On the Street Where You Live

  “Did Dr. Madden keep drugs here?”

  “No drugs. She was a psychologist, a Ph.D., not a medical doctor. Of course, the person who did it may not have known that, but . . .” He shrugged.

  “The secretary, Joan Hodges, found her,” Willette continued. “Hodges ran outside and collapsed on the street. She’s being treated in there.” He nodded toward the open door that led to the living quarters on the other side of the vestibule. “Why don’t you talk to her?”

  “I intend to.”

  Joan Hodges was propped up on pillows on the bed in the guest bedroom, a medic from the ambulance team at her side. A Belmar policeman standing at the foot of the bed was about to put away his notebook.

  “I do not want to go to the hospital,” she was saying as Duggan and Walsh entered the room. “I’ll be all right. It was just the shock of finding her . . .” Her voice trailed off, and tears began to run down her cheeks. “It’s so awful,” she whispered. “Why would anyone do that to her?”

  Tommy Duggan looked at the Belmar cop, whom he knew slightly. “I’ve already talked to Ms. Hodges,” the cop said. “I guess you have some questions for her too.”

  “I do.” Tommy pulled up a chair, sat down by the bed, and introduced himself.

  His voice sympathetic and understanding, he expressed sorrow and shock, then began to question Joan gently.

  It was immediately clear that Joan Hodges had a very definite opinion about the reason for Lillian Madden’s murder.

  Her voice growing firmer as anger mingled with grief, Joan said, “There is a serial killer out there, and I’m beginning to think he is a reincarnation of the one who lived in the 1890s. The media kept calling Dr. Madden and asking her about that on Thursday and all day yesterday. They all wanted her opinion about him.”

  “Do you mean she might have known him?” Tommy Duggan asked.

  “I don’t know what I mean, frankly. Maybe she could have told them something that would have helped the police find him. I had a bad feeling about Dr. Madden going to her class last night. I told her I thought she ought to cancel it. Maybe somebody followed her home.”

  Hodges had a point, Tommy thought. The killer could easily have attended the lecture.

  “Joan, you saw the way the office records were thrown around. The killer was obviously looking for something, maybe even his own file. Can you think of any of the doctor’s patients who might have threatened her? Or is one of them perhaps psychotic enough to have turned on her for some reason?”

  Joan Hodges brushed back hair from her forehead. I was going to have it frosted, she thought. With all her being she wished that the clock could be turned back, that the day could unfold as it had been planned, that right now she was out shopping for the new dress she needed for her best friend’s second wedding.

  Dr. Madden, she thought. Her patients loved her. She was so kind, so understanding. Oh sure, there’d been a few who had stopped coming, but that happens with any psychologist. Dr. Madden used to say that some people just want reinforcement of their inappropriate behavior, not insight into how to change it.

  “I don’t know of a single patient who would ever have wanted to harm Dr. Madden,” she told Tom. “It’s that serial killer. I know it is. He’s afraid that she figured out something about him.”

  That makes sense, if he’d been a patient of hers at some time, Tom thought. “Joan, where else would a patient’s name appear, besides in his own file?”

  “In the appointment book I keep, and in the computer.”

  Tommy Duggan stood up. “Joan, we’re going to find this guy. I promise you that. Your job is to start concentrating on the patients. I don’t care how insignificant you may think it is, if anything at all odd about any one of them occurs to you, call me up right away, okay?”

  He put his card on the night table beside the bed.

  When he and Pete returned to the doctor’s office, the body bag holding the remains of Lillian Madden was being carried out.

  “We’re finished here,” the head of the forensic team told him. “I doubt that we have anything useful for you guys. My guess is that this guy was smart enough to wear gloves.”

  “Whatever he was looking for in the files, he probably found,” Chief Willette said. “The cabinets with the patients’ files are in the doctor’s private office, and the key was in the master lock. Either the guy found it in the top drawer of Dr. Madden’s desk, or it was already in the lock.”

