The Fregoli Delusion (18 page)

Why was Holland doing this to him?
Why was he trying to trick him? Why was he standing there pretending to ignore
him, pretending to be a stranger, when it was perfectly obvious he was stalking
him, that he had it in for him, that he was going to attack him somehow?

Hank could feel the paranoia of
it.

They were all of a type, that was
for sure. All rich, well-dressed, anxious to show off their success. He could
practically track their conversation in his head by rote. Boats, cars, who’s in
bed with whom, what’s a safe shelter these days. You didn’t have to be
delusional to think they were all interchangeable.

But that was his own rational mind
again, making light of it. It was actually quite unsettling, trying to think
like a paranoid schizophrenic with delusional misidentification syndrome. It
was difficult, and very, very unsettling, to try to think the way Brett Parris
must think.

He saw two men come down the
stairs and head across the floor, deep in conversation. One man was grinning
and the other was waving his hands while telling a story. The grinning man
reminded Hank of how his father had looked just before his death: tall, a few
pounds overweight, wavy gray hair shot through with lingering brown. It was the
second time this evening he’d thought of him.

He felt a powerful desire to talk
to his father right now, to have him sit down in the chair Diane Benson had
just vacated. He'd pour him a cup of this great coffee and ask him how it was
going. Ask him if he thought his youngest son was spending his life doing the
right things. Hoping for approval. Hoping he’d say Hank was doing all right.
Hoping he’d see a little glint of pride in his eye.

He remembered, as he often did,
the last time he saw his father alive. Hank was downstairs in the kitchen, eating
breakfast. His first class wasn't until ten. His father hurried through on his
way out the door, stuffing a file folder into his briefcase, his head already
in the courtroom where he was defending a client accused of the murder of an
elderly man. The courtroom in which he would have his fatal heart attack that
afternoon.

“Have a good day, Dad,” Hank said,
watching him fumble with the clasp of his briefcase.

“You too, son.” Distracted, not
looking up as he spoke, then around the corner and out the door into the garage
to his Mercedes.

Gone.

Meredith walked slowly across the
atrium floor. She saw he was sitting alone at the table and angled toward him.

“You look lost in thought.” She
sat down in the chair Diane had just left.

“Mm.”

“Emily’s having a big party in two
weeks for Jerome’s sixty-fifth birthday. She asked me to come, and I said I’d
think about it. She said, ‘bring that handsome policeman of yours.’ I think she
likes you.”

“Lucky me,” Hank said.

The server stopped at the table.
“Can I get you more coffee, Lieutenant?” He looked at Meredith. “Or something
for the lady?”

“I’m fine,” Meredith said.

“No, thanks,” Hank said. When they
were alone again he looked at Meredith. “I’m sorry for being such a lousy
date.”

“Well, you did say you were
definitely a cop,” she said. “Can’t say I wasn’t forewarned.”

“That’s no excuse. You deserve
someone’s full and complete attention. Especially looking the way you do
tonight.”

“That’s very flattering and I love
to hear that sort of thing all the time, but I don’t need someone to dote on me
like I’m an airhead princess, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I guess
I was hoping for something in between. I should be able to juggle everything,
and still have a good time with you.”

“You aren’t having a good time
with me?”

He grinned.

“You know,” she said, leaning
forward on her elbow, her hand under her chin, “I wouldn’t want to have to come
to this sort of thing all the time, but I must say it’s been a pretty fun
sandbox to play in.”

“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it.”

“I have.” She leaned back and
looked out across the floor. “Now I think it’s time, Lieutenant Donaghue, for
you to take me home.”

18

At ten minutes before ten o’clock
the next morning, Hank stood in his office doorway and caught Karen’s eye as
she was locking her firearm in her desk drawer. He motioned with his head and,
when she joined him in the office, he closed the door behind her. She dropped
into a visitor’s chair. He perched on the corner of the desk closest to her.

She looked up at him. “Am I off
the case?”

Hank had just come from a meeting
in the chief’s office. The chief was unhappy. Walter Parris had in fact made
his phone call, and it was the kind of call Bennett hated, one that dug the
combined wedges of money and politics under his fat butt cheeks and shoved
hard, as he colorfully put it. To his credit, when Bennett was finished ranting,
he generously allowed Hank ninety seconds to state his case. Hank proposed a
compromise in which Stainer remained on the task force but didn’t interview
people whose net worth exceeded Homicide’s annual budget. Bennett blustered a
little more, but with Ann Martinez’s encouragement, reluctantly agreed. Hank had
crossed his fingers, knowing the arrangement wouldn’t last long.

“You’re on the case,” he told
Karen, “but with conditions.”

“Chuh. Let me guess.”

“Come on, Karen. You know damned
well all suspects aren’t created equal. Situational management. You’ve taken
the course, it’s in your jacket, and you don’t need to be reminded because I
see you use the technique all the time. Subject A responds best to direct
pressure, Subject B to indirect pressure, et cetera. Parris was livid, the
chief’s livid, Martinez put her ass on the line for us, and now I’ve got the
football. Horvath takes the lead in interviews with these people right now and
you’re going to let him. Okay?”

