The Fregoli Delusion (22 page)

23

Richard Holland’s lawyer was a
thin, tired-looking, thirty-something named Alice Marsden. Captain Martinez
leaned forward on the table in the interview room and steepled her fingers
while Karen watched, chafing, through the one-way glass in the observation room
next door.

“Let’s go through it again,” Martinez
suggested. “I think maybe we’re missing something here.”

“My client is not prepared to
answer any more questions at this time,” replied Marsden in a monotone. “He’s
already cooperated, and,” she glanced at Holland reproachfully, “without
benefit of counsel, I should add. There’s nothing more he can help you with.”

Holland sat casually with his arms
folded across his chest, a bemused smile on his face. The entire thing was
apparently a joke to him. The fact that Horvath and a team of crime scene technicians
were tearing apart his condo and extremely expensive car was a joke to him. The
fact that Melissa Grove was now swearing that Holland had not been with her on
Thursday morning at the time of the shooting, in contradiction to their earlier
statements, was a joke to him. Richard Holland’s world was an incredibly
amusing place at the moment, apparently.

Karen’s lip curled as she stood
next to ASA Leanne DiOrio behind the one-way glass, forced to the sidelines by
the chief’s edict that she not be allowed to interview The Select Few.

“Cocky sonofabitch,” she growled.

DiOrio said nothing, reading a
text message on her cell phone.

“Do you own a gun, Mr. Holland?”
Martinez pressed.

“He’s already told you that he
doesn’t.”

“Have you ever owned a gun, Mr.
Holland?”

“No,” replied Holland.

“Mr. Holland,” Marsden said,
turning to him. “Please let me do the talking.”

“It’s all right, Alice.” Holland
smiled at her as though she were a cousin for whom he held a special fondness.
“I don’t mind.”

“Have you ever fired a gun before,
Mr. Holland?” Martinez put in.

“Sure. Of course. Hasn’t
everyone?”

“How recently have you fired a
gun?”

“Not for years. Back in college, I
guess. A couple of us went to a firing range. One guy was a member. We thought
it would be fun to try it.”

“Was it fun, Mr. Holland?”

“Yeah. I guess it was.”

“And yet you never went out and
bought your own gun after that?”

“I’ve never really needed one. And
it actually wasn’t
that
fun. It was amusing, I suppose. But that was
about it.”

“You found it amusing.” Martinez
leaned back, as though disgusted.

Holland grinned. “By the way, did
you find a gun at my place?”

Martinez ignored the jab. Hank had
already called to report that Horvath’s search of Holland’s condo had turned up
nothing, and that a cursory inspection of the Ferrari had been just as
fruitless, but she wasn’t about to concede that point to him. “Tell me again,
Mr. Holland. Where were you on Thursday morning between six and eight o’clock?”

“He’s already answered that
question,” Marsden said, “and he has nothing else to say on the subject. As
I’ve
already
said. We have nothing more to say, and my client wishes to
leave.”

“Counselor, I’ve already explained
to you that his alibi has been exploded. We have a sworn statement to the
effect that your client was not where he said he was. Now either he tells me a
better one or he’s going to be charged with obstructing and hindering for lying
about his whereabouts
and
for attempting to bribe our witness to repeat
that lie, and that’s just for starters because we’re also going to hold him
over for further questioning in our homicide investigation. So which is it?”

“It’s weak,” Marsden said. “She’s
a prostitute. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how you got her to change
her statement. The entire thing is a house of cards based on your desperation
to find a straw dog for this case, and it’ll be a pleasure to tear your
ridiculous obstructing charge to shreds. Do your worst.”

Beside Karen in the observation
booth, DiOrio’s cell phone rang. She answered it, turning away from the glass.

“Tell me again where you were
between six and seven thirty on Thursday morning, Mr. Holland,” Martinez
suggested.

“He did?” DiOrio said quietly into
the phone, behind Karen. “I’m very sorry, sir.”

“We’re not going to listen to any
more,” Marsden said, rising. “Come on, Richard.”

DiOrio put away her phone and hit
the button on the intercom. “Captain Martinez, a word.”

Martinez pointed a finger at
Marsden. “Sit down. Right now.” Glancing at the one-way glass, the captain
stood up and left the interview room.

Karen turned around, frowning.
“What the hell’s going on?”

DiOrio ignored her.

Martinez came through the door of
the observation booth. “What is it?”

“Turn him loose, Ann.”

“
What
?”

