“Lucky for both of you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m inclined to believe Carver, and his story supports what you’ve told me.”
“So?”
“So I’m prepared to leave Carver out of it unless I get evidence I can use against Lessing.”
Gray was watching him, humming. Minorini recognized the tune: “When a man loves a woman…”
“Seems like we got a real whodunit on our hands,” Gray said. “What do you think?”
“I’d rather not speculate.”
“FBI to the end, huhn? Well, no matter. No hurry. No statute of limitations on murder.”
It was obvious Gray had connected all the dots.
Fifty-Seven
The trip south was colder than it had been over Thanksgiving. Dry salt on the road—powdery. The sky seemed farther away; snow covered the corn stubble and all but the tips of the roadside grasses.
Paul and Sean talked about football—which neither seemed to follow passionately. There was a wariness between them that she hadn’t noticed at the safe house. They seemed to be trying almost too hard to be pals—for her sake, she was sure. It was oddly uncomfortable. They were all relieved when they spotted the mailbox marked SCHROEDER.
The family greeted her pretty much as they had in November, perhaps a little more urgently because of her narrow escape. They were naturally curious about Paul, whom Allen and Ken had met before. She wondered why Paul hadn’t mentioned that. But then, he seemed to want to fit in. He probably didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable by bringing it up.
At sunset, they all watched the red disk slip from a lemon-ice sky, below an icy gold horizon. Then the teenagers piled into a car to go see a movie; the adults settled in to watch one on the VCR.
After dinner, Paul parked in front of the TV with the guys while the women did the washing up. Their topic of conversation was Joanne’s new beau, of course. Kate and Mary were almost too enthusiastic. When they’d dried the last plate, Elizabeth sent them to join their husbands and poured two cups of coffee. She pointed to a chair at the kitchen table and asked Joanne to sit.
“What’s up, ma?”
“Joanne, how well do you know this man?”
“Well enough. I thought you’d like him.”
“He’s very nice, but are you sure you’re not just feeling gratitude because he saved your life?”
He didn’t save my life, she thought. I did. What she said was, “I’m sure. And I’m sure he loves me.”
Elizabeth nodded. “That’s that, then.”
Joanne sent Sean to bed at eleven. The others turned in soon after, leaving her and Paul to watch the fire die. He was beautiful in firelight. She had to fight the urge to grab a camera.
He got up and put another log on, then took a little leather pouch from his pocket. He opened it in front of her with a flourish, and dumped the contents in her hand.
The diamond that landed on her palm must’ve been a full carat, sparkling like sunlit ice in the fire light. It held her attention like a magic spell. He was saying, “Let’s make this official.”
She let him take it from her palm and slip it on her finger as smoothly as he’d cuff one of the suspects he’d tracked down.
She was tired of going it alone. And he knew. He knew and wanted her anyway. Or maybe he wanted her because he knew. She didn’t care. He wanted her.
He kissed her then, tentatively at first, then more passionately, until she felt light-headed. He undressed them both, and they made love on the rug. Afterwards, he lay looking thoughtfully at the fire while she put on his shirt and went to look out at the snow.
It was so cold. Cold as the trigger of her father’s gun. She felt a déjà vu. Cold as guilt.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him take something from the wallet in his pants pocket and throw it in the fire. A small photograph.
It was browned almost beyond recognition by the time she crossed to the fireplace, but in the moment before flames burst from it she recognized Gianni Dossi—she was certain. One of her own pictures, taken at Dossi’s house. Paul had had it all along.
“What was that?” she said.
“Nothing important.”
The flame vanished as suddenly as it appeared, its gold fading to red ember. The ash was carried upward by the heat.
He laced his fingers through hers and pulled her down next to him. She was happy. In the red glow of the firelight, she could no longer see blood on their hands.
More from Michael Allen Dymmoch
M.I.A.
This gripping novel of suspense is a tale of violent men and violent passions, of missing friends, of loss and love and discovery.
The accidental death of Rhiann Fahey’s second husband leaves her paralyzed by grief and has her son Jimmy cutting school and drinking. The widow’s problems are compounded by unwanted advances from her dead husband’s friend. She does her best to cope, returning to work, dealing patiently with Jimmy’s misbehavior, telling Rory Sinter she isn't interested.
Then a mysterious stranger moves next door. John Devlin offers Rhiann beer and sympathy. He offers Jimmy work.
When Sinter tries to discredit John, then beat him to death, Rhiann comes to John’s rescue. But she discovers her perfect neighbor isn’t what he’d seemed—which leads her to investigate, and to see John in a different light altogether.
A beautifully written story with characters who come to life from the first page, M.I.A. shows one more side of Michael Allen Dymmoch’s powerful storytelling ability.
Caleb & Thinnes Mysteries
The Man Who Understood Cats
Two unlikely partners join forces to solve a murder disguised as suicide and catch a killer ready to strike again.
