F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (47 page)

           
"I'll be keeping an eye on this
place—and it's
here
I want you to
stay. Not that apartment."

           
Kara felt her back begin to stiffen
at being told where to stay, but she made herself relax. Rob was right.

           
"But what if I'm… dangerous
after I go to sleep?"

           
"Can't you talk to Ellen? Find
some way to lock you in a bedroom when you call it a night?"

           
Kara thought about that. She could
tell Ellen and Jill she'd been sleepwalking.

           
"That might work. What are you
going to be doing?"

           
"I'm going to be all over
Gates. He's in this up to his neck. Not like you say—sorry, but there's no way
I can buy that. But he's involved. After all, it was
his
name Bannion wrote on the floor. So that means the good
doctor's got some questions to answer. And I'm the guy who's going to be
asking."

           
The grim determination in Rob's eyes
offered her a glimmer of hope.

           
Jill came running into the room, a
plate in one hand and her ever-present chopsticks in the other.

           
"Rob! Rob!" she cried,
then caught Kara's sharp look. "Mr. Harris! Look at this!"

           
Kara watched his face brighten at
the sight of her. He put an arm around her waist and drew her close. With the
contact, all the tension seemed to run out of his body.

           
"What are they?"

           
"Guess!"

           
"Spotted rocks."

           
She giggled. "No! They're
uncooked cookies."

           
"Don't look like cookies to me.
Cookies are flat. Those are round."

           
"They flatten when they cook.
But watch this!" She picked up one of the balls of raw cookie dough with
her chopsticks and popped it into her mouth. "See? I can do it now!"

           
"Well, I'll be!" Rob said,
hugging her closer. "You did that just like a real Chinese! Can I have
one?"

           
Jill picked up another with her
chopsticks and got it to Rob's mouth.

           
"Hmmmm," he said.
"Tell the cook it needs more vanilla."

           
"Not me!" Jill said.
"
You
tell her!"

           
Jill ate another dough ball.

           
"You know," Rob told her,
"you're so good with those, I think we can take you to a sushi bar."

           
"What's that?"

           
"That's where they eat raw fish
on rice balls."

           
Jill made a sour face.
"Eeeeuuuuu!"

           
Kara watched Rob rock his head back
and laugh. She had to tell him about his daughter. And soon. Before he figured
it out on his own.

           
Rob sat in Gates' waiting room and
surveyed some choice photos of the murder scene. The best was a close-up of the
writing on the floor. Rob had made sure the photographer had set the lamp so
that the light reflected off the still-wet letters. He was anxious to show this
to Gates and watch how he reacted to seeing his own name written in blood.

           
Kara was innocent and Gates was
guilty. He firmly believed that. He had no right to. He hadn't a shred of
evidence to back that up. It was a gut feeling.

           
Or was he fooling himself? This was
why cops were supposed to stay away from cases in which they were emotionally
involved. Emotions clouded judgment. Were his feelings for Kara clouding his?

           
Rob began to turn the photo over on
his lap, then snapped it back to face up. From this angle, the smears to the
right of "Gates" had looked like an "equals" sign, followed
by a "K."

 
 

           
The hairs at the back of his neck
began to rise.
Gates is Kara
? Rob
stared at it from all angles. Was that what Bannion was trying to say? That
Gates was in Kara? Like the note on the electric bill had said? Like Kara had
said less than an hour ago?

           
The number of people who believed in
that crazy idea seemed to be growing. Was it possible that—?

           
Rob shook off the thought. No.
Couldn't be. Something like that simply wasn't possible. The smeared end of
Bannion's scrawl—the "=K" part—had to be a trick of the light. People
did a lot of awful things to each other in New York, but they didn't take over
each other's bodies.

           
When Gates' patient came out, Rob
scooted into the consultation room as he had done before, without waiting for
the receptionist to warn the doctor.

           
"Detective Harris," Gates
said in a bored tone. "What brings you back?"

           
"Your friend Edward Bannion is
dead," Rob said without preamble.

           
It had the desired effect. Gates
stiffened and blurted:

           
"My friend?"

           
Any uncertainties Rob had harbored
about Gates being involved in Bannion's death evaporated with those two words.
He took grim satisfaction from the fact that Gates' first response was not to
ask who was Edward Bannion or what the hell Rob was talking about, but to
challenge the idea that he was a friend.

           
He shoved a particularly gory crime
scene photo under the psychiatrist's nose.

           
"Sure. Don't you recognize
him?"

           
Gates took the photo and studied it.
The blood and the corpse did not seem to faze him.

           
"I've never seen this man
before in my life."

           
"Really?" Rob handed over
the close up of the scrawl. "The last act of his life was to write your
name."

           
Gates was clearly jolted by the
sight of his name written in blood. But Rob had to hand it to him: he recovered
quickly.

           
"This could mean anything. It
doesn't say 'Dr. Gates' and it doesn't say 'Lawrence Gates,' it just says
'Gates.' That could mean anything."

           
"Yeah," Rob said softly,
staring at him, "but you know and I know that he means you."

           
"Are you accusing me of murder?"
Gates said.

           
"You said it, not me."

           
Gates leaned back and smiled. He
picked up the key ring from his desk top and began twirling it on his finger.

           
"All right, Detective Harris.
Let's assume you are accusing me of the murder of a man I have never even heard
of until this very moment. Let's play this game through. I have no motive, and
no opportunity."

           
"Can you account for your
whereabouts at the time of the murder?"

           
"Which was?"

           
"Approximately two-thirty A.M.
Sunday morning."

           
"I was here, in my office,
working on patient charts. And I have the best witness in the world."

           
"Really. Who's that?"

           
"A member of the city's police
department. You."

           
Rob felt the surprise break through
onto his face.

           
Gates's smile broadened.

           
"Come now, Detective Harris.
Did you really think your pathetic attempts to shadow me went unnoticed? I know
you've been watching me. It's been quite amusing, really."

           
But
I wasn't outside your place all night
! Rob thought. He had been at Kara's
before the murder and at Bannion's after. Plenty of time for Gates to sneak out
and kill Bannion.

           
But he wasn't going to tell Gates
that. Not yet.

           
"If you think you were shadowed
before, pal, you wait."

           
The smile faded from Gates' face,
replaced by a look of cold contempt.

           
"Don't look for trouble,
detective."

           
"I won't be looking for trouble—just
looking for you. No matter where you go, you're going to look up and see me.
I'll connect you to Bannion, and then you'll be mine. You can file harassment
charges, but that won't stop me."

           
"Harassment charges? Do you
think I'd have to stoop, to that? Against
you
?
Do you really think I couldn't lose you any time I wished? Do you actually
believe that someone like you would be any sort of match for a man with my
intelligence and knowledge of the human mind? Don't make me laugh!"

           
"That's the last thing I want
to make you do, pal," Rob said.