blistering heat. She started on time, bypassing the usual preliminary introduction, instead launching into the need and techniques for rapid personality assessment of witnesses. Midway through her power point presentation a disruption occurred. Someone was arriving late. Sky paused as he made his way to the front of the room. She watched, puzzled, as people acknowledged him. The inevitable class clown called from the far corner, “Everything’s jake, right Farrell?” causing laughter to ripple through the lecture hall. Jake Farrell. Sky made the connection. Jake Farrell, still BMOC. He took a leisurely seat at the front of the room and caused another disruption by leaving early. That evening, after the seminar broke up, Sky was getting into her car when Detective Farrell appeared out of the dark with a clutch of scarlet roses. "Let me buy you dinner," he'd said. When Sky informed him that she didn't date her students, he just laughed and said, "Not a problem. There’s nothing you can teach me.”

That was nearly four years ago.

"Jake’s not my best student,” Sky admitted, straightening the knot on Kyle's tie. Kyle had been her best student, a quick study. He had a healthy respect for data and he didn't mind taking counsel from a woman.

"You can interview those kids.” Sky tapped a finger on Kyle’s chest; their old routine. “I taught you everything I know."

"Yeah, I'm good. But you? I don't know, maybe it's because you're a tiny woman. People trust tiny women. Who the fuck knows? You want me to get on my knees?"

Kyle O’Toole was one of the good guys. Adroit, prudent, wise. The best kind of homicide detective. His Achilles heel was his unerring instinct for the wrong woman. Kyle was on his third marriage, last time Sky counted. He also suffered an unflagging affection for Sky.

"Give me some background,” she relented.

Kyle grinned, revealing a slight gap between his front teeth. "Alice Payne, forty-one years, works at the Shoe Shed."

Sky knew the place, a shabby boutique on Walnut. She bought her Doc Martens there.

"Divorced three years," Kyle continued, "two children. Kids live with her. Boy's name is Noah, eleven years. Girl is Molly, six years. They live at 51 Pulsifer." Kyle flipped a page on his notepad. "Ex-husband, David Payne, architect, lives in New York. Remarried last year. Mrs. Payne says she didn't know the kids left the house, she was sleeping when Noah called her about the dead body – at exactly 4:04 A.M., according to her alarm clock." Kyle snapped the notepad shut, looked at Sky and jerked his head at the door.

"Let's dance, partner. You lead." Sky gave her cowboy boots a swipe against the calf of each leg and pushed through the swinging door.

Kyle made introductions.

Sky shook each child's hand in turn and reached to shake Mrs. Payne’s hand.

"You must think I'm a terrible mother, letting my kids run wild in the middle of the night.  But I swear, I didn't know they were gone."

Looking into the woman's tired eyes, Sky held the handshake an extra beat. She's angry, but not with the children. She's angry with the husband. The ex-husband. Sky released Mrs. Payne's hand.

The woman gave her a suspicious squint. "You a psychic?"

"No, no, no!" Kyle laughed too loudly and stepped between the women. "Doctor Stone is a psychologist. A behavioral scientist." He drew the words out for full effect.

Sky suppressed a smile. Any hint of the nonordinary really freaked Kyle out. She tried to look scientific while Kyle went on to explain the interview procedure to Mrs. Payne and Noah.

Meanwhile, Molly ran laps around them all, singing Ring-Around-the-Rosy and rapping the fishing rod against the linoleum floor.

Sky kneeled down and caught the little girl in her arms. Molly squirmed with pleasure.

"Catch any fish with this?" Sky wiggled the tip of the yellow fishing rod.

"Not yet." Molly touched the pointed toe of Sky's red boot with a chubby finger. "Are you a cowboy?"

"Sometimes." Sky removed a blade of grass from the girl's hair. "Can I ask you some questions about what happened this morning?”

Molly nodded her head and slipped her hand into Sky's. They walked to the front desk, where a small, tidy officer with pointed ears let them through a rickety wooden gate. The hinges creaked painfully.

"I want the Powder Room key," Sky said.

The Powder Room was, in fact, an interview room on the second floor of police headquarters. One rainy morning a few years earlier, when Sky was only two days into her first murder investigation, she'd pointed out to Chief Moriarty the environmental shortcomings of his squad room: "Magnus, these constant interruptions and ringing telephones are screwing up my interviews.”

The Chief agreed, reluctantly, to convert a storage room to Sky's specifications. Her design ran against convention, but experimental data suggested that witnesses were more likely to loosen up if the interview was conducted in a less cop-like surround. During the renovation, senior detectives, apparently sensing a perilous feminization of the homicide unit, dubbed it the Powder Room. It was in constant demand, and always seemed to yield the most instructive interviews. But the name stuck.

Sky took a mottled brass key ring and led Molly upstairs to the second floor. She unlocked the door and flipped the light switch. The Powder Room appeared unchanged. An oak desk and chair sat under shuttered windows, flanked by a fig tree and an oak file cabinet. A small teak étagère with a carved dragon motif sat undisturbed in the corner.

Tropical fish the shape and color of tiny limes darted endlessly through a tank of sea grass. A huge Audubon bird print, a favorite of Sky's, hung at eye level and showed a swallow-tailed hawk in mid-flight clutching a writhing snake in her talons.

Molly circled the room three times before scrambling into an overstuffed chair. The chair was the room's single feminine note, the upholstery a profusion of pink cabbage roses. This floral exuberance was tempered somewhat by a second print hanging above the chair. It showed a pair of peregrine falcons gutting a teal.

Sky took a tape recorder from the top shelf of the étagère and grabbed the desk chair. Facing Molly with the tape recorder on her lap, she pulled the journal from her hip pocket and looked at the drawing of the bloody patch.

Pushing the red button on the tape recorder, Sky spoke name, date, time, subject. Molly struck various positions in rapid succession, finally settling in crosswise. Her blonde head rested against one padded arm of the chair and her legs splayed over the other arm.

Sky took the yellow fishing rod from the child's hand and leaned it against the chair. "Molly, sometimes people don't tell me things because they think they aren't important. But I want you to tell me absolutely everything that happened from the minute you got out of bed this morning.”

Molly nodded and furrowed her eyebrows in concentration.

She began with Noah shaking her awake in the dark, then the cold walk to Bullough’s Pond, then fishing in the fog with her Christmas fishing pole. The walk home and the body in the woods, the sirens and police cars, the ride to the station.

"The end!"  Molly yawned.

The child had revealed nothing particularly useful, but Sky was patient.

"Good girl. Now I want you to tell me everything backwards." Sky tried to make a game of it because she knew the child was tiring.

Molly brightened. In her child's warble she described her wait on the wooden bench downstairs. Her eyes were wide open now, and she peppered her recollections with gesture and pantomime. And, as most subjects did when given the peculiar task of reverse recall, Molly presented her memories in discrete scenes, like a stage play performed backwards.

She was talking about the corpse in the woods now. "I saw red hair like my friend Briana. I think she was taking a nap." Then, she and Noah at the pond, fishing.

"Noah put some bologna on my hook but the fish ate it and Noah told me "Bait your own hook!"" Molly mimicked Noah's voice so perfectly that Sky smiled in spite of herself. The child had a gift.

"So I had to put the bologna on that hook all by myself, so that's why I didn't hide when those people came."

Sky waited.

"Noah told me, "Hide behind the boat house if anybody comes." But when I heard the woman laughing I didn't run behind the boathouse because I was putting cheese on the hook and it kept falling off and it was my last piece." Molly looked at the ceiling in mock despair.

Sky watched an invisible vein pulse softly along the child's pale, exposed throat. Behind the blonde head, in the Audubon print, bloody entrails spilled from the falcon's beak.

“Can you tell me what was the woman was doing, Molly?”

“She was running. I think she wanted to fish.”

“Why do you think she wanted to fish?”

“Cause she was running toward the water but the man pulled her arm. He said ‘No’ and pulled her arm.”

“Tell me about the man.”

“He was big. Like my daddy.”

Sky proceeded carefully, allowing Molly to lead, letting the child narrow down the possibilities. Tall, wide shoulders, dressed in black sweats, black shoes, a black hood hiding his features. A deep voice.