James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

“I’d say, keep talking, John O’Hara. Maybe we have a couple of things in common.”

Book Four

The Vows We Make,

the Vows We’re Given…

Chapter 71

I REALLY SHOULD’VE called ahead. What was I thinking?

Actually, I knew exactly what I was thinking. Olivia Sinclair was up in Langdale, New York, and I didn’t want to risk being told over the phone, “Now’s not a good time.”

And okay, yes: a small part of me was showing off a bit for the woman sitting shotgun next to me.

“Anytime you want to tell me where we’re going, fire away,” said Sarah more than once as we were driving north along I-684.

“We’ll be there soon enough,” I said.

Part guilt, part curiosity, and a slight sense of responsibility had me checking up on Olivia Sinclair since her daughter, Nora, was murdered. Once a year, sometimes twice a year, I’d call the head nurse, Emily Barrows, to see how her most intriguing patient was doing. In a way, that sort of added to the irony of Ned Sinclair wanting to kill me.

“Pine Woods Psychiatric Facility?” asked a puzzled Sarah as we drove by the sign on the way into the parking lot.

I turned to her as I pulled into a space, cutting the engine. “Pop quiz: What do all serial killers have in common?”

Sarah looked at me blankly.

“They all have a mother,” I said.

Her face lit up. Exactly as I’d thought.

From the moment I’d met Special Agent Sarah Brubaker I could tell how laser-focused she was on Ned Sinclair, presumably even more so since she’d been ordered off his trail. That just made her hungrier for a break in the case. Call it human nature. Also call it the reason she was willing to drive with me for more than an hour without knowing where she was going.

It wasn’t just your rapier wit and charm, O’Hara.

I led Sarah up to the eighth floor nurses’ station, where, sure enough, Emily Barrows was on duty. The last time she and I spoke was the previous summer, but it had been about five years or so since we’d seen each other face-to-face. She looked more tired than I remembered, a bit more run-down.

Time is especially hard on those whose workday is defined as a “shift.”

After introducing Sarah, I apologized to Emily for showing up unannounced. “I was hoping, though, that we could speak with Olivia. She’s still down at the end of the hall, right?”

Emily paused, unsure at first how to respond.

“I know, I know,” I said. “I’m probably supposed to go through your chief administrator for that request, but we’re sort of pressed for time, and—”

“No, it’s not that,” said Emily. She paused again. “Olivia’s no longer here.”

“Oh, I see. You mean she was released?”

As I said, I really should’ve called ahead.

“No,” said Emily. “I mean she’s dead.”

Chapter 72

“HOW?” I ASKED. “When did it happen?”

“Two months ago,” answered Emily. “Pancreatic cancer. It took her very fast.”

She was about to say something else, but stopped.

“What is it?” I asked. “You were going to say…”

“Nothing, really. I was just remembering what Olivia told me after she was first diagnosed. She said the cancer was from the grief—you know, from her daughter’s death. She holds herself responsible.”

“She loved Nora very much,” I said. I couldn’t resist the segue. “Do you remember her ever mentioning that she also had a son?”

Emily thought for a few seconds before shaking her head. “I don’t believe so.”

I looked over at Sarah, who surely had thoughts of decking me right there in the hallway for taking her on a wild goose chase. To her credit, though, she seemed determined to make the most of it. Or, at the very least, to exhaust every angle.

“Her son’s name is Ned,” said Sarah. “Maybe that helps.”

It didn’t. “You have to keep in mind, Olivia barely talked at all for years,” said Emily. “It wasn’t until after Nora’s death that she actually spoke more than a few sentences to me. But it’s not like we struck up a friendship.”

Sarah listened and nodded, but I could tell she was already a few questions ahead in her mind. “Did Olivia pass away here?” she asked.

“No. Toward the end she was transferred to a hospice. That’s where she died.”

“What about her personal effects? Did they go with her to the hospice?”

Emily hesitated. It was as if she was trying to figure out how to answer without lying. I’d seen that hesitation countless times in the course of interrogations. Clearly, so had Sarah. We traded glances.

“Is there something you need to tell us?” asked Sarah.

It was a simple question, but through her tone and inflection my “bad cop” partner had managed to insinuate that Emily’s world would come crashing down like a house of cards were she not to level with us. Pretty damn intimidating, actually.

Dick Cheney could keep his waterboarding kit. I had Sarah Brubaker.

Emily nervously looked left and right to make sure no one else was within earshot. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Please. Just give me a minute.”

She disappeared into the room behind the nurses’ station. No more than ten seconds later, she returned with something wrapped in a plastic shopping bag.

“Olivia kept it hidden at the bottom of a box in her closet,” said Emily. “I know it was wrong of me, but after everything I learned about her daughter, Nora…well, I just couldn’t help myself.”

And with that, she handed the bag to Sarah.

Chapter 73

I DROVE. SARAH READ.

“Hey!” I must have called out a half dozen times when Sarah’s voice would trail off. She was so engrossed she didn’t realize she’d stopped reading aloud.

The date of the first entry was August 9, 1990, right as Olivia began her prison sentence for murdering her husband. Only she wasn’t the one who killed him. It was Ned. She took the fall for her seven-year-old son. Or so she claimed.

Would she lie to her own diary?

There was no denying the unsettling, slightly disconcerting nature of what Sarah and I were doing—and, yes, what nurse Emily Barrows had done before us. This was the ultimate invasion of privacy, and the fact that Olivia was dead hardly mitigated that fact.

Still.

If there was one iota of information in this little brown leather-bound book that could help us catch Ned Sinclair before he killed again, then that justified our actions. It didn’t get more Machiavellian than that.

And, oddly, having met Olivia Sinclair, I had the feeling she’d completely understand.

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Sarah, interrupting herself midsentence.

I glanced over at her from behind the wheel. She looked disgusted. “What is it?” I asked.

“Nora was molested by her father,” she said. “Repeatedly.”

The rest was like the last few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It all fit together easily.

Ned had known about the incest, taking matters into his own little hands. The fact that Olivia knew nothing about what her husband had been doing—until it was too late—surely accelerated her decision to take the fall for Ned. It was her last act of motherhood.

Sarah continued to read. In gut-wrenching detail, Olivia described the guilt she felt, the pain of learning that her children would be sent off to an orphanage.

It only got worse. A year later, she learned that Ned and Nora had been separated, sent to two different state-run foster care facilities.

Sarah suddenly closed the book, snapping it shut.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Taking a break. I can’t read any more right now,” she said. “What a terrible story.”

For someone so intent on bringing down Ned Sinclair, that was saying a lot. Not that I could blame her. Olivia’s diary described a nightmare come to life—for all the Sinclairs.