The Syndrome (22 page)

Packing …

Adrienne sat up with a start, and turned on the light. If he was packing, he’d take everything—clothes, furniture, and files. Including her sister’s medical file. Either that, or he’d throw it away.

She wanted it.

And, as next of kin, she had a right to it. But if she asked for the file in a letter or by phone, Duran would probably “sanitize it” before he turned it over. So she needed a pretext, a
reason to visit him so that she could make the request in person—at his office—no excuses. It only took her a minute to think of one.

Getting out of bed, she pulled her Filofax out of her attaché case, found Duran’s number, and placed the call. The clock on the nightstand read 12:15. To her surprise, he answered after a single ring. “Hello?”

This is crazy
, she thought.
It will look like harassment.

“Hello?” Duran repeated.

She started to hang up, then realized that he probably had Caller ID—which would make things even worse. Anonymous calls, late at night. “Mr. Duran?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“It’s Adrienne Cope.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“No—you didn’t, I was—I was just watching television.”

“Well, I won’t make a practice of calling you so late, but—I’ve been so busy at work—it was the only time I had.”

“I see.” When she said nothing, he filled in the silence, “And the reason you called was …?”

Get to the point
, she told herself. “First, I want to thank you for taking the polygraph,” she told him.

“I was happy to,” he replied.

“You didn’t have to—”

“I don’t have anything to hide,” he said.

“Well … the reason I called was to tell you … I have a check.”

“A what?”

“A check—for you. As Nikki’s executor, I’m making a partial distribution of the estate. Basically, it’s the money from her checking account.”

“But … why me?”

“You’re in the will.”

The line was silent for a while. Finally, Duran said, “Well, why don’t you keep it? I don’t want it. Whatever happened, I failed her.”

Oh, pleeeze
rose up in her throat, but instead, she said, “I understand but, if you feel that way, I’m sure there’s a charity you could give it to. In any case, I was hoping I could stop by, and drop it off.”

Duran was slow to answer. Finally, he said, “You could just … put it in the mail.”

“I would,” she replied, “but there’s another reason I wanted to see you, and—would Saturday be all right? It would only take a minute.” She could hear the television in the background, the little zip of a laugh track.

Duran was quiet for a moment, then asked, “What’s the other reason?” His voice sounded toneless, robotic.

Adrienne took a deep breath. “Actually, I’m—well, I’m thinking of dropping the suit,” she told him, surprising herself at least as much as Duran. “—If you’ll just tell me about Nikki.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, and for a moment, it occurred to her that he was more wrapped up in the television than he was in his conversation with her. Finally, he said, “I’m working out in the morning. Early. Then I’ve got clients until lunch.”

“Will you be done by one?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” he replied. The laugh track surged in the background.

“Then I’ll see you then,” she said in a bright little voice. “One o’clock.
Sharp.”

When she told Eddie Bonilla that she was going to see Duran, he went off like a pop-top can.

“Are you outta your mind?”

“No—”

“I thought we had a deal!”

“Well, we
do
, but—it’s the only way I’m going to get my sister’s medical file. If I ask him to send it to me—”

“Does the word ‘psychopath’
mean
anything to you?” Bonilla demanded.

“Of course it does, but—”

“When are you supposed to see him?”

“This afternoon.”

“What time?”

“One.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

She hesitated. She felt guilty about how much time the detective was spending on her case—and not charging her for it. When she’d insisted on an accounting at the end of the week, he’d only billed her for an hour and a half. And then, when she’d protested, he’d raised his hands as if to hold her off. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “They’re my hours—I’ll bill ’em as I like.”

“That’s
soooo
nice of you, Eddie, but—”

Bonilla drove. He refused to ride in her Subaru—which was strewn with paper coffee cups and rusting out.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said.

“’Cause you’re tappin’ your foot like you’re Gregory Hines or something.”

Adrienne laughed as Bonilla turned off Connecticut onto a side street, and began looking for a parking space. “I’m just tired,” she told him. “Slough has us working around the clock.”

