"Nah," Rob said, leaning back in his chair and hoping he was convincing. Mooney didn't like his cops getting into cases where they were personally involved. "It just interests me, you know? Ever have a case that got under your skin and made you itch?"
Mooney's eyes got even narrower. His whine became more pronounced.
"You ain't thinking of writing a book or any shit like that, are you?"
Rob laughed. "Hey, lieu, you've read my reports! What do you think?"
Mooney stuck the cigar back in his mouth and smiled.
"Yeah. You've got a point there. But Christ, every other guy in the department seems to be writing a book!"
Rob nodded. Ever since Bill Caunitz, a former detective with Mooney's rank and position, began hitting the best-seller lists and appearing on Good Morning America, a lot of guys were trying their hand at fiction, but not with much success.
"Give me another week, lieu. If I can't prove foul play by then I'll close it myself."
"You'd better. And don't come back next week with some sky blue theory. I want hard stuff or we close. Got it?"
"Got it."
Rob knew Mooney was hoping he'd find nothing. The lieutenant liked grounders—open and shut cases. If Kelly Wade's case remained a suicide it would be closed and forgotten. But if it became reclassified as a murder it stayed open until solved. Unsolved murders were never closed, and that could mean filing semiannual DD5 Supplementary Complaint Reports into eternity.
Rob took the file and returned to his own desk in the squad room. It was the same color and style as Mooney's, only older and more dented. A few phone message slips on his blotter. None from Connie. He wondered why he felt relieved. Another love affair down the tubes. It was getting to be a habit.
He picked up the sheet with the notes he'd made on that lawyer yesterday and tossed it out. Ed Bannion checked out okay: a tax attorney with no record. Still… one nervous guy. Rob uncrumpled the sheet and slipped it into the back of Kelly's file, then went over the new information he'd dug up on Dr. Gates—or rather, Lazlo Gati.
It hadn't been easy. Little Lazlo's immigration papers said he was seven years old when he arrived in the United States. He took the oath of citizenship at age 21 and had his name changed to Lawrence Gates that same year. Beyond that, Rob had come up blank. Then he'd remembered Doc Winters' passing remark about an older brother and sister who'd died in West Virginia a while back. A department contact at a Wheeling newspaper faxed him a couple of articles. The first to come through was three years old and concerned Marta Gati's death in a fire that gutted her house. The circumstances were deemed suspicious, especially since the young handyman and the maid had disappeared. Interesting, but it told Rob nothing about Dr. Gates. Then another article came through, a few years older than the first, concerning the death of the senior Gati sibling, Karl, an independent mine owner who suffered a fatal heart attack.
Rob hit paydirt in the second article. It contained an interview with Karl's sister, Marta, wherein she chronicled the family history. A fascinating story.
The Gati family had run one of Hungary's major mining concerns since the turn of the century. Somehow, through bribery and political influence, they managed to survive the Nazi occupation with all six members alive and the family fortune hidden away nearly intact. When the communists took over, however, they decided to flee. They gathered up all the gold and jewels they had squirreled away before the war and headed for the border. Mama and Papa Gati sent the kids across first. They were supposed to follow soon after but they never showed up. The children later learned that they had been captured and shot. Karl, the oldest of the three brothers at twenty, took over as head of the family. There was no opposition. Lazlo was just a boy at the time, and Marta and the other brother, Gabor, both suffered from unspecified but apparently disabling birth defects. The article mentioned that Marta was confined to a wheelchair.)
Karl turned the gold and jewels into cash and brought the family to the United States. He settled them in West Virginia where he invested their money in the familiar business of mining. He did very well, moving from comfortably well-off to extremely wealthy. Lazlo was accepted at NYU premed and moved to New York, taking the sickly Gabor with him. They all felt Gabor could get the best care in the various New York medical centers when the need arose, but apparently he died anyway. Marta was proud of her younger brother, Lazlo—she never referred to him by his American name—who was now a respected new York psychiatrist. And now that Karl was dead, Marta was all alone in the big house he had built for her, but she was not afraid. She had a loyal staff to take care of the place for her.
Rob shook his head as he folded the glossy fax sheets and slipped them back into the folder. Some loyal staff! The place burned to the ground a few years later, taking her with it.
He had one more slip of paper on the Gati family: a copy of Gabor Gati's death certificate, dated eight years ago.
Immediate cause of death: cardiopulmonary collapse;
secondary to: overwhelming infection;
secondary to: multiple congenital defects.
So, Dr. Lawrence Gates' older sister and both his brothers had all died suddenly a few years apart, leaving Gates as the only heir to a considerable fortune. How convenient.
This was all a sidebar, though. There might or might not be something fishy there, but it had no bearing on the Kelly Wade case, at least none that Rob could see.
He had the file cover half closed when the signature of the attending physician on the death certificate caught his eye. He looked closer, blinking. No, he was wasn't mistaken. The signature read:
Lawrence Gates, M.D.
Now that might not have been illegal, but it sure as hell was irregular to have one brother sign the other's death certificate.
Rob decided he'd better have another talk with Doc Winters about his former resident.
February 15
5:33 A.M.
She was awake.
And as soon as she realized it, Kara threw down the quilt and top sheet and felt the soles of her feet. She couldn't see in the predawn gray, but they seemed okay. She snapped on the bedside lamp and looked.
Clean. Thank God, they were clean!
The sense of relief brought her close to tears.
She'd never paid much attention to washing her feet, it was just part of her shower routine. But last night she'd washed them carefully, inspecting them again before she turned out the light. They'd been clean.
Sleep had been a long time coming, kept at bay by the nightmare possibility that sleep might release another someone within her, might allow that someone to use her body. No matter how often Kara dismissed the idea, it crept back. Exhaustion finally overpowered apprehension and she drifted off.
But it was okay, now. Her feet were clean. They had been spotless last night, and they were spotless now.
She hopped out of bed. Her muscles ached from the aerobic and Nautilus work-out she'd put herself through at the gym yesterday. But it was good pain. Constructive pain.
She took a deep breath. Sunday. This was going to be a good day. She'd been too tense to do much writing yesterday. But with the early start she was getting now, she'd make up for that today.
She padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth and throw some water on her face. The medicine cabinet over the sink was open. Jill must have been up during the night and not pushed it closed firmly enough. She grabbed the toothpaste tube and slammed the door shut.
And stared.
Someone had written in lipstick on the door's mirrored surface.
Kara felt the toothpaste slip from her fingers as she stood there and trembled. It took all her strength of will to keep from screaming. She leaned on the sink and steadied herself. She had to be calm. She had to control this situation. Most of all she had to protect Jill from it. She couldn't let Jill see the writing, and she couldn't let Jill see her mother like this.