“That’s the basic theory of the prosecution in the Ulrich case,” I say. “Ulrich dated a woman who ended up being his final victim, but they broke up before the killings started. The prosecution claims that Ulrich was so upset by the breakup that he killed women who looked like the lover who scorned him, and then eventually killed the lover herself.”
“A theory that makes sense from the sound of it,” Maggie says. “At least until you take into account your victim.” She frowns again, rubbing at her chin with her thumb. “All of the original victims were found in the area of Eau Claire, correct?”
“Correct,” Hurley says. He is eyeing her curiously.
“And yet you said that only one of them was actually from the Eau Claire area, also correct?”
“That’s right,” Hurley said. “All of the victims except for the last one, the one that Ulrich dated, were transients . . . homeless women who were drug addicts.”
“And your victim, the latest one, she is also a transient homeless person?”
Hurley and I both nod.
“Hmm,” Maggie says, rubbing her chin again.
“What are you thinking, Dr. Baldwin?” Hurley says. He’s leaning forward in his seat, an eager look on his face.
Maggie doesn’t answer right away, and Hurley’s right leg starts bouncing in impatient anticipation. The room is so silent for a moment that I can hear the scribbling sound of my son’s crayon in the other room.
“Let’s assume that your victim is not a copycat killing,” Maggie says finally. “I really don’t think it is, because it doesn’t make sense. As I said before, copycat killers want the attention. Yet, whoever killed this woman has not only done nothing to draw attention to himself, he’s made efforts to hide his work. So we go with the premise that it’s the same killer. If we do that, certain other things don’t make sense, either. The woman Ulrich dated is an outlier. She doesn’t fit in with the other victims, and the only way she makes sense is if Ulrich killed all of them, including yours. And we know he didn’t kill your victim.”
Hurley leans back in his seat and looks up at the ceiling for a moment, letting out a sigh. Then he looks at Maggie and says, “Do you think the same person killed all these women?”
“My gut says yes, but you need to look very closely at the wounds, the exact positioning and shape of the wounds. Determine if they were made with the same weapon, if you can. Examine any trace evidence you might have and compare that with trace found on the other victims. Tie them together with the evidence, and once you do that, it will help you find your killer. Either the defense team is behind this latest killing, in which case I think you’ll find subtle differences between your victim and the others, or one person has killed all these women. If the latter is the case, the victim that Ulrich dated doesn’t fit the profile. She’s the exception, and therein lies your answer. Why was she killed?”
There is another long silence as all three of us contemplate what Maggie has just said. I finally say, “Do you have any theories on why she was killed, Maggie?”
“Either she knew something about the killer and needed to be eliminated, or she was a way for the killer to point a finger in Ulrich’s direction, making him a patsy. He was already on the police’s radar you said, right?”
Both Hurley and I nod.
“Then it makes sense for the real killer to stack the odds even more against Ulrich, so he takes the fall for it.” Maggie pauses and her face lights up. She raises a finger, letting us know she’s about to make a point. “And if you go with that theory, the geographic anomaly surrounding your latest victim makes more sense. The killer wanted to stop, but couldn’t, so he killed someone outside of the previous jurisdiction with the hope that it wouldn’t attract attention.”
Hurley’s face lights up, too, and he nods slowly.
“Consider who would have had the knowledge and access to the case to be able to set up Ulrich as a patsy,” Maggie says.
“Someone with ties to the investigation,” Hurley says. “Of course.” He beams a smile at Maggie. “Thanks, Dr. Baldwin. You’ve been a big help.”
With that, Hurley stands and looks at me. I stand, too, and say, “Hurley, would you mind taking Matthew to Dom’s? I want to get back to my office and get Arnie to help me with examining those wound patterns right away.”
“Sure,” Hurley says. I help him round up Matthew and his playthings, then carry Matthew to Hurley’s truck, fastening him into his car seat and kissing him good-bye. I then get in my car and start it up. Hurley starts up his truck and pulls to the edge of the parking lot, where he waits, idling.
I realize he’s waiting for me to follow him and I think fast, trying to figure out a way to get him to go on rather than wait for me so we can caravan back to town. An idea comes to me, and I pull the hearse up alongside his truck, rolling my window down.
“Don’t wait on me,” I say. “I need to get gas.”
Hurley nods and rolls his window back up. I hear Matthew fussing about something just before the window closes, and I breathe a sigh of relief as Hurley pulls out onto the street. I pull out, too, but go in the opposite direction and pull into a gas station that is in the same block. Committed to playing out my scenario, I pull up to a pump, get out, swipe a credit card, and start pumping. It doesn’t take long. My tank was three-quarters full already. By the time I’m done, Hurley’s truck has disappeared down the road and I breathe a sigh of relief. I get back in my car, drive back to Maggie’s lot, park, and head inside.
I go upstairs to her office, and when I open the door, she is still sitting where we left her. She smiles at me and says, “Quite the subterfuge.”
“I know. Don’t judge me. I really need to talk to you alone and I’m not ready for Hurley to know about it yet. I want to sort some things out first.”
