At the Stroke of Madness

  “From what we can tell, this killer bashes in his victims’ skulls from behind and then hides their bodies. We’re not talking about a killer with a lot of arrogant false courage. If you were him, would you go after the strong, young burly construction worker or the old man with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease?”

  “You also said that he could panic. That he might kill again.”

  “Yes. And I think he may have taken the woman I’m looking for, Joan Begley. She may have driven to Hubbard Park to meet him Saturday night.”

  “Hubbard Park?”

  “I found a note in her hotel room with Hubbard Park, West Peak and 11:30 written on it. The time fits with when she was last heard from. Could you check the park?”

  “For her car?”

  “Yes. Or her body.”

  Maggie could see Watermeier’s eyes narrowing. He shifted his weight and leaned against the counter again, only this time he looked like he was seriously considering what she had said.

  “You know I was with the NYPD for more than thirty years?”

  The question startled Maggie. Watermeier was looking somewhere over her head, out the window, maybe watching Bonzado and Racine. Maybe. And although he hesitated, she knew he wasn’t waiting for an answer.

  “I’ve seen a lot of weird crap in my time, O’Dell.” He glanced at her, then the eyes went back out the window. “It was my wife, Rosie’s, idea for us to move out here. I didn’t like it much at first. Her idea that I run for sheriff, too. I didn’t like that at first, either. Too goddamn slow of a pace. Then 9/11 happened. I lost a lot of old buddies. In one day. Gone.”

  He scratched at his jaw, but this time he didn’t look back at Maggie. “I could have been with them that day. And I would have been gone, too. Just like that. I ended up spending weeks there…there in that mess. Rosie hated it, but she knew it was something I had to do. I kept going back week after week. Had to. Had to help find my buddies. It was the least I could do.

  “We kept searching every stinking day, as if we’d rescue them though all we’d find were scraps, bits and pieces. Thirty years on the force and I thought I’d seen it all. But there wasn’t anything could prepare me for that mess. Faces melted off. A foot left in a laced-up boot. A severed hand still gripping the melted impression of a cell phone. I’ve seen a lot of crap, O’Dell. So this,” he said, nodding at the roasting pot on the stove, “doesn’t shock me. Neither does anything we’ve found in those barrels.

  “But the difference here—” and now he looked at Maggie, making sure he had her attention “—this here I’m being asked to explain. Like there is some fucking explanation. I’m expected to figure this out. And then I’m expected to stop this asshole.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say. Was she supposed to tell him it’d be okay? That, of course, they’d find the killer? That she already had a more detailed profile drawn up in her mind? That her profiles were always right? She wasn’t even sure they could protect Luc Racine.

  Adam Bonzado came in the back door, checking over his shoulder. Racine stayed seated on a bench on the stone terrace, his Jack Russell on his lap. The two of them stared out at the pond, the dog’s head turning and following the geese as they flew overhead, but Racine continued to stare straight ahead.

  Bonzado looked at Maggie and then Watermeier. “Mind if I take that back to the lab?”

  “Help yourself. Stolz’s not gonna be much help with this one. I need to get one of the techs to bag the roaster. O’Dell here thinks it might have the killer’s fingerprints.” There was no sarcasm in Watermeier’s voice this time.

  “What about the old man?” Bonzado asked the sheriff.

  “What about him?”

  “You have anyone to stay with him tonight?”

  “My guys are pulling double duty as it is. I can’t be asking—”

  “I’ll stay with him tonight,” Maggie said, surprising herself with the offer almost as much as she surprised the two men.

  CHAPTER 46

  Agents did it all the time—looked out for one another, covered one another’s backs. Oftentimes that extended to one another’s families. But Detective Julia Racine was with the District Police Department, not the FBI. And although she and Maggie had worked a couple of cases together, they were far from friends, tolerating each other as colleagues. Detective Racine had climbed the career ladder by breaking rules that stood in her way. She could be reckless at times, ruthless at others. But last year in a park rest room in Cleveland, Ohio, Julia Racine had stopped Maggie’s mother from slitting her own wrists. Maggie didn’t like owing favors. She owed Julia Racine. It seemed appropriate that she pay her back by protecting her father from a killer. Besides, Maggie sort of liked the old guy. He was nothing like his daughter.

