Authors: Jeremiah Healy
“Fine by me. I missed breakfast this morning.”
We ate in silence. Granted he was more familiar with the limited menu than I was, but he didn’t waste a motion, ingesting calories as if he had time only to take on necessary fuel, not taste the food as well.
He finished way ahead of me and seemed not to know quite what to do with himself. I half expected him to call for a report and catch up on his reading.
I laid my knife and fork on the plate at ten-past-two position and downed the last of my iced tea. “Ready when you are.”
“I like you, John. Enough that I want to trust you.”
“I like you too, Mr. Creasey—I’m sorry, Sam—but not quite enough to trust you.”
He smiled and almost seemed to relax. He pushed his plate to the side of the table. The waitress appeared unbidden to clear the table, leaving only the daffodil and our water glasses and refilling the latter.
He got serious again as soon as she closed the door behind her. “You believe that Jennifer’s murder and the death of Lainie Bishop last night are connected, don’t you?”
“Yes, but remember, it would be in my client’s interest to believe that.”
“Because?”
“Because if they’re connected in the sense that the same person committed both, then William is innocent because he couldn’t have killed Lainie from his jail cell.”
“Agreed. I’ve been thinking over what you said to me in your car. About inconsistencies and so on.”
“Anything more to add?”
“I’m not sure, but Pina … she’s our maid?”
“I remember her.”
“Well, Jennifer had been living at home for the last few weeks, and not because she preferred Tyne and me to the dormitory. Pina believes that the McCatty boy was bothering her at school.”
“And therefore?”
“And therefore maybe he was the one.”
“Who set William up, you mean?”
“Yes. I even remember Jennifer talking once at dinner about hypnosis and how McCatty had learned how to do it.”
“Learned how to put people under?”
“Exactly.”
“So does Bjorkman.”
“He does?”
“From the police academy. Linden too.”
“Linda?”
“No, Homer Linden. He’s an older man from Jennifer’s psychotherapy group.”
Creasey ground his jaw. “It would have been like Jennifer to … approach an older man.”
I had been rolling a question around in my mind for a while. Sam was the only one other than Deborah Wald I thought might know the answer to it, and after what she’d been through with her father, I wasn’t about to call her about it.
“Sam, I want to ask you a question. I’m not looking forward to it, but it might help me.”
“Ask it.”
I rested both my hands flat on the table, separated by about the width of Creasey’s shoulders. I said, “Did Jennifer ever approach you?”
He threw his left at my face before he even started to stand up. I flicked my right up and parried it. He stood, and I followed him up as he swung his right at me. I took it on my left forearm as the table went over, the vase and water glasses smashing on the floor.
Creasey seemed distracted by the shattering noise. He bent over to the flower. I said, “Don’t cut yourself.”
He muttered something to himself and stood back up. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t appear to want to hit me anymore. He righted the table and the chairs it carried over with it. “Please,” he said, gesturing for me to sit as he did.
I sat back down. He looked out the window and talked softly.
“It was just before Christmas. Tyne was in New York. She goes there every year to do holiday shopping. I got home late from one of those sports banquets where they raise money for some good cause. I can’t even remember…. Anyway, I was sitting next to a former Red Sox player I admired when I first moved here. He was quite a drinker and … well, I’m not. But I stayed with him at and after this dinner for a few rounds. Then I drove home. Jennifer heard me come in.
“I heard her coming down the stairs. I called to her. ‘Playfully,’ she said later. I’m not a ‘playful’ man, John. But I was feeling good and so I called to her, said how are you doing, how come a beautiful girl like you isn’t out, and so on. It was the liquor. My back was still to her as I dropped my coat and briefcase on a chair. Then she said, ‘You sound playful tonight. Well, I feel playful too.’ That was when I turned around. She …” Creasey swallowed hard. “She had on just a bra and panties. She swayed over to me. I was too … stunned to move or say anything. She reached up here”—he poked his tie at his breastplate—“and unsnapped her bra. It … they just fell open and then she slipped her arms around my neck, and kissed me hard and open. Her mouth, I mean. I … I came to my senses and pushed her away, harder than I had to. She banged into a small stand near the wall and knocked over a vase. An expensive one, a wedding present from one of Tyne’s aunts. It fell and broke and Jennifer ran away, up the stairs, cursing at me. ‘I thought you wanted to play,’ she said, over and over, as she ran up the stairs. ‘I thought you wanted to play.’ ”
Creasey swallowed hard, closed his eyes. “That’s it.”