“I’m not judging,” Maggie says, waving me toward a seat.
I settle into the same seat I’d had earlier. I’m trying to figure out where to begin and decide I will start by telling Maggie that I’m pregnant. No sooner do I open my mouth to do this, when the outer door to the office opens. I hadn’t bothered to close the inner door, since no one was expected, so the new arrival has a clear view of me sitting inside.
The newcomer is Hurley, holding Matthew by the hand, his face an angry shade of red.
CHAPTER 16
My mind is whirling with questions, excuses, potential explanations, and a sense of fear akin to what I felt as a child when I was caught doing something I wasn’t allowed to do. I sputter for a moment, withering beneath Hurley’s expression, which is a weird mix of hurt, confusion, and distrust.
The tension in the office is tighter than a tourniquet, but it is suddenly released when Matthew hollers, “There it is!” He dashes into the room and drops to his knees, bending over to reach under a side table against the wall. He pulls out one of the toy trucks he’d had tucked into his “futility belt” earlier.
“Hurley, what are you doing here?” I manage to say, realizing that I already know the answer. I know how persistent and annoying Matthew can be if he wants something he’s left behind and, clearly, the toy truck fit that bill.
Hurley doesn’t answer. Instead, he fires my own question back at me. “What are you doing here?”
There is a definite hint of suspicion in his voice and I decide that some semblance of the truth is called for. “I had some things that were bothering me that I thought I could talk over with Maggie, things related to the . . .” I point to my belly. “After I gassed up the car, I popped back over here, since I knew Maggie’s first appointment for the day had canceled and she would have some open time.” This is essentially the truth, though I’ve worded it in such a way as to fudge with the timeline a little and not make it apparent that this had been my plan all along.
“What issues?” Hurley asks, glancing at Matthew, who is still on his knees on the floor, running his truck over the carpet and making vroom-vroom noises. “If you’re having issues related to the . . . situ
ation, shouldn’t we both be involved in any discussions about it?”
I glance back at Maggie, giving her a wide-eyed look that I’m hoping says, “Feel free to jump in and help me anytime here,” but she is smiling serenely and watching our interchange as if it’s a tennis match between friends. Realizing I’m on my own, I turn back to Hurley.
“It’s just some personal stuff,” I tell him, trying to smile, but forcing it so much that I fear I look ghoulish. “Girl stuff,” I add.
Hurley stares at me, frowning, and I let my forced smile fade. I decide to go on the offensive. “Is there a problem with that?” I ask, hoping I sound innocently confused. He is clearly upset by the discovery, though I’m not sure if it’s because I wasn’t totally honest with him in coming back here, or if it’s something more.
Silence stretches between us, every second pulling the band of tension between us tighter. Finally Hurley says, “We can discuss it later.” He breaks the eye contact, strides over to Matthew in two long steps, grabs him around the waist, and hauls him off the floor. Then, without another word or look, he turns and leaves, carrying Matthew on one hip.
I turn and give Maggie a fragile smile.
“Well, that was certainly interesting,” she says. “I gather there is some tension between the two of you?”
“You think?” I say sarcastically.
“And I also gather that you are pregnant again?”
I start to answer, but I am suddenly overcome with emotion—frustration, anger, a feeling of helplessness. My throat is too tight to speak and I burst into tears.
Maggie rises from her chair, hands me a box of tissues, and walks over to shut the door between her office and the waiting room. “Looks like we’ve got some work ahead of us,” she says, heading back to her chair. “Where would you like to start?”
It takes me a moment to get my tears under control enough that I can speak. “I’m pregnant,” I say, stating the obvious. “And I’m happy about that. At least I think I am. Hurley is very happy about it.”
“You can be happy about it and still have reservations,” Maggie says. “That’s to be expected.”
I nod. “Yes, I suppose that’s it. I’m happy, but I’m also worried.”
“About what, specifically? List some of your concerns and we’ll tackle them, one at a time.”
This is one of the things I love about Maggie. She has the ability to distill an overwhelming situation down to its basic core issues, each of which can then be dealt with individually, making the problem seem much less daunting.
“To start with, I have doubts about my abilities as a mother. There are times with Matthew when I feel like I’m doing everything wrong, and I’m going to ruin him somehow. There’s no manual on how to do this the right way, and let’s face it, I didn’t have the best example of motherhood to draw from with my own experiences.”
This is an understatement of astounding proportions. My mother has had a list of mental health issues all her life. Her medical record reads like the psychiatric section of the diagnostic standards manual. In addition to being both a narcissist and a hypochondriac, my mother also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and has claustrophobia, agoraphobia, germophobia, and aerophobia. This means she is afraid to go out of her house, which is cleaner than the OR I once worked in, will never fly anywhere, must have everything done her way and in just the right order, and is dying all the time from some imagined terminal illness.
This latter problem, her hypochondria, which I think is mixed in with a touch of Munchausen—a mental disorder where someone uses faked illnesses to garner attention—colored my entire childhood. As far back as I can remember, I believed my mother was imminently dying of some horrific disease. This belief was reinforced by frequent visits to many doctors, who looked amazed, appalled, and intrigued by the menu of symptoms my mother would relate to them. Mom researched her illnesses well and knew exactly what to say to convince her medical providers of what she had. She never told them outright, even though she always had a specific diagnosis in mind.
