“Detective, this is Dr. Langford. I’m returning your call. I’m…I was Aubrey Davenport’s psychiatrist. I’m in shock over her death. The reports on the internet say it was homicide. Is that true?”
“Yes, sir. My partner and I would like to talk to you. We could come to your office immediately.”
“That’s impossible,” he said, and I braced myself for the usual doctor-patient confidentiality resistance. “I’m at a medical conference in Albany. I couldn’t possibly get back to the city till tomorrow morning. I realize time is of the essence, but we can’t do this over the phone. Most of my notes are in my office.”
“But you’ll help us?” I said.
“Of course I’ll help you. The law forbids me to share information about my living patients, but Aubrey’s death frees me to help you in any way I can. I’ll gather her files, and we can meet in my office tomorrow at ten a.m.”
He gave me the address and we hung up. “Good news on the Davenport case,” I told Kylie. “Now where were we on Fairfax?”
“You were ogling Kenda Whithouse’s tits, and I was wondering why Nathan Hirsch would go to the men’s room instead of waiting a few more minutes until the mayor got up and said her piece. But now I’m thinking, What a lucky coincidence—Nathan left the room right before the bomb went off.” She smiled. “And you know how cops feel about luck or coincidence.”
CHAPTER 16
It was time to dig deeper into the lives of Del Fairfax’s surviving partners. Fortunately, there was no shortage of material.
“These guys generate a lot of ink,” Kylie said.
“People with no money love to read about people who have mountains of it,” I said. “The world is full of hermits, loners, and recluses, but Howard Hughes was a billionaire, so the press made him famous for it.”
We were looking for a motive for the bombing, but in article after article, interview after interview, the four founders came across as model citizens. Princeton Wells had summed it up the night before: “Nobody wants to kill the golden goose. Silver Bullet doesn’t have enemies.”
By 1:00 p.m. we had raked over their public persona, and there wasn’t enough Red Bull on the planet to get us started looking under their private rocks.
After pulling a thirty-hour shift, we punched out. I went home, slept five hours, showered, and showed up at Cheryl’s apartment at seven. The heady aroma of jambalaya hit me as soon as she opened the door.
She had a wooden spoon in her hand, so I gave her a quick kiss, and she hustled back to the stove while I made straight for the open bottle of Chardonnay on the counter.
“Can I violate one of our cardinal rules tonight?” she asked, spooning mounds of chicken, shrimp, sausage, rice, and chopped vegetables into a serving bowl.
“Just give me half a minute to inhale some of this wine, and you can violate anything you want.”
“Reel it in, lover boy. I’m talking dinner table rules.”
“You mean the one where Zach can’t use his phone at the table, but Cheryl can, because she’s a doctor?”
“That one is chiseled in stone, but I’d like to bend the no-cop-talk-at-dinner rule. I’ve been getting secondhand news about the bombing all day, and I want the unsanitized version.”
We sat down to dinner, and in between forkfuls of spicy Creole bliss and sips of chilled, fruity Chardonnay, I took her through it all—glossing over the carnage and milking absurdities like Kenda Whithouse’s post-explosion bad hair for all the laughs I could get.
By the time I got to the verbal drubbing we’d taken from Arnie Zimmer, the bottle of wine was empty. “You must be exhausted,” she said, opening another. “And you haven’t even come up with a motive for the bombing yet.”
“Plus I still have a second high-profile murder on my hands. Which reminds me: did you ever hear of a shrink named Morris Langford?”
“Morey Langford? Yes, he’s the go-to doc on psychosexual disorders. Why do you ask?”
“Kylie and I are going to see him tomorrow.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s wonderful,” she said, refilling my wineglass. “It’s about time you and Kylie came to terms with your issues. I’m sure Morey can help you.”
“Thanks, but I get all the therapy I need from Gerri at the diner. It’s free with breakfast whether I ask for it or not. My other homicide victim, Aubrey Davenport, was a patient of Langford’s, and he agreed to help. Didn’t throw any of the standard HIPAA bullshit at us.”
“That sounds like Morey. He’s a no-bullshit kind of guy. I had a consult with him a few months ago.”
“Are you serious? You went to see a sex therapist a few months ago, and you didn’t say anything to me?”
“Get a grip, Romeo. It wasn’t about you. I’m a department shrink. You think I only deal with PTSD and alcohol abuse? Cops have at least as many sexual impulse disorders as congressmen. It’s none of my business until they either bring it to me on their own, or someone from on high asks me to evaluate how it could impact their job.”
“Why did you consult with Langford?”
“I had a transit cop who was suffering from frotteurism, and I had zero experience with it. Langford knew it chapter and verse.”
“I never even heard of it.”
“Good, and please promise me you will continue to remain blissfully unsophisticated.”
“Unsophisticated? Come on, doc—how can you say that? You’ve seen my moves—all three of them.”
“Hmm,” she said, her eyes locked on mine, her fingers twirling a lock of raven hair. “There were three?”
I stood up, took her by the hand, and put my arms around her. “You know, I think I’m coming down with a case of sexual impulse disorder myself.”
She began kissing my neck. “I’m a doctor,” she whispered. “Why don’t you step into my office and take off your clothes? I may be able to help.”
“I think you’re helping already,” I said, rotating my hips in time with hers.
“Are you sure there were three?” she said, leading me to the bedroom. “I think I’m going to have to sign up for a refresher course.”
CHAPTER 17
By the time I got to the precinct the next morning, Kylie was already at her desk. “How was your evening?” I asked.
“Stellar,” she said with a gleam in her eye that challenged me to ask for the juicy details. When I didn’t, she came back with, “And how was yours?”
“Educational,” I said. “I learned a new word.”
“Educate me.”
“Frotteurism. It means—”
“Zach, I know what it means. I arrested a guy for it. It happened a few years ago on the number 6 train. It was rush hour, the car was packed, and this dirtbag started rubbing his junk up against the woman standing next to him.”
“Most of these pervs don’t get caught. Lucky for the woman, there was a cop on the train.”
She grinned. “Actually it was unlucky for the perv that the ass he decided to rub against belonged to a cop.”
Her phone rang, and she picked it up. “Hey, Jason, what’ve you got?”
Jason White is a recent transfer from NYPD’s Real Time Crime Center and our back door into the private lives of private people. He’s the Big Brother who can track anyone’s digital footprints. Yesterday, after we’d come up empty-handed, we recruited him to see what he could find on Wells, Hirsch, and Zimmer.
“Thanks,” Kylie said, hanging up. She turned to me. “Nathan Hirsch lives with his wife and three kids in Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, but he also rents an apartment on Hudson Terrace in Fort Lee, New Jersey. And his E-ZPass has him going over the G. W. Bridge every Thursday around three p.m.”
“Maybe the apartment is for his ailing mother, and, good son that he is, he visits once a week.”
“According to Jason, Mom is black, has implants the size of disco balls, and goes by the name of Tiffany Wilde.”
“How the hell does he dig that shit up so fast?”
“I’m curious, too, but it would be unwise of us to ask. The less we know, the more honest we can be on the witness stand.”