Love Gone Mad (17 page)

It’s seven thirty in the evening. Adrian, Megan, Mulvaney, and Harwood are in the third-floor doctors’ lounge. A siren whoops outside. Megan shudders; Adrian wraps his arm around her shoulders.

“How’re ya feelin’, Megan?” Mulvaney asks.

“Just a few scrapes and bruises. I’ll be okay,” she whispers.

But Adrian feels her body trembling. And she sounds drained, wasted. He rubs her back and whispers, “It’ll be okay.”

“Megan, can you talk now?” Mulvaney asks. Harwood stands nearby with a digital recorder.

“I don’t know,” she stammers. “I’m feeling calmer now. That sedative’s kicking in.”

“Can you tell us anything else?” Mulvaney asks.

“I couldn’t … not really … He was very fast … and … and strong … and …” Her voice warbles; her hands shake.

“You think it was your ex?” Mulvaney asks.

She nods and swallows hard. “Yes.”

“We’re combin’ each floor, goin’ in every room,” Mulvaney says. “Everyone’s being interviewed. The only ones we’re not talkin’ to are patients in
comas
.”

“He’s gone,” Harwood says.

“Can’t know,” Mulvaney says.

“You’re pretty sure it’s Conrad Wilson, aren’t you?” Adrian says.

“Believe me, Adrian,” Mulvaney says. “It’s almost always the husband or the ex. And I’ll tell ya somethin’ else. He’s probably lookin’ for you, too. That night at King’s Corner wasn’t a coincidence.”

“But Megan and I hadn’t even
met
yet.”

“Still, Adrian, he was lookin’ for someone … and he picked
you
.”

“You mean the break-in at my place, don’t you?”

“By
then
he knew you were in the picture. It’s that old jealousy thing. ‘If I can’t have you, then no one can,’” Mulvaney says. He turns to Megan. “We’re gonna make arrangements for you, Megan.”

“Huh?” she says, and peers vacantly at Mulvaney.

“We’re takin’ you to a hotel. The tab’s on the governor. It’s not the Ritz-Carlton, but you’ll be comfortable. I can’t tell you where right now—protocol, ya know?”

“But I can’t leave Marlee.”

“You’ll both go.”

“What about Erin and her kids? They could be in danger.”

Adrian realizes it’s extraordinary; after what she’s been through, Megan worries about her sister and the kids.

“She’ll be here soon … with the kids,” Mulvaney says. “You’ll
all
go. And her husband, he and the dog are stayin’ at a friend’s place in Avon.”

“I’m going with them,” Adrian says.

“Not a good idea,” Mulvaney says.

“Someone can cover me. I’ll—”

“Adrian, you’re
both
targets. We’re gonna separate you. You’ll stay at a hotel in Fairfield, on the Eastport border—near the hospital—until this is over.”

“He’s probably left Connecticut,” Adrian says, feeling both hope and dread.

“New York’s only forty minutes away. And Rhode Island’s an hour from here on I-95. But my old cop’s gut tells me he’s around.”

Harwood’s cell phone trills. He snaps it open, listens, thanks the caller, and then closes the phone.

“That’s New Haven PD,” Harwood says. “They got a warrant and went to Wilson’s place. Empty coffee containers, pizza boxes, and half-eaten cartons of Chinese are everywhere. But he’s not there.”

“So you’ll be looking for that pickup?” Adrian asks.

“My guess is he garaged it somewhere,” Mulvaney says. “Or maybe he sold it for cash to some illegal.”

Mulvaney pauses and then says, “Adrian, you need anything from your place?”

“Just some clothes, a few things …”

Mulvaney glances at his watch. “It’s safe to go there now. I spoke with Chief Toscano in Simpson. Just in case Wilson decides to pay you another visit, Simpson PD’s got your place staked out. The cruiser’s probably been there for a half hour by now, so it’s safe. But don’t stay long.”

Adrian nods.

“Look, I gotta be up-front with you,” Mulvaney says. “Wilson may come back. Megan, we’ve got your place under surveillance—twenty-four-seven—with state police and my men. Adrian, Lieutenant Harwood’s made arrangements at a hotel for you in Fairfield. You’ll use a different name … Tom Cunningham.”

“I don’t see why I can’t go with Megan.”

“Please, Adrian, you’re in
my
operating room now.”

Mulvaney rises to his full height. Then he says, “Adrian, talk with Lieutenant Harwood, then go home, pick up a few things, and head over to the hotel. Remember … the name’s Tom Cunningham.”

