Michelle seemed trapped in memories and regret and wasn’t listening to Rachel. “If she hadn’t died, I never would have married him. I couldn’t bear disappointing her. I was the one who always pleased her. I was the little princess, prim and proper, and you were the tomboy getting dirty in the woods and coming home with leaves stuck to your clothes and your hair a mess. You never could please her, no matter how hard you tried. And I liked being her favorite. I’m so sorry, Rachel. I wasn’t a good sister.”
“None of it was your fault, or mine. When you’re stronger, we’ll talk it all out.” Rachel knew how it felt to be drowning in a flood of memory and regret and guilt, and she wanted desperately to save her sister from that ordeal, but the past couldn’t be held at bay forever. At last it was bleeding through into the present, and its stain would never be erased.
The buzz of her cell phone made her jump. By the time she’d pulled it from her shirt pocket the brisk young nurse had appeared, scowling. “Not in the hospital,” she snapped. “Take it outside.”
Rachel was about to silence the ringtone and let the call go to voice mail when she saw the caller ID display. Private caller. The name and number had been blocked. She didn’t have to wonder who it was. She knew.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Michelle.
She rushed for the door to the outside, hoping voice mail wouldn’t take the call before she could. Shoving open the glass door, she punched the button to answer just in time.
“Hello, Perry,” she said.
No response. Unable to stand still, Rachel paced back and forth outside the ER door. “Nothing to say? You seemed to have a lot to say to my sister. But it’s really me you’re after, isn’t it? When are you going to stop hiding like a coward and come out in the open?”
The sound from the other end began as a soft chuckle and built to a laugh, louder and louder until Rachel had to hold the phone away from her ear. Then the connection went dead.
***
Tom peeled strips of fingerprint tape off the basement window and the area around it and pressed each one onto a white card. Rachel stood watching with folded arms and a grim expression.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “This guy hasn’t left a fingerprint behind yet. Or a footprint or a hair or anything else that might identify him.”
“Oh, yes, he has,” Rachel said. “That rattlesnake told me exactly who he is.”
Tom frowned at her. “What do you mean? What does the snake tell you except that he’s not afraid to handle deadly reptiles?”
“Finish your work here, then come up to my office.”
If she had some kind of theory about Michelle’s stalker, Tom was willing to listen. He and Dennis had gotten nowhere by checking e-mails and phone calls and putting the rest of the deputies on alert for strangers in the area. The stalker had turned dangerous. Michelle could have died from the snakebite. If Rachel had sat down at her desk before Michelle did, she could be the one in the hospital.
Tom finished collecting the prints, put his kit back together, and joined Rachel upstairs.
“Okay, what’s your theory?” he asked, closing the door to her office behind him. Rachel stood at the window, her auburn hair gleaming in the slant of sunshine.
“It’s not a theory. I’m positive. Just hear me out, okay?” She sat behind her desk and gestured for Tom to take the visitor’s chair. “You know about some of the threatening letters Perry Nelson sent me—”
“What does he have to do with this?”
“Just listen, please. I showed you some of the letters he’s sent me. But not all of them.”
“What? Why not?”
“I told myself I shouldn’t obsess about him, I shouldn’t let him interfere with our lives.”
“I thought the letters stopped after the last time you made a complaint. Or did you just stop telling me about them?” Rachel was good at keeping secrets, and she could withdraw into an impenetrable shell when she wanted to.
“Actually, they did stop. Late last year.”
“So…?”
“The last one he sent came here, to the clinic. I still have it.” Rachel pulled open a bottom drawer in the desk and riffled through the files. She pulled out a folder and handed it across to him. “He hasn’t sent me anything since.”
Inside the folder Tom found a single envelope, addressed to Rachel at the animal hospital. It had no return address but bore a generic Northern Virginia postmark. The envelope had probably been through so many hands that any fingerprints on the paper would be meaningless, but still Tom handled it with care, touching only the edges. He did the same when he pulled out the sheet of paper and spread it on Rachel’s desk. The paper bore a realistic drawing of a rattlesnake, with tail raised, mouth open, fangs dripping venom.