  “Do you know if she often worked at night?” Pete Walsh asked.

  “Dr. Madden lectured last night at the community college. Looks like she came back from the college, then went straight to her office. Her coat and briefcase are in the reception area. I wonder what was so important? She was obviously at her desk working when she was killed. Probably never heard the intruder.”

  “How’d he enter?”

  “Nothing forced. Maybe an unlocked window? We found three or four of them. The alarm was turned off.”

  “He was a patient,” Tommy said positively. “Maybe someone who said too much under hypnosis and was worried. Otherwise, why go through the files? Joan Hodges said that if he was a patient, his name will be listed in the appointment books.”

  “He tried to smash the computers,” Willette said.

  Tommy nodded. He was not surprised. “Unless the hard drive is broken, we may be able to bring them up,” he said.

  “I’m going to help you.” Joan Hodges, still ghostly pale, but determined, had followed them.

  An hour later a frustrated Tommy Duggan was certain of only one fact: the murderer of Lillian Madden had been a patient sometime in the last five years. All the appointment books covering that time period were missing, both Dr. Madden’s personal copies and the ones Joan Hodges kept.

  Joan looked ready to cave in.

  “We have to leave, and you should go home,” Tommy told her. “Let Pete drive your car.” An uneasy feeling had been settling over him. “How long have you been with Dr. Madden, Joan?” he asked.

  “Six years next week.”

  “Did Dr. Madden discuss her patients with you?”

  “Never.”

  As he drove through Belmar, following Joan’s car to her condominium in Wall Township, Tommy wondered if Dr. Madden’s killer might begin to worry that her secretary might also have been her confidante.

  I’ll tell the local guys to keep an eye on her place, he decided. He tightened his hands on the steering wheel as he felt a primitive need to lash out, to punch something with his fists. “I’ve been with the killer,” he said aloud, spitting out the words. “I’ve sensed his presence. I just don’t know who the hell he is.”

  thirty-three ________________

  MARTY BROWSKI of Albany, New York, did not know Tommy Duggan of Monmouth County, New Jersey, but they were kindred spirits, detectives to the core, with the absolute tenacity of bulldogs when they set out to solve a crime.

  They had something else in common. When they got that almost mystical feeling that there was something wrong about a crime—one that apparently had been satisfactorily solved—they could not rest until they had reexamined every aspect of it, looking for a miscarriage of justice.

  Since the phone call from Emily Graham about the photograph that had been slipped under her door in Spring Lake, Marty Browski had been deeply disturbed.

  He had been convinced that Ned Koehler was the stalker and that they’d caught him just in time, before he had a chance to kill Emily. But now he wasn’t so sure.

  On Saturday afternoon, Marty talked it over with his wife, Janey, as they took their Labrador, Ranger, for a long walk through the park near their home in Troy. “When we arrested Koehler, he was outside Emily Graham’s townhouse. He claimed that he’d only planned to frighten her. He said he had no intention of going inside.”

  “You believed him, Marty. Everyone did. He was convicted of stalking her,” Janey observed.

  “He changed his story when I talked to him yesterday. He added to it,
saying he wanted Emily to experience how frightened his mother was before she died.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “Spring’s coming,” Marty observed, sniffing the air. “Be good to get the boat out.” He grimaced. “Janey, Ned Koehler supposedly arrived home and found his mother dead, the knife in her chest. He went crazy: picked her up, carried her body out of the apartment, yelling for help. Joel Lake had been in that apartment, had burglarized it. It’s a miracle Emily Graham got him acquitted of the murder charge.”

  “As I remember, the jury believed Ruth Koehler’s sister when she testified that she’d spoken to Ruth after Joel Lake was seen leaving the building.”

  “I didn’t think they’d buy that story at the time. I thought that old lady was as reliable as a weather report.”

  Janey Browski smiled. She and Marty had been childhood sweethearts and were married the week after they graduated from high school. At age forty-nine, she had three grown children and four grandchildren, a fact belied by her disarmingly youthful appearance. She was a sophomore at Sienna College now, working for a bachelor’s degree, the same as Marty had earned when he attended evening classes during the first five years of their marriage.

