“Tell me!”
“Then have a seat.”
“Tell me!”
“Officer Dodge, please have a seat.”
Her expression remained set. After another moment, Bobby grudgingly let go of her desk. He sat back down, picking up the Coke can and twirling it between his fingers. He felt a light fluttering in his chest. Breathlessness. Panic. Damn, he was tired of feeling this way, as if the world had spun away from him, as if he’d never feel in control again.
“Judge Gagnon had gotten my name from an associate. He came seeking specific information about a psychological phenomenon. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Munchausen by proxy.”
“Shit,” Bobby said.
“The judge told me a little bit about his daughter-in-law, Catherine. He wanted to know if someone with her background might fit the profile of a person capable of Munchausen’s. Essentially, he wanted me to tell him, sight unseen, if Catherine was either faking his grandson’s illnesses or deliberately making the boy sick in order to gain attention for herself.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said it wasn’t my area of expertise. I said as far as I knew, there wasn’t a profile for Munchausen’s. I said that if he honestly believed his grandson was in danger, then he should seek immediate professional assistance and contemplate legal action to separate the boy from his mother.”
“Is he going to do that?”
“I don’t know. He took the name of the person I gave him and he thanked me for my time.”
“When was this?”
“Six months ago.”
“Six months ago? The man sought expert advice for the safety of his grandson, and he didn’t bother to act on it for six months!”
“Bobby,” she said quietly, “I don’t know what was going on in that house. More to the point, you don’t know what was going on in that house.”
“No,” he said bitterly. “I just showed up like judge and jury and shot a man. Shit. Just plain … shit.”
Elizabeth leaned forward. Her expression was kind. “Last night, Bobby, you made a very astute observation. You said, ‘Tactical teams don’t have the luxury of information.’ Do you remember that, Bobby?”
“Yeah.”
“More importantly, do you still believe that, Bobby?”
“A guy is dead. Is it really such a great excuse to say it’s because I didn’t know any better?”
“It’s not an excuse, Bobby. It’s a fact of life.”
“Yeah.” He crumpled the Coke can. “What a pisser.”
Elizabeth shuffled some papers on her desk. The silence dragged on. “Shall we talk about your family?” Elizabeth asked at last.
“No.”
“Well, then, shall we talk about the shooting?”
“Hell no.”
“All right. Let’s discuss your job. Why policing?”
He shrugged. “I liked the uniform.”
“Any other family members who were law enforcement? Friends, associates, relatives?”
“Not really.”
“So you’re the first? Starting a new family tradition?”
“That’s me. I’m a wild child.” He was still feeling belligerent.
Elizabeth sighed and drummed her fingernails on the top of her desk. “What brought you to the badge, Bobby? Of all the jobs in the world, how did this one become yours?”
“I don’t know. When I was a kid, I figured I’d either be an astronaut or a cop. The astronaut thing was a little harder to pull off, so I became a cop.”
“And your father?”
“What about my father? He’s okay with it.”
“What did he do for a living?”
“Drove a front loader for Gillette.”
“And your mom?”
“Don’t know.”
“Do you ever ask your father questions about your mother?”
“Not in a long time.” He set down the crumpled can and gazed at her pointedly. “Now you’re asking questions about my family.”
“So I am. Okay, you became a cop because the astronaut gig seemed like a bit of a stretch. Why a tactical team?”
“The challenge.” He said it immediately.
“You wanted to become a sniper? Were you always into guns?”
“I’d never shot a rifle before.”
He’d finally surprised her. “You’d never fired a rifle? Before joining the STOP team?”
“Yeah. My father collects guns, does some custom work. But those are handguns, and frankly, my father’s not big into shooting anyway, he just likes working on pistols. The machinery. The beauty of a really nice piece.”
“So how did you become a sniper?”
“I was good at it.”
“You were good at it?”
He sighed. “When qualifying for the tac team, you have to take proficiency exams in a variety of weaponry. I picked up the rifle and I was good at it. Little bit more practice here and there and I scored expert. So my lieutenant asked me about being a sniper.”
“You’re a natural with guns?”
“I guess.” That thought made him uncomfortable though. He amended it immediately. “Being a sniper isn’t just shooting. The official title is Sniper-Observer.”
“Explain.”
He leaned forward and spread his hands. “Okay, so once a month I’m on a shooting range, making sure my technical skills are up to par. But in actual field duty, chances of me being called upon to shoot my weapon are like one in a thousand—hell, maybe one in a million. You train to be prepared. But day in, day out, what I do on the job is observe. Snipers are recon. We use our scopes and/or binoculars to see what no one else can see. We identify how many people are at the scene, what they’re wearing, what they’re doing. We’re the eyes for the entire team.”
“Do you train for that?”
“All the time. KIMS games, stuff like that.”
“KIMS games?”
