At any rate, this was vitally important information. She looked at her watch: seven. Pendergast would be awake—she figured him for an early riser. She opened a drawer and sorted through the pile of business cards she accumulated as part of her work. Finding Pendergast’s, she took out her cell phone to call him, confess her earlier mistake, and offer him this new discovery.
30
SMITHBACK DRAINED HIS third espresso and grabbed a couple of granola bars for snacks on the drive along with a Zyrtec for the damn allergies, then went down to the garage. Starting up the Subaru and cranking the A/C, he took out his phone, typed in Bronner’s address, and stuck the device in its dashboard holder. He eased into the street and set off, Siri giving him directions.
He had decided not to call Bronner ahead of time. It would be easy for the man to put him off on the phone, and then Smithback would have little recourse. Better to show up, slather on the charm, and talk his way in. He tried to imagine how Bill would have handled it. There were only a few vital questions he wanted answered—it should take ten minutes, tops. He hoped to hell Bronner wasn’t getting feebleminded. He must have had a lot of patients in his day and it would be hard enough to remember Flayley and Baxter after eleven years, even with a sharp memory. He wondered if the old guy had seen their names in the papers.
He sensed his courage flagging and reminded himself he was following a lead nobody else had yet stumbled upon.
The morning rush-hour traffic around Miami was brutal as usual, but once he hit 826 it cleared up and became smooth sailing. He knew from experience to avoid Route 1 and its tourists as long as possible, instead paying the toll on the Reagan Turnpike. He finally picked up Route 1 in Florida City, and another half hour brought him past the Southern Glades and onto the beautiful causeway to Key Largo. His destination had sounded like a typical fancy address for that area: Buttonwood Lane, where no doubt every manicured house had its own gleaming boat slip. But when he finally arrived, he found it was anything but upscale: a shabby, midcentury-modern neighborhood of sad-looking dwellings, RVs, and crappy center-console boats decorated with FOR SALE signs.
Strange place for a psychiatrist to live, especially one who must still be getting a cut from the operation of his former clinic.
The house was at the end of Buttonwood Lane, right on the channel, and it was yet another surprise—a big, run-down dwelling with white stucco falling off in plates, terra-cotta roof tiles still askew from the last hurricane. It was buried in a riot of tropical vegetation that looked like it hadn’t seen a pair of clippers in years. The house of a serial killer? Or just a creepy eccentric?
There was a wrought-iron gate across the driveway, white with streaks of orange rust. Smithback parked his car next to the gate, got out, and looked for an intercom or something, but there was nothing. The gate was locked.
What the hell kind of a gated house had no intercom or buzzer? Peering through the bars, he could just barely see a turquoise-colored truck in the driveway, hidden behind a cluster of bamboo. Someone must be home.
The street was quiet. He looked the fence up and down—no big deal. He grasped the bars, shimmied up, and swung over, landing lightly on the far side. He strode with as much confidence as he could muster up the driveway, past the truck, and to the front door. He would get only one shot at this, so it better be good.
He rang the doorbell. A long silence ensued—and then he heard the shuffle of slippers on a stone floor as someone made their way slowly to the door. A moment later it opened up.
Smithback had assumed Bronner would be some stooped, frail, white-haired guy in horn-rimmed glasses. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The retired psychiatrist was massive, powerful, and not all that old—maybe sixty-five. His jaw was as big as a boar’s and his hands were veined and hairy. As Bronner stared down at him, Smithback had the shivery sense that something wasn’t quite right with him.
“Dr. Bronner?” he asked.
“How did you get in here?”
“I, ah, climbed over your fence.”
At this Bronner’s heavy-boned face darkened, but he said nothing.
“I’m the brother of a patient you treated years ago, who unfortunately committed suicide. Through no fault of your own, of course,” he added hastily.
“Who?”
“A woman named Agatha Flayley.”
A long silence. Smithback began to feel uneasy. He could see through the open door into a barren, unkempt house.