  She brought a tray out to him where he continued to sit and stare despite the fact that the landscape he seemed so interested in was disappearing into the night shadows. He had refused to go back into the house until the skull was removed and the smell of boiled human flesh could no longer be detected. Maggie had left the stove’s ventilation fan on High and opened all the windows that weren’t painted shut. She honestly couldn’t smell it anymore, but Luc said he could.

  “I made us sandwiches,” she told him as she set the tray on the bench between them. Other than milk and juice, the cold cuts, mayonnaise and bread were all there had been in the refrigerator.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said with barely a glance at the food. Then he went back to what looked like a vigil, sitting straight-backed as if on alert and listening for something out of the ordinary. Instead there were only crickets chirping and nocturnal birds calling out to one another. Scrapple sat on Luc’s lap, previously content but now interested in the tray of food, wiggling enough to get his owner’s attention. Luc reached over and pulled off the edge of some ham for the dog, instructing him, “Chew it. Don’t just swallow.” But the dog gulped and waited for more.

  “So I wasn’t imagining things. He was in my house,” he said without looking at Maggie.

  “Yes.”

  It seemed a relief to him. Had he honestly believed he had imagined it? He even took a bite of the sandwich for himself and then pulled off another piece for Scrapple.

  “But why? Why’s he picking on me?”

  “You and Calvin Vargus intruded on his private hiding place. He might simply be doing the same to you.”

  “Do you think he wants to hurt me? You know, like those others?”

  Maggie looked for signs of fear, but now he seemed more interested in eating.

  “He might just want to scare you,” she told him, but she wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t convinced the killer wasn’t still hiding in the shadows, watching despite Sheriff Watermeier’s men having checked the premises.

  “I think I saw him,” Luc said matter-of-factly, but it made Maggie sit up.

  “Where? When?”

  “Yesterday. Maybe the day before. Just his reflection in a store window as I passed. I kept hearing footsteps…you know, following me, slowing when I slowed. Stopping when I stopped.”

  Maggie tried to contain her excitement, letting him tell at his own pace, but she was impatient. He had already put the half-eaten sandwich back down and was staring into the dark again.

  “What did the reflection look like?” she asked.

  Luc was quiet and she thought he might be trying to remember, to conjure up the image. After a while, she asked again, “Luc, what did the reflection look like?”

  He turned to her, his eyes darting back and forth before meeting hers when he said, “I’m sorry, who did you say you were?”

  CHAPTER 47

  Tully couldn’t be sure what her reaction would be, but he knew Dr. Patterson might be easier on him than O’Dell would be. Or at least that was his excuse for calling her, asking if he could run something by her. He could have told her about it over the phone or shown her by forwarding it to her e-mail, yet when she suggested that he stop by her brownstone aga
in, he didn’t hesitate.

  She opened the door to greet him with bare feet, but still wearing her skirt and silk blouse, her usual business attire, only without the jacket and with the blouse untucked, as if she had just gotten home.

  “Come on in.” She left him and headed back to the kitchen where a pot was on the stove, emitting wonderful aromas of garlic and tomato. “Have you eaten? Because I haven’t and I’m starved for the first time in days.”

  “Smells great,” he said, not wanting to admit that he had filled up on pizza with Emma and Aleesha.

  “It’s nothing fancy. Just some spaghetti and marinara sauce.”

  Tully checked her expression, wondering if perhaps this was some gesture, some reminder. Last year in Boston he had taken her to a small Italian restaurant, where she had shown him how to twirl his spaghetti correctly onto his fork in what he remembered to be an almost erotic experience. Or at least it had been for him.

