Читать книгу Blind Spot - Nancy Bush - Страница 7

“Get over here,” Leesha said. “You need to meet our new patient. Someone tried to cut her baby out!”

Dr. Claire Norris wheeled into Laurelton General’s parking lot and peremptorily nosed her car into another doctor’s designated spot. She wasn’t affiliated with Laurelton General. She was a psychiatrist at Halo Valley Security Hospital, a facility located some fifty miles south of Laurelton for patients with mental problems. But today, on her day off, she’d gotten the call from Leesha, a friend and associate, who believed this patient would be transferred to Halo Valley as soon as her physical ailments were addressed.

Damn near catatonic. Knifed across her shoulders and abdomen. Not deep enough to cut to the baby, but Jesus, Joseph, and Mary…

Claire drew a steadying breath. She’d seen the damage a knife could do to human flesh. In her office. Directly in front of her. A knife slashing through a woman’s throat, the last awful sounds as the victim lost her life and the murderer turned his attention on Claire…

As she had since the beginning, she pushed the memory aside with an almost physical effort as she switched off the ignition. But, like always, it nagged at her. Wouldn’t let her go. The killer had been one of her patients. Heyward Marsdon III. A paranoid schizophrenic who suffered from hallucinations and delusions. He hadn’t meant to kill his girlfriend, Melody Stone. He hadn’t known what he was doing. He’d dragged Melody to see Claire and then been overrun with visions of ghoulish zombielike creatures who he believed were trying to attack Claire. He’d grabbed Melody, no longer his girlfriend but an evil being out for blood, and threatened to kill her. Claire begged him to stop. Begged him. Cajoled and reasoned and expected results. Heyward hesitated briefly, just long enough for Melody to whisper “Do it!” to him, as if she were under the spell of some rapture, and then he slit her throat. Just like that. Slaying the woman he believed to be a soulless monster in one stroke.

Claire screamed. Shock ran through her like an electric current. But then Heyward was on her, the knife to Claire’s throat, determined to kill her—or, more accurately, the evil being Claire had become. He pressed the knife’s edge to her throat, his hand quivering. Claire told him over and over that she was his doctor, that she meant him no harm. She asked quietly if she could get help for Melody and somehow her words finally penetrated his brain and he allowed her to call in Wade, one of the hospital guards. But Melody Stone was long gone before help arrived. Only Claire survived.

Six months ago. As real a nightmare now as it had been then. Claire had been in her own kind of therapy ever since it had happened. A memory that wouldn’t go away. Ever. She could only hope she could put it aside a bit with time.

Now, glancing through the windshield and spotting rain, her gaze extended to the sprawling gray concrete-and-stone hospital that was Laurelton General. She probably shouldn’t be here. Was doubtlessly overstepping her limits. By all rights she should leave this to the higher-ups at Halo Valley who had so uncaringly thrown her to the wolves after the incident with Heyward Marsdon. That’s what they’d reduced Melody Stone’s death to: the incident. And though Claire’s life had been threatened, too, they let her take the fall alone.

In the time since the incident Claire had been seen by a barrage of other psychologists and psychiatrists and varying concerned hospital administrators and investors who’d rubbed their chins and offered antidepressants, which she’d refused, and then tentatively, finally pronounced her mentally good to go. Everyone professed great relief for her well-being, but all they really wanted was to dust their hands of her: the sole witness to a murder on hospital grounds.

Ironically, after Heyward Marsdon, delusional and hallucinating, was pulled away from Claire, wrestled to the ground, and taken away, he was eventually incarcerated at Halo Valley Security Hospital himself, on the side of the hospital reserved for the criminally insane.

Claire had dutifully followed through with her own therapy, but it had yet to make so much as a dent in her lingering feelings of horror and inadequacy. She had someone else for that. Another friend who understood human emotions and treated Claire with compassion. Dinah Smythe lived at the coast and was Claire’s closest neighbor. Dinah was the only person who seemed to truly understand the long road Claire was traveling for her own mental health.

Thank God for her, Claire thought passionately.

