Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

“Sympathetic guy,” said Frost.

Sarmiento suddenly hung up the phone and stepped out. Then, through the window, they saw him stick his head into the interrogation room and motion to Ligett. Both detectives left the room. Dwayne, now left alone at the table, looked at his watch, shifted in his chair. Gazed at the mirror and frowned. He pulled out a pocket comb and fussed with his hair until every strand was perfect. The grieving husband, getting camera-ready for the five o’clock news.

Sarmiento slipped back into the room with Rizzoli and Frost, and gave them a knowing wink. “Gotcha,” he whispered.

“What do you have?”

“Watch.”

Through the window, they saw Ligett reenter the interrogation room. He closed the door and just stood gazing at Dwayne. Dwayne went very still, but the pulse in his neck was visibly bounding above his shirt collar.

“So,” said Ligett. “You wanna tell me the truth now?”

“About what?”

“Those two nights in the Crowne Plaza Hotel?”

Dwayne gave a laugh-an inappropriate response, under the circumstances. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Detective Sarmiento just spoke to the Crowne Plaza. They confirm you were a guest those two nights.”

“Well, you see? I told you-”

“Who was the woman who checked in with you, Dwayne? Blond, pretty. Had breakfast with you both mornings in the dining room?”

Dwayne fell silent. He swallowed.

“Your wife know about the blonde? Is that what you and Mattie were arguing about?”

“No-”

“So she didn’t know about her?”

“No! I mean, that’s not why we argued.”

“Sure it is.”

“You’re trying to put the worst possible spin on this!”

“What, the girlfriend doesn’t exist?” Ligett moved closer, getting right up in Dwayne’s face. “She’s not going to be hard to find. She’ll probably call us. She’ll see your face on the news and realize she’s better off stepping right up to the plate with the truth.”

“This has got nothing to do with-I mean, I know it looks bad, but-”

“Sure does.”

“Okay.” Dwayne sighed. “Okay, I kind of strayed, all right? Lot of guys do, in my position. It’s hard when your wife’s so huge you can’t do it with her anymore. There’s that big belly sticking out. And she’s just not interested.”

Rizzoli stared rigidly ahead, wondering if Frost and Sarmiento were glancing her way. Yeah, here I am. Another one with a big belly. And a husband who’s out of town. She stared at Dwayne and imagined Gabriel sitting in that chair, saying those words. Jesus, don’t do this to yourself, she thought, don’t screw around with your own head. It’s not Gabriel, but a loser named Dwayne Purvis who got caught with a girlfriend and couldn’t deal with the consequences. Your wife finds out about the chickie on the side, and you’re thinking: bye bye to Breitling watches and half the house and eighteen years of child support. This asshole is definitely guilty.

She looked at Frost. He shook his head. Both of them could see this was just a replay of an old tragedy they’d seen a dozen times before.

“So did she threaten divorce?” asked Ligett.

“No. Mattie didn’t know anything about her.”

“She just shows up at work and picks a fight?”

“It was stupid. I told Sarmiento all about it.”

“Why did you get mad, Dwayne?”

“Because she drives around with a goddamn flat tire and doesn’t even notice it! I mean, how dense can you be not to notice that you’re scraping your rim? The other salesman saw it. Brand-new tire, and it’s shredded, just ripped to hell. I see that and I guess I yelled at her. And she gets all teary-eyed, and that just irritates me more, because it makes me feel like a jerk.”

You are a jerk, thought Rizzoli. She looked at Sarmiento. “I think we’ve heard enough.”

“What’d I tell you?”

“You’ll let us know if anything new develops?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sarmiento’s gaze was back on Dwayne. “It’s easy when they’re this dumb.”

Rizzoli and Frost turned to leave.

“Who knows how many miles she was driving around with it like that?” Dwayne was saying. “Hell, it might already have been flat when she got to the doctor’s office.”

Rizzoli suddenly halted. Turning back to the window, she frowned at Dwayne. Felt her pulse suddenly pounding in her temple. Jesus. I almost missed it.

“Which doctor is he talking about?” she asked Sarmiento.

“A Dr. Fishman. I spoke to her yesterday.”

“Why did Mrs. Purvis see her?”

“Just a routine OB appointment, nothing unusual about it.”

Rizzoli looked at Sarmiento. “Dr. Fishman is an obstetrician?”

He nodded. “She has an office in the Women’s Clinic. Over on Bacon Street.”

Dr. Susan Fishman had been up most of the night at the hospital, and her face was a map of exhaustion. Her unwashed brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the white lab coat she wore over the rumpled scrub suit had pockets so loaded down with various examination tools that the fabric seemed to be dragging her shoulders toward the floor.

“Larry from security brought over the surveillance tapes,” she said as she escorted Rizzoli and Frost from the clinic reception desk into a rear hallway. Her tennis shoes squeaked across the linoleum. “He’s getting the video equipment set up in the back room. Thank god no one expects me to do it. I don’t even have a VCR at home.”

“Your clinic still has the recordings from a week ago?” asked Frost.

“We have a contract with Minute Man Security. They keep the tapes for at least a week. We asked them to, given all the threats.”

“What threats?”

“This is a pro-choice clinic, you know. We don’t perform any abortions on site, but just the fact we call ourselves a women’s clinic seems to tick off the right-wing crowd. We like to keep an eye on who comes into the building.”

“So you’ve had problems before?”

“What you’d expect. Threatening letters. Envelopes with fake anthrax. Assholes hanging around, taking photos of our patients. That’s why we keep that video camera in the parking lot. We want to keep an eye on everyone who comes near our front door.” She led them down another hallway, decorated with the same cheerfully generic posters that seemed to adorn every obstetrician’s office. Diagrams on breast-feeding, on maternal nutrition, on the “five danger signs that you have an abusive partner.” An anatomical illustration of a pregnant woman, the contents of her abdomen revealed in cross section. It made Rizzoli uncomfortable walking beside Frost, with that poster looming on the wall, as though her own anatomy was up there on display. Bowel, bladder, uterus. Fetus curled up in a tangle of limbs. Only last week, Matilda Purvis had walked past this very poster.

“We’re all heartsick about Mattie,” said Dr. Fishman. “She’s just the sweetest person. And she’s so thrilled about the baby.”

“At her last appointment, everything was fine?” asked Rizzoli.

“Oh, yes. Strong fetal heart tones, good position. Everything looked great.” Fishman glanced back at Rizzoli. Asked, grimly: “You think it’s the husband?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, isn’t it usually the husband? He only came in with her once, way at the beginning. Acted bored the whole visit. After that, Mattie would show up alone for her appointments. That’s the tip-off for me. If you make a baby together, you damn well ought to show up together. But that’s just my opinion.” She opened a door. “This is our conference room.”

Larry from Minute Man Security Systems was waiting in the room for them. “I’ve got that video ready to show you,” he said. “I narrowed it down to the time frame you’re interested in. Dr. Fishman, you’ll need to watch the footage. Tell us when you spot your patient on the video.”