“Look, if this isn’t a good time,” he said, edging backward. “I mean, maybe you’re busy—”
“Come in,” Bronner said, stepping aside and opening the door further.
Smithback warily entered the house. It was as cheerless as a prison, but at least it had a view of the ocean beyond a buttonwood border.
“Right on the beach,” said Smithback. “Nice.”
“Sit down.”
Smithback sat on a ratty sofa.
“I remember Agatha,” said Dr. Bronner slowly, taking a seat across from him, eyes on Smithback. “She came to see me—when was that? Thirteen, fourteen years ago.”
“Do you remember the exact dates, by any chance?”
A faraway look. “Yes. Not precisely, but she was my patient for two years. In 2005 and 2006, I think. I don’t have the medical records here, of course; they’re back in the clinic. They’re private, unless you have a signed HIPAA release.”
“I don’t. I’m not looking for that kind of information—just hoping to understand why she did it. I mean, the suicide surprised our whole family.”
A steady look. “Funny, she never talked of any family.”
God, this geezer had a mind like a steel trap. “Well, there was just me and my half brother. That’s what I meant by family.” Smithback swallowed, trying to project a serious but hopeful disposition.
“The suicide surprised me, too. She was certainly not the type, but then you can never be certain.”
“One thing my brother and I were curious about was she had a good friend who saw you, too. Elise Baxter.”
A slow nod. “Another suicide.”
“You have a good memory.”
“A psychiatrist never forgets his suicides.” A long, serious, creepy look.
Smithback cleared his throat. “When did you see Baxter as a patient?”
“Just a few times. Late 2004, early 2005, maybe.”
“Can I ask why she saw you? I mean, I’m curious what she and my sister might have had in common.”
“She had a difficult mother. One of those parents who criticize constantly. But she didn’t really need a psychiatrist for that. She needed a talk therapist, so I referred her out. Don’t believe she ever followed through, though.”
“They shared another joint friend. A person named Mary Adler. Did you ever see her, by any chance?”
A long silence. And then Bronner said, “No.”
“Are you sure? Mary S. Adler of Hialeah?”
At this point Bronner stared at him long and hard. “What did you say your name was?”
“Smithback. Roger Smithback.”
“Smithback. Not Flayley. Agatha was never married when she saw me.”
Smithback swallowed. Shit.
“Okay, Smithback, what’s your game?”
“No game, no game at all. Just a bereaved brother—”
“Cut that shit. I can read the papers. Mary Adler, Agatha Flayley, Elise Baxter. The Brokenhearts graves.”
Smithback swallowed again, with more difficulty.
“You’re no bereaved brother. You’re a reporter—aren’t you?”
Busted. Now what?
“That’s right. You’re a reporter and you’re here on false pretenses!” Bronner suddenly roared, his knotted hands gripping the sides of his chair as he stood up, towering over Smithback.
“Um, yes. That’s true.” Smithback couldn’t lie now. “I’m a reporter for the Herald, and I want to know why Flayley and Baxter were both your patients—and then, eleven years aft
er their deaths, were chosen by Brokenhearts. Coincidence?”
Bronner advanced, clenching his fists, and Smithback abruptly lost his nerve and had to step back.
“What do you mean by this insinuation? You think I’ve got something to do with that business?”
“I’m not insinuating. I came in here in search of the truth.”
“You’re out to destroy my practice, you son of a bitch!”
“It has nothing to do with your practice. I’m going to publish this information—that the two victims were your patients—because it’s in the public interest.” Smithback tried hard to muster both courage and dignity, the effect spoiled by the fear squeaking in his voice. “I seek your comment on that fact, Doctor. Is it coincidence…or something else?”
“Here’s my comment, you little shit!” Bronner balled up a massive fist and stepped forward. Even though Bronner had thirty years on the journalist, he was formidable, and Smithback, being a natural coward who’d always managed to talk his way out of dicey situations, skipped backward. “Just a moment, think about what you’re doing, about how this is going to look—”
Bronner rushed toward him with a grunt. Smithback ducked a heavy swing and turned, scampering out the front door, the doctor in pursuit. He raced for the fence, Bronner behind. He leapt up just as the doctor seized his foot. Smithback gave a heave, losing one slip-on, and tumbled down the other side. He sprinted to his car—one foot shoeless—clambered in, gunned the engine, and tore off with a spray of sand. The last he saw was Bronner shaking the gate, face black with rage.
