Chapter 8 #2
“Bullshit.” Sarah pushed away from the window and scoped out the minibar. Wine. Bottled water. She frowned. No liquor?
Frustrated and tired, she opened a personal serving bottle of white wine that had been grown, bottled, and aged right here in a Youngstown vineyard.
“Probably poisoned.”
She took a long, deep swallow anyway.
Not bad. She drifted back to the bed, plunked the bottle on the antique side table, and opened her suitcase.
She shoved her stuff into a couple of drawers and tucked the bag under the bed.
Cosmetic bag in hand, she shuffled to the bathroom and tossed it onto the counter.
“Cosmetic bag” was a misnomer in her case.
She didn’t wear unnecessary cosmetics. Deodorant, Chapstick, toothbrush and paste, and hairbrush were all she packed.
Finishing her wine, she kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed. It was early still but she was tired. She needed to think, to review the research she’d done before she crashed for the night.
Tomorrow she would get started with the interviews. That was when she would really make friends. She would be watching for that compassion Conner spoke of.
The buzz of her cell phone vibrating reminded her that she hadn’t called her editor. Don Wiley would be pissed. She rolled off the bed and dug for her phone in her coat pocket.
“Newton,” she answered without checking the number first as she usually did.
“Sarah, you missed your appointment today.”
Big mistake to answer without checking the caller ID.
“Sorry about that, Doc. I had an unexpected assignment. I completely forgot the appointment.” Hell. Dr. Ballantine. Her shrink. She would never get off the phone without answering endless, probing questions.
“You know our deal, Sarah. You can miss one appointment, but if you miss two, we have the session by phone. Is now good for you?”
Sarah fell back onto the bed. Damn it. Damn her editor.
This was his fault. She’d had that little meltdown a couple of years ago and he’d blackmailed her into therapy.
One session per week or no field assignments.
Even worse, he kept Ballantine abreast of Sarah’s assignments—just to ensure she wasn’t working too hard or going against the doc’s orders.
Damn it.
“Sure.” She made a face. “Now’s fine.”
“Excellent.”
The sound of a page turning told Sarah the doc was preparing to take notes. At least she wasn’t recording it. Sarah hated recorded sessions. What if someone broke into the doc’s office and stole the tapes or the notes? The dirtbag killer here in Youngstown wasn’t the only one with secrets.
Sarah would just as soon prefer that hers stayed where they belonged. In the past.
“How have you been sleeping?”
“Great.” Lie one.
“Good. Any dreams or nightmares that wake you or unsettle you?”
“Nope.” Lie two. She usually made it all the way to four before Dr. Ballantine called her on her lack of cooperation.
“Any night sweats or headaches?”
“Nada.” Three. Sarah reached up and righted the painting of the harbor hanging over her bed.
“Have you been taking your medication?”
“Absolutely.” Four.
“When did you last eat?”
Hey, this was going pretty damned good. Maybe she should do this over the phone more often. “About two hours ago. This hot guy took me to a cozy restaurant right on the water. It was nice.” Five. Six.
Damn, she was on a roll.
“I’m impressed, Sarah.”
She was, too. “I try, Doc.”
“Now.” Paper rustled as Dr. Ballantine flipped to a new page in her notepad. “Let’s start from the beginning once more. This time I’d like the truth.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. Fooling Ballantine had been wishful thinking. “Shitty. Yes. Yes. No. And I can’t remember.”
“I see.”
Honesty was never the best policy when it came to shrinks.
At least, not for Sarah.
“So, you’re not sleeping. You’re experiencing those same nightmares. You’re having night sweats and headaches. Not taking your medicine. And you haven’t eaten today.”
“I had coffee and wine. Does that count?”
“Sarah.”
She sat up and opened the drawer on the bedside table. A room service menu mocked her. “You know I hate to eat at these places. They could poison me.”
“Paranoid already? You haven’t even been there twenty-four hours. Doesn’t it usually take forty-eight?”
There was nothing worse than a shrink who knew everything about you. “Okay. I’ll eat. Then I’ll take my medicine and go to sleep. I won’t dream or sweat or any of that other stuff. Okay?”
“I wish I could trust you to do exactly that.” Dead air pulsed between them. “Sarah, if you stay on this track you’re headed for trouble. Following my advice is the only way to avoid it. You know this.”
Sarah pulled out the menu and scanned the items available after seven. What else would one eat in Maine? Chowder.
“I’m ordering something right now. You can listen.
” Sarah ignored whatever the doc said and placed her cell on the table while she made the call on the room phone.
She ordered the chowder and hot tea. A young female voice promised to deliver the order within fifteen minutes.
Sarah cradled the receiver and picked up her cell. “You happy now?”
“Sarah.”
Here it came. The talk.
“Have you forgotten what happened last time?”
Sarah scrubbed her free hand over her face. “Of course not.” How could she? She’d spent seven days in a padded room with voices that weren’t hers screaming in her head. Then another seven days under close observation.
“This is the way it starts,” Ballantine scolded gently. “You stop eating and taking your medicine. You stop sleeping and then you become vulnerable to the break.”
The break. That was the official diagnosis. A break in reality. The inability to control one’s thoughts or actions and to discern the real from the imagined.
Not exactly a trip to the islands.
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” Sarah promised. “I’ll be fed and fully medicated. I swear.”
“I’ve seen the news reports regarding the case you’re working on, Sarah.
You let yourself be vulnerable and you could end up a victim.
You know this. It’s one of the hazards of your work.
Not to mention the fact that you’re not going to win any popularity contests while you’re there. Stress can be an overpowering enemy.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I got it, Doc. I’ll do better.”
“Tomorrow,” Ballantine reminded. “Five o’clock. You call me and give me an update.”
Sarah gave her assurance and ended the call. She pitched her cell aside and lay there for a long, disturbing moment considering all that Ballantine had said.
The medicine made Sarah groggy, slowed her reactions. She just forgot to eat. It wasn’t on purpose. And the dreams etc., she had about as much control over those as she did the rest of her life. Shit happened.
She’d always dealt with it just fine except that once. Maybe the case had been too close to home. The murdered kids had been between eight and ten years of age. Sarah had empathized too closely with their vulnerability. Gotten in too deep . . . nearly gotten herself killed.
She touched her right side. Shuddered.
Put it away. Don’t even look.
In her experience, the best medicine for her was work.
As long as she remembered not to trust anyone but herself.
With that in mind, she sat up and reached for her shoulder bag.
She never left home without it. Inside she carried a folder on whatever case she was working, a flashlight, a compact pair of binoculars, pepper spray, matches, and toilet paper.
Oh, and a bottle of water. The bag was her life preserver.
She pulled the folder from the bag and thumbed through her handwritten notes and the newspaper clippings and police reports she’d gathered.
As if she’d gone blind and couldn’t see any of those things, her thoughts wandered back to Conner.
If she opted to keep him around, how long would it take her to win him over to her side?
A couple of days? Maybe. Right now he was just doing the job he’d been ordered to do.
But he wanted the truth just as badly as she did.
Maybe more. He wouldn’t find it until he backed off that high horse of his and admitted that the killer could be anyone.
Then again, she could be expecting too much. Maybe winning him over wasn’t possible.
She’d learned in the past couple of hours that he wasn’t quite as easygoing as he appeared.
Not twenty minutes ago she had reminded herself what trouble she could get into hanging around with a guy like him. Suddenly she was leaning in that direction.
Kale Conner was a means to an end. He could help her get into places she might not get into otherwise. He could be useful. Keeping him around another day or so couldn’t hurt.
The last piece of research material she had in her file was a photograph that had cost her editor a pretty penny. A copy of a crime-scene photo taken of Valerie Gerard’s body on the cold stone floor at the chapel.
Why hadn’t Conner told her the truth about the body?
Maybe he’d been instructed not to. After all, that detail hadn’t been disclosed to the public. Nine days and counting and there hadn’t been a leak yet beyond the photo. But that wouldn’t last. Eventually someone else would break and then the proverbial shit would hit the fan.
That one redacted detail was more telling than any other related to the condition of the body. It also told something significant about the killer.
A single word had been written along the victim’s torso in her own blood.
That one word shifted this homicide to a whole different level.
A very personal level.
Sarah stared at the photo of the young woman who had died such a slow, painful death.
“Who hated you enough to call you that?” Sarah murmured. “Then killed you for it?”
One word, four seemingly innocuous letters that when aligned together carried profound meaning.
Liar