“I just took a call from State’s
Attorney Exler. He just took a call from Judge Brown. Judge Brown just took a
call from Gerald W. Evans, senior partner at Evans, Curry and Bryce, where our
friend Alice Marsden is a junior partner. Unfortunately, Judge Brown was asleep
when Evans called and was very upset at being disturbed, and Mr. Exler was
asleep when Judge Brown called
him
, and he was even more upset to hear
that Judge Brown was upset. The judge is upset because we’re holding a client
of Evans, Curry and Bryce on the word of a prostitute who, as they’re now
arguing, is changing her story in order to extort money from their client.
Since she’s admitted she expected money from Holland, and since I also had to
admit to Mr. Exler that your search of his premises and car failed to turn up a
murder weapon or Brett Parris’s camera, I didn’t have any ammunition left to
fire. Mr. Exler’s instructions are crystal clear. Holland walks.”

“What the
fuck
!” Karen
pounded her fist against the glass and walked out, slamming the door behind
her.

In the interview room, Holland and
Alice Marsden looked up, startled. Holland’s lip curled in a faint smile.

“Damn it, Leanne,” Martinez said,
“he lied and gave a false alibi. I don’t care what they say, I believe the
girl. She took money to back his play, yeah, but she’s telling the truth.”

“You may believe her,” DiOrio
said, “but a jury won’t. They’ll crucify her on the stand and make Holland look
like a victim. You’ve got nothing. He walks.”

Martinez stared through the glass.

“She’s over her head, Ann,” DiOrio
said after a moment, looking at the door Karen had slammed on her way out.
“She’s a liability and you need to take her off the case before it goes south
on you.”

“She’ll be all right,” Martinez
said, unwilling to admit she’d just been thinking the same thing. “We’ll manage
her.”

“It’s your neck on the line here.
Detectives are a dime a dozen. Commanders, not so much.”

“I know.” She turned around.
“Don’t you think I know that?”

“All right.” DiOrio held up a
hand. “I’m just saying.”

“Stainer’s a hell of a detective,
and Hank has complete faith in her. She’s off her game a bit, yeah, but she’ll
come through for us and we’ll nail that son of a bitch.” She looked back at
Holland. “Her gut’s on the money. That bastard did it. I can feel it, just like
she does.”

DiOrio stuck out her lower lip.
“Good luck proving it.”

Martinez pushed past her and went
out the door to give Richard Holland his good news.

24

Meredith Collier lived on the
twenty-eighth floor of a high-rise condominium complex on the waterfront. The
building was only six years old, and no expense had been spared in its
construction. The corridors on each floor featured expensive carpeting,
discreet video security, and original works of art on the walls. Meredith’s
condo included an open-concept entry area, three large bedrooms, a master
bathroom with a Jacuzzi, a powder room for guests, and a large living room with
a spectacular view of the river.

Hank sat in a recliner in her
living room, sipping coffee as a cargo vessel moved down the river, leaving a
silver wake behind it in the late morning sun. He wore black pajama bottoms and
an open silk robe that Meredith had given to him last night. There was a pajama
top as well, but he wasn’t sure where it was at the moment.

She sat in a recliner angled next
to his, reading the Sunday morning news on a tablet. She wore a berry-colored
cashmere robe that was belted around the middle. Her feet were bare. She put
the tablet aside and stretched.

“I should get us something to eat.
Would you like something?”

“Don’t go to any trouble.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got some
cold grilled salmon in the fridge. I’ll scramble some eggs, make some cheesy
French toast, with cherry tomatoes and watercress. It’ll only take a few
minutes.”

“Sounds great.”

She didn’t move.

“Sorry I was so late last night,”
Hank said.

“Nonsense. You’ve already
apologized.”

He set aside his coffee cup. “It’s
beautiful here. What a view.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“I have a view of the city,
looking north. I love it, but I love this, too.”

“You’ll have to show it to me some
time.”

The ship’s horn sounded softly on
the water below.

“I’ll have to eat and run,” he
said. “We’re going to caucus at one o’clock. We need to pull this thing
together.”

“Will you go back to your place
first?” she asked, thinking about the time.

“No, Karen will pick me up.” He’d
already called her, while Meredith was in the bathroom, showering. Since Karen
lived nearby, it was not a problem for her to pick him up.

Meredith rose and moved behind his
chair. She put her hand on the top of his head, her fingers gently moving
through his frizzy hair. “You know, you can leave a few things here if you like.
Save wearing the same clothing two days in a row.”

He tilted his head back. “I’m not
sure that’s a good idea.”

“There’s lots of room in my
closets,” she joked, pretending not to understand.

His eyes creased in affection.
“I’m not a nine-to-five guy, Merry.”

“That’s obvious.” Her fingers
continued to caress his hair.

“We keep the detectives on shifts
and they get paid overtime if they’re called in,” he went on, “but I don’t work
shifts and I don’t claim overtime. The phone rings and I go. I stay as long as
I have to, then I go on to the next one. That’s my life. I don’t have the right
to force that kind of thing on someone else.”