Now, climbing out of her black Passat, she hit the remote lock and listened for the beep. Fall guy or not, today she’d answered Leesha Franklin’s call and was going to meet the comatose, pregnant patient on her own time. Before the tragedy Claire had been considered top in her field. She still was in the larger world, but within the inner circles at Halo Valley there was a definite cover-your-ass mentality overriding common sense, and Claire had lost value because of it. No one wanted the taint of the consequences to stick to them. Let Claire Norris take the hit. She’s the one who witnessed the murder. She’s the one who couldn’t stop it. It was her fault. Yes, her fault! No one else’s.

Claire felt a simmering anger as she thought of it, followed by a sense of inadequacy that she couldn’t help Melody. She could recall every moment, every syllable, everything: the bright yellow tulips in a bouquet on her desk splashed with equally bright red blood; the soft cadence of Melody Stone’s voice as she goaded Heyward to do it; the rustle of clothing as he pulled her closer; the metallic scent of blood; the resonating terror of her own voice in her ears; the slam of the door as Wade burst into the room; the shriek of sirens as the ambulance screamed up the long lane to Halo Valley hospital and medical offices.

She shook the memory free, fighting its grip. No amount of dwelling and soul-searching was going to help now. She needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, learning to forget.

A sharp wind whipped up as Claire headed for the hospital, yanking her hair from its restraining clip at her nape. Dark brown strands snapped in front of her eyes and she bent her head and trudged on, seeing the toes of her brown pumps march rapidly toward the sliding glass doors of the main entrance. She heard the sound of an approaching engine and glanced around to see a news van turn into the lot. “Vultures,” she muttered aloud, aware that soon this particular patient’s story would be blasted across the airwaves. Claire had had her fill of newspeople types. She’d been the object of their bristling mics and pointed questions enough times to become disillusioned with the lot of them.

The hospital’s main entrance doors slid open and she was inside, moving rapidly toward the elevators that led to the upper floors. Laurelton General was positioned on a sharp incline resulting in the two west-side floors being on the lower hillside and therefore below the main entrance. This explained why the main floor sign declared in big block letters: FLOOR THREE.

Claire finger-combed her hair, smoothing it behind her ears. She chafed at the delay of the elevator and practically slammed into a doctor hurrying into the elevator as she tried to exit on floor five.

He made a disgruntled sound, which she ignored. Departing elevator riders had priority and she was clearly in the right. He could just bite it.

“Well, there you are!” Leesha called when she saw her. At five feet four and a hundred and sixty-five pounds, Leesha was a solid wall of a woman, built like a square, by her own admission. Her skin was a warm coffee color and her black hair was lined in cornrows that looked tight enough to cause a migraine. Leesha was as cranky as she was empathetic—cranky to imbeciles who got in her way and whined; empathetic toward her patients. She couldn’t bear indecision and finger-pointing and she knew enough about Melody Stone’s death and Claire’s recent problems to be thoroughly pissed off at all the people trying to scuttle away and leave Claire standing alone to take the heat.

But today there was underlying panic on Leesha’s face. The horror of the attack on the Jane Doe was inescapable.

“C’mon this way.” She motioned for Claire to follow her, then moved quickly to the end of the hall and into a room already occupied by at least one other doctor and a nurse.

“Been like that since she was brought in this morning, poor child,” Leesha said in an aside as Claire gazed down at the woman in the bed who was attached to an IV and a heart rate monitor for both her and the baby. Her hair was a soft yellow shade, her skin smooth and unlined. She appeared to be sleeping but there was something deeper in her manner.

“No head injury,” Leesha added, reading Claire’s thoughts. “Coma, maybe emotionally induced? If she doesn’t come to, she’ll be heading your way for sure.”

“I’ll try to make her my patient,” Claire said.

“You better. My girl here needs the best.”

“Just know it might not happen.”

Claire’s success rate in treating patients with psychological disorders was the best at Halo Valley; Heyward Marsdon the notable exception, although she’d warned everyone from the hospital administrator on down that he was a danger to himself and to others. But Heyward Marsdon III’s family didn’t agree and threatened to cut off their hospital funding, and so she’d been ignored. When the incident happened, she was in the process of finalizing her recommendation letter concerning Heyward and suggesting he be held on a seventy-two-hour watch, but it became a moot point. She’d been removed as his psychiatrist, and though she did try to defend herself, explaining about her recommended course of treatment, no one cared. It was too late. The damage too severe. No one was about to throw Claire a life raft when they were all scrambling to keep from drowning.

