Part 22 (1/2)

”Sure ... Bad things happen to people in here, Barrett,” he said.

”They do,” she replied, convinced now that Anton was deliberately concealing stuff. But why?

As they got up to leave, her beeper chirped.

”I'll be right back,” she walked across to a phone and dialed the number on the display.

”Barrett?” Hobbs' voice felt like a balm on her jangled nerves.

”What's up?”

”I thought you'd want to know, the results came back on Kravitz's insulin.”

”And?”

”It's insulin all right, but the concentration is ten times higher than it should be. Kravitz was murdered. We've pulled Sheila Kravitz in for questioning ... Where are you right now?”

”Croton,” she said, ”I've been going through Martin's records.”

”Find anything?”

”I can't talk here,” she glanced over at Anton who was waiting with briefcase in hand by the elevator. ”I don't think Sheila killed her husband.”

”That makes two of us, but the only fingerprints on the bottle belong to her and her husband.”

”Are you going to be around later?” she asked.

”Sure.”

”I'll call you. Too many things aren't adding up.”

”And I bet our boy is in the middle of it.”

”Yes.”

”He wants something from you, Barrett. And it's not duets.”

”Don't be jealous,” she tried to tease, but her anxiety was too high to carry it off.

”I don't want to see you get hurt,” his tone deadpan.

”I can handle myself.”

”I know. But sometimes the best strategy is to pull back until you know what you're facing.”

”I can't run, Ed. Even if I wanted to, and right now there's a part of me that's scared s.h.i.+tless ... It's not an option.”

”You say that, Barrett. But you've got to be smarter than that. What am I missing?”

Barrett knew exactly why she couldn't run. She could hear her father's drunken rage, her mother screaming for Barrett to go to her room, the bruises on her face. The long drive. The paralyzing fear when he'd tracked them down. Sophie's words to her mother, ”There's a time to run, and a time to stay and fight.” If Jimmy killed Ralph-and G.o.d knows who else-leaving town wouldn't help. Erotomaniacs weren't so easily dissuaded. Once she started to run, she'd never be able to stop.

There was a pause. ”Maybe someday you'll tell me,” Hobbs said softly.

”Maybe.”

EIGHTEEN.

Later that night, holed up in her cave-like Manhattan office, Barrett tried to work. The phone rang. ”h.e.l.lo?” Who'd be calling this late? It was after eight, and aside from the guard in the lobby and the cleaning crew, she was the only one left. She'd stayed, ostensibly to edit a chapter in her book. But the truth was, she didn't want to go home.

”Dr. Conyors,” a woman's m.u.f.fled and frightened voice spoke.

”Yes.”

”If you want to get Jimmy Martin, find Gordon Mayfield.”

”Who is this?” A sliver of fear shot up her spine.

”Gordon Mayfield,” she repeated and then hung up.

Still holding the phone, Barrett muttered, ”What the h.e.l.l?” She focused on the woman's voice; it could have been anyone, even a man pretending to be a woman-even Jimmy for that matter. But why call so late? Either this person was expecting to get put into her voice mail, or knew she was here; not a comforting thought. She glanced around and considered calling the security desk to make certain that no one else had entered the building. She opened the door and peered down the dark hallway. As she did, the motion detectors turned on the lights; she was alone. She went back into her office, locked the door and jiggled the handle.

Standing in the middle of the room, she strained to hear the noises of the building, the gurgle of hot water through the radiators, a soft and distant buzzing from a dying florescent bulb. ”Gordon Mayfield ... why do I know that name?” She opened her bottom drawer and pulled out the growing stack that she'd collected on Jimmy. She'd given Marla the task of cajoling the Croton librarian into printing out several hundred pages of Jimmy's records and faxing them over. It had taken the better part of the day, but finally Barrett could spend the time she needed to hunt through Jimmy's history and find the pieces that had been overlooked. The thing that made him tick.

She ran through her notes from the visit to Croton, wondering if Mayfield's name was there; it wasn't. Still, it was familiar, on the tip of her tongue. ”Mayfield,” she repeated aloud as she flipped through records.

She tapped her mouse, the computer emitted an electronic tw.a.n.g and the screen blinked on. She ran the cursor down, called up the database for the center, and typed in Mayfield, Gordon.

What came back was not what she'd expected. The screen filled with a full page of patient names, all of them connected to Gordon Mayfield-MD. And then she remembered; Gordon Mayfield had been a psychiatrist here, but before her time. She'd even worked with clients who'd been treated by him. But that wasn't what people mentioned on those rare occasions when his name came up; he was the psychiatrist who'd killed himself. Sad, but not earth-shattering. Why Mayfield would occasionally surface had to do with the how, the why, and the where of his death.

The story had it that he'd been caught sleeping with a patient. Scheduled for a disciplinary hearing, he was most likely about to lose his job and possibly his license. The day before the hearing, he went up to the roof-a twelve-story structure-and jumped.

But what, she wondered, did he have to do with Jimmy?

Scrolling down the patient list, she looked for a line that connected Mayfield to James C. Martin IV; there was nothing. As she got to the last name she realized that the database only went back eleven years. Jimmy would have been at Croton. She glanced over the stack of Jimmy's records on her desk, it was over a foot thick and it was only a fraction of what existed.

Trilling her fingers on the edge of the desk , what about? She logged onto the Croton library's web site. She typed in her pa.s.sword and gained access to the on-line literature search. She put in Mayfield's name; seven references materialized. Apparently, he'd written a series of articles on the a.s.sessment of s.e.xual deviants, published in the Journal of Criminal Psychiatry. She printed out the page and placed it beside the monitor.

”Okay,” she muttered, ”that's something, but what else?” With her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth, she switched from the library to her favorite on-line search engine. She again typed in ”Gordon Mayfield” and waited to see what, if anything, appeared from the interlaced strands of the electronic web. There were forty-seven hits with Mayfield's name. As she scrolled through she discarded most of them, but halfway through she came upon a hyperlink for a web site called s.e.x Killer Klub.

”You've got to be kidding.” Feeling repulsed, she double-clicked on the blue hyperlink and headed into a sick corner of the Internet. She had a millisecond's hesitation, knowing that all the clinic's computers were routinely audited to determine where the employees had traveled on the Web. It was a standing joke that Barrett's was always filled with p.o.r.nographic and fetish-based web sites-a part of her research. She'd often interview anonymous individuals in chat rooms, where they seemed eager and willing to discuss their most secret and potent fantasies.

She read through the options and clicked a box t.i.tled Rogues Gallery. As she went down the list of high-profile killers, Mayfield's name was nowhere. Returning to the home page, she hunted for the sc.r.a.p of data that connected her original search to the web page. She found a single phrase that was a different color that said-reference materials-and clicked. And there they were-Mayfield's articles. She pressed print.