A Killing Gift

Thirty-nine

Jason returned many of his calls, but he delayed returning the urgent phone call of Sid Barkow, president of the institute. At four p.m. he felt he couldn't in good conscience wait any longer. He dialed the number in a fifteen-minute break between patients, fervently praying that he'd reach Sid's voice mail and be spared talking to Sid himself. Sid must have been screening his calls, because he picked up immediately. "Hello."

"Hi, Sid, it's Jason." Jason tried not to sound disappointed.

"I know who you are. But I'm with someone. When are you free to talk?" Sid let his breath out in a long whoosh, as if he'd been holding it in all day.

"I'm free now, Sid," Jason told him.

"Okay, well, I'm just finishing up. I'll call you back in five minutes." Sid hung up. Five minutes later he called back, and right away his hysteria spewed out. "For God's sake, Jason, did you hear about Mrs. Bassett?"

"Yes. I saw the story on the news. Very sad," Jason murmured. The more he'd thought about it all day the sadder it became.

"Jesus, it's just such bad luck. Did you have a chance to talk to her about the institute?"

"You know, Sid, you're a-" Jason almost let his mouth say sleazy bastard, but he stopped himself in time. What was the point in antagonizing an old colleague? "No, I was supposed to meet with her today."

"Oh, God, that's just terrible. Who gets control of Max's foundation now?" he asked.

"You know, Sid, I wouldn't know that." Jason was distressed by the one-track mind. Institute, institute, institute. Couldn't anyone take a break? Poor Mrs. Bassett. She'd sounded like a nice lady.

"I thought you knew Max so well," Sid started whining. Now that the legacy was gone, he must feel very threatened.

"I didn't know him that well." In fact, Jason had met with Max dozens of times over the years and they'd talked about many things, but never about his dying someday, or the details of his foundation.

"Well, what were his plans for the institute when his wife died?"

"He didn't tell me, Sid. He didn't think his wife would die. She was only thirty-seven." Max hadn't thought he would die either, for that matter. Jason pondered the two deaths so close together and wondered what he'd missed in that conversation with Birdie.

"Will you find out, Jason?" Sid's voice had that panicked tone that always irritated everyone in board meetings.

"Yes, Sid, I'll find out," Jason promised in his most soothing tone.

"How soon?" Sid demanded.

"Well, I have to check my notes, talk to a few people. It may take a week or so."

"Can you hurry it up, so I can add it to my report for the June meeting?"

"Sure thing, Sid. I'll get back to you soon. Got to go. My patient is here."

As soon as Jason hung up, his doorbell really did ring. And it was Molly, who happened to be a lovely woman, ironically thirty-seven years old. When she'd come to Jason two years ago, she hadn't had a date in ten years and suffered from so many phobias that she couldn't leave her apartment for anything but food. Now she was working and dating like a maniac, even talking about getting married and having children. One of his success stories. But today he couldn't get interested in any of her exciting plans for the future.

He was distracted by remorse for having put Birdie Bassett off for a week. He should have met with her that evening. It really bothered him.

"What's the matter?" Molly gave him a funny look. He came to and smiled benignly.

"You were frowning at me," Molly accused. "You don't think I mean it?"

Jason had no idea whether she meant it or not. He hadn't been listening. "What are your feelings about that?" he asked. A shrink could turn anything back onto the patient. While Molly thought about important people in her life who had frowned at her, he pondered his relationship with Max Bassett.

Max had wanted to understand the failures of his first marriage. At the time, Jason had encouraged him to talk to a good analyst and formalize his query into why he'd been so passionately loyal to a woman who'd caused him and his children so much damage and pain. But Max wouldn't hear of it; he didn't want to pay to tell a stranger the terrible secrets that made him feel squirmy. So Jason had let Max talk to him for free. He'd been an important donor to the institute. If he'd wanted a little free treatment in return for his largesse, Jason complied. It was one of the services he donated to the institute that no one knew about.

When Molly's session ended, she left with a smile and surreptitiously wiped the doorknob of his office only twice before touching it. Two hours later, his last patient, a lawyer who booked two double sessions a week but rarely came to both-and sometimes didn't show up for either-canceled yet again. Jason was secretly glad to have the free time. He called April to ask if she could see him, and she came right over.

At seven forty-five she gave him a real hug, then took a seat in his patient chair. He was impressed. She looked even prettier than the last time he'd seen her many months ago. Her hair was longer now, and she was wearing a stylish navy suit and red blouse. In fact, she looked better than good. She had metamorphosed from an insecure and prickly female cop who knew pretty much nothing else, into a confident, competent executive who was comfortable in any situation.

"I'm glad to see you," he said, putting a world of meaning into the simple greeting.

"Well, thanks for calling. I'm glad to see you, too." She gave him a rueful smile. "I'd like to see Emma and the baby later if they're around, but business first. I need your help."

Jason smiled. "So what else is new?"

"Look, we've got our own profilers. The FBI, they've got theirs, too. Everybody's got a profiler, and everybody's in this."

