The Blue Journal (16 page)

When the waiter arrived, Bill Reilly said, “Okay, who really wants another drink?” Amidst some grudging laughter all five of them raised their hands.

But Jeannine persisted. “That's a lousy example,” she said. “Men have real rituals they follow.”

“For instance?”

“Peeing on the golf course,” she offered defiantly as her first point of proof. “I never met a man who played golf who didn't have to go into the woods and urinate at least once a round. And it doesn't matter if there are toilet facilities all over the course. You all just love to go into the woods and pee.”

The men reluctantly nodded their agreement and Bill Reilly said, “If it's nice out, leave it out.”

Jeannine shot him another of her disapproving looks, then soldiered on. “And all that teasing you men do. That locker-room banter. Stupid nicknames and insult humor. It's strictly a male thing, right?”

Her husband shook his head. “Not necessarily, Miss Butthead.”

“That's right,” Stratford agreed. “Although we can include you if you like, dorkface.”

“Grow up,” Linda Stratford said.

Her tone turned the table quiet for a moment, but then Bill Reilly said, “You know what they say in my business, Linda? Husbands are like long-term bonds, they never seem to mature.”

That won him a couple of laughs, but not from his own wife, who said, “It's too true to be funny.”

Linda Stratford turned to her husband. “What about the ritual of introducing your single friends to the unattached women you know? Surely, Robert, you must know some eligible bachelor for Randi. This way she wouldn't have to come to these dinners alone.” She turned her sharp gaze to Randi and offered a smile that was as warm as the ice in her husband's glass. “That is, unless it's one of those nights you're filling in for me, dear.”

Randi managed a smile of her own but did not reply, expecting Stratford to answer his wife.

He said nothing.

“Okay then,” Bill Reilly barged in again, “what about some of that female stuff you all do?”

“What stuff?” his wife asked.

“You know, the way women are so catty about other women. Men may joke and make funny insults face-to-face, but women are really evil.”

“Evil? We're evil?” Jeannine demanded of her husband.

“You know what I mean.”

“I'm not sure that I do,
Bill
,” somehow managing to wring three syllables from her husband's name.

“Come on, Jeannine, you're always talking about your friends behind their backs.”

“I see,” she replied, her face making it clear how she felt about the accusation, particularly in front of Linda Stratford. “As if men don't do the same thing.”

Bob Stratford and Bill Reilly exchanged a guilty look.

“What about it, Randi?” Jeannine continued. “You
are
the professional here. Aren't men more ritualistic than women?”

Randi slowly shook her head. “Generalizations can be dangerous.”

“Fine,” Jeannine said. “Give us a specific then.”

“Sex, for instance,” Stratford suggested as he turned to Randi. “That's the main event, and your area of expertise, so to speak.”

Bill Reilly lifted his glass and did his drunken best to focus his uneven gaze on Randi. “I would like to take a moment to congratulate you for choosing sex as your area of expertise.”

After all of the cocktails and wine, three of them thought that was funny. Linda and Randi did not.

“If you want a serious answer, I can tell you that in my experience, men and women aren't so different,” Randi said. “Basically they all behave the same way when it comes to sex.”

“What does that mean?” Jeannine asked.

Randi slowly looked around the table, then said, “Men and women all have habits and patterns, no matter how dull or outlandish. And in our society, the truth being told, men and women spend much more time talking about sex than having sex.”

“That's for sure,” Jeannine Reilly said in her throaty voice, earning some approving laughter from both sides of the debate.

“I will admit,” Randi went on, “when it comes to sex, it seems to me that men and women do share one basic ritual.”

When she paused, Jeannine demanded impatiently, “What? What ritual?”

Randi took a long swallow of her fresh drink, then looked directly at Linda Stratford. “They lie,” she said.

CHAPTER 18

Anthony Walker arrived at the station house early on Saturday morning. The Knoebel file was sitting atop a stack of papers on the steel cabinet in his office. He grabbed it, dropped into his chair, and began looking through the folder, trying to determine what, if anything, he might be missing.

After a brief but frustrating review he finally leaned forward, tossed the file on his desk, and grabbed the phone. He dialed up voice mail and retrieved his messages. The first call he returned was to Teddy Blasko.

“Hey, I've been trying to reach you,” Blasko told him.

“What've you got?”

“For starters, there's no evidence anyone tampered with her computer. It also doesn't appear any of the files have been edited lately, except what we read together. Someone worked on that one the day she died.”

“When you say ‘someone' . . .”

“I mean anyone who had access to her computer. Could've been her, could've been someone else. No way of knowing that.”

“The fingerprints lifted off the keyboard were all hers. She had to be the last one to use it.”

“Right,” Blasko said. “Forgot about that. Kovie went through her e-mails?”

“He did. Nothing helpful there, coming or going. If her stories are real, she wasn't communicating with these people by e-mail.”

“Agreed. I checked for deleted messages, the trash bin on her hard drive, nothing useful there either.”

“Okay. What about the file names?”

“Turns out to be a variation on a Caesarian code with a real first initial and a progression starting with the second letter.”

“Simple English would be helpful.”

“Right, right. She used real first initials, added four letters to the second letter, three to the next, then two, then one. Kept all the names to five letters.”

“Names, Teddy. What are the names?”

“Right, right. Using those names you gave me as possible matches, that made some of them easy as pie. Others don't fit at all. I mean they don't match the pattern. Got your list handy?”

“Hold on,” Walker said as he grabbed the sheet from the file. “Okay, go.”