  She knew that Marty’s ultimate expression of disbelief was to compare sworn testimony to a weather report.

  “Are you saying that Ruth Koehler may have surprised Joel Lake while he was burglarizing her apartment and that he was the killer?”

  “I was sure he was. We collared him a couple of blocks away. He had the stuff he’d taken from the apartment on him. The fact that he had no bloodstains didn’t mean anything because the knife had been thrown at Ruth Koehler and caught her in the chest.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “Joel Lake wore gloves during the burglary. Anyhow, Ned Koehler compromised the crime scene by pulling the knife out of his mother’s body and carrying her out of the apartment into the hall. We all bought his story that he had found her and become hysterical.”

  Janey Browski bent down and picked up a stick to throw to Ranger, who was clearly looking for them to play games with him.

  She wound up and tossed the stick. It sailed high and clear and well beyond Ranger, who raced to catch it with a happy bark.

  “The Mets could use you,” Marty said admiringly.

  “Sure they could. You had pegged Ned Koehler as a weirdo but also a grieving son who stalked the lawyer who got his mother’s killer acquitted.”

  ‘’Right.”

  “Is the know-it-all detective about to face the fact that he might have rushed to an erroneous conclusion?”

  Ranger was loping back to them, the stick in his teeth.

  Marty Browski sighed. “Janey, why didn’t your mother teach you to respect your husband? Ned Koehler is a weirdo and a liar. After seeing him yesterday, I now believe he is also a murderer, his mother’s murderer. And—”

  “What else?” Janey asked.

  “I also think that he may not be the stalker who was making Emily Graham’s life hell. I think that whoever shoved a picture of her under her door the other night was the real stalker. I’ve talked to the Spring Lake police. Think about it. If somebody from around here followed her down to Spring Lake, found out where she was staying, even what room she was in, then stood on the beach hoping to catch her at the window, got her picture, developed it, and shoved it under her door the next night while a policeman was on the premises—what does that say to you?”

  “Obsession. Recklessness. Cunning.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So whoever stalked her up here didn’t mind making the drive to Spring Lake. If you eliminate Ned Koehler, where do you start looking for him?”

  “Maybe Joel Lake? He’s the one she got acquitted. He’s slime. He got a light sentence for the burglary and was out on the streets when the stalking started. Then I’m taking a good look at Gary White.”

  ‘’Oh, come on, Marty! Emily Graham and Gary White have been divorced for over three years. I heard he broke up with Barbara what’s-her-name and is playing the field. He’s just a minor-league Don Juan.”

  “He sued Emily Graham for five million dollars, half of what she made when she sold her dot-com stock. Which incidentally was the smartest thing she ever did in her life,” Marty added. “It’s really taken a beating lately.”

  They had reached the T junction in the park, where they always turned around and started back home. In an instinctive gesture, they each reached for the other’s hand.

  “And your next stop is . . . ?” Janey asked.

  “To look at the files on Ruth Koehler’s death, with the premise that her son, Ned, may well be the killer. And to reopen the stalking case.”

  “Sounds sensible to me.”

  “And to warn Emily Graham,” Marty Browski added grimly.

  thirty-four ________________

  AT THREE O’CLOCK a total of twenty-five people, including the five catering employees, were gathered in Will Stafford’s living room. Chairs from the dining room had remedied the need for extra seating. Somewhat ill at ease, and glad to feel useful, the catering staff had rushed to get the chairs and had deliberately set five of them to one side for themselves.

  Tommy Duggan stood at the fireplace, the focal point of the room. He looked the group over, the image of Dr. Lillian Madden’s body in his mind. There was a good chance that whoever murdered her was in this room right now—a thought that both exhilarated and sickened him.

  But he had a tangible clue—the scarf found buried with Martha Lawrence’s body. If just one person remembered that someone had been wearing a silver scarf with metallic beading on it that night, he would have a link to the killer.

