All I Want For Christmas Page 3

  “You’re right.” He stepped inside and stooped to pick up the rest of the files that were scattered over the floor. “I’m fresh out of candy canes.”

  She bent on one knee and helped him. For a second, she thought she might have misjudged the man last night. A second later, she knew she hadn’t. He was pausing to read the names on the labels. She took the folders from him and dropped them on top of a file cabinet.

  The names and notes on the charts were confidential. In the wrong hands, the confessions of indiscretions and self-perceived sins she heard during therapeutic sessions could wreak havoc on the lives of her patients. And some of her patients had enemies who’d love to ruin them.

  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall” was never truer than in the realms of politics and wealth She had more than a few of the town’s biggest in both areas, proving once again that wealth and power did not necessarily go hand in hand with happiness and emotional stability.

  “Nice office you have here,” Jack said, when she’d returned to her desk. His gaze took in the room, settling on the coffeepot and pottery mugs on a corner table. “Mind if I pour myself a cup?”

  “Help yourself.” She slid the file she’d been reviewing into the top drawer of her desk. “And then have a seat. I’m eager to hear what procedures you have in mind for finding out who sent the threatening note.” She was determined to keep the conversation focused.

  He set his cup on the back corner of her desk and pulled a chair close, taking a long drag of the strong New Orleans brew before he sat. The look on his face was not merry.

  “I take it you didn’t hear the news this morning.”

  “No,” she said, trying to read his expression. “Should I have?”

  “It wasn’t good. Shortly after I left you last night, a young woman’s body was discovered by a couple of teenagers who’d pulled off the road to neck.”

  “Where?” The question came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “In a wooded area across from a golf course on Behrman Highway in Algiers. According to forensics, the time of death was about 3:00 p.m. She’d been strangled with a silk scarf and then apparently dumped. Prints indicated she’d been dragged to the spot where the kids found her.”

  Susan’s lungs constricted as if she’d been punched. “Who was she?”

  “Maggie Henderson. Do you know her?”

  “Maggie Henderson.” Susan ran the name and the statistics through her mind, but came up with nothing. “I don’t recognize the name.”

  “Could she be one of your patients?”

  Susan turned on her computer and went to her patient files, moving the mouse until she reached the spot where Henderson should have appeared. “She’s not a current patient. If she was a patient more than three years ago, she might not be on the computer yet. My secretary has just started databasing those records.”

  “How about Maggie Latham? That was her maiden name.”

  Susan found the Ls. “No Latham either. I’ll have Bobby dig out the old records and see if there’s a Maggie Henderson or Latham.” She turned back to the detective. “So we know the note I received wasn’t a hoax.”

  “We don’t know anything for sure. Murders in and around New Orleans are nightly occurrences. It could be a coincidence.”

  “If you thought that you wouldn’t be here at eight in the morning, would you, Detective?”

  “Maybe I just like your company.”

  “Let’s not play games.”

  “No, I wouldn’t dream of it. I don’t picture you as the game-playing sort, Doctor.”

  “Your intuition is on target. So why don’t we get to the point of this visit? I have a very busy schedule today.”

  “Is what you have to do more important than apprehending a killer, more important than making sure he doesn’t kill again?”

  Susan looked away. Of course not. Nothing was. She was letting this man get to her again, the same way he had last night. She hadn’t a clue why, except that she had the vague feeling he was switching roles with her. It seemed that he read something into every word she uttered.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help, but I don’t know what that would be. I lay awake most of the night running through my caseload in my mind. I can’t imagine any of them taking someone’s life.”

  “Everyone has the potential to become a killer, Doctor, if the situation’s right. So all we do is decide who’s in a situation that may have pushed him—or her—over the edge.”

  “How do you suggest we do that?”

  “We’ll rate the potential of each of your patients. You might call it their ability-to-commit-murder quotient. Then I’ll take it from there. I’ll check out motivation, past criminal records, opportunity to commit the murder. All the variables I can cover.”

  He leaned closer, his voice steady and persuasive. “You’ll walk me through your findings, guiding me so that I don’t misread the emotional signs. Together we have a good chance of stopping him before our killer strikes again, before another young woman loses her life.”

  His gaze sought and engaged hers, and she shivered in unexplained anticipation. She and Jack, tracking a killer.

  “All you have to do is give me access to your files.”

  Susan shook her head, anger destroying the brief period of anticipation. So this was the game the detective had in mind. He’d make her feel the two of them were on the same team, entice her into unethical conduct.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Detective. As I told you last night, my records are confidential.”

  “Not when murder is involved. You have a legal duty to—”

  “I’m well aware of my legal duties,” she interrupted before he drove her over the edge. “If you have evidence that one of my patients is a suspect, I can accommodate you. But no judge in the country is going to grant you a subpoena to view all of my records. I’ll go through the files today and select those patients with decidedly aggressive tendencies. Then we’ll talk, if you’re interested.”

  “You’re calling the shots. What time do you want me here?”

  “Not here. We’ll have to meet at my apartment. How about tonight at ten? Rebecca and Timmy will be in bed by then, and I’ll have had time to put together a few profiles for you to look at.”

