Lucy, Jackson charged ten cents for a three-minute reading and, ah, dispensing advice. He was ten years old, I believe.”
“How did he treat his customers?” Sherlock asked.
“I believe he looked at the men’s palms, and for the women, he swished the remains of the lemonade in the bottom of their paper cups and studied the arrangement of the pulp.
“That was the first time I realized how intuitive he was. His mother closed him down after he counseled a neighbor to stop sleeping with Mrs. Hinkley, who lived two blocks over. He and his sister Jennifer made a bundle that summer.
“Listen, I can tell something’s going on with him and that young lady—Rachael—but he claimed everything was fine, all the bandages were for dippy stuff, all the result of our plane crash. I told him my injuries hadn’t made me stupid, but evidently his had. Rachael laughed. Jackson said she was an interior designer. She told me since I’m not going to be in this room for much longer, she wouldn’t bother coming up with a new color scheme. She managed to distract me, and then they left, so I’m asking you: What’s going on with Jackson? Don’t try telling me it’s only about me and my problems.”
Savich nodded. “You’re right, he is involved in some pretty hinky things. But you know he’s good. He’ll be fine. Try not to worry. The staff told us your wife stayed with you all last evening. You must have been very pleased to have her back from Lexington. Are you expecting her this morning?”
Sherlock realized, watching Dr. MacLean’s face, that his wife was the ultimate distraction.
MacLean said in a huff, “I told Molly not to come back today, that I’m not going anywhere and she doesn’t have to worry—she’d just piss me off with all her nagging, her never-ending litany about finding us a little beach house in Bermuda. At least the rest of the family is still in Lexington. That crew would bring down the hospital. I threatened them on pain of death not to come here and drive me nuts.” He grinned real big. “Hey, I guess I already am nuts.”
Time to get to it. Sherlock dove right in. “Dr. MacLean, do you remember what we spoke about yesterday?”
“My brain might be executing a big-time tailspin into never-never land, but I do remember our conversation from yesterday. It’s true, sometimes I don’t. But yesterday, yeah, I remember everything. I told you about two of my patients, something I shouldn’t have done. But you’re FBI, so I suppose I have no choice since some jerk-face is trying to murder me. I’d sing it to you in an aria if I had to.
“Actually, telling you about those particular people was amusing. And you can call me Timothy.” They nodded, and he continued. “By the way, the FBI agent guarding my door, Tomlin, he’s come in a couple of times, told me I’m not to worry because he never snoozes on the job and he’s one tough bud, raised by a mom, a police lieutenant, who, according to him, shut down a gang in Detroit.” He grinned as he looked from Savich to Sherlock. “He also told me you guys were in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, playing with psychic mediums. Talk about weird yahoos.”
“Agent Tomlin is a crackerjack,” Sherlock said. “I didn’t know his mom was such a hotshot.”
Timothy laughed. “I’ll tell him that next time he comes in to see me.”
Sherlock asked, “How are you feeling this morning, sir?”
“I still feel like I’m busted up all over, but I took a hit of pain meds maybe five minutes ago, so soon that will translate into feeling mighty fine, thank you.” He frowned, then said with all the innocence of a child, “I remember it clearly. I was telling you about Congresswoman Dolores McManus.”
“Yes,” Savich said. “And how she murdered her first husband.”
Timothy sighed, then smiled beatifically “Fact is, she popped out with it under hypnosis—you know, surprised the crap out of me. I couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it. At first I thought she was pulling my leg, but no, that wasn’t possible, she was indeed well under.
“I only wish I’d instructed her to forget everything she’d told me when I brought her out of it, but I was so flustered by what she’d said, I didn’t.”
Sherlock said, “Why don’t you tell us exactly what she said so we can follow up on it.”
For several moments MacLean looked uncertain. Even after saying he’d tell them everything, they could see him battling with himself. Then the disease must have blunted his concerns, or his sense of self-preservation exerted itself, because he said, his voice smooth, like a man carrying on a superficial social conversation, “Like I told you already, Dolores was married young, to a trucker, had two kids, and managed to get herself a communications degree before she was twenty-five. Life happened, as it always does, but with her it took an interesting twist. She had a big mouth, you see, and she wasn’t afraid ofanything. She started getting a reputation for taking on the big dogs, sometimes even bringing them down. This made her adjust her thinking about what she wanted and how she was going to get it.
“Her trucker husband, however, didn’t want to get with the program. He wanted his wife waiting for him at home, a beer for him in her hand. He threatened to hurt her, to take the kids, whatever.
“She believed, she told me, that he would beat her. But the kids? The last one was out of the house in another six months so that wasn’t a problem. But he was—a great big honking problem.
“So Dolores got to thinking. Who would vote for a congress-woman with a macho trucker lor a husband? She knew this guy wouldn’t rocket her to the stars, which she felt she deserved. For her that was winning a political office, one that paid her. He would only underscore her lack of any working credentials and what had been, to date, a worthless education.
“Then, all of a sudden, this middle-aged woman proceeded to tell me that her husband was eighteen- wheeling on one of his regular runs through Alabama. When he pulled into his favorite truck stop to eat at the small diner, someone stepped out of the shadows and shot him dead.
“Then Dolores said, ‘Watch this,’ and she manufactured instant tears, told me this was how she acted when the cops came to her house—you know, ‘Oh, how horrible, it must be a mistake, not my Lukey, oh God, what am I going to do, what about my poor fatherless children,’ that sort of thing. Then she told me she swooned—the shock, you know. Then suddenly, she started laughing. She nearly hyperventilated she laughed so hard. She told me between hiccups how she’d hired this thug from Savannah to shoot Lukey, paid him five hundred bucks, told him where to do it. She was very pleased with herself, with her ultimate solution to getting elected to Congress. I was so shocked I brought her out of it. She remembered exactly what she’d said, of course, and so there it all was, the eight-hundred-pound moose in the middle of my office. I told her she was my patient and I would never break confidentiality. Still, I could tell she was spooked. I never expected to see her again, and I didn’t. You think Dolores is the one out to kill me?”
“She sounds like a better possibility than Lomas Clapman,” Savich said. “What she came to see you about professionally, any motive there if revealed?”
“Probably not, her stepfather sexually abused her, and she was having nightmares about it on and off during the past year. It was driving her nuts, and so she came to see me. What brought it on? She didn’t know but that was the reason for the hypnosis—to take her back, to relive it, I guess you could say, in a controlled environment. But this is what popped out.”
Savich nodded. “Okay, there was another patient the bartender heard you talking about, right? Pierre Barbeau.”
“Ah, yes, Pierre. I nearly forgot. Pierre is very smart, knows his way in and out of the intelligence community. I’ve known him and his wife, Estelle, and his son, Jean David, for years. Molly and I played golf with them, socialized a bit with them. We weren’t best friends, but we had a pleasant acquaintanceship, I guess you could call it.
“Anyway, Pierre’s a high-up liaison between the French National Police and our CIA. He’s arrogant and rather vain, but you’d expect that because he’s French, and over the years I just laughed at him when he’d go on and on about the superiority of the French. Blah blah blah, I tell him.
“Then, out of the blue, he called me, said he was in
“Turns out it was about his son, Jean David, who, interestingly enough, was an American citizen, born unexpectedly three weeks early on vacation in Cape May, New Jersey, twenty-six years old, a Harvard graduate, very analytical, very bright, a nice guy, maybe even smarter than his old man, a strategic information analyst for the CIA, with a focus on the Middle East.
“Yeah, I can see you’re getting the picture here. About six months ago lean David got involved with a young
