15 Seconds

I did my best to hold off until morning. I barely slept a wink.

At five-thirty I called Maryanne, my assistant.

“Maryanne-it’s Henry!” I said. “I realize I’m waking you up, but this is important!”

“Dr. Steadman?” she muttered groggily. I could hear her husband, Frank, stirring next to her, wanting to know what the hell was going on.

“Maryanne, I’m sorry to disturb you so early-but I need something from you. It’s important-or I wouldn’t be calling you like this…”

She cleared her throat and gradually gathered her wits. “What is it you need?”

Frank was probably calling the police on the other line, but I didn’t care.

“You remember that guy who came in about a month ago-heavyset, bald, fuzzy reddish hair around the sides. From out of state. I can’t think of his name, but he came in about his neck. Wrinkles…”

“Yes. I think so,” she answered. “Hofer…”

“I need his records, Maryanne. As soon as you can get them to me. I need his name and address, whatever he left, as well as his Social. And a photo. I’m pretty sure I took one while he was there. It has to be in the system. I need you to get that for me…”

“Sure. Of course…” Maryanne said. “I’ll go right now.”

I could hear her already out of bed and in motion. The gears must have been turning in her mind as she mobilized herself because she suddenly asked: “You think he’s involved…?”

“Fast as you can, Maryanne! That’s all I can say. You have no idea how much is depending on this.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

I couldn’t wait for breakfast to show Carrie what I’d found. I was far too wound up.

By 6:15, Maryanne had e-mailed me what I’d asked for. The patient’s name was Vance Hofer. The address he’d left was 2919 Bain Road. In Acropolis. He’d left a Social Security number as well.

And a photo. I always took one as a “before” shot to scan into my patients’ files.

And there he was! My eyes swarmed over the round, pink-complexioned face. The dull gray eyes that seemed to stare off past me with the slightest hint of a smile in them. I’d never seen him before he walked into my office that day. Was he the one? The one doing this to me? What possible motive could he have to want to harm me?

Excited, I knocked on Carrie’s door with the iPad at a quarter of seven. She opened it just a crack, a towel wrapped around her. “Okay, you’re still here,” she said. “I can see that. Can you give me a couple of minutes, though? I’m dressing…”

“Carrie,” I said excitedly, “I think I know who it is!”

The door edged open wider. Her hair was still wet from the shower.

“Something hit me during the night. I just received a file back from my office. A patient’s file. I need to show it to you.”

“I shouldn’t be more than a minute or two, okay…?”

Seconds later Carrie opened her door.

She was in a baby-blue Gator basketball warm-up T-shirt over jeans, her hair combed out a little. A bunch of clothes was strewn all over the second bed. No makeup. If I had been there for any purpose other than to save my daughter’s life, I might have thought she looked totally adorable.

“What are you talking about, Dr. Steadman?”

I told her how it came to me during the night, this town where a patient of mine had come from: Acropolis, Georgia. Not a patient actually, a prospective one, and how I’d just bumped into the name kind of randomly as I searched through MapQuest. How he’d been in my office a couple of weeks back at the same time as Mike happened to call about my trip.

I opened the iPad, and showed her what Maryanne had sent me.

“Vance Hofer…” Carrie muttered to herself. “Acropolis. I don’t understand, what’s his connection to you?”

“There is no connection!” I sank onto the bed across from her. “At least none I can identify. Only that you asked last night if I knew anyone from around here and then I saw this town on the map where he said he was from, and it’s only about thirty miles from here. And then it hit me that he happened to be in my office the day Mike called in. I took the call while he was sitting right there in front of me. And I’m certain I mentioned the conference I was going to and about playing golf; I’m not sure, but I may even have mentioned Atlantic Pines… And I even think I told Mike to e-mail me his address in Avondale… I’m sorry”-I could barely hold myself together-“but I’m not really into coincidences right about now…”

More seemed to fit together the more I recalled.

“Go on,” Carrie urged.

“I remember him being kind of odd… I don’t know…” I got up, my blood racing, like I was on speed. “I can’t exactly put my finger on it. Just not my usual kind of patient. He came in about some rhytid tissue on his neck. Heavy wrinkling. I told him what I could do. I even told him I could recommend someone closer to his home if he wanted. That’s why I recall where he was from.” I stopped pacing. “I never heard back from him.

“But it all kind of fits. It’s the only thing that has fit! I don’t know what his connection to me is, or any motive, only that he was there! He heard all those things on the phone. And he’s from fucking here …”

Carrie nodded, slowly at first. I wasn’t sure she was totally buying it.

I told her, “I’m thinking we can take this back to Fellows and see if he knows him…?”

Then she looked up at me, blue eyes beaming, resolute. “I’m thinking I can do you one a whole lot better than that.”

She grabbed her cell and found a number on her speed dial, and I sat on the bed, expectantly. The person picked up.

“Jack-I need you to look someone up for me,” Carrie said, cutting right to the chase, “and I don’t want to have to tell you why, or how come the JSO isn’t able to do it for me. I just need you to do this for me-no questions asked. Okay? If it’s what I think…”

She stopped herself, and looked at me, one knee curled to the side, like a yoga position. “If it’s what I think it is, I may have a headline here for you.”

She waited, seeming to gird herself for the barrage she was anticipating.

“I know. I know. I know all that, Jack…” After a pause, she exhaled with exasperation. “I can’t tell you that, Jack. And I can’t tell you where I am either. Only… Just write this down, okay?” She spelled out Hofer’s name. And his address. And she gave him his SSN. I heard a trace of excitement in her voice. I knew she was putting herself out on a line. This wasn’t exactly part of the community outreach routine.

My blood throbbed with the certainty that we were finally getting close to the truth.

“Just e-mail what you have back to me as soon as you have it. Whatever you can find on him. With a special emphasis on anything that might have caused him to become violent, okay? That’s not important,” she said. Then, in answer to another question: “That’s not important either. You just have to trust me on this. Like ol’ times… And, Jack…” She waited. “This is important. This has to stay one hundred percent between us, okay? I need your promise on that.” She nodded. “Thank you, Jack. And I will be careful. I promise…”

Carrie hung up and looked over to me, a crooked, little girl’s smile conveying, I hope that was smart. That this was terrain she had never been down before.

Neither had I, for that matter.

“Someone you work with?” I asked curiously. “At the sheriff’s office.”

“Brother.” She shook her head. “At the FBI.”