"Of course. So how can I help you?" These were the words Jason said to every potential patient who came to him. Just the way the cops said to each other, "What do you need?"

"How much time have you got?" April crossed her legs and relaxed a little in the chair.

"I'm done for the day; take as much time as you want, as long as it takes."

"Okay, did you read that piece about coincidence and terrorism in the Times a few months back?"

Jason frowned. "About the confluence of a dozen weird and weirder deaths of people involved in bio-medical research following the anthrax scare?"

"Gee, anybody ever tell you that you speak in full paragraphs, Jason?"

He laughed. "My wife."

"But yes," she said. "The idea was that the world is big enough for lots of very odd things to happen at the same time, but the world is also small enough for people to take note of odd occurrences and study them. And that even though it seemed logical that terrorists were killing off the experts, in fact, their dying the way they did was really just coincidence. Do you believe that?"

"I don't know. It's a very profound concept, but what's your point?"

"Last week my former supervisor-the man who'd promoted me to detective-was murdered in Washington Square on the way home from his retirement party. He'd left without saying good-bye, so I followed him out. I was the one who found his body." She put her hand over her eyes for a second, then went on. "I was supposed to call for help, but I didn't. I ran after the killer and ended up in the hospital. So did another man. He saw me being throttled and risked his own life to save me. New York isn't so bad, right?"

Jason frowned and started to say something, but April held up her hand. "That's not the weird part. Last night Birdie Bassett was on her way home from a York U dinner, and was murdered in a similar way in pretty much the same place. Coincidence?"

Jason opened his mouth, but again April held up her hand.

"They both had come into money very recently. They both had been alums of York, and they both had known their killer."

"Not coincidence. Someone from the university," Jason said. Being a detective wasn't so hard.

"Not necessarily. Berardino's wife died five weeks ago of natural causes. He inherited her lottery money.

Now four million of it is missing. He's murdered exactly thirty days after his wife's death. Circumstantial evidence points to his son, who maybe didn't want to wait for his dad to die of natural causes to get it, and his former partner, who gave two hundred thousand away to a girlfriend."

"Interesting, but you already told me some of this. How much money did Bernardino get?"

"Fifteen million. Now Birdie. When her husband, your friend Max, died, she inherited more than thirty million, his houses, and his foundation. The lawyers won't give the details yet. Anyway, she got hit the same thirty days later. Sounds like the same killer is working a pattern? A natural death, wait a month, then kill the heir?"

"Yes, sounds like a pattern."

"Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. In both cases the children of the deceased had something to gain by the deaths, and only one of the four has an alibi."

"Does one of the children work at York U?"

"No, but that is a good question."

"So what's troubling you, April?"

"The third coincidence. The man who tried to save me and ended up with a broken arm is Jack Devereaux."

Jason drew a blank. "Who's that?"

"Don't you read the newspaper, Jason? He's Creighton Blackstone's son."

"I don't know who that is." Jason's head was beginning to swim with this.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, he was one of the billionaire founders of the Internet. He left a son no one knew he had."

Jason brought his lips together. "Oh, yes. Now I remember. This is a little out of my depth. Where are you going with it?"

"Jack Devereaux walks his dog every night in the square. He was there the night Bernardino was killed.

He's an alum of York U, and the same caller at the university called both him and Bernardino."

Jason frowned and finally let his breath out. "Before or after he intervened with you?"

"Another good question. Before."

"Well, who's the caller?" Jason asked.

"We don't know yet. York U is a big place."

"April, I'm a little lost. What's your question for me?"

"Probabilities, Jason. Bernardino and Devereaux happen to be connected by calls from the university, but the perpetrators of the two murders could still be the children. You following me?"

"Right."

It had been a long, nerve-racking day. Jason was hungry and wanted to see his girls. For the first time he thought April was acting like a nut. Her voice was scratchy. Maybe she was sick. He gave her a speculative look. "So you're saying that just as the anthrax cases seemed to be connected to Arab terrorists because they occurred directly after 9/11, one of the murders appears to be linked to York University by a phone call, but in fact both murders might have been committed by the children in the end."

"Yes." April looked pleased.

Jason blinked. "Okaaay. Now what about your Jack Devereaux, who happens to be a billionaire himself now, and was walking his dog on the night of your supervisor's murder-did I hear you say he's a York U alum, too?"

"Yes, Jason, you did."

Jason blew air out. "Then you'd better tell him to stay home at night. What do you need from me?"

"I need everything you have on Max and his children. You said he wasn't a patient, so you have no confidentiality issues here. And I need to know everything about Birdie and her relationship with her stepchildren."

"That's easy. Is that it?" He glanced at his watch.

"No, Jason. I also need a profile. What kind of person in a university would target alums who became millionaires?"

"Somebody with a grievance." Jason lifted his shoulder.

"Maybe. We have the hows. Now we need the whys. Will you help me?"

Now Jason really was puzzled. "Well, sure, I'll help you. But you just said you suspected the children."

"I do, but what are the probabilities of that?"

Jason rolled his eyes. Cops.