“Goddammit. Are you asking me to
lay off them because they’re
rich
? Is that what’s going on here?”

“No, I’m asking you to be the
river and not the rock, just for a while. These people love a good fight. They
spend their entire lives facing down everybody in their path. We’ll have a lot
better results if we work around them instead of head-butting them.”

“Be the river and not the rock.
Jesus Christ, Hank.”

Hank forced himself to look
pissed. “Yeah, well, we all have to make our little sacrifices, and that’s
yours if you want to stay on this case. Clear?”

“Clear.” She stood up and glared
at him as he opened the door for her.

He ignored the look and led the
way down the hall to a meeting room he’d co-opted as their war room, where the
team was waiting. Two large whiteboards on wheels were lined up along one wall.
There was a table in the middle of the room with chairs around it. A projector
and laptop were set up on it. There was also a table in the corner with a
landline telephone, a networked computer and multi-function printer, and a
coffee machine.

Everyone helped themselves to
coffee. Hank got things underway by reminding them that the media would be
dogging their footsteps throughout the investigation, and that, until further
notice, all public statements about the case would be coming either from
Commander Martinez or from the chief's office.

He went on to thank CSI Mickey
Marcotte for sitting in. A thirty-something with brown hair and sideburns,
Marcotte would bring them up to speed on the physical evidence gathered to date.

Karen and Horvath would work the
case full time until further notice, he explained. Kaplan and Belknap would
carry the load on everything else in the unit, and Higgins was coming over from
Robbery to assist. Among the three of them, Kaplan, Belknap, and Higgins would have
to work all the other open homicide cases until Jarrett was cleared.

“Any open files you have that are
active enough to need immediate work,” he concluded, “pass them over, and make
sure you give these guys a decent briefing.”

“And Peralta’s not coming back,”
Karen said.

“Detective Peralta’s not coming
back,” Hank replied.

Karen’s eyes moved from Hank to
Truly. When they moved back to Hank, they were asking the question.

“Detective Truly's been seconded
over from Cold Case to work with us on this,” Hank confirmed. “She’s going to
be the hub for all the information gathered during the investigation. She’ll
maintain the murder book, she’ll gather and collate everything we get, and
she’ll help us analyze it. Mickey, I’ll ask you to work closely with her over
the next while to make sure she knows everything coming out of your lab the
instant you have it. She’ll be the conduit through which everything reaches
this team.”

“Sounds good,” Marcotte said.

Hank looked at Truly. “You’ll also
pair up with Jim, Karen, or myself as needed for interviews or whatever else.
You won’t be sitting around shuffling paper. We need everybody working
everything, all the time.”

“That’s fine, Lieutenant,” Truly said,
from her position at the other end of the whiteboards. She wore a pale blue
blouse, a dark blue sleeveless sweater, a black knee-length skirt, and
thick-soled black shoes. She’d switched her glasses from the red-framed pair to
a black-framed pair that were just as unflattering.

“Detective Truly was kind enough
to come in early and set up these whiteboards for us. On this one,” Hank
pointed to the board closest to him, “we’ve got the name of every person
directly connected to Jarrett in some way or other who could’ve conceivably had
something to do with it. There are more than forty names here right now, but it
could easily be a hundred.”

“Person or persons unknown,”
Horvath quipped.

“Yeah. What we’re going to do this
morning is go through this list and see how many names we need to move over to
the second board, which you can see is empty right now. That’ll be our suspect
list. But first,” Hank looked at Marcotte, “we’re going to review our timeline
for Jarrett on Thursday morning. Mick?”

Marcotte switched on the projector
and lifted the lid on his laptop. “This is kind of low tech, but I guess since
we’re also using whiteboards and dry-erase markers it’ll fit right in.” He
grinned at Hank. “What we
should
have is one of those cool table-top
interfaces with the gesture technology, like they have on
Hawaii Five-O
.”

“Oh, yeah,” Horvath said. “I love
that show. I watch it all the time.”

“Really?” Marcotte said, launching
his presentation software.

Horvath laughed. “Not.”

“Oh.” Marcotte looked a little
crestfallen. “Okay, well, anyway, we’ve got a basic timeline here showing everything
Jarrett did that morning up until he was shot. We’ve extended the timeline back
a week, so we can go through it that far, if you want.” He glanced at Truly.
“Maureen and I integrated data from Jarrett’s office staff, his household
staff, CD Security, and statements from the wife and other main witnesses, plus
data from his computer activity and his phone records, which include the line
in his office at work, the landline at his home, and his personal cell. We
printed out a hard copy of the timeline, and Maureen put it into the murder
book.”

