“When did all this take place?”
“Three nights ago, around eleven P.M.”
“I assume you’ve already figured out who this DickMan character is?”
“That I have,” De Mello said. “And this is where it gets interesting.”
He hit another key and an arrest report came up on screen, showing a mug shot of the same shirtless guy.
“He’s a street hustler by the name of Todd Hastert. Popped a few times for soliciting and for crystal meth possession.”
“Another charmer,” Blackburn said.
“Thing is, up until about a year ago he was legit. Worked in the M.E.’s office as a morgue attendant. Got eighty-sixed when he failed a piss test.”
A small alarm went off in Blackburn’s head. Morgue attendants routinely prepped bodies for postmortem examination. Which meant Hastert might have been privy to all kinds of information, including autopsy reports. Only a handful of people at the time had known the secret details of the Van Gogh murders, and one of those people was the medical examiner. If you were looking for a leak, Todd Hastert might be a good place to start.
“Tell me you’ve got a line on this guy.”
De Mello reached over to the Palm Pilot in Blackburn’s hand and stabbed the name DickMan229 with his fingernail. An address came up on the small screen.
“Your wish is my command.”
36
Carmody had questioned three nurses, two orderlies, and one of the security guards, and none of them had even the remotest idea where Tolan might have gone.
They uniformly described the doctor as a good guy, a great boss, always accessible, always ready with a kind word. He overextended himself sometimes, sure, tended to wear himself out, but they’d never known him to suffer any significant lapses of judgment.
Until now, Carmody thought.
But if you’re going to suffer a lapse, you might as well do it on a grand scale. And Tolan had certainly managed that.
Why, she wondered, had he made up such an elaborate story?
He had to know he’d be caught.
Carmody had always thought of him as a direct, no-nonsense kind of guy. So why the hoax? Was Frank right? Was this simply Tolan’s roundabout way of unburdening himself of a year’s worth of guilt?
It was, after all, the anniversary of his wife’s murder. Had the significance of the day shaken something loose?
As she questioned the EDU staff, the defaced snapshots of Abby Tolan kept playing like a slide show in her mind. She wasn’t entirely convinced of Frank’s theory, but those photos had certainly lent credence to it.
The symbolism was clear.
A “good guy” doesn’t cut his wife’s eyeballs out.
So maybe Frank’s instincts were correct.
One thing Carmody had learned about Frank Blackburn, in the short time they were partnered up, was that despite his unrelenting, annoying demeanor, his instincts had always been pretty accurate. She had to give him that much.
She just wished that that was all she had given him.
There’s nothing worse, she thought, than knowing you’ve slept with a guy who annoys the crap out of you. A guy whose every political, social, and moral belief is the exact opposite of your own.
Carmody thought about that night a lot more than she should. The night of their big mistake.
They had gone to The Elbow Room for a celebratory drink after their success with the Sarah Murphy case — another scumbag rapist in the bucket and headed to trial — and they’d both been pretty giddy over their success.
Frank was dropping her off at her apartment when her own worthless instincts reared up. Made her lean across the seat and kiss him. It was a surprise to them both and she couldn’t to this day tell you why she’d done it. But she had. And it was a great kiss. Better than it should have been.
It wasn’t long before they were inside her apartment, inside her bedroom, throwing their clothes off, clinging to each other like two lonely, desperate strangers.
The funny thing was, neither of them was particularly lonely or desperate, but something about that night made it seem that way, and being naked with Frank was neither awkward nor embarrassing.
He laid her across her bed and peppered her with soft kisses, lingering in all the right places, using his tongue and his fingers so skillfully that he brought her close to the edge faster than any man she had ever been with.
She didn’t know what she had expected when she’d kissed him in the car, but it certainly wasn’t this. Nothing about his demeanor had ever hinted that he could be so attentive to a woman, so loving.
And when he entered her, slowly pushing himself inside, teasing her, making her wait for that first, exquisite thrust, she felt the rush coming on, stronger than ever before. As he finally pushed himself deep, moaning in her ear as if this was the most wonderful thing he had ever felt in his life, as if she were the most wonderful thing—
— she came.
And not for the last time that night.
Then, three hours before the sun rose the next day, Carmody had been lying next to him in her bed, listening to him breathe, wondering what the hell she had just done and how she was going to get out of it. Sleeping with your partner is never a good idea. Ever. Under any circumstances.
Carmody liked to think of herself as a reasonably intelligent woman, someone who weighed the pros and cons of every move she made before she actually made it. Yet that night, all reason had abandoned her and now she had to pay the consequences.
She’d had no desire to be in a relationship with Frank. And she knew that irrevocable damage had been done to the partnership. When Frank awoke, slipping back to his usual, sarcastic, annoyingly alpha male persona, she’d decided right then and there to put her papers in for a transfer to Homicide.
It was a move that had hurt him. She knew that. Had made him even more insufferably male, acting as if he couldn’t have cared less about the transfer, that he was, in fact, happy to get rid of her. But most men are so ridiculously easy to read. So obvious about their wants and desires and their fears, and she knew that Frank had been severely stung by her decision. And in those last couple weeks together, they became increasingly hostile to each other, a hostility that lingered to this day.
A hostility she often regretted, but couldn’t quite release.
Carmody approached the nurses’ station, hoping to page the head nurse, whom Frank had mentioned was Tolan’s girlfriend. She was halfway to the counter when her cell phone rang.
Pulling it out, she glanced at the screen, saw only the words INCOMING CALL.
Flicking it on, she said, “Sue Carmody.”
Silence on the line.
Well, not silence exactly. She could hear someone breathing.
“Hello?”
No response. Just the breathing.
She was about to say something, when the line clicked. Assuming it was a wrong number, she continued toward the nurses’ station, glancing past the EDU security cage toward the lobby doors.
Although the parking lot was some distance away, she could plainly see that there was a car parked in Dr. Tolan’s slot. It looked like his black Lexus.
And there was someone behind the wheel.
She turned then, heading toward the doors, when her phone rang again.
She immediately clicked it on. “Sue Carmody.”
Silence. More breathing.
She stared out at the Lexus.
“Dr. Tolan?”
No response.
Carmody moved through the security cage and out toward the lobby doors. “Dr. Tolan, is this you?”