Treating my mother was like watching an episode of House, where all the answers are a test of one’s knowledge of fascino-mas—a term for rare and obscure diagnoses that, ironically, often intrigue and fascinate the medical providers more so than the patient who has them. There’s a saying in medicine that when you hear hoofbeats, you should think of horses, not zebras. The meaning behind this is a caveat to diagnosticians to look for and rule out the common disorders and diseases before going after the sexier, more obscure ones. But the zebras are much more interesting and alluring, and that’s what my mother offered. The lure was more than most could resist.
Of course it was only once the batteries of tests all came back normal or negative that the physicians began to suspect Mom’s only illness was in her head. And there is nothing sexy about mental illness. Once the doctors figured out what was really going on, many of them expelled my mother from their practices. By the time I was in high school, I often had to drive Mom to neighboring towns for her appointments, because she’d burned through all the local physicians. Her reputation is well known in the medical community, and I fear it will one day cause her the same fate of that boy who cried wolf one too many times. Someday she will have something legitimately wrong with her and no one will believe it.
Fortunately, my mother’s physical health seems to be fine. And I gained an unexpected benefit from her many antics, in that I knew a lot about medicine by the time I went into nursing school. That and the extensive medical resource library my mother has at home—all the books encased in special plastic dustcovers—gave me a definite leg up over the other students in my class.
“I think your mother trained you well,” Maggie says. “You’ve been a caregiver most of your life, and that’s essentially what being a mother is.”
“That seems rather simplistic,” I say irritably, unwilling to be so easily placated, and really wanting to shift most, if not all, of the blame for my insecurities onto my mother. “Though I’m sure it seems that way to someone on the outside, someone who doesn’t see the day-to-day trials and tribulations involved with raising a child. Or even just keeping them alive for that matter,” I add, recalling Matthew’s recent climb to the top of the refrigerator to get the cookies I put up there, all in the amount of time it took me to throw a load of unsorted laundry into the washer. “Someone who doesn’t see all that doesn’t understand what it’s really like. And now I’m about to double my trouble.”
Maggie stares at me for a long moment, and at first, I’m afraid that I’ve insulted her, or hurt her feelings in some way by pointing out her childlessness, something I know wasn’t a choice for her. But then she smiles knowingly and says, “This whining about the trials and tribulations is just a smoke screen. What’s really behind all this angst? You agreed to having another child, and I know for a fact that Matthew means more to you than life itself. So let’s figure out what’s really going on, shall we?”
I roll my eyes at her. “Where do we begin?”
“Let’s start with Matthew and Emily and your skills as a mother. What, specifically, do you feel is lacking in your abilities?”
I ponder the question and can’t come up with any specific shortcomings, though there is a nagging issue I keep trying to bury. Like a zombie, it refuses to die, trying to eat away at my brain instead.
“Emily is fine, and I can’t take any credit for the way she turned out. Kate gets the kudos there.”
“Not true. Kate has been dead for several years now and you’ve been the primary maternal influence in Emily’s life, true?”
I shrug. “If you can call it that. To be honest, our relationship is more like a sibling one than it is a parent-child one. And let’s not forget that Emily hated me in the beginning.”
“And yet you won her over,” Maggie points out. “That says something, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know if I won her over. I think it was more of an acceptance of the circumsta
nces that life threw at us and the establishment of a détente.”
“I think you’re shortchanging yourself in that regard,” Maggie says. “And I have reason to know that.” She has a point. Maggie provided a lot of counseling to Emily back in the early days. “But let’s shift and focus on Matthew,” Maggie goes on. “What are your thoughts on your ability to mother him?”
I let my zombie out. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m shortchanging Matthew by working instead of being a stay-at-home mom.”
“Okay, let’s explore that a little. You’ve cut back your hours so you can spend more time with Matthew, correct?”
I nod. “But then I do what I’m doing today, what I did yesterday. I spend what should be my days off, my time with Matthew, working the job anyway.”
“You are working one particular case, right?”
I nod.
“Do you always give up your days off to work a case, or is this one an exception?”
“This one is an exception,” I admit. “There have been one or two others, but for the most part, I’m happy to hand stuff off to Christopher, my job-share partner.”
“What is it about the exceptions that make them exceptions?”
I think on this a moment. “Well, the last one was because I knew there was a young girl out there that we had the chance to save if we solved the mystery of her sister’s death fast enough.”
“That seems reasonable,” Maggie says. “What about the current case?”
This one took me longer to parse out. “I’m not sure. I think it’s the idea that there is a man behind bars who might be innocent.”
“And you think that if you put in the extra hours it will make a difference in the outcome?”
Do I think this? I realize quickly that I don’t. So, why am I spending my time off working this case? Why am I not spending the time with Matthew instead? “I’m not sure,” I say, but an instant later, I know that’s a lie.
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