The Blue Journal (19 page)

The rain was becoming heavier. Walker gently placed his hands on her shoulders. “Why not let me help you?”

She looked at him, her soft brown eyes searching his face for something. “I want you to, I truly do.”

“All right. Then start by telling me what just happened. And don't give me any baloney about doctor-client privilege. That was no therapy session and you don't owe anything to a murderer.”

Randi began to turn away, but Walker reached out and took her by the arm.

“Give me some time, please,” she said.

“All right,” Walker sighed.

“Thank you.”

He offered her a crooked grin. “You really did get wet out here.”

“I guess so.”

“You need some dry clothes. How about we skip the restaurant and I make us something to eat at my place? I'll go inside and give Roberto his table back. I live just a few minutes from here.”

“Your place?” she asked with a wary look.

“It's a small apartment, but I happen to be a great cook.”

“I'll bet. What's your specialty?”

“Breakfast,” he said.

“Not funny.”

“I'm not kidding,” he told her. “Come on.”

As they turned back toward the restaurant, neither of them noticed the car with its lights off, sitting across the wide street, just beyond the parking lot. Neither of them saw the car as it rolled forward, still dark, then made a turn around the corner where the headlights came on and the sedan disappeared from view.

CHAPTER 22

Randi accepted Walker's invitation but insisted on following him in her own car. She peered through her rain-dappled windshield, concentrating on the two red taillights of his SUV just ahead. She needed these few minutes to herself, to collect her thoughts, to simply calm down. It also gave her an opportunity to notice how comfortable she was at the prospect of a quiet dinner with this man who had suddenly entered her life under the most unwelcome circumstances.

She realized that she felt safer knowing that he was keeping an eye on her. She wanted to know about the book Elizabeth had written. She wanted to tell Walker about the anonymous note, about the threatening phone call she had just received, about her fears concerning several of her patients, and Elizabeth Knoebel. But not yet, she decided. Not yet.

When they arrived at his place she pulled into the parking spot beside his car. The building was part of a complex of two-story structures.

“I'm up a flight,” Walker said, then stopped at the base of the stairway and asked her to wait for a moment. He knocked on the door of the ground-level apartment.

“It's Anthony, Mrs. Shapiro. You all right?”

He waited a few moments, then heard the voice of an elderly woman call back, “Yes, dear, thank you. I'm fine.”

“Okay,” he said, “good night.” Then he led Randi upstairs to his landing. “Nice old lady,” he explained in response to her inquiring look. “Lives alone, I just keep an eye on her, let her know when I'm here.” He unlocked his door and showed her in.

His apartment was small, as advertised. Randi followed him into the living room.

“Sorry for the mess,” he said. “I don't do much entertaining.” He dropped the brown envelope containing Elizabeth's diary on the table. “You need some dry clothes,” he said. “Be right with you.” He turned back as he was leaving the room. “Make yourself at home.”

Walker left her alone to stare at the envelope. She thought about picking it up, then decided she would wait. Instead she had a look at the various photographs he had on display. They were all shots of Walker's daughters, ranging from infancy to what she guessed were their current ages, somewhere in their mid-teens. When he returned, he was holding a fleecy NYPD sweatshirt. “Sorry,” he said, “didn't have any clean sweatpants. This all right?”

“Fine,” Randi said. “It's all I need, thanks.”

They stood there looking at each other for a moment.

“The bathroom?”

“Right. Just down the hall,” he pointed. “I'll get the food going.”

Carrying her purse, she walked the short length of corridor and shut herself in the bathroom to change. She hadn't realized how wet she had gotten, her blond hair dark from the rain. She searched the cabinet for a dryer but there was none to be found. This was decidedly a man's bathroom, clean but disorganized, with the white tiles and white towels and white fixtures seeming to cry out for anything with color. She removed her soggy blouse, toweled herself off as best she could, then pulled on his sweatshirt. She took a brush from her purse and combed her hair back, then put on lipstick and had a look in the mirror. Not a fashion statement, but at least she felt warm and dry.

Randi opened the door and switched off the light. Stepping into the hallway she found herself facing his bedroom, directly across the way. She peeked inside, smiling at the rumpled, unmade bed and the clothes on the floor. Then she saw an easel set up in the corner. She moved inside and had a look at the notes and photographs that were pinned to the corkboard. There were familiar names, snapshots of Elizabeth and the Knoebel home, and various ideas scribbled on index cards and scraps of paper.

When she joined Walker in the kitchen he was busy preparing dinner and setting the small oak table for two.

“Here,” he said in response to her offer of help, passing her a loaf of rye bread. “You can handle the toast.”

“You really weren't kidding about breakfast,” she observed as she dropped four slices of bread into the toaster. “I thought it was just a line.”

Walker looked up from the stove, where he had three skillets going—in one he was sautéing mushrooms and in the other he was frying off several rashers of bacon. The third was for the scrambled eggs he was whipping up. “Sometimes it is,” he admitted.

He held her soft gaze for a moment, until she asked, “You're sure I can't do anything more than watch the toaster?”

Walker pointed to a wire basket on the counter. “How about slicing up some of those tomatoes?”

As they worked together, Walker poured them each a glass of the chardonnay he had brought from the restaurant. Then he went back to turning over the bacon and sliding the mushrooms around in the pan. They talked about his years as a policeman in New York and her years as a therapist. She asked about his daughters, and he was happy to share some details, to brag a bit about how well they were doing in school and to admit how sorry he was not to see them more often.

“I don't know,” he said, “maybe people live too long nowadays. Maybe that's why marriages don't last.”

“Not the first time I've heard that theory.”