“Excuse me, who are you?” The doctor who had tried to ignore them now gazed at Claire authoritatively. His bushy gray brows were all over the place, one side looking as if it were trying to crawl to the other. He wore the requisite white jacket and had a habit of dropping his chin and looking through the tops of his eyes, a disciplinarian’s unconscious body language. His name tag read Dr. Franco Blount.

“This is Dr. Claire Norris from Halo Valley,” Leesha answered. “I called her.”

“This woman is our patient,” he said frostily to the nurse.

Leesha pointed to the blond girl in the bed. “This woman was attacked by someone trying to take her baby. When she comes to, y’think she might need psych?”

Blount glared darkly at her but Leesha held his gaze. She didn’t scare easily, if at all, and she knew what she knew. The other nurse in the room, however, must have decided it was high time to get out as she muttered some excuse and scurried from the room.

“When did the patient arrive?” Claire asked.

“A trucker found her around six A.M. She was brought in about seven thirty,” Leesha answered.

“Closer to eight,” Blount corrected her.

“Unconscious the whole time?” Claire asked.

Blount opened his mouth but Leesha beat him to a response. “ER said her eyes were open when she arrived but she never spoke. She didn’t respond to their questions.”

“And the baby?”

“So far, so good.” She raised crossed fingers.

“Considering this.” Blount pulled back the covers and lifted the hospital gown. The woman’s protruding abdomen was scored with knife wounds that crisscrossed both above and below her navel. Dried blood could be seen, and the yellowish orange swab of antiseptic. The cuts hadn’t been bandaged yet.

“Those wounds as superficial as they look?” Claire asked neutrally, but it took an effort. Her throat felt completely void of liquid.

“They are,” Leesha said, but before she could go on, Blount tried to wrest back control.

“The police have been here,” he said. “It appears someone sliced at her wildly. No method. They never got close to actually taking the baby.”

“There are some wounds on her shoulders,” Leesha said. “Like she was attacked there first and then overtaken.”

“That’s what the police said?” Claire asked.

“More or less.”

“Did they say anything else?”

“Are you planning to investigate, too?” Dr. Blount broke in scathingly. He twitched the hospital gown back into place, then lightly tossed the blankets back over the unconscious girl.

“There was a second victim. A man. DOA,” Leesha said.

“From knife wounds?”

“Uh-huh.” Leesha nodded.

“So they were both attacked by the same person.”

“Looks that way.”

“If you both plan to be amateur sleuths, perhaps you should seek different employment,” Blount stated flatly. “Dr. Norris, calling you was premature. When we’ve made a full examination of the patient, decisions will be made.”

He tried to hustle them out of the room but Leesha was a blockade. They had a brief standoff where Leesha tried to step aside and make way for the doctor to leave and he stood in lockjawed annoyance. Claire decided to alleviate the small drama by heading into the hall herself, but as she gave a last glance back at the patient she saw the pretty blond woman’s face contort with pain.

“The patient,” she declared, pushing back into the room past Blount, who still maintained his stance. Leesha was on her heels as Claire jerked back the covers as the Jane Doe moaned and thrashed. “Is she in labor?” Claire asked, seeing the contraction.

“Hope not.” Leesha pressed the call button, then hustled into the hall for additional help.

Claire looked to Blount, who hesitated, then swept after Leesha. As Claire leaned down to the patient, Jane Doe’s eyes slowly opened. Cornflower blue. Confused. Full of pain.

“You’re all right,” Claire told her. “You’re in a hospital.”

Her pupils seemed to dilate, then retract.

A team of medical personnel suddenly rushed into the room. “Excuse me,” one of the nurses said sharply and Claire was pushed aside. Reluctantly she moved to the door. There was nothing she could do but get in the way. They needed room to move. Drugs to inhibit the contractions. Prayers that they could keep the baby from coming too early.

Too early…

Leesha was in the hall. They looked at each other and Leesha came over and gave Claire a pat on her arm. Too early. Claire knew what that was like as well. Life was full of unexpected pitfalls, and today Claire was revisiting all of hers.

“Dr. Norris?”

The tight male voice was familiar. Claire’s stomach tightened as she turned and faced the frowning visage of the insufferable Dr. Freeson as he made his way toward them. One of the psychiatrists at Halo Valley. Her immediate superior, in some ways, though he thought he was in all ways.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I called her,” Leesha jumped in. “She was good enough to come on her day off.”