Gold Coast psychiatrist Jack Caleb is wealthy, cultured, and gay. When one of his clients is found dead in a locked apartment—apparently from a self-inflicted wound— burned-out Chicago detective John Thinnes doesn’t believe it was suicide. And Caleb is inclined to agree.
But Thinnes regards a shrink who makes house calls suspicious and starts his murder investigation with the doctor himself. An attack on Caleb that's made to look like an accidental drug overdose starts to change the detective’s mind.
Soon, the two men find themselves a whirlwind of theft, scandal, and blackmail. Forced into an unlikely partnership, they’ll have to confront not only a killer, but hard truths within themselves that will change them forever.
The Death of Blue Mountain Cat
The art world is the backdrop when a controversial artist reaches the end of his fifteen minutes of fame.
Native American artist Blue Mountain Cat has a style described as "Andy Warhol meets Jonathan Swift in Indian country." When he's murdered at an exclusive showing in a conservative art museum, Detective John Thinnes has no shortage of suspects. Targets of the artist's satire included a greedy developer, a beautiful Navajo woman, and black-market antiquities dealers. Even the victim's wife merits investigation.
Thinnes drafts psychiatrist Jack Caleb to guide him through the terra incognita of the art world, and their investigation turns up a desperate museum director, a savage critic, a married mistress, and shady dealings by the artist's partner. Thinnes and Caleb connect several apparently unrelated deaths as they follow leads from Wisconsin to Chicago's South Side and the mystery's explosive conclusion.
Incendiary Designs
Arson, passion, and religious fanaticism set Chicago ablaze in the deadliest summer on record.
While jogging through Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Dr. Jack Caleb runs into murder—a mob setting a police car on fire— with the officer still inside. Caleb rescues the man, but later the cop's partner is found stoned to death. Detective John Thinnes is assigned to investigate.
Evidence points toward members of a charismatic church, but too many of them die in arson fires before the cops can round them up. When arson kills the apparent ring leader, it's too much coincidence. The remaining cop kill
ers plead guilty; the case seems to be closed. But as Chicago heats up in the deadliest summer on record, it becomes clear that a serial arsonist is still at large.
A physician friend of Caleb's is implicated when some of the fire victims are found to have been drugged. To exonerate the man, Caleb sets a trap for the killer, and Thinnes and Caleb are nearly incinerated when the doctor's trap brings the case to a fiery finish.
The Feline Friendship
When a vicious rapist crosses the line into murder, Detective John Thinnes and his prickly new partner draft psychiatrist Jack Caleb to help them track the killer down.
When a young woman is brutally raped in the posh Lincoln Park neighborhood, Chicago Police detective John Thinnes catches the case—even though Thinnes hates working rapes. Worse yet, he has to deal with a new female detective who has a chip on her shoulder the size of a 12 gauge shotgun.
A second victim is murdered, and the rapes become "heater cases." What started as a simple investigation, soon twists around earlier, similar crimes. Tempers flare; the detective squad polarizes across the gender line. Dr. Jack Caleb, a psychiatrist and police consultant, is asked to mediate. But Thinnes's sometime-ally finds himself with conflicts of interest occasioned by their friendship and Caleb's own disturbing case load.
The investigation ranges from Chicago's Lincoln Park to the northern Illinois city of Waukegan. And the explosive climax explores not only the karma of evil but the beginning of a beautiful Feline Friendship.
White Tiger
In Vietnam, white is the color of death. The 1997 murder of a Vietnamese woman in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood brings Dr. Jack Caleb and Detective John Thinnes together to catch another Vietnamese transplant—a deadly criminal known only as the White Tiger.
The TV news report of a woman's murder in Uptown leaves psychiatrist Jack Caleb flashing back to Vietnam and sends him running to his own shrink.
Assigned to investigate, Chicago detectives John Thinnes and Don Franchi find the victim's son, Tien Lee, curiously unmoved by his mother's death. Their preliminary canvass of the dead woman's building and neighborhood reveals that Hue An Lee was well liked and well off, and she had never quarreled with anyone but her "good son."
Attending the autopsy next morning, Thinnes realizes that he knew the victim when he was stationed in Vietnam—twenty-four years earlier. Thinnes is pulled off the case when an anonymous tipster alleges he'd been intimate enough with Mrs. Lee to have fathered her son. But Thinnes can't let go. And when a schizophrenic man shows up at Mrs. Lee's wake, connecting the deceased to another Vietnam vet and to an unsolved murder in wartime Saigon, Thinnes starts a retrospective investigation of that crime. He solicits Dr. Caleb's help. Tien Lee complicates the case by insisting that the paternity allegation is an insult to his dead mother. He tries to keep Thinnes on the case.
Dr. Caleb's therapy leads him to relive his own in Vietnam War experiences. When he's brought into the Lee case by a request to help the schizophrenic mourner, Caleb teams up with Thinnes and his partner to discover the identity of the White Tiger and to set a trap for the elusive killer.
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