Daughter of Darkness (21 page)

    "Possibly. That's why I want to read up on it before I say anything else." He laughed. "Hard as it is to believe, Coffey, I could be wrong."

    "Who the hell would want to brainwash her?"

    "Somebody who hates her. Or who is jealous of her. Like a boyfriend who feels he's losing control of her."

    "David Foster?"

    "I'm just throwing out possibilities here."

    "She sees a shrink. A Priscilla Bowman."

    "Yes, she told me."

    "You know Bowman?"

    "Only by reputation. She's supposed to be very, very good. A lot of our peers knock her, but they're mostly jealous. She's got a firm grip on the millionaire business in the city. She makes a lot of money. And she's not known for being especially humble."

    "Could Bowman brainwash her?"

    "Could she? Probably. I mean, she has the opportunity certainly. She sees Jenny often, and sometimes hypnotizes her. Couple that with certain drugs, and she could probably mess with Jenny's mind pretty much as she wanted to. 'Mess with Jenny's mind' is technical jargon, by the way."

    Coffey laughed. "You should write for Leno, the way you tell jokes all the time."

    "There are some days I
wish
I wrote for Leno. believe me. Anything but sitting in my office being bombarded by people's problems."

    "Like mine?"

    "Oh, no. This is something real interesting. This'll get my shrink juices going again."

    "Can you help her?" Coffey asked.

    "I can help her if she wants me to."

    "Meaning?"

    "Meaning, she may be more comfortable with Priscilla Bowman."

    "But what if Priscilla Bowman's behind this somehow."

    "Jenny has a lot of faith in the woman. I don't have the professional or ethical right to shake that faith. I don't have any evidence that Bowman is being anything other than the first-rate shrink she's known to be. Therefore, I don't have any right to try and disrupt or alter their relationship." He grinned. "Plus, Priscilla is very litigious. She'd probably sue my ass if I took one of her clients away."

    "God," Coffey said, "brainwashed."

    "Listen to me, Coffey. I said that was a
possibility
. I didn't say it's what she's suffering from. There are all sorts of things she could be suffering from."

    Coffey steadied himself for his next question. He didn't really want an answer. "Do you think she killed the guy in the motel?"

    "I don't know.
She
doesn't know. Not for sure, anyway?"

    "Not even under hypnosis?"

    "Not even under hypnosis," Hal said. "That part of the evening is very vague to her."

    "Do you think she'll ever remember?"

    "Possibly," Hal said. "Possibly."

    Coffey sat back in his chair. "David Foster had to be pretty desperate the other night. Following her to the motel."

    "That sounds pretty desperate to me, yes."

    "He was upset because he'd lost her. Meaning he'd been following her around all night. Meaning that he knew she'd gone into the motel room."

    "Sounds plausible."

    "Meaning that he might have gone into the room himself. After she left."

    "And then
he
killed him?" Hal said. "That's awful neat and tidy, Coffey."

    "Sometimes, it works out that way, neat and tidy."

    "You've already got two suspects for brainwashing, and we don't even
know
that she's been brainwashed. I know you want her to be innocent, Coffey, but you've got to be open-minded about this."

    "Open-minded?"

    "She might actually have killed the guy."

    "
She
actually killed the guy? I just can't believe that."

    "Maybe you'll have to, Coffey."

    "Gee, thanks, that's just what I need to hear."

    "Coffey, look, I know how deep your feelings are for Jenny. I'm just trying to do what a good shrink does-warn you that this may not have the happy ending you want."

    "I haven't even mentioned the van," Coffey said, desperate for Hal to believe in Jenny's innocence as much as he did. If Hal could only see how many suspects there were-

    "The van?" Hal said.

    "A Ford van," Jenny said from the doorway. "I've seen it, too."

    Coffey looked over at her. She wore a pair of Coffey's pajamas. With her tousled hair and sleepy face, she looked like a little kid.

    She came into the kitchen and said, "Hal is right, Coffey. We have to admit the possibility that I killed that man. I mean, I was the only one in the room with him as far as we know."

    Bad enough, Coffey thought, that Hal held out the possibility that Jenny had killed the guy. Now, Jenny
herself
was saying the same thing.

    He talked to Hal a few more minutes, and then hung up.

    

    

    Margie Ryan said. "We got a phone tip, Mrs. Stafford, and we needed to check it out."

    "A phone tip?"

    Eileen had brought both of them coffee and set the cups on a shining sterling silver tray. She placed the tray between them at the small antique parquet-surface table by the study window. The window overlooked the northeast edge of the grounds. A gardener was at work on a tractor mower. The day was almost done now, but he seemed to have no trouble seeing. He used the lone headlight on the front of the tractor to illuminate his way.

    Molly didn't like the detective. She was too forward, too cold. Molly wanted a smile or two and a gentler manner-and deference. Yes, a little deference. It probably wasn't very nice to admit-Molly really didn't like thinking of herself as a snob-but shouldn't the detective be at least a
little
intimidated coming into the Stafford house?

    "Somebody said they saw your daughter at the Econo-Nite Motel the other night." "Perky" was the best way to describe the detective. She was just tall enough to have passed the police exam, and probably just heavy enough. She was finely boned, with a childlike face, and sharp, sudden movements, as if energy were overwhelming her. She wore a wine-colored blazer, a red-checked blouse, a dark skirt and one-inch black heels. She looked like a sales clerk in a medium-priced department store.

    "I wish I knew what you were talking about," Molly said.

    "Phone tips. Motels. We're talking about my daughter here, Jenny. She's a very proper girl."

    "I'm sure she is."

    "She's not a prude or anything like that. But a motel-I really doubt it. And even if she
was
at a motel, I don't see what the significance would be. She's over twenty-one. If she chooses to go to a motel, it's her business."

