The dark blue eyes showed themselves. “Oh, I need the police. I think you know that, Chief.”
Ryan stepped to one side and Cutter went in. He’d been here several times, yet the room was always something of a surprise — the ceiling rose to the full two-stories, with a central open staircase curving to a half upper floor of bedrooms while this chamber seemed like maybe a wall had been torn from between the living room and parlor of what was already a spacious house.
At left was a brick fireplace with an oil painting of Ryan’s late parents above it, when they were the age Roy and Helen were now, smiling from eternity. A once elegant couch faced the fire, waiting patiently for re-upholstery. Here and there were corners with lamps and chairs for reading, and several sitting areas with chairs and two-seater sofas, making many rooms of this one.
An at once magnificent and shabby space, this was a living room designed, unlike most, for actual living. Over at right was a sort of library with lots of books, both medical and popular fiction; but also on the built-in shelves were the modern intrusions of a television and a hi-fi system.
The boy, Richie, was sitting on the floor in his blue and red Superman pajamas, looking up at the TV resting on an adult’s eye-level shelf. He glanced at Cutter coming in, smiled, and waved; the chief waved back and the boy returned to The Amazing Spider-Man on the tube.
Helen was sitting on that sofa in front of the fireplace, where flames were licking and snapping — the night was chill enough for that. She rose as Cutter entered, a stunning woman in her early thirties, almost as tall as her husband, shapely and just tanned enough, with eyes as blue as Cutter’s own and long blonde hair brushing the shoulders of a long-sleeved second skin of a black top and bell-bottom jeans. She wore sandals, a rich hippie.
She looked pissed.
Clearly Cutter had entered mid-argument.
She came over quickly and planted herself before him and said, “You’re Chief Cutter, I take it?”
“I am.”
“These are your men, walking the grounds?”
“They are. I take it you’re Mrs. Ryan.”
“For the moment. Are you a part of this?”
“A part of what, ma’am?”
She frowned; oddly, she was just as beautiful doing so, nothing at all ugly about her but her tone. “Spare me the Dragnet routine. I came down here in good faith, for a reasonable discussion with Roy about arranging shared custody of our son Richard, and what do I find? This... this circus.”
Roy, at Cutter’s side and facing the angry woman, bit the words off: “You can’t really imagine I would, that I could enlist the entire Peachtree Heights police department just to hang onto Richie for a few days while I, what? Cook up some evil plan with a small-town lawyer to go up against your father’s fleet of big-city, big-shot attorneys?”
“You did all right for yourself before!” she said, shaking a fist.
Whoa, Cutter thought. He didn’t know the specifics, just that somehow Dr. Roy had won full custody of his son. Rumor around Peachtree Heights was that the doc’s wife must be wild or something. Maybe on drugs or running around with men. Or, worse, women!
Mad as a wet hen though she might be, however, this was obviously no drug addict, and who she was or wasn’t having sex with was beside the point — her love for her son was clear by the depth of her rage.
Cutter needed to settle this shit down.
“Mrs. Ryan... or would you prefer ‘Helen’? I’m Blake. I’m really not the enemy, and I assure you this is not some crazy scheme to get the best of you in your custody battle. Could you and Mr. Ryan just... sit down for a moment, and let me fill you both in?”
The woman took a deep breath and let it out. She swallowed. Nodded. “Yes. Certainly. And ‘Helen’ is fine... Blake.”
Ryan and his estranged wife deposited themselves on the sofa, leaving a cushion’s worth of space between them. Placing his Stetson and windbreaker on a nearby chair, Cutter put himself opposite that empty cushion with the warmth of the fire behind him. The real heat was coming from Mrs. Ryan, who watched him with skeptical tolerance. Flames reflected and danced on the faces of both wife and husband, as if God or anyway some god were laughing at them.
Cutter began: “Helen, I take it you’re aware of what’s happened in and around Peachtree Heights over the past month and a half?”
Helen nodded. “Three retired doctors have died. Accidental deaths in two cases, natural causes in the other.”
Cutter nodded, slowly, saying, “Died, yes. But not accidents, and not of natural causes.”
She frowned. “You were asked by reporters in Atlanta whether these were murders and your reply was, I believe, ‘no comment.’”
Cutter shrugged. “That was accurately reported. But ‘no comment’ and ‘no’ are two very different responses. We are not anxious to advertise it, just yet... but these are looking like murders.”
She did not seem impressed.
Her husband, however, was sitting forward, eyes narrowed and alert. “Including that obstetrician? Vernon Petersen?”
Again Cutter nodded. “His is the most obvious murder, but our medical examiner has only just confirmed the cause of death. Suffocation. Indications are Dr. Petersen was smothered with a pillow.”
Now Helen’s head cocked and an eyebrow raised. “What about the other two?”
“Dr. Samuel Carter, pediatric surgeon, fell down the stairs. Hard to prove that one’s a murder, but the carpeted stairs do tell a story of sorts — for it to be an accidental death, Carter would’ve had to miss the first three steps entirely, based upon where blood and broken teeth were found, indicating he first hit his head half-way down before tumbling the rest of the way and breaking his neck.”
That made Helen wince.
“As for Dr. Lee Meyer,” Cutter said, “he drowned, all right. And was washed ashore. But his shoulders were bruised, as if he’d been held under water.”
“Are these injuries,” Helen asked, “absolute proof of murder and not accident?”
“No,” Cutter admitted. “Carter could have missed the first step and Meyer might have been bruised by objects in the water. But Petersen’s death seals it. It’s absolutely suffocation.”
Helen’s eyes were slits now. “How can you know that for certain?”
But it was her husband who answered: “Petechial hemorrhaging.”
Cutter clarified: “Red or purple splotches in the eyes, face, neck. Your husband showed you the note?”
She twitched a frown. “Yes. Just before you got here. But... nothing.”
Ryan said, “She thought I was lying. That I made it up! Can you believe this bullshit?”
Cutter held up a gentling hand. He went to his windbreaker and got out the plastic-sheathed note and came over and handed the missive to her.
She read it.
Cutter knew what it said, in cut-out letters from area newspapers and national magazines: NOT JUST A DOCTOR THIS TIME. FIRST THE BOY. THIS IN PAYMENT FOR WHAT THEY DID TO ME.
“How...” She swallowed, thrust the plastic-encased note back to Cutter. “...how do we know an unsigned piece of garbage like that isn’t just... just a goddamn prank?”
Cutter flipped a hand. “To what end?”
She had no answer to that, but asked pointedly, “Why wasn’t I told about that vile note sooner?”
“It showed up in your husband’s mailbox today. We take it to mean it’s a deranged individual with one hell of a grudge against doctors.”
“Doctors in general?” Helen asked. “Or specific doctors?”
Ryan said, “She has a point. Two of the victims are pediatricians. The one last week, an obstetrician. All child-oriented physicians. But I’m a general practitioner. A family doctor.”