Underneath the drawing, a message had been printed in thick block letters: YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHEN THE SNAKE IS GOING TO STRIKE.
The ugliness, the raw menace of the drawing and the words hit Tom with a visceral punch. “Why did you keep this to yourself?”
“I just told you why. Can we argue about that later, please?” Rachel waved both hands, palms-out, as if erasing the subject from the conversation. “I know a lot of time has passed since he sent me that drawing, but the snake under my desk this morning—I can’t prove it, I can’t even prove he sent the drawing, for that matter, but I know he’s responsible.”
Tom chose his words carefully. “I believe Nelson sent you this drawing, but—”
Rachel released a tremulous breath. “I knew there would be a but. Tom, he called me today while I was with Michelle at the ER. He called me this time, not her.”
“You mean the stalker called you?”
“Perry Nelson is the stalker. I’m convinced of it.”
Tom could see that she was, and he hated questioning her reasoning, but he had no choice. “I don’t see how he could be the stalker, if he’s in a hospital.”
“We don’t know for sure that he’s hospitalized right now,” Rachel said. “Nobody keeps me informed about him anymore. The prosecutor who handled my case always looked out for me, she told me what was happening, but she’s moved on. After I got that drawing, I called the prosecutor’s office and found out they’re not even keeping track of him now. All they could tell me was that he’d been moved from a state hospital in central Virginia to the Northern Virginia State Hospital in Fairfax County, so he could be closer to his family.”
“I’ll check on him myself, I’ll make sure he’s still in the hospital.”
“You’re going to find out he’s not. They’ve either let him go or he’s walked away, and nobody went to the trouble of telling me.”
“One thing at a time. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Tom rose and went to her, pulled her against him. Her body was rigid with tension and although they wrapped their arms around each other he didn’t feel he was holding her. What if he learned that Nelson was safely inside the walls of the hospital, had been nowhere near Mason County? Would she accept that? Hoping he could make it true, he said, “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise. Whoever the stalker is, I’m not going to stand by and let him hurt you.”
***
As Tom feared, his promise to Rachel was easier made than kept. When he returned to his office and called the hospital director, the man refused to cooperative.
“I can’t share information about a patient with you,” the doctor protested. “I would need a compelling reason to violate a patient’s privacy, and I certainly can’t answer questions over the telephone from someone I’ve never met, whose official position I haven’t verified.”
“Then verify it,” Tom said. “Do whatever will satisfy you. Look up the number of the Mason County Sheriff’s Department and call and ask for Captain Tom Bridger.”
“It would be better for you to come to my office with a warrant in hand, and—”
“I don’t have time for that,” Tom snapped. “Nelson could still be harassing Dr. Godd
ard. That trumps any concern you have for his privacy. I know what the law is. You have to provide information to law enforcement if a patient is a potential danger to anybody’s safety.”
“It’s up to our staff to determine whether that is the case, and I don’t consider Mr. Nelson to be—”
“All I’m asking you to tell me is whether Nelson is in the hospital right now, today, yes or no.”
A long pause followed. Tom rapped a pencil against the edge of his desk, seething as he listened to the man’s breath, in and out, on the other end of the line. Come on, come on, I don’t have all day.
At last the doctor huffed a noisy sigh. “Mr. Nelson was granted a leave to visit his parents, who live in McLean, just a few miles from the hospital.”
“How long has he been out?”
Another hesitation, another sigh. “Since Friday morning of last week. He’s due to return to the hospital on Friday evening of this week.”
“Is he checking in with you? Do you know where he is all the time?”
“Well, no, of course not. There’s hardly any point in granting a patient leave if we’re going to place onerous conditions on him. Captain Bridger, I feel sure that your concern is misplaced. Mr. Nelson has made considerable progress, and he’s not a danger to anyone anymore.”
