James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

Until I reached the bottom.

There, lying facedown, was a small picture frame. Even before I picked it up and turned it over, I knew whose picture I was about to see.

Nora Sinclair.

I wiped away some dust on the glass and stared. She looked every bit as stunning as I remembered. The high cheekbones and full lips. The radiant eyes and sun-kissed skin.

Yep: by far the most beautiful serial killer I’d ever slept with.

“How’s it going?” Sarah yelled up. “Anything?”

Freud would’ve had a field day with the way I suddenly fumbled with the frame, as if I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t have been doing.

“Not yet,” I yelled down, putting the frame back on the bottom of the chest.

Almost immediately, though, I picked it up again.

It wasn’t Nora’s picture I was staring at now. It was the back of the frame, where it opened.

I’m not exactly sure why I did what I did next. Was it my once reading about a guy who discovered a copy of the Declaration of Independence behind a painting he bought at a yard sale? Was it the way my grandmother used to add new photos of me to her frames while leaving the old ones behind them?

All I knew was that something made me open the back of that frame.

Chapter 77

ALL OF A SUDDEN, Sarah was calling out again, only her call wasn’t aimed at me.

“Don’t move!” I heard her yell.

I immediately reached for my shin holster and raced out of the room, flying down the stairs. Landing with a thud in the foyer, I saw him from behind, his hands up. Sinclair? Really? No, it couldn’t be!

Instinctively, he turned around at the sound of me, his eyes popping wide with terror as he realized his predicament. Sarah was in front of him; I was at his back.

“Who are you?” demanded Sarah.

He turned to face her. Every nervous word tripped over his tongue. “I’m…uh, I’m…my name is Dr. Bruce Drummond. I’m…um, a psychiatrist.”

“Why are you here?” she asked—no, demanded.

“The news,” he said. “When I…uh…got home from work, I saw it on the news.”

Sarah and I both lowered our guns at the same time. Just like that, we’d already filled in the blanks.

“You treated Ned Sinclair?” she asked.

“Yes, for a year,” he answered, breathing for the first time. “Are you the police? I hope you’re the police.”

“FBI,” she said, flashing her badge. “I’m Agent Sarah Brubaker and that’s my partner, John.”

Cleverly, she avoided saying my last name. That would’ve surely confused the already shaky psychiatrist. As it was, he had more pressing concerns.

“Can I put my hands down now?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Sarah. “In fact, you can do a heck of a lot more than that. You can help us.”

We walked into Ned’s living room, where the theme of “sparsely furnished” had been carried even further. There was one couch, one armchair. That was it. The idea of a coffee table had apparently been deemed superfluous.

Not that we were offering Dr. Bruce Drummond any coffee. No drinks or hors d’oeuvres, either. Ixnay on the cocktail weenies, too—all we wanted to do was pump him for information.

“To start with, why are you here?” asked Sarah. “Have you been in contact with Ned?”

“Not for a couple of years,” he explained. “On the off chance that he was here, though, I was hoping to get him to surrender. The door was open when I arrived.”

“You didn’t think of first going to the police?” I asked.

Drummond folded his legs. “Ned never would have surrendered to the police,” he said matter-of-factly. He was calmer now, more composed; his scholarly aura began to assert itself.

Sarah clearly picked up on this and softened her tone. Smart cookie: she wanted to make Drummond feel appreciated for what he’d been trying to do. That was the best way to get him to open up about Ned.

“It’s understandable you would care about his well-being,” she said. “How long ago were you his psychiatrist?”

“He became my patient about five years ago, right after his sister was killed. The chair of the math department at UCLA, a friend of mine, had suggested that Ned see me.”

“For grief counseling?” I asked. I certainly had a little experience in that area.

“Yes, he was very close with his sister,” said Drummond. Then he tacked on something under his breath, almost by accident. “Too close.”

If there was ever a line that begged for a follow-up question, that was it. “What does that mean?” I asked.

Drummond hesitated. “Have you seen Ned’s personnel file from the university? Do you know why he left?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “It said he was fired based on consistently poor student feedback.”

“That figures,” said Drummond. “It would’ve been a PR nightmare otherwise.”

“What would have?” I asked.

“The truth,” he said.

Chapter 78

I’LL GIVE THE doctor this: he certainly had our full attention.

Drummond leaned forward in the armchair, clasping his hands. “Ned was caught in his office on campus masturbating to a picture of a young woman,” he explained.

Sarah barely batted an eyelash. “One of his students?” she asked.

“Worse, if you can imagine,” he said. “It was a picture of Nora.”

Okay, that’s a different story. We just took a right turn onto Weird Avenue. And depending on what picture it was, I might have to go wash my hands.

Drummond continued, “It’s called a psychosexual fixation disorder. It’s rare among siblings, but it does happen.”

“And you continued to counsel him after the incident?” Sarah asked.

“Yes. At least I tried to,” he said. “The fact that Nora was dead, though, made it more difficult. Not only was he fixated on her but, as you might imagine, he also became obsessed with the question of who killed her. He claimed he knew who it was.”

“Did he actually give you a name?” I asked.

“No, and that was the worst part,” he said. “He kept insisting that he was going to take care of it himself.”

“It?” repeated Sarah. “Like he was planning to kill the guy?”

“That’s the impression I got,” he said. “Of course, without a name it wasn’t exactly a Tarasoff situation.”

“Still, you thought he was a threat to somebody, ” said Sarah. “So you had him admitted to Eagle Mountain, right?”

“Almost a year to the day after he became my patient, yes.”

I raised my hand. “Tarasoff?”

“The court case,” said Sarah. “ Tarasoff versus Regents of the University of California . The ruling obliges a therapist to breach confidentiality with his patient if he knows a third party is in danger.”

I shot her a sideways look. “Show-off.”

She smiled before turning again to Drummond. “Here’s what I don’t get, though,” she said. “Ned goes to Eagle Mountain and stays there for over three years without incident. Then one day, out of the blue, he decides to escape. He violently murders a nurse and goes on a killing spree, all the victims having the same name.”

“Obviously he blames someone named John O’Hara for his sister’s death,” said Drummond. “I mean, he really blames him.”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “But why act on it now? Why did he wait?”

“Think of his fixation disorder as a cancer,” he said. “Ned was in remission. He was on medication, and whatever urges he had, they were under control. In check.”

“So that’s my question. What happened to change that?” she asked.

“I had the same question,” said Drummond. “That’s why before I came here I paid a visit to Eagle Mountain. It turns out a new nurse had been assigned to Ned’s floor.”