last spear of light glimmers through a far cluster of trees before it too moves on and plunges the house into night. So quick, he wonders. Almost too quick. He knocks twice, waits a few seconds, and then raps again. A voice calls out from inside, thought the words are indistinct.
“It’s the police again. Sorry, we forgot something. It’ll only take a minute.” He smiles to himself at the calmness of his voice. I must even sound like a cop, he muses, but there’s no time to dwell on his impersonation.
The door opens. She still wears the pink-and-white dress. From this close he sees that she looks very different. He levels the pistol at her, pushes the door open wide, and steps inside.
“Remember me?”
He stops speaking and studies her again. Now he’s less than two feet away. The hair looks pretty much the same and the body wrapped in the familiar dress is just as sexy as he remembered, but the overall effect he sees is that of a different person. This Heidi is slightly taller. The big difference though is in the face. It is definitely familiar, but it’s not Heidi’s. The eyes are just as black and the skin tone is just as olive, but the nose is too long and the bump in the middle is gone. He breathes deeply, and his eyes flutter closed for a moment before he rubs them with his free hand.
“No. You wouldn’t remember me. I’m the man who fucked Heidi for over a year, but I’ve never fucked you. At least not yet. So who the hell are you?”
There is no answer, just a short intake hiss as the woman gasps for breath. He enters the house and slams the door.
“Where’s the bedroom?” His words fly out like a fist.
She doesn’t answer and seems to struggle to stay upright. Her face pales in contrast to the olive complexion of her arms. He spins her around just as he sees her legs begin to shake. He pushes her forward. She stumbles across the room and stops when one hand grabs the door jamb at the edge of a long corridor. He drags her away and moves down the empty corridor, but this time he pulls at her arm rather than pushing at her back. He stops at the first room with a light, a bedroom.
“This should do. Is it yours?” His voice trembles with anticipation. One hand holds her against the wall and the other waves the gun in a small overhead circle.
“Ja.” She speaks for the first time and half raises one hand to point into the room.
The room is painted a light blue. The only light comes from a single lamp that rests alone on a small table adjacent to a queen-sized bed that’s crowned with a light-colored wood headboard. There is no spread and the pillows are fluffed and the blanket turned down. A small dresser of similar wood occupies the opposite wall. Its surface is empty except for a television that plays an old movie with token volume. Dark curtains are drawn across the only windows.
He pushes her across the room. She lurches to the bed and crumples at the edge. One hand reaches out and clutches a pillow to her chest.
No. She isn’t Heidi.
“Who are you? I won’t ask again.”
She fails to react. His words fall on a woman paralyzed by fear. Paralysis makes him thinks of another chemical he almost used for Posner, the tropical poison curare. It works like deadly snake venom and leaves its victims paralyzed and unable to breathe. He will make her talk though. It’s easy enough.
“Take your clothes off!”
She pulls the pillow tighter across her chest, but he moves forward and pulls it away.
“I said take off your clothes! Now!”
She looks around as if help could be found somewhere in the sparse room, but the only diversion from her fear is a nearly soundless Cary Grant on the television. She looks at Stern again.
“I’m Heidi’s sister, Brigid.”
“She doesn’t have a sister. She would have told me.”
“We had a big fight several years ago.”
“Later,” he says. “Tell me all about it later.”
He is no longer listening, just staring. Now she’s Heidi again, not Brigid or whoever. The face and body morph back into the woman he knows. The woman he thought he’d lost. But she’s back now. It’s not a great leap to have Heidi back again.
He takes off his jacket and drops it on the dresser next to the television. Then he puts his gun on top of the jacket. When he speaks again his voice is very different, softer, and even tender.
“Get undressed, Heidi. You know you want to. It’s what you always want.”
She stands from the bed with effort and one trembling arm stretches behind for the zipper. He stares for a moment longer, tastes a sudden dryness in his mouth, and then begins to unbutton his shirt.
CHAPTER 24
Wisdom knows that with their current information, it’ll be no problem for the Suffolk County Police to get NYPD’s help in getting a warrant to search Stern’s New York apartment. Stern is now officially a fugitive. The day has passed, however, without a sign of the man.
At a quarter to nine on the morning after the events at Posner’s house, Bennett calls Wisdom with preliminary results. Except for a few hours of troubled sleep, Wisdom hasn’t left his desk since he got back from Posner’s house. Brigid is back at her house and Posner is at Southampton Hospital for observation. The County police are in charge now, yet Wisdom won’t let it rest until they clear it all up, not with Stern still running around. He grabs for the phone and comes perilously close to knocking over a nearly full cup of coffee in the process, even though a few splashes fly across his desk. Bennett ignores Wisdom’s curses and plunges ahead.
“Two things of interest: one, he had another six needles of insulin in his apartment fridge. The man could have been his own lethal-weapon machine, especially since his official hospital medical records show no evidence of diabetes.”
“And the other?”
“We found some unusual pills in his medicine cabinet. Notably a nearly full bottle of something called Seroquel.”
“What?”
“Seroquel. It’s apparently an antipsychotic drug prescribed for schizophrenia.”
“God. This is getting messier. Who’s the prescribing doctor?”
“He is. The hospital may have suspended him, but he still has his license. That’s why he can still prescribe. For himself or anyone else. That’s how he got the insulin. The needles were still in a bag with the pharmacy name on it.”
Wisdom questions aloud what other prescription medications Stern’s helped himself to.
“We’ll have a list of all other drugs he’s ordered either to self-medicate or otherwise in a few more hours, at least from that pharmacy.”
“Okay and thanks for keeping me in the loop.”
His last words disappear into Bennett’s dial tone.
“So the doctor is psychotic.” His words tumble out and roll over a silent audience.
Wisdom pulls up the Internet on his screen and starts to research mental illnesses. Police work provides a broad education beyond the law. Wisdom has a general fragmentary knowledge of many medical issues, but is probably less informed about mental health matters than anything else. He could call the department psychologist, but first opts for a quick check of the web. He finds a site with the heading, “An Introduction to Schizophrenia.” He opens it and begins to read, but almost as quickly has a chilling thought. Heidi used to be a resident in psychiatry, and now that her ex-lover might well need her professional help, it’s too late. A mental postscript forces him to wonder whether Heidi ever knew Stern had such a problem.
The details go on for pages and there’s no end to the links available to other websites on the subject, but in twenty minutes he manages to absorb some basic essentials. A blurred distinction between truth and fantasy jumps out at him. A person might behave in a very normal fashion one moment, and then switch seamlessly into an entirely different person where a wide range of abnormal behavior is possible. Some references are to split personalities and there are many cases on record of multiple personalities in the same individual, each waiting for