Tom tried to keep his temper in check and his voice level. “Is this the first time he’s been out?”
Again the doctor hesitated before answering. “No, it isn’t. We wouldn’t suddenly send a patient home for a week without first assessing his ability to cope.”
Now maybe they were getting somewhere. Tom grabbed a notepad, ready to write down dates. “When did you start letting Nelson out on furloughs? I need the exact dates of every overnight furlough he’s had in the last six weeks.”
“I didn’t say he’d been out overnight. I’m not sure that he has been. He’s probably been given passes for lunches and dinners with his parents. I don’t have the details of his case in front of me.”
Tom flung down his pen. It landed on the desktop with a thwack and rolled a couple of inches before stopping. “Could you locate those details for me? I need to know if he’s been out of the hospital overnight before this week. Can you check the records and tell me so I’ll have accurate information?”
The doctor said, in a long-suffering tone, “If you insist.”
Tom gave him a clipped, “Thank you.”
The doctor put him on hold. No music, no recorded message, just dead air that made Tom wonder if he’d been cut off.
Then the doctor was back on the line, telling him, “I’m afraid I was in error when I spoke from memory. Mr. Nelson has, in fact, been out on overnight leave before.”
His heart suddenly racing, Tom grabbed his pen and poised it over a notepad. “Tell me the dates.”
His excitement deflated when he heard the dates.
“Is that all, Captain Bridger?” the doctor asked.
“Yes, it is, for now. Thank you.”
“Goodbye then, Captain Bridger.”
Tom ended the call, feeling as if he’d walked into a wall. Nelson could be in Mason County now, he could have followed Michelle there last Saturday. He could have put the snake in Rachel’s office. But he’d been in the hospital every time something happened at Michelle’s office in Bethesda. Common sense said Nelson wasn’t the stalker, but Tom knew Rachel wouldn’t be satisfied with that conclusion.
First things first. He had to find out whether Nelson was where he was supposed to be right now, with his parents in Fairfax County. He didn’t want to make a cold call. He couldn’t trust anything Nelson’s parents might tell him, in any case. Perry was their son. From what Rachel had told Tom, he guessed they would protect their boy and insist on his innocence even if they found him standing over Rachel’s dead body with a smoking gun in his hand.
Tom knew somebody he could turn to for help. He snatched up the receiver again while he pulled a telephone/address book from his desk drawer and flipped through it. He dialed Detective Bernard Fagan’s cell phone number. It rang five times and went to voice mail.
“Damn it,” he muttered. When Fagan’s voice told him to leave a message, he said, “This is Tom Bridger. If you still want to do something to help Rachel, give me a call as soon as you get this.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Mrs. Jankowski greeted Tom with the same degree of enthusiasm he would have expected from her daughter.
“Rita’s not here.” Mrs. Jankowski squinted at him through the screen door. Her bright red hair was pinned up, the curls sitting atop her head like strawberries heaped on a plate.
“They told me at the store that she’s not working today. Do you know where I can find her?” The cell phone signal in this part of the county was unreliable, and Tom was afraid he would miss Fagan’s return call if he stayed out here too long. At the same time, he couldn’t sit in his office and wait while he had so many things to follow up on.
“Find Jordy Gale and you’ll probably find her.” She snorted in disgust. “He’s been going through a hard time and Rita says she’s the only one who understands him. Why she’d want to understand a sick puppy like him is more than I can figure out.”
Tom regarded her with interest. He might learn more from Rita’s mother than from Rita herself. “Can I come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”
She jutted her sharp little chin as if brandishing a knife. When she took a step backward Tom was afraid she would shut the door in his face, but instead she said, “You got no business with me.”
“I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“What are you up to?” She folded her arms. “Tryin’ to trick me into sayin’ something against my daughter? You think my girl had something to do with Shelley Beecher dying?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Just what are you gettin’ at, then? Why are you doggin’ her like this?”
“I’ll explain if you let me come in.”