Bonilla nodded distractedly, then seeing a parking space,
maneuvered the Camaro into position at the curb, wedging it between a Volvo and a Mercedes. As Adrienne began to get out, the detective removed something from under the seat and, reaching behind, shoved it into the back of his waistband.

Adrienne couldn’t believe it. “What are you
doing
?”

“What does it look like?” the detective replied. “I’m taking you up to—”

“I mean the gun.” Together, they stepped from the car, and slammed the doors.

“I got a permit to carry. I’m
licensed”

“I
hate
guns.”

“So?”

“So I think you should put it back in the car.”

Bonilla put his hands in his pockets, and leaned against the car door. “Un-unh,” he said. “I’m not strapped, I don’t go.”

“Fine,” she told him. “I’ll get a cab back.” As she turned to leave, he put a hand on her arm.

“I don’t go, you don’t go.”

“That’s not part of the deal. You didn’t say anything about a gun,” Adrienne replied.

“Hey—I’m a private investigator! It’s ‘tools of the trade.’ You hire a cabdriver, he comes with a cab. You hire me, I come with the Duke.”

Adrienne was nonplussed. “The what?”

Bonilla blushed. “Never mind. It’s a long story.”

Duran must have been waiting for her, because when she pressed the buzzer on the intercom, he answered almost immediately. “Yes?”

“It’s Adrienne Cope.”

“Come on up,” Duran told her, and buzzed her into the lobby.

When they got to the sixth floor, he was waiting for them in front of his apartment. Seeing Bonilla, a rueful smile flickered across his face. “I see you brought a date,” he said.

“Very funny,” Bonilla remarked, stepping past Duran into the apartment.

She was shocked at how tired Duran seemed. He was basically a good-looking guy. So good-looking, in a black Irish kind of way (thick dark hair, blue eyes), that she wondered if Nikki had selected him on the basis of appearance.

But now, he appeared almost haggard. His eyes were rimmed with red, and it seemed as if he’d lost weight. As they walked into the living room, he stopped so suddenly that Adrienne and Bonilla almost crashed into him.

“Christ!” Duran exclaimed, and reached into the corduroy jacket he was wearing.

“What’s the matter?” Adrienne asked.

He removed a cassette tape from his pocket, and shook his head. “It’s for the insurance company. I’m supposed to mail it—”

“You got lots of time before the last pickup,” Bonilla told him.

Duran nodded, and dropped the cassette back into his pocket.

“Can I take your coats?” he asked.

“Nah,” Bonilla said. “We won’t be that long.” His eyes flickered from one side of the apartment to the other, as if he were looking for a small, but deadly, snake.

“Oh,” Duran said. “Okay.” Then he turned to Adrienne with an expectant look, which she returned with a puzzled frown. Duran prompted her: “You said you had a check for me. I mean, I thought that’s why you’re here.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she remembered. “I have it right here!” She reached into her purse, and extracted an envelope with Duran’s name on it. “It’s five grand,” she told him.

With a disinterested nod, he slid the envelope into the pocket of his jacket. “Well, thanks,” he said. “I’ll see that it goes to a good cause.” Bonilla scoffed, turning his head with a dismissive puff. Duran looked at him in an empty, even way that suggested the P.I. was beneath his notice. Then he turned back to Adrienne. “You said something on the phone about dropping the suit,” Duran reminded her.

“Yes, I did. I’m thinking of doing that.”

“Well, I hope you will. If there’s anything I can do—”

“Actually,” Adrienne said, jumping in on cue, “there
is!”

Duran regarded her with a wary eye. “And what’s that?”

“My sister’s medical file …”

“What about it?”

“I was hoping I could have a copy.”

Duran thought about it. Finally, he said, “I don’t see the point.”

“I’ll bet you don’t,” Bonilla remarked, half to himself and half to Duran, drawing a look of rebuke from Adrienne—who turned to Duran, and said, “I
am
the next of kin, you know.”

“I realize that, but …” He sighed. “Look,” he said, “making a copy is out of the question—”

“I can have it subpoena’d,” she told him in a cool voice.

