“I don’t blame them for the virus,” she said. “I blame them for just about everything else they did.” She’d said that before. I was certain she would say it again. And again.
“Greedy bastards,” she repeated. “Do you know what they offered me for compensation? Do you?”
I did. But I also knew she’d tell me again anyway.
“They’d let me do the same darn death cruise a second time, and then they’d let me do another one at twenty-five percent off. That’s it. That’s the going rate for almost killing an old woman.”
It was at that interlude in her session that I had the wisdom to cut Sam some slack. The thought I was allowing to ferment was:Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe he was telling the truth about the bug.
But if Sam didn’t plant the damn device in my office in order to find out what Gibbs knew about her husband’s murderous tendencies, who did? And why?
My dear patient, I knew, would have gladly blamed the whole fiasco on the greedy bastards from the cruise line.
The truth, I guessed, was not going to be so simple. Who had planted the device in my couch pillow? I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t know until I figured out why it had been placed. Knowing why meant discerning exactly what one of my patients might have had to say in the confines of therapy that was worth committing a felony to overhear.
I spent some time mentally reviewing my roster of patients, imagining which of their secrets, mostly mundane to me, was so prized by someone else. Although Jim Zebid’s accusation about Judge Heller’s husband selling cocaine was intriguing, and Sharon Lewis’s identity would have certainly caused a tabloidish stir, Gibbs’s story was the one that definitely had the most universal allure.
That’s what led me to thinking that the culprit was the cops, and to Sam. The police would certainly have some interest in what Gibbs said to me.
So, I imagined, would Sterling. Had he somehow gained access to my office and planted the device before he left for Florida to cover the football game in Tallahassee? If he had-considering the likelihood that his corpse was caught on some debris beneath the surface of the Ochlockonee River-I’d probably never know. But at least everyone’s secrets would be safe.
But I was overlooking something important: a possibility that I had to rule out. I phoned home. Lauren answered. I checked in on her battle with Solumedrol and commiserated as she reluctantly shared the details of her travails.
Then I asked, “Do you have time for a work question?”
“Sure, sure,” she said.
Her voice was pressured, as though her vocal cords were too taut. I asked, “Is there any way the police could get a warrant to put a listening device in my office?”
“What?”
“Is there any way-”
“I heard you. You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“No? No way?”
“No, no way.”
“I just had one removed. A listening device was hidden inside a pillow on my sofa.”
“If this isn’t your idea of a joke, I can assure you that it wasn’t the Boulder police who put it there.”
“Thanks, I needed to hear that. I have to go.”
“You’ll fill me in on all this later?”
“Yeah. Love you.”
If I could have answered the who and why questions, I might have been able to predict the complications that were to develop over the next few hours.
But I couldn’t, and I didn’t.
FORTY-SIX
Sometimes momentum rules. I’d been pointing toward Indiana’s bull’s-eye, so I kept going that way. I had some lunch in a Shoney’s by a gas station, went and saw the Speedway just for the hell of it, and then backtracked downtown so I could be near the RCA Dome. I parked the car in a motel lot a few blocks away, checked in for one night, and started strolling over toward the immense sports stadium, waiting for some inspiration from the dead woman who had worked there. What was her name? Julie Franconia. Yeah.
But I got no inspiration.
Nothing. Julie wasn’t talking.
My pager vibrated once again against my hip.
I knew it was him. I walked another hundred yards or so before I bothered to look at the screen.
It was him. Another faux 911.
First I kept my promise to Lucy, called her, and told her where I was spending the night. She didn’t have anything new for me. Then I called Alan.
The second the phone started ringing, I was already regretting phoning him back. “What?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I was still walking. It turned out that the Dome butted right up against downtown Indianapolis. I liked that. Sports should be part of things, part of a city’s life, not some suburban reverse-doughnut thing where the arena is surrounded by acres of open space that are used to park a gazillion cars twenty times a year. There was even a nice green park with a big fountain outside the front door of the RCA Dome.
Cool.
“I’m sorry,” Alan said again.
By then I’d walked around the corner, ducked under a sky bridge that linked the stadium with a garage, and stopped in front of a nice old church with twin copper steeples. I sat on the steps.
“I’m in a church,” I said to Alan, lying. “I’m hoping it will make me be nice to you.”
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
“You said that. Next.”
“If that was being nice to me because you’re sitting in a church, I’m glad you’re not sitting in a topless bar.”
I laughed. It was a good comeback. “A titty bar would be way too much stress on my heart. Truth is, I’m actually on the stoop of the church. Not inside. God may be occupied with the folks who made it all the way inside, so be careful.”
“I shouldn’t have accused you.”
“Accused me? You shouldn’t have even considered me. I play hard, but I don’t play dirty. I might be tricky, but I don’t cheat.”
“I know. I was wrong.”
“Is that it? I got to go.”
“Where?”
It was actually another good comeback, although Alan probably didn’t realize it.
“I don’t know. I’m thinking of going up north and seeing Simon.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“Seeing my kid? It’s always a good idea. Always.”
He didn’t skip a beat. He asked, “You want to tell me what’s going on with Sherry?”
“Nope.”
My pager vibrated again. I was about to turn the damn thing off. I lifted it off my hip and held it at full arm’s length from my eyes. Even that far away I could barely read it. I said, “Gibbs is paging me. Now I do have to go.”
“What does she want? Call me back.”
“Right.”
“Detective Purdy? I’m scared.”
Her voice did something to me.
It was something unfamiliar. I stood and moved two steps higher on the church stoop. That didn’t feel quite right, so I moved back down and settled my fat ass one step lower than when I had started. I wasn’t sure precisely what I wanted God’s help doing at that moment, but I was aware that it might be something He wouldn’t be eager to assist me with.
“Yeah?”
“I think he’s alive. I do.”
I assumed we were chatting about Sterling. “You think he’d come after you?”
She said, “No, not really. But maybe, I guess. God, what a thing to say.”
As she implored the deity, I craned my neck upward toward the pointy ends of the steeples.