Part 86 (1/2)

31.

”He keeps files on everyone,” Siobhan said. ”He has a file on me, one on you, Mr. Kenzie, and one on you as well, Miss Gennaro.”

”What are in the files?” Angie asked.

”Your daily routines. Your weaknesses. Oh,” she waved her hand at the smoke from her cigarette, ”there's plenty else. Whatever biographical information he can find.” She pointed the cigarette at Angie. ”He was so happy when he found out about the death of your husband. He thought he had you.”

”Had me?”

”The means to break you, Miss Gennaro. The means to break you. Everyone has something they can't face, don't they. Then he discovered you have some powerful relatives, yeah?”

Angie nodded.

”That was not a day you'd have wanted to be around Scott Pea.r.s.e, you can be certain.”

”My heart bleeds for him,” I said. ”Let me ask you-why'd you speak to me that first time I came to the Dawes' house?”

”To throw you off the scent, Mr. Kenzie.”

”You sent me after Cody Falk.”

She nodded

”What, did Pea.r.s.e think I'd kill him and be done with the case?”

”It seemed a reasonable possibility, don't you think?” She looked down at her coffee cup.

”Is Diane Bourne his only source for psych files?” I asked.

Siobhan shook her head. ”He's got a man in the records department at McLean Hospital in Belmont. Can you guess how many patients McLean services in a year, Mr. Kenzie?”

McLean was one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in the state. It handled both voluntary and involuntary committals, had locked and unlocked wards, treated everything from narcotics and alcohol dependency to chronic fatigue syndrome to paranoid disa.s.sociative schizophrenia with violent tendencies. McLean had over three hundred beds and an average of three thousand admissions a year.

Siobhan leaned back in the booth and ran a weary hand through her close-cropped hair. We'd left the commuter station in Weston and driven straight into rush hour, pulled out of it in Waltham and stopped at an IHOP on Main Street. At five-thirty in the evening, the IHOP sported only a few patrons, and after we ordered a pot of regular coffee and a pot of decaf, the surly waitress was happy to ignore us and leave us to our privacy.

”How does Pea.r.s.e enlist people?” Angie asked.

Siobhan gave us an acrid smile. ”He's very magnetic, isn't he?”

Angie shrugged. ”Never met the man up close.”

”Take it on faith, then,” Siobhan said. ”The man looks straight through to your soul.”

I tried not to roll my eyes.

”He befriends you,” Siobhan said. ”Then he beds you. He learns your weaknesses-whatever those things are you can't face. Then he owns you. And you do what he asks, or he destroys you.”

”Why Karen?” I said. ”I mean, I know he was trying to teach the Dawes a lesson, but even for Pea.r.s.e that strikes me as severe.”