“Well, you’re not needed.” He gazed at Claire hard. “I was in a meeting with Avanti, or I would have been here earlier,” he said primly, his Vandyck beard bristling. Forty-something with sandy-colored hair and eyes and a blotchy complexion, he wasn’t exactly God’s gift but he sure thought he was. He’d made a casual pass at Claire when she’d first joined Halo Valley and when she didn’t jump for joy, he’d been irked and somewhat embarrassed. It hadn’t helped their working relationship.

“I’m already here.” Claire forced a faint smile. It was better to treat Freeson like she was impervious, but sometimes she just wanted to smack his smug, supercilious face.

“Tomorrow, when you’re back at work, Avanti wants to talk to you.”

So what else was new? Dr. Paolo Avanti, Freeson’s immediate superior, loved giving daily lectures about anything and everything. He was at least as much of a prick as Freeson, though he had better social skills in front of the public. But neither Freeson nor Avanti had come to Claire’s defense when she really needed them, and they would both prostrate themselves in front of the head hospital administrator, Dr. Emile Radke, if they thought it would help their positions at the hospital.

“Okay,” Claire said neutrally.

“Where is this patient?” Freeson demanded.

“The staff’s in with her now,” Leesha answered. “You’ll have to wait.”

He eyed her frostily from head to toe. He was a fairly slight man and Leesha’s stolid form seemed to nonplus him a bit. He wasn’t used to being thwarted, wasn’t used to anything but complete capitulation. “Then I’ll wait.”

Claire knew Freeson didn’t give a damn about the patient. This was all about jockeying for position within the hospital, and this patient provided media attention, something Freeson went after like a heat-seeking missile. He seemed to also have made it his personal mission to keep Claire in line.

It was such utter bullshit. A means for everyone to believe that they were doing everything possible to rectify the fact that Melody Stone had been attacked on their hallowed grounds, in front of one of their own doctors, by another patient whose wealthy parents had coerced his release from those selfsame doctors and therefore helped set up the very events that led to Melody’s death.

Why was she the only one who saw it?

She answered her own question: hospital politics and money.

The nightmare scene of Melody’s death tried to play across Claire’s mind again, but this time she resolutely stuck it inside a box in her mind and tied it tightly. Not now. Not today. She knew grief and shock took their own sweet time in relinquishing their grip, and so she was trying to let nature take its course and heal her. She’d made good strides and was beginning to understand and process Melody’s death. She was also almost managing to forgive Heyward, knowing he was at the mercy of his own disease, though that was happening much slower.

The team of nurses and Dr. Blount came out of Jane Doe’s room and Leesha hurried over for a quick consult. Freeson breezed past them and entered the room. Claire felt compelled to follow him as he stood over the now peacefully resting patient.

“Not labor,” Leesha said near her ear. “Some other pain. Maybe mental.”

“She was attacked,” Claire reminded her.

They were all silent for a few moments, then all left together. Claire said to Leesha, “Keep me informed.”

“She’s not your patient,” Freeson told her, but Claire ignored him as she walked rapidly down the hall in the opposite direction that she’d arrived. By design she’d chosen a different exit. She had no interest in speaking to Freeson any more than she had to, and since he was likely to leave by the front, she would hit a side door. If he wanted her to wait for him, he could just go ahead and be pissed off that she’d avoided him.

“Hey!” He called after her before she could turn the corner.

Claire increased the length of her strides, pretending she didn’t know he was calling for her. She hit the stairs and hurried down the steps, pushing through a door to a small walkway that circled the building. Turning toward the front of the hospital and the parking lot, she bent her head to the chilly, drizzling rain. The Passat was still parked in a reserved spot. The hovering newspeople barely gave her a passing glance as she climbed into the car. She hadn’t left by the main entrance. She wasn’t wearing a lab coat. They couldn’t connect her to the patient and didn’t know who she was.

Good.

She’d had enough of them six months earlier. Oh, brother, had she! As she backed out, she glanced through the window at their news van and the smattering of people milling around. She could see the dark, slickly combed head of Pauline Kirby.

Claire made a growling sound as she twisted the ignition. That woman had been particularly invasive. Between her insinuations, the accusations from Melody Stone’s family, and the abandonment of her colleagues, Claire had been under lethal assault.

And when she thought about it—really thought about it without all the underlying sorrow and horror—it really kind of pissed her off.