  While he looked for signs that she might also be remembering that evening, Gwen Patterson gave the sauce a quick stir, then starting slathering butter on a loaf of what looked like fresh bread. She wasn’t even paying attention to him. No, he must be wrong about her wanting to remind him of Boston. What an idiot he was. She had said she wanted to forget about it. She meant it. Why was he still thinking about it?

  “Can I help?” he asked, taking off his jacket and putting the briefcase with his laptop computer on the kitchen counter.

  “There’re some romaine hearts in the colander.” She pointed to the sink. “Would you mind pulling them apart for our salad?”

  “Sure, I can do that,” he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. Pulling apart hearts for a salad? Sure, he could do that, feeling relieved to recognize romaine hearts as lettuce. Why didn’t he pay more attention to these kinds of things and what they were called—romaine hearts and Picasso…Pablo Picasso? Maybe it was time that he did. If he could figure out who Britney was, what raves were and that the ingredients of wet included PCP and embalming fluid—which by the way, he had told Emma if he discovered her doing any drugs she would be grounded until she was thirty-five—then certainly he could figure out what made up the world of Gwen Patterson. Although Emma had already informed him that Britney was so like yesterday.

  “Nice job, Agent Tully.” She came up beside him with bottles of vinegar and oil. “I have the bread in the oven and the sauce on simmer.”

  She sprinkled the lettuce with the oil and vinegar, gently tossing it, then topping it with some freshly grated parmesan and black pepper. It smelled wonderful, and Tully felt proud for having had a bit part in its creation. How did she make this all look so effortless? Lately it seemed an effort for him to put his takeout on regular plates rather than eat it right out of its plastic containers.

  “Let’s put this in the fridge,” she told him. “And while we wait for the spaghetti, you can show me what you’ve got.”

  Tully took out the laptop computer, opened it and turned it on.

  “If the killer and this Sonny is one and the same person, then I’m almost certain he’s the one who has Joan. He says some weird stuff in a couple of his e-mails to her.”

  He kept an eye on her, wondering if it was such a good idea to talk about her patient and what this killer may have in mind for her. She looked pale, maybe just tired.

  “You sure you want to talk about this?” he asked.

  “Of course. It’s a case. I offered to help. And it might help us find Joan.” She pointed to the wine rack at the end of the counter. “Would you mind opening a bottle?”

  He checked for a red wine, pulled one out and showed her the label for approval, but she was handing him the corkscrew and reaching for wineglasses. What kind seemed of little consequence.

  “Let’s go back a step. Maggie said he’s been taking parts from his victims,” she said, looking as if she was trying very hard to be her normal professional self, though the color hadn’t yet returned to her face. “But why? This doesn’t seem like the regular sort of trophies that serial killers take.”

  “Yes,” he said, “this is different.”

  “Is he on a mission to rid the world of those with deformities or imperfections?”

  “I thought of that, but then why not show off his handiwork? Usually killers on a mission want to show off what they’ve done. This guy hides what he’s done. Not just hides the victims but goes through a lot of trouble to stuff them in barrels and then bury them under tons of rock never to be found.”

  “Sort of overkill?” she said, then smiled. “Bad pun, sorry.”

  Maybe the wine was working. The color was returning to her cheeks. He filled her glass again.

  “But it’s exactly what I’m thinking. Why the overkill? I think he’s embarrassed of what he’s doing.” He waited for her reaction. He wanted to know what Gwen Patterson, the psychologist, thought.

  “Hmm…interesting.”

  “In fact, I don’t think he gets much enjoyment or gratification from the killings. Don’t get me wrong, I still think he gains something from killing besides just getting the pieces he wants. He might feel some sort of control, but again, I’m not sure it’s from the actual killing as much as it is from simply possessing those pieces. Does that make sense?”

  “What does Maggie think?”

