Catherine Coulter: Riptide

“You’re a public nuisance. You’re filing false complaints, telling lies that waste manpower. I don’t like you, Ms. Matlock. I’d like to throw you in jail for all the grief you’ve dished out, but I won’t if you go see our shrink. Maybe he can straighten you out. God knows someone needs to.”

Becca rose slowly to her feet. She looked at each of them in turn. “I have told you the truth. There is a madman out there and I don’t know who he is. I’ve told you everything I can think of. He has threatened the governor. He murdered that poor old woman in front of the museum. I’m not making anything up. I’m not nuts and I’m not on drugs.”

It did no good. They didn’t believe her.

The three men lined up along the wall of the interrogation room didn’t say a word. One of them simply nodded to Detective Gordon as Becca walked out of the room.

Thirty minutes later, Becca Matlock was seated in a very comfortable chair in a small office that had only two narrow windows that looked across at two other narrow windows. Across the desk sat Dr. Burnett, a man somewhere in his forties, nearly bald, wearing designer glasses. He looked intense and tired.

“What I don’t understand,” Becca said, sitting forward, “is why the police won’t believe me.”

“We’ll get to that. Now, you didn’t want to speak with me?”

“I’m sure you’re a very nice man, but no, I don’t need to speak to you, at least not professionally.”

“The police officers aren’t certain about that, Ms. Matlock. Now, why don’t you tell me, in your own words, a bit about yourself and exactly when this stalker first came to your attention.”

Yet again, she thought. Her voice was flat because she’d said the same words so many times. Hard to feel anything saying them now. “I’m a senior speechwriter for Governor Bledsoe. I live in a very nice condominium on Oak Street in Albany. Two and a half weeks ago, I got the first phone call. No heavy breathing, no profanity, nothing like that. He just said he’d seen me running in the park, and he wanted to get to know me. He wouldn’t tell me who he was. He said I would come to know him very well. He said he wanted to be my boyfriend. I told him to leave me alone and hung up.”

“Did you tell any friends or the governor about the call?”

“Not until after he called me another two times. That’s when he told me to stop sleeping with the governor. He said he was my boyfriend, and I wasn’t going to sleep with any other man. In a very calm voice, he said that if I didn’t stop sleeping with the governor, he’d just have to kill him. Naturally, when I told the governor about this, everyone licensed to carry a gun within a ten-mile radius was on it.”

He didn’t even crack a smile, just kept staring at her.

Becca found she really didn’t care. She said, “They tapped my phone immediately, but somehow he knew they had. They couldn’t find him. They said he was using some sort of electronic scrambler that kept giving out fake locations.”

“And are you sleeping with Governor Bledsoe, Ms. Matlock?”

She’d heard that question a good dozen times, too, over and over, especially from Detective Gordon. She even managed a smile. “Actually, no. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed, but he is old enough to be my father.”

“We had a president old enough to be your father and a woman even younger than you are and neither of them had a problem with that concept.”

She wondered if Governor Bledsoe could ever survive a Monica and almost smiled. She just shrugged.

“So, Ms. Matlock, are you sleeping with the governor?”

She’d discovered that at the mention of sex, everyone -media folk, cops, friends-homed right in on it. It still offended her, but she had answered the question so often the edge was off now. She shrugged again, seeing that it bothered him, and said, “No, I haven’t slept with Governor Bledsoe. I have never wanted to sleep with Governor Bledsoe. I write speeches for him, really fine speeches. I don’t sleep with him. I even occasionally write speeches for Mrs. Bledsoe. I don’t sleep with her, either.

“Now, I have no clue why the man believes that I am having sex with the governor. I have no clue why he would care if I were. Why did he pull the governor, of all people, out of the hat? Because I spend time with him? Because he’s powerful? I just don’t know. The Albany police haven’t found out anything about this man yet. However, they didn’t think I was a liar, not like the police here in New York. I even met with a police psychologist, who gave me advice on how to handle him when he called.”

“Actually, Ms. Matlock, the Albany police do believe you are a liar. At first they didn’t, but that’s what they believe now. But do go on.”

Just like that? He said everyone believed she was a liar and she was just to go on? “What do you mean?” she said slowly. “They never gave me that impression.”

“That’s why our detectives finally sent you to me. They spoke to their counterparts in Albany. No one could discover any stalker. They believed you were disturbed about something. Perhaps you had a crush on the governor and this was your way of getting him to acknowledge you.”

“Ah, I see. I have, perhaps, a fatal attraction.”

“No, certainly not. You shouldn’t have referred to it like that. It’s much too soon.”

“Too soon for what? I’m still trying to get the hang of it?”

Anger flashed in his eyes. It made her feel good. “Just go on, Ms. Matlock. No, don’t argue with me yet. First tell me more. I need to understand. Then we can determine what’s going on, together.”

In his dreams, she thought. A crush on the governor? Yeah, right. What a joke that was. Bledsoe was a man who would sleep with a nun if he could get under her habit. He made Bill Clinton look as upstanding as Eisenhower, or had Ike had a mistress, too? Men and power-the two always seemed to go with illicit sex. As for Bledsoe, he’d been very lucky thus far, he hadn’t yet run into an intern as voracious as Monica, one who wouldn’t just fade into the woodwork when he was done with her.

“Very well,” she said. “I came to New York to escape that maniac. I was-I am-terrified of him and what he’ll do. Also, my mother lives here and she’s very ill. I wanted to be with her.”

“You’re staying in her apartment, is that right?”

“Yes. She’s in Lenox Hill Hospital.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Becca looked at him and tried to say the words. They wouldn’t come out. She cleared her throat and finally managed to say, “She’s dying of uterine cancer.”

“I’m sorry. You say this man followed you here to New York?”

Becca nodded. “I saw him here for the first time just after I arrived in New York, on Madison near Fiftieth, weaving in and out of people to my right. He was wearing a blue windbreaker and a baseball cap. How do I know it was him? I can’t be specific about that. I just know. Deep down, I recognized that it was him. He knew I saw him, I’m sure of that. Unfortunately I couldn’t see him clearly enough to give more than a general impression of what he looks like.”

“And that is?”

“He’s tall, slender. Is he young? I just don’t know. The baseball cap covered his hair and he was wearing aviator glasses, very dark, opaque. He was wearing generic jeans and that blue windbreaker that was very loose.” She paused a moment. “I’ve told the police all of this, many times. Why do you care?”

His look said it all. He wanted to see just how specific, just how detailed her descriptions were, how much she’d embellished her fantasy man. And all of the marvelous particulars were from her imagination, her very sick imagination.