Turning the wipers on, she wheeled the Passat out of the lot. The interior was warm and she could smell her own body scent, dampened by rain. Lavender Mist. The body gel she’d washed with that morning in the shower. Today’s flavor, after lemon, apricot, and that horrible sea foam, was a fresh, almost minty scent that had been as ineffective as all the rest. Nothing could wash away the feeling of guilt, though she knew rationally she had nothing to feel guilty about.

In her rearview she saw Freeson step from the vapor-locked portico in front of the hospital. His gaze searched the parking lot, the impatience on his face a tight mask. But he didn’t focus on her car as the news horde bore down on him.

“Pretend you know something, Freeson,” she muttered, turning onto the main road. “Like you pretended to know what drove Heyward Marsdon to kill Melody Stone.”

“Heyward Marsdon killed my sister and nobody did a damn thing about it,” Langdon Stone stated flatly as he tipped up a longnecked beer. He swallowed a third of the bottle, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and added, “I’m not coming back to the department. I’m not doing a damn thing until that sick, privileged bastard is behind bars. Prison bars.”

“We know,” was the long-suffering response. His ex-partner, Detective Trey Curtis, dark-haired, lean, gruff, and still at the Portland Police Department, waved for the bartender to send over two more longnecks. “I’m not trying to get you to come back. Everything’s been better since you left.”

Lang snorted.

“Celek’s been doing a helluva job. I couldn’t ask for a better partner. And he’s better-looking than you are. Gets all the chicks. They swoon.”

Curtis almost made Lang smile. Almost. He knew Curtis’s new partner, Joshua Celek: a chubby, freckled thirty-year-old with a sunny disposition and a belief in human nature that couldn’t be hammered out of him no matter how much depravity he encountered on the job. He looked and acted like a kid out of a fifties sitcom. He’d been elevated from robbery to homicide after Lang unceremoniously walked away from the job he’d worked for nearly a decade.

“Swoon,” Lang repeated.

“Yeah, swoon.”

“Well, that’s good, then, ’cause I’m not coming back.”

“Who says there’s a job waiting for you? You’re out. The chief…the captain…Lieutenant Drano…they’re all glad your pain-in-the-butt attitude is gone.”

“Drano called me yesterday. Offered me more money and a new partner if I had problems with you.”

“Drano’s on vacation in Mallorca.”

“Yeah, he got back last night and phoned me as soon as he touched down at PDX.”

“You’re lying. Good one, though.”

Lang did smile now, and Curtis reached over and knocked Lang’s baseball cap off his head. They locked their arms around each other’s necks, alarming their waiter, who’d already seemed to want to comment on their choice of beer with breakfast. It was a long-standing rule with Lang and Curtis: whenever they met, whichever one saw the other first, that one would buy the first beer. Lang had spotted Curtis and had ordered two Budweisers and they’d been enjoying them with bacon and eggs.

Curtis shoved Lang away from him and said to the waiter, “You don’t have to call the cops. I got a badge. Just off duty and trying to knock some sense into my friend here.” The waiter nodded slowly but the consternation on his face didn’t quite leave. “Really,” Curtis said.

“Okay. Can I get you anything else?”

Lang said, “Scotch and water, hold the water.”

“No. Thanks.” Curtis waved the waiter off. “Not until after nine thirty.” As the waiter turned away, he admitted to Lang, “Okay, butthead, Drano does want you back. We all do.”

Lieutenant Draden was called Drano because his craggy, world-weary face and dispirited manner made him seem drained of life. He was, in fact, savvy, smart, and surprisingly full of ideas, but you had to get to know him a while to see the man behind the persona. So far Celek hadn’t clued in. Curtis had told Lang a story about the newbie homicide detective and his penchant for keeping the gory details from Draden, as if it might somehow spiral him over the edge, that almost made Lang chuckle. Almost.

“Celek thinks if he tells Drano anything but sunshine and lollipops that Drano will jump off a bridge.”

“Tough to keep details from your lieutenant.”

“Oh, he writes up these bang-up reports—way better than yours, except for spelling and punctuation, your specialty—”

“Thank you.”

“—and then he tries to make me turn them in. Like Drano won’t see his name at the bottom. Celek’s got all kinds of weirdness. Nicety-nice stuff that takes up so much time and energy that you want to knock him sideways.”