He looked up at the screen. “As
you can see, his alarm went off at five on Thursday morning, and his breakfast
was served in the sun room, where he usually eats it, at five twenty
.
Scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon, toast,
orange juice, coffee, and his usual medications and vitamins. In the
twenty-minute gap between the alarm and breakfast we can assume that he
showered, shaved, and dressed in his track suit. He left the sun room at six
o’clock. After a trip to the washroom, he went into his study and worked from six
oh-five to six twenty-nine on his personal computer, which has remote
connectivity to his office. He spent the time reading e-mails from Kelly,
Raskin, Holland, and other people at work. A couple of them had attachments
which he opened and read. He answered some of the e-mails with very brief
responses. One or two sentences. Nothing jumps out, but you can check them and
see. At any rate, that’s all he did. He didn’t have a Twitter or Facebook
account, he didn’t browse websites, even news sites, and the phone logs show no
calls at all, incoming or outgoing. He had no contact with anyone that morning
that we can find, other than through the e-mails.”

“Is that normal for him?” Hank
asked.

“As far as I can tell. We’ve
extended the timeline back a week, as I say, and it seems to be his usual
pattern, which agrees with what witnesses have told us. My guess is that when
you’re that rich, you get to control your environment a lot better than you or
I could. You want peace and quiet, you get peace and quiet.”

Hank smiled. “Go on.”

“Okay. He logged off at six
twenty-nine and, according to James Edward Bishop, his personal assistant and
driver, arrived downstairs in his gym at six thirty-five, where he ran through
a light workout routine until six fifty-three, when CD Security surveillance
picks him up coming outside through the back door of the gym with his bicycle.
He headed directly for the bike path, and that’s all we have.”

“How long would it take to ride
his bike from there to the crime scene?” Hank asked. “Has anyone timed it?”

“Not yet, but it would’ve taken
him maybe ten minutes,” Marcotte replied. “I don’t know how fast he usually
traveled. I’m an avid biker, myself, and I’d probably make it in five to seven
minutes, but then again, I’m not a sixty-eight-year-old man.”

“So he gets there,” Karen said,
“at about seven oh-three and stops to talk to the guy who pops him.”

“But we don’t know how long they
talked,” said Horvath, “before the shot was fired.”

“True,” Karen said. “Could’ve been
long, could’ve been real short.”

“What were the time stamps on the
photos taken by the witness, Brett Parris?” Hank asked.

“Good question.” Marcotte checked
his notes. “The first picture was taken at seven fourteen
.
”

“So the shot was fired some time
between about seven and seven fourteen,” Horvath said. “A fourteen-minute
window.”

“Yes,” Marcotte said, looking up
from his notes. “And we can shave it a little, if we say that Brett Parris
would have taken two or three minutes to reach the body. If what he says is
true. So possibly between seven and seven twelve
.
A twelve-minute window.”

“All right, thanks,” Hank said.
“Now how about giving us an overview of the physical evidence, Mick? Start with
the crime scene.”

“I threw this together quickly
this morning,” Marcotte said, looking at the projection screen and clicking his
mouse, “so it gives you the basics. I can answer any questions you’ve got,
though, so feel free. Take a look at these five or six pics first of all.” He
flipped slowly through images of the body as it was found in Granger Park on
Thursday morning. “These are the ones taken by Brett Parris on his cell. Okay,
now here’s a side-by-side with the first one taken by us at the scene. I’ll
spare you the eyestrain; they’re essentially identical. Nothing was changed
respecting the body between the time Parris took his pictures and the time we
got there.”

“Doesn’t mean the body wasn’t
touched before the pictures were shot,” Karen said.

“Correct,” Marcotte said. “It
doesn’t tell us everything, but it does tell us something. Which can be said
for any piece of evidence, can’t it? All right, moving along. Here’s the
bicycle.”

Jarrett’s bicycle had been found
resting on its kickstand on the bike path, facing east, meaning that Jarrett
had still been traveling away from the mansion when he’d stopped, presumably to
talk to the person who shot him. The murder occurred at a point just under a
half mile from the victim’s home.

The bicycle, an expensive Raleigh
model, was in excellent repair. They'd found four different sets of
fingerprints on it. One set belonged to Jarrett, another to James Edward
Bishop, and the other two were currently unidentified.

“The bike was serviced a week
ago,” Marcotte said. “We figure the other two sets belong to people at the bike
shop. The technician and whoever delivered it.”

Truly walked over to the person of
interest whiteboard and picked up a dry-erase marker.

“Call them Bike Shop Number One
and Bike Shop Number Two,” Hank suggested.

She wrote the two aliases at the
bottom of the list entitled “Jarrett Household,” then capped the marker and
walked back down to the other end.

“Maybe it was Bishop who met him
on the path,” Horvath said. “Put his hands on the bike to stop Jarrett and keep
him from getting away while they had some kind of argument.”

Karen snorted. “More likely it’s
his job to get the damned bike ready for his lord and master to go for his
little ride in the morning.”

Horvath shrugged amiably. “Could
be.”

Marcotte then moved through a
sequence of shots of Jarrett’s wallet. It had been found under a bush, emptied
of its contents, thirty-three feet east of the body at the edge of the path.
They could see, from its position underneath the low-hanging bush, that it must
have been tossed under there, rather than dropped or placed.