You bastard, he thought, you can’t threaten the press like that and get away with it. He’d lost one of his shoes—a Vans Classic, sixty dollars a pair—and it didn’t seem likely Bronner would give it back.
He glanced at the time on the dashboard display. Ten thirty—still plenty of time to get in a story. “Hey, Siri,” he said as he drove, “look up Dr. Peterson Bronner.” And then, as an afterthought, he added: “criminal record.”
“Here’s what I found on the web,” the irritatingly pleasant voice replied. The first image that appeared on his phone’s screen was a mug shot of the doctor, holding a sign up to his chest and standing against a cinder-block wall.
31
THE HEADQUARTERS OF the Miami Police Department was housed in a large, squat building that—with its tiers of smoked windows, angled up and out in cantilever style—reminded Coldmoon of an air traffic control tower. It was on Northwest Second Avenue, near the skyscrapers of downtown and not far from the city cemetery; he even recognized a few landmarks from their memorable dash to Agatha Flayley’s tomb.
And that wasn’t all he found memorable. Upon being picked up by Pendergast at his hotel, Coldmoon found his partner within a dented yellow cab whose interior odor, not to mention driver, were all too familiar. Pendergast, it seemed, had tracked down Axel and hired him as temporary chauffeur. “He knows the city,” Pendergast had explained as they’d shot westward over the MacArthur Causeway. “And he seems to enjoy this newfound freedom to drive without the usual constraints. I admire a man who takes pride in his work.”
Coldmoon—who was sick and tired of driving them around in the ludicrous Miami traffic—didn’t complain.
After a suitably terrifying ride, the cab pulled up beside the entrance of the Miami HQ with a squeal of poorly maintained brakes. A mob of reporters, journalists, and camerapeople at the main double doors fell back at the sound, and Pendergast got out, Coldmoon following. Axel—Coldmoon still had no idea what his last name was—showed no intention of moving, but instead placed a small black wallet with a gold shield on the dashboard.
“What did you give him?” Coldmoon asked.
“A mere bauble,” came the reply.
Sensing fresh meat, the crowd of reporters now closed back in on them. They pushed through, avoiding eye contact and ignoring shouted questions. One television journalist—a young woman with short blond hair, wide cheekbones, and an expensive-looking outfit—blocked Coldmoon’s way and danced to one side and the other as he tried to pass. He recognized her from flipping channels in his hotel room: she was the investigative reporter for a local news channel. Someone-or-other Fleming—he couldn’t remember her first name. Very attractive, but with eyes as bright as a rattlesnake’s.
“Excuse me, sir!” the woman said, thrusting forward a microphone labeled with a garish 6 as Pendergast paused to look back. “Sir! What can you tell me about the latest victim? Can you confirm a serial killer’s involved?”
Coldmoon removed his cap. “H’ahíya wóglaka ye,” he said. “Owákahnige šni.” And he stepped around her as tactfully as possible.
“What did you tell her?” Pendergast asked as they entered the building.
“Ms. Fleming? I said I couldn’t understand and asked her to speak more slowly.”
Pendergast clucked disapprovingly. “A lie is a lie, even in Lakota.”
“On the reservation the elders had a saying—the only person worse than a liar is a hypocrite.”
“My Cajun grandmother in New Orleans was fond of the same hoary proverb.”
Pendergast walked over to a large front desk and said something in low tones to a uniformed officer. The cop pointed toward a nearby elevator bank. They showed their IDs, signed in, bypassed the metal detector, and headed for the elevators.
