Patricia Cornwell - Predator

“Fred, I’m trying to help. I can’t do it if you don’t talk to me.”

“Let me start with when Helen was twelve,” he says. “I was beginning my freshman year in college. I’m older, obviously. Helen went to live with my dad’s brother and his wife for about six months.”

“Why?”

“It was sad, such a pretty, talented girl. Got into Harvard when she was only sixteen, lasted not even a semester, had a meltdown and came home.”

“When?”

“That would have been the fall before she and Mom disappeared. She only lasted until November-at Harvard.”

“Eight months before she and your mother disappeared?”

“Yes. Helen was dealt a really lousy genetic hand.”

He pauses as if trying to decide whether he should go on, then, “All right. My mom wasn’t the most stable person. You might have already figured that out, her Christmas obsession. Craziness, more craziness, on and off for as long as I can remember. But it got really bad when Helen was twelve. Mom was doing some pretty irrational things.”

“Was she seeing a local psychiatrist?”

“Whatever money could buy. That celebrity one. She lived inPalm Beachback then. Dr. Self. She recommended hospitalization. That’s the real reason she sent Helen off to live with my aunt and uncle. Mom was in the hospital, and Dad was really busy and not inclined to take care of a twelve-year-old kid all by himself. Mom came home. Then Helen did and neither of them were, well, normal.”

“Did Helen go to a psychiatrist?”

“Not at that time,” Fred says. “She was just strange. Not unstable like Mom but strange. She did well in school, really well, then went off to Harvard and crashed and burned, was found in the lobby of some funeral home up there, didn’t know who she was. As if things weren’t bad enough, Dad died. Mom went into a real downhill spiral, would go places on the weekends, not tell me where she was, freaking me out. It was awful.”

“So the police figured she was unstable and into disappearing acts, and maybe ran off with Helen?”

“I wondered it myself. I still wonder if my mom and sister are out there somewhere.”

“How did your dad die?”

“Fell off a ladder in the rare-book library. The house inPalm Beachwas three stories, everything marble and stone tiles.”

“He home alone when it happened?”

“Helen found him on the first-floor landing.”

“She was the only one in the house at the time?”

“A boyfriend, maybe. Don’t know who.”

“When was this?”

“A couple months before she and Mom disappeared. Helen was seventeen then, precocious. Well, truthfully, after she came home from Harvard, she was completely out of control. I’ve always wondered if it was a reaction to my dad, my uncle, the people on my dad’s side of the family. Extremely religious and serious, Jesus this, Jesus that, big in their churches. Deacons, Sunday-school teachers, always trying towitness to people.”

“You ever meet any of Helen’s boyfriends?”

“No. She ran around, would disappear for days. Just trouble. I didn’t come home if I didn’t have to. Mom’s Christmas obsession is such a joke. It was never Christmas in our house. It was always pretty damn awful.”

He gets up from the table. “Mind if I have a beer?”

“Help yourself.”

He picks out a Michelob, twists off the cap. He shuts the refrigerator door and sits back down.

“Was your sister ever hospitalized?” Lucy asks.

“Same place Mom was. For a month right after she dropped out of Harvard. ClubMcLean, I called it. The good ole family genes.”

“McLeaninMassachusetts?”

“Yup. You ever take notes? I don’t know how you can remember all this.”

Lucy fingers the pen she’s holding, the small recorder turned on and invisible in her pocket.

“We need your mom’s and sister’s DNA,” she says.

“I don’t have any idea how we’re going to get it now. Unless the police still have that stuff.”

“Yours will work. Think of it as family-tree DNA,” Lucy says.

Scarpetta looks out the window at the cold, white street. It is almost three, and she has been on the phone most of the day.

“What kind of screening do you have? You must have some system in place for controlling who makes it on the air,” she says.

“Of course. One of the producers talks to the person, makes sure he isn’t crazy.”

It seems an odd choice of words for a psychiatrist.

“In this case, I’d already had a conversation with the man, the lawn-service man. It’s a long story.” Dr. Self is talking fast.

“He said his name was Hog when you talked to him the first time?”

“I didn’t think anything about it. A lot of people have wacky nicknames. I just need to know. Did some elderly lady suddenly turn up dead, a suicide? You would know, wouldn’t you? He threatened to kill me.”

“I’m afraid a lot of elderly ladies turn up dead on a regular basis,” Scarpetta replies evasively. “Can you give me a few more details? What exactly did he say?”

Dr. Self recounts the story of the blighted citrus trees in the old woman’s yard, of her grief over the loss of her husband, of her threat to kill herself with her dead husband’s shotgun if the lawn-service man-Hog-had her trees destroyed.Bentonwalks into the living room with two coffees, and Scarpetta puts Dr. Self on speakerphone.

“Then he threatened to kill me,” Dr. Self says again. “Or said he was going to but changed his mind.”

“I’ve got someone with me who needs to hear this,” Scarpetta says, and she introducesBenton. “Tell him what you just told me.”

Bentonsits on the couch as Dr. Self replies that she doesn’t understand why a forensic psychologist inMassachusettswould have any interest in a suicide that may or may not have happened inFlorida. But he might have a valid opinion about a threat on her life, and she would love to have him on her show sometime. What sort of person would threaten her like that? Is she in danger?

“Does your studio keep track of the call-ins through caller ID?”Bentonasks. “Are the numbers stored, even temporarily?”

“I would think so.”

“I’d like you to find that out right away,” he says. “Let’s see if we can determine where he was calling from.”

“I do know we don’t accept unidentified calls. You have to disable the caller ID block, because once I had this insane woman threaten to kill me on the air. It’s not the first time it’s happened. Her call came in as unidentified. No more.”

“Then you’re obviously capturing the numbers of whoever is calling in,”Bentonsays. “What I’d like is a printout of the numbers of everybody who called in during the show earlier this afternoon. What about when you talked to this lawn man the first time? You mentioned you had a phone conversation with him. When was that, and was the call local? Did you capture the number in a log?”

“Late Tuesday afternoon. I don’t have caller ID. I have an unlisted, unpublished number and don’t need it.”

“Did he identify himself?”

“As Hog.”

“He called your house?”

“My private office. I see patients in the office behind my house. It’s really a guesthouse-slash-pool house.”

“How might he have gotten the number?”

“I have no idea, now that you mention it. Of course, my colleagues, anybody I do business with, my patients have it.”

“Any possibility this man might be one of your patients?”

“I didn’t recognize his voice. I can’t think of anybody I see who might have been him. There’s something more going on here.” She gets pushy. “I think I have a right to know if there’s something more about this than meets the eye. In the first place, you haven’t confirmed whether there’s an old woman who committed suicide with a shotgun because of her blighted citrus trees.”