recognize the caller ID. Her expression brightened, though, as soon as she answered. Over the din of the pub, Nick picked up only fragments of her brief conversation.
“Hi there, I’m so glad to hear from you… You do? Oh, my God, that’s fascinating. As I told you, I’ve been suspicious of the timing from the get-go… No, it’s not a problem. This is a good time… Sure, I can… Where?… Yeah, I know the place. I’ll meet you in an hour… Okay. See you there.” She set the phone down and turned to Nick. “Talk about things coming together.”
“What was that all about?”
“That was my condo’s insurance company. Now they’re thinking the fire was arson. Apparently, they actually have information about who might have set it. He wants to meet with me in an hour and go over their findings.”
“Is this the same fire inspector you told me about?”
“Exactly,” Jillian said. “His name’s Regis, Paul Regis.”
CHAPTER 44
Nick’s ninety-minute eye movement therapy session was especially intense, but he was ready for it. Dr. Coletta Deems, his therapist, a tall, formal scarecrow of a woman, was impressed, and said so.
“You seem exceptionally focused today, Dr. Garrity.”
“I’m visualizing better,” he said instead. “Maybe today’s like the fifty-foot putt that keeps you coming back to the golf course.”
“Pardon?”
“Not worth repeating. I have a lot on my mind today, which makes my ability to control my thinking that much more surprising and satisfying.”
“So, where would you put your SUD score at this moment?”
Nick looked up at the Subjective Units of Distress chart on the wall of the tranquil therapy room. Ten was defined as “unbearably bad.” Zero was “absolute peace and serenity.”
Four, he decided, and said so.
“Yes, I believe I’m under five.”
Deems was as delighted as she seemed capable of being.
“Progress is what we’re after, Dr. Garrity,” she said, adjusting her wire-rims. “No more or less than progress.”
“Progress,” Nick echoed, excited to share the news of his SUD triumph with Jillian.
“Oh, by the way, Doctor, you asked not to have our session interrupted for any call other than one from Don Reese.”
“Yes?”
“Well, he didn’t call, but a”-she checked a small slip of paper- “Mr. Mollender called about twenty minutes ago. He asked you to call him in the office. I have the number here.”
As soon as he could, Nick called Noreen Siliski’s office. The Mole answered on the first ring.
“Saul! Sorry I wasn’t able to take your call. You got anything?”
“I do. But I think we need to meet in person to discuss it. I’m still at Noreen’s office.”
“I… know. That’s the number I dialed. Did you find them?”
“The med student and the resident?” Mollender said vaguely. “Yes, yes, I think so. But I’d rather show you. Can you make it down here?”
Mollender sounded tense and exhausted, hardly like a man with any good news to share. Nick looked across at the SUD chart and decided he had drifted up to a five:
“It’s getting on rush hour,” he said, “but I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
“And Nick, do you still have the DVDs of Andy’s death?”
“Andy? You mean Umberto. I have one and I left the other one with Roger Pendleton, the perfusionist. I’m pretty sure I already told you that.”
“I’ll see you soon,” Mollender said.
The line went dead.
____________________
ON THE stop-and-go drive to Sutton, Nick tried unsuccessfully to reach Jillian and Junie. He did manage to catch Reggie at home, who told him that both his foster mother and the RV were gone, although he hadn’t seen her leave. Strange, Nick thought. Junie almost certainly was in the RV headed for D.C. to pick up the Professor, as they referred to this particular covering doc. There should be no reason why she wouldn’t answer her phone.
Maybe she had already arrived at the Professor’s and stopped in for coffee… Maybe.
Jillian, he figured, was bogged down in dealing with what had now become an arson investigation. But she had a caller ID. Why hadn’t
His SUD score had spent a nanosecond in the fours and may now, he realized, be approaching six:
Nick pulled into the same space where he had parked earlier that day, to the left of the Dumpster and alongside a red Corolla, the only other vehicle in an otherwise deserted lot. He peered up along the ingenious two-story telescoping trash-barrel chute snaking down from Noreen’s window to the center of the half-filled Dumpster. There was no light coming from the window surrounding the upper end of the tube, and he assumed the canvas shade had been dropped down.
His uneasiness increased.
What had earlier been a bright afternoon, had, during his drive south, progressively given way to dense clouds. Now a light rain had begun to fall, plucking rhythmically against the leaves of the dense woods that bordered the parking lot.
As Mollender requested, Nick had dropped the DVD into his well-worn leather bag, alongside the research on Aleem Syed Mohammad that Reggie had compiled. Now, glancing about, he took the disc out of his bag and slid it onto a metal support beneath the Dumpster. He felt increasingly unsettled about the Mole’s nervousness and use of his dead brother’s name rather than Umberto’s. Perhaps he was being paranoid, but with all they had uncovered, he felt he had good reason to be.
He heightened his own tension by trying Junie, Jillian, Reese, and Mollender once more.
Nothing.
Moving through a burgeoning sense of unease, Nick entered the building and took the stairs up two floors. He tried the door, assuming it would be open. Locked. He knocked several times. No answer.
“Saul? Noreen?” His voice reverberated off of the stairwell walls. “You there?”
He tried the knob again, and was only slightly surprised when it turned. He pushed the door open and stepped inside Noreen’s partially renovated office.
The first thing he saw was blood.
There were pools of it on the floor, soaking several of the white sheets red, and mixing with sawdust to form nauseating clumps. The scent of freshly cut wood, so pleasant earlier that day, was overtaken by the hideous, bitterly metallic stench of blood and death.
Nick’s mouth went dry and he felt his stomach lurch. Then he saw Noreen. She lay spread-eagled on the floor, several feet to the right of her workbench in roughly the center of the room. Her throat had been widely sliced