“You tell your wife about this?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t have to. Jennifer did. Locked herself in her room, called her mother in New York, and said I’d gotten drunk and attacked her. I was outside Jennifer’s door. She screamed at me to get on another extension, that Tyne wanted to talk to me. I went into our bedroom and picked up the receiver. Tyne was—I think she’d been drinking some too—Tyne was hysterical, calling me all sorts of names, threatening to call the police. It was a nightmare.”
Creasey raised his face to me, then leaned halfway across the table. He really did look a lot like Gregory Peck. In the crack-up scene from
Twelve O’Clock High
.
He said, “Now you see why I’ve got to know the police have the right one. The one who really killed her.”
I said, “Yes, I do,” even though I didn’t have the slightest idea what Sam Creasey meant.
A
S
I
WALKED BACK
to my car in the Channel 8 parking lot, I decided that I had enough time before my appointment with Professor Kirby to pay a visit to Dr. Marek. The drive took fifteen minutes in the hurry-scurry traffic that seems always to crowd suburban areas on Friday afternoons.
I parked in front of Marek’s building and entered the lobby. I walked downstairs to the basement, answering some time and distance questions I had. I also tried to find my friend the maintenance man, but he must have been off at another of the owner’s properties, “saving a dime.” I climbed the stairs all the way to Marek’s floor.
His receptionist was typing on some short-form stationery as I came through the door. Given what I guessed Marek’s rates were, I would have thought he’d at least send out his bills on full-sized paper. She looked up with a practiced smile, not quite placing me. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I don’t have an appointment, but I was here on Tuesday, and I think Dr. Marek would really appreciate hearing what I’ve found out since then.”
“Let me … I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your …”
“Cuddy, John Cuddy. I’m sure Dr. Marek will remember me.”
She worked hard to keep quizzical from hardening into disapproving. “Please be seated. I’ll tell him you’re here.” She stood and made her way to and through the doorway to his office while I busied myself with the periodicals on his waiting area table. Sandwiched between last month’s issue of
Town & Country
and this month’s issue of
Ducks Unlimited
was a copy of a recent
Calem Chronicle
.
She reappeared in the doorway and said, “The doctor will see you now.”
I said thank you and passed her as she moved back to the bills.
Marek was sitting at his desk, laying down a dictating microphone and adjusting some dial on a control panel as I sat down.
“Well, Mr. Cuddy, good to see you again,” he said without looking up. He finally finished with the control panel and actually engaged me. “Unfortunately, I need Friday afternoons to catch up on correspondence and such, so I’m afraid that I can’t give you much time. Mrs. Porter said that you had something important to tell me?”
Nicely done. Parameters of interview set, warm inflection on last clause to encourage me to state my news succinctly, with little time for discussion.
“Actually, I thought you might be in need of a little counseling yourself today.”
He canted his head toward a shoulder. “I’m not sure I …”
“Lainie Bishop was killed last night.”
“Yes, tragic. I heard it on the late news.”
“Kind of an epidemic.”
“Epidemic?”
“Among your patients, I mean. First Jennifer, then William, as a consequence anyway, and now Lainie.”
“I don’t think … The news bulletin suggested a burglar, I believe.”
“And therefore how could Jennifer and Lainie be connected?”
“Well, yes.”
“Doctor, doesn’t it strike you as at least peculiar that the ranks of your patients are thinning out so quickly and specifically?”
“I’m afraid I’m finding this conversation a bit obtuse, Mr. Cuddy. What do you mean by ‘specifically’?”
“That two members of a five-person therapy group are murdered within a month of each other and a third member is charged on one of them. Doesn’t that seem kind of selective to you?”
“But it’s clear that William killed Jennifer and that he couldn’t have killed Lainie. And Lainie’s death seems certain to have been due to some startled prowler. Aside from mere coincidence, I don’t see the connection.”