“You might want to consider that
perhaps someone else might not be bothered by it.”

“You look cute upside down.”

“I’m told it’s my best angle.
Don’t change the subject.”

“I get very focused when I’m in
the middle of an investigation. Sometimes I’m hardly aware of anything else.”

“I thought your focus was pretty
good last night.”

He smiled.

She moved around and sat down on
the arm of his chair. “I tease you, but I can’t imagine what it must be like,
doing your job.”

“I’ve been getting that a lot
lately.” He told her about Perry’s impromptu visit to Jarrett’s autopsy on
Friday, how he’d been unprepared for the stark reality of post-mortem
dissection, and how, afterward, he’d pressed Hank about his career choice.

“I tried to explain, but I didn’t
do a very good job of it.”

She waited.

“Some of it involves what Freud called
isolation of affect,” he said. “A defense mechanism where you respond to
unpleasantness or horror by putting your emotions in a box and cutting them off
from the rest of your thought processes. I do that. Every cop does, if they
want to survive. Compartmentalize your emotional responses to the things you
see and keep the lid on very tightly.”

“I can understand that.”

“The problems come, though, when
you do that for too long and you lose touch with your emotions altogether.” He
watched the ship inch down the river. “You lose all your highs and lows, and end
up in the middle where there’s little or no emotion at all. Or, just as bad,
you have inappropriate emotional responses to normal things.”

He told her about John Douglas,
the FBI profiler who, in one of his books, described having lashed out at his
children for being upset over cut knees and scraped shins when he’d witnessed terrible
brutality against other children that they couldn’t possibly imagine. And the
instance when his wife became upset because she’d badly cut her hand with a
knife in the kitchen and he began to muse aloud about blood spatter patterns
he’d seen at horrific crime scenes. Douglas had written about these incidents
while discussing his divorce and how his career had made a shambles of his
personal life.

“You can’t interact with people
normally any more,” he finished. “Or you crash and burn,” he said, thinking of
Peralta.

“Was it a problem,” she asked,
“between you and your wife?”

“Marla?” He chuckled, surprised.
“No, not at all. We weren’t together long enough for anything that deep. She
was three years older than I was, and twice as ambitious. She was disappointed
I decided to put on a uniform and become a cop, and that was it. Her
expectations were a lot higher than that.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe
it was more than twenty years ago. Ancient history.”

“Where is she now?”

“Annapolis. She married a dentist
or something. Had some kids, went into private practice. We don’t stay in
touch.”

They listened to the silence for a
moment. Meredith stirred. “Do you worry about it? That you’ll lose touch with
your emotions?”

“I’m an intellectualizer, he smiled.
“Another defense mechanism. Allows me to consciously analyze the things I see
without becoming anxious. Focus on the facts instead of the emotions.” He
smiled at her. “Flight into reason, they call it.”

“You think that’s what you do?”

“To a certain extent.”

“I only took first-year psych,”
she said, “and I wasn’t very interested in it except for how it relates to linguistics
and culture, especially Asian culture, but I do remember reading that humor is
considered the highest of our defense mechanisms. You have a very active sense
of humor, Hank. Maybe that helps you.”

“Maybe.” He reached out and picked
up his coffee cup. As he raised it to his lips, his hand quivered slightly. It
reminded him immediately of Horvath's hand, trembling as the detective lifted
his cigarette to his mouth in the parking lot behind Jarrett Tower on Thursday.
Peralta's meltdown had affected all of them, even Karen with her brave talk
about law enforcement lifers. They all knew there was a line that, once
crossed, could not be re-crossed. Peralta had reached that line and balked. Had
he already crossed it? Was he, as Karen had joked, another law enforcement
lifer?

Meredith ruffled his frizzy hair
once more and stood up. “I'll get us that lunch now.”

Turning, he watched her move away
toward the kitchen. He remembered the moment at the fundraiser on Friday night
when he'd stared at the blond curl on her shoulder. He watched her bare feet
heel-and-toe, heel-and-toe across the floor. He remembered the first time she'd
ever touched him, lightly on the arm, a year ago when he'd visited her here in
this apartment to interview her about Peter Mah and the Triad view of the
world. He remembered still feeling the pressure of her fingers on his arm afterward,
as he'd ridden down in the elevator. He knew now it had been the beginning of a
change within him, a movement through shadows toward anticipated light.

He set the cup back down, forcing
his hand to remain steady.

An act of will.

He knew he’d crossed the line a
very, very long time ago. What he didn’t know, and what he suspected no one
else really knew, was exactly what was possible on this side.

Time to find out.