“You’ve controlled yourself so far?”

“No thanks to you. When are you coming back?”

“I told you: I’m not.” Lang shoved back his chair. “Let’s go somewhere with a pool table.”

“Too early. Besides, you got enough money off me last time we played.” Curtis threw some cash on the table and said, “My treat.” Lang threw the same amount down and walked away. Swearing, Curtis picked up Lang’s cash and followed him onto the street and into a pouring rain, surprisingly chilly for September. “I’m giving this to charity,” he said, waving Lang’s bills at him.

“To the Neglected Children of Strippers Named Taffy or Sugar or Cinnamon.”

“Only if they’re my kids,” Curtis agreed, playing along. Their relationship was long and deep. “When are you going to give up the vendetta? Marsdon’s behind bars.”

Lang frowned and shook his head, rainwater collecting on his black hair. “That facility is a hospital, not a prison.”

“Damn near a prison. And at the risk of getting my head bit off, the man’s sick.”

“Sure, he’s sick. But he killed my sister. And now he gets to stay at the very hospital where he slit her throat? Why not send him to a five-star hotel?”

“He’s in the lockdown section. With all the other super crazies who are incapable of standing trial.”

“He should be in prison,” Lang insisted, his jaw tightening.

“Not according to the courts and the doctors,” Curtis reminded him quietly. They were getting into dangerous territory, and even being the good friends that they were, Trey Curtis was completely aware of the depth of his friend’s anger, misery, and need for retribution. He didn’t want to get in the way.

“Doctors,” Lang sneered. “She’s dead because of them. Because of her.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

“You’re sure as hell doing a good job of it.”

“I’m just lobbing out little facts. Doesn’t mean I like any of it.” He lifted his hands in surrender.

“He could stand trial,” Lang insisted again. “Heyward Marsdon the Third is at Halo Valley because of his grand-dad’s money.”

“He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, Lang. He’s probably where he should be.” Lang looked ready to argue. He certainly wasn’t going to capitulate, so Curtis went on, “You’re too good a man, too good a cop, to let this define your entire life. Do what you can in the matter, but do it on the job. Drano wants you back. I want you back. Hell, even Celek wants you back.” He paused, then added, “No matter what you think, Halo Valley ain’t no summer camp.”

“I want him dead,” Lang said then.

“So do I, man,” Curtis agreed. “For you. I wish he’d hang himself, or throw himself in front of freeway traffic, or put the barrel of a forty-four in his mouth. But it’s not gonna happen, and neither you nor I is going to make it happen. So, let’s move on.”

“Move on,” Lang repeated, his eyes taking on a faraway look as he gazed over Portland city center’s morning traffic. “I got a job offer from the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Which you haven’t taken yet, either.” They were standing under a narrow awning and had been speaking in fierce, if partially hushed, tones. “So, okay, I got a different job for you,” Curtis said. “Something I want you to look into.”

“What, am I your personal gofer now?”

“A body was found at a rest stop on the outskirts of Winslow County. The guy was stabbed to death, and someone tried to cut out the baby from his pregnant companion. Didn’t succeed, as far as I know. She’s at Laurelton General. He’s at the county morgue.”

“I saw it on the morning news,” Lang said, then, “Not your jurisdiction.”

“That’s why I want you to look into it.”

“And piss off a lot of people who might think I should mind my own business.”

“I hear the county’s swamped and would like some help,” Curtis said mildly.

“You’re full of it.”

“Call the sheriff and see if I am.”

With that Curtis gave him a light punch on the upper arm and bent his head to the falling rain. Lang watched him walk up the street. He wasn’t going to call Winslow County’s Sheriff Nunce, a man who’d been reelected the fall before though it was rumored he had been reluctant to run again, had been, in fact, expected to retire. Lang had met Nunce a few times over the years when their cases overlapped and had found the sheriff congenial and able to share investigative work, but that didn’t mean Nunce would be looking for Lang to stick his nose in where it didn’t really belong.

“Celek doesn’t want me back,” he said aloud, though Curtis was long out of earshot.

He bent his head to the rain as he headed toward his gray Dodge truck, yanking open the stubborn driver’s door, ducking inside. Slamming the door shut with an effort, he reminded himself he needed to take the truck in and have the door fixed. He just didn’t ever seem to have the energy or initiative. He’d been that way for months, ever since his sister’s death.

