Once Pined

by Blake Pierce

  “Then who did poison Arlis?” he demanded.

  “Hold it,” Wingert cried.

  But Bill was lost in a maze of ancient memories and current fury.

  “Who were you working with?” he shouted in Gannon’s face. “When you got tired of your wife, who did you get involved with? Did you find someone who could help you get rid of Arlis?”

  He shoved Gannon back against the wall and saw that he had triggered the man’s temper. It gave him a sense of deep satisfaction.

  Bill easily dodged the punch that Gannon threw and slugged the man in the solar plexus. He watched Gannon stagger backward and begin to collapse. He liked that sight.

  Then Havens stepped in front of Bill, yelling, “Snap out of it, man.”

  The fog in Bill’s mind cleared and he stepped back.

  Gannon was gasping for breath and Wingert was helping him sit back down on the box in the corner.

  “Sorry,” Bill said. “I guess this jerk really got to me.”

  He couldn’t help but note that Havens and Wingert were both looking at him with new respect in their eyes.

  Somehow that brought home the enormity of the mistake he had made.

  *

  Solange Landis had given Riley an address where she should be able to find Maxine Crowe. The LPN was now working as a palliative caregiver. That fact alone stirred Riley’s suspicions. What couldn’t a poisoner get away with while caring for patients who were thought to be already dying?

  It was an unsettling question.

  When Riley arrived at the house, she was struck with a gut feeling that something was strange about the place. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why she felt that, but the house itself struck her as very odd. It was a large old bungalow in a staid-looking middle-class neighborhood. The house appeared well cared for, but it somehow had an abandoned look about it.

  The yard had been mowed, but there was neither shrubbery nor a flowerbed to offer a touch of color. When she stepped up on the porch, she saw that there were no chairs, no tables, no sign that anyone had ever spent time there.

  Riley peeked through the big front windows. There didn’t appear to be any drapes or blinds hung at all. The late afternoon sunlight sloped through the panes and shone inside across a bare hardwood floor.

  Stranger still, the interior seemed to have been gutted. The space was vast and empty, as if a single room took up the whole bottom floor. And like the porch, there wasn’t a piece of furniture in sight inside.

  She looked again at the note that Landis had handed her. This was definitely the address where Maxine Crowe was supposed to be working with a patient in her last weeks of life.

  Nothing is what it seems here, she thought.

  She had no idea what to expect—or to prepare for.

  Riley knocked sharply on the door and waited.

  No one answered.

  She knocked again and waited some more. Still no one answered.

  What was going on in there? Was someone hovering over another victim? Or was the murderer alone inside, using this seemingly empty house as a hideout?

  Finally she turned the doorknob. The door was unlocked, and she pushed it open.

  She called out, “This is the FBI. I’m looking for Maxine Crowe.”

  A ghostly woman’s voice replied, echoing as if disembodied.

  “What do you want?”

  “Are you Maxine Crowe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I only want to talk to you.”

  Silence fell for a moment.

  “Go away,” the woman said.

  Riley kept her hand close to her gun and she walked on inside. In the sloping, dusty rays of sunlight, now she could see the room more clearly. It really was a huge room that had probably started off as two or three rooms.

  One long wall was completely covered with mirrors. Stretching at waist height along the mirrors was a dance barre.

  This room had been a dance studio—whether long ago or recently, Riley couldn’t tell.

  “Where are you?” Riley called out.

  “I said go away.”

  Then Riley heard the murmuring of another voice. A conversation seemed to be going on. Riley followed the voices across the studio to an open door on the other side. She peered into a much smaller room.

  In the middle of the smaller room was a hospital bed with an IV stand next to it. In the bed lay a tiny, emaciated, white-haired woman. Standing next to her was a youngish, white-clad woman with a long, birdlike face and enormous, probing eyes.

  Riley found Maxine Crowe’s expression inscrutable, but that wide-eyed stare made her think of some predatory creature.

  Maxine raised her fingers to her lips, cautioning Riley to be silent.

  The old woman in the bed kept talking in a weak, croaking voice.

  “But I keep forgetting—is Millicent bringing her little girl tomorrow?”

  “No, the day after tomorrow,” the caregiver said.

  The old woman let out a hoarse, rasping chuckle.

  “I’m so excited about seeing her! If you’d told me when I was your age that I’d live to be a great-great-grandmother, I’d never have believed it. Someday it will be your turn. Or do you want to have children, Maxine?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Well, you’ve got time. It must be wonderful, knowing your whole life is ahead of you.”

  The old woman was holding a small plastic object with a button on it. Her hand was trembling so much that she could barely hold onto it. She kept trying to push the button with her thumb.

  “Oh, I can’t do it anymore,” she said with a sigh. “And the pain is so terrible. Could you do it for me?”

  Now Riley understood that the button controlled the IV drip.

  Probably morphine, she thought.

  Or might it be something more sinister?

  Maxine gently took the button out of the woman’s hand. She held the button in front of the woman’s eyes and squeezed it. A smile of relief crossed the woman’s face. Her whole body relaxed.

