A Necessary Evil

CHAPTER 77

Washington, D.C.

From her office window, Gwen Patterson watched the rush-hour traffic below. Detective Julia Racine had left Gwen's nerves frayed and her mind preoccupied. Yet, somehow she had managed to get through the day of appointments, and she had managed to do so despite all the interruptions from her temp. The poor girl had jammed the copier, broken Gwen's brand-new gourmet coffeemaker and hung up on everyone she thought she was putting on hold, including a United States senator with an urgent question for Gwen. His impatience, however, seemed to override his urgency. He never called back. She was glad she had left poor Harvey back at her brownstone. He would have been a nervous wreck trying to keep track of all the chaos in the office today. "Is there anything else, Ms. Patterson? I mean, Dr. Patterson?" the girl asked from the doorway.

Gwen took a good look at the girl… the young woman, Gwen corrected herself. Normally Gwen would have shaken her head at the eyebrow piercing and too short and too tight knit top. She had always tried to instill, or perhaps drill was more appropriate, into her assistants that their appearance became a reflection of her and her practice. They influenced her patients' first impressions of this office. They were the gateway to her business. All of that seemed insignificant at the moment. Her gateway had allowed a killer to pass back and forth, getting and taking advice that evidently had encouraged him to continue to kill. It certainly hadn't stopped him.

"No, there's nothing else, Amanda. Let's call it a day."

"I'm so sorry about your coffeemaker. I'll buy you a new one."

"Don't worry about it," Gwen told her, knowing poor Amanda didn't realize it would take her almost a whole week's salary to replace it. "Go home. Get some rest. We'll try it all over again tomorrow."

"Thanks, Dr. Patterson." It was the first smile Gwen had gotten out of her all day.

Amanda would probably go home and complain to her roommate or her boyfriend, maybe her mother or a girlfriend. And suddenly Gwen realized what luxury it must be to have someone like that to release the day's trials and tribulations to. And who did she have? Only Harvey and even he was on loan. She decided she'd call Maggie tonight. For a person who made her living convincing her patients that confession is actually good for the soul and the mind, she sure didn't practice what she preached. Maybe it was about time that she started.

Gwen decided she'd also take her own advice about going home and getting some rest. She slid her laptop and some folders into her leather briefcase just as the phone began to ring. She was tempted to let the voice-messaging service pick it up, but at the last minute grabbed the receiver.

"This is Dr. Patterson."

"Hey, Doc, it's Julia Racine."

So much for rest, and Gwen leaned against her desk, expecting to need the extra support.

"What can I do for you, Detective Racine?" she asked instead of saying what she wanted to say _ What the hell do you want now?

"The Boston guys found some prints they think the killer left on a coffee mug. I just thought you'd like to know the prints don't match up. They're not Rubin Nash's."

"Am I supposed to be relieved?" All it meant was that Nash hadn't traveled to Boston to cut the head off some priest. She had already guessed that the two cases weren't related. "That only means he hasn't switched from killing young women to killing priests."

"I'm not too sure about that," Racine said and Gwen could barely hear her with what sounded like traffic noise in the background. The detective must be en route somewhere. "The rest of it is very much like our guy. Father Conley was strangled just like the other victims and the killer used a hatchet to chop and rip off his head. Sounds like he even dismembered him in the garden shed behind the rectory."

Gwen didn't want these details. She couldn't hear them without visions of Dena being mutilated piece by piece. She wanted to tell Racine to stop, to save it for Maggie or Tully or anyone else. She didn't want to do this anymore. After Rubin Nash her criminal-profiling days would be over.

'Those are details," Racine continued, "that we haven't released to the media, so it's not likely we have a copycat."

"Why are you telling me all this, Detective Racine?"

"Because I have nothing. And unless you can tell me something more about Rubin Nash, I can't even bring him in for questioning."

Gwen resisted the urge to hang up. She released a heavy sigh, hoping to release her frustration.

"I've told you everything I can think of," she told Racine. "The notes, the things he's left me, aren't any of them proof enough?"

"They would be if we could find his fingerprints on any of it."

"But I noticed myself that there are fingerprints. There's even a smudge of one on the map of the park."

"They're not his." Racine was shouting now, but not out of anger. It was only to make herself heard over the noise surrounding her. "Look, I've gotta go, Doc. If you think of anything, anything at all, call me."

And she was gone before Gwen could respond. She was beginning to think Racine had dropped the ball. Had she really checked out the fingerprints? Was it possible Nash had used someone else as his courier? Maybe he wanted to throw them all off.

She had just finished packing her briefcase when she heard the outside door to the office open. Amanda had either forgotten something or she'd neglected to lock it on her way out She couldn't handle one more delivery or repairman and was about to say just that when James Campion stopped in her doorway.

"Hello, Dr. Patterson," he said, sounding out of breath.

He looked awful compared to his usual neat and tidy self. His clothes were wrinkled as if he had slept in them, his hair disheveled and his eyes bloodshot and swollen.

"James? Are you all right?"

"I really need to talk to you, Dr. Patterson."

"What's happened? Are you hurt?"

"No, no. Not hurt. At least not the way you mean."

She knew she should tell him to come back in the morning, that it was after hours. But he looked so frantic, so frightened, his boyish face grimacing, and she worried morning might be too late, remembering the hesitation marks on his wrists.

"Come in and sit." She needed to calm him down, but he was pacing the length of her office, watching out the window with every pass as if expecting to see that someone had followed him. She didn't like her patients up and about. It made them too out of control.

"We can talk, James, but you need to sit down and tell me what's happened."

Finally he stopped long enough to meet her eyes and in what sounded like a very small boy's voice he whispered, "The pounding, the banging," and he pointed to his chest and his head, "it won't stop. I think it's because I broke the rules."