"Kava, Alex - Maggie 04 - At the Stroke of Madness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kava Alex)

"Maggie O'Dell."
"Maggie, it's Gwen. Is this a good a time to talk?"
"Tully and I are just having an early lunch. What's wrong?" Maggie knew Gwen Patterson well enough to recognize the urgency in her friend's voice, despite Gwen's attempt to disguise it with a clipped professional tone. She and Gwen had known each other for almost ten years, having first met when Maggie was in Quantico's forensic program and Gwen was a consulting psychologist frequently called in by Maggie's boss, Assistant Director Kyle Cunningham. The two women, despite their age difference-Gwen was thirteen years Maggie's senior-had become instant friends.
"1 was wondering if you might be able to check on something for me."
"Sure. What do you need?"
"I'm concerned about a patient. I'm afraid she might be in some kind of trouble."
"Okay." Maggie was a bit surprised. Gwen rarely talked about her patients, let alone asked for help with one. "What kind of trouble?"
"I'm not sure. It may be nothing, but I'd feel better if someone checked on her. She left a disturbing voice message late Saturday night. I haven't been able to reach her. Then this morning she missed our weekly session. She never misses a session."
"Have you tried contacting her employer or any of her family?"
"She's an artist, self-employed. No family that I know of other than her grandmother. Actually she was out of town for her grandmother's funeral. Another concern. You know how funerals can be emotional triggers."
Yes, Maggie did know. Over a decade later and she still wasn't able to go to one without visions of her heroic, fire-fighting father lying in that huge mahogany box, his hair combed to the wrong side, his burnt hands wrapped in plastic and tucked at his sides. "Maggie?"
"Could she simply have decided to stay an extra day or two?"
"I doubt she would do that. She didn't even want to be there for the funeral."
"Maybe her car broke down on the trip back?" Maggie couldn't help wondering if Gwen was overreacting. It made sense that the woman may have wanted to be away from everyone and everything for a day or two without running back here for a session with her shrink to dissect how she was feeling. But then Maggie knew not everyone reacted to stress and tragedy like she did.
"No, she rented a car up there. See, that's another thing. The car hasn't been turned in yet. The hotel told me she was scheduled for departure yesterday but she hasn't checked out, nor has she contacted anyone about staying longer. And she missed her flight yesterday. She's not like this. She has problems, but organization and reliability are not on the list."
"You said yourself that funerals can be emotionally draining. Maybe she just wanted a few more days before coming back to the everyday routine. By the way, how were you able to find out that she missed her flight?" Airlines didn't just hand out their passenger manifest. After years of Gwen lecturing her about playing by the rules, Maggie waited for an admission of guilt. Now that she thought about it, Gwen had managed to get a lot of information that wasn't usually handed out freely.
"Maggie, there's more to it." The urgency returned to Gwen's voice, dismissing any confession to rule breaking. "She said she was meeting someone.. .a man. That was the message and she was calling me to talk her out of it. She has this...this tendency..." She paused. "Look, Maggie, I can't share the intimacies of her case. Let's just say that in the past she's made some bad choices when it comes to men."
Maggie glanced across the table to find Tully watching her, listening. He looked away quickly as if caught. She had noticed recently-although he tried to disguise it-that he seemed interested in anything related to Gwen Patterson. Or was it simply her imagination?
"What are you saying, Gwen? That you think this man may have done something to her?"
Silence again. Maggie waited. Was Gwen finally realizing that perhaps she was overreacting? And why was she being so overprotective with this particular woman? Maggie had never known Gwen to baby-sit her patients. Her friends, yes, but not her patients.
"Maggie, is there some way you could check on her? Someone you might be able to call?"
Maggie looked at Tully again. He had finished his lunch and now pretended to be watching out the window, another group of recruits down below in sweaty T-shirts and jogging shorts snaking through the woods.
Maggie picked at her own lunch. Why had Gwen suddenly decided to become this patient's caretaker? It seemed like a simple case of a grieving woman shutting herself away from her world for a while, perhaps even finding solace in a friendly stranger. Why didn't Gwen see that? "Maggie?"
"I'll do what I can. Where was she staying?" "The funeral was in Wallingford, Connecticut, but she was staying at the Ramada Plaza Hotel next door in Meriden. I have the phone numbers and addresses right here. I can fax over some other information later. All I know about the man she was meeting was that she called him Sonny." Maggie's stomach gave a sudden flip while she took down the information. All the while she kept thinking, "Not Connecticut."