  “Oh, that’s better. Please do it again.”

  Maxine squeezed again.

  “A little more, please,” the woman said.

  Maxine squeezed yet again.

  Then again.

  And again.

  The woman’s eyes closed and she seemed to fall fast asleep.

  Riley felt a kind of helplessness that she’d seldom felt before. Was she witnessing a medical treatment or a murder in progress?

  “What’s in that bottle?” Riley demanded.

  Maxine turned and looked at Riley with a mysterious smile.

  “What do you think is in this bottle? You don’t know, do you? And I’m quite sure you’ll never guess.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Riley’s doubts vanished in a shudder of horror. This woman had to be the killer she was looking for. And she had to stop her this very minute.

  Riley reached for her handcuffs.

  “Maxine Crowe, I’m placing you under arrest. For attempted murder.”

  Maxine’s eyes opened wide.

  “For what?” she said.

  “You heard me. Murder. You will also be held responsible for the death of three victims that we know about. And I am witness to this attempt.”

  Maxine’s smile broadened.

  “Let me show you something,” she said.

  She rolled up her left sleeve. Riley was surprised to see that she had an injection port in her own arm. Then she disconnected the IV tube from the sleeping woman’s port and inserted it in her own.

  She repeatedly pushed the button. Riley could hardly believe her eyes. The liquid in the bottle was now going into Maxine’s own vein just as it had gone into the vein of the patient.

  Maxine’s eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “There,” Maxine said, pushing the button again and again. “Do you still think I’m a murderer?”

  “What’s in the bottle?” Riley asked again.

  “What do yo
u think is in the bottle?”

  Riley was beginning to understand.

  “Apparently nothing,” she said slowly. “Not morphine, anyway. Saline solution, maybe.”

  Maxine nodded and softly laughed.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of placebos,” she said. “Now you’ve seen how they work.”

  Riley pointed to the port in Maxine’s arm.

  “But why—?”

  “Just an experiment. You see, placebos can work even when you know they’re placebos. I’ve been testing this placebo’s effect on me. And to tell the truth, I’m feeling a little bit high right now.”

  She disconnected the tube from the injection port.

  She asked, “But what’s all this talk about murder?”

  “The FBI is investigating some recent poisonings here in Seattle,” Riley said. “Possibly a serial killer.”

  “And I seemed like a possible suspect? Why?”

  “We strongly suspect that the killer may be a healthcare worker.”

  “Ah,” Maxine said with a sigh. “And you came looking for me because I’ve gotten in trouble for some unorthodox treatments? Well, yes, I’ve done some unauthorized experimenting. All of it has to do with placebos. People understand so little about the body’s untapped healing powers. Legitimate research has been too slow for my taste. So I took matters into my own hands.”

  Maxine looked away rather sadly.

  “Perhaps I really did go too far,” she murmured.

  The whole thing seemed unreal to Riley, almost like a dream. She wondered if Maxine Crowe was really in her right mind. At the very least, she was dangerously irresponsible.

  But one thing she didn’t seem to be was a deliberate killer.

  “How long has she got to live?” Riley asked, indicating the patient.

  “A day or two at most,” Maxine said. “Organ failure is already underway. Don’t worry, I’ve always got real morphine on hand in case the placebo doesn’t work. That sometimes happens. I’d never allow anybody to suffer—not for the sake of an experiment or anything else. Anyway, I’m really doing this for her sake. I think it’s better for her.”

  Riley remembered the snippet of conversation she’d heard when she first came in.

  “Who is she?” Riley asked.

  “Her name is Nadia Polasky,” Maxine said. “She’s ninety-nine years old. She was a dancer and a choreographer and teacher for longer than either of us has been alive. Probably both of us put together. She kept right on working until just five or six years ago.”

  Riley felt a touch of awe. The woman must have been a true force of nature.

  What would it be like to live so long? Riley wondered.

  What might Riley herself live to see? Would she still be working so late in life? Would she want to spend all those years facing demons—not just in criminals but herself?

  Riley asked, “Do you think she’ll live long enough to see her great-great-granddaughter?”

  Maxine shrugged.

  “What great-great-granddaughter? She never had any children at all, never even got married. From what I’ve been told, her work in dance was her whole life.”

  “I don’t understand,” Riley said. “She was just talking about being a great-great-grandmother.”

  “I’m not sure I do either. The best I can figure is that she spent her whole life fantasizing about what it would be like to have a family. She’s an extremely creative and imaginative woman, so those fantasies must have been very vivid. Now that she’s falling into dementia, she’s forgotten that they were fantasies. She believes that all of it was true. Well, I’m not going to tell her otherwise. Her illusions are the most powerful placebos of all. They keep her at peace.”

  Riley’s mind reeled. She remembered that feeling she’d had when she got here—a feeling that nothing in this house was what it seemed.

  I had no idea how right I was, she thought.

  “I still don’t understand why anybody thought I might be capable of murder,” Maxine said. “Certainly some people have disapproved of my methods, but nobody ever accused me of poisoning anyone.”