  “I appreciate that you all were kind enough to join us,” he began, his tone conciliatory. “The reason we are here together is that you were the last people to spend time with Martha Lawrence. You were present at the party at the Lawrence home only hours before she disappeared and, as we now know, was murdered.

  “I have talked with all of you individually during these past four and a half years. My hope is that by bringing you together, something you noticed that night, then forgot, may surface in your minds. Perhaps Martha mentioned her plans for meeting someone later that night or the next day.

  “What I’d like to do is take you into Will’s study, one at a time, and ask you to give me the details of any conversation you had with Martha that night at the party, and any conversation you may have overheard her having with someone else.”

  He paused. “I then want to go over with each one of you exactly where you were the next morning between the hours of six and nine.”

  Tommy’s eyes scanned the room for reactions. Robert Frieze was obviously furious. The skin over his high cheekbones was turning a deep shade of crimson; his lips were compressed in a thin, angry line. He had claimed he’d been working in his flower beds that morning. His wife had been asleep. With the high hedges around his house, no one else would have been able to see him to verify his alibi. Mr. McGregor in his cabbage patch. Tommy did not know why he always thought of the Beatrix Potter character when he pictured Robert Frieze in his backyard, but there it was. The image was stuck somehow.

  Dennis and Isabelle Hughes, the Lawrences’ neighbors, were frowning in concentration. Both seemed anxious to help. She was a talker. Maybe seeing everyone together like this would trigger a memory.

  One guy on the catering staff, the assistant boss, Reed Turner, had always been something of a question mark. Fortyish, not bad-looking, he considered himself a ladies’ man. Tommy noticed he looked worried now. Why?

  Dr. Wilcox hid behind a philosophic expression as he had whenever Tommy had questioned him during these past four and a half years. He’d admitted to being out for a long walk that morning, but not on the boardwalk, just around town. Maybe. Maybe not?

  Mrs. Wilcox. Brunhilde. I’d hate to get in her way, Tommy thought. She appears to be one tough cookie. The look on her face right now would stop a clock. Reminds me
of Mrs. Orbach. Mrs. Orbach had been his fifth-grade teacher. What a battle-ax, he thought.

  Will Stafford. Good-looking. A single guy. The women were attracted to him. Natalie Frieze had given him a mighty warm kiss when she came in. Right in front of her husband, too. Had Martha Lawrence been attracted to him? Tommy wondered.

  There were four other couples, each wife distinctly remembering that her husband never left the house early that morning. Would they lie rather than let their husbands come under any hint of suspicion? Maybe.

  Tommy could visualize any one of these men saying to his wife, “Just because I went out for an early walk for ten minutes doesn’t mean I want the whole town to wonder if I might have committed a murder. I didn’t run into anybody. Let’s just agree that I wasn’t out of your sight all morning.”

  Mrs. Joyce. Late seventies. Longtime friend of the senior Lawrences. After the initial investigation, he’d never had much chance to talk to her. She didn’t have a home here anymore. Stayed at The Breakers for a month or so every summer. She’d come up for the memorial Mass.

  “Why don’t I start with you, Mr. Turner?” Tommy asked, then turned to Pete Walsh. “All set?”

  They had decided how they would conduct the sessions. Not quite good cop-bad cop, but Pete would sit behind the person being interviewed, the notes of all the previous statements in his hand, and interrupt whenever he found a discrepancy.

  That technique always rattled anyone who was trying to conceal something.

  Tommy had two questions to ask each of them. The first was, “Do you remember any of the women at the party that night wearing a silver scarf with metallic beading on the edges?” The second, “Have you ever been a patient of Dr. Lillian Madden’s or had a consultation with her?”

  As Tommy started to walk across the room to the study, Robert Frieze stopped him. “I must insist that you ask your questions of me before anyone else. I have a restaurant to run, and Saturday night is very busy. I believe I pointed that out to you on the phone the other day.”