CHAPTER 4
Sheriff Henry Watermeier shoved his hat back and swiped at the sweat on his forehead.
"Fuck!" he muttered, wanting to walk, to pace off his frustration, but reminding himself to stand in one place. And so he did, hands on his belt buckle, waiting and watching and trying to think, trying to ignore the stench of death and the buzzing of flies. Jesus! The flies were a pain in the ass, miniature vultures, impatient and persistent despite the plastic tarp.
It wasn't the first body Henry had seen stuffed into a strange and unusual place. He had seen more than his share during his thirty years with the NYPD. But not here. Crimes like this weren't supposed to happen in Connecticut. This was exactly the kind of stuff he had hoped to escape when his wife talked him into moving to the middle of nowhere. Yeah, sure, Fairfield County and the shore got its share of this kind of thing all the time. There were always plenty of high-profile cases-big fucking cases-like that stupid publicist driving her SUV over sixteen people, or even the Martha Moxley murder that took decades to solve, or Alex Cross, Connecticut's very own preppy rapist. Yeah, there were plenty of crimes on the shore and closer to New York, but in the middle of Connecticut things were quieter. Crap like this wasn't supposed to happen here.
He had instructed his deputies to set up a wide perimeter, having them string up yellow crime-scene tape. It was going to take a hell of a lot of tape. He watched two of his men stretching it from tree to tree, Arliss with a fucking Marlboro hanging from his lips and that kid, Truman, screeching like a banshee at any of the outsiders who dared come within ten feet.
"Arliss, make sure your butts don't end up on the ground." The deputy looked up, startled, as if he had no idea what his boss was talking about. "I mean the damned cigarette. Get it out of your mouth. Now."
Finally, a look of recognition crossed Arliss's face as he grabbed at the cigarette, stubbed it out on a tree, started to fling it but stopped with his hand in midair. Henry could see the red start at his deputy's neck as he tucked the rest of the cigarette under his hat and over his ear. It almost made Henry as mad as if Arliss had flung it. First major crime scene as New Haven County sheriff, maybe his last major crime scene of his career, and these goddamn screwups were going to make him look like a fucking idiot. Henry glanced over his shoulder, pretending to assess the scene when all he really wanted to know was if Channel 8 still had their camera on him. Should have known, the fucking lens was still pointed at his back. He could feel it like a laser beam slicing him in two. And that's exactly what it could do if he wasn't careful.
Why the hell had Calvin Vargus called the goddamn media? Of course, he knew why, and he didn't know Vargus except by reputation. The son of a bitch was living up to that reputation in spades, flapping his yap to that pretty little reporter from Hartford even after Henry told him to shut the fuck up. But he couldn't make Vargus shut up. Not without locking him up. Although that wasn't entirely out of the question.
He needed to concentrate. Vargus was the least of his worries. He lifted the tarp and forced himself to look at the body again, or at least at the part sticking out of the barrel. From what he could see the blouse looked like silk with French cuffs. The fingernails were once professionally manicured. The hair may have been dyed-the roots were a bit darker. It was hard to tell since it was now matted and caked with blood. A shitload of blood. Definite death blow. Didn't have to be a forensic scientist to know that.
He dropped the tarp and wondered again if this poor woman was a local. Was she some bastard's mistress? Before he left the station he had run the list of missing persons, highlighting those in New Haven County, but none of them fit the preliminary description. The list included a male college student who had skipped out on classes last spring, a teenage drug addict who had probably run away from home, and an elderly woman who supposedly went out for milk one morning and hadn't been seen since. Nowhere on the list had Henry found a fortysomething-year-old female with long hair, an expensive silk blouse and manicured fingernails.
Henry took a deep breath to clear his mind, to help him think. He looked up into the cloudless blue and watched another flock of geese. Lucky bastards. Maybe he was getting old and tired. Maybe he was simply ready for that fantasy retirement of endless days fishing off the banks of the Connecticut River with a cooler full of Budweiser and a couple of smoked turkey sandwiches with salami and pro-volone. Yeah, a sandwich, but not just any sandwich. One with the works from Vinny's Deli, wrapped all neat and tight in that white paper that Vinny used. He could go for one now.