  Riley felt rather puzzled by this as well.

  “I talked with your old teacher—Solange Landis. She said—”

  Maxine interrupted.

  “Professor Landis? I should have known.”

  “Why?” Riley asked.

  “We weren’t exactly on good terms when I graduated from her school.”

  Riley was taken a little aback.

  “But she spoke well of you,” Riley said. “She said you were bright and that she was fond of you.”

  “We liked each other at first, but then …”

  Maxine paused, stroking her patient’s hair.

  “Have you ever been to her house?” Maxine said.

  “No.”

  “It’s very strange. She’s very strange. She’s got images of death everywhere—antique photos of funerals and coffins, a Civil War embalming table, real human skulls, morbid engravings and paintings. A few times she invited me and some other students over to her house to drink and talk. The talk went on late into the morning hours—and it sometimes turned toward interesting ways to kill people. Not serious talk, of course. Just letting off steam, joking and having fun, scaring each other a little.”

  Maxine thought for a moment.

  “Still, it was too weird for me, and I told her so. I stopped going. Things were never the same between us after that.”

  Riley thanked Maxine for her time. As she crossed the empty dance studio, she found odd images churning around in her mind—two women discussing methods of murder in a setting of human skulls and grisly mementoes. She began to mull over how she might arrange to visit the home of Solange Landis.

  As she stepped down from the empty porch into the unadorned yard, she realized that it was late in the day now. She wondered how Bill had done with his interview of a possible suspect. She would check in with him and they would plan what to follow up on tomorrow.

  Like the Seattle mist, troubling thoughts permeated everything about this strange, disturbing case.

  Nothing is what it seems, Riley thought.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Amanda Somers was pleased when she saw Judy Brubaker walking along her private dock toward her home on the water. Through her window, she could see that Judy was glancing up and down the dock, looking rather confused. She was undoubtedly expecting something more modest.

  Poor thing, Amanda thought. Maybe I should have warned her.

  When Judy got to the front door, Amanda pressed the buzzer to let her in.

  “I hadn’t realized that this would be a gated houseboat community,” Judy said. “I’m glad you told you the gatekeeper to let me in.”

  “And I’m glad you called before you came over,” Amanda said. “As I told you, it was important to do that. Otherwise he would have made a fuss and demanded identification and phoned me for clearance, and it would have been a bother for everybody. Of course, maybe I should have told you why it was important. It didn’t occur to me.”

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Judy said.

  Then Judy just stood staring around at the spacious interior with its clean modern lines and sleek, comfortable furniture. Amanda kept forgetting that her home on the water might not be exactly what visitors had assumed they would see. She’d long since grown comfortable here. She loved her bedroom upstairs with huge windows looking out over the water, and her rooftop deck that made her feel like she owned the sky.

  Of course, it sometimes seemed like more space than Amanda needed.

  Still, it was little more than a cottage in comparison to her place up in Moritz Hill. Amanda liked the comparative snugness. What she liked most about the houseboat was the privacy. The homes here were close together, but everyone in this community respected each other’s space. If anyone here knew how famous she was, they never mentioned it.

  As far as her neighbors here on the wharf were concerned, she was just an ordinary
person who lived here part of the time. They were all used to her coming and going, being away for weeks at a time. They never intruded to ask why she left or where she went.

  As Judy looked around, her curiosity gave Amanda a moment to study her a little.

  She was dressed just like she had been back at the rehab center—in a plain jogging suit. Her auburn hair was arranged simply with bangs, and she wore no makeup. The reading glasses hanging around her neck were the only thing about her that looked especially stylish.

  Amanda liked Judy’s plain demeanor, and she always enjoyed the marvelous stories the therapist liked to tell. She hoped that she had found a friend she could trust. She wasn’t sure, but she hoped so. Her life could be awfully lonely.

  Now Judy was wandering about the place rather freely, peeking into the kitchen and dining room. Right away, she seemed to Amanda like someone who could make herself at home just about anywhere.

  But was that a good thing or a bad thing?

  Still looking around, Judy said, “When you said a houseboat, I guess I was picturing …”

  She let the sentence trail off.

  “Something more like a mobile home?” Amanda asked.

  “I suppose so,” Judy said. “It’s not what I expected.”

  “Well, my real estate agent insisted that it’s not a houseboat but a ‘floating home.’ But that sounds so pretentious. I just feel awkward saying it.”

  Judy was looking out the window now.

  “Then it doesn’t actually go anywhere?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not really a boat?”

  Amanda chuckled a little.

  “No, you won’t find any engines, gas tanks, or steering wheels. Instead, I’ve got all the standard necessities—running water, connections to the city sewer pipes, and electricity. You could say that I’ve traded mobility for comfort. But I love the feeling of living on the water. Sometimes the whole place actually rocks gently. I hope you don’t get seasick!”

  Judy’s smile broadened.

  “Seasick, me? Not a chance!”

  Judy’s roving about was starting to make Amanda a little nervous—an irrational feeling, she told herself.

  “Would you like to sit down?” Amanda said.