MULTIPLE MOTIVES (The Kate Huntington mystery series Book 1) (3 page)

   “Come in.”

   She closed the door behind her. He sat at his desk, looking over some papers in an open file folder.

“You’re never going to believe the conversation I had earlier with the biggest jerk in the world.” In an irate voice, she summarized the phone call with Detective Phillips.

Rob sat back in his chair and looked pointedly at her fists clenched at her sides. “Calm down, Kate. He’s just doing his job.”

She willed her fingers to uncurl. “Easy for you to say. You weren’t talking to the…” Several words came to mind that she didn’t normally say out loud. She settled on “jackass.”

“Oh, he’s questioned me twice already, and I’m sure he’ll be back around again. Once he’s finished his fishing expedition with my colleagues and friends.” Rob’s voice was grim. “The spouse is always the first suspect in a murder or attempted murder.”

Kate stared at him. The word
murder
had rendered her temporarily speechless, a rare experience for her.

After a long pause, she said, “Well, considering the possibility that you were behind Liz’s accident–or non-accident if indeed it was intentional–that’s one thing. But it sounded to me like he’d already proposed marriage to the theory and was about to waltz it down the aisle.”

~~~~~~~~

Friday at noon, Kate sat back in her desk chair with a sigh. It had been a tough morning, topping off a bad week. “TGIF,” she muttered. Taking a bite from her ham sandwich, she mulled over the session she’d just had with Cheryl Crofton, a pregnant, domestic violence survivor. Cheryl’s estranged husband had gotten his hands on her phone number. Thank God he still didn’t know her new address.

He’d called her the previous weekend, and of course they’d argued. Now that Cheryl felt relatively safe from her abusive spouse, her anger was surfacing. An all too common reaction, as Kate knew. Cheryl had ended the conversation by informing him he now had to talk to her lawyer, Robert Franklin, instead of to her.

“Has he threatened you?” Kate had asked.

“No, not really. He just keeps sayin’ he’s gonna make me come home.”

“I don’t want to frighten you, but sometimes after the woman leaves, a wife-batterer becomes more violent. I suggest you get your phone number changed. If you tell the phone company someone’s harassing you, they might change it for free.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not scared. I bought a gun and a friend of mine’s teachin’ me how to use it. I’m never gonna let
nobody
intimidate me again.”

Kate had reservations about Cheryl as a gun-toting mama but she’d kept them to herself. She didn’t want to undermine her client’s newfound assertiveness, and the threat of a spurned wife-batterer turning deadly was real. At least she was getting lessons on the gun’s proper use, which hopefully would include safety instructions.

Kate chomped down on the dill pickle spear the deli had delivered along with her sandwich. As she chewed, her mind turned to her first session that morning. Multiple personalities–or dissociative identity disorder as it was now called–was more common in women, but Jim Lincoln was the second man with the disorder whom Kate had treated in her twelve-year career as a psychotherapist.

Jim was quiet and shy by nature. In addition to the D.I.D.–which was tough enough to treat–he was still confused about his sexual orientation at age twenty-nine. He’d grown up in rural western Maryland, in the foothills of the Appalachians. His seductive mother had fondled him as a child and eventually moved on to even more inappropriate sexual behaviors. Meanwhile his homophobic father had beaten him on a regular basis. At age four, his father started taking him to Ku Klux Klan meetings to “teach him how to be a man.” His first alter personality developed at that time–Steve, who was now an ultra-macho, heterosexual fifteen-year-old.

Other alters had joined the ranks through the years to help the sensitive boy cope. One was a little girl named Lilly who came out whenever Jim wanted to play dolls with the neighborhood girls instead of baseball with the boys. This made it okay and warded off his fear of his father’s wrath. After all, it wasn’t Jim who was playing with dolls; it was this female, Lilly.

Lilly had come out toward the end of today’s session. She’d then been resistant to giving up control of the shared body so Jim could get home safely. Lilly, at age six, did not know how to drive a car.

Kate let out a sigh and took another bite of her sandwich. There was a soft knock on her slightly ajar door. Expecting Pauline with phone messages, she mumbled, “Come in,” around ham and cheese.

Rob’s head appeared instead. “We’re headed for the airport but Shelley wanted to say good-bye.” He ushered his daughter into the office.