“No. You can’t set one foot in my house without my say-so. I know my rights. No reason you can’t talk to me right where you’re standin’.”
“Okay, fine. You don’t seem to be a big fan of Jordy Gale. What do you have against him?”
Mrs. Jankowski raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You know he’s mental, don’t you?”
“Mental?”
“Crazy. Not right in the head. He’s been locked up. Lord, are you as dense as you seem to be?”
“I know Jordy’s been in drug rehab two or three times,” Tom said. “Like a lot of people. But he seems to be straightening out his life.”
“Ha! Shows how much you know. He’s always been a junkie. That’s the reason Rita got herself unhitched from him just about as fast as they got hitched. But it wasn’t just drugs. He went off the rails, had a nervous breakdown. His sister that he was stayin’ with up in Manassas, she caught him with a shotgun in his mouth, ready to blow his head off. She put him in the nuthouse, the state hospital up there.”
“When did that happen?”
She pursed her lips and seemed to be debating whether to share the information. When she spoke, she sounded cagey, as if she didn’t want to say too much. “Oh, about six years ago, I reckon.” She paused and averted her eyes, gazing off beyond Tom. “While Vance Lankford was on trial for murder.”
That explained why Tom hadn’t heard about Gale attempting suicide. Tom was working for the Richmond Police Department at the time, Jordy Gale had been living in Northern Virginia, and they’d barely known each other. His ongoing drug problem was what the gossips focused on. Suicidal moods weren’t unusual among addicts, and Tom wasn’t surprised Jordy had crashed on meth and crack. But Mrs. Jankowski seemed to be hinting that there was more to the story.
“State mental hospitals have units where they treat drug addicts,” he said. “If Jordy didn’t actually hurt himself, that’s where he would have gone, to a substance abuse facility.”
“Facility,” she scoffed. “Everything’s a faci
lity these days. Well, to me it was the nuthouse. Yeah, they got him off drugs, and they blamed the dope for him wanting to kill himself. But I think he’s got a screw loose. Anyway, that was just the first time he landed in that place. I tell you, he’s bad for Rita. I thought so when they run off and got married straight out of school, and I think so now.”
Mrs. Jankowski was hardly the first mother to take against a daughter’s boyfriend. “If they’re back together now, maybe that means they belong with each other. They shouldn’t have split up the first time.”
“No, sir, she don’t belong with the likes of him.” Mrs. Jankowski shook her head so vigorously that a red curl pulled loose from the pile atop her head and dangled over her right ear. She swiped it back into place and folded her arms. “I’ve been beggin’ and beggin’ Rita to cut him off, steer clear, but she won’t listen to me.”
“Don’t you believe he’s kicked his habit?”
She looked at Tom as if she couldn’t believe somebody so dumb was walking around loose. “There ain’t no such thing as kickin’ a drug habit. You oughta know that, bein’ a cop. Once they’re hooked, they stay hooked. You might as well cut your losses and let ’em go.”
“You’re a hard woman, Mrs. Jankowski.”
She sniffed and rubbed at her nose with the back of a hand as if scratching an itch. “Anyway, like I said, it’s not just the drugs. It’s the way he makes Rita feel about herself. He just sucks the life out of her, you know what I mean? Makes her think she’s not worth a thing, and he’s the only man who appreciates her.”
Rita had said as much to Tom in slightly different words—Jordy treats me with respect. He’s the only man in this county who doesn’t treat me like trash.
Mrs. Jankowski was wound up now, the words spooling out of her. Through the screen door Tom watched a kaleidoscope of emotions play across her face. Anger. Bewilderment. Frustration. And fear, deep and genuine.
“It wasn’t so bad long as he stayed up there with his sister, but every time he landed in the nuthouse, Rita had to go see him, didn’t let a week go by. Spendin’ money she couldn’t afford on motels so she could stay over. Missin’ work. Nearly lost her job over it that last time, back in the winter. Now he’s right here underfoot, and he’s just shot her plans all to hell.”
Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 25
