“Motive,” Maddocks said slowly, watching Holgersen’s face. “That’s how I approach everything, everyone. Norton-Wells might be a law student, but he’s also a disappointment to his father. I’m guessing his mother, too—a top prosecutor and politician. If he’s a law student because he wants approval from his own parents, he’s needy. Not in his wheelhouse. I’m betting he’s probably not the smartest, or most strident, of law students, either.” He sipped, returning his attention to the photo of Jayden Norton-Wells.
“He’s devoutly religious,” Maddocks said quietly, staring at the young man’s features. “There’s a clear morality at play in his head. Right and wrong. Good and bad. And in his faith, bad means you go to hell. And Jayden Norton-Wells is shit-scared he’s going to hell. Because when we went to see him, right after the news broke about Drummond, he was a mess. Sick with stress, oozing fear. You could smell it on him.”
“Yah, so, he fits the religious aspect of the killings maybe, and hemighthave known our Gracie, and he lied about the Lexus ... but he don’t fit no Grablowski lone-wolf, lust-based, cunning,sadistic, serial killer profile. Way I figure it,ifhe did give our Gracie girl a personally engraved Saint Christopher medallion, he cares about her. Them saints are supposed to look after people. Jayden-pretty-softy-rich-boy don’t want to rape and cut and kill her and then risk hell and damnation by dragging his offering into the cemetery at midnight and leaving her bleeding and dying at the foot of the Virgin Mary. No way, José.”
“Exactly. But hedoesknow something. He’s hiding something. He’s shit-scared. And Norton-Wells panics when scared. He panicked into a really bad lie about that Lexus, the dinner at the Auberge, about the parking lot from where the Lexus was allegedly stolen, and he panicked into a wild dash to have something out with Raddison at city hall—couldn’t even think to put his coat on, or who would see him. Now,thatwasn’t a lawyer thinking.” Maddocks set his mug down. “Panic is like a wild horse without the jockey of logic to rein it in. You actually lose the ability to think at all—you just act from the primal brain. We go lean on Norton-Wells for the murder of his dear Gracie Drummond, we make him panic, he might just offer up his DNA sample to save his ass—because my bet is hedidn’tdo those things to Gracie Drummond. But he might know—or suspect—who did.”
“What if he bolts straight to Daddy and Mommy and they pull out all them big legal guns? Then we gets nada.”
“I don’t think he will. And even if we do find enough for a DNA warrant, those guns are coming out anyway. This way we head them off at the pass. And the clock is ticking on this one. Fast. It’s worth a shot.”
“Worth the wrath of Fitz?”
“We got nothing else right now.” He paused and met Holgersen’s eyes. “I’m running the investigation. Not Fitz.”
Holgersen inhaled deeply, smoothed his goatee, then grinned heartily. “Let’s go nab us a law-boy, boss.”
CHAPTER 55
Dr.Alex Strauss handed Angie tea in a cup and saucer. Outside the bay window of his late-eighteenth-century James Bay home, the Saturday afternoon rain came down in a bleak and silvery curtain. “Ceylon,” he said. “Remember those afternoons when we used to drink it?”
Angie smiled. “It’s been a long time.” She sipped, and memories flooded back—of being in his campus office, the hours of discussion. Dr.Strauss had been first her academic advisor, then friend. He’d left the university four years back and was easing his way toward retirement while editing a psychology journal.
“Too long to not see an old friend.” He seated himself in a wingback opposite her, sipped from his cup. Between them, a fire crackled in the hearth.
“You’re looking good, Alex.” And Angie meant it. He might be edging into his seventies now, but he really hadn’t changed much. Being in his company was still like comfort food. For the soul. Whyhadshe not come to visit him before now? “Still riding your bike?” she asked.
“And you, still flattering me, I see.” His smiled faded. “Why so long?”
“Life, the job.” She paused. “I don’t know, Alex. I got busy.”
He considered her for a moment. She had the urge to shift in her chair, but she refused to move.
“You never did make it clear to me why you decided to go into law enforcement,” he said. “What drove you to leave academia behind for the world of policing?”
She moistened her lips. “You sound like my dad. I ... wanted to help. To make a difference in the lives of the vulnerable. To put away those who abused and hurt them.” Her thoughts spun back to Maddocks and what he’d said about his need to care for Jack-O—why he’d taken the stray on. About needing to make a tangible difference, because sometimes—often—the job didn’t give that to you. He was a rescuer. A good guy. She didn’t deserve a guy like him—
“Mostly putting men away—in the special victims unit, in particular,” Alex said.
Angie pulled her thoughts back. “Sex crimes. Yeah, statistically it’s the males who are the bad guys. That’s the way life crumbles.”
The psychologist nodded slowly, assessing her. “So, what precipitated this emergency visit, Angie? What’s troubling you?” As always, he cut right to the chase. And she’d probably already given away more of herself than she’d intended. Possibly this was why shehadavoided Alex. She’d become increasingly shuttered emotionally since leaving college, since joining the force, since learning to compartmentalize her life and stay objective on brutal, disturbing cases, since embarking on a life of increasingly anonymous sex encounters. So gradual had been the inner transition that she hadn’t really noticed it happening. But she realized now, sitting with the old psychologist, that being with people like him, people who looked too deeply into her eyes and searched for the soul inside, and who saw things that others couldn’t, had begun to unnerve her.
Carefully, she set her cup and saucer down on the small table beside her chair, and she began to tell him about her mother’s illness and subsequent hospitalization, about her own fears that similar genetically predisposed symptoms might be surfacing in her—the visual and auditory hallucinations. The little girl in pink. The strange words and foreign language. And how, when these visions presented, she felt terror on a very primal level, a desperate urge to flee, as if for her very survival. She explained how she always felt uneasy at Christmastime and when it snowed. She explained how she’d reacted when her mother sang that hymn, and finally, how she’d blacked out and attacked a colleague outside the church.
Angie also told Alex straight-up that she was avoiding a psych eval following her experience with Hash and little Tiffy, and that she was afraid to go through any kind of official medical channels because it would leave a record, an evidence trail, of unsound mental health, which could cost Angie her job. Which was basically her world.
“Angie,” he said gently. “I do know someone, a therapist, who comes highly recommended, and who—”
“I don’t wantofficialtherapy, Alex. You’re not hearing me. I want your advice, as a friend, first, before I decide on an official course of action.” She fidgeted with her watch strap. “I met someone, and I ... think I’m starting to care about him. He’s the one I tried to stab outside the church. It rocked me very badly, and he convinced me that I owe it to him, to my fellow officers, to seek a diagnosis, to get the facts, and if I am indeed ill, that I need to pull myself out.”
“So there’s your conflict right there. You don’t want help, yet you’ve been driven to it because of this man. So you came to me for a kinda therapy lite—an easy answer, a way out.”
She held his gaze, and she felt her walls slamming up. “Yeah, maybe I made a mistake. I’m sorry.” She came to her feet. “I should—”
“I’ve seen the news, Angie. I know from the media that you are involved in those sex-murder investigations. It’s rough, that kind of thing. On anybody. It’s enough to precipitate—”
“It’s not the case. I’m not cracking under—”
