"Yes?" he said, concern tightening his deep voice.
"It's Dwyer."
"What?" He went from concern to anger. "I just stepped out of session because my nurse told me-"
"Forget what your nurse told you. You and I need to talk."
"I'm sorry for what happened to Karen."
"Not good enough."
"Exactly what does that mean, Mr. Dwyer?"
"It means that she died of an overdose of Librium."
"And so?"
"And so I'll bet you have a lot of Librium on hand."
"You're implying that I killed Karen?"
"It's a possibility."
"I loved Karen."
"That doesn't mean you wouldn't kill her."
"People don't ordinarily kill people they love, Mr. Dwyer."
"Of course they do. Spend a week in a squad car. You see it all the time."
"I didn't kill her."
"Did you ever treat Karen as a patient?"
"No.
"Be very careful here, Doctor."
"Are you threatening me?"
"Yes. Because if I think you're lying to me, I'm going to call the police and tell them I think I've put it all together. At the very least, the publicity won't do your practice a lot of good."
He sighed. "I'm not sure what you mean by 'treat.' "
"Psychoanalyzed her."
"That's an occupational hazard, Mr. Dwyer."
"Don't be coy, Doctor. You know what I mean."
A pause. "We were both lovers and friends, Mr. Dwyer. It was only natural that she tell me things about herself and her past."
"Did you ever give her any kind of medication that might loosen her inhibitions?"
"I don't know if I want to answer that question."
"I assume, then, that that means yes."
"I was trying to help her. As her friend."
What a powerful grip psychiatrists can have on people. Particularly people they might love. In the name of helping them, they can enslave them through deceit and manipulation and drugs forever.
"You knew you couldn't keep her otherwise, didn't you?"
"That's very damned insulting. Both professionally and personally."
"I'm going to be at your condo at six. I expect you to be there and I expect you to talk. I'm going to ask you some questions, and if I'm not happy with the answers, I'm going straight to the police."
I didn't say good-bye. I just hung up.
Two minutes later Dave Haskins came flying out of the parking ramp in a new blue Oldsmobile. Three minutes after that, I found a nice snug place a quarter mile behind him on the expressway and decided to settle in and find out where he was taking us.
Chapter 22
From bluffs of oak and birch you look down into a deep valley where the river runs wide and green and deep in the springtime. Every few years you see sandbag crews work around the clock to minimize the flood damage. During flood years the river itself becomes a political issue and has defeated at least two candidates in recent memory.
The marina was busy today. People were hammering, painting, scraping, washing boats of all sizes. Music from fifty radios clashed, and shouts loud as boyhood boasts floated on the soft air and then fell away like birds vanishing. Sunlight and water and sails caught the breeze. More than enough to make most reasonable people happy.
I parked up in the bluffs and got out, taking my binoculars with me. Haskins had pulled into the marina's private parking lot. Without a card to open the automatic device, I was never going to get in there.
I brought the 'nocs into focus and began following him from his car, down along the pier, past several clusters of chittering houseboat owners, to a small leg of pier where a splendid white yacht overwhelmed everything within sight.
Two men stood on the prow of the yacht. Ted Forester, tan, trim, silver-haired, wearing the sort of casual Western getup you associate with very rich Texans. And Larry Price, smoking one of those 100-mm cigarettes, blue windbreaker contrasting with his movie-star blond hair and his weary sneer. By age forty-three he had to be tired of hating people as much as he did. He had to.
It happened very quickly.
Dave Haskins had not quite gotten aboard when Larry Price reached out and slapped him. He hit him hard enough that Haskins fell back into Forester's arms. Then Forester grabbed Haskins and shoved him against the cabin. All this was in pantomime. It was not unlike a silent movie. Everything looked very broad and theatrical.
I had no idea what was happening here, but I felt certain it had something to do with a missing suitcase and with an accidental overdose that wasn't accidental at all and with the mysterious mission of a crazed woman on a black Honda motorcycle.
I got back in the Toyota and drove the rest of the way down the hills, swerving once to avoid a squirrel who sat by the roadside looking much cuter than any rodent had a right to, and then easing on into the traffic flow, flanked on one side by a BMW and on the other by a Porsche. These guys probably thought I was here to clean out some houseboat toilets that had gotten plugged up over the years.
I parked just outside the private gate. From the glove compartment I took the Smith amp; Wesson.38 I'd used back in my days on the force, pushed it down inside my belt, and then set off over the gravel to the yacht a quarter mile away.
The people I passed were as festive as carnival goers, smiling, laughing, saying hi though they didn't know me, standing atop houseboats watching speedboats cutting through the long miles of river lying east. There had been paddle wheelers here as recently as a hundred years ago, and now the smell of fish and the scent of mud and the white flash of birch made you want to be a boy of that era and see one of the big wheelers come sidling into the cove half a mile downriver.
When I got to the leg of the pier where the yacht sat, I touched the.38 as if for luck. They were below deck now, the vast white boat empty up top, its three red mast pennants flapping with the force of gunshots in the wind.
When I got abreast of the yacht, I moved quickly, jumping aboard without pause. Then I stood there, waiting to find out if they'd heard me. If they had, they'd come up through the small oak cabin doors. And they would not be happy.
From what I could see, the yacht had a large aft deck, an upper salon and lounge, and carried decals that designated Twin Cummins main engines. There was a lower dining salon, and it was there I assumed the three of them had gone.
Everything was given over to the wind here, the cold clear force of it, and the scent of water. I heard nothing from below.
Then a voice said, "You planning a party tonight?"
When I turned to him, I saw that he was a dapper elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt and white ducks and baby blue deck shoes. Liver spots like tattoos decorated his hairy white forearms. When he saw who I was he frowned, obviously disappointed.
"Oh, I thought you were one of the Forester party." His tone implied that I owed him an explanation for not being such.
Damn, I thought. My idea had been to get as close to the cabin as possible and hear what was going on. Standing here talking was bound to get them up from below deck. I wouldn't learn anything at all.
But then I got lucky.
A woman of similar age called to the man from down the dock. He waved to her.
"I'm with maintenance," I said quickly.
"Oh," he said, "maintenance." He said it as if he knew exactly what I was talking about. I was glad he did. Then, "My wife. She wants me to help her paint the walls. On our houseboat."
I wished he weren't talking so loudly. I wished he would leave.
She called again and he shrugged, as if embarrassed a woman would have such power over a man, and then he left. I stood there counting minutes on my Timex again, waiting for them to burst through the cabin doors and demand to know what I was doing there.