"You're saying she had one?"
"I can't say for sure."
"But still, you think it's true?"
McAfee wrestled with the question for a moment.
"The reason it's important," Hunt said, "is if she was having an affair, her lover might have been her killer. I'm not looking for a name, Doctor. Just a yes or a no."
Finally, McAfee nodded. "All right, then, I'd say yes. Although who it is, or was, I don't have any idea. But I think so."
"Why? Anything specific?"
"Nothing I could put my finger on. But as I told you, I knew her very well and for a very long time. You pick up on changes. Sometime last summer, she changed."
"In what way?"
"Well, over the past couple of years, she'd become grim. It was all money and business, or responsibilities with her family, and she did it all with a kind of lockjawed determination. She wasn't going to let it beat her that things were hard, that life was work and nothing else." He shrugged, took a beat. "Then her daughter-have you met Kymberly?"
Though he hadn't, Hunt nodded.
"Well, on top of everything else, Caryn was going through a particularly difficult time right around Kym's graduation. Very difficult. I'd hold her hand-not literally-but I'd listen to her complaints. She was at the end. Evidently Kym had a new boyfriend she'd started sleeping with and she was staying out all night and doing drugs and stealing things and for a while there, Caryn seemed to lose the ability to cope with it all. She felt it wasn't ever going to end, that her home life with Stuart and Kym was this chain around her neck that was choking her, and she'd never get it off."
"So what happened?"
"So one day, suddenly, she came in here and she was… I don't know how to describe it other than radiantly happy. Really like her old self. The change was so dramatic, I had to ask her what had happened."
"And what did she say?"
"She said she'd just realized how beautiful she was. I told her that of course she was, and she just smiled at me and said I had no idea. That was all. Except that after that she started to take more care with her looks-not that she needed to, but… I don't know how to put it, exactly. She looked more obviously attractive-bought some new clothes, wore her makeup differently, smiled more. She had more energy for her work. She was just different."
"And not because anything changed at home?"
"No. I'm sure of that. Rather the opposite, in fact. I remember she found out Kym had pierced herself in a very private area around this time, and rather than agonizing over it as she would have a few months before, she was almost breezy. She said, 'I've just got to give her a home until she goes off to college. I owe her that much. Then I'm free.' And never a word about Stuart. It was like he simply ceased to exist."
Hunt pulled out the small tape recorder he kept in the pocket of his sports coat. "I'm not so hot at taking notes," he said, echoing the disengenuous and universal theme. "You mind if I record what we say? I want to make sure I get it exactly right."
"No. Go ahead."
Satisfied, Hunt looked up. "Let's cut to the chase, Doctor. Do you think it was Pinkert?"
Again, the unexpected guffaw; again, cut off quickly. "I suppose I just inadvertently gave my answer away." In all seriousness, he continued. "I'd be surprised if it was Mike."
"Why?"
"First, you've got to know him. He needs to lose fifty pounds. Caryn hates extra weight on people. The other reason might be me. When Caryn and I had our thing, one of her big worries was that word would get out around the hospital. She told me that if she was going to do that again, it wasn't going to be with anybody she worked with. She didn't want gossip. She didn't want to hurt her husband.
She just needed to do what she had do to. Maybe that's a small thing, and maybe she changed her mind, but I think she stuck with it." "You think she had other affairs?"
"Well, at least two. Which eliminates any moral objection to the idea, doesn't it? So it would have been a matter of convenience. I'd say probably." As though just remembering, McAfee snapped his fingers. "Are you really interested in seeing the rest of this place?"
"Sure." Hunt followed McAfee through a door into a long hallway. Since McAfee had never asked him to turn it off, he checked to make sure his tape recorder was still working. It was.
As they took the tour, it was evident that construction was well along. The internal walls separated administrative and medical offices from waiting areas and from operating theaters. The rugs weren't down yet, but the lighting was installed, the place about half painted, most of the equipment and furnishings still to come. But to Hunt it felt like a mostly unfurnished medical complex, not a warehouse anymore. When they got down to the far end, Hunt said, "Looks pretty close to done. When are you opening?"
McAfee crossed his arms over his chest, proud of what he'd wrought. "I'm shooting for the first of the year, give or take a couple of weeks. I start hiring staff in the next week or two."
"So everything's a go?"
"Pretty much. There's always last-minute problems, and I'm sure there will be on this, but all in all I'm fairly confident."
Hunt decided to take the gloves off. "Pretty big change in a week, isn't it?"
McAfee's face went slack, then reddened. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well, I mean, obviously, last week you were fighting Caryn over a partner you didn't want in the business. But you needed his money to keep construction going. Now both those problems are gone. Also gone is an original headstrong partner who was giving you nothing but headaches. How much life insurance did you and Caryn take out on one another?"
"I don't have to answer that. And I resent the hell out of the implication. I loved Caryn."
"How much insurance?" Hunt repeated. "It's in the public record. If you make me look for it, I might get cranky. How much?"
"Two and a half million."
"Each?"
"Each."
"And when's the last time you saw Caryn?"
"Friday, here. No, Saturday morning. I ran into her at the hospital where we both had patients. We barely spoke."
"Because of the tension between both of you and Pinkert?" "No. Because we were busy looking at patients. I just told you that."
"Yes, you did. But it seems to me that if you're having all of these issues, you might have talked about them a little."
"We'd just done that the day before. She finished before me at the hospital on Saturday and left. Maybe to go see her lover. I don't know. But we didn't talk."
"All right. What about Sunday?"
"No, I didn't see her on Sunday."
"What did you do Sunday night?"
"I already told your partner…"
"That you were asleep. I'm talking earlier. Dinnertime. Where did you have dinner?"
"I don't know. I'd have to think." "Go ahead. Take your time."
Hunt pulled out his notebook again. Ostentatiously flipped pages, grabbed his pen. "Sunday," he said curtly, "three days ago."
McAfee rubbed his hands together. He forced a painful smile. "I'm just not remembering. I'm drawing a complete blank. Sunday, Sunday…"
"Sunday," Hunt said. "You were in bed by eleven. Maybe your wife would remember."
He shook his head. "We're divorced. I'm living by myself out on
Fillmore. I'm really drawing a blank here, though. Just a second. Do you mind if I make a phone call?"
"Not at all."
McAfee pulled his cell phone from his belt and said "Office" into it. A few seconds later, he started talking. "Marcia, hey, it's me. What's my calendar got me doing on Sunday, last Sunday? Sure, I'll wait a minute." That nervous come-and-go smile. Then, "Nothing? No, I'm sure I did something. I just can't… okay. Okay. Thanks then. Bye."
Clicking off, he shrugged dramatically. "I guess I'm going to have to think about it. Whatever it was, it wasn't too memorable."
"Doctor, didn't Inspector Juhle ask you about this?"
"Sure. I told him I had surgery scheduled Monday morning, so I'm sure I was in bed."