M
ulvaney peers at the throng outside the hospital. There are klieg lights and a clot of reporters. What a goddamned zoo, he thinks. A battalion of microphones bobs in his face. One aggressive reporter nearly pokes him in the nose with his digital recorder.

Jesus, buddy. Watch it, will ya? I only got one nose
, Mulvaney thinks, scowling at the guy. He makes his way down the hospital’s steps, thinking he should have used a side door.

News 12 Connecticut has a truck sitting there. Local reporters and TV crews jostle for position.

“Chief! Can you give us any details?”

“I’m afraid not, Harold,” Mulvaney says to Harold Fallon, a reporter for the
Connecticut Post
. He and Fallon go back two decades to Mulvaney’s days in the New Haven PD. “We’re sortin’ through everything.”

Mulvaney tries to quicken his pace, but the pack is too thick. He stops on the mezzanine between the upper and lower stairway.

“Any idea who it was, Chief?” calls a reporter. The guy’s face is thin, mottled—some goddamned skin condition—and under the lights he looks reptilian.

“Is there a boyfriend involved?” asks a guy from the
New Haven Register
.

“No comment.”

The horde cascades down the steps with him, mikes, cameras, recorders held high.

“Does it look like a random thing, or was it a stalker?” shouts a reporter for the
Eastport Bulletin
, the town weekly. The paper’s biggest stories usually center on the new school budget or rising property taxes. Not tonight.

“People … people … it’s an ongoin’ investigation.”

Mulvaney plows through the mob, but they follow him like a swarm of pilot fish on a shark’s ass. A forensic team’s just arrived from Hartford; it’s combing through the place. If something’s found—a hair, fiber, anything—they’ll tag it and bag it.

Everyone’s here—TV crews, the daily rags, the local weeklies. Mulvaney gets to the sidewalk and keeps walking. One guy with a camcorder crouches down to get a close-up of Mulvaney—a goddamned nostril shot. Mulvaney keeps trudging as two beefy cops commandeer Camcorder Guy and shove him back.

This stinks out loud
, Mulvaney thinks, quickening his stride.

I gotta get away from this pack of shitweasals
.

A contingent of state police brass is coming to an eight o’clock meeting at the town hall. So is Eastport’s first selectman, Kevin Russell, and members of the town council. Mulvaney’s gotta hustle now, gotta talk with Inspector Bruce Howard, state police deputy chief of the Central District’s Major Crime Unit.

This shit storm’s coming down the pike—like an eighteen-wheeler on I-95.

D
inner is taken in the hotel dining room, a drab expanse of off-white, Formica-topped tables. Soggy, warmed-over preparations sit in tarnished tureens on a long, cloth-covered buffet table. Cloying music is piped in—tinny Muzak stuff that reminds Megan of the saccharine music she hears at the Danbury mall. She glances at a clot of hotel conventioneers picking over the buffet offerings.

“We’d be better off at the Olive Garden,” Erin mutters.

Trembling ripples through Megan’s chest, and a hum courses through her insides. The food smells like cheap meat and reused cooking oil. It makes her feel nauseous. Even the
thought
of food makes Megan’s stomach churn. She’s not certain she’ll be able to swallow an Ambien before bedtime. Yet another drug … She’ll be a junkie before this is over.

God, when will this shaky feeling end? I don’t want to take another Xanax … I feel zonked already. But this shaking just won’t quit. Will I end up like Nurse Jackie on Showtime—drug addicted and sneaking meds out of the dispensary?

“I can’t believe this place,” Erin mutters, pushing Robert’s plate closer to him. “It’s totally bargain basement.”

Erin’s right. The hotel—a nondescript six-story, prefab structure—is situated between the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford and the choking exhaust fumes of I-91. It’s cookie-cutter generic, with zero personality. It’s typical of the world we now live in—homogeneous. You could be in Hartford or Baltimore or Cleveland, for all it matters; they all look the same. But who cares? It’s only temporary, till this nightmare ends.

“This place should be called Hotel Purgatory,” Erin says. “You just kill time here, waiting to go somewhere else.”

Why do I feel this is my fault?

“Don’t worry, honey,” Erin says. “Adrian can handle himself.”

Marlee pokes her fork onto Robert’s plate and snares a chicken wing.

“Marlee, let Robert eat in peace,” Megan rasps. She feels brittle, ready to crack apart. No, not ready to crack. There’s already a deep, raw fissure in her being. She’s been shredded, chopped, and churned in this food processer called life.