“I know you can. And I’ll produce it when you do. Until then …” Seeing the scowl on her face, he said, “It’s a professional issue. But if you’d like, I could let you look at it—here, in my office. Would that be okay?” She had been about to turn on her heel and storm off, so the offer took her by surprise—and Bonilla, too. “It’s in here,” Duran added, and gestured for her to follow him down the hall to his consultation room. Bonilla padded after them, ready for a shark attack.

Once in the room, Duran went to his desk. Bonilla stayed with him, as if he were playing man-to-man. Glancing at the monitor on Duran’s desk, he remarked with a chuckle, “Your computer’s on the fritz, Doc. You got an ‘unknown host,’ or somethin’.”

Duran ignored him and, taking a small key from his pocket, turned toward the two-drawer filing cabinet behind his desk. Unlocking it, he pulled open the top drawer, the contents of which were so conspicuously few that Adrienne and Bonilla exchanged glances. Withdrawing a manila folder from the drawer, Duran handed it to Adrienne and leaned back against the edge of the desk.

The tab on the file was neatly typed—
Sullivan, Nicole
—but the file itself was absurdly thin. She could
feel
that. It was almost empty. But it didn’t matter.

Even a single page would tell her what she wanted to know—which was how Nikki had ended up in Duran’s office. If he was a fraud, who’d referred her to him?

Wordlessly, she laid the file on Duran’s desk, and slowly opened it.

Inside was a single, 8 3 10 glossy photograph of her sister. Slightly out of focus, it seemed to have been taken in an airport. Nikki’s expression was one of bored distraction, as if she were waiting for her luggage to arrive—which, in fact, she probably had been.

Adrienne turned the photo over. On the picture’s reverse was a single word, scrawled in blue ink:
Subject.
There was nothing else.

Looking up at Duran, she did her best to keep her voice steady, as she asked, “Is this a joke?” The words quavered with anger.

Duran seemed puzzled by the question, then let his eyes drift toward the open file. Seeing the lone photograph, he frowned, then pushed away from the desk, suddenly agitated. “There’s supposed to be a face sheet!” he protested. “And tests. Information about medication, and … consent forms! Where’s the GAF?”

With a snort, Bonilla strode to the filing cabinet and, one by one, pulled out the drawers—which contained only a single file.
De Groot, Henrik.
Bonilla opened it, and found a photo like the one of Nikki, a candid shot taken in what looked like a public square. Swearing to himself, he tossed it on the desk, and turned to Duran.

“This is your ‘practice’?” he asked. “These are your notes?”

“Of course not,” Duran replied.

“I oughta kick the shit outa you right here,” Bonilla growled.

Duran shrugged, a gesture more of haplessness than defiance. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he told them.

Adrienne was as angry as she’d ever been, but even so, she
wanted to warn Duran that Bonilla had several levels of testosterone and, knowing the signs as she did, the possibility of violence was very real.

And a bad idea. If Bonilla hit him, they’d both be up on assault charges. And with her civil suit pending, she’d probably be suspended or disbarred. She could imagine the judge:
You
assaulted
the defendant in his office because he wouldn’t give you
a file
when you asked for it?

Even now, she could see Bonilla’s fuse, never very long, burning toward its end. He was standing sideways toward Duran with his head cocked, and his right shoulder lower than his left. It was the kind of stance that almost always preceded a roundhouse.

“Eddie,” Adrienne warned. The detective’s eyes shifted to her’s. “Don’t,” she ordered.

In reality, of course, Bonilla’s “fuse” was a lot longer than people realized. It was very much to his advantage that people should think that he, Edward Bonilla, was a walking time bomb. As long as they thought that he might go off in their faces, people tended to be more tolerant, if not more respectful.

Even so, he was within an inch of taking Duran’s head off—when they heard someone pounding on the front door.

Bonilla looked disappointed. “You got a customer, or something?” he asked.

Duran shook his head. The pounding got louder. “They’re supposed to buzz,” he said to no one in particular. “If they aren’t buzzed in, security’s supposed to call.”

“Yeah, well, this guy sounds like he’s got something
acute
.”

Together, they left the consulting room and walked down the hall to where it opened out, leading into the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. Adrienne and Bonilla went into the living room, while Duran headed for the door.

“Who is it?” he asked.