“Yeah, KIMS. As in ‘Kims.’ I don’t remember what it stands for. It’s a title of a Rudyard Kipling novel or something like that. It’s about observing. You go out on the field, and the trainer gives you sixty seconds to spot ten things and describe them. You grab your binoculars and go.” He pointed at the Coke can. “I see what appears to be one crumpled soda can, looks new, red and white, probably Coke”—he tipped it on its side—“probably empty. Or, I see something that appears to be a length of wire, approximately eighteen inches long with green coating. It appears cut at one end and I can see the copper core, which is dirty. That sort of thing.”
She regarded him with a bemused expression. “So you’re professionally trained to notice everything. Does that drive you batty in real life? To notice all the nitty-gritty details everyplace you go?”
He grimaced and shrugged again. “Susan would probably say I don’t notice a thing. Last time she got her hair cut, it took me two days to figure it out.”
“And Susan is?”
“My girlfriend.” He caught himself. “My ex-girlfriend.”
“You mentioned her on Friday. I thought you said things were going well.”
“I lied.”
“You lied?”
“Yeah.”
“And that would be because?”
“Because I’d just met you. Because I was feeling uncomfortable. Because … hell, take your pick. I’m a guy. Sometimes we lie.”
The good doctor didn’t seem amused by that statement. “So what happened with Susan?”
“I don’t know.”
“She just walked away?”
“Not really.” He sighed, took a deep breath. “I did.”
“You just walked away? Let me get this straight. You haven’t talked to your girlfriend about the shooting at all?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.” She said it. He blinked. “You’re an intelligent man, Bobby Dodge. More intelligent than you like to let on. When you do things, it’s for a reason.
So why didn’t you talk things over with Susan? Did you simply not care?”
“I don’t know.” He caught himself. She was right; he did know. “I thought she’d be horrified. In Susan’s world, cops are the good guys, keeping things safe. In Susan’s world, cops don’t blow some guy’s brains out, right in front of his kid.”
“You didn’t think she’d be able to handle it.”
“I know she wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“How wonderfully patronizing of you.”
“Hey, you asked, I answered.”
“Absolutely. And you’re wrong, just so you know.”
He sat upright. “What the hell kind of doctor are you?”
“Bobby, I’m going to ask you something and I don’t want you to answer right away. I want you to think about it real hard before you say anything. Is it in Susan’s world that cops are the good guys, or is it in Bobby’s world? Is it in Susan’s world that cops don’t ‘blow some guy’s brains out,’ or is it in Bobby’s world? You said once that you were mad. But Bobby, aren’t you also horrified?”
His gaze dropped to the carpet. He didn’t say a word.
“You’ve commented several times now that you shot Jimmy Gagnon in front of his son. That seems to really bother you. Who is it in the scenario that you’re identifying with? Are you upset for the powerful father dying in front of his child, or are you upset for the helpless child who is watching someone he loves die?”
He kept his gaze on the carpet.
“Bobby?” she prodded.
His gaze finally came up. He said, “I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.”
He had his jacket on and was rewrapping his scarf before he spoke again. “Do you think Judge Gagnon could’ve been right?”
Elizabeth was sitting on the edge of her receptionist’s desk, watching her patient bundle up and feeling frustrated. “I have no idea.”
“Seems hard to imagine, a woman harming her kid just so she can have attention.”
“Munchausen by proxy is not terribly common, but I’ve read estimates of up to twelve hundred new cases a year.”
“What are the warning signs?”
“A child with a prolonged history of unusual illnesses, where the symptomatology doesn’t add up. A child whose health is a prolonged cycle of being perfectly well one week, then drastically ill the next. A family with a history of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.”
“I spoke with Nathan Gagnon’s doctor today,” Bobby said abruptly. “He doesn’t have a firm diagnosis for the boy.”
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Do you think that was such a good idea?”
Bobby gave her a look. “I went. Good idea or not, it no longer matters.”
“What are you doing, Bobby?”
“I’m putting on my scarf.”
“You know what I mean.”
“The Gagnons are suing me for murder. Anyone tell you that? They’re using some fancy legal maneuver to charge me with killing their son. In all honesty, Doc, I don’t think the concept of ‘good’ really applies to my life anymore.”
“Being charged with murder must be very difficult.”
“You think?”
She refused to get sucked into his sarcasm. “Bobby, Thursday night was a horrible tragedy. For you. For the Gagnons. For little Nathan. Do you really think there’s anything you can learn now that will make you feel better about having shot a man?”
Bobby stared her straight in the eye. There was a look in his slate-gray gaze she’d never seen before. It left her slightly breathless. It chilled her to the bone.
“I’m going to get her, Doc,” he said quietly. “If she’s harming that boy, if she set me up to kill her husband … Catherine Gagnon may think she knows how to deal with men. But she’s never met the likes of me.”
He finished up his scarf.
Elizabeth sighed heavily and shook her head. There were things Elizabeth wanted to say to him, but she already knew it wouldn’t do her any good. He wasn’t ready to listen. Maybe Bobby didn’t understand it completely yet, but she knew exactly who he identified with the night of the shooting, and it wasn’t the gun-toting father.
