Tal stepped back, arms crossed, staring numbly at the find.
Another officer walked outside. “Found these hidden behind the desk downstairs.”
In his latex-gloved hands Tal took the documents. They were the Bensons’ files from the Cardiac Support Center. He opened and read through the first pages.
LaTour said something but the statistician didn’t hear. He’d hoped up until now that the facts were wrong, that this was all a huge misunderstanding. But true mathematicians will always accept where the truth leads, even if it shatters their most heart-felt theorem.
There was no doubt that Mac McCaffrey was the killer.
She’d been the person who’d just bought the suicide book. And it was here, in her house, that they’d found the jacket, the Luminux bottles and the euthanasia articles. As for the Bensons’ files, her name was prominently given as the couple’s nurse/counselor. She’d lied about working with them.
The homicide cop spoke again.
“What’d you say?” Tal muttered.
“Where is she, you think?”
“At the hospital, I’d guess. The Cardiac Support Center.”
“So you ready?” LaTour asked.
“For what?”
“To make your first collar.”
The blue cheese, in fact, turned out to be a bust.
But Nurse Mac — the only way Robert Covey could think of her now — seemed to enjoy the other food he’d laid out.
“Nobody’s ever made appetizers for me,” she said, touched.
“They don’t make gentlemen like me anymore.”
And bless her, here was a woman who didn’t whine about her weight. She smeared a big slab of pate on a cracker and ate it right down, then went for the shrimp.
Covey sat back on the couch in the den, a bit perplexed. He recalled her feistiness from their first meeting and was anticipating — and looking forward to — a fight about diet and exercise. But she made only one exercise comment — after she’d opened the back door.
“Beautiful yard.”
“Thanks. Ver was the landscaper.”
“That’s a nice pool. You like to swim?”
He told her he loved to, though since he’d been diagnosed with the heart problem he didn’t swim alone, worried he’d faint or have a heart attack and drown.
Nurse Mac had nodded. But there was something else on her mind. She finally turned away from the pool. “You’re probably wondering what’s on the agenda for this session?”
“Yes’m, I am.”
“Well, I’ll be right up front. I’m here to talk you into doing something you might not want to do.”
“Ah, negotiating, are we? This involve the fourth glass of port?”
She smiled. “It’s a little more important than that. But now that you’ve brought it up...” She rose and walked to the bar. “You don’t mind, do you?” She picked up a bottle of old Taylor-Fladgate, lifted an eyebrow.
“I’ll mind if you pour it down the drain. I don’t mind if we drink some.”
“Why don’t you refill the food,” she said. “I’ll play bartender.”
When Covey returned from the kitchen Nurse Mac had poured him a large glass of port. She handed it to him then poured one for herself. She lifted hers. He did too and the crystal rang.
They both sipped.
“So what’s this all about, you acting so mysterious?”
“What’s it about?” she mused. “It’s about eliminating pain, finding peace. And sometimes you just can’t do that alone. Sometimes you need somebody to help you.”
“Can’t argue with the sentiment. What’ve you got in mind? Specific, I mean.”
Mac leaned forward, tapped her glass to his. “Drink up.” They downed the ruby-colored liquor.
“Go, go, go!”
“You wanna drive?” LaTour shouted over the roar of the engine. They skidded sharply around the parkway, over the curb and onto the grass, nearly scraping the side of the unmarked car against a jutting rock.
“At least I know how to drive,” Tal called. Then: “Step on it!”
“Shut the fuck up. Let me concentrate.”
As the wheel grated against another curb Tal decided that shutting up was a wise idea and fell silent.
Another squad car was behind them.
“There, that’s the turn-off.” Tal pointed.
LaTour controlled the skid and somehow managed to keep them out of the oncoming traffic lane.
Another three hundred yards. Tal directed the homicide cop down the winding road then up a long driveway, at the end of which was a small, dark-blue sedan. The same car the witnesses had seen outside the Bensons’ house, the same car that had left the tread marks at the Whitley’s the day they died.
Killing the siren, LaTour skidded to a stop in front of the car. The squad car parked close behind, blocking the sedan in.
All four officers leapt out. As they ran past the vehicle Tal glanced in the backseat and saw the tan baseball cap that the driver of the car, Mac McCaffrey, had worn outside the Bensons’ house, the day she’d engineered their deaths.
In a movement quite smooth for such a big man LaTour unlatched the door and shoved inside, not even breaking stride. He pulled his gun from his holster.
They and the uniformed officers charged into the living room and then the den.
They stopped, looking at the two astonished people on the couch.
One was Robert Covey, who was unharmed.
The other, the woman who’d been about to kill him, was standing over him, eyes wide. Mac was just offering the old man one of the tools of her murderous trade: a glass undoubtedly laced with enough Luminux to render him half conscious and suggestible to suicide. Tal noticed that the back door was open, revealing a large swimming pool. So, not a gun or carbon monoxide. Death by drowning this time.
“Tal!” she gasped.
But he said nothing. He let LaTour step forward to cuff her and arrest her. The homicide cop was, of course, much better versed in such matters of protocol.
The homicide detective looked through her purse and found the suicide book inside.
Robert Covey was in the ambulance outside, being checked out by the medics. He’d seemed okay but they were taking their time, just to make sure.
After they found the evidence at Mac’s house, Tal and LaTour had sped to the hospital. She was out but Dr. Dehoeven at the CRC had pulled her client list and they’d gone through her calendar, learning that she was meeting with Covey at that moment. He hadn’t answered the phone, and they’d raced to the elderly man’s house.
LaTour would’ve been content to ship Mac off to Central Booking but Tal was a bit out of control; he couldn’t help confronting her. “You did know Don and Sy Benson. Don was your client. You lied to me.”
Mac started to speak then looked down, her tearful eyes on the floor.
“We found Benson’s files in your house. And the computer logs at CSC showed you erased his records. You were at their house the day they died. It was you the witness saw in the hat and sunglasses. And the Whitleys? You killed them too.”
“I didn’t kill anybody!”
“Okay, fine — you helped them kill themselves. You drugged them and talked them into it. And then cleaned up after.” He turned to the uniformed deputy. “Take her to Booking.”
And she was led away, calling, “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Bullshit,” LaTour muttered.
Though, staring after her as the car eased down the long drive, Tal reflected that in a way — some abstract, moral sense — she truly did believe she hadn’t done anything wrong.
But to the people of the state of New York, the evidence was irrefutable. Nurse Claire “Mac” McCaffrey had murdered four people and undoubtedly intended to murder scores of others. She’d gotten the Bensons doped up on Friday and helped them kill themselves. Then on Sunday she’d called the Whitleys from a pay phone, made sure they were home then went over there and arranged for their suicides too. She’d cleaned up the place, taken the Luminux and hadn’t left until after they died: (Tal had learned that the opera show she listened to wasn’t on until 7:00 P.M. Not 4:00, as she’d told him. That’s why he hadn’t been able to find it when he’d surfed the frequencies in LaTour’s car.)