Now, running a hand through his wet hair, he stared through the windshield. He’d found parking only a block and a half away from Dooley’s, the breakfast/lunch pub where he’d met Curtis in downtown Portland, not far from the station. Curtis was walking back to work and Lang, though he refused to admit it, felt a faint twinge of regret or envy or a mixture of both. He didn’t want his old job back. He didn’t want a new one, either. He’d been unable to concentrate on it after Melody’s death. He wanted Heyward Marsdon’s neck in a noose, and that’s all he wanted. Not exactly the kind of attitude conducive to good police work.

And Marsdon’s damn family. Wealthy. Arrogant. Above the law. Unable to believe in their son’s culpability though it was understood all around that Heyward III had indeed committed the unthinkable crime. Of course the asshole had feigned remorse. Had actually shed tears. And there had been a lot of psycho mumbo jumbo about schizophrenia and illness and an inability to truly understand his own feelings and actions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The guy was sick, all right. Sick in the head. But someone to be pitied? Lang simply did not have it in his heart. Heyward Marsdon had killed his sister and he had to pay for it along with the rest of that supercilious hospital staff. Heyward’s doctor, Claire Norris, being at the top of Lang’s hit list.

Throwing the truck into gear, he rumbled into traffic and was cut off by a guy in a black Ferrari on his cell phone who nearly got his rear end crunched by Lang’s truck. Lang was half amused, half irked when the driver flipped him off. He pulled up on the left side of the asshole and rolled his right window down. The driver looked up and threw him a cold look.

Lang signaled for the man to hang up and the bastard released the bird a second time, pointing at him with that same middle finger, making deep, stabbing motions. For half a second Lang thought about continuing the insanity. He felt an almost overpowering need to drag the guy out of the car and beat the hell out of him. Transference? The need to release pent-up aggression? You bet. With an effort he turned his eyes forward, set his jaw, thought about Dr. Claire Norris, and wondered if he could have just one meeting with her. He’d been advised against it by a passel of lawyers. He was too personally involved. It wouldn’t do any good. She wasn’t completely responsible. Marsdon had killed Melody, not anyone from the hospital. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

The Ferrari jumped ahead, then screeched to a halt at a light where a gaggle of teenage girls were trying to cross the street. They stared at him in collective horror, then broke into the filthiest language and gestures Lang had ever seen from a group their age. Lang pulled up on the driver’s left again and smiled over at him. He could practically see the steam pouring from the guy’s ears. The girls became truly obnoxious. Standing directly in front of his car and not moving, dangerously, until Lang worried for them as the light was about to turn green.

But they sauntered away, arms crossed behind their backs, middle fingers sticking up for the Ferrari asshole’s uninhibited view.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Lang wasn’t much for religion, but a few key phrases sometimes popped into his head from time to time, a gift from his sister, who’d flitted from religion to religion like a butterfly to a flower.

His sister. Beautiful. Fresh. Intelligent. Deeply flawed.

Lang shook his head. Couldn’t think of her. Instead he concentrated on the other woman who haunted his thoughts: Dr. Claire Norris. The reason Heyward Marsdon III had been outside hospital walls looking for whatever his sick, twisted brain considered its next need. Dr. Claire Norris. She’d probably been the conduit for Melody and Heyward to meet. The good doctor, introducing one homicidal sicko to a sweet but slightly twisted woman with delusions and hallucinations of her own, probably putting them together in some kind of therapy class.

Claire Norris. Lang had seen her from afar, a slim, dark-haired, prettier-than-average woman with a strained look on her face. She had witnessed something horrific; he could give her that. His own mind shied away from what must have happened in that room. But Dr. Norris was the one who had okayed Marsdon’s release into society. It was her name on the form. She was the one with the ultimate responsibility for Melody’s death. She was the one who allowed Marsdon to cut his sister’s throat.

He’d said as much a number of times, to anyone who would listen. He’d been told his thinking was convoluted. He was just looking for someone to blame. He needed antidepressants and therapy. He needed help.

Drugs? That kind of help? From the psychiatric community? Like he was going to listen to anything those headshrinkers from Halo Valley had to say. Quacks, every one. Self-serving quacks.