He glanced at the barrel again. The flies were sneaking under the tarp, their buzzing amplified instead of muffled. Goddamn vultures. They'd be swarming the moist areas and taking up residence before the M.E. arrived. Nothing worse than flies and their fucking offspring maggots. He'd seen the damage they could do in a matter of hours. Disgusting. And here he was thinking about Vinny's sandwiches. Well, hell, it took a lot for him to lose his appetite. His wife, Rosie, would say it was because he had become "jaded." Jesus! She actually talked like that, using words like jaded. Henry claimed instead that he was simply pissed dry, burned out. This short stint as New Haven County's sheriff was supposed to help him make some sort of transition. It was supposed to help him ease his way from the head-banging stress of New York to the laid-back routine of Connecticut to finally the peace and quiet of retirement. But this... No, he hadn't signed up for this. He didn't want or need a messy unsolved murder to screw up his reputation. How the hell were he and Rosie going to retire here if he had to listen to the stories, the second-guessing, the snickers behind his back?
He glanced at Arliss again. The goddamn idiot had some crime-scene tape stuck to the bottom of his shoe, a stream of it following him like toilet paper and fucking Arliss completely unaware.
No, this was definitely not the way he wanted to end his career.

CHAPTER 5

R.J. Tully watched O'Dell sort through some file folders stacked on her desk.
"So much for vacation," she said, her good mood put on hold.
He thought her mood had changed because of the phone call from Dr. Patterson, but O'Dell seemed to be ignoring the fax machine behind her as it spit out page after page of details about Patterson's missing patient. Instead of retrieving and examining those pages, O'Dell was searching for something already lost in her stacks. Perhaps a case she had planned on taking home with her to peruse during those backyard digging breaks. What was one more if she added Dr. Patterson's?
Tully sank into the overstuffed chair O'Dell had managed to cram into her small but orderly office. It always amazed him. Their offices down in BSU-Behavorial Science Unit-were Cracker Jack boxes, yet hers included neatly stacked bookcases-not one errant hardcover squashed on top. Now that he had a closer look, he could see they were categorized. And alphabetized.
His office, on the other hand, looked like a storage closet with stacks of files and books and magazines-not necessarily each in separate piles-on his shelves, on his desk and guest chair and even on the floor. Some days he was lucky to find a path to his desk. And underneath his desk was a whole other matter. That's where he kept a duffel bag of running shoes, shorts and socks, some of which-especially the dirty ones--never managed to stay put in the bag. Now that he thought about it, maybe that was the mysterious smell that had recently begun to take over the room. He missed having a window in his office. In Cleveland he had left behind a corner office on the third floor in exchange for a Cracker Jack box three floors underground. He missed the fresh air, especially this time of year. Fall used to be his favorite season. Used to be. Back before the divorce.
Funny, but that was how he kept track of time these days before the divorce and after the divorce. Before the divorce he had been much more organized. Or at least he hadn't been such a mess. Since his transfer to Quantico he hadn't been able to get back on track. No, that wasn't true. It had little to do with the move. Ever since his divorce from Caroline his life had been a mess. Yes, it was the divorce that had caused this nosedive, this spiral into disorganization. Maybe that's what bothered him right now about O'Dell's attitude. She really seemed to be taking this finalization of her divorce as a form of liberation. Maybe he envied her just a little.
He waited while O'Dell continued her search, still ignoring the wheeze of the fax machine. He wanted to say something to retrieve her good mood, something like, "What? No color-coded filing system?" But before he could say it he noticed the files she had pulled out of the stack all had red tabs. He rubbed at the beginning of a smile. For as predictable as his partner was, why couldn't he figure out what the hell she was up to most of the time? Like, for instance, how long did she intend to taunt him with that last doughnut? She had brought it down from the cafeteria with her, still wrapped in cellophane, untouched and now sitting on the corner of her desk-yes, sitting on the edge of her desk, tempting him.
Finally she slipped the file folders into her briefcase and turned to collect the faxed pages. "Her name is Joan Begley," O'Dell said, looking over the information as she put the pages in order. "She's been a patient of Gwen's for more than ten years."
Gwen. Tully still hadn't allowed himself to call her by her first name. To him she was Dr. Gwen Patterson, D.C. psychologist, best friend to his partner and sometimes consultant to the FBI and their boss, Assistant Director Cunningham. Usually the woman drove Tully a little nuts with her arrogant, know-it-all psychobabble. It didn't help matters that she had strawberry-blond hair and nice legs.