Swallowing quickly, Kate jumped up to give the young woman a hug. “Sweetheart, getting to see you was the only good part of this lousy week.” She stepped back, her hands still on the nineteen-year-old’s shoulders. “I can’t believe how grown up you are now. And you look so much like your mother.”

After a few minutes of chitchat, they said their farewells. Kate settled back down in her chair. She picked up her sandwich and took a bite.

Two loud cracks, followed by screams. Kate almost choked on her food. She bolted out of her chair and across her office. It sounded like the screams were coming from the street in front of the building. Heart in her throat, she ran through the center’s outer office and down the central stairs to the first floor.

She reached the lobby at the same time as the building’s security guard. He motioned for her to stay back. Drawing his gun, he cautiously eased one of the glass doors open.

The door was yanked out of his hand. Rob barreled through, his daughter in his arms. He flattened his back against the lobby wall. Shelley’s feet slid to the floor. She stood trembling in her father’s arms.

Kate raced over to them. “Oh my God! Is she hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” Rob’s voice was shaky. “Are you hurt, baby?”

Shelley shook her head and burst into tears.

He held his sobbing daughter tightly, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. “One shot hit right beside her. It got one of the flower pots.”

Kate leaned over and peeked through the glass door. The large pot of geraniums to the left of the door was intact. Dirt, chunks of terra cotta clay, and mangled flowers were scattered on the sidewalk where its mate used to be.

There were two shots
.

Her hand flew to her chest. A young man, in biking helmet, shorts and T-shirt, was crumpled on the sidewalk near the curb. He moaned and clutched his bleeding leg. His bike lay abandoned in the road.

An older couple had already come to his aid. The man pressed a clean handkerchief against the wound while his wife draped her sweater around the biker’s shoulders.

The security guard came back through the other door. “Police and ambulance are on the way,” he announced. “Is the girl hurt?”

Rob shook his head, then looked at Kate. His expression said,
I can’t take much more of this.

Kate wrapped her arms around the big man and his daughter. They were both trembling. “Sh-sh-sh, it’s okay,” she whispered. “Sh-sh, it’s over now.”

She hoped she was right.

CHAPTER THREE

On Sunday, Eddie had just gotten home from a day of tax forms and stressed-out clients. He was pulling off his tie as he walked through the living room. The phone rang. He picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Rob.”

Kate hustled into the kitchen to grab the other phone from its base.

“The doctors feel Liz is recovering well,” Rob was saying as she picked up. “But I didn’t tell her about the shooting yet. I’ll wait until she’s a little stronger. Shelley ended up staying through this morning. She was pretty shaken Friday night, but she seems fine now. After a weekend of fighting with her sister, she was quite ready to go back to school.”

“Ah, the resiliency of kids,” Eddie said.

Kate pursed her lips. One of her pet peeves was adults assuming kids were more resilient than they were. “I don’t know,” she said into the phone. “I wonder sometimes if they figure they don’t have any other choice. Kids cope because they have to.”

“Well, she seems to be coping better than I am,” Rob said. “I have a wife in the hospital, just spent the weekend in a teenage war zone, and Samantha is now pouting in her room because I told her, no, she could
not
wear a leather halter top and miniskirt to her school dance.”

Kate opened her mouth, then thought better of it. Now probably wasn’t the best time to point out that his daughters might not be coping as well as they seemed to be.

“Hmm, maybe we should rethink this baby idea, love,” Eddie said.

“Don’t worry, they only stay rebellious teenagers for a few years, although it feels like a decade or two,” Rob said with a chuckle in his voice.

Kate decided a change of subject was in order. “What have the police come up with on the shooting?”

“They haven’t a clue. After all, drive-bys aren’t exactly commonplace outside of the city. By the time people figured out what was going on, the shooter was long gone. The police don’t think he was aiming for anyone in particular. Just some crazy who thought it would be fun to take pot shots at people.”

“Some crazy who’s seen one too many violent movies,” Kate said. “I was going to stop by the hospital after work tomorrow. You going to be there?”

“Yeah, see you then.” Rob signed off.

“Geez,” Kate said as Eddie walked into the kitchen. “Talk about adjusting because you have to. We sounded like all this is normal. Calmly discussing drive-bys in suburbia and visiting friends who’ve been run over by trucks.”

Her mind flashed to the haunted look on Rob’s face two days ago. She wondered if any of the Franklins were doing quite as well as they seemed to be.