“I want chicken wings, too,” Marlee whines.

“Then ask and we’ll go to the buffet table.”

“It’s been going on nonstop,” Erin says.

Megan mouths the word
Jealous
. Then she crosses her arms in front of her and squeezes, holding herself together so she won’t collapse in front of the kids.

M
egan sits in her room at the edge of the bed. A muted orange glow comes from the bedside lamp. She gazes at the room’s grayish walls. Yes, Erin’s right: the place is a dump—Burger King cheap.

During dinner, Erin kept muttering about Conrad. “I hope they find him soon because we can’t stay very long in this hole,” she said. “And the kids have school …”

Erin’s antipathy toward Conrad had always been out there, especially as he’d become more unhinged years earlier.

“He’s a caveman,” Erin would say. “Okay … so he’s smart, even with that callow country-cowboy act. Actually, I think he’s a bipolar maniac.”

Megan recalls the time Erin—jokingly, of course—called him
Connie
. You’d think she’d castrated him—purposely. Sometimes Erin can be really cutting. It’s just her personality. But Conrad reacted as if she’d called him
faggot
, his favorite word. His face turned plum-purple and he looked like he’d implode.

Megan wonders why she fell for him so quickly back then. Yes, Erin nailed it—part of her sister’s social intelligence. It was that callow,
aw shucks
cow-puncher way of his. At first he wasn’t particularly jealous. And there were no rage-filled, paranoid rants until later.

But now she understands what attracted her to Conrad. It was the seduction of shared circumstances. They’d both been adopted, and she fell into that vortex of commonality. God, how pathetic it all was; how completely naive it was of her to think that their both being orphans made for some deep and abiding connection.

How stupid could you have been, girl?

The telephone rings in a nerve-jangling burst of noise, and Megan nearly jumps. She picks up the receiver.

“How’re you feeling, sweetie?” Erin asks.

“I’m okay,” she says, trying to stifle the motor in her chest. “I’m glad Marlee’s staying with you and the kids tonight.”

“For them, this is an outing. It could be Rye Playland.”

A high-pitched yowling derails the conversation.

“You two have
got
to stop this,” Erin calls, her hand over the receiver.

“What’s going on?” Megan asks.

“Oh, Robert wants to watch
SpongeBob
and Marlee wants something else.” Erin’s voice fades as she yells, “You’ll take turns!” Then, speaking into the telephone, she says, “Marlee’s bullying Robert …”

“Well, she’s in this shitty hotel—and she knows I’m all screwed up. She picks up on everything. You know how kids are.”

“Megan, maybe Marlee’s got Conrad’s …” Erin’s voice trails off.

“S
ay
it, Erin,” she whispers. “She’s got Conrad’s
temperament
, right? She’s got his lousy genes?”

“I’m sorry, Megan. It’s … just stupid …”

Megan’s eyes well up with tears and feel swollen. “No,
I’m
sorry, Erin. I shouldn’t take this out on you.”

“Forget it, sweetie. I was being a jerk.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Megan murmurs, as that internal motor shifts to low gear.

“Oh, Megan, this must be terrible for you …”

“I just can’t believe this is happening … to you, Bob, the kids … and Adrian.”

“It’ll be over soon, sweetie.”

“I feel like a nerve dipped in the ocean, like I have no skin.”

“Honey, you just need some time to get past this.”

Megan nods; she tries desperately to convince herself Erin’s right. Yes, she needs time—the great healer. Tincture of time will do it. Isn’t that what the doctors always say?

But her head pulses and her chest feels clogged. God, she can still smell that storage room, the cement and moldy cardboard mixed with dust and rat droppings. It’s embedded in her nostrils. And she can’t rid her thoughts of him … the mask and the knife.

A
ding
comes from the hallway elevator. Megan’s insides lurch. Her pulse stampedes. There are voices—a man and a woman, then laughter.

“What’s wrong?” Erin asks.

“I just heard the elevator.” Her chin quivers.

“Megan, we’re
safe
here. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. And remember, sweetie, there’re cops in the lobby.”

“And Marlee’s okay?”

“She’s fine.”

Megan’s shoulders hunch with tension; she’s so tight, her muscles ache. She hears the ice machine rattle in the alcove off the hallway.

Clunk … clunk … clunk …
Cubes drop heavily into a plastic bucket. The sound shoots through her like a machine gun.

Music floats down the hallway from an open door.

A woman says, “Oh, don’t be stupid …”

A door slams. The music dies.