  “Ten it is. You make the coffee and I’ll bring the doughnuts.”

  “This isn’t a party.”

  “Absolutely not. If I even act as if I enjoy the doughnut, you snatch it from my hands and stuff it down the disposal.” He gave a mock salute and disappeared through the door.

  Susan swallowed and tossed the pen she’d been holding across the desk. The man was impossible. A typical know-it-all, manipulating, devilishly handsome cop. For two cents she’d call the chief of police and demand he be replaced as investigating detective on this case.

  But then this was New Orleans. She might be exchanging the known devil for something worse. A sigh of frustration escaped her lips. A killer on the loose who’d made her a silent partner in his acts of violence and an investigating detective who had no regard for her ethical obligations.

  This on top of anxiety-ridden patients and two children who needed all she could give and more. No wonder cold, bleak, quiet January was her favorite month of the year.

  11:45 p.m.

  SUSAN SLIPPED HER stockinged feet from the confining shoes. Stretching her legs beneath the kitchen table, she flexed and wiggled her toes. The big toe on her right foot brushed the leg of Jack Carter. She jerked away as if she’d rubbed it against broken glass.

  “I don’t bite,” he said, looking up from the notes he’d had his nose buried in for the last half hour.

  “I know. I’m just tired. It’s nearly midnight and we’ve been sitting in this one spot for two hours.”

  “A couple more questions and I’ll get out of here and let you get some rest.”

  “Why bother? You’ve had questions about everything I’ve shown you, and you’re never satisfied with my answers.”
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br />   Jack stared at her for long, silent seconds before speaking. “I’m not doing this to aggravate you. If there was a way to leave you out of this mess, I would.”

  The concern in his voice caught her off guard, and a strange fluttery sensation skittered along her nerve endings. It was the late hour, she told herself. Besides, so much time spent alone with an attractive man was bound to affect the senses. It meant absolutely nothing.

  “Ask your questions,” she said. She meant the words to come out cool and steady, but a tremor slipped in.

  He picked up on it immediately. “I can ask these questions tomorrow if you’re too tired.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Okay.” He pushed a page of her own notes in front of her. “Tell me a little more about this guy. You say here he’s unusually jealous of his wife.”

  The muscles in Susan’s stomach tightened. Gabriel Hornsby’s past would make fascinating reading for the detective, but if it leaked out to the wrong people, it could have a very damaging effect on his life. She considered her words carefully.

  “He’s in his mid-fifties. His wife is twenty years younger and quite beautiful. She’s out of town frequently on business, and he gets upset if he calls her hotel room at night and she doesn’t answer.”

  “Poor guy. Insanely jealous men should never marry.”

  “I didn’t say insanely jealous. I said unusually.”

  “Right. So what about the wife? How does she handle it when he goes berserk?”

  Susan twisted the napkin at her fingertips. She hadn’t said the man was insanely jealous and she hadn’t said he went berserk, but both descriptions were probably truer than her own. Still, they drew a false picture of Gabriel. “His wife appears to be very caring, but she is becoming increasingly annoyed by his reactions. She bears the brunt of his insecurities even though they were formed at an early age, long before she came into the picture.”

  Susan ran her fingers along the rim of her empty coffee cup. “His actions may well cost him his marriage if he’s not able to move past the obstacles and develop more mature patterns of coping.”

  “So the poor slob needs to let up before his wife decides that if she’s got the name she might as well play the game.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Yeah, well, I told you, I’m a simple man. Words of more than two syllables twist my tongue, but I speak fluent cop talk So, what kind of work does this traveling babe do?”

  Susan stared at Jack icily. He was doing it again, pulling her strings on purpose, trying to get her worked up so she’d slip and give more information than she intended. She slid her feet back into her shoes and sat up straight. “The lady is an officer in one the area’s largest banks.”

  “And is she running around on him?”

  “Not that I know of, but it’s possible. I only know what my patient tells me. He’s basing his jealousies on speculation.”

  “What about the husband? What are these deep dark secrets of the past that messed up his mind?” Jack picked up his coffee cup and swirled the dark liquid.

  Susan thought for a minute, deciding how much she could say without revealing the man’s identity and wrecking his life. “He witnessed the infidelity of his mother,” she finally explained, “on many occasions— when he was a preteen.”

  A whistle and a low curse flew from Jack’s lips. He set his cup on the table. “Sorry about the language. It just slipped out.”

  “No problem. I’m sure it’s a standard exclamation in cop talk, being one syllable and simple.”

  “Touché. But that has to be tough on a kid, seeing something like that.”

  “It was, but actually witnessed was not the correct word. He was in the house and he was aware of what was going on. He didn’t actually see anything.”

  “Still, that would have to mess up a boy’s mind real good, carry over into adulthood. Might even drive a man to kill, if the situation was right.”

  “It might, but I don’t believe so, not in this case.”

  Jack leaned in close. “I need his name, Susan. I have to check this one out.”