“I'll bet,” he said. “Let's face it, when they invented marriage, people got hitched at fifteen and died before they were thirty, right?”

“So, you're not only a cynic, you're also a social historian.”

“Think so?” Walker poured the eggs into the pan and stirred them with a wooden spoon, then lifted the small skillet with the mushrooms and added them. “Maybe I am.” He folded the eggs over a couple of times as Randi grabbed the toast and buttered the slices. “These preserves are great,” he told her as he set a heavy jar on the table. “Oregon black raspberry.”

“Sounds delicious,” she said.

He laid out the bacon on paper towels, spooned the eggs onto their plates, then placed everything on the table. They sat down, soft strains of music coming from the stereo system in his living room.

“Who is that?” she asked as she took a piece of toast and dipped her knife into the dark-purple jam.

“Jenna Mammina,” he said. “Good, isn't she?”

“Yes. She is.”

They were quiet for a moment, then Randi said, “The divorce must have been tough on you.”

“On a scale of one to ten, it was depressing as hell.”

Randi watched him as he picked up a strip of bacon with his fingers. She said, “We tend to learn more from depression and dissatisfaction than from happiness.”

“Maybe I didn't need to be so smart.”

Randi smiled.

“Unfortunately, I wasn't given much of a choice.”

“Hard for me to believe. A tough guy like you, seems you're the type that makes the rules most of the time.”

“That's the key qualifier—most of the time.” He thought about it as he took a bite of toast. “I knew the move to Connecticut was going to be a financial stretch. Lower pay, higher cost of living. Especially the house. I couldn't even afford to live in the town where I worked. You believe that?” He shook his head. “It's different in New York City. Police and firemen are part of a huge middle class. Here in Fairfield County we're on a much lower rung of the ladder.” He grabbed another piece of bacon. “But I figured they were compromises worth making. Better schools for my daughters, better life for the family.”

“So where did it fall apart?”

Walker uttered a bitter laugh. “It fell apart when my wife got a look at the money all around us and decided she wanted to move out of the cheap seats. We were happy when we got here, or at least I thought so. Suddenly she hated my job, my salary, our car, and especially the house we were renting in Norwalk. Like I say, back in New York City we fit in, here we were second-class citizens.”

“You felt that way too?”

“Not me. I'm a cop, always have been, always will be. I had the grades in college, could have gone to law school, could have trained to be a stockbroker or something, but that's not what I wanted.”

“So what happened?”

He went at the eggs, then washed them down with some wine. “Mary's a good-looking dame. She took the easiest route she could find to get what she was after—had an affair with a divorced real estate broker. Guy was making a lot of dough, took her and my two girls to live with him in Westport. The divorce was a joke by Fairfield County standards. Mary didn't want anything except the statutory minimum for child support. She married the broker and now my daughters live in one of those large houses along the Gold Coast. Over three years ago now.”

“And you stayed in Connecticut.”

“I considered heading back to New York. Had this fatalistic sense of ‘That's where I really belong,' but I couldn't bring myself to do it, not with my daughters here. I gave up the small house, been in this apartment ever since. My little castle.” He forced a half-hearted laugh. “I do all right.”

“And the anger and sadness and . . .”

“You asking if I need a shrink to talk this through?” He laughed. “No, it's over. The most surprising thing is that I don't miss Mary, not at all. Didn't even miss her very much in the beginning, after she first left. Never expected that, but it's the truth. If she felt I wasn't good enough for her, then the hell with it, right? Miss my girls like crazy, though.”

“I can see that,” she told him as she pointed to the photos on the counter.

“So what about you? What happened with that fiancé of yours?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Quite an admission for someone with your experience.”

“Some of my friends think I've always been searching for the perfect guy.”

“But you don't buy that.”

“No, I don't. I was going to marry the miserable sonuvabitch, till I found out he was screwing everything that moved. I'm still not sure why, or what I missed along the way.”

“That's too bad. But it shouldn't sour you on marriage.”

Randi smiled. “Quite a piece of advice, coming from someone with
your
experience.”

Walker laughed.

“I don't know. Maybe I see so many problems in the marriages I handle, maybe it scares me off.”

“Professional hazard.”

“We all have them,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I noticed the bulletin board in your bedroom.” He responded with a look that prompted her to add, “I wasn't prying. I saw it there, after I changed.”

“Uh huh.”

“Not the type to leave your work in the office.”

“I do some of my best work at night,” he said, then had a gulp of wine. “That's a line I use once in a while too.”

Randi gave him a knowing look.

“So what'd you think?”

“I didn't read any of it.”

“Come on. You saw enough to know it wasn't my grocery list.”

She picked up her wine glass. “You've created quite a gallery of suspects.”

“More like a bunch of disorganized clues, actually.”

“More than that, I would say.”

“So you
did
read it,” he said with a grin.

“A couple of names caught my eye. Especially mine. Am I under suspicion?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you mean by ‘suspicion.'” He swallowed a forkful of eggs, watching her. “Good, right?”

“Delicious,” she said.

“I forgot to ask if you like mushrooms.”

“They're great.”

Walker nodded. “Let's face it,” he said, “I'm a suspicious person, by nature and profession.”

“So am I,” Randi admitted.

“So the truth comes out.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that we have more in common than you might want to admit.”

She could not suppress a slight smile. “I doubt that, Anthony, I truly do.” She went after a crispy piece of bacon with her fork. When it broke in two, she placed the fork down and picked it up in her fingers.

“All right,” he said, “at least it explains why you're so edgy.”

“My suspicious nature, you mean?”

“Exactly. Why not put some of those feelings to work and help me with my gallery of suspects, maybe trim it down a bit?”

She shrugged.

“Why not start by telling me about that phone call?”