“I notice that you get the
Chronicle
.”
“The local paper, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“What of it?”
“Do you read the ‘Police Blotter’ column?”
He gave me a tolerant smile. “Not my favorite.”
“Too bad. I hear it covers local crime waves pretty thoroughly. Like the string of burglaries before Lainie was killed.”
Marek shook his head, then looked down toward his microphone. “Really, Mr. Cuddy. I don’t understand what you’re driving at, and I do have a mountain of work yet to move today, so …”
“It must be kind of lonely for you on Thursdays now.”
“What?”
“Without the experimental group, I mean.”
“Mr. Cuddy, I fail to see …”
“Of course, it also frees up your time for other things.”
“What are you insinuating?”
“Like house calls, for example.”
“I think you’d better leave, sir.”
I peeked down at my watch. “Gee, thanks. I do have another appointment. I’m going to see somebody about hypnosis. I understand it can be a very helpful device.” I stood up and moved toward the door. “By the way, Doctor, did Jennifer ever tell you what a crush she had on you?”
When I looked back at Marek, he was giving me the tolerant smile again. “Do close the door and please don’t bother me after today. Understood?”
If I was right about Clifford Marek, I had to admire his recovery ability. If I was wrong about him, I wasn’t sure where else to look.
The drive into the city was pleasant, the afternoon warm and sunny. It helped that the first outriders of the rush-hour traffic were coming at me rather than traveling with me. I wound my way to the medical school’s South End location, a good distance from Boston University’s main campus on Commonwealth Avenue. I parked in an illegal space and walked to a four-story building.
Professor—Doctor—Douglas Kirby was a happy surprise. He was bright, knowledgeable, and he tactfully ignored the passing of about an hour and a half. We discussed flurazepam and placebos, suppression states and nightmares. Especially as they related to the force of hypnosis and posthypnotic suggestions. I left his office with five books under my arm.
I spent the balance of Friday night and most of Saturday at home reading the material Kirby had lent me. I grew pretty certain of the who and the how of Jennifer’s death. What I still didn’t know was the why. And with Lainie dead, I wasn’t likely to uncover that without getting on at least one plane. I called Murphy and Mrs. Daniels, advising them what I was going to do. They insisted on footing the bills, and I declined by hanging up on each. I then reached my landlord in Chicago, who said that although she was at a different hospital, she would personally call Dr. Jerome Gemelman and ask him to see me on Monday. She was going out of town to a conference, so she also gave me the name and telephone numbers of an administrative dean at a Chicago law school whom she knew and who might be able to help if I ran into any snags. “Jim’s a little weird, John, but he’s good.” I thanked her and wondered briefly, before I made my airline and hotel reservations, how weird a dean at a law school could be.
I
GOT UP AT 8:00 A.M
. on that cloudy Sunday morning and thought about packing my running gear for the trip. Instead, I put it on and ran a slow but satisfying six-mile loop from the condo west to and across the Harvard Square bridge and then east along the Cambridge side of the river before crossing back over at the Mass Ave bridge. I bought the Sunday
Times
and some croissants and milk, then walked home and showered. While my hair dried, I ate breakfast, skimmed the
Times
, and filled a carry-on case. I dressed casually, called a cab, and headed to the airport. With one intermediate stop.
“You gonna be here long, Mac?”
I shook my head. “Ten minutes, maybe. Leave the meter running.”
“Don’t worry, I will. Freaking cemeteries give me the creeps, y’know?”
“Yeah, me too.”
The sun was just breaking through the overcast as I drew even with her stone. The rays made her name on it wink at me. “That’s a pretty good trick, kid.”
Practice, she said. Where are you going?
“Chicago, then maybe on to Philadelphia and New York.”
See America first?
“Not exactly. I took your advice. I assumed that William didn’t kill Jennifer and then tried to see who could have set him up. Any alternative killer was helped most by William spilling the beans at the hypnosis session. Probably the only one with both the opportunity and the ability to set that up was Dr. Marek himself, since he was the one who could control the hypnosis session.”