  Panic punched her in the stomach. This wasn’t their man, and she couldn’t give Jack his name. Not that she didn’t want to find the killer. She wanted it at least as badly as Jack Carter did. All she’d been able to think about, the entire day, was the young woman, strangled, her life stolen from her. And somehow Susan was at the root of the murderer’s insane behaviors.

  But still she couldn’t destroy an innocent man who’d trusted her, who’d believed her promise of confidentiality. Not when that man was Gabriel.

  Gabriel Hornsby, prominent New Orleans surgeon, son of Marilyn Hornsby, state representative. One whisper of all of this and the newspapers would have a field day. One whisper and Marilyn’s career would be destroyed. One whisper and Gabriel would regress to the point he’d been at two years ago when he’d first walked into her office.

  Suddenly the odor of the half-eaten doughnut at her elbow was sickeningly sweet. She stood and carried it to the trash.

  “His name, Susan. I need the man’s name.” Jack’s voice was insistent. “You gave me two other names to check out. What makes this man so special?”

  When had Jack switched from Dr. McKnight to Susan? No matter. It was just another ploy to win her confidence, to make her do something she knew was ethically and inherently wrong. She turned to face him. “I can’t give you his name.”

  “For Pete’s sake, a woman’s dead. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll go to a judge and force you to release this man’s records.”

  “Give me another choice, Detective.”

  “Another choice? What do you have in mind? Maybe you’d like to conduct the investigation yourself. Dr. Susan McKnight, Psychologist Policewoman.”

  She took a deep breath. “It’s not what I’d like to do. It’s what I have to do.”

  Jack jumped up, the kitchen chair scraping noisily behind him, his face twisted in aggravation. “I thought psychologists were the masters of reason. You are making no sense.”

  “Lower your voice—you’ll wake the children,” she cautioned, her voice and emotions much more controlled than his. “Tell me what to do, detective. I can follow directions.”

  He walked over and stood in front of her, his body invading her space. “I’ve told you what to do. Give me the man’s name. I’ll check his whereabouts at the time of the murder.”

  “What if I can do that for you? We’ll have the same results without my breaking confidentiality.”

  “You’re not a police officer. I can’t allow you to start questioning a murder suspect.”

  “Sure you can. If I’m not a police officer, I don’t have to follow your rules. I don’t need to issue a Miranda warning. I’ll just ask a few questions and snoop around. If I find he has a proven alibi, we can dismiss him without ruining his life.”

  “I have no intention of ruining his life unless he’s guilty.”

  Susan rubbed her fingers against her temples. Why was doing what was right so difficult? “Just give me a chance to find out if he has an alibi.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “We’ll talk again”

  “And in the meantime, the killer may be picking out his next victim”

  A cold shiver shook Susan’s body. No matter what they did the killer could be picking out his next victim. “Detective, my doctoral thesis was on the personality characteristics of the criminally insane. I gathered that material while working in a facility where that population received therapy behind locked doors and barred windows.”

  “Good, then you know what we’re dealing with here.”

  “A psychopath. And the patient in question isn’t one. Besides, all I’m asking is a chance to see if he has an alibi,” she repeated. “If I can’t do it, I’ll give you his name.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s the way I have to handle it. I want the killer caught, but I will not c
ompromise innocent patients.” She shuddered as cruel images marched through her mind. A woman’s body, cold and wet, lifeless.

  Jack touched a hand to her elbow. “We’ll find him,” he said, apparently aware that she was lost in her own dark thoughts. “Just be careful. That’s all I ask.”

  “I will.”

  He stepped away. “I guess I better get out of here so we can both get some sleep.” Turning, he walked over and deposited his coffee cup in the sink. “But don’t think we’re stopping here. I need a profile on every male patient you have. By tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’ll do what I can. But my sitter has Friday afternoons off. You can meet me here at two. That way we can talk while Timmy is down for his nap and before Rebecca returns from school.”

  “Two, it is.”

  Susan went to the front door and unlocked it while Jack retrieved his light jacket from the back of the sofa. He followed her to the door but made no move to leave. “I’ll talk to you in the morning,” he said, coming up behind her and stopping at her elbow. “I want to know exactly how you plan to check out the alibi. And don’t do anything without talking to me first.”

  “You have my word, Detective Carter. Believe me. I have no intention of playing any dangerous games.”

  “Good.”

  She extended her hand. He took it, but he didn’t shake it and didn’t let go. “You can call me Jack, Carter, or even Santa, but ‘Detective’ sounds way too formal for a woman that I see first thing in the morning and last thing at night.”

  Susan trembled. It had happened again, the crazy tingle that danced through her body and left her weak. She looked up at him and for a second she thought he was going to kiss her. For a second she wished he would. But instead he let go of her hand and pushed through the door.

  “Goodnight, Jack.” Her voice was low, and the name came out sounding like an endearment. For the first time in a long time, she felt the heat of a blush on her skin.

  He turned and smiled, and the warmth inside her heated up considerably. It had been way too long since she’d been with a man. That was the only possible reason a man like Jack Carter could awaken any kind of desire in her.