Mortal Fear. Greg Iles

look up like they just realized something and say, ‘Are you Dr. Cole’s son?’ Most times they’d just tear up the ticket and let me go my way. At first I thought they were letting me go because they thought my dad was the greatest guy in the world. And some of them did. The black ones, especially. But even the white ones let me go, guys that probably hated my dad. Then I figured out the deal. Dad had been the police doctor for a while. Back several years before. A lot of these guys owed him money. He never would have tried to collect, but they didn’t know that. They figured, I write this kid a twenty-dollar ticket, I get a bill for eight hundred bucks or whatever.”

      “Why did these white police officers hate your father?”

      I take a long, weary breath and exhale slowly. “You’ve arrived back at your second question, only you don’t know it.”

      “Which question?”

      “What am I proudest of.”

      “Ah. Will you answer it now?”

      “I don’t see the relevance.”

      “Please let me decide what’s relevant.”

      “You think I’m going to spill my guts to you in the naive belief that you’d honor doctor-patient confidentiality?”

      Lenz straightens at his desk. “I honor patient confidences absolutely.”

      “Yeah?” Propelled by some contrary impulse, I take out my wallet, withdraw a hundred-dollar bill, cross the room, and stuff the bill into Lenz’s breast pocket. “You’re hired.”

      “You’re testing my patience, Mr. Cole.”

      “And I give you a C-minus. You want to turn off the tape recorder now?”

      “I do not tape my sessions,” he says indignantly.

      “Thank you, Doctor Nixon.”

      Lenz looks genuinely indignant. “You’re making me angry, Cole.”

      I back over to the couch and lie down again. “I’m now officially your patient. What if I tell you I killed those seven women?”

      He catches his breath. “Did you?”

      “Answer my question first.”

      Lenz nervously pushes up the nosepiece of his glasses. “If you’re telling me that you did … well … my honest answer would be that I … I would try to find some other way of proving your guilt than violating doctor-patient confidentiality.”

      “What if you couldn’t do that? And you knew I was going to kill again?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “You could always kill me yourself. Then doctor-patient privilege would no longer be in effect, right?”

      “You’re as bad as your friend.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “The levels of deviousness. I don’t know whether to tell Daniel to arrest Turner or to hire him as a consultant. I think he’s already figured out more about the EROS killer than the Bureau has.”

      “That wouldn’t surprise me.” Again I wonder if the FBI arrested Miles right on this couch and hauled him off to jail. “On the other hand, maybe Miles knows so much because he is the killer.”

      Lenz doesn’t bite.

      A telephone on the desk emits a soft chirp and the psychiatrist answers, his eyes still focused on me. He listens, then covers the transmitter and says, “Would you mind leaving the room until I’m done?”

      I stand up and step into the hall. Lenz’s sonorous voice resumes behind me, muted by the heavy door. The dark-skinned receptionist is still AWOL from the billing office. I open the waiting-room door on the off chance that Miles may be there, but he isn’t. Thinking I might catch Drewe on her cellular, I step over to the receptionist’s desk. I am reaching for her phone when I notice an envelope with my name on it at the center of the desk. Without hesitation I pick it up and scan the few handwritten words on the paper inside.

      Harper,

      Brahma just logged back onto EROS under alias “Shiva.” With that Wyoming court order, Baxter now has the power he needs to trace the call. I’ll talk to you when I can.

      Ciao

      As I slip the note back into the envelope, the waiting-room door opens and a blond, square-jawed yuppie in a blue business suit steps inside. I crush the envelope into my pants pocket and head back toward Lenz’s office.

      The psychiatrist almost bowls me over as he hurries up the hallway, tugging on his jacket to the jingle of car keys.

      “Sorry, Cole,” he says, his voice clipped. “We’re going to have to talk on the move. This is Special Agent Peter Schmidt.”

      I ignore Agent Schmidt as he steps up behind me. “What are you talking about? Where are we going?”

      “That was Daniel Baxter on the phone. There’s been a new development. I’m needed at Quantico and he told me to bring you along.”

      “What kind of development?” I ask, thinking of Miles’s message.

      “They may have found Rosalind May.”

      My heart thumps. “Dead?”

      “We don’t know.”

      “Look, I’ve got a flight to catch tonight, remember?”

      “Cole, need I remind you that you are currently a suspect in seven capital murders?”

      “You know I didn’t kill those women.”

      “What I think doesn’t matter at this point. A woman’s life is at stake.”

      “You’re lying, Doctor. What you think is all that matters.”

      Lenz looks at Agent Schmidt, then at the floor, then back at me. “Our UNSUB’s in Dallas, Texas. It’s your choice. Fly home and be out of it, or watch the killer you smoked out get what’s coming to him.”

      In that moment all the hours I spent reading “David Strobekker’s” dark seductions alone in my office come back to me. Beyond that, the horror and guilt of watching the first CNN report of Karin Wheat’s murder twists in my gut like a strand of barbed wire. I have no choice.

      “Let’s go.”

       SEVENTEEN

      Lenz leads Agent Schmidt and me across the parking lot to a midnight blue Mercedes 450SL. Schmidt starts to get in, but the psychiatrist pulls him aside and speaks softly, and he disappears.

      Lenz drives with assurance, keeping just under the speed limit as he makes for a distant overpass bristling with green metal signs. Afternoon is wearing toward evening, the gray over our heads fading downward to a deep blue.

      “We’re about thirty-five miles from Quantico,” he says, punching a button on his cellular phone, apparently to make sure it’s working.

      “If everything’s happening in Dallas, why are we going to Quantico?”

      “They have certain facilities there.” He threads the Mercedes through a thicket of cars. “You’ll know more soon.”

      “Nice ride,” I comment.

      “A gift from my wife,” he says in a taut voice.

      At that moment Lenz’s cellular rings, and the speed with which he snatches it up betrays the tension he feels. He listens for twenty seconds, says yes twice, and then hangs up.

      “Come on,” I say sharply. “They traced Strobekker’s call through Wyoming to Dallas, right? And they just got an exact address.”