'At the bottom?' Mason asked.
'Dead last,' she answered. 'She's got more to read than she'll ever have time for. She does a great job with the cases she gets to, but she's overworked and underpaid.'
'That's great!' Mason said.
'You're kidding,' Samantha said. 'How can that be great?'
'It's a real fish story. Remind me to tell you later,' Mason said.
The online world was open for business every second of every day, converting distances formerly measured in miles to download times measured in seconds. Mickey Shanahan had convinced Mason to buy a laptop with a wireless Internet connection to use at home, explaining to Mason that he could be online whether he was working at his desk or sitting on the toilet.
'I've got the
'Think globally,' Mickey had said. 'You could read the
'I'm a creature of habit. My bowels are used to the local paper,' Mason told him.
'Be careful, boss,' Mickey had said. 'Once you start planning your life around your bowels, you're doomed. You'll skip middle age and go straight to a soft food diet. You'll end up with one of those seven-day pill packs filled with fiber pills, vitamins, and stool softeners. You won't be able to shack up away from home because of all the crap you've got to take before you go to bed each night.'
It was easier to buy the laptop than argue with Mickey about his future. He and Abby had stocked each other's bathrooms with travel sets of their toiletries. It had been a gradual process, a few things added at a time, proving Mickey's point that spontaneous sleepovers became more difficult after the age of forty. After a while, he'd cleared a dresser drawer for her night things and underwear and she'd done the same for him. They had been easing toward living together while avoiding a decision whether to move into his place or hers. Mason had left her things where they were, unable to pack them up.
Mickey taught him how to use the laptop and Mason had become a proficient surfer. He logged on while seated in his living room at the dining room table. He'd picked up Greek carryout on the way home, washed it down with a cold beer, and shoved the remains to the center of the table to make room for his computer. He kicked off his shoes, rubbing Tuffy's belly with his bare foot.
Rachel Firestone's sources had said that King's mother, Victoria, had been a patient at the Golden Years Psychiatric Hospital since the death of her husband, Christopher King, his death coming on the heels of Whitney's acquittal in the Byrneses murder trial. Mason could understand how the combination of those events could fracture a sound psyche, though Victoria King's must have been eggshell thin to have left her institutionalized for the last fifteen years.
Mason found the Golden Years Web site touting its caring staff and comfortable surroundings at its nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals located in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois. He clicked on the button for locations, selecting Lenexa, Kansas.
The hospital and nursing home were located on a twenty-five-acre campus that included condos and assisted living apartments. A map showed directions to Golden Years, Mason noting that it was only a short distance from Burning Oak, the exclusive development where Whitney King lived. It was hard to fault a man for living close to his mother.
Mason returned to the Golden Years home page, clicked on a link titled 'About Us' and learned that the privately owned company was founded thirty years ago to-according to its mission statement-'provide special care for special people with special needs.'
There was a message from Damon Parker, the president of the company, spreading good cheer and compassion for the elderly and those suffering from mental illness and Alzheimer's. Parker's picture was pasted in the upper-righthand corner of the Web page, a thin-faced man with a Marine brush cut, black-rimmed glasses over narrow, hawkish eyes, and a smile that Mason was certain had been digitally enhanced. Parker looked to be in his late sixties, maybe early seventies, and Mason wondered whether he'd reserved his own Golden Years suite.
After reading Parker's message, Mason clicked on the word 'more' scripted in bright blue at the bottom of the page. The following Web pages recited the company's history and included photographs of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Lenexa location. Mason double-clicked on those photographs, enlarging them one at a time to fill his computer screen. He held the laptop up so he could study the pictures more closely, setting it down again when he saw what he was looking for.
'Son of a bitch,' he said, pressing too firmly on Tuffy's stomach, the dog snapping at Mason's toes. 'Sorry, dog,' Mason said, patting her on the head, 'but you aren't going to believe this.'
Mason carried the laptop to the office he kept in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He attached a printer cable to the laptop, put a sheet of photo quality paper in the printer, and clicked print. A moment later, he had a glossy image of the ground-breaking ceremony, a sign reading 'King Construction Company, General Contractor' clearly visible in the background. Mason had no trouble picking out Damon Parker. He had had the birdlike face, geek glasses, and flattop haircut a long time. Equally obvious was Christopher King, a dead ringer for his son Whitney. Both men were grinning, holding gold-tipped shovels and wearing spotless hard hats.
A woman and a little boy stood behind Christopher King, the woman draping her hand across the boy's chest, the boy grasping a miniature shovel, gold-tipped like his father's. Mason savored the irony that Whitney's father had built a home for his wife without even knowing it.
He carried the picture of little Whitney and his parents into his bedroom, comparing it to one of him and his parents Claire had given to him when he was a boy. It was more snapshot than portrait, a five-by-seven showing Mason on a swing set, his father pushing him from behind, his mother pretending to catch him. Claire had taken the picture a week before his parents were killed, the date written on the back. Mason kept the picture in a Plexiglas frame on the nightstand next to his bed, space shared with a framed picture of Abby.
He sat on his bed, laying the King family picture aside, thinking of his fragmented past and his uncertain future. The phone rang, saving him from dipping too deeply into those waters. He let it ring twice before picking up.
'Hello,' he said, his thoughts still distant.
Harry Ryman said, 'Lou, I finally got the story on that license plate you asked me to run. Sorry it took all week, but like I told you, the chief has made it tough. The son of a bitch says the department isn't in the favor business.'
Mason stood, not taking his eyes from the picture of him and his parents. 'You mean the license plate from the cemetery?'
'What cemetery?' Harry asked. 'You didn't say anything about a cemetery.'
'Sorry, Harry,' Mason said. 'What did you find out?'
'The car is a Mercedes SUV registered to a woman named Judith Bartholow.'
'Did you get an address?' Mason asked, grabbing a pen.
'I'm full service,' Harry said reciting the address. Mason wrote it down on the back of the King picture. 'Her name mean anything to you?' he asked Mason.
'I hope so,' Mason answered.
Chapter 39
There were times in a case when Mason knew he was on the verge of making sense out of the contradictory, indifferent, and depraved impulses that led people to lie, cheat, and kill. It was an urgent, irresistible sensation that reminded him of when he used to fly down the long, steep, sweeping curve of Ward Parkway from Fifty-fifth Street to the Plaza.
It was the summer before his junior year in high school when the only thing he could drive was a ten-speed bike. In those days before the Plaza went upscale, Sears occupied a four-story building on the west end of Nichols Road, the shopping district's main drag. Mason worked on every floor and in every department from electrical to