  He picked up his own glass of wine for the first time and took a drink. “I haven’t talked to her about this yet.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “I wanted to run it by you first.” He could tell from the look she gave him that she didn’t buy that. “Okay, I haven’t talked to her about it yet because I did something. And I’m not sure she’s going to be very happy with me.”

  Now Dr. Patterson planted her elbows on the counter, leaning into him as if ready to share in his secret. “And just what did you do, Agent Tully?”

  “I sort of pulled a Maggie O’Dell.”

  She smiled. “Oh, heavens, she’s already a bad influence on you.” She sipped more wine. “What did you do?”

  He pulled the laptop closer and clicked on the AOL icon. “I sent him an e-mail.”

  “You sent Sonny an e-mail? That doesn’t sound so unforgivable. Actually it sounds very much like something Maggie would do.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Because I sent him an e-mail from Joan Begley.”

  He waited for her reaction. She sipped her wine, watching him over the rim of the glass. Finally she said, “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

  He could almost feel the blood drain from his face, replaced by embarrassment, embarrassed that, yes, he had given up on Joan Begley. Especially if Sonny was the rock quarry killer. And the e-mails that Sonny and Joan exchanged in the days preceding her disappearance had convinced Tully that Sonny had taken her and most likely had killed her.

  “Let me show you some of their e-mail correspondence,” he said in answer to her question. “And then you can tell me what you think.”

  He brought up the file on the laptop’s screen and she came in behind him to look over his shoulder. Maybe it was the effect of the wine, because suddenly Tully found it difficult to concentrate on the computer screen. As Dr. Patterson read over his shoulder all he could think about was how good she smelled, a subtle soft scent like fresh flowers after a spring rain shower.

  “It sounds almost like he’s jealous of Joan’s struggle with her weight,” he said.

  “Jealous?”

  “He sees it as a reason for her to get sympathy, to draw attention.”

  “And you think that he’s jealous of his victims’ imperfections, their deformities?”

  “Exactly. Here he tells her that he wishes he had a reason for people to feel sorry for him. In this one—” he scrolled down to find it “—he confides that as a child he had awful, terrible stomachaches and his mother never believed him. He says, ‘She gave me medicine but it only made me sicker.’ He tells her that’s when he gave up on telling people about his own aches and pains because nobody believed h
im. He reminds me of a hypochondriac.”

  Tully felt her hair brush against his temple as she batted it out of her face in order to read the computer screen. He tried to focus. What was it he was saying? “So, anyway, I got to thinking, what if he had all these stomachaches, maybe he still gets them but the doctors have never found anything. Maybe the doctors even start telling him all his aches and pains are simply in his head, in his mind. But he sees people around him—a guy who has an inoperable brain tumor, a woman who’s survived breast cancer—and he sees them getting sympathy or at least having justification for their aches and pains. He wants justification for his ailments, too. Maybe he wants it so much he decides to take it from others, cuts it out of them. By keeping these things for himself, these deformed pieces that have drawn sympathy for others, by possessing them he gains strength, control.”

  She came around to the other side of the table and sat down to look at him. He worried she was about to say he was way off base. But instead she said, “So he has no reason to keep Joan alive?”

  She didn’t wait for his answer. She didn’t need it, having come to the same conclusion. She got up and went to the stove, busying herself with the sauce they had allowed to simmer for too long. “I can’t help but feel partly responsible,” she said, surprising him with what sounded like a confession.

  “Responsible? Why in the world would you feel responsible?”

  “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” And she laughed, running a hand through her hair, a nervous trait he had noticed long ago. She seemed to do it whenever she was feeling a bit vulnerable, as if she had revealed too much and needed to remind herself to not let her hair down so much.

  “No, it doesn’t sound silly. I’m just not sure why you would feel responsible. You had no way of knowing Joan Begley would come across this killer when she went to Connecticut.”

  “But I should have been available that night when she called. If only I had called her back…She needed me and I wasn’t available.”