~~~~~~~~

On Tuesday, Kate was anticipating a long but relatively easy day. She had late office hours this evening, but the only tough session was likely to be Jim Lincoln’s. With D.I.D. clients, there was no such thing as an easy session.

It was even harder than she’d feared. Steve, the macho alter, came out and flirted quite blatantly with her. Sidestepping the come-ons without being outright rejecting was tricky.

By the time Cheryl Crofton, her last client of the evening, arrived, Kate was beginning to drag.

Cheryl was in a good mood, almost manic. “I don’t think I’ll need to change my phone number. Frank called again. I told him you said to change it, but he said,” she puffed up her chest and said in a deep voice, “‘Don’t bother. You won’t be hearing from me for awhile.’” Then she gave a little laugh.

“What do you think that means?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know. And I’m not sure I care. As long as he stays away from me.”

Kate was pleased by that response. The woman seemed to be truly letting go of her husband, a process that was often a lot longer and harder than one might expect, even when the man was abusive.

Toward the end of the session, Cheryl started discussing her legal case. Whenever she said Rob’s name, her voice softened and a wisp of a smile floated across her face.

Uh, oh
.
She’s falling for the white knight.

Kate decided not to address the issue tonight, however, since they were running out of time. Instead, she brought the conversation back to the woman’s concerns about her finances.

As the session was winding down, Cheryl abruptly changed the subject. “Hey, did I show you my new shoes?” Her voice had a manic edge to it again. She held up one foot encased in a strappy black sandal with a very high heel. “Ten bucks at Walmart. Doncha love a bargain!”

“How do you walk in those things, especially pregnant?” Kate asked. Cheryl was not a small woman.

“It ain’t easy. But it’s worth it. They make me feel sexy.”

The shoes were somewhat incompatible with the rest of her casual attire–a loose top over a denim skirt–but Kate had to admit they did show off the woman’s muscular calves. She chuckled. “I hate to tell you what we called those when I was in high school.”

“Ho shoes,” Cheryl replied, and they both laughed. Almost out of time, Kate decided to let the session end on that light note.

Kate was writing notes in Cheryl’s file–the woman’s mood was a bit strange tonight–when Rob knocked lightly on her half-opened door.

“Hey, what are you doing here so late?” she asked.

“Meeting with a client. I went over to the hospital for awhile at lunchtime. Liz said not to bother coming by this evening.” He sounded tired.

“So how are you doing?” Kate asked, as she put the file in her cabinet, then locked it.

He flopped onto the loveseat in the corner of her office. “Okay, I guess.” His bleak tone said the opposite.

Her own fatigue temporarily forgotten, Kate sat down in her desk chair and turned it toward him. She tried not to let her worry show on her face. A comfortable silence settled around them.

Rob sighed. “What a week it’s been.” He was quiet again for a moment. Then in a voice so low she could barely hear him, he said, “My God, Kate, when I think about what could’ve happened. I… I could’ve lost both of them.” His voice broke on a sob.

She moved quickly across the room and crammed herself in next to him on the loveseat, wrapping her arms around him as best she could. Rob dropped his head onto her shoulder. His broad back was shaking. “That didn’t happen,” she whispered in his ear. “They’re both okay.”

After a moment the shaking stopped. Kate was wondering how they would extricate themselves from this scenario with Rob’s ego relatively intact, when a noise outside her open door provided an opportune distraction. She struggled up from the loveseat to investigate, while Rob searched his pockets for a handkerchief.

There was no one in the waiting area. Were those heels clicking in the hallway? She walked to the center’s outer door, opened it, and looked in both directions. The hallway was empty.

Must be imagining things
.

~~~~~~~~

Every time the nearby kitchen door opened, the fragrant combination of hot grease and Old Bay seasoning wafted in Kate’s direction. Her stomach growled. She closed her eyes and savored the anticipation of the crab cake she would soon be eating.