He was driving out Sunset Highway through a misting rain, leaving the Portland skyline in his rearview mirror, passing through the tunnel and headed west into the sunset. Except today the horizon was all gray and dreary. No sun in sight. Two weeks ago it had been blazing hot. Early September. Not much change from August. Then bam. They’d been hit with an early storm and now this rain.

Well, the rain suited his mood.

He exited the freeway on the outskirts of Laurelton, still within the western edge of the Portland city limits. He’d bought the property as soon as he’d scratched up enough money for a down payment, and after their parents died in a fiery crash on I-5, he had Melody move in with him. She’d been seventeen and he’d been twenty-three. Now he was thirty-seven and she would have been thirty-one this past May if not for Heyward Marsdon.

She’d been in and out of rehab more times than he liked to recall. She was crazy without medication. She hated taking medication. She took the wrong kind of medication. She crashed. She went to rehab. Got clean. Got crazy again.

But…she was such a sweet, funny person when everything was in line. Slightly ironic, slightly off-kilter, slightly acerbic. He loved her. And now she was gone.

He’d quit the force shortly after Melody’s death, though Drano had told him the job was open whenever he felt like stepping back in. Lang supposed he should have felt grateful, but all his energies were directed somewhere else and he didn’t honestly give a damn.

Now when he walked into his house, he had the peculiar notion that Melody was there. Something in the air. A leftover scent. But it was an illusion. He’d identified her body in the morgue. There was no question it was her. No question she was dead. No question where the responsibility lay. It was just sometimes—rarely—Lang wanted her back so badly that he almost made himself believe it could happen.

Nutty behavior. Grief taking over the sane part of his mind from time to time.

Walking onto the small back deck outside the kitchen, he was impervious to the shivering drizzle that seemed to have gripped the area in a firm hand. The deck was about three feet off the ground and he’d been building steps to it from the backyard, more for something to do than any serious interest in home improvement. Now he tested the wooden rail and wondered if he should change them out to wrought iron. He could do the work himself.

Trying to come up with something to fill your time?

Back inside, he poured cold coffee from the pot into a mug and heated it in the microwave. He thought about Claire Norris some more. He’d seen her on television, mostly; in person he’d had to keep his distance and he didn’t want to be too near her anyway. Self-preservation. He didn’t want to do anything rash.

So, he’d watched her on television with an intensity that was undoubtedly obsessive. He’d DVR’d her only interview with the press and kept it still. She was about five-eight with sexy legs and small feet encased in sensible black pumps. She wore a lab coat over a skirt or dress, mostly. Her hair was chin length, and she had a tendency to tuck it behind her ears when she was speaking, an unconscious focusing act. She was good-looking, her teeth white, her waist slim, her chin slightly pointy. She appeared…honest, he could admit. But then, that was Halo Valley’s prime disguise.

Now Lang threw himself in a chair in front of the television. Clicking around, he found nothing but game shows, talk shows, and daytime dramas. He stared out the sliding glass door to the rain-soaked cedar boards of his deck. Then, like an addict, he accessed his DVR interview of Claire Norris. Dr. Claire Norris.

She only said a few words, and Lang knew them by heart.

Pauline Kirby: Would you have done things differently, knowing what you do now?

Claire: Heyward Marsdon the Third is under continuing psychiatric care.

Pauline: But shouldn’t he have been locked up? Shouldn’t you have known?

Claire seemed to struggle a bit when a man with a goatee jumped forward and practically shoved her aside.

Dr. Freeson: I’m Dr. James Freeson with Halo Valley Security Hospital. We always strive to give each of our patients individual care. Dr. Norris has been Mr. Marsdon’s primary psychiatric physician for several years and is highly competent.

Blah, blah, blah.

Lang rewound and watched it again. Funny, how Freeson initially sounded like he was defending Claire Norris, but after hearing his tone a thousand times and seeing his face, Lang suspected the man was trying to distance himself from the woman who’d brought this destruction to the hospital.

He watched it again and then froze the picture on Claire Norris’s face.

“You’re obsessed,” he said a few minutes later, never taking his eyes from the screen. “It’s dangerous.”

I got a job for you. Something I want you to look into.

Curtis was worried about him. Maybe he was right. Maybe Lang was starting down that nutty lane his sister had traversed most of her adult life.

With a feeling of inevitability, he picked up the phone and asked for the Winslow County Sheriff’s Department.

Maybe it was time to talk to Sheriff Nunce and see if there was something he could do.