“You’re not responsible for Nathan Gagnon,” Elizabeth murmured softly, but Bobby was already out the door.
Chapter
14
Catherine drove straight to the hospital. Nathan was still asleep, the heart monitor beeping faithfully while morphine dripped slowly into his thin veins. The night nurse didn’t have much to report. Nathan remained on intravenous fluids, his temp was down, his pain under control. Maybe tomorrow he could go home, she’d have to consult with a doctor.
Catherine looked down the long, shadowed halls. Machines beeped, respirators hummed, patients thrashed restlessly in their curtained-off beds. But it was still a hospital at night. Too few nurses, too many strangers. Dark corners everywhere.
“Nathan’s very sick,” she said again.
“Yes.”
“I think he needs more nursing care. Is there a private nurse I could hire? Staff of some sort? I’m willing to pay.”
The nurse gave her a look. “You know, ma’am, in this mansion, it’s just us servants tending the rooms.”
“He’s my child,” Catherine said quietly. “I’m worried about him.”
“Honey, they’re all somebody’s children.”
The nurse wouldn’t help her. Catherine finally buzzed the doctor on call, but he refused to sign a release. Nathan needed to remain at the hospital. Particularly given his “condition.”
And what condition is that, she thought wildly. The infamous condition nobody can identify? Briefly, she contemplated calling Tony Rocco. She could beg, she could plead. Maybe Tony would come down, sign Nathan’s release.
And what then? She’d take Nathan home where he’d be magically safe?
Boo! the message had read. Boo!
Inside her own car, parked in her father’s driveway, written in her lipstick.
She left the hospital, footsteps fast, hands shaking.
At home, she went manically from room to room. The reporters clustered outside her brownstone were gone. Police, too. Where were the vultures when you needed them? Someone else had probably gotten shot tonight. Or maybe a senator had gotten caught with his cute young aide. Even the dubious celebrity of infamy could last only so long.
She checked doors and windows. Turned on lights until her townhouse glowed like a landing strip. The master bedroom thwarted her, however. The police still considered it a crime scene and she wasn’t allowed to touch anything. Easy for them to say. They had patched the shattered slider with sheets of plastic. It didn’t even block the goddamn wind. How was that going to stop an intruder?
She’d move the bureau. Shove it in front of the slider. Of course, if it was light enough for her to move, it would definitely be light enough for a man to move. Okay then. She’d move the bureau to block the entry, turn on the outdoor spotlight to illuminate the upper patio, then close the master bedroom door and nail it shut from the outside. Perfect.
She went downstairs to find Prudence.
“I need your help,” she told the nanny briskly. “We’re doing a little rearranging.”
Prudence didn’t say anything. Years of training, Catherine thought. Years of very expensive British training.
They went upstairs. Prudence helped her push the heavy painted pine bureau in front of the broken sliding glass door. There were still some shards of glass on the carpet. Blood, too. Prudence saw all of it and didn’t say a word.
Catherine went down to the laundry room and dug around until she found the tool kit. When she started pounding nails into the outer frame of the bedroom door, Prudence finally spoke.
“Madam?”
“I saw someone outside,” Catherine said briskly. “Lurking. Probably just a tabloid reporter, looking to make a quick buck. How much do you think the papers would pay for a detailed photo of the Back Bay murder scene? I will no
t let anyone profit from this tragedy.”
Prudence seemed to accept that explanation.
After another moment, Catherine added, “I want to thank you, you know. This has been a terrible time. Heaven knows what you must think. But you’ve been there for Nathan. I appreciate that. He needs you, you know. With everything that’s going on, he really, really needs you.”
“Nathan’s doing better?”
“He should be home tomorrow.” She had another thought. “Maybe if he’s feeling up to it, we could all go on vacation. Somewhere warm, with sandy beaches and drinks with little umbrellas in them. We could get away from … from all of this.”
She finished hammering in the last nail. She tried the door, shaking it hard. It held.
That should do it. She hoped.
“Prudence, if anyone comes to the door that you don’t know, don’t answer it. And if you see any other … reporters … please tell me.”
“Yes, Madam,” Prudence said. “And the lights?”
“I think,” Catherine said, still breathing heavily, “that we’ll leave them on for a little bit longer.”
Tony Rocco had had a long day. Ten p.m., he was finally leaving the hospital. Not bad ten years ago, but he was supposedly at the pinnacle of his career now. At this stage of the game, the hungry residents were supposed to deal with the endless grind of puking kids and snotty noses. He only came in for the big stuff.
His wife liked to remind him of that nightly. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Tony, when are you going to start demanding some respect? Just walk away from that damn hospital. Private practice is where the money is. You could be making three, four times what you’re bringing home now. We could be making …”
He had stopped listening to his wife about five years ago. It had been halfway through a Thanksgiving dinner at his parents’ house, when for the first time, honest to God, midway through his mother’s rant about his father daring to go play golf with his friends, Tony had looked across the table at his lovely bride of three years and realized that he’d married his mother. It had hit him just like that. A giant thwack to the head.