“We’re going to what’s known as the war room,” said Pendergast. “It’s where the MPD keep their electronic toys. It gives them access to the most up-to-date real-time information available, along with links to medical and criminological databases. I’m preparing a little worksite of our own, in a less conspicuous area, but this office will do for an initial confabulation. That liaison fellow, Commander Grove, promised to meet us there, along with Lieutenant Sandoval.”
“You really think Pickett will live up to his promise and let us work without interference?”
“We haven’t been packed off to Salt Lake City, have we?” They exited the elevator and made their way down a cluttered hallway. Coldmoon looked at his watch: 3:00 PM exactly.
The war room lived up to its name, bristling with computers and a huge glossy blackboard on casters. Coldmoon looked around. Some of the fluorescent bulbs behind their frosted ceiling panels were burned out, and one was flickering. There was a battered drip coffeemaker on a table in the far corner, surrounded by stacks of paper cups and cans of powdered milk. He could tell just by looking that the half-full pot had been sitting for only a few hours. Too fresh. Despite the high-tech equipment, this felt a lot more familiar than the sleek FBI headquarters in Miramar, where they’d been given the psych profile by Dr. Mars. This place had a lived-in feel, a place where real police work was done, with scuff marks on the walls, a grumbling HVAC system, and no windows. Coldmoon relaxed.
The center of the room was taken up by a rectangular table. At one end sat Sandoval and Commander Grove. Sandoval’s face was studiously neutral, but the commander couldn’t quite conceal his look of interest, even eagerness. And why not—this was a spectacular investigation, one for the books.
“Gentlemen,” Pendergast said, nodding at each in turn. “Thanks to the work of Dr. Fauchet, we now know Flayley was subjected to the same kind of push-choke strangulation that killed Baxter. In short, these were homicides staged as suicides.” He turned to Sandoval. “Lieutenant, anything new to bring to our attention?”
Sandoval stroked an imaginary mustache as his impassive expression turned sour. “That damned newshound Smithback is really riling people up. First he digs up the Brokenhearts moniker, then just this morning he figures out that both Baxter and Flayley saw the same shrink.” He picked up his cell phone and began reading aloud from an online article:
While the police have declined to release the texts of the notes left on the graves, the grisly “gifts” themselves reveal a troubled person who, surprisingly, might not fit the mold of the classic psychopath—generally assumed to be without remorse or normal human feelings of compassion and
empathy. One must ask: What do these “gifts” signify to the giver? Loss? Remorse? Repentance? Perhaps if the authorities would devote more time to looking into the psychology of Mister Brokenhearts, and asking themselves what terrible experiences must have happened to create an individual with such a warped perspective, they might be able to find him—without further loss of life.
He replaced his phone on the desk in disgust. “We should have found that shrink ourselves, not learned it from a damned newspaper. Just like we should have leaned harder on a possible link between the old suicides and the new murders. That’s on us.”
“At least that reporter doesn’t know the ‘old suicides’ weren’t suicides,” Coldmoon said.
Sandoval nodded. Then he pushed a small remote control on the desk, and the large black rectangle at the far end of the room came to life. Coldmoon realized that it was not a blackboard after all, but an ultra-high-resolution monitor. The screen split into three windows displaying head shots: Baxter, Flayley, and Adler.
“I find it curious,” Pendergast said, “that while all of these supposed suicides lived in Greater Miami, they were killed hundreds of miles apart. And yet the recent Brokenhearts murders all took place in Miami Beach.”
“You think that’s relevant?” Sandoval asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Sandoval turned to Grove. “Anything yet on the Adler autopsy files, Commander?”
“We finally broke the logjam,” Grove said. “Our team located her files and morgue photographs. I’ll be getting them within the hour. She was apparently a follower of a country music group, the Fat Palmettos, and she traveled up to North Carolina from Hialeah for a concert that never took place—the lead guitarist sprained a thumb.”
“The Fat Palmettos,” Coldmoon said.
“They disbanded several years ago.”
“We’ll check on them anyway,” said Sandoval. “Meanwhile, our teams here in Miami Beach are interviewing her remaining family, former co-workers, the rest. Nothing of note so far.”
Verses for the Dead Page 18