    "There was a murder in this motel."

    "Now you're telling me she had something to do with a murder?"

    "No, Mrs. Stafford, I'm not. I'm simply following up on a phone tip. Do you know what time your daughter got home the night before last?"

    "I'd have to think about it, I guess."

    "We're not accusing her of anything, Mrs. Stafford. We just have to check this out."

    "Who was murdered?"

    "A sales rep named Benedict."

    "A sales rep? But Jenny doesn't hang out with people like that."

    As soon as she spoke, she knew she'd put her thought the wrong way. A tiny smirk appeared in the corners of Detective Ryan's mouth. "People like that." That phrase had identified Molly as the snob the detective had probably suspected. And now had confirmed.

    "As I said, we're just checking things out, Mrs. Stafford."

    "They used my daughter's name?"

    "Yes, they did, if you mean the tipster, Mrs. Stafford."

    "Jenny Stafford? The daughter of
Tom
Stafford?"

    "Yes, Mrs. Stafford. Jenny Stafford, the daughter of Tom Stafford."

    "I just don't understand why anybody would make a phone call like that."

    Detective Ryan shrugged. "There are two possibilities. One, it was a prank, somebody who knows your daughter and wanted to have a little fun."

    "Fun?"

    "Fun as
they
saw it. Not fun for the police, and not fun for you and your family."

    "And what's the other possibility?"

    "The other possibility is that the tipster was somebody who sincerely believed that he saw your daughter leaving the motel that night."

    "If he was so sincere, why didn't he leave his name?"

    "Tipsters rarely do. They don't want to get involved."

    "He could've been wrong. Maybe it was just somebody who
looked
like Jenny."

    "Very possibly, Mrs. Stafford. Eyewitnesses aren't all that reliable."

    "See? You said it yourself. This must be a mistake."

    "I'm sure it is, too, Mrs. Stafford. All I really need to know is where Jenny was the other night and what time she got in. And I
would
like to talk to her if I could." The detective reached inside her blazer and took out a standard business card. No fancy logo, no fancy script. Black type and white card. It identified her as a member of the Chicago PD, and listed her work phone and home phone. She set it in the middle of the table. "Tell her, I'd appreciate a call."

    "I'm sure she was home by eleven." Molly said a little too quickly. "I just remembered."

    "By eleven? You're sure?"

    "Yes, positive." Molly wanted to clear the air. And she'd done it. Jenny
hadn't
come home until well into the night, but who was to know? Eileen would never tell. The only other person who knew was the cab driver who'd brought her home. And how would the police ever find out about
him?

    For the first time, the detective smiled. It was a coldly appraising smile. It was easy to see that she knew Molly was lying. She said again, "You're sure?"

    "Oh, yes. Sure."

    "Well, then, there we are."

    "So you won't need to speak to Jenny?"

    "Oh, just a quick phone call is all, Mrs. Stafford." She pointed to the business card that still sat between them on the table.

    "But if I remember now. I don't see why you need to speak to Jenny."

    "Just a formality," the detective said. "Just a quick call is all I need."

    The cold smile remained on her lips all the way to the study door. "Just please be sure to have her call me."

    

    

    A panty-sniffer would be nice, Priscilla Bowman was thinking. Or a junkie. Or just a plain old garden variety bisexual. Or even a kleptomaniac.

    But no. Today was divorce day in her office. And divorced people tended to say the same things over and over, an endless monotonous repetition of he said-she said, he did-she did. Gay couples were no different. Yada yada yada.

    At least, she was winding up her day. Only five minutes to go with Heather Tompkins. And then freedom.

    Heather was the spoiled daughter of inherited wealth, three generations of strapping Irishmen who'd cheated their way into dominant position on the docks of Chicago. Not that this background sullied Heather. She'd been sent to private school in Switzerland, and to Brown back here in the states. She was bright, polished, and relentlessly sexual. At age twenty-two-after an admittedly wild time as a single in LA-she'd married staid New England banking money and begun producing a brood of good-looking but intellectually dull children. She always said to Priscilla, and without a smidge of humility, they got my looks and their father's brains. And father's brains were largely the problem here. At thirty-five, (this being Heather's version), he'd become an old man. The only exercise he ever got, she once claimed, was passing gas after every meal. She also said that he'd flunked his bar exam four times before finally passing, which should have told her something. Because of his father's connections, the son had been made a partner in a most prestigious Gold Coast law firm, but he was never given anything more important than low-level trust funds to handle. He had lost interest in sex, in going out for fun weekends, and in bringing home all the neat surprise gifts he once lavished upon his "wifey" (as he always called her).

    With all the money involved, with all the high society involved, you'd think this would be at least mildly titillating to Priscilla. But it wasn't. Because divorces, whether they involved the milkman or the governor of the state, were all pretty much the same. Cotton sheets from Penney's or silk sheets from Neiman Marcus, the tale was drearily similar.

    Sex might be the thing Heather liked most, but talking uninterrupted came in a close second. She had spent her hour today reporting on one of her many infidelities, this at the country club the other night where she'd "done" a man and he'd "done" her in the back seat of his van while Don The Drone (as she frequently referred to her husband) was at the bar discussing the recent layoffs at J. P. Morgan and what they portended for the market in general. Like many men, Heather was of the mind that as long as there was no penetration, no actual sexual act had been committed.

    Now she was winding down for the session, talking about her forthcoming high school reunion. She was trying to think of some way of keeping her husband at home. She'd have a lot more fun going by herself. They both understood what she meant by fun. What she wanted, in bringing up the subject of her going alone to the reunion, was Priscilla's approval. That was the big difference between going to confession and going to a shrink. Sometimes the shrink
approved
of you committing a sin.

    But Priscilla didn't approve. All she said was, "You're the one who has to make that decision. Heather."