Gail Bowen - The Nesting Dolls

My husband stirred. I moved my chair closer and continued to read. It was a quiet morning. I awakened Zack when it was time to give him pills and liquids. At intervals, I skimmed the soup. Mid-morning, a courier arrived with three large and unwieldy packages. When I ripped off the paper, I discovered that I’d signed for three copper pots filled with poinsettias in Zack’s favourite deep red. I brought the pots into our bedroom, placed them on a low table close to the window where he could see them, and went back to my book.

An hour before noon, I skimmed the soup and, following Helen Freedman’s recipe, made and refrigerated matzo balls. When Zack awakened, I was ready. I kissed him. “Welcome back,” I said.

Zack took my hand. “Always glad to be where you are, Ms. Shreve. So what’s going on?”

“Someone sent you flowers,” I said.

“Am I dead?”

“No, just worthy of spoiling.” I handed him the unopened card. He slipped on his reading glasses. “From Louise,” he said. “She sends her affection and apologies.”

“As well she might,” I said.

Zack gave me a sharp look. “I take it things didn’t go well with you two last night.”

“No. I was angry at what she was doing to Declan, and I was furious that she dragged you out of the house when you were sick to clean up the mess she’d made.”

Zack shrugged. “I agree with you about Declan. But Leland Hunter pays the firm a sizable sum to keep his family out of trouble, so I was just doing my job.”

“Has Leland ever considered doing that particular job himself?”

“Too busy earning money. Considering that Louise is his ex, he’s very responsible. Over the years, he’s paid a number of people to keep her from self-destructing. She used to have a kind of babysitter who went to restaurants with her and sat at the next table. The theory was the guy would keep Louise out of trouble, but half the time she gave him the slip. Finally, Leland realized that no matter how many people he hired to protect Louise, she’d always find a log with which to set herself on fire. Last spring when she was charged with DUI, she was weaving and driving so slowly that the cops ran her licence and were there waiting at her front door when she finally wended her way home.”

“Do you think she wants to get caught?”

“I’m not a shrink, but my theory is that Louise’s motivation is the same as Declan’s – she wants Leland to pay attention to her.”

“So Louise teaches her son that to get his father’s attention, he just has to break the law,” I said.

“You know I can’t answer that,” Zack said. “Anyway, aren’t you being a little hard on her?” He started to cough and he couldn’t seem to stop. I put my arm behind his back and pulled him upright. When the coughing finally ended I was scared and furious. I rested my forehead on his shoulder.

“To answer your question,” I said, “I don’t think I’m being too hard on Louise at all.”

Zack slept deeply for the next three hours. He was feverish, and even when I wiped his head with a cool cloth, he didn’t awaken. Concerned that he was becoming dehydrated, I took him a glass of ginger ale and roused him. He’d managed to drink half of it when the doorbell chimed. He made a gesture of dismissal and lay back on his pillow. “I’m good,” he said. “Better see who that is.”

The guest on the porch was Debbie Haczkewicz. Her cheeks were ruddy with health and cold, but her eyes were tired.

“I was in the neighbourhood, so I thought I’d stop by to see how Zack’s doing,” she said.

“He’s been sleeping pretty much on and off all day,” I said. “But I can see if he’s awake.”

“It’s nothing important. Just telI him I came by.”

Debbie looked as weary as I felt. “Would you like to come in?” I said. “I’m dragging, and I was about to make myself coffee.”

“Dragging is my permanent state these days,” Debbie said. “Caffeine helps, and I’d appreciate a cup of something that didn’t taste like the floor sweepings we have at headquarters.”

Our kitchen caught the afternoon sun. It was a cheerful place in which to sit, and Debbie and I had our coffee there. “So how’s it going?” I said.

“Not well,” Debbie said. “It’s been nine days since Abby Michaels died, and all we have are questions. We know from the forensic pathology results that Abby Michaels didn’t fight her attacker. Usually in these cases the victim’s fingernails are a treasure trove for the M.E. – samples of the attacker’s hair, skin, and blood – but Abby’s nails were clean.”

“Is it possible that she was drugged with something like Rohypnol?”

Debbie sugared her coffee. “Nope, Toxicology’s still running tests, but so far no traces of any of the classic ‘date rape’ drugs, including alcohol. It seems that Abby didn’t perceive the man who killed her as a threat.”

“She was a stranger here. Whom would she trust that completely?”

“I have a theory,” Debbie said. “Abby Michaels had just given away her child. She was traumatized. She went to someone whom she believed would help her deal with what she’d done. I think she put herself in his hands. The element of surprise was on his side. The autopsy results suggest that the man strangled her, raped her, dragged her down at least one flight of stairs, then pulled her through the snow to her car and drove her to the parking lot behind A-1.”

I shuddered. “Do you ever get used to seeing that kind of viciousness?”

Debbie was measured. “No, but that degree of contempt for another human being is revealing. It suggests a psychosis, and nine times out of ten, that means we’re dealing with a habitual offender. If we’re lucky and can match the semen on the victim with semen in the vi-class data bank, we can start checking halfway houses and the location of inmates on mandatory release and sooner or later, we find our guy. But we’ve already established the semen found on Abby doesn’t match any in the vi-class data bank.”

The sun was pouring into our kitchen, but I felt a chill. “If he was able to take Abby by surprise, he must seem trustworthy,” I said.

“Or he’s in a profession that makes a woman feel it’s safe to let down her guard,” Debbie said tightly. “And, of course, that’s why he poses such a threat to his potential victims and to the police force. There’s a deadly mix here: We have a disarming psychotic, and we have a public desperate for action because Abby was educated, middle-class, and not known to indulge in risky behaviour.”

“People identify with her,” I said.

“And they feel vulnerable,” Debbie said. “Abby could be their sister, their girlfriend, their wife, or their daughter. People are scared.”

“And that puts pressure on you,” I said.

“You bet it does,” Debbie said. “Nobody likes to admit it, but when we get the call that a body’s been found, there’s an adrenalin rush. All the possibilities are open. We choose the members of the lead investigative team, let them know they’re up to bat and meet them at the crime scene. By the time I get there, the uniforms are already ricocheting, bagging evidence, taking photographs, taking notes, making guesses. Everybody’s charged up. But that’s Day One. As the days go by and nothing pans out, the adrenalin seeps away. We all start getting antsy, and that’s a dangerous time in an investigation because this is when we start getting seduced by false clues. It’s as if we’re all standing in the dark – waiting for a sound or a flash of light. When there’s been nothing but silence, and one of us hears the snap of the twig, there’s always the danger that we’ll overreact – give that twig far more attention than it merits. That’s where we are now, Joanne, and it’s not a good place to be.”