“In order, I'll spell out what we've got. Remember, the first initials remain the same. I get BRIAN. CHARL. DRCON. FINAL—that one appears to be uncoded. FRANC. FREDW. INTRO—another one that's uncoded. JOANA. JAMES. LISAG. MITCH. NETIE. PAULG. PHYLS. REGNA. ROBRT. SHAKE is another one that does not seem to follow the code. STNLY. THOMS. That's it.”

Walker sat there and stared at the list he had just made. BRIAN, JAMES, REGNA, and ROBRT were new. He would have to look at the file called SHAKE, see what that was about. The other names were becoming increasingly familiar. He riffled through the pages for what he now knew were the DRCON and the STNLY files. They were blank. “What about the backup you mentioned?”

“Nothing different there.”

“Tell me about the two empty files.”

“Whatever they might have had in them, they were wiped clean a week before her murder.”

“Okay.”

“What do you want me to do with the laptop?”

“Drop it off here today.”

“Done,” Blasko said, then hung up.

Walker's next call was to Kovacevic.

“Still sleeping?”

“It's Saturday, sir.”

“Right. Here's what you're going to do on Saturday.”

Walker told him about the results of Blasko's work and explained what he wanted him to do with the names they had matched between Elizabeth's computer and Randi Conway's patients. He hung up, pulled another number from the file, and punched it in. When he got an answering machine he ended the call and dialed a second number, the one for her office.

She picked up the phone and said, “Doctor Conway.”

“This is Anthony Walker.”

“Good morning, Detective Walker.”

“Working early on a Saturday?”

“Catching up on some paperwork.”

“Yeah, me too. Look, I think I might have been a little heavy-handed the other day.”

“A little?”

“Let's just say that you and I have gotten off to a bad start, how's that?”

“I'm not sure what you think we're starting,” she said in an unfriendly monotone, “but, yes, I agree that we've given bad starts a new meaning.”

“So what do you say to a truce?”

“A truce?”

“Is that what you therapists do, you answer every question with another question?”

“Someone else just accused me of that. Is that what everyone thinks?”

“See, that's another question. I'm catching on.”

“Is there a point to this call, Detective Walker?”

“I think we should talk.”

“Is that right?”

“I'm actually calling to ask if you'll have dinner with me.”

“Dinner?”

“There you go again.”

Randi allowed herself a brief laugh. “Maybe I can't help myself, but I do have another question. Why would we want to have dinner together?”

“Let's just say I have some new information you might find interesting, and I could use your help. You pick the spot, I'll buy.”

“When would we be having this dinner?”

“How about tonight, at seven?”

“I can't do it tonight, I'm busy,” she lied reflexively. It was a Saturday night, after all, and she was not about to admit she had no plans.

“Something you can change?”

She paused. “Is this like you're calling me in for questioning?”

Walker laughed. “Not exactly, no. But it is important.”

He waited through a long silence. Then Randi said. “Can I call you back?”

“You can, but it'd be a whole lot easier if you just said yes and named the place.”

“All right,” she said, her tone making it sound very much like ‘Why not'? “Seven o'clock.”

“Good,” he said. “How about Roberto's, in Stamford?”

“I thought I got to pick the place.”

“You can, sure, I was just trying to move things along. I know them, a table won't be a problem.”

“Your regular hangout?”

“No, but I once did the owner a favor.”

“And it'll be better for us to meet in another town, rather than here in Darien, am I right?”

“That was my thought. Figured it might be more comfortable for you.”

“Roberto's is fine,” she said.

“Can I pick you up?”

“That's all right. I know the place. I'll meet you there.”

He felt a bit uncomfortable about that—he was old-school about such things—but he decided not to push it. It wasn't a date, after all, it was a dinner meeting. “Okay,” he said. “See you there.”

After Randi hung up, the first thing she thought about was the type­written notes she had found in her office. She took them out of the drawer and looked at them again.

She had not mentioned them to Bob Stratford and she already knew she was not going to tell Walker about it, at least not yet.

But why?
she asked herself. What was she afraid they would discover? What was she afraid
she
might discover? The notes were anonymous, after all.

She leaned back, her gaze unfocused, recalling a private session with Elizabeth Knoebel, nearly a year ago.

It was near the end of the hour, and Elizabeth's face wore the sardonic smile that had become so familiar to Randi.

“Doctor,” Elizabeth said, “I don't think you realize that you may actually be the one in need of help.”

Randi did not respond.

“It's obvious to all of us.”

“All of you?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Of course,” she said. “You may be the analyst, but you're as needy as any of the rest of them in that pitiful group.”

Randi stared at her without speaking.

Then, in a whisper, Elizabeth said, “I know what you need.”

Randi looked away, which caused Elizabeth to laugh. “You see how tense you are, Doctor? You need a release for that tension.”

“You believe I'm tense?”

“I believe you're tight, yes. Are you tight, Doctor? I believe you're tight.”

Randi resisted the urge to say what she really thought. Instead she said, “What I believe, Elizabeth, is that we should be talking about you.”

“But we are talking about me, don't you see? We're talking about us.”

Randi remained silent.

“Fear is a disabling emotion, Doctor. What are so you afraid of?”

When Randi gave no answer, Elizabeth leaned forward, the low cut of her blouse offering a view of her fleshy breasts. She was not wearing a bra. “What are you so afraid of?” she asked again.

Randi lowered her gaze. She could not bring herself to answer. Elizabeth was so close they seemed to be sharing the fragrance of her musky perfume. Randi could almost feel the warmth of Elizabeth's breath as she spoke.

“Ah, Doctor, what a pity that you live your life this way, allowing opportunities to pass. It's true, isn't it? You lead a life of lost opportunities.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Randi answered, feeling foolish for having said it.