Healy nodded again. He looked at Susan and smiled.
“There you have the essence of my professional life,” he said.
“Oddly enough,” Susan said, “mine, too.”
“You know if Rugar was invited?” Healy said to me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Anything else either of you want to tell me?” Healy said. “Observation? Theory? Anything?”
I shook my head. I could see Susan thinking about it. So could Healy.
“What?” he said to her.
“Just… not even an observation… an impression, maybe,” Susan said.
“Yeah?” Healy said.
“I’ve seen a lot of traumatized people in my practice,” Susan said. “Heidi Bradshaw seems to be holding up awfully well in the face of a horrendous experience culminating in the murder of her son-in-law and the kidnapping of her daughter.”
“You think she’s somehow involved?” Healy said.
“Perhaps she’s simply numb with shock,” Susan said. “Perhaps she’s Mother Courage. I only can say that her behavior is not consistent with other behavior I’ve seen in other traumatic circumstances. And I’ve never seen circumstances as flamboyantly traumatic as these.”
Healy looked at me. I shrugged.
“We all know it’s hard to assess the performance of people under stress,” I said.
Healy was silent. He walked to one of the tall windows and looked out at the storm-littered lawn.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll see.”
He turned back to us from the window.
“You want to go home?” he said.
“Yes,” Susan said.
“I’ll tell my people at the dock to let you go,” Healy said.
Susan said, “Thank you.”
Healy looked at me and said, “You going to stay in this?”
“I think I will,” I said.
“Thought you might,” Healy said. “Just don’t muddy the waters.”
I grinned at him.
“Can’t promise,” I said.
“Didn’t think you could,” Healy said.
14
What with packing and waiting for a boat and such, we got to Susan’s house in the late afternoon. Hawk was there with Pearl. We went in, kissed Pearl, thanked Hawk, fed Pearl, went to bed, and slept for fourteen hours.
In the morning I fed Pearl again and made coffee while Susan prepared a face to meet the patients she would see today. Susan pulled together for work was rather different from the Susan whom I often took to dinner. Work was dark tailored suits, quiet makeup, little jewelry. Dinner was much more glamorous.
And after dinner was sometimes exotic.
At eight-thirty Susan went downstairs for her first patient. Pearl and I went out and ran along the river. We were back to Susan’s by nine-thirty. We were in my office checking the mail by ten. Actually, I was checking the mail. Pearl was on her couch against the far wall, resting her eyes.
The mail was unenlightening, though a couple of clients paid their bills, which was pleasing. There were no phone messages, no e-mail except spam. I wondered if anyone ever bought anything as a result of being spammed. I hoped not.
I got out a lined yellow pad and a Bic pen and sat, and looked out the window at the place where Berkeley Street crosses Boylston. Or does Boylston cross Berkeley? Either way, the storm that had hit Tashtego full-on had then followed the coast-line out along the cape and on out to sea. Boston had gotten only rain. The rain had been heavy and had washed everything so that the old redbrick city seemed to glow in the Indian-summer sunshine.
I wrote Heidi Bradshaw on my pad.
Then I sat some more and looked out the window.
Then I wrote Peter Van Meer on my pad. And in a creative frenzy wrote down Maurice Lessard and Adelaide Van Meer Lessard. Then I looked out the window some more.
It was odd for the Gray Man to be involved in a simple kidnapping for ransom, even one as ornate as this one. And if he was going to kidnap her, why would he not wait until she was on her way home from Wal-Mart, or Tiffany, or wherever Adelaide shopped, and grab her. Why a kidnapping that required a squad of submachine gunners and a helicopter, in front of a host of celebrated people, on an island that had limited exit choices?
“Why is that?” I said to Pearl.
Pearl, who was lying on her back with her feet in the air and her head lolling off the couch, opened her eyes for a moment and looked at me upside down, and closed her eyes again.
“Lassie woulda known,” I said.
I got up and made some coffee and stood in my bay window and looked down while it brewed. Then I poured myself a cup with cream and sugar and sat back down and put my feet up.
I drank some coffee.
Did Rugar want it to be noticeable? Or did someone who hired Rugar want that? Did they want to sell the kidnapping? Why would they want to? Why would they think they needed to? And why Rugar? Rugar was the big leagues. Whoever wanted her kidnapped could have hired any third-rate fringe guy to grab her. How did they even know about Rugar? You didn’t find him hanging on a corner in South Philly.
I drank some more coffee.
Maybe I was looking the wrong way. Maybe the kidnapping was a decoy. On my yellow pad I wrote DEATHS: Minister, Maurice Lessard, four Tashtego patrol guys, the shooter I threw off the cliff. Others? The guy off the cliff could not be planned for. I crossed him out. The security guys almost certainly just drew the wrong duty at the wrong time. Hard to imagine that this whole elaborate charade was a cover to kill one or more of them. I knew nothing about the minister. If there were others, Healy would let me know. Healy was meticulous. He would run down everybody. And he would share it with me. We went back a long way, and while we weren’t exactly friends, we weren’t exactly not friends. More than that, Healy was not a protocol guy. If anyone could help him, he’d take the help.
I stood again and looked down at Berkeley Street. It was lunchtime, and lots of people, many of them well-dressed young women, were on the street, going to lunch. I examined them closely, but none looked suspicious.
I sat down again. I poured some more coffee. I drank some and stared out the window some more. Then I picked up my pen and crossed out everybody on my yellow pad but Heidi and Adelaide, Peter Van Meer, and Maurice Lessard.
“Solid gumshoe technique,” I said to Pearl. “Narrow the investigation.”
Pearl didn’t even open an eye. She usually paid very little attention to discussions that did not involve food or a walk. She paid very little attention to this one.
15
Healy came into my office without knocking, carrying a briefcase, and sat down in one of the client chairs that I had arranged hopefully in front of my desk. He opened the briefcase, took out a blue manila folder, and tossed it onto my desk.
“Background,” Healy said. “The results of our extensive research.”
“Folder looks kind of thin,” I said.
“I knew you’d be grateful,” Healy said.
I slid the folder toward myself and left it closed on the desktop.
“Can’t wait to read it,” I said. “Is there a ransom request yet?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You think they’d tell you?” I said.
“I think so.”
“Even if they were warned not to?” I said.
“Most people are so shook by the whole thing they want to turn it over to us regardless.”
I nodded.
“Unless they can hire some guy like you,” Healy said.
“There is no guy like me,” I said. “Except me.”
“And you don’t know anything about a ransom.”
“No,” I said.
“And you’d tell me if you did,” Healy said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Ah,” Healy said. “The spirit of cooperation.”
“What else you got?” I said.
“The final body count,” Healy said, “not counting the guy